China is second largest economy. So, ...?

I play bridge online (for free, through BridgeBase) and rarely are even two of the four hands around the table American.  Once, a few days ago, to my right was a player from Greece.  After a few games, he informed the table that he was leaving, to go for a swim.  A fellow player then chimed in that Greece is so beautiful, to which the Greek replied that it was the most beautiful country in the world and that he knows because he has been to 36 countries.

I chuckled away thinking that in Europe it is quite easy to drive a couple of hundred kilometers and be in another country!  Here in the US, driving north from San Diego, it will take about 800 miles to even get to another state within the same country.  (Ahem, that is about 1300 kilometers!  So, having traveled 36 countries doesn't say any damn thing.
 
China is one bloody huge country--it ought to be viewed as a continent.  And it has the population too to be a continent.  After all, China as one single country has a population that exceeds the combined population of all the European countries together.

So, when the world's press announces with great drama that China has overtaken Japan to become the second largest economy in the world, yes, it is commendable that China has progressed a lot.  But, even for a moment did the media pause to consider, for instance, Japan's population is just about a tenth of China's?   

Why is then that China's economy captures our attention so much?

One is a very simple reason--over the years, China's Communist leaders have preferred to use a good chunk of the generated wealth to loan to America.  And now, China is locked into it, and has no choice but to keep this going.  As Larry Summers described it a long time, this is the Mutually Assured Destruction in the post-Cold War era.

The American interest in the Chinese economic story comes, I think, with this in mind.  For Europeans, it is more about environmental impacts, and human rights (or lack thereof) in China.

India is not far behind--as a continent, similar to China.  But is a lot poorer; when Europe was clawing its way out of its Dark Ages, India might have been way more advanced compared to the rest of the world.  "The twin stories of India and China are the most dramatic in the world economy. In 1820, the two countries contributed to nearly half of the world's income. In 1950, their share was less than a tenth"  Now, it is one poor country, where about every third Indian is poor.  The fact that these two continents countries now have some of the highest economic growth rates doesn't surprise me nor worry me.

What does worry me is the uneasy tension that lies under the surface in the relationship between these two countries.  As the Economist points out,

China and India are in many ways rivals, not Asian brothers, and their relationship is by any standard vexed—as recent quarrelling has made abundantly plain. If you then consider that they are, despite their mutual good wishes, old enemies, bad neighbours and nuclear powers, and have two of the world’s biggest armies—with almost 4m troops between them—this may seem troubling.

One scenario that has always been of concern to me is this: so far, the Communist Party has managed to keep a tight hold on the political aspects, while freeing up a lot on the economic front.  But, what if the pressure builds up to an extent that it threatens the very hold of the party?  The contested territory could then become an ideal relief valve for China--hey, nothing holds a country together and legitimizes a government's power like a foreign war!

The basic problem is twofold. In the undefined northern part of the frontier India claims an area the size of Switzerland, occupied by China, for its region of Ladakh. In the eastern part, China claims an Indian-occupied area three times bigger, including most of Arunachal. This 890km stretch of frontier was settled in 1914 by the governments of Britain and Tibet, which was then in effect independent, and named the McMahon Line after its creator, Sir Henry McMahon, foreign secretary of British-ruled India. For China—which was afforded mere observer status at the negotiations preceding the agreement—the McMahon Line represents a dire humiliation.

China also particularly resents being deprived of Tawang, which—though south of the McMahon Line—was occupied by Indian troops only in 1951, shortly after China’s new Communist rulers dispatched troops to Tibet. This district of almost 40,000 people, scattered over 2,000 square kilometres of valley and high mountains, was the birthplace in the 17th century of the sixth Dalai Lama (the incumbent incarnation is the 14th). Tawang is a centre of Tibet’s Buddhist culture, with one of the biggest Tibetan monasteries outside Lhasa. Traditionally, its ethnic Monpa inhabitants offered fealty to Tibet’s rulers—which those aged peasants around Tawang also remember. “The Tibetans came for money and did nothing for us,” said Mr Nansey, referring to the fur-cloaked Tibetan officials who until the late 1940s went from village to village extracting a share of the harvest.

Making matters worse, the McMahon Line was drawn with a fat nib, establishing a ten-kilometre margin for error, and it has never been demarcated. With more confusion in the central sector, bordering India’s northern state of Uttarakhand, there are in all a dozen stretches of frontier where neither side knows where even the disputed border should be. In these “pockets”, as they are called, Indian and Chinese border guards circle each other endlessly while littering the Himalayan hillsides—as dogs mark lampposts—to make their presence known.

I suppose my grandmother said it best when we were kids and when we complained about somebody else getting a larger portion (we perceived it thus).  Grandma always then directed us to simply focus on our own plates and finish what was served.  Similarly, we will be much better off worrying about our own internal problems--which we have in plenty--than to point to China's or India's economic growth rates.

