Hedy Lamarr  born  Hedwig Kiesler the daughter of a Ukrainian banker father and a Hungarian aristocratic pianist mother, both assimilated Viennese Jews shot to central European infamy as the first woman to feign orgasm on screen in the 1933 film Ecstasy and dubbed as “the mother of Wi-Fi” and other wireless communications like GPS and Bluetooth was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the development of her frequency hopping technology in 2014. Her husband, the rich Austrian industrialist Friedrich  Mandl, was not impressed, when he went on to make weapons for the Nazis. She drugged her maid … Continue reading Did Vienna Invent the world as we know it

When the first Chinese labourers began to sojourn and settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese food has the curious distinction of being both one of the world’s best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For over a century the overwhelming dominance of simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication – but today that is beginning to change. James Beard Award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy and techniques of china’s rich and ancient culinary culture. Fuchsia Dunlop once cooked 350 duck tongues for … Continue reading Lured by exotic ingredients

Imperial Island reveals how empire and its ever-present aftermath have divided and defined Britain over the last seventy years and shaped modern Britain. Open-minded historian, Charlotte Lydia Riley in her withering indictment of cruel Britannia, describes a chilling history of institutional and public prejudice, and skillfully builds up a picture that’s been hiding in plain sight for far too long. The book is rich on civil society campaigns against racism, everyday experiences of new migrants and documents the political role played by the anti-war left in modern Britain. The historic heart of London’s imperial dockland, has long been the entry … Continue reading Shaped by the Legacy of Empire and Imperialism

 The power of Algorithms for prediction and their paradoxical effects on risk. The Age of Prediction is about two powerful, and symbiotic, trends and the rapid development and use of artificial intelligence and big data to enhance prediction, as well as the often paradoxical effects of these better predictions on our understanding of risk and the ways we live. Dramatic advances in quantitative investing and precision medicine, and how predictive technology is quietly reshaping our world in fundamental ways, from crime fighting and warfare to monitoring individual health and elections. Investor Igor Tulchinsky and Cornell professor of Genomics Christopher E … Continue reading Riksy Era of AI

Shares in Indian conglomerate Adani slid as Indian opposition politicians demanded action after both Financial Times and Guardian reported revelations about family-linked shareholders in the company’s stock and exposed opaque offshore structures that shielded some of the group’s largest shareholders and their connections to the Adani family. The report spotlighted relationship between Gautam Adani, the industrial group’s founder and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a febrile atmosphere before the election early next year. The value of the group’s 10 listed groups fell by £3.31bn or 3.3  per cent, yesterday. India is hosting G20 Summit of leading economies on September … Continue reading Who’s hedging whom

Mohamed al Fayed, Egyptian self-made billionaire and former Harrods and Fulham FC owner dies aged 94. He died after the car crash in Paris that killed his eldest son, Dodi and Diana, Princes of  Wales on 31 August 1997. Al Fayed, son of a school teacher, was born in Alexandra. He launched his own shipping business, before becoming adviser to the Sultan of Brunei in 1966. He arrived in the UK in the 1970s and joined the board of mining conglomerate Lonrho in 1975 which lasted nine months. In 1979, with his brother Ali he bought the Paris Ritz Hotel. … Continue reading Al Fayed dies aged 94

A new epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala and following three generations. In The Covenant of Water, the physician-writer Abraham Verghese’s riveting  epic  opens with a mother and her 12-year-old daughter crying. 1900 in Travancore, south India’s Malabar Coast, the frightened girl is to marry a man who is 40 and a widower. The family is part of a Christian community that traces itself to the time of the apostles, but times are shifting, and the matriarch of this family, known as Big Ammachi, will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of … Continue reading Evocation of a lost India

European Union is often seen as a cosmopolitan rejection of violent nationalism, although Europe has a long, problematic history in medieval times. Europe was synonymous with Christianity: and in the modern era, it became associated with whiteness. Kundnani, a European Eurowhiteness exposes the EU as a vehicle for imperial amnesia. Kundnani, a European insider, an expert on Germany,, who has worked with Chatam House, and the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote this book to “stimulate debate.” The ethnic cultural component of the contemporary European project wsa hidden by the fact of Europe’s cold war division, and the notion of … Continue reading Crumbling European solidarity

India succeeded in landing two robots, a lander named Vikram and a rover named Pragyan on the southern polar region of the moon, and made India the first country to ever reach this part of the lunar surface in one piece and the fourth country ever to land on the moon. ISRO chairman S Somanth said “ India is on the moon, we have achieved soft landing on the moon on Wednesday”. India has routinely orbited the moon and Mars and launches satellites above the Earth with far fewer financial resources than other space-faring nations. Prayers were offered for the … Continue reading India lands on Moon

Continue reading Chandrayaan-3 Lands near Moon’s South Pole