The conservative Indian-Americans

I am not sure whether there has been any systematic polling done on the political leanings of Indian-Americans--the naturalized and the natural-born.  I would not be surprised if it shows a near even split.

For instance, the politics of Bobby Jindal in New Orleans and Nikki Hawley in South Carolina are not only Republican but with a good chunk of social and religious conservatism as well.  The conservative commentators Ramesh Ponnuru and Dinesh D'Souza also share that social/religious conservatism.

But, it appears that recently D'Souza has swung even further right with his weird psychoanalysis of Obama's politics; what happened to him?

Here is Shikha Dalmia--another Indian-American--writing about D'Souza's thesis (in, of all places, her regular column in Forbes, which had given D'Souza the cover-story privilege!):

What is even more unsettling than D’Souza’s unsubstantiated ideological accusations against Obama are his gratuitous digs at polygamy in Obama’s family. He plays this up repeatedly. What is the point of this except to remind Americans that Obama is a Muslim – the most dreaded of “others”? Ultimately, D’Souza’s rumination reveals less about how Obama thinks and more about how D’Souza thinks. It shows not that Obama is motivated by malice toward America, but D’Souza is motivated by malice toward Obama. How pathetic.

From an an essay that comes across as a little too calm for the usually volcanic Christopher Hitchens comes this note:

For Dinesh D'Souza to label Obama the equivalent of a Kenyan Mau Mau was one thing, but for former Speaker Newt Gingrich to endorse the analysis with such dispatch was quite another. What will they do for an encore?

 Salon has the best place for D'Souza's rant: This week in crazy

His newest, "The Roots of Obama's Rage," is the story of Dinesh D'Souza flailing to find a new and unique way of making a moderate pragmatic Democrat sound like a horrible monster bent on the destruction of America and enslavement of its people. He's recreating the nation in the image of his "philandering, inebriated African socialist" father. He is stealing America's wealth and redistributing it to third-world nations. Sources include, in addition to Obama's memoir about the absence of his father from his life, one obscure paper Obama Sr. wrote, and also something one of Obama's grandmothers said, once.

D'Souza's embarrassing history should've led this book straight to the remainder bin. Instead it made the cover of Forbes. Then Newt Gingrich endorsed it. Then Glenn Beck endorsed it. The book immediately climbed up the Amazon bestseller list.

Now the White House is involved, with Robert Gibbs asking Forbes to retract the numerous factual inaccuracies. All Forbes will say is that facts don't apply in opinion pieces.

D'Souza is enjoying all the attention, of course.

Ahem, time for me to admit that there are some crazy Indian-Americans, too :)

Speaking of crazy Indian-Americans, nobody better than Peter Sellers' Hrundi V. Bakshi in The Party:)

"Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry"

Nicholas Kristof has a beauty on the issue of the virulent anti-Muslim hysteria in the US, and writes way more powerfully than I ever could:

I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.

But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.

I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.

I too.

The perils of Pakistan

Decades ago, when I was young, one of the first "English films"--movies in the English language, American or British--I watched was "Perils of Pauline."

No, I am not that old!  It just so happened that I lived in a small town in India, which, at that time had lots of restrictions on import of anything foreign. So, the English language movies we watched were often ten or more years old.

Just as Pauline in the movie encounters one peril after another, well, so does Pakistan. Right from when the movie began with independence in 1947. War with India. Military takeover. War with India. More military. War with India. Even more military. Hanging of a former prime minister. Almost war with India. Post 9/11 and the Taliban.  Gruesome assassination of a former prime minister, who was the daughter of the former prime minister who was hanged.

As if such perils were not enough, earthquakes and now the catastrophic floods.

In case Pakistanis thought that they could turn to their beloved game of cricket to escape from everything, well, some of their leading players were caught in a match-fixing scandal.

The latest?

Imran Farooq, one of the co-founders of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), was found by neighbours stabbed and badly beaten outside flats near his home in Edgware, north-west London, yesterday afternoon. Witnesses said he was attacked by another Asian man. Paramedics were called but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Farooq, 50, who was married with two young sons, went on the run for seven years from criminal charges in Pakistan at a time when the MQM was engaged in a violent battle for control of Karachi, Pakistan's largest city.

