Vikram Nandwani is probably the best cartoonist I know. Here’s his latest:The background according to Vikram,The NSA (National Security Advisor) said there was a need to effectively deal with organisations like SIMI and Bajrang Dal “because then there …

This is just very cool. It’ a simulation of air traffic worldwide, over a 24-hour period.  Just looking at that, can’t help but feel that Sri Lanka would have been such a logical place for another heavy traffic point. But no..[Link via Chris Blattman’…

Via the 50 most busiest blogposts, I stumbled upon The Army of Dude, a U.S. Mil-blogger who was based in Iraq, who also happens to be a good writer. For us mere mortals who don’t really know what it’s like to run around legitimately shooting people, w…

Picture of the day, comes from The Colombo Post:Sri Lankan Government ministers, trying their hand at farming. Subsequently, one of them got bombed, but survived. Lots of antics, for the rural vote. 

This is how the government intends on spending your taxes. At least partly how it will be spent. We can’t afford the whole thing so the rest will be financed by debt and aid (yes, yes, eventually paid by you). The largest expenditure is for defence, t…

is very interesting. It resizes the world map according to different criteria. Sri Lanka is really big in a few things:First, number of book published (per million).This was a genuine surprise. And the annual rate of forest depletion :And not so surpri…

Dinidu de Alwis thinks those who practice religion are stupid.  He mentions my name repetitively in his post, so I’m compelled to write something. My biggest beef with this ‘argument’ is not so much its conclusion – the assertion that religiou…

Today, I find this extremely useful Google Map Maker. The application basically allows you to map things you know (businesses, cafes, towns and yes, islands) on Google Maps. So go ahead help, map your town, your neighborhood and help put Sri Lanka on t…

The Rs.200 note. Whatever happened to it? (Pic by PVGM)Seen any 50 cents recently? (coins, not the rapper) I haven’t either. They probably don’t mint it anymore. If they did, that would be a subsidy for the guys who mint coins because the metal require…

Here’s something for you Sarah Palin/Asif Zadari haters. The two met recently in New York and here’s what happened:On entering a room filled with several Pakistani officials this afternoon, Palin was immediately greeted by Sherry Rehman, the country’s …

Because he says things like this :From Parliament of Whores (1991) Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, th…

There is a financial crisis in the U.S. and we are hearing the same old silly arguments. Apparently, in the last few weeks capitalism has collapsed, Bush has become a socialist and it’s all the fault of the World Bank and the IMF. If you belive any of …

The most horniest is Pakistan, followed by Bangladesh. That’s according to Google Insights. See the graph here:(Click to enlarge or see Google Insight link)I used insights to show the results for the terms ‘porn’ or ’sex’. Also notice that the top 4 c…

It strikes me as rather odd when the most right-wing of the Sri Lankan media is retardedly leftwing when it comes to reporting about U.S. politics. But this choice picture for an anti-Palin piece on the Sunday Times takes the cake. Here’s a screenshot …

Obama is down in the polls, including on InTrade, which means lots of people are quite literally betting he will loose. So the Sri Lankan communalists are now pointing to racism to explain this turn of events. Case in point  –  this Island piece by …

Finally, it dawned on me why they call Mihin Lanka a “budget airline”. From LBO:Sept 11, 2008 (LBO) - Sri Lanka’s troubled state-run budget carrier Mihin Air is to ask for another three billion rupees in peoples’ money in the next budget to revive oper…

Finally, there’s some good news on the reform front :Sri Lanka has been rated the top South Asian reformer in an annual business regulation study by the World Bank group, with a new company law and credit information improvements boosting its scores. […

A friend of mine likes to obsess about the article 14 of the Sri Lankan constitution, which according to him guarantees freedom of expression. Here’s what Chapter 3, article 14 say,(1) Every citizen is entitled to -(a) the freedom of speech and express…

Partnhe Wali Gali, Old Delhi. Pic Courtesy: Krishna 1951 Lanka Reviewed has a post on my favorite street food joint in Colombo, “Burger King” in Malay street. Here’s a brief about the setting from LR,Mr Burger King is imaginatively located in Colombo 2…

The museum of Communism in Prague. The entrance is through McDonald’s. (A pic by udijw)The Rajapakse Administration won, despite some irregularities, a genuine victory over the UNP in the recent provincial council elections. Perhaps the most exciting…

I am in London stuck in a 12 hour transit, catching up on some reading I’ve missed during the last couple of weeks. There’s a bunch of people I know in the city, but the immigration chaps won’t let me go out, because, I’m um, Sri Lankan. In any case, n…

This is kinda cool. It let’s you generate your own word cloud for a bunch of text. Here’s mine:It generates the cloud for the current posts in the home page if you give your blog address, you can play with the colors and fonts. Here’s one for Kottu :Go…

(Pic courtesy: The Daily Mirror)In view of the SAARC summit, the Sri Lankan government decided to demolish the homes of a bunch of poor people living in ‘unauthorized dwellings’. Apparently aesthetics are more important for the government than life and…

For the past few years, despite high inflation, despite the war, there’s one statistic that the government had been harping about — Sri Lanka’s GDP growth has managed to hover at around 7%.Writing for her regular column in the DM Financial Times, Anil…

Cato’s Johan Norberg has a detailed rebuttal on Naomi Klein’s superficial claims about Milton Friedman and free-market policies made in her book, The shock doctrine. Here’s a video of Norberg explaining how Ms Klein misrepresents what Friedman said: Al…

