Depending on who you talk to, Uber’s either the devil or the disruptive darling. And, to a lesser extent, so is Lyft, Curb, Grab, Ola and what have you. These are applications that have taken the promise of ‘freeing up underutilized transport resources’ and turned that into ‘running a taxi business’, undercutting the old model in ways that don’t quite ...
In 1993, Samuel Huntington wrote an article titled “The Clash of Civilizations”. In it, he expounded his theory that the world was basically divided into 9 civilizations – the Western, the Orthodox, the Islamic, and so on and so forth. He split these civilizations based not on economics but along racial and cultural lines, and explained that wars would happen ...
a guest post by @AlanSE, in which he discusses three things really holding us back from space colonization – things that few of us bother to question. Saturday night, what are you doing? Perhaps going out to the movies? If you were a permanent resident of space in a substantially-sized colony, you might be doing the same thing. This ...
But this kind of growth, like that associated with Coursera, is “faster than Facebook,” specifically in terms of having a user growth rate greater than 2,000%. That’s growth from roughly 160,000 learners at one university in 2011 to 35,000,000 learners at 570 universities and twelve providers in 2015. – OnlineCourseReport, State of the MOOC 2016 There’s a saying that Edtech ...
The word ‘utopia‘ means the ideal state – a nation, or society, where laws, government and socioeconomic conditions are as perfect as they can possibly be. We have Sir Thomas More to thank for this strangely beautiful word. Many have tried to describe a perfect state – Plato among them – but More, in 1516 book ‘De optimo rei publicae deque ...
homosexual (hɒmə(ʊ)ˈsɛkʃʊəl,ˌhəʊmə(ʊ)ˈsɛkʃʊəl) So recently the government shut down yet another attempt to decriminalize homosexuality in Sri Lanka. To wit, the bill proposed that people should not be discriminated upon based on their gender, and the old farts panicked. We got the usual excuse that this is a Buddhist country, and this was culturally inappropriate. This is, unfortunately, rational, if ...
It is the 30th of December, 1:30 AM. I’m sure that someone famous will have died by the time the auto-publisher sends this post live. Good people die every year, but it seems this year really has it out for the artists and the creators. Among the golden throng I would really like to mention Richard Adams, who wrote Watership ...
The siege of Aleppo reads like a scene from The Lord of the Rings. Aleppo, the largest city in Syria has, since 2012, been a battle point between the rebels (the Free Syrian Army plus the Army of Conquest, as well as Al-Queda’s Syrian arm). Some 31,000 people are estimated to have died. The government forces (and Russia) have been airstriking ...
Honorable Speaker, as the 20th Minister of Finance of Sri Lanka, it is my privilege to present the 71st Budget for 2017. First I’m going to put the rest of the Parliament to sleep by singing the praises of Yahapalanaya and Ranil W. Now, if you can all forget our track record of failed budgets, let’s begin. We spend around ...
Not too long ago, the Sunday Leader published an article on prostitution in Sri Lanka. It was so absurd and poorly written that not only did it prompt the good old pitchforks-and-torches response from Colombo on Facebook; it also probably made every single dead journalist turn over in their graves and scream in spiritual agony. The Queen, had she seen that ...
When I was a child, I wanted to be an author. Unfortunately, my father, who was a smart man, took me aside and said to me, “Son, you might enjoy reading, but you’re never going to make money writing.” Now, years later, I’ve proven him wrong, but he had a point. The world was changing. This was the 90s: in ...
If there’s one thing all my female friends have in common, it’s that all of them have been stared at, catcalled, dry-humped and masturbated at. It’s not that all of them are alluringly sexy (sorry, folks) or go out in leather and heels every day. It happens whether they’re wearing jeans, shirts, skirts, hijabs, flat, sneakers. One of them is a ...
Pada Yatra: rough translation, pilgrimage. They’ve been around for awhile, but the most famous is Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent Salt Tax protest. That original Pada Yatra started with 80 people and went down in history as the famous Dandi Salt March: it even inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. Leave it to the Joint Opposition to organize their own Pada Yatra. Mahinda Rajapaksa ...
In Nice, a man driving a bomb-laden truck killed some 84 people. In the wake of the Nice bomb, many people stoof up and said: “The Nice bomber drank alcohol. He ate pork. He never went to mosque. He was not a Muslim. He was not one of us. Islam is a religion of peace.” This is the same chant that ...
When the identity of the new Governor of the CBSL was revealed, I saw congratulatory posts flying left and right on social media. An excellent choice, they said in general. Like many people, I saw his acceptance speech and felt inclined to agree. He sounds like the man we need in that chair right now. Unfortunately, I don’t really know the good ...
This article was originally written as a paper following the 2014 CPRSouth Conference. However, work and procrastination set in, and after half a year of just sitting on it (I completed this in December 2015) I decided to upload it here in the format I know best – a blog. Scroll down past the introduction and the method if you ...
“They allege that I have stolen $18 billion, but if they find evidence of even $1, I will cut my throat.” – Mahinda Rajapakse Two years ago I used to wonder why more people didn’t really discuss the news. I wondered why we, and my generation in particular, were largely content to ignore everything happening around us and focus on mundane things like what to ...
My first introduction to Thailand was Bangkok. We were met at the airport, whisked into a van and checked into an expensive hotel in Bangkok’s Siam Square, where we stayed for the next two days. I knew what I was going to do and who I was going to do it to. Phuket was a completely different experience. I arrived ...
Three days since my first, hurried update. If there is such a thing as too much goodwill, I think I’ve seen it. Gripped by a desire to help out our fellow Sri Lankans, we’ve cooked, screamed, delivered, run supplies by the truckload and picked clean the shelves of our supermarkets. The result? Incredible good – people fed, clothed, supported to another ...
Here’s what we can make out right now. Kotikawatta, Kelaniya, Biyagama, Malwana, Wellampitiya, Kolonnawa, Aranayaka, Dippitiya, Kilinocchi,Meethotamulla, parts of Ja-Ela and Wattala are flooded. According to Anura Yapa’s statement in Parliament, we have: 1. Affected Div Secs: 219 2. Displaced families: 98,075 3. Displaced individuals: 414,677 4. Deaths: 43 5. Injured: 28 6. Homes fully damaged: 286 7. Homes partially ...