The MQM and Karachi connection is significant. In its initial years, the first "M" in MQM stood for Muhajir--the people who (im)migrated to Pakistan from the "Indian" parts of the Raj.  This is significant more so when we pause to think about the name of the country, Pakistan. After all, unlike Tajikistan which is the land of Tajiks, or Uzbekistan which is the land of the Uzbeks, Pakistan is not the land of the Pakis because there is no ethnic group called the Pakis.

Pakistan was a name put together for political reasons, to represent the peoples within its borders from Punjab, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Indus, and Sindh.  There isn't a place for the muhajirs here, is there?  This second-class treatment laid the foundation for the MQM.
-
Why Karachi?  This was the, ahem, Mecca for the immigrants. Karachi was a vibrant cosmopolitan city where immigrants knew that they could easily fit in.

The killing of the MQM leader, all the way across in London, is, therefore, a significant event.

And even that has become old news: this morning, I scan the news and I find that Pakistan was rocked by a 6.3-Richter scale earthquake, and India and Pakistan have upped the rhetoric over Kashmir.

Any good news at all for the Pauline that Pakistan is?

Joke of the day: Bush :)

Read somewhere the other day:

Q: What do Democrats and USC Trojans have in common?
A: They both blame Bush for all their problems

Muahahaha :)

With USC, it is Reggie Bush, of course. who has also returned his Heisman Trophy.  I suppose Bush doesn't need it anymore now that he has a Super Bowl ring!

The entire Bush chronicles are a nasty reminder about the level of money in college sports.  It is, after all, not the first time, nor will be the last time, for such stories.  What I don't get is how the world of higher education and the public go on pretending that college athletics aren't about money ... Perhaps such a behavior is consistent with everything else: we don't seem to be concerned about the debt, or the war, or the power of corporations, or ....

Maybe it is time to rename the country, the United Apathy of America ... oh well ...

Anyway, back to USC, I hope their sports suck for the next few years. Why? The last time USC football was in the dumps, in the Larry Smith years (which is when I was a grad student there) and after, USC started focusing on academics. Now, USC's academic ranking has picked up like crazy.  USC's academic reputation is now on par with UCLA, and its freshman acceptance is selective--though not anywhere as selective as Harvard or Stanford.

The entering undergraduate student body at USC is the most academically talented in the university’s 130-year history.
Average standardized test scores for the incoming class are in the 96th percentile. More than 85 percent of incoming freshmen were in the top 10 percent of their high school class and around 10 percent of them were valedictorians. The average GPA of the group was 3.7.
USC received 35,794 applications for 2,972 places in the fall 2010 freshman class. With this year’s applicant pool, USC’s admission rate was 24 percent.

I hope this is no plateau, and that the university will continue to enhance its academic standing under the leadership of the new president.

Fight on, Trojans--in the classrooms and in the labs, that is.

Photo of the day: walking on the edge

Caption at the source:

Women farm labourers crossing the overflowing tank at Kothapalli village on the outskirts of Karimnagar town in Andhra Pradesh. Photo: Thakur Ajay Pal Singh

Rally to restore sanity. March to keep fear alive. 10-30-10.

Book your tickets to Washington, DC :)
"Rational people will gather on the National Mall in DC to spread a timeless message -- take it down a notch for America."

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

"To fight Jon Stewart's creeping reasonableness and to restore truthiness, Stephen announces his March to Keep Fear Alive"

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
March to Keep Fear Alive
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

America's #1 problem "isn’t Islamo-fascism". It is debt.

Michael Kinsley puts it so well, as he always does:

The biggest peril Americans now face isn’t Islamo-fascism. It’s our own inability to live within our means. It would be nice to give our country the wisdom and self-discipline to stop running up the credit card. And we should try. But it’s unlikely that we can remake the national character (including our own) in 19 years. What we can do is offer a lecture and a fresh start. We should pass on to the next generation an America that’s free from debt. Instead of ignoring it, or arguing endlessly about whose fault it is and who should pay for it, Boomers as an age cohort should just grab the check and say, “This one’s on us.”

The "we" in this excerpt? The boomers.

