Himanshu

Product Manager| Marathoner | Aspiring Vegan | Tar-heel | Tweets/likes personal

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

Stupid clever people are destroying Britain.

How did Jason Arday blag his way to a Cambridge professorship?

My column: https://t.co/Tt1S0jIWAL

[Himanshu @bkhimanshu]

@decoyposts My car was broken into ( it was empty; there was nothing in the car). The cops refused to come to the spot. There was a guy doing a massive rental scam on an elderly person's property. I reported it and gave cops details. The cop laughed me off when I asked about action.

[Himanshu @bkhimanshu]

@markbdelaney I had the exact same thing but with North Carolina and California. But to be fair, the NC IRS was awesome. Within 20 minutes, they addressed the issue and sent me a confirmation

[Himanshu @bkhimanshu]

Can’t even win a rigged World Cup. Reached World Cup final without facing a single decent team. Thugs!!! Cheats!!!! Zero shots!!!!!

[Toni Kroos @ToniKroos]

Football won

[Malay Krishna @Malay4Product]

I taught JEE physics for years. That paper breaks strong kids in three hours.

This exam is five hours of theory and five hours of lab work, and these five did close to perfect scores on it.

Let me tell you what actually happened.

The International Physics Olympiad is the world championship of school physics. It was the 56th edition. Held in Bucaramanga, Colombia, from July 5 to 12.

381 students. More than 85 countries. Every one of them the best physics student their country could find.

India sent five kids.

All five came back with gold.

Their names are Kanishk Jain from Pune. Riddhesh Anant Bendale from Indore. Rishit Garg from Dwarka in Delhi. Shresth Suraiya from Mumbai. Svarit Joshi from Ahmedabad.

We know a hundred cricketers by their nickname and not one of these boys. :)

That clean sweep put India at joint World Number One. Tied with China, Russia, Kazakhstan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Those are countries that pour serious money and national pride into science education. We are standing level with them.

Now here is what the exam actually was.

Two papers. Each five hours long.

The theory paper had three problems. One on the thermodynamics of paramagnetic cooling. One on the photoionisation of ozone. One on the dynamics of electron positron pairs.

The experimental paper was another five hours in a lab, working through heat transfer and thermodynamic processes in fluids.

That means you get given equipment you have never seen, and you have to design your own experiment, take your own readings, handle the errors, and reach a real answer.

Not multiple choice. No shortcuts. No pattern recognition. You either understand physics or you sit there for five hours.

HBCSE says the Indian students were near perfect on theory and excellent on the practical too.

Now, this was India's 27th appearance at the IPhO.

Across all those years, about 44 percent of Indian students have won gold, 41 percent silver, 10 percent bronze.

In the last ten years, every single Indian student has come home with a medal. 62 percent gold, 38 percent silver.

Not one kid has gone and come back empty handed in a decade.

Five golds in one year has happened only twice. This year, and in 2018.

So who built this.

The programme is run by HBCSE, the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. It sits under TIFR, which sits under the Department of Atomic Energy.

They run the whole funnel. A national exam, then a national olympiad, then a brutal selection and training camp, and out of everyone in the country, five kids get on a plane.

The team was led by Professor Anwesh Mazumdar of HBCSE-TIFR and Dr Leena Joshi from St Xavier's College, Mumbai.

The scientific observers were Professor Ananda Dasgupta from IISER Kolkata and Nisha Kelkar from Gogate-Joglekar College in Ratnagiri.

Yes. Ratnagiri. A college in a small coastal town in Maharashtra.

This is public education doing something the private coaching industry could never do on its own.

The coaching industry is very good at one thing. Teaching you to solve a known problem fast.

That is what JEE and NEET reward, and I say that with love because I was part of that world.

But an olympiad paper does not have a known type. There is no shortcut chapter. There is no formula sheet that saves you. You have to sit with a problem you have never seen and think.

That is a completely different muscle. And a government funded centre has been quietly building it in Indian teenagers for 27 years.

So yes, be proud. Loudly.

HBCSE also shared that around 64 percent of India's olympiad medallists go on to do a PhD.

But only about 32 percent of medallists end up settling in India.

I do not say that to spoil the moment. These kids owe the country nothing. They earned every option they have.

But it should tell us something. We are excellent at finding this talent. We are excellent at training it. We are still not great at giving it somewhere worth staying.

