I watched Krugman in a movie :)

So, there I was merrily laughing away at the sometimes grossly humorous "Get him to the Greek" ... and all of a sudden Paul Krugman shows up in the movie.  Yes, that Nobel laureate himself.  The NY Times columnist in this raunchy and farcical film?  Yes, ma'am ...
I wonder what the inside story is, with Krugman's cameo there.  I mean, is there a connection like the Matt Damon--Howard Zinn story ...

Your next vacation spot? NOT!

What a wonderfully scenic photo, right?  Doesn't it make you want to pack your suitcase, dust off that passport, and head to the airport right away?

Don't.

This, says the NY Times, is a photo of
The village of Rihab in Wadi Dawan, a valley that is the ancestral home of Bin Laden.

I have blogged quite a few times about Yemen.  (editor: do you know if anyone actually reads them though?!!!)
Anyway, back to Yemen, which is where that bin Laden village is located.  I loved this description of the country in that NY Times piece:

Beneath the familiar Arab iconography, like pictures of the president that hang in every shop, there is a wildness about the place, a feeling that things might come apart at any moment. A narcotic haze descends on Yemen every afternoon, as men stuff their mouths with glossy khat leaves until their cheeks bulge and their eyes glaze over. Police officers sit down and ignore their posts, a green dribble running down their chins. Taxi drivers get lost and drive in circles, babbling into their cellphones. But if not for the opiate of khat, some say, all of Yemen - not just those areas of the south and north already smoldering with discontent - would explode into rebellion.

If not for the fact that this is one messed-up country, this paragraph would qualify as one of the best travel-writings ...
Oh, BTW, the title of the NY Times piece?  "Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?"
The answer is a no-brainer!

Remember Haiti?

In a world where attention spans that seem to get shortening everyday, and where crises abound, there is good chance that we have forgotten the horrible devastation to life and property after the earthquake back on January 12th.
The Guardian, from where I grabbed the photo, reports that:
In devastated Haiti, much of the promised aid has failed to materialise and many of the homeless are still sleeping rough.
The Wall Street Journal adds to this depressing state of relief efforts:

With European economies in trouble and the U.S. recovery weak, there are growing doubts over the generous financial commitments promised in a first rush of international sympathy.
"I have the sense that the government and the international community have lost the sense of urgency that we had at the beginning," says Edmundo Mulet, head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission here.

The way that WSJ report ends is even more tragic:

The World Bank estimates the quake caused $7.3 billion in damage, about 130% of GDP. The bank estimates Haiti will need a decade and more than $11 billion to rebuild. Within days after the earthquake, the United Nations raised some $960 million, of which it has spent about $357 million on relief operations.
There is no tally of private-sector donations, but they likely add up to at least $2 billion: The International Red Cross alone has raised $900 million it says it will spend on Haiti.
At a U.N.-sponsored conference in New York in March, donors pledged an additional $10 billion for reconstruction, with $5.3 billion aimed at the first two years of the process. But pledges have been slow in arriving.
"The money is not there," says Mr. Voltaire, the government's liaison to the U.N. "The Haitian people think the government is stealing the money, and the international community doesn't want to say there is no money, and the government, which doesn't communicate, doesn't want to say there is no money."

 If the WSJ report is this depressing, then I can only bet the situation is way worse than we can ever imagine :(

Chennai is the new Detroit

Last year, when I was in Madras, er, Chennai, to escape from the heat and humidity, we went to a nearby up and coming hill resort, Yelagiri.  Everything on the way to Yelagiri was educational to me.  The new highway without cattle in the middle, speeding at 70 miles an hour while I was the only one of seven people wearing a seat belt, and the wonderfully pleasant temperature of Yelagiri.  But, what was absolutely shocking--a pleasant one--was how much new manufacturing units were in place all along for quite a while.  As dad often mentioned, "all Western-style factories."  Indeed--sleek factories, and most of them foreign-owned.  Including car factories.
 
Which is why this Wall Street Journal report that Chennai is the new Detroit does not surprise me at all (ht).  In fact, I would venture that Chennai seems to have all the right ingredients for one massive economic take-off: it is already a major IT centre, with a long tradition of highly reputed colleges and universities, and relatively well-connected transport infrastructure.

The effect of such transformation is evident in this quote from that piece:

A sprawling amusement park across the street from the Hyundai factory, a French bakery, evangelical Korean churches and Japanese grocery stores have popped up in recent years.
"The city has really changed," said R. Sethuraman, the Chennai-based senior vice president of finance and corporate affairs at Hyundai's India unit. "We used to only have South Indian food."  

