Monday, July 21, 2025
Michael Hudson on today’s civilizational conflict
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/07/michael-hudson-todays-civilizational-conflict.html
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Nanoclay:the liquid turning desert in to farmland
https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/the-spray-that-turns-deserts-into-farmland.html
Friday, July 18, 2025
A bit about my research in mathematics
It seems natural in old age to reflect on one’s past and that has been the case with me recently, in particular with reference to mathematics. one used to study, pass examinations with the hope of getting a stable government job at some stage. That was the case with me and I was not particularly interested in any topic. Then suddenly at the age of 15 Professor V.Krishnamurthy in Loyola College, Madras started teaching a topics course once a week. he explained about rational numbers, real numbers, that there are many more real numbers than rational numbers using Cantor’s diagonal argument. I got hooked. It seemed to be subject one could understand which has ideas and not just calculations. From then on I wanted to study mathematics with the idea of ending up as a teacher somewhere and continue to learn and enjoy mathematics. But after a few years, just learning became more of the same and there were natural questions around what one was learning and some of them seemed worth pursuing. So learning slowly turned in to a mixture of learning and research. But I did not like teachers except one or two like Krishnamurthy and did not want to be guided in research. So I did not acquire expertise in any topic and what I leaned became a mixture actual knowledge together with some statements which I assumed without knowing proofs and kept thinking about them off and on trying to figure out how to prove such things. Meanwhile the subject kept changing and one had to learn new things alone though in an institutional setting.
One such event was the arrival of William Thurston. One had to learn what he was doing or give up the subject. But I did not have the background to understand any of it. One way of entry seemed to be through old complex analysis and Mobius transformations leading to some hyperbolic geometry and limit sets and such. It is at this stage I got acquainted with Bernard Maskit. I was wondering about limit sets and he showed me the thesis of one of his students Perry Susskind. It was exactly what I was looking for and then I realised that they could be extended to all dimensions using Margolis Lemma. Perry kindly agreed to collaborate and it was exactly the kind of stuff I liked, learning combined with a bit of research. This knowledge of limit sets also led to some work with Peter Scott on the geometric finiteness of some Kleinian groups using famous work of Cannon and Thurston. This way, I slowly started understanding bits and pieces of Thurston’s work and at the same time writing papers and surviving in the profession. This acquaintance with Maskit, learning about Susdkind’s thesis etc seemed a crucial part of my continuing in the profession when survival seemed difficult after the arrival of Thurston.
Another strand in my career was the theory of JSJ decompositions in which I entered accidentally. While passing through London in 1977, I found a copy of Hempel’s book on three manifolds. I found that there was no reference to me in the book though some work similar to mine made the references. I started looking at the problems at the end of the book and solved one of them on the train to Southampton. I was wondering whether it was publishable or not and later realised that it was a special case of a well known result of Johannson with a long proof and duly published it. I slowly acquired the reputation of having some expertise on JSJ without really reading any of the papers or knowing any thing. Then around 1996, Walter Neumann organised a conference and asked me to write a survey paper on JSJ for the conference. I foolishly agreed but found it impossible to read the relevant papers. After a month I told Walter that it is becoming more of research project and I would do it if he collaborated with me. Peter Scott said “An elementary proof of the existence of the JSJ decomposition was given by Neumann and Swarup in Their arguments greatly simplified the subject by concentrating only on embedded annuli and tori.” It immediately got in to text books. But since it is a joint paper and I had this unfortunate habit of not reading the parts written by collaborators, I am still struggling with the topic and again planning to write a proof of the deformation theorem for my own understanding.
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Michael Hudson on the economics of the current conflicts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avSepk1qxw
A,Astaire Crooke on Trump blunders
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/07/15/us-hubris-driven-blunders-transform-the-entire-complexion-of-wider-war/
Saturday, July 12, 2025
Concentration camp plan for Gaza by Yves Smith
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/07/stop-israels-dystopian-new-improved-concentration-camp-plan-before-its-too-late.html
see also the discussionafter 51 minute mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3TbO2gMKVs&t=2793s
May be some severe financial crisis soon is the onlyxolution.
Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Focus on Turkiye- Azerbaijan activities against Iran
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/07/will-russia-greatly-accelerate-its-ukraine-tempo-to-facilitate-responding-to-turkiye-azerbaijan-threat-to-iran.html
Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Voice of Protest: A Study of Dalit Song in Telugu
The following article contains several references https://untouchablespring.blogspot.com/2011/05/voice-of-protest-study-of-dalit-song-in.html
Things moving fast around Middle East
Douglas Macgregor yesterday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL336a7RMeg
Sunday, July 06, 2025
Now the war against Russia spreads to Azerbaijan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4qpDjKuwsk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TTf24Z2vOQ
more https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/07/chaos-in-the-caucasus-turkiye-and-azerbaijan-make-their-us-israel-backed-move-against-russia-and-iran.html
A depressing scenario about Palestine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUPKVghUp54 "...US course is set, the Palestinian people are going
to end up being a nomadic people much like ironically the Jews themselves once were. Not only will they not have a state, they will not have a homeland."
Friday, July 04, 2025
Tuesday, July 01, 2025
Brian Berletic on future conflicts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CsFqWbDRzY
Scott Ritteron the future of Israel andIran conflict https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp1Y7qTmmpI
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