Music video of the day

Simply awesome :)

Faux Noose, er, Fox News

Wearing the hijab in Bosnia, and not wearing it in Kyrgyzstan

Radio Free Europe offers views from

women from six countries explain why they do (or do not) wear the hijab. France made headlines recently when it banned the burqa from public spaces, but debate about Islamic headwear goes on in every corner of the world.

Click here to understand hijab, burqua, ...

And why against?

ht

The coming state government layoffs

Oregon's government, like many other states in the union, is looking at huge budget deficits, and reminders of this painful reality of the financial hole are aplenty.  It slowly begins to filter down to everyday life, such as the one described in the NY Times:

Since the start of the recession, at least 25 states and the District of Columbia have curtailed programs that include meal deliveries, housekeeping aid and assistance for family caregivers, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research organization. That threatens to reverse a long-term trend of enabling people to stay in their homes longer.

 My guess is that elected officials will have no choice but to either layoff government employees, or to force cuts in pay and benefits, or both.  And appointed officials will have no choice but to implement that decision.  As all these people do that, I hope they will exercise careful thought, and have empathy, as best demonstrated in this episode of Benson.

Two geographers on the road in a 1990 Celica

No, it is not anything to set up the punchline for a joke. 
For real: two geography faculty are on their way in the London-Tashkent rally.  (Well, neither London nor Tashkent is a starting or ending point; more details here, but a subscription might be required)

David A. Fyfe, a geographer at York College of Pennsylvania, hopped a plane to London 10 days ago to embark, with a fellow geography professor, on a planned 5,000-mile road rally across Europe and Central Asia in a $150 Toyota Celica.
Mr. Fyfe was kind enough to describe his "London-Tashkent" adventure for an article that appeared this week on The Chronicle's Web site. (Spoiler alert!) He wrote us this week from Ukraine to say that his car's radiator and head gasket had blown in Germany, just two days into the drive, so he and his teammate, Tracy H. Allen, decided to bid a less-than-fond farewell to their vehicle.
Mr. Fyfe hopped in with the rally organizers, and Mr. Allen went with a German team that ultimately got stuck in Poland because they had the wrong registration papers for their car. Border authorities had blocked their exit, so Mr. Allen jumped in with a pair of Scottish motorists who, at last report, had to tie their radiator with a rope to keep it from falling out of their Nissan.

iPad's competition--from India?

For $35. Will you purchase one?
More so when the iPad sells for, ahem, $499?

the tablet supports web browsing, video conferencing and word processing, say developers.
...The device unveiled on Thursday has no hard disk, using a memory card instead, like a mobile phone, and can run on solar power, according to reports.
... The plan was to drop the price eventually to $20 and ultimately to $10,

Whether or not this prototype eventually gets manufactured is, to some extent, irrelevant compared to the arguments that (a) such gadgets will get cheaper and cheaper, and (b) competition to new products will be insanely intense and this competition will rise up faster and faster than ever before.  I doubt whether companies will be able to make the gazillions out of new products like they used to in the past.  The speed of the treadmill has increased :)

More on this product:

Of the Holy Trinity of technology progress - "better, faster, cheaper" - India has cornered the market on "cheaper." First there was the $2100 car. Then, the $2000 open-heart surgery and the $16 water purifier. Today, the Indian government added the $35 tablet computer to that list. Think of it as an iPad for the rest of us.
(That's 1500 rupees, if you're keeping score in Indian currency.)
The computer uses the Android operating system and will come in three screen sizes: 5, 7 and 9 inches. It will be equipped with 2 GB of RAM, Wi-Fi connectivity, and a energy-saving 2-watt power supply -- useful in India's power-starved rural regions. A solar power option, also useful in those areas, will be available for an additional charge.
The computer will be equipped with many open-source applications, another money-saver. Standard on the tablet will be a Web browser, the OpenOffice office productivity suite, a PDF reader, video conferencing capability, the Scilab numerical computation package, a media player, content viewer, and remote device management capability.

One dissenting note though: India cornering the market on "cheaper?" Hello?  That is China, my friend!