Despite all this, I would bet that Chennai will continue to maintain its flavor; i.e., there is no way it will begin to look like yet another modern city.  Deep down, there is a great deal of traditions, and this might just about become a role-model for integrating the old and the new.  Good for Chennai; after all, without traditions, ... our lives will be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof ...

Photo of the day: in the nude

What caught my attention was not the, ahem, bum line-up, but the caption for the photo:
"CALIFORNIA—Near Bakersfield, 1983"

The Bakersfield I know--from 1991 on--was one conservative place.  A couple of years ago, it was rated the most conservative city in California, and the eight most in the country!!!  And this was only eight years before I first got to visit Bakersfield?  Did the transition happen that fast?  Is the caption incorrect?  Hey, anybody from Bakersfield reading this?  Any stories to tell?

BTW, that was not the only photo from "near Bakersfield" ... there are more.  As always, only the best photos from Magnum (via Slate)

Quote of the day: on Dems losing in November

“Earth to House Democrats,” ... “It’s time to press the panic button.”

That was "Bill Galston, a senior fellow in the Democrat-leaning Brookings Institution" quoted in this piece in the Economist, which has a classy, typical, Economist-style reporting:

What has gone wrong for the Democrats? Almost everything.

I suspect that the clincher is the following:

One hope on the Democratic side is that the conservative “tea-party” movement will drive the Republicans too far to the right for the taste of mainstream voters. But there is not much evidence of that in the polling. Indeed, the number of voters telling Gallup’s pollsters that the Republicans are too conservative has fallen since 2008 from 43% to 40%, and the proportion who think them about right has grown from 38% to 41%. Meanwhile the share of voters who consider the Democrats “too liberal” has risen from 39% to 49%. That cannot be good news for Ms Pelosi and her anxious colleagues in the House.

It is so bizarre that the executive arm is perceived as too liberal, and the judiciary is considered too conservative, but only the legislature is up for elections this fall.  Damn; I wish the Supreme Court justices were up for re-election instead :)

Which means that two important issues that are way past the expiration date will be further delayed: immigration, and energy.  Unfortunate. But, all these make for fantastic political theatre--reminds me of the dirty, rotten, politics in India :)

Who would have thought that the UK, with a Tory/LibDem alliance, could turn out to be the "Change" that we have been waiting for!!!

I get knocked down ...

But I get up again :)

Chew-S-A, Chew-S-A, USA :)

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Quote of the day: on Obama

During the campaign days two years ago, I recall two colleagues/friends being shocked at my description of Obama as "Slick Willie without the sex" ... I thought Obama was very similar to Bill Clinton in terms of playing politics.  But, my colleagues thought otherwise--they really expected some kind of an overhaul of politics--as if the unsightly sausage-making will go away all of a sudden.
In fact, the following is what I blogged a year ago:

I have been cautiously optimistic about BHO ever since his campaign days. My first red flag was when I heard him being interviewed on NPR--I think it was with Michelle Norris. This was way back, even before he announced his candidacy. She asked Obama more than once whether he was planning on a presidential bid. And, every time Obama hedged his responses so well that I kept thinking he reminded me of somebody, but I could not place who it was.

Later as the campaign picked up momentum, I concluded (and shared with maybe two or three people) that it was Bill Clinton he reminded me of, and that Obama was Slick Willie without the sex :-) Of course, I will gladly take a Slick Willie without sex over the muddler from Midland, or the phoenix that is older than the pyramids. But, hey, Obama is slickness as we have never seen before.

Which is why there is nothing for me to disagree with in the quote here (ht):

Obama’s supporters were counting on him to bring to the White House an enlightened moral sensibility: He would govern differently not only because he was smarter than his predecessor but because he responded to a different—and truer—inner compass. Events have demolished such expectations. Today, when they look at Washington, Americans see a cool, dispassionate, calculating president whose administration lacks a moral core.

Guns and butter: war and unemployment

The cartoonist here uses one of the metaphors that the "dismal scientists" use to demonstrate trade-offs:

How much has the US spent on the two wars?

I am a hydrogen ... not a walrus or "mashed potatoes"? :)

I didn't ever have any disinterest in science, nor did I have problems with it as a student.  I was actually, ahem, pretty good at it.  (editor: will you stop tooting your horn, and get to the point sometime soon?)
Yet, when I read science in some wonderful storybook fashion, I can't help thinking whether I might have enjoyed science that much more.  And, more importantly, whether many of my classmates who dreaded science would have actually enjoyed learning the materials.
Case in point: the ongoing series about the periodic table and some of the elements.  Here is an excerpt from the entry on Antimony:

Antimony has enjoyed wide use throughout history, and not just in alchemical experiments. Egyptian women used one form of antimony, stibium, as eyeliner (hence the symbol for antimony, Sb, even though neither letter appears in the element's name). Pills of the element became popular as a medicine in the 1700s, especially as a laxative, able to blast through the most compacted bowels. It was so good the chronically constipated would root through their excrement to retrieve the pill and reuse it later. Some lucky families passed down antimony laxatives from generation to generation.

