“I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities… on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.” –Bill Gates at Harvard

Elsewhere:

Obscurity--Knowledge is a queer thing, like Latin. For instance, what do you think the phrase ignotum per ignotius means? It is an explanation which is harder to understand than what it is meant to explain. [...]

Down Usenet lane…--Exactly one day after I wrote that Jeff and Joel are two of my favourite writers, both of them announce a joint venture they're doing called stackoverflow.com which is the new Usenet/newsgroup. For the dear reader who [...]

Of civil action and auto-rickshaws--Well, Chennai is hot. Smeltering hot. That's not so bad in itself, but, I had to be in it for two days. And my primary mode of transport was auto-rickshaws, and so, as Ali would [...]