Pakistan: Drones v. Militants

Source

Shakespeare + Sarah Palin = Shakespalin

Ever since Sarah Palin invoked Shakespeare's name to defend her usage of a non-existent word, refudiate, the web and Twitter has been all the more an exciting place with creative "Shakespalins" :)
Here are a few that I liked about the Bard of Wasilla:

ellagreeneyes  "Wherefore art thou Romeo? I'll try to find him and bring him to ya."
adn_jomalley "The lady doth refudiate on Twitter"
TheRealSucrerey O mighty Palin! dost thou lie so low? Are all thy Bushisms, panderings, dunders, idiocies, Shrunk to this little tweet?
PDXp2b Et tu', Webster's?
french7 "By the winking of her eye, something stupid this way comes."
AgentM83 Now is the winter of dis continent
linc0lnpark: To be Governor, or not to be Governor; a book deal is in question.
cruzi Why then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either truth nor lies, but Faux News makes it so     
geekjokes Plumber Joe, Plumber Joe, where for art thou Plumber Joe
zaoelpis What fools these voters be!

The search continues for the one-handed economist!

I can't understand why they refer to economics as a science!  And don't get me started on "political science" :)

Afghanistan: US beat USSR, and now China beat US?

In the current news culture where events from a month ago are equivalent to something from the Stone Age, it is easy to forget, for instance, the Google controversy in China.  Could the assertiveness of the Chinese government be because it senses the beginning of the end of the unique economic relationship it has/had with the US (the economic version of the mutually assured destruction)?  That the economic quagmire in which the US is trapped for various reasons is the equivalent to the the USSR's final days in Afghanistan, which was only months before the entire system collapsed?  While predicting is difficult, as Yogi Berra remarked, particularly when it comes to the future, I have no doubts that the Chinese economy is at a significant place.  As Ian Bremmer notes:

China’s leaders no longer believe that American power is indispensable for their country’s prosperity—or their own long-term political survival. The financial crisis has underlined the risk that China has accepted in relying on exports to developed states for economic growth. This has increased the urgency with which the leadership works to build domestic demand for Chinese products. Chinese officials have made news in recent months with the occasional call for the establishment of a new reserve currency to replace the dollar. That cannot happen overnight, but as China reduces its dependence on market conditions in the West, the need to purchase dollars will gradually ease, and much of the reserves will flow toward the purchase of commodities. This is a long-term project and one that will have to be undertaken carefully to ensure that the creative destruction that accompanies this transition does not force so many people out of work at one time that widespread social unrest reaches critical mass. 

It might be even harder to remember then, or even imagine, that before 9/11, China was the greatest threat to the US--not from an economic perspective, but in terms of military and national security.  These tensions came head-to-head, or plane-to-plane, only five months before 9/11 over Hainan Island:

While gathering intelligence off the coast of China, a U.S. Navy EP-3 electronic spy plane, piloted by Lt. Shane Osborn, collides in mid-air with a Chinese F-8 and is forced to make an emergency landing at Hainan Island. The Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, is killed in the incident. China charges that the U.S. plane illegally entered Chinese airspace, and detains the 24 U.S. crew members for 11 days. It demands that the U.S. take full responsibility for the incident and issue a full apology. In the end, the United States offers a letter in which it says it is "very sorry" for the loss of the Chinese pilot and "very sorry" that the aircraft landed in China without permission. The damaged U.S. airplane is not returned for three months.

Another interesting, and profound, coincidence?  A week after 9/11, China's membership in the World Trade Organization was green-lighted.  The economic, political, and military worlds have never been the same since the transformational September 2001.

Does banning asbestos hurt poor countries?

In 2002, I visited my school, where I studied and played and goofed around!  All the way until the 12th grade. (lots and lots of warm memories--about the teachers, fellow students, hmmm ... maybe I should visit the school later this year?)

All the buildings seemed much smaller when I visited the school after 21 years--a result of having been used to the sizes here in the US.

I am pretty sure that many of the buildings continued to have the same asbestos roofs that were in place when I was there.  I am no buildings expert (editor: are you an expert in anything, other than commenting? No problems--I will check with dad who is a civil engineer!) but I am sure even in the photo here the roof is asbestos.

Except for a couple of months when the temperatures were pleasant, the 6th through 8th grades that I think we spent in these buildings were always warm/hot.  It was a different life when we didn't care much about the heat and dust.  And neither did we care that there was asbestos all around, particularly in the broken pieces.  Even drainage pipes had asbestos.