My blog readers ... and other readers :)

Oddest email of the day:

Dear Sriram Khe,

I am one of the followers of your blog, I enjoy reading your articles.
May I ask you to review our System Optimizer product in exchange
for the full version? I work for Digeus, Inc and may give
you and all your readers such present (in case they also write
a review somewhere and provide me with the link to it).
http://digeus.com/products/systemoptimizer/system-optimizer.html

Sincerely,

Am reminded of blogs that are in reality those of paid product reviewers/advertisers ... Hey, I can't do this because in my blog I deal only with intellectual products (editor: so, you think you are an intellectual? stop being so funny!)

War in Iraq ends. Really? "Shock and aw, man!"

Yesterday, I watched on C-Span (how do I ever live without that!) a rerun.  Yes, a repeat.  Of Britain's Iraq (Chilcot) Inquiry hearings, with Claire Short providing testimony.  Short was a loud dissenter in Tony "the poodle" Blair's cabinet, and she quit as a result of her differences, after serving for six years.

Watching that was depressing because it reminded me all over again about the bloody lies from the 'Bushies' ever since the day after 9/11.  I still recall watching on TV Colin Powell presenting his case at the UN--from the beginning until the end, and feeling so let down ... I, like many, used to think of him as presidential material, but there he was at the UN serving as his excellency's the president's minion.  While I don't condone how Harry Belafonte described Powell, it is not difficult to see how emotionally upset the Banana Boat singer would have been about another luminary with West Indian roots.

After all those lies, Obama (a better political version of Slick Willie, without the sex at least thus far) did nothing to change the warmongering.  Which is why it did not surprise me at all that Obama as the president was not in favor of any inquiry even about one side-story--the tortures--when declared that he was not going to look back, and would only look forward.  If that was the case about torture (editor: the US does not torture--only enhanced interrogations!)  If only we had an inquiry commission of our own ...

Now, we are told that the combat operations in Iraq are over.  In effect, we ought to be celebrating the end of war, right?  Leave it to Colbert to talk about this:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - What If You Threw a Peace and Nobody Came?
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

So, how are things in Iraq, anyway?  Do they have a government yet?
Nope!

And the key person to determine Iraq's political fate has been living in exile in Iran for the last three years: Moqtada al-Sadr

Sadr reminds of me of many wily and opportunistic politicians in India who know well how to manipulate the system and the peoples by appealing to the basest religious, communal, and ethnic biases.  (editor: how different is this from the Manhattan Mosque controversy?)  and to quite an extent, the Khalistan movement's Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.

So, what is Sadr up to now?

More than a year before the elections in March, Sadr and his top aides set up an election strategy committee they dubbed the "machine." The goal was to game the electoral system as best as they could. A team of seven pored over the election law, dissected district maps, and built an extensive database of voters in every province. In the end, Sadr's Free Movement party won 39 seats in parliament, giving his followers a decisive vote within the National Iraqi Alliance, the dominant Shiite bloc of which they are part.

Now that Sadr has those valuable seats, ...

So what does Sadr want? One issue that has come up again and again in the negotiations to form the government is detainees. In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, Sadr estimated that there are as many as 2,000 detainees linked to his movement, most swept up in U.S. operations in 2007 and 2008, whom he would like to see released. ...

But the detainees are only a short-term bargaining chip. What Sadr is after is power itself -- and if his past record is any indication, he won't be shy about using it. There are any number of issues he could block or help push through parliament. Sadr has previously butted heads with Kurdish groups about the final status of Kirkuk, an oil-rich city that the Kurds claim as their capital. He is a proponent of putting oil revenues under central government control, a position at odds with the Kurds as well as some rival Shiite groups, such as ISCI. Women's rights groups have already voiced strong concerns that the Sadrists could block their attempts to reform laws that cover property ownership, divorce, and child custody. Some even fear that Mahdi fighters will again target women's rights activists, as they did in Basra in 2007 and 2008.

Sadr's ambitions don't cover Iraq's domestic agenda alone. His high-profile trips to Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere indicate that he wants to be seen as a prominent regional player. He would like to promote his Mahdi Army as a member of the so-called "axis of resistance" made up by Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which have made their names by confronting the United States and Israel.

For now, Sadr is undoubtedly pleased by his opportunity to have a key vote in who becomes the next prime minister. And it's hard to miss the irony from a man who has built his image on being among the people. He's not casting that vote from Baghdad, where he could rally millions of supporters, but from a comfortable perch hundreds of miles away in neighboring Iran.

Welcome to the post-war Iraq.

And, BTW, Iran is firing up its nuclear reactor.

This, too, is India ... no outsourcing!

The caption at the source:

ALL FOR PEANUTS: A farmer ploughs his field as a farm woman spreads groundnut seeds in a field in Mappillainayakampatti, near Thanjavur District. Photo: M. Srinath

In trouble in France ... after all the way from India

France, which loves to advice the rest of the world on anything and everything is deporting quite a few Roma:

"That's France for you," said one middle-aged woman, sitting dejectedly in pink flip-flops at the rue de Lyon squat. She, like all other Roma to whom the Guardian spoke, was unwilling to be identified. Intense media interest since the start of Nicolas Sarkozy's crackdown on crime and illegal immigration last month has made them uneasy in front of the cameras.

So, what happened?

In July, dozens of French Roma armed with hatchets and iron bars attacked a police station, hacked down trees and burned cars in the small Loire Valley town of Saint Aignan.
The riot erupted after a gendarme shot and killed a French Roma, 22-year-old Luigi Duquenet, who officials said had driven through a police checkpoint, knocking over a policeman. Media reports suggested he had been involved in a burglary earlier that day.
Duquenet's family dispute the police version of events, saying he was scared of being stopped because he did not have a valid driver's licence.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called an emergency ministerial meeting, at which it was decided that some 300 illegal camps and squats would be dismantled within the coming three months.

Sakozy, who showed how brutally dogmatic he can be when it comes to dealing with minorities--remember how he dealt with the Algerian youth?--jumps into this harsh decision of deportation.  Romania, not that it has treated the Roma well within its own borders, cries xenophobia:

"We understand the position of the French government. At the same time, we support unconditionally the right of every Romanian citizen to travel without restrictions within the E.U.," Romanian President Traian Basescu said.

The rest of Europe is watching this closely:

The Council of Europe has expressed grave concerns at France's controversial deportation of Roma migrants.
“Recent developments in several European countries, most recently evictions of Roma camps in France and expulsions of Roma from France and Germany, are certainly not the right measures to improve the situation of this vulnerable minority. On the contrary, they are likely to lead to an increase in racist and xenophobic feelings in Europe,” Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), declared on Friday.

Finally, why do the Roma wander anyway, right?

The Roma originated in India but left the subcontinent in the 11^th century, perhaps following Muslim invasions. From there, they crossed into the Byzantine Empire, and then up to southeastern Europe by about 1300. Generally speaking, xenophobia made it difficult for them to stop in any one place for very long, let alone establish permanent settlements. (Since it's thought that the Roma adhered to strict purity codes, they may also have been reluctant to mix with outsiders, making assimilation unwanted on both sides.) When the Roma arrived in Western Europe in the 15^th century, local populations worried they were part of an Ottoman invasion (because of their dark skin color) and the German Reichstag of Freiberg declared them outlaws. Barred from purchasing land or joining guilds, the Roma had no choice but to move about.

Another take on the Indian connection here.

But, the Roma have experienced worse things than Sarkozy.  Which is why I cheer when I read this:

many of the Romany families deported by France for outstaying their welcome were planning to head straight back.
“Of course we are thinking about going back,” 26-year-old Ionut Balasz told journalists as he arrived at the airport. “Life is better there than in Romania, even when you are illegal.”

Good luck to the Roma!

The apathy towards Pakistan and its floods

Quite a few days ago, as the crisis started unfolding, I noted Pakistan's' president Zardari being apathetic about the catastrophic floods in his country.  So, if the country's president could have behaved thus, why should we be surprised that the floods have barely made a dent on the world's consciousness/conscience!

First, the latest numbers.  Even in that earlier post, I argued that the numbers of people affected will quickly grow to a very large number.  Current estimates are that at least 20 million people have been messed up by these floods of unimagined magnitudes.

Yet, a question remains: why has this not hit emotional resonance across the planet, especially in the affluent world?

My cynical mind says it is in the timing.  Mid-August pretty much the entire European world,a even the broke Greeks, tunes out and head to beaches and villas and rivieras.  Watching BBC or CNN while on vacation, even if one did, will not jolt one into caring.  And Australia is in the middle of an intensely close election.  I would guess that in India it is difficult to evoke sympathy for Pakistan even under ordinary circumstances, and recently tensions have been quite high.  This means we are left with China and the USA.  China couldn't care for anything on this planet unless it stands to benefit, which means that we should be surprised if anything like a huge aid comes from China.

Despite labeling this as cynicism, I find it difficult to walk away from these reasons.  Others have been thinking about this as well, it seems.

Over at Foreign Policy, Mosharaff Zaidi writes:

Between our fear of terrorism, nervousness about a Muslim country with a nuclear weapon, and global discomfort with an intelligence service that seems to do whatever it wants (rather than what we want it to do), Pakistan makes the world, and Americans in particular, extremely uncomfortable. In a 2008 Gallup poll of Americans, only Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, North Korea, and Iran were less popular than Pakistan.
The net result of Pakistan's own sins, and a global media that is gaga over India, is that Pakistan is always the bad guy. You'd be hard pressed to find a news story anywhere that celebrates the country's incredible scenery, diversity, food, unique brand of Islam, evolving and exciting musical tradition, or even its arresting array of sporting talent, though all those things are present in abundance.

