Monthly Archives: December 2004

Armies of Islam

Posted on December 30, 2004 by

There are some striking aspects of the different armies of Islam field in course of the 14 centuries of Jihad against the Kaffrs and Dhimmis. The first army of Islam, that of the Arabs, met with rapid somewhat surprising success. … Continue reading →

Posted in History

The ghost again

Posted on December 29, 2004 by

It was disastrous day. Unfazed by the disasters we were returning. We paused on our path for we distinctly saw some strange dark object like a coat lying on our a path a few feet away. I reached the object … Continue reading →

Posted in Life

The scooter circuit

Posted on December 25, 2004 by

We performed our peculiar scooter circuit that year. Earlier it was the cycle circuit. We were like the pAshupata, distanced from the plebian world. We we passed in the midst of the plebians, we heard their chatter, we saw them … Continue reading →

Posted in Life

The battle of Talas

Posted on December 24, 2004 by

Reviewing the battle of Talas one of the most defining moments in Asiatic history is worthwhile because the same explosive mix continues to dominate Central Asia. We have to learn many military lessons from the battle of Talas for a … Continue reading →

Posted in History | Tagged , , ,

Mythologists

Posted on December 24, 2004 by

So impressed was Jung by the mental patients that he believed the origins of myth lay in mental disease. With this conclusion Jung set rolling many a modern western critique of myth. The first sterile offshoot was that of Freud, … Continue reading →

Posted in Heathen thought, Scientific ramblings

The drinking of poison

Posted on December 23, 2004 by

While the bhAgavataM is considered a vaiShNava text, it contains an highly magnified stotra to rudra. The stotra contains yet another example of the classical macrantropic motif that is so pervasive in Hindu thought since the puruSha sUktaM and the … Continue reading →

Posted in Life

Zipf’s law

Posted on December 23, 2004 by

Some recent discussions on scripts and languages reminded me of Zipf’s law. It is a version of the power law that states that the probability of encountering the nth most frequent word in a language is: p(n)=n^(-s) (where s is … Continue reading →

Posted in Scientific ramblings