Asbestos, from which we run away here in the US because of its carcinogenic effects, is an inexpensive and robust material in the poor countries.  The school that I attended is a relatively affluent school in an affluent town.  To have the kind of roofs it does and the facilities it offers is one awesome dream for, I would reckon, three quarters of the billion-plus who live in that country.  The millions living in slums would love to have asbestos roofs, instead of the tin sheets, or thatched roofs ...

Asbestos is a huge industry even now, as this chart from the BBC shows.

It is not difficult to understand why it is used a lot in poorer economies.  The crazies thing here is with Canada--it is one leading producer and exporter, even though "What is mined in Quebec is a different kind of asbestos - white asbestos or chrysotile - the only kind now used commercially worldwide. Countries like Russia, China, Brazil, and India - although not Canada - use it widely as a cheap and effective building material."

Talk about ethics--Canada does not allow using asbestos within its borders, but mines and exports asbestos for others to use?  It is like Norway--those peace-loving tree-hugging Scandinavians extract and export quite a few millions of barrels of petroleum that is a major polluter :)

Oh well; we can't all be Gandhis and practice what we preach!

Wrestling, or parliament? :)

I suppose I can keep this thread open, forever; here is the latest one from India's Bihar:

The caption for this photo (news report here) is:

An expelled opposition MLA being marshalled out of Bihar Legislative Assembly following a ruckus over an alleged multi-crore scam in Patna on Wednesday.

Long live democracy, eh! :)

Mouth-watering dish of the day :)

I wish I could taste this Potato-Bellpepper Pulao that the Edible Garden has blogged about ... I suppose I can only drool from here :)

An interview with WikiLeaks founder, Assange

I wish it were a better interviewer ... but, that does not take away the need to understand government (and corporate?) secrecy ...


Here is an excerpt from a lengthy piece in the New Yorker:

As it now functions, the Web site is primarily hosted on a Swedish Internet service provider called PRQ.se, which was created to withstand both legal pressure and cyber attacks, and which fiercely preserves the anonymity of its clients. Submissions are routed first through PRQ, then to a WikiLeaks server in Belgium, and then on to “another country that has some beneficial laws,” Assange told me, where they are removed at “end-point machines” and stored elsewhere. These machines are maintained by exceptionally secretive engineers, the high priesthood of WikiLeaks. One of them, who would speak only by encrypted chat, told me that Assange and the other public members of WikiLeaks “do not have access to certain parts of the system as a measure to protect them and us.” The entire pipeline, along with the submissions moving through it, is encrypted, and the traffic is kept anonymous by means of a modified version of the Tor network, which sends Internet traffic through “virtual tunnels” that are extremely private. Moreover, at any given time WikiLeaks computers are feeding hundreds of thousands of fake submissions through these tunnels, obscuring the real documents. Assange told me that there are still vulnerabilities, but “this is vastly more secure than any banking network.”

Definitions that will make non-economists go nuts :)

When the government relieves an excess demand for liquid money by printing up cash and swapping it out for government bonds, we call that expansionary monetary policy. When the government relieves an excess demand for bonds by printing up more Treasuries and selling them to finance its own purchases of goods and services, we call that expansionary fiscal policy. And when it prints up cash and bonds and swaps them for risky private financial assets, or when it guarantees private assets and so raises the supply of high-quality and reduces the supply of low-quality bonds, we call that banking policy.

I suppose Brad DeLong knew he was addressing readers well versed in the discipline--after all, this is in the Financial Times where he was arguing in favor of expansion.  Still ...
Compare this with how Niall Ferguson writes against:

deficits are being run at a time when the US is heavily reliant on foreign lenders, not least its rising strategic rival China (which holds 11 per cent of US Treasuries in public hands); at a time when economies are open, so American stimulus can end up benefiting Chinese exporters; and at a time when there is much under-utilised capacity, so that deflation is a bigger threat than inflation.