Congratulations Kanishk, Riddhesh, Rishit, Shresth and Svarit. This is one of the best things an Indian did this year and most of the country will never hear about it.

[Himanshu @bkhimanshu]

@MelissaReddy_ The fact that they have the audacity to rig a global event on U.S. soil is really telling. I can understand Qatar, a dictatorship, but U.S. wow!!!

[New York Post @nypost]

Murderous Bishnoi Gang wiped out in mass raids across California after 'barbaric' assassination spree https://t.co/WZy49Imdbb

[Mark Ogden @MarkOgden_]

Pretty incredible move by FIFA. A bit like erasing Cristiano Ronaldo's red card / two match ban so he could play in the opening two games of this World Cup. Making it up as they go..

https://t.co/BI2s9Zw2K8

[Himanshu @bkhimanshu]

@applefiles_ What's the point of all these bells and whistles when Apple Maps can't even find a place or do the basics right?

[Erik Solheim @ErikSolheim]

In defense of Indian 🇮🇳 democracy!

During Prime Minister Narendra Modi most successful visit to Norway a minor incident happened. A Norwegian journalist demanded that the prime minister starts holding press conferences. She claimed that Indian democracy is in bad shape.

May be its time to pause? May be its time to be a bit curious to the world’s largest democracy?

Two weeks ago five Indian states and territories held elections. The turn out in the battlefield state of West Bengal was 94%. In the last local election in Norway it was 62%, in many European local elections turn out is below 50%. Can voting in massive numbers be a signal Indians trust their democratic process?

In the same election BJP won big in Assam and West Bengal. It lost even bigger in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Can this diversity be a signal that Indian democracy is reflecting the will of the people?

The journalist referred to a democracy ranking putting India at 157 in the world, behind many dictatorships and deeply troubled states. When a ranking is so obviously contrary to common sense, why not ask critical questions to those making the ranking rather than demand that leaders shall comment on nonsense? I recommend Salvatore Babones book “Dharma democracy”. The book debunks convincingly the flawed methodology of these rankings.

It was referred to a ranking claiming it’s very dangerous to be a journalist in India. Reality is that it is more dangerous to be journalist in the US and far more dangerous in the vast majority of other nations in the world.

Let’s be real. India is not perfect. Of course there are incidents. India has a population the size of North America, South America and Europe combined. But India is much more peaceful than Europe or the Americas. That’s remarkable - given the ethnic, language and religious diversity of India and the many development challenges.

Unless we consider democracy a form of government only suited for some very small, peaceful and homogeneous Western European nations, may be we should commend Indian democracy?

India is the only major former UK colony which became and has remained a democracy. Its sometimes claimed that the Brits taught India democracy. If that was the case why isn’t Myanmar or Pakistan or the Gulf kingdoms democracies??? Reality is that Indian democracy is both homegrown and extraordinary successful.

[Smriti Z Irani @smritiirani]

यतो धर्मस्ततो जयः!

[Telangana Maata @TelanganaMaata]

RSS worker and primary school teacher Bandhu Prakash Pal, along with his pregnant wife and child, were killed in cold blood in West Bengal.

Never forget. Never forgive.

[Himanshu @bkhimanshu]

@ARanganathan72 heart attack might be the best thing that ever happened to you. changed your life.

[Himanshu @bkhimanshu]

@dhume Pramod Mahajan was a good orator like the late Arun Jaitley. Not much to show for in administration. Modi had great administration and execution experience in Gujarat. That would have elevated him to the PM post.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

They not like us

[Himanshu @bkhimanshu]

@pitdesi @SRS91839430 Well, we will find out, won't we... hopefully in our lifetimes.

[Himanshu @bkhimanshu]

@pitdesi @SRS91839430 There is a greater probability of a Republican female president than of a Democrat one.

[60 Minutes @60Minutes]

With five cancers and a terminal diagnosis, Ben Sasse is in a clinical trial for a new drug that may be a breakthrough in pancreatic cancer treatment. https://t.co/q6elBFopYb

[Lane Brown @lanebrown_3]

Hero Principal Kirk Moore—who tackled a school shooter at Pauls Valley High School in Oklahoma is crowned prom king!

This man deserves a raise! Hero.

[Himanshu @bkhimanshu]

@stoolpresidente I am sure he paid the ghostwriters with the PAC money, too.