Kinsley then threads the needle:

We may legitimately disagree about the timing of any Great Fiscal Clean-Up: do we need a second or third jolt of stimulus first to nail shut the coffin of the Great Recession, adding a trillion or more in IOUs to the pile before turning to the task of reducing the pile? Maybe so. But money well spent is still money spent. The Great Recession may have been a legitimate reason for putting off the day of reckoning—just as a cold may be a good reason to put off a necessary heart operation—but the cold doesn’t cure your heart problem or eliminate the need for the operation.

Not convinced?  Here are some hard data that Kinsley then provides:

pick a document at random from the pile. Here’s one: the latest annual “Long-Term Budget Outlook” of the Congressional Budget Office, published in June. The future is especially hard to predict at this moment, because current law includes several things that are unlikely to happen, such as the expiration of the George W. Bush tax cuts, and major unspecified cuts in defense and other spending programs. But making reasonable assumptions about these matters, the CBO projects that the national debt—nearly 62 percent of GDP—will rise to 87 percent of GDP by 2020 (a decade away), 109 percent (its previous peak, during World War II) by 2025, and 185 percent by 2035. “After that, the growing imbalance between revenues and noninterest spending, combined with spiraling interest payments, would swiftly push debt to unsustainable levels.”

Of course, I am with Kinsley all the way here. My blogging track-record also shows that I have forever been worrying about the rapidly growing debt.  It is simply bizarre that everybody talks about it, but nobody wants to do anything.  Nothing is done because reducing debt will require honest discussions about where government expenditures ought to be chopped off, and for every expenditure there is an equally strong lobby to retain that particular expenditure and cut somewhere else.

As the Economist notes:

To get spending down to the level we're taxed at, we'd have to cut back to persistent levels of federal spending we haven't seen in 50 years. Average federal spending in the 1960s was 18.6% of GDP. In the 1970s it was 20.1% of GDP. In the 1980s it was 22.2% of GDP. In the 1990s it was 20.7% of GDP. In the 2000s it was 20.0% of GDP. In the 1950s, federal spending was 17.6% of GDP, but in the 1950s, there was no Medicare or Medicaid.
And this is all the data can tell us. The data can't tell us whether we want to go back to the levels of federal spending we had in the 1950s. That's a question of value that voters have to decide.

The scarier aspect is that this is not the only story. Again, as I have blogged referring to a number of commentators, there is another issue as well--the budgetary crises at local and state governments. The only good news here is that these entities cannot print money as the federal government can!

Maybe the Onion was on the right track after all, in terms of how to solve this problem :)

U.S. Government Wipes Out National Debt

Why we don't work sometimes!

Freddie Mercury movie soon. Queen rocks!

In an earlier post, I commented that a movie based on Freddie Mercury's life will be fantastic--not only because of the music by Queen, but also because of the so many fascinating contextual backdrops of his life.

Apparently it is the beginning to the end that waiting game.  BBC reports that a team has been assembled to start filming next year:

Ali G and Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen is to play Freddie Mercury in a film about Queen, the rock band's guitarist Brian May has confirmed to the BBC. ...
Frost/Nixon scribe Peter Morgan is writing the screenplay, he added.
The film, which will focus on the period leading up to Live Aid in 1985, will begin shooting next year.

Cool.

Thank the Constitution!

Today it Constitution Day--to recognize the ratification of the US Constitution, and those who have become US citizens.  As a naturalized citizen, I doubly appreciate this day.  A wonderful home this country has been, with all its warts, to quote Shakespeare, "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare      As any she belied with false compare."

To mark the occasion, here is a repeat of an earlier post:

Aware that I would be without internet access during my stay in the southern highlands of Tanzania, I took with me the book that I have always wanted to read but kept postponing—The Federalist Papers.

The Federalist Papers is a collection of essays that analyze, defend and, in a way, sell, the American Constitution.  The essays were intended to be along those lines because the principal author, Alexander Hamilton, was deeply worried that the Constitution might not get the backing of enough votes, which would have then brought the revolutionary democratic experiment to a premature end. 

So, in fall1787, soon after the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Hamilton, with considerable contributions from James Madison and John Jay, authored a series of essays advocating the ratification of the Constitution.  Looking at it from 2010, when we continue to operate with that original constitution and with only 27 amendments to it over the more than 200 years since, it does sound strange that Hamilton was so concerned.  But, I suppose this is yet another evidence of the thorough job the founders did and left no stone unturned.