So, can we kind of settle this debate on whether or not a "surge" is in order to fight the economic slump?  How about a third economist, with equally impressive credentials--Kenneth Rogoff?

much of the world is going to be facing huge macroeconomic uncertainty for years to come. There is uncertainty about regulation, sovereign debt, the state of our banking and healthcare systems as well as about political fallout from the financial crisis. In this environment, measures to gradually stabilise debt burdens – to restore normality – surely make sense. If things turn radically worse for a sustained period, then yes, absolutely, further action will be necessary. But until then, a panicked government fiscal surge is far more likely to destabilise the nascent recovery than to nurture it.

So, there you have it.  No wonder then that President Truman asked for a one-handed economist!

One can also easily then see why there are endless discussions in the Senate, where mis- and ill-informed parade about.  And worse, outside, like this populist leader who wants to refudiate everything :)

Hillary Clinton in Pakistan ... for what?

Pakistan is upset, watch this video, from America's finest news source:

More on athletics v. academics

Outsourced:

Recent renovations have reaffirmed the Big House as the Biggest House: Michigan Stadium's official capacity this fall will be a whopping 109,901, moving it ahead of Penn State as the largest sporting edifice in America. (It even says so on Wikipedia.) That's $226 million well-spent.
For some context, 109,901 people will make the stadium the seventh-largest city in Michigan on game days (passing up Ann Arbor, ironically), and is significantly larger than the largest city in Delaware, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire or North Dakota. The combined populations of the largest cities in West Virginia (Charleston, 53,421) and Wyoming (Cheyenne, 55,362) couldn't quite fill it. (And yes, 109,901 is nearly the exact population of the U.S. Virgin Islands at last estimate.)

Mel Gibson alert :)

Slate Video has a mashup video bringing in the latest of Mel Gibson audio.  Hilarious.

Also at Slate, Christopher Hitchens has a brilliant piece thanks to which I had to figure out what the word gauleiter means!  Hitchens writes:

what he is issuing is the distilled violence, cruelty, and bigotry—and sexual hypocrisy—that stretches from the Crusades through the Inquisition to the "concordats" between the church and Hitler and Mussolini. Yet he's still reporting for work. When will Hollywood, and the wider society, finally decide to shun and spurn him utterly, both for what he is and for what he represents?

Frank Rich is all about schadenfreude, and writes:

It seems preposterous in retrospect that a film as bigoted and noxious as “The Passion” had so many reverent defenders in high places in 2004. Once Gibson, or at least the subconscious Gibson, baldly advertised his anti-Semitism with his obscene tirade during a 2006 D.U.I. incident in Malibu, his old defenders had no choice but to peel off. Today you never hear conservatives mention their embrace of “The Passion” back then — if they mention Gibson at all. (Fox News has barely covered the new tapes.) But it isn’t just Gibson who has been discredited. Even as he self-immolated, so did many of the moral paragons who had rallied around him as a culture-war martyr.
Take, for instance, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. During the “Passion” wars, he had tried to blackmail Gibson’s critics by publicly noting that Christians are “a major source of support for Israel” and that Jewish leaders would be “shortsighted” to “risk alienating two billion Christians over a movie.” That evangelical leader was Ted Haggard, the Colorado megachurch pastor since brought down by a male prostitute. Gibson’s only outspoken rabbinical defender in 2004, the far-right Daniel Lapin, would be sullied in the scandals surrounding the subsequently jailed Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. William Donohue of the Catholic League — who defended Gibson in 2004 by saying, “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular” — has been reduced these days to the marginal role of attacking The Times for reporting on priestly child abuse.
The cultural wave that crested with “The Passion” was far bigger than Gibson. He was simply a symptom and beneficiary of a moment when the old religious right and its political and media shills were riding high. In 2010, the American ayatollahs’ ranks have been depleted by death (Falwell), retirement (James Dobson) and rent boys (too many to name). What remains of that old guard is stigmatized by its identification with poisonous crusades, from the potentially lethal antihomosexuality laws in Uganda to the rehabilitation campaign for the “born-again” serial killer David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) in America.

I suppose Gibson is one of those celebrity wells that keep on giving.  Here is a classic from the Daily Show :)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Highway to Mel?
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

(Under)Statement of the day: on higher education

Higher education has become a colossus—a $420-billion industry—immune from scrutiny and in need of reform.

The authors go on to list a few proposals that they argue could begin the process of setting things right.  I support most of them, and have also consistently blogged about most of them.

