Ilayaraja glows again

It is not often that a single song comes off as worthy of a full review, at least not in the last 10 years or so. The last review-worthy IR song was Om Sivoham from Naan Kadavul.

Also, sometimes I feel conscious that I don’t track film songs closely enough to…

Travel: My most favorite place in the world (ahem, America)

Big Sur

More often than not, we tend to like a place, a song or a movie by the memories it brings, more than their own attributes. They remind us of a particularly good time, a person we hung out with…

Humming Now #15

I have long argued that music, including its more formal forms (such as Carnatic or Western Classical), is exoteric — not esoteric. Esoterism may exist in understanding of the internals and underlying theory, but the experience is always accessible to anyone, including those who never intended…

HOV lanes and economics

I have long argued that economics and conditioning can explain most things in the world.

A great example of an economics concept applied is — HOV a.k.a carpool lanes. In US and several other countries, road and highway providers typically reserve one lane for…

Humming Now #14

I have been listening to raga based music and applying raga concepts to movie songs only for the past 10 years or so. But it surprises me how a stunning variety of movie songs I like belong to the same raga — when you realize it you definitely have a Wah moment. There are many many songs and ragas…

Could Amazon come up with a phone?

When Mel Gibson offers to lose in all the hands in the first 60 minutes of poker in the movie Maverick, no one at the table realizes why. When his 60 minutes are up, he has learnt enough about everyone at the table that he does not lose a single hand after that.

USPS and its survival

The USPS is United States’ postal service with a very bold statement — while private sector enterprises (read: the big banks) are using taxpayers’ money to recover from the crisis they created, USPS, though a public enterprise, has been self-sufficient most of its time — funding its…