How America became a nation of the woke and the wary, walking on eggshells
This opinion piece from the Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post makes a counter-intuitive point, namely the more a democracy seeks to legislate against letting people voice opinions which might hurt the sentiments of minorities, the more such divisions (between the majority and the minorities) get entrenched. Whilst the piece focuses on the US, the subject […]
Mass starvation, extinctions, disasters: the new IPCC report’s grim predictions, and why adaptation efforts are falling behind
Given the epic scale on which climate change is playing out, it is likely to become one of the defining investment opportunities of this century. The latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report is useful because it chalks out not only the scale of change but also the wide range of adaptations that will […]
‘The end of an era’: Ikea, Russia’s middle class and the new cold war
Those of us who grew up in the socialist India of the 1980s will remember how the choice of brands you consume can be a marker not just of your social status but of your political choices. So, drinking a can of Coke smuggled into India in the 1980s indicated both that your family had […]
Review of Deng Xiaoping and the transformation of China” by Ezra Vogel
As China and its growing economic and military might becomes ever more salient in a world where Western muscle diminishes by the passing month, those trying to develop a better understanding of China would be well advised to start with Ezra Vogel’s masterly biography of the architect of China’s ascendancy, Deng Xiaoping. The book portrays […]
In praise of Shane Warne, cricketing genius
Those of us who came of age in the 1990s grew up idolising Shane Warne. He was everything we longed to be – outrageously talented, immensely successful, shrewd & outspoken, constantly smoking and drinking when not on the cricket field and a bit of a ‘ladies man’ – but couldn’t be given our middle class […]
How ‘Pasoori’ dancer Sheema Kermani resisted Gen Zia-ul-Haq by wearing ‘un-Islamic’ saris
This piece from The Print highlights an iconoclast from across the border. The unlikely star of the piece is Sheema Kermani, a Bharatnatyam dancer from Pakistan. 26 million people across the world have watched her performance in ‘Pasoori” (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Eqb_-j3FDA), a Pakistani video which marries a Punjabi song with Sheema’s Bharatnatyam. Now, you would imagine that […]
If not for Kamalini Dutt, Doordarshan would have lost some of its most valuable treasures for good
In this era of digital overload, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that some of India’s greatest cultural treasures are stored in the vaults of the country’s state-owned broadcaster, Doordarshan. However, these vaults are so massive that someone needed to go in there, locate the treasures, restore them to their former glory […]
Sanctions and the spectre of deglobalisation
This piece by Shakkar Aiyar underscores the ineffectual nature of the sanctions that are being enforced by the West on Russia. The subtext of the piece is that other than the pulverised population of Ukraine, the other big loser in this conflict is the USA – its weakness as a superpower is now out there […]
This is the reason Demis Hassabis started DeepMind
This piece focuses on a specific application of AI – the use of AI by Dennis Hassabis (the man who in 2016 used AI to train DeepMind to beat the world champion in Go, Lee Sedol of Korea) to predict the structure of proteins. Reading the piece helps us understand how technology, and specifically AI, […]
Talking War and Market Volatility With a Giant of Economics
This is an exceptionally good interview conducted by Jeff Sommer with the Nobel Laureate, Eugene Fama, who demonstrated 60 years ago that that short-term stock price movements are unpredictable and approximate a random walk. In doing so, Fama revolutionised finance and set the ground both for the rise of tracker funds and for the use […]
An extract from Anirudh Kanisetti’s book, ‘Lords of the Deccan’
Many of us in Marcellus are fans of the young Indian historian, Manu Pillai, who has done much to make Indian history interesting and accessible through several bestselling books. Now, as the remaking of India produces more scholars who are researching the country’s history, we have found another equally articulate historian in Anirudh Kanisetti, an […]
How Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema Pulls Off a Shallow Depth of Field
Over the past two decades we have watched Christopher Nolan’s riveting movies (eg. Inception, Dunkirk, Interstallar, Batman Begins, The Dark Night Rises, Tenet, etc) as much for the stunning visuals as for the intriguing plotlines. Nowhere is more apparent than in last year’s movie ‘Tenet’, part of which is set in Mumbai. In ‘Tenet’ the […]
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