There is a comical twist to this, though.  The same article lists a few colleges and universities that are, according to the authors, doing a good job.  The institution where I teach is included there.

One might think that such a positive note about the teaching and learning would be welcomed by faculty, right?  With a huge note of thanks to the authors? 

Hmmm .... think again!  Strange things happen in academe! Here are excerpts from all-campus emails that were in response to the publicity given to the article:

From Professor 1:

it mis-represented our campus:
"There are no star professors, little research, and the administrative pool is bare bones. All energy is focused on one thing: educating undergraduates."

This is actually a fully functioning university that includes many graduate programs, and many faculty who do excellent research. We mentor and guide graduate students, as well as undergraduates, and our programs are geared toward encouraging students to value research as a vital component of ongoing education. Moreover, it might be noted that one reason for the excellence of faculty and programs at this University is the collective bargaining agreement, which has rationalized the process of tenure and promotion, providing assurance to newly hired faculty that their career trajectory here will be rewarding and largely protected from the stress-inducing caprice of higher-level administrators that is more typical at other universities. This is a unionized faculty. And we do damn good work--research and teaching.

From Professor 2

I suspect the authors cherry picked items from PR statements and included them in the story.  We at WOU need to determine who in our administration is responsible for distributing official information about faculty workloads whereby outside observers can conclude that faculty here do "little research."  The person or persons responsible need to change their information and apologize to faculty.

From Professor 3:

Both authors visited campus about two years ago and conducted interviews.  I don't know the breadth of their research but I can tell you that I had dinner with them and agreed to be on the record for an interview of about two hours.  Claudia is a well known science reporter for the NY Times and she took extensive notes.  My point here is that the information about WOU was not simply a product of the WOU public relations office.  We will have to read the entire manuscript to see what else they have to say about our campus.

From the provost:

The Chronicle story about WOU’s appearance in the forthcoming book, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It, came as a surprise to me.  The authors did not contact my office about any information used to compile the book and we had no advance notice about the Chronicle reference. ...It’s worth noting that the Chronicle piece is symptomatic of a suspicious portion of the population that has been suffering the longest and deepest recession in the country’s history and that no longer believes in government programs or the provisions that government purports to make “for the common good.”  It is likewise representative of a good portion of our citizens who question the value of a college degree as tuition continues to rise and the economy and job growth remain stagnant....

From the Director Academic Affairs/Assistant to Provost (Comment #59; I assume this was triggered by the faculty reactions to her congratulatory email)

As pleased as I am that our institution, Western Oregon University, is cited by the author as one among many who "get it right", and I must confess I do believe that our undergraduate education experience is exemplary, I would like to interject a couple of important points: First, that Western Oregon University's faculty consists of some very fine professors who are committed to teaching undergraduates but who also are fine researchers published in peer-reviewed journals and contribute significant hours of service locally, nationally and internationally. Our faculty and staff are committed to student success and they been recognized for outstanding academic advising by NACADA for the past three years.

More update ... from the minutes of the Division meeting on Sep 22nd:

HIGHER EDUCATION? – Dean Braa and Peter Callero were quoted in a new book out about higher education.  Peter apologized about the controversial book.  He said that the authors interviewed several faculty members here at Western Oregon University.  The authors and faculty disagreed with some areas of the book.  The authors defended labor unions and supported adjunct professors.  They also discussed the corporization of campuses.  Peter mentioned that they spent the afternoon with the authors and had dinner with them.  Western Oregon University’s students won the authors over.  They left “loving” the campus and faculty of Western Oregon University.  Dean Braa stated that he stressed that Western Oregon University is a teaching institution, but the faculty do good research as well.  The authors came because they love to teach.

The geography of top secret America

I would love it if the Association of American Geographers invited the Washington Post journalists, Dana Priest and Williiam Arkin, to be speakers at a plenary session at the next Annual Meeting in Seattle.  It will be fantastic to listen to them talk about their two-year investigation into the geography of the ultra secretive American government since 9/11.  The map and the geographic database they have assembled is bloody frightening--that in a democratic society we could have such a system!

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

The Matrix seems more and more real, and less and less fictional :(

ht

The "five mothers" mystery is solved :)

So, a few days ago I blogged about searching for the Sanskrit verse about five mothers in a person's life.  I noted there that I could not locate the original verse.

