Kanthan's blog

26 February 2020 — A fascinating case has made its way to the US Supreme Court.  In 2018, Catholic Social Services, an arm of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, took the city to court accusing it of violating the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and religion....

24 February 2020 — Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? This Latin phrase traces back to the work of the Roman poet Juvenal, written around the late first or early second century, It translates to "who will guard the guardians?" Surprisingly, the original context was not in the sense of the modern...

22 February 2020 — Fancy listening to Folk Music of Afghanistan from 1971? Or Afro-Cuban Jazz from 1966? The Internet Archive has begun digitizing long out-of-print vinyl and making it freely available. As I write these words, I am listening to "Profiles" by Gary McFarland (1966). It was...

20 February 2020 — A quick listicle from the World Economic Forum on cognitive biases that could be holding some of us back at work. The sunk cost fallacy — when you have already invested so much time, emotion, or effort in something that it becomes difficult to abandon, even though you...

18 February 2020 — And I miss you... Like the deserts miss the rain... went the 90s track from Everything But The Girl. Desert rains also bring chaos. An abundance of rain leads to an abundance of foliage, which encourages breeding of locusts. These have wreaked havoc around the Horn of...

16 February 2020 — Whenever I watch "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade", I'm filled with longing for the majestic beauty of airships. Three times longer and twice as tall as a 747 – to put that in perspective, the Hindenburg class machine was as long as the Empire State Building is tall – ...

14 February 2020 — Yesterday, I said there are three very simple things President Ramaphosa can do today that will immediately give an uptick to our economy: Let SAA fail Take the money that would be spent on SAA and use it to upgrade Metrorail rolling stock and stations Hand over...

12 February 2020 — When the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project trotted out the new interchange at the intersection of the N1 and William Nicol, there were many oohs and aahs around how beautiful it was. Actually, it's stupid. It is responsible for creating what is possibly the single...

10 February 2020 — In October 2018, German Chancellor Merkel announced that she would not be standing for reelection as leader of her party, the Christian Democratic Union. In the December election that followed, Merkel's protégé, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, (Germany's current Minister of...

8 February 2020 — When you see one strutting along on its hind legs, you might be forgiven for thinking this is a baby tyrannosaurus.  When it rolls up into a ball, it looks like a projectile from a medieval version of pelota designed for the Spanish Inquisition.  And then it puts forward...

6 February 2020 — Earlier this week, someone expressed an opinion as to why he/she should be forced to subscribe to company medical aid. "The problem is companies to do not give us a choice. We are forced into joining (Discovery Health). That's what we need our government to look at. Why are...