From the venerable Brookings Institution comes this:

The relatively limited media coverage of the Pakistani floods is puzzling. Our analysis of major global English-language print and broadcast media shows that Pakistan’s floods have been covered far less than other major disasters. Ten days after the flooding began there were approximately 320 broadcast news stories and 730 print news stories covering the Pakistan flood disaster with the number of stories in print media rising to almost 1,800 by day 20. In virtually every other major disaster, including the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the recent Pakistan and Haiti earthquakes, coverage was well over 3,000 stories in both print and broadcast media respectively by day 10 and by day 20.
The slow-onset nature of the disaster may be one reason for the limited attention. Earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes are one-time calamitous events, making it easy to capture the public’s attention, especially if real life mimics Hollywood movie scenarios. At the beginning of the Pakistan floods, rivers rapidly overflowed destroying everything in their wake. However, water levels are currently rising more slowly. Water is steadily enveloping more and more of Pakistan’s countryside every day. ...
The negligible media attention in the English-language press is certainly a factor in the limited support for flood victims from private individuals, foundations and corporations, especially in the U.S.

AidWatch presents another angle:

one third of the variation in how much TV attention a disaster gets is explained by how popular the affected country is with US tourists. Sadly for the flood survivors, Pakistan is nowhere on the list of top destinations for US travelers in Asia and the outlook’s not great: the World Economic Forum ranked Pakistan 113 out of 133 countries in its latest Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report.

In addition to all these observations, the Economist notes:

Some donors still have bad memories of an earlier disaster, in 2005, when an earthquake struck the Pakistan-run bit of Kashmir, killing nearly 80,000 people. Foreign governments and charities promised some $6 billion in aid, to be spent by Pakistani officials and by local and foreign NGOs. Some, inevitably, was wasted or stolen. More troublingly, some local charities, such as Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which had links to extremists, ended up claiming credit for the relief work. And that is before taking into account the credible worries that Pakistan’s spies support elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan and have done too little to rein in Islamist terror directed at India.

The magazine argues, and I concur here, that:

In Pakistan the greatest need will be in the coming weeks and months, as flood waters recede, homes and roads need to be rebuilt and fields have to be replanted. That gives donors time to find effective ways to co-ordinate their help—ways that, where possible, should bypass Mr Zardari’s loose-fingered friends. Already there are signs of progress. Some $3 billion has been offered by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, the UN has set up a fund and donations from governments are starting to flow. America, a provider of much military and other aid to Pakistan, is lending helicopters and providing other help, hoping to show ordinary Pakistanis that it is not the hostile bully many of them believe it to be.
India, Pakistan’s traditional foe, could also turn disaster into opportunity. Some have described the current floods as the worst battering Pakistan has taken since the man-made disaster of partition from India in 1947. India itself has suffered recent floods and has offered some help (Pakistan is unsure whether to accept). Delivering it could show that India genuinely wants its troubled neighbour to recover and to prosper. A little money now could go a long way.

Zaidi puts it much better:

The fact that people in other countries don't like Pakistan very much doesn't change the humanity of those affected by the floods or their suffering. It is right and proper to take a critical view of Pakistani politicians, of their myopia and greed. It is understandable to be worried about the far-reaching capabilities of the Pakistani intelligence community and reports that they continue to support the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is even excusable that some indulge in the fantasy that a few hundred al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are capable of taking over a country guarded by more than 750,000 men and women of the Pakistani military, and the 180 million folks that pay their salaries.
But are the farmers of Pashtun Ghari, of Muzzafararh and Dera Ghazi Khan, of Shikarpur and Sukkur, really obligated to allay these fears before they can get help in replacing their lost livelihoods? Twenty million people are now struggling to find a dry place to sleep, a morsel of food to eat, a sip of clean water to drink -- and the questions we are asking have to do with politics and international security. The problem is not in Pakistan. It is where those questions are coming from.
Pakistan has suffered from desperately poor moral leadership, but punishing the helpless and homeless millions of the 2010 floods is the worst possible way to express our rejection of the Pakistani elite and their duplicity and corruption. The poor, hungry, and homeless are not an ISI conspiracy to bilk you of your cash. They are a test of your humanity. Do not follow in the footsteps of the Pakistani elite by failing them. That would be immoral and inhumane. This is a time to ask only one question. And that question is: "How can I help?"

Finally, if one needed yet another before/after photo of this catastrophe, here is one from NASA:
Before (August 2009)

And, after:

Why is Amreica so paranoid about Islam and Muslims?

This chart from the Economist reveals a depressingly troubling aspect of contemporary America:

Only 52 percent of those polled think a mosque is ok in a place where other religious worship places are ok?  And a 34 percent think there are some places where it is inappropriate to build mosques?

Oh, bloody depressing this is.

What a level of transparent bigotry, and a dissing of the Constitution itself ... what is wrong with my fellow citizens?

And, apparently Islam itself gets an unfavorable rating:

Only one-in-four has at least favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of Islam?

How did we end up here?

Jesus and Mohammed duke it out with Jon Stewart

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover - Team Mohammed vs. Team Jesus
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Photo of the day: "smile week" :)

I had no idea there is something called a national smile week :)
So, will add smile emoticons :)
More photos here :)

Lewis Black reviews "Eat, Pray, Love"

Will add this to the earlier "gag, shoot, and leave" post :)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Eat Pray Love
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Why I love "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

It is one of my favorite movies ever.  It is not only because of the fantastic movie it is, or for how uniquely the movie depicted humans and aliens communicating with each other, for Dreyfuss' crazed and possessed looks ... But also because it is a reminder of a glorious time in my childhood.

I was a little more than 15 years old then, and after the written part of the National Talent Search exams, I was one of the few students invited to interview at the Madras campus of the Indian Institute of Technology.  Two other students from my class, Vijay and Krishna, had also gotten to this stage.  The prospect of the interview itself did not excite me as much as the thought that I would be at the fabled IIT campus for some serious, official, business.

Dad took me to Madras, and we stayed at the home of my favorite uncle, whose sons were always a delight to hang out with ... The following day was the big moment at IIT.

While I did well, I knew I screwed it up because I messed up the first question big time.  This first question was rather simple, compared to the later ones, and I suppose I remember only the first question because that was how, I am sure, I lost the honor of the scholarship ... and that simple question was, "what is the maximum value of the tangent of an angle?"

Throughout my school life, my math teachers--right from the earliest days that I can recall--tried their best to help me understand that I needed to pause and think about the questions before I answered them only because of the remarkably silly mistakes I did while being in a hurry as if I were in a race against the devil.  But, stupid is as stupid does, as I would learn much later from Forrest Gump.  And, consistent with that track record of buzzing in the answer almost as a reflex action, I said "one."

That answer bothered me.  But, I had no time to think because they were tossing more questions my way, including one where I was required to solve a problem on the chalkboard.  After I was done, and while exiting the campus, I realized how much I had erred in that first question itself.

Perhaps dad realized that I was kicking myself for my haste.  He then did two things.  First, he took me to the beach, and at a restaurant I ordered a cucumber/tomato sandwich.  And then he said we could go to any movie of my choice.  Which is how we went to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." I think this was at the Satyam complex.  After the movie ended, and as we were exiting, dad said, "I didn't understand anything there."

Poem(s) of the day

First, Robert Louis Stevenson's Requiem:

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This is the verse you grave for me:
'Here he lies where he longed to be;
Here is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.'

Notice "this is the verse" there? 
Philip Larkin titled his poem This be the verse ... It is a short one, with swift blows. 

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

The Web is dead? And Flipboard?

Because of an NPR report, and then the Charlie Rose program, I checked out this piece at Wired--on how the web is dead.  A catchy and provocative title, yes.  The essay makes a distinction between the "www" and the "internet."

And, thankfully, I am able to follow this discussion! 

Decades ago, when I was transitioning into graduate school life, I took up a job with the computing services (UCS) at USC.  This was in addition to my graduate assistantship.  My first day at UCS, the supervisor took me around to the backrooms and pointed to a bunch of stuff and said something like, "this is our ARPAnet."  Having been trained in the Indian culture, I didn't ask him what that meant ... annoying people with questions is something I became good at much later, and I have to thank America for it :)

But, it did not take me long to understand that ARPANET was one awesome computer network.  I recall spending hours reading random and useless posts on various "soc." and "alt." groups.  Some were profound too--in fact, it was from one of those soc.culture.indian postings that I knew that the then dictator president of Pakistan, Zia ul Haq, died in a plane crash.  These were the days of the "internet" before the World Wide Web--the web now.

Which brings us to the death of the web as Wired argues:

Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they’re rejecting the idea of the Web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen). The fact that it’s easier for companies to make money on these platforms only cements the trend. Producers and consumers agree: The Web is not the culmination of the digital revolution.

(and to think that higher education still wants to hang on to the old lecture/chalkboard mode of teaching/learning!!!)

So, where is the trigger coming from?

The rise of machine-to-machine communications — iPhone apps talking to Twitter APIs — is all about control. Every API comes with terms of service, and Twitter, Amazon.com, Google, or any other company can control the use as they will. 

Kind of creepy, come to think of it: machine-to-machine communications?  Hey, buddy, isn't communication supposed to be between and amongst humans? :)
Ok, I am exaggerating. But, not by that much.
The following video is an example of how much the machine-to-machine communications can present a completely different kind of experience for us humans ...

Cue that Twilight Zone music already :)

Crowing about having gone to Crow

I learn a lot through my students.

