NB: This is what passes for academic rigour in India these days. Brutal mediocrity, mindless bureaucrats, and unscrupulous moneybags ruling over academia. Small wonder that young Indians are scrambling to escape; no matter that the situation abroad is becoming more uncertain and more scam-like than ever. What a shame. DS Hindustan Times, October 17, 2025… Read More Shobhit Mahajan: The Paper Mill
Defying scholarly norms, he took a hands-on approach to research. To study resilience, he visited the Crow Nation; to explore Freudian theory, he became a psychoanalyst. By Michael S. Rosenwald Jonathan Lear, an idiosyncratic and intellectually playful philosopher who melded the ideas of ancient Greek thinkers with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory to explore the meaning… Read More Jonathan Lear, Philosopher Who Embraced Freud, Dies at 76
As platforms degrade into outrage and slop, users are turning away John Burn-Murdoch In years to come, we may well look back on September 2025 as the point at which social media jumped the shark and began rapidly accelerating its transition from the place to be seen (through a flattering Instagram filter), to a gaudy… Read More Have we passed peak social media?
The truth never dies, but is made to live like a beggar: Yiddish proverb People all seek to know what they do not know yet / they ought rather seek to know what they know already : Zhuang Zhou (369-286 BC) What you run away from, runs after you: Roumanian proverb Raoul Wootliff There is a moment in 1948:… Read More October 7 War: Remember, Remember Not
Readers outside of India can donate here to support Mainstream Weeklyhttps://tinyurl.com/2rsy4ss6++++++ In this issue DOCUMENTS BOOKS IMAGE & SOUND Editor’s Picks: Books of Note: * (Cover page artwork credits: Franciska Clausen, Cercle et carre 1929) https://mainstreamweekly.net/article16172.html ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NB: Arvind Gupta combines humility, enthusiasm, energy, love and creative intellect in a character all his own. He’s the Pied Piper of India’s children, one who can quieten a noisy class of children in two minutes, by showing them the wondrous ways of nature. He never sought glory, and I suspect his numerous awards indicate… Read More The Science of Toys: by Padma Shri Arvind Gupta
Opinion by Chris Truax Confabulation is sometimes called “honest lying,” because the person doing it genuinely believes what he’s saying, even if it is obviously and patently false. A person confabulates when they are telling completely invented stories that don’t provide them any particular tangible benefit. In other words, it’s not like lying to try and get out… Read More Trump’s mental decline is undeniable / Trump’s agram-Bagram on Afghanistan airbase
First posted October 27, 2011 ‘The essay is a marvellous account of the hundreds of ways in which the Ramayana has been told, complete with examples of this narrative diversity. I can’t imagine that the vice-chancellor, a member of that urbane cohort, the Class of ’75, wanted the essay removed because he agreed with the Akhil Bharatiya… Read More Mukul Kesavan: Delhi University and the purging of Ramanujan
One of the strangest things about an American university education is that it bundles a whole lot of different things together. If you want to take a course in high-level mathematics or listen to the lectures of an accomplished historian of Ming China, you must also buy membership in one of the country’s most lavish gyms;… Read More Unbundle the (American) University
As a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump made his world view plain: there was “us” and there was “them.” Once he was in the White House, the fear factor would prevail. By David Remnick The young Donald Trump was the Nelson Muntz of Jamaica Estates. (Or was he its Draco Malfoy? Scholars will debate such questions for… Read More The Politics of Fear
After the truth-shower 