A helpful reader emailed me a note earlier today:

Sanskrit Pearls has put up the verse that you were looking for:

And included the URL of that one.  My thanks to the reader for that feedback.
(Hey editor: see, we have proof on consecutive days that there are people reading this blog.  Pay me now, will ya!)

Here is the verse I was looking for:

राजपत्नी गुरोः पत्नी मित्रपत्नी तथैव च
पत्नीमाता स्वमाता च पञ्चैता मातरः स्मृताः
- चाणक्य नीति

Transliteration:
raajapatnI guroH patnI mitrapatnI tathaiva cha
patnImaataa svamaataa cha pa~nchaitaa maataraH smRutaaH
- chaaNakya nIti

Meaning of the subhAShita:
The king's wife, the teacher's wife, friend's wife, wife's mother and his own birth mother - these 5 should be deemed as mother figures

Hey, my memory was not bad, after all ... Score!  The site has a commentary on the deeper meanings of this verse.

The wonder woman down under

I am rooting for Julia Gillard, the current Australian prime minister, and her Labor Party to win the upcoming elections.  Primarily because of the freshness she brings to politics.  Just as the Tory/LibDem alliance, if successful, could begin to change politics even outside the UK, Gillard's victory could have significant effects.

And it is not merely because of the gender, which itself is a huge positive development.  Gillard, unlike politicians all over the developed world who strut around with their spouses and children, and talk about family values, is, well, not married.  Has never been married.  She has, as it once used to be said, shacked up.  And with one who is a hairdresser.  She has no children.  What a contrast from all the politicians we are used to, particularly here in the US.  A wonderfully fresh take on political life.

And the ultimate clincher: Gillard has openly said that she does not believe in god.  Hey, GOP, when do you think you might evolve enough to have such  person among your leadership?  For that matter, hey Dems, how about you?

One of my many observations (editor: to whom?) is that the ultimate test for "democracy" would be for a country to elect as its leader a childless lesbian Jew, who is is also an atheist.  Because, this will be such a contrast to the past conditions when such characteristics have even meant death sentences from societies.  If Australia elects Gillard to power, then it will be a remarkable victory for democracy itself--that we have progressed beyond the stereotype of bible-holding white male married to a woman, and with children in tow.  Of course, countries have elected women leaders, but not a childless, never-been-married atheist.

Gillard's story is that she was born in Wales.  I have known two women who are Welsh.  Both are competent and strong-minded women.  I picture them in my mind when I try to imagine Julia Gillard's personality.  Good for the Welsh, and good for the Aussies, eh.

And, Gillard is from Melbourne, which is where my brother and his family live.  So, yet another reason to cheer for Julia Gillard :)

A ht to this piece for making me think more about all these

A symbol makes a currency? Nah!

This is the symbol for the Indian Rupee--has been adopted by the Indian government, and will now work its way through various international bodies for acceptance and implementation worldwide.

The more important question is whether the Indian rupee will be accepted at, say, Tokyo's Narita Airport.  It is one thing to design a new symbol, it is another for the currency to be accepted outside India.  That will take a long time.

One commentator notes:

Looks a little like Harry Potter's lightning scar, doesn't it? Either that or the logo for a new import sports car. Or maybe even a windblown pine tree in a Tom Thomson painting.

Over at the WSJ is this observation:

The new symbol contains the Devanagari ‘Ra’ and the Roman capital ‘R’ without its upright leg. It’s hard to describe. It also looks like backward “c” suspended on a backslash with some railway tracks running through it. That help?

So, what does the Gray Lady has to add to this?

It was designed by D. Udaya Kumar, a student at the Indian Institute of Technology, who studied typography, scripts and ancient printing methods.

Where do some of the other currency symbols that we use often come from anyway? The American $?

When the United States adopted its own currency in 1785, it used Spanish money as its model—a deliberate "screw you" to the British. Scholars have since theorized that the $ sign evolved out of an abbreviation for peso: The plural for pesos was "p^s," which eventually became "ps," and then simply an "S" with a single stroke denoting the "p." One early instance of the $ symbol crops up in a letter written by the merchant Oliver Pollock in 1778. Pollock also uses the "ps" abbreviation, making the letter a bridge between the two. The double-line through the S variation is less easily explained. Some believe they represent the twin pillars of Gibraltar depicted on the Spanish coat of arms. Others say it's shorthand for the letter "U" superimposed over the letter "S"—for U.S.