Perhaps it was meant to be that I delayed reading this classic treatise all these years until I was in Tanzania.  For one, it meant reading it under conditions that were not far removed from Hamilton’s times.  After sunset, electricity was available at the Tanzanian village only through a local generator, and that too for a restricted three hours between 7 until 10.  Therefore, most of the reading that I did was while sitting up inside a mosquito net and with a LED headlamp on—instead of candles or oil lamps that Hamilton might have used after sundown.

From a political perspective, of course, Tanzania has been one of the fortunate countries in Africa with a relatively high degree of stability.  In contrast, half the sub-Saharan African countries are authoritarian regimes, according to The Economist magazine’s report on democracy, which classifies countries into full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes.  Thus, reading this classic while in Africa, in a continent where democratic governance cannot be taken for granted even in the year 2010, was quite a reminder of how much the 18^th century thinking of the framers of the Constitution continues to be way ahead of a great part of the contemporary world. 

Yet, as much as they were blazing a new political trail, the authors of the Federalist Papers were no dreamy idealists.  For instance, Madison notes that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” He then masterfully reminds us that government is a reflection of human nature, which then logically underscores the need and structure for checks and balances. Unchecked governments, which seem to be in plenty around the world, certainly do prove that they are no angels.

Lest anybody mistakenly conclude that the Constitution is the perfect model without blemishes and where no ideal was compromised, Hamilton observes in the final—85^th—Federalist paper, “I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man.”  Yes, we need this reminder in the 21^st century America, too, as we continue to renegotiate the social contracts at the federal and state levels in order to correct the old imperfections and to mitigate the new ones we introduce.

The fact that the cogent arguments that are offered in the Federalist Papers are as applicable now as they were back in the 18^th century is more than a testament to the clear vision of the founders and their belief in the virtues of democracy.  I now have that much more of an appreciation of my good fortune in having spent all my life in democratic societies, one-half in America and the other, earlier, half in India. 

Finally, reading the Federalist Papers was highly encouraging for a personal reason—these were published as a series of essays in the newspapers in New York.  In other words, discussing policy issues with fellow citizens through the pages of the newspapers is an American tradition that pre-dates even Washington’s presidency.

Which is why I now have a simple explanation for writing opinion columns—it is an absolutely American thing to do!  Thank you, Alexander Hamilton.

"The end" ... best Scientific American issue ever!

It was such a bloody delight to read the Scientific American ...

This particular issue has some of the big issues of science in all its glory in a language that even I could understand. (editor: ahem, don't you often claim that you were a science/physics nerd?)

My favorite of all?  Actually not one but a few vignettes:
Danny Hillis writes about how we are fully into "the age of digital entanglement," and notes that whether we like the digital dependencies or not--he refers to networks, and not just the gadgets--"our destinies are entangled with one another's and with our technologies."

Edward Felten says we are in a different time period all together--"The era of infinite storage."  He does not refer to the junk that your grandma has stashed away in every nook and cranny, but the possibility that pretty much our entire lives can be videotaped and archived, for instance.  And then when we forget something, a quick digital rewind of the chip and "no longer will you have to struggle to remember the name of the restaurant where you ate three years ago in Cleveland." Ah, excuse me, Cleveland? Couldn't pick a better city?

Christof Koch says we will soon have "An answer to the riddle of consciousness."  I am excited all the more because a few years ago, I had an opportunity to ask the physicist Brian Greene what he thought might be a tough science question for this century. "Consciousness" was his reply. I wonder if within my lifetime it will really be possible to know whether a dog is "aware of itself as a thinking being."

