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Monday, February 21, 2005

Here's a puzzle that has been vexing me for quite sometime
d/dx(x^2)= 2*x --Pretty straightforward,ain't it?
Now,if you substitute x^2 with the sum (x+x+x......x times),you get:
d/dx(x+x+x.......x times)=x
which is obviously incorrect.
Where have I gone wrong?
Please do point out the error.

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Saturday, February 19, 2005

An article on Anti-Americanism in The Economist magazine(subscription required).

What I liked was the author's succinct articulation of the reason behind
Anti-Americanism in the Arab world.

Arab anti-Americanism became widespread in the Middle East only with America’s open support for Israel after the 1967 six-day war............... Since 1967 America has been considered by Arabs to be incomprehensibly pro-Israeli. The potency of this view probably owes more to Arab failures than to anything else—failures to deal with Israel, to establish democracies, to create modern economies, to produce heroes in virtually any field of respectable human endeavour.
This must be someone’s fault. Whose? Why, the local thug (Israel) and its sponsor(America), of course.


I don't think a truer word has been spoken.This piece made me wonder as to why societies/cultures tend to nurse strong aversions towards each other.Or for that matter,at a more micro-level,how do individuals manage to build up strong hates/dislikes.If A despises B intensely,can we infer that in most cases the
feeling stems out of a deep-seated feeling of inferiority or personal inadequacy that A might be experiencing? Having been in A's stead many times,I would be tempted to answer in the affirmative.

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