Now you know!

Kashmir and the Indo-Pak situation

I received an interesting email in response to my earlier posts on Kashmir and the darkening clouds over India and Pakistan; excerpt:

I just saw your post on the Indian-Pakistan peace talk and its lack of any concrete compromises or solutions. Many are disappointed by the continued disagreements and tension between India and Pakistan. I think you will find the following video interesting and relevant to this discussion:

http://www.newsy.com/videos/tension-lingers-after-india-pakistan-talks-end
The video gives some background to this recent talk and also shows a number of different opinions on the talk's original purposes, the aims of both India and Pakistan during the talk, and whether or not it is likely that these two countries will find some sort of compromise in the future. I hope you will consider embedding this video to your site.

Newsy.com videos analyze and synthesize news coverage from multiple sources. Its unique method of showing how different media cover the news helps viewers better understand complex stories.

Here is the video that the email refers to:

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

BTW, here is more info about Newsy

More on Kashmir, and the dark clouds of war

While the web has made it possible to follow events from thousands of miles away, it is equally possible to be misled because of that very distance.  Which is why I feel better--even when discussing awful developments--when I find that I am not the only one worried about, in this case, Kashmir.  Here is Tariq Ali writing in the London Review of Books:

An ugly anti-Muslim chauvinism accompanies India’s violence. It has been open season on Muslims since 9/11, when the liberation struggle in Kashmir was conveniently subsumed under the war on terror

I second his view that in India it has been open season on Muslims.  I was too shocked to make any comment when watching a television show during one of my trips there.  It was on NDTV, I think, and seemed to be an Indian version of the American talk-fest among pundits, with audience participation.  The question they were discussing?  "All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims."

I was shocked at the topic itself, not to speak of the comments that were made.  This in a country where two prime ministers had been assassinated not by people with Islamic faith--Indira Gandhi was felled by bullets from her bodyguards who were Sikh, and Rajiv Gandhi was brutally exploded by a Sri Lankan Tamil suicide bomber.  Of course, Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi was killed by a Hindu zealot.

Ok, these were before 9/11.  But, all contemporary terrorists being Muslims is contradicted by, for instance, the Maoist rebels who seem to strike and kill at ease, which has the government responding by deploying paramilitary forces in large numbers.  And, of course, the communal terror launched by the BJP and Shiv Sena .... Or, how about Gujarat's Modi coordinating the violence that killed and terrorized Muslims in the state in which he was elected chief minister to protect and serve those very people?

That TV show was no exception.  Maybe one needs such an outsider's perspective to see through all these ...

Very depressing all the developments in Kashmir have been ... Ali concludes:

Now a new generation of Kashmiri youth is on the march. They fight, like the young Palestinians, with stones. Many have lost their fear of death and will not surrender. Ignored by politicians at home, abandoned by Pakistan, they are developing the independence of spirit that comes with isolation and it will not be easily quelled. It’s unlikely, however, that the prime minister of India and his colleagues will pay any attention to them. And just to show who’s master, the Indian army flag-marched through the streets of Srinagar on 7 July in an awesome show of strength.

I have problems with many of Tariq Ali's takes on the world ... but, in this case, I agree with him.

Successive Pakistani governments continue to capitalize on the Kashmir issue, and the explicit and implicit anti-Muslim tendencies in India--and they screw the country and the people in the process.  I mean, this is a no-win for anybody involved.  Bloody hell all around.

In the immortal words of Rodney King, why can't we all get along?

I wonder if I might never get to see Kashmir's famous Dal Lake that I thought I would visit some day--it was in the textbook for the "social studies" class a long time ago (what was that teacher's name? I can kind of picture her even  now! Was it Sitalakshmi Ramaswamy?) that I came across a photo of Dal Lake.  And then there were so many Hindi movie song/dance sequences from that lake and the state itself.  My graduate school mate, Gazala, who was from Srinagar, added to my interests with her descriptions of Dal Lake ...
Here is one of my favorite Hindi film songs--this one is from "Kashmir Ki Kali" (lyrics translation here)