When I tell students this, their facial expressions don't suggest that they believe me.  They probably think I am mouthing off some platitude.  But, I am dead serious.

One example is this: I pay attention to their descriptions of towns and high schools.  It gives me a phenomenally insightful view into a world that I might not otherwise know about.  And then, when I get a chance, I swing by those communities.  Given that I grew up in a different part of the world, and given that I moved here from California, through my students I learn a lot about Oregon, its land and peoples.  And then, in some other class when a student says a town's name and I am able to relate my experiences with that town, that student and the rest of the class begin to see me as one of their own.  Yes, I can see that difference in their body language, their sudden warmth and respect ... My first this way was about Astoria, many years ago ... That student was blown away with my stories of the tram by the waterfront and a restaurant in town.

Thus, over the years I have been to communities that I might not have visited otherwise.  I have now that much more of a feel for the places from where our students come.

Last year, one student was very hesitant to talk about her town--Crow.  I told her that I had seen signboards pointing to Crow, but that I had never been there.  She dismissed it as not worth a visit .. that it is a very small town ... but, I knew it was worth a visit, and that I would learn a lot.

And I did.



Crow is in a fantastically scenic setting.  It was late in the afternoon on a wonderful summer day--about 75 degrees, sunny, with scattered white clouds against a remarkably blue sky--when I was driving around that part of the country. Yes, it is country--large acreage homes with animals, trees, vineyards, ... as I was driving, it occurred to me it could easily compete with the rural landscape outside of Firenze (Florence) that I vivdly remember from my only trip there twelve summers ago.  The small little church, the high school which definitely could be a focal point of the community, the gas-station/mini-mart ... what politicians would easily refer to the salt of the earth America.  I loved it.

I stopped for a bit to watch a few cows wandering about.  There was something soothing in watching those animals against the slowly yellowing setting Sun.

Thanks to that student, "H."

Now, I wish some of these students would invite me over, so that I can get a taste of the food their mothers and grandmothers cook :)

Update (August 20th):
"H." emailed me the following:

Hi Dr. Khe,

This made my day! I'm really happy you went out to Crow    If you ever head out that way again, let me know! I can meet you down there sometime and take you home for dinner at my grandma's. It's even further outside of civilization than the high school and the Crow store.

Thanks for the update!

All right, an open dinner invite :)

Jon Stewart, the lousy actor :)

Thanks to Hulu, I was watching old sitcoms .... and Jon Stewart pops up in an episode of Newsradio!  I am glad that he found a better avenue for his creativity :)

"Mother and Child" ... Annette Bening does great!

So, there I am waiting in the ticket line, and wondering whether anybody ahead was for Mother and Child.  After all, it is a drama--a little more than artsy, and a little less than a tearjerker--with a whole lot of conversations, and a relatively relaxed pace of storytelling.

I hear one clearly Hispanic-looking guy--perhaps my age--asking for Mother and Child.  And then about three of four people later, a middle-aged couple, appearance suggesting Far East Asian, get their tickets.  I get into the movie hall, and I see the couple, the Hispanic guy, and one other much older White guy in a cardigan reading a book.  Interestingly enough, they were all on the right half of the aisle, while I was the only one on the left.  I thought to myself that I had never seen such demographics at any movie I have ever been to.

The first of the previews had just about started when an all-female contingent walked in and took up a row-and-a-half of seats on my side of the aisle.  Later, after the film ended and when the lights came back up, it seemed like there were only two Whites among that group of women, and the rest were all Blacks.

One of the most interesting audiences ever, I would think.

The cast included: Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Samuel Jackson, Jimmy Smits, Kerry Washington ... well, these are the names/faces I could recognize in the poster. 

I have never cared much for the acting abilities of Jackson and Smits.  I am yet to see any movie of Naomi Watts where she plays anything close to a "normal" person.  In this movie too Watts' character is a complicated one, and she does her part well.

I liked Annette Bening's performance the most.  The first time I saw Bening in a movie was in Bugsy, and I remember one scene all too well when her character snarks at Bugsy to go jerk himself a soda.  I am pretty sure that was the line. (A preemptive note to the editor: I don't care to Google and verify this.)  Later, I was positive that she would win the Oscar for her performance in American Beauty, but Hillary Swank edged her out. And then as Julia she delivered a convincing and believable character, but was yet again beaten to the Oscar finish line by Swank--this time as the boxer.  But, I don't think her acting here was anywhere near the other two that yielded the Oscar nods.

Anyway, in Mother and Child, too, Bening makes the character come across quite well.  There were moments when the transition seemed sudden, but I would think that it was more the problem with the direction and storytelling, than with the acting.

And the best part is this: all this for an admission ticket price of $1.75. Can't beat that.

Chart of the day: beer

A former colleague used to joke that his body was a temporary storage facility for beer :)

The tortures we go through ...