Absolutely fascinatingly hilarious.
And how about the following remark about hydrogen and the relative unimportance of all the other elements of the periodic table:

The periodic table is a colossal waste of time. Nine out of every 10 atoms in the universe are hydrogen, the first element and the major constituent of stars. The other 10 percent of all atoms are helium. That's already 100 percent. The rest of the periodic table, Elements 3 through 118, lithium through ununoctium, barely register on a cosmic scale. The rest of the universe, you and I included, is a rounding error.

Looks like the author's book will be neat ... a complement, in a way, to Tungsten :)

The 12 million Roma, and the "Indian" connection

This CNN news story is more than a mere news item to a junkie like me ... the guy so actively working to improve the life of the Roma in the Czech Republic is my high school buddy--we were very close friends.  His sister, who lives across the continent from me, sent me the link to this news item

More about Kumar here

"Dr. Doom" Roubini all tied up over unemployment

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And more here from that other political economic analyst, too:

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Remembrance of things past--11

Lyrics translation? Here

Name this country

Guess in which country is the gathering in this photo? Click on the photo for the answer

Poem of the day: Speak

In an earlier posting, I had quoted Tony Judt who worries about "no speak."  Today, I read this piece on Google, China, and the First Amendment by James Fallows where he writes about a site called "1 for All."  An interesting site that is, devoted to the right to free speech.

To add to all that, here is a wonderful poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, in translation from its original in Urdu ...

A quick note on Faiz first.  Known for his poetry, Faiz was imprisoned for four years in the early days of Pakistan as a country for his role in a failed attempt at a coup.  It is even more unfortunate that in the post-Bhutto (the father, not the daughter) Pakistan, Faiz was forced into exile to Lebanon where he lived for a decade.

As far as I am concerned, these unfortunate events may not even have happened if the nasty partition had never occurred in the first place. 

Speak, by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Speak, your lips are free.
Speak, it is your own tongue.
Speak, it is your own body.
Speak, your life is still yours.

See how in the blacksmith's shop
The flame burns wild, the iron glows red;
The locks open their jaws,
And every chain begins to break.

Speak, this brief hour is long enough
Before the death of body and tongue:
Speak, 'cause the truth is not dead yet,
Speak, speak, whatever you must speak.

I knew of the following "film song" but had no idea it was a Faiz poem (Mujh se pehli si mohabbat) to which Noor Jehan (the singer here) had added the music

Kookaburra has the last laugh

Back in school, we used to sing "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree" as a rhyme.  It was neat to recall that in the context of the court order that the Men At Work had copied that tune for their famous hit song ... this old news segment has a neat comparison of both tunes

Bikini in Havana

More homage to bikinis here
BTW, this was the pre-Fidel Havana :)

A country at war--more than one :(

Stagflation cometh? Already here?

The next reading of the CPI comes out in mid-July. A negative number will mark the third straight decline and will surely inflate the volume of talk about deflation. (As the historical data show, we haven't seen four straight monthly declines in the CPI since the 1930s.) But when considering the risks of deflation, we shouldn't look at the CPI in isolation. The phenomenon of prices falling modestly at a time when the economy as a whole is growing at a 3 percent click, as it is today, isn't much to worry about. "The combination of slow growth or stagnation and deflation is the thing that's scary," says Michael Bordo. In other words, look out for stagflation.

That is enough to get me worried all the more about a disastrous combination of employment stagnation and deflation, about which I have blogged enough ... Here is a post from back in October 2008 where I quoted extensively from Dr. Doom himself!

Speaking of him, here is Roubini's comical response to Financial Times' quick survey of summer vacation plans:

Where are you going on holiday this year?Recently I have lived like the George Clooney character in Up in the Air (a film I watched on a plane). If I get a vacation this summer it would possibly be a tour of crisis-hit countries – if I am still allowed in them: Spain, Ireland, Iceland, Latvia, Greece and, maybe, the oil spill-ridden US Gulf Coast.

Poem for Independence Day:

By the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (ht)


God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o'er
When from their galling chains set free,
The oppress'd shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom's reign,
To man his plundered fights again
Restore.

God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end.
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant's presence cower;
But all to manhood's stature tower,
By equal birth!
THAT HOUR WILL, COME, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house, the thrall
Go forth.

Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I'll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive--
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate'er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.

This land is my land, too :)

America the Beautiful

Words by Katharine Lee Bates,
Melody by Samuel Ward

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

... the rest