Cato’s Johan Norberg has a detailed rebuttal on Naomi Klein’s superficial claims about Milton Friedman and free-market policies made in her book, The shock doctrine. Here’s a video of Norberg explaining how Ms Klein misrepresents what Friedman said: Al…

Prompted by my earlier post on legalizing marijuana, Jack Point thinks that a good way of tackling the problem of hard drugs, such as heroin is for government to give it away for free for addicts and encourage them to voluntary enroll themselves to tre…

Despite vowing to oppose unauthorized wiretapping legislation, senator Obama decided to flip-flop on the issue and support wiretapping bill anyway. This is now one of many ‘policy shifts’ by Obama scrambling to center of the spectrum after taking a rid…

I was recently reminded by a friend that Sri Lanka actually does have legal access medical Marijuana (Ganja). The practitioners of traditional Ayurvedic medicine are allowed to carry 1kg (figure unconfirmed) amount of Ganja to be used for medicinal pur…

Crosswords in Bangalore. Pic courtesy:Kishore

This last post reminded me how much I rue the fact that Sri Lanka doesn’t have good book stores. The Vijitha Yapa is not really a book store, it’s a small book-shop. There’s no place to just chill, read …

That’s part of my Gtalk status today. The inability of the (allegedly) Marxist JVP and (supposedly) the main opposition UNP to mobilize enough ‘working class’ for the country-wide strike today told it’s own story. Truth be told, thanks to the financia…

Ever since Stevens, Levitt and Dubner broke into the scene with their enormously popular Freakonomics, there has been a multitude of popular economics books. Books that uses the tools of economics — the study of incentives, laws of supply and demand, …

According to a reliable source at the University of Colombo faculty of law, a cup of tea at the University canteen is Rs.2 (less than $ 0.02 USD). He told me this just before purchasing a 100-times more expensive cup from Barista’s.It’s bad enough we h…

Drew Carey in another installment of his series at Reason.tv takes a swing at the U.S. protectionists’ (Obama-types) fear mongering over NAFTA.

Something that’s rarely understood by protectionist all over the world is that the biggest source of “job…

According to the Daily Mirror all Sri Lankan males (and some females) are criminals. Here’s a report,Women and Child Bureau (WCB) is filing legal action against Sri Lankans appearing in pornographic videos and pictures on the internet violating the Ind…

Seriously, have you ever wondered why the price of Petrol in Sri Lanka exceeds that of the United States? let’s do the math,1 Liters of Petrol in Sri Lanka costs about Rs.157 (Ceylon Petroleum Corporation prices)1 gallon of Petrol (gasoline) in the U.S…

I always kind of thought Nalin de Silva and his Jathika Chinthana (national visionaries?) chaps were a bit nuts. Now that I’m reading their blog, I can confirm — they are retarded. I mean, in a good way. the blog is actually kinda funny.See this post…

Well, at least that’s what this should amount to. The government has made it a requirement for ‘people of the north’ to get special permission from the police to go to any place in the ’south’.Here’s a Sunday Times report, Civilians in the no…

Now maybe it’s just me, but it seems to me that the Sri Lankan Government’s oil policy is a bit retarded. Let’s summarize,First, theres’ a tax on Petrol (VAT, excise duties, so on) Some reports puts the proportion of the tax at about 37% of the total s…

Is that they don’t have their publications (research, policy studies, etc.) online.Either they haven’t really figured out that the web has significantly changed from 1999, or they think they will loose out on revenues. I understand partly, but really …

Don Boudreaux has an interesting explanation :Women are more decent than men.Fewer women than men itch to lord it over others. Also, women are less willing than men to perform the countless asinine stunts and soul-shriveling pandering necessary to win…

Karu Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka’s Minister of public administration has confirmed something I’ve been saying for a while on this blog : Sri Lanka has the world’s largest government. That’s in addition to having the largest cabinet (literally) and having an …

No really, if you click “vision” on their website it comes up empty.

It seems the Pillayan group(TMVP) a break away (still-armed) group of the Karuna faction a break away faction of the LTTE, who contested under the government’s election symbol and patronage seems to have won the elections in the Eastern province after…

Comes from the Daily Mirror :West responsible for cyclone in Burma.How fitting it was a direct quote by Champika Ranwaka. Do check out the comments section, this is confirming my increasing cynicism of democracy, I mean forget an informed electorate, d…

Yesterday’s Daily Mirror FT had an article by Anila Dias tittled Reducing Poverty - What lessons can we learn?. Overall the article does a decent job of summarizing the recent report on poverty indicators (pdf link). It also correctly identifies the fa…

..Has been grounded until further notice. Now, His Excellency is trying to fly on his own. Budget-airline no.

In typical Sri Lankan fashion - about a month late and for a few more than one hour. Ok so it was an island-wide power failure. Given the frequency of these failures, (multiple times a month where I live) the folks at Greenpeace or WWF should nominate…

(Starving Billionaires in Zimbabwe)With the rate of inflation at 100,000% that’s the state of affairs in Zimbabwe. Recently, the Zimbabwean reserve bank put out a $50 Million currency note. I wonder if the Zimbabwean central bankers are pushing “cost-…

(Starving Billionaires in Zimbabwe)With the rate of inflation at 100,000% that’s the state of affairs in Zimbabwe. Recently, the Zimbabwean reserve bank put out a $50 Million currency note. I wonder if the Zimbabwean central bankers are pushing “cost-…