Reading about the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) exam results brought back memories of anxieties and excitement about my performance in the XII class exams almost thirty years ago.  And, along with those thoughts, I was quickly back in time when I had to deal with that dreaded word in engineering college those days—ragging!

I was as an excited seventeen-year old who headed out all the way from Neyveli to Nagpur, to join the Visvesvaraya Regional College of Engineering (VRCE) as it was called then, which is now the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology.

The college had a lovely, spacious campus with trees and buildings woven together into a pleasing landscape.  Teashops outside the college walls where students were hanging out was exactly the kind of ambiance I had pictured in my mind. 

A group of senior students, also from Tamil Nadu, treated my much older cousin—who was to help me with the travel and transition—and me very well, and I was confident that I had come to the right place.  I was having such a good time that all I could think was how friendly people were. 

After a day, my cousin had barely left for the railway station to return to Madras when one of the senior Tamil students suggested that I go with him.  He led me into a hostel room.  There were about seven or eight students sitting around an empty space in the middle.

Before I knew it, the seniors, who only about an hour earlier had been joking with me, turned out to be the dreaded raggers that I had often been warned about.  It was an “et tu, Brute” situation—I had no idea about the devils inside all the friendliness they displayed when my cousin was there. 

But, I had no time to analyze the situation as I was led to that empty space.  I was directed to strip down to nothing.  I remembered going to a physician to get his advice regarding a rash on my thigh, and sitting there with only my underwear on was, up until then, one of the most horrible experiences ever.  Now I was stark naked in front of strangers in a closed room.

I knelt down, as per the instructions, quite dazed, trying to figure out how to extricate myself from this situation.  I heard a sharp command along the lines of: “Your balls are hanging lower than your penis, and we want you to reverse the situation.”  I understood that they wanted me to have an erection!

Meanwhile, the group was getting impatient with me.  The guy who was closest to me slapped me hard on my cheek, over my left ear, and repeated the instruction.  I was even more shocked that I was being slapped for no fault of my own.   

There was no way I was going to carry out the orders--after all, I was the same guy who had tried, and continues to try, his best to resist authority.  Before I could process the instructions coming from all around, more slaps and more bizarre questions followed.  I was also made to understand that this was only the initial session and that there were quite a few more to follow.   I endured one more day of this ragging and then I packed up my stuff and left the college for good. 

After I returned to Neyveli, a schoolmate, who even until today has no idea of what happened (unless he read this post,) remarked that I could have easily handled the ragging, given that I was an avid reader of spy and war novels.   I wondered if the implicit understanding was that boys were expected to toughen up by reading stories where physical and mental tortures were the norm.  Or, was this remark a pathetic example of how our senses get dulled to such an extent that we fail to recognize acts of violence?

Of course, I never shared the details with friends or family.  I suspect that my middle age, and living far away in the United States, have given me the comfort and luxury of writing about past events.

I have often wondered why I did not protest at the first minute itself.  Should I be ashamed that I did not stand up to them?  But then I remind myself that I was, after all, only seventeen.  Yes, way closer to seventeen than to eighteen. 

Every once in a while I think about those raggers.  Did they feel bad after I packed up and left?  Or did they laugh at how much a wimp I was, and that they were merely training me to be tough?  Did at least one among them feel a sense of remorse that perhaps they messed up my life?

The reality is also that it is not a rare event such as reading about the CBSE results that remind me about my own experience.  Every minute of the day I feel the effect of ragging; the sharp stinging slap across my left ear apparently damaged the hearing mechanism.  A few years ago I started hearing chirping sounds from within my ear, and my physician said that those sounds are normally the first signs of hearing loss.  Now, my left ear is only about a third effective, and I can no longer locate the origin of the sound by triangulation, which means I sometimes end up looking in the wrong direction--a problem that, until now, I have been able to successfully camouflage in the classroom.

My doctor recommends that I seriously consider wearing a hearing aid, and I guess it is my vanity that prevents me from doing that.  I ask myself, well, if I can wear glasses for my eyes, then why not a device for my left ear, more so when the hearing loss was inflicted by somebody else? 

I suppose there will always be a few humans who delight in causing misery to others.  It will be truly wonderful if the world were otherwise—where people exist not to harm but to help others.

That world surely did exist, in my mind, when I was a naïve and idealistic seventeen-year old who had just received his CBSE marks.

Updated in July 2012:
At the reunion, one of the classmates,"K," who was also at the same college for a brief while--a little longer than my stay--remarked to a few others "ரகின்க்ல அவன் செம்ம அடி வாங்கினான்" (he was beaten up quite badly during the ragging) ... oddly enough, it felt comforting to know that there was at least one person who knew about the violence.  But, it was creepy that he laughed about it though :(

Cartoon of the day: on the mosque at Manhattan

Where is this city?

Any guesses re. this city? Name? At least the country where it is located? The population of this city?
Click on the image for answers that will surely surprise you.  Full disclosure: I had no clue whatsoever!

Confessions of a recovering environmentalist

Of course, there is a a lot to disagree with in this essay; but, it is exceeded by the amount to think about ... (ht)

 The weird and unintentional pincer-movement of the failed left, with its class analysis of waterfalls and fresh air, and the managerial, carbon-über-alles brigade has infiltrated, ironed out and reworked environmentalism for its own ends. Now it is not about the ridiculous beauty of coral, the mist over the fields at dawn. It is not about ecocentrism. It is not about reforging a connection between over-civilised people and the world outside their windows. It is not about living close to the land or valuing the world for the sake of the world. It is not about attacking the self-absorbed conceits of the bubble that our civilisation has become.Today’s environmentalism is about people. It is a consolation prize for a gaggle of washed-up Trots and at the same time, with an amusing irony, it is an adjunct to hyper-capitalism; the catalytic converter on the silver SUV of the global economy....
... What is to be done about this? Probably nothing. It was perhaps inevitable that a utilitarian society would generate a utilitarian environmentalism, and inevitable too that the greens would not be able to last for long outside the established political bunkers.

If that got you thinking, how about then watching George Carlin's bitingly satirical and funny segment on saving the planet:

"I'm in the twilight of a mediocre career" :)

Now, that describes me well!

Thanks to NPR for the program segment that made me aware of it.  Why does the musician, Jim Pearce, then continue to do what he does if he thought it was a mediocre career?  I loved his response: ""I really had no other job skills," he says. "That's all I can do."

Yes, sir. Me too! (though, after listening to the program, it is clear that he is no mediocrity. I am one though, and will be the first to admit it.)

...

Taliban stones couple to death

A few days ago, we witnessed from afar the Afghanistan Taliban executing a pregnant widow--because of relationships outside of marriage.  In case we thought that was the worst they could do, it turns out that the Taliban is far from done.  This time, "The Taliban has stoned to the death a couple in northern Afghanistan over charges of adultery."

I cannot even begin to imagine the cruel punishment the couple endured before their deaths.

"The two were stoned to death in a bazaar of Dasht-e Archi district on the accusation of committing the act of adultery," said Mohammad Omar.

Last week, Islamist militants publicly flogged and killed a woman, accused of adultery, in the Badhgis province in northwestern Afghanistan, said officials.

These killings in Kunduz, if confirmed, would be the first of their kind by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, where the militant group has comparatively lower influence than in the south. The stoning follows last week's call by a section of clerics for the imposition of a strict code of Islamic law that has frequently awarded capital punishment.

Afghan authorities say the Taliban had arrested the couple following complaints by their parents, as the two were to be married to separate individuals. The Taliban, during their rule of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, is known to have imposed draconian punishments on people who did not subscribe to its strict code of social behaviour.

As an atheist, I don't imagine that there is anything waiting for us after we die--which rules out heaven and hell.  But, if I am proven to be wrong, I wish that there does exist a special place, call it hell or whatever, which is where I want these murderous and barbaric thugs to end up--after they go through the worst possible torture and death in this world.

Graphic (joke) of the day :)

source

Why maps and geography matter?

Here is yet another reason.  From, ahem, another guy with an Indian connection :)
One of the many impressive skill-sets he has: "speaks German, Hindi, French, Spanish, and basic Arabic." 

Poem of the day: on India's Independence Day

I might as well make a thematic third for today, after this post and this

The following poem by Rabindranath Tagore was a required reading back in high school.  I would expect that to be the same even now.  (Note: this poem was not written by Tagore to commemorate the independence.  He died in 1941--six years before the British handed over the keys.)

WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Music video of the day

To mark India's Independence Day :)

Yes, a bizarre sense of humor!
Note that the way the Jai Ho song starts is very much like how the following one (Itna Na Mujhse Tu Pyar Badha) begins:

Well, this song itself, as you the talented reader already figured out, owes a lot to Mozart Symphony 40

Photo of the day: India's Independence Day

From my favorite Indian newspaper, of course. 

The moment of birth, 63 years ago, was characterized as the "tryst with destiny" by Jawaharlal Nehru.

In that historic speech, Nehru remembered, and reminded everybody, the siblings who now became citizens of another country, Pakistan:

We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good and ill fortune alike.

For India and Pakistan, it has been two very different tales right from their births.  I often wonder what the story might have been had there been no partition.  Or, what if Kashmir had become a separate country, like Nepal. And, later on, what if the states had not been created based on the prevailing majority languages spoken.

Such counterfactual questions aside, it is quite an achievement, indeed, that the country has been largely successful with its experiment in democracy--except for that brief period of darkness that was the "Emergency" imposed by the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi.

I have my own version of Salman Rushdie's marking of the I-Day in his life; it was on a August 15th that I left India for the United States decades ago in order to pursue graduate studies at USC.  It is also, in a way, my own independence day :)