planned perpetual poverty

Here are two  very interesting and informative  BLOGs for anyone interested in the 'development' of India and also to a certain extent Indian subcontinent as a whole.
Atanu Day on India's Development
Emergic: Rajesh Jain’s Blog 

"Giving the Planned Perpetual Poverty of Socialism a Quick Burial"

"My colleague Rajesh Jain in the second part of a series “It’s Up to Us Now” notes, that “even after 63 years, India is in many senses worse off than it was in 1947. We have to understand the whys and hows of India’s failure to develop. That’s the unavoidable first step to putting India on a path to recovery. We cannot fix problems that we don’t understand the causes of, or worse yet, if we don’t even admit that we have problems.”

He asks 10 questions and writes that the search for answers to those questions “is the start for the path to reclaim India. Our so-called leaders have failed us. It is up to us now to change the course of our nation.”

• Why is India still poor?
• Why have the numbers of Indians below the poverty line doubled to more than 500 million since 1947?
• Why doesn’t India have a decent education system?
• Why are 70 percent of Indians still stuck in tiny villages in the 21st century?
• Why is 60 percent of the labor force involved in agriculture?
• Why is India’s industrial base so small?
• Why doesn’t India generate sufficient electrical power?
• Why doesn’t India have a modern rail network?
• Why doesn’t India have a serviceable road network?
• Why is India so unfriendly to business and entrepreneurship?

Atanu Day is an economist with a background in development, who did his doctoral work at the University of California at Berkeley.

Rajesh Jain is an entrepeneur based in Mumbai, India. He is the founder and Managing Director of Netcore Solutions Pvt Ltd. Read this article on him on TIME/Asia

dubai

 

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/

http://techlab.scherdan.com/gallery/satellite

http://www.eikongraphia.com/

http://www.intute.ac.uk/worldguide/satellite_cities.html

wikipedia is upto date!

I was surprised to see this amount of  accurate and detailed information regarding Sri Lanka's architectural profession on Wikipeida.

Wikipedia > Professional requirements for architects  > Sri Lanka

passikudah winning entries - exhibition

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.

A familiar quotation by a not so familiar architect!

සිංහල චිත්‍රය හා මෝස්තර සම්ප්‍රදාය (book #14)

සිංහල චිත්‍රය හා මෝස්තර සම්ප්‍රදාය
කර්තෘ: මහාචාර්ය නිමල් ද සිල්වා

mirissa hills (cSLa #27)

Mirissa Hills.

Architect: Anjalendran C.

Photos:    Waruna G

geoffrey bawa memorial lecture 2010

Geoffrey Bawa Memorial Lecture 2010
Cecil Balmond - Guest Speaker

will be held on Monday 31st may at the Kularatne Hall, Ananda College,
Maradana Road, Borella.

Entrance Free.


Cecil Balmond was born in Sri Lanka, where he trained as a civil engineer. He joined ARUP in London in 1968, being on the Group Board since 1998 and founding the Advanced Geometry Unit in 2000, where he now works with scientists, architects and engineers.

world expo shanghai 2010: the good, bad & the ugly

The good

The bad 

 The ugly

 and the vicious

Sri Lanka

India

Read the full blog here and there is some more info here

some useless statistics about the readership of this blog

This absolutely useless, but accurate information is based on this blog's hit counter for the last 2 months.

Country	Hits	per 100,000 internet users
Sri Lanka	620	53.29
United States	178	0.08
India	60	0.07
United Kingdom	59	0.13
Australia	56	0.33
Canada	37	0.15
Italy	24	0.04
France	22	0.04
Singapore	20	0.59
United Arab Emirates	15	0.42
Germany	14	0.02
Switzerland	14	0.18
Qatar	11	2.52
Hong Kong	10	0.20

Jaffna Taxis (2010)

An Old Austin Somerset parked in front of Jaffna Hospital as seen on my recent visit to Jaffna with the University of Moratuwa M.U.D.(Masters in Urban Design) study group. There were quite a few Austin Cambridges, Morris Oxfords and Austin A50s to be seen as well. Few of the A50s were converted to run on kerosene as solution to the fuel shortage during the war. Actually the conversion is pretty straight forward affair. "Petrol (Gas) Tank" is filled with Kerosene and there is a separate canister (most of the time a plastic bottle) of petrol which is connected to the air filter with a 'saline tube' with a stopper. You open up the petrol line to start the car and then let it run with the petrol for a fwe seconds and then cut off the petrol line. Simple but effective.

Here is the engine bay of an Austin A50 (Yes, converted to Kerosene).

pseudo japanese poetry extracted from the comments to cSLa #19 and other posts

eato japoneso donuto
and watcho the hentaio movieo

hoto yes very hoto when you stando outside-o

in the sun-o.
heato reflecto from whito surface-o

house-o very-o sexyo,
i cannot helpo thinko it is o very modern-o,

beyondo all this-o magazine crappo some body talkino,

no. ha ha ho ho
Nareino, sum birdo ino crusho... wocho outo
sleeepo Zzzzzzzzzzzzo... please givo pilo...
ho ho hi hi
O so glado fo mahathiro-hitlero discussiono goto remove-o
from the web page-o,
whato disastro thiso locolo architectho make-o
from themselfo into monstro
when they canto digesto
some goodo architectcho

Taro

Good, Now we have an author also!

dr. anuththaradevi on sri lankan contemporary architecture

"Eastern Needs and American Desires" by Dr. Anuththaradevi Widyalankara, a Fulbright Scholar, on contemporary Sri Lankan architecture, delivered at the Savannah School of Art & Design, USA (on SCAD tv)

'young architect of the year' 2010

Archt. Narein Perera is the winner of the  'Young Architect of the Year 2010'. This award is annually awarded by the SLIA during its sessions & exhibition. Well, really  this item should have gone up during March / April, but better late then never!

architecture design notebook (book #13)

Architecture Design Notebook focuses on the process of design as pragmatic and non-theoretical. Dealing systematically with the core design curriculum, it clearly demonstrates the skills required for designing at undergraduate level. Providing students with fundamental maxims of design, and a framework within which they can approach their work, this book supports undergraduates as they learn to produce solutions to design challenges.

around the world in 80 clicks

Around the world in 80 clicks.

"8585 travel pictures in 852 stories from 122 countries around the world. Images of people, sights, nature, architecture, cities; pictures of well known spots but also photos of places you might have never heard of before."

Photos of Old San'a, Yemen via traveladventures.org