Note to recruiters

Note to recruiters: We are quite aware that recruiters, interviewers, VCs and other professionals generally perform a Google Search before they interview someone, take a pitch from someone, et cetera. Please keep in mind that not everything put on the Internet must align directly to one's future career and/or one's future product portfolio. Sometimes, people do put things on the Internet just because. Just because. It may be out of their personal interests, which may have nothing to do with their professional interests. Or it may be for some other reason. Recruiters seem to have this wrong-headed notion that if somebody is not signalling their interests in a certain area online, then that means that they are not interested in that area at all. It is worth pointing out that economics pretty much underlies the areas of marketing, strategy, operations and finance. And this blog is about economics. With metta, let us. by all means, be reflective about this whole business of business. Also, see our post on "The Multi-faceted Identity Problem".

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Tamil writing proposal in closing, and, as a bonus, a Theory of History

It is now time to close this series of posts. I have had this proposal for a new way of writing Tamil kicking around my (many) laptops for a while but posted it to this blog only following the Pizza and Panini column for Indiatimes.com. Panini, in a sense, lives on!

Below are the links to all the posts on the Tamil writing proposal:

And in closing, something pretty. Below the fold is the brAhmI alphabet/alphasyllabary. It is, of course, studied by Buddhists for them to be able to understand ancient Buddhist texts, some of which were written in Pali. Just in and of itself, the brAhmI alphabet bears witness to the extraordinary influence that Panini still has around the world. I have a Theory of History which I have never posted about before. Want to know more? Click below to go to the rest of the post.

The Theory of History, ahem, is this. No, wait, that has to be a different post. But as a teaser trailer, consider just this kind-of-sort-of Lemma in the Theory. This kind-of-sort-of Lemma is as follows : it was the introduction by Panini of a comprehensive and more importantly scientific theory of grammar that led to Buddhism being as influential as it was. In a sense, Panini was one of the earliest innovators. It was his innovation with writing systems that helped launch the Axial Age.

Now, behind this Theory of History is a second Theory of History (TOH2). It is somewhat obvious but it takes some thinking to get to; however, since it is somewhat obvious, I will simply refer to it as TOH2. TOH2 states that scientific innovation has a very long history predating the discovery of the scientific method itself. The idea that scientific innovation has a history predating the discovery of the scientific method may come as a surprise to you. The natural reaction for many people is this : how could scientific innovation have a history from, say, prior to the Christian Era when the scientific method itself was only discovered during the 17th century? That question will be answered and the Theory of History will be developed in future posts. But as one example, consider Panini. By introducing a writing system, he was able to help send the ideas of the Buddha around the subcontinent which may well have been impossible without that standardization.

As a continuing tribute to Panini, below is a picture of the brAhmI script.