Speaking of lifetime, in a lengthy essay, George Musser discusses the question "Could time end?" incorporating both physics and philosophy. The explanation I liked the best is this: "Time is inherently bidirectional; the arrow we perceive is simply the natural degeneration of matter from order to chaos" ... which implies that once we reach maximum chaos, well, time ends when the arrow reverses for us mortals :)

So, when time reverses, will all country music songs become upbeat and chirpy about getting the boyfriend, the pickup, the dog, ...? muahahaha

Ok, one last favorite from the issue ... this is all about what happens to us after we die. As in the biochemistry. It apparently happens in four main stages. The discussions are just truly gory facts presented as, hey, this is what happens. I am glad that I will never know this experience because (a) I will be dead!, and (b) I will be cremated before all the rot begins :)

So, I lied; I have one more that I liked. This one is an exploration of an (you will soon see the pun) "age old" question: "Why can't we live forever?"  My first thought was why anybody would want to; that is just insane. Anyway, I shall leave you with a cliffhanger: the author writes that "when your death occurs, only a tiny number of your cells will continue this immortal lineage into the future" ... what is that survivor?

Can't wait for all these to unfold. Hopefully, a solar superstorm will not happen anytime soon; if it did, well, our economic activities will come to a standstill, and we will all be on equal footing ...

You still here? What are you waiting for? Go get a copy and start reading!

Video of the day

The young woman in this video grew up to become ... the Republican senatorial candidate from Delaware :) (ht)

Poster of the day :)

How did we ever survive before Sir Timothy Berners-Lee came up with the idea of "http://" and the world wide web!
Such graphics (ht) would be so difficult to share without his creation ...

Can Photoshop help the Mideast peace talks?

Will be funny, it only it weren't true!
Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2

See what the major difference between the two is?
No?
Look again.
Aha, you spotted the difference :)

Al-Ahram showed Mr Mubarak walking on a red carpet ahead of US President Barack Obama as well as the Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian leaders.
The original image, taken at the White House when talks were formally re-launched, shows Mr Obama leading the way and Mr Mubarak trailing behind.

I suppose the airbrush artists from the Soviet Union are alive and well in Egypt!

South Asia's geography of conflict

Robert Kaplan says that "India's interests are, more or less, the same as ours" ... the "ours" referring to the US, of course.  He notes in the report:

While geography matters immensely, it is also true that the decisions taken by individuals affect history even more. Had the British Cabinet made different decisions in the 1940s, prior to the partition of the subcontinent, and had the Soviet Politburo made different decisions in the late 1970s, prior to its invasion of Afghanistan, a modern Indian superstate may have emerged able to better integrate what would have been peaceable northwestern borderlands.

There are a few places where I might slightly disagree with Kaplan, but I have nothing to disagree with the following:

This millennia-old imperial history is something that Indian elites feel deeply about, whether or not they are intimate with all the details. For even as Americans separate Eurasia into smaller and more manageable geographical areas, Indians see the supercontinent holistically, so that both Afghanistan and China are part of one integrated map in which every place affects every place else. The United States should think likewise.

Castro admits defeat? Awesome!

When I was a young fellow (editor: you were young?) I was a big time admirer of Castro.  Those were the days when I thought everything was wonderful about the Soviet Union, too.

In many ways, like in this situation, I guess I do practice Keynes' idea to change one's opinion if the facts presented change.

Looks like Castro, too, is changing his idea; I almost fell of the chair when I read that he said:

We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world in which people can live without working

and:

The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore

 Viva revolucion :)

The wandering Indians ...

Ever since a few ancestors wandered out of Africa, we humans have always been peripatetic.  However, new people coming into an established settlement has not always been welcomed with open arms.  We here in America have had our own complicated relations with newcomers, and the contemporary anti-Muslim rhetoric is yet another variation of this theme.

The Romas in Europe know these, and more, all too well.  After all, they are viewed with suspicion and hate even now, though they have been on the continent for centuries.

Having grown up in a country with a very long and rich history means that I am connected to the Roma, who, too, originated from India.  About a thousand years ago, the Roma started moving west, perhaps in response to the Muslim invasions from Central Asia.  Soon, they were past Turkey and into Eastern Europe.

By then, Europe was already beginning to feel the effects of the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire, and the darker-skinned Roma were not  welcomed.  The Roma maintained their ways of life, as minorities typically do, and their intra-group interactions vastly exceeded those with other groups, which then further compounded the relationship. 

The Nazis and the Communists were not good for the Roma either. It is estimated that the Nazis killed a fifth of the Roma population at that time.  The Nazis are long gone, and so is the Communist Bloc, but the status of the Roma has not improved to an equal standing with the rest.   Evidence include the recent developments in France, which is expelling Romas back to Romania, even though the European Union allows unrestricted movement for citizens of member countries.

Against such a backdrop is another Indian connection to the European Roma. The Czech Republic has a significant Roma population, and the Czech-Roma relations have always been strained.  One of the leading personalities working to bridge this divide is Srikumar Vishwanathan—my close friend from my school days in the small town of Neyveli in India.

Kumar—as he is known now—and I were crazy about physics as high-schoolers, and I moved on to study electrical engineering while he went to the Soviet Union to study theoretical physics. 

Even before he completed his studies, the Soviet system started crumbling and his girl friend, Ladka, decided to head back to her home country—Czechoslovakia.

Kumar followed her and was an active and enthusiastic participant in the Velvet Revolution that ousted the Communists from power.  He gained citizenship in the new Czech Republic and, thanks to his training in physics, became a high school teacher in a town called Olomouc. 

One evening, when he was returning home, a group of young Czechs beat the pulp out of Kumar because they thought he was one of the Roma.  This was a transformational moment for Kumar, who soon ditched his teaching job and started his own initiative to not only help the Roma, but also normalize the Czech-Roma relations.

A decade ago, when we spent a couple of days with Kumar, Ladka and their infant son,  Kumar had just been honored by the Czech government as one of the leading lights in the country. 

Since then, Kumar has received a lot more recognition for his work—including from our own government.  In 2005, the US Embassy in Prague awarded Kumar the Alice Garrigue Masaryk Award, which was established “to recognize persons in the Czech Republic who have made an exceptional contribution to the advancement of human rights in the country through courageous promotion of social justice and defense of democratic liberties and an open civil society.”  A year later, Kumar was here in America, to experience the country and its peoples as a guest of the State Department. 

A month ago, while highlighting the Roma’s plight, a CNN report featured Kumar and his work.  It is surreal that an Indian immigrant is a well-recognized social activist in the Czech Republic. But then, it is equally a story of the wandering Indians—this time a newcomer helping out the descendants of the old ones who left India a millennium ago.  I am delighted that we still have in us the wandering trait of our African ancestors, even if means running into the metaphorical, and sometimes literal, gunfire.

Squeeze and win the battle of the bulge :)

The video below is from America's Finest News Source:

Today Now!: How To Thrust Your Fat Into A More Appealing Shape

In Praise of Fast Food ... well, not "fast food" itself ...

I like cooking. I do not have an extensive repertoire, but I do all right. The more I cook, the less I find foods at restaurants tasty anymore--particularly for the price they charge for the quality they offer. 

But, and despite this, I don't diss the extensive practice of eating food that somebody else has prepared: fast food in many variations. Because, as I tell my students when we discuss geographic patterns in agriculture and food, the "old ways" were also the times when women had pretty much no choice but to be cooks, or most men had no choice but to be farmers.

The story of economic progress has been one of walking away from such limited choices into exercising freedom in terms of what we want to do.

It is quite possible that my grandmother hand-made a lot more dishes and snacks than my mother did--and she made some wonderful sweets that I always, always, looked forward to.  And, yes, my sister makes way fewer eats than what my mother did.

But, the differences in terms of what my sister has done/does versus the previous generations of women, include everything from, say, my sister having a masters degree in the sciences ...

The productivity difference is also enormous. For instance, the electric rice grinder that mom bought about thirty years ago, which she still uses, gained her the two hours that she would have otherwise had to spend at the "aattukkal". (The large version of the mortar/pestle in the photo here.)  Now, both mom and sister have yet another choice--they can directly purchase from the grocery store the machine-mass-produced ready to cook ground mix!  It is their choice now, if they want to do anything the "old way" ... to be able to exercise that choice is freedom.

Freedom in our daily lives matter a lot.  These are not freedoms that a constitution can guarantee, but can only come from economic progress.  Thus, when I feel like having vadas while visiting India, mom does not have to slave in the hot kitchen and fry those delicious vadas and come out of the kitchen drenched in sweat--a two minute walk takes me to the restaurant where I can pick up any number of vadas I want.

So, why such thoughts?
It is not only because I think of food a lot :)

I have started thinking about the kind of topics that I would like to discuss with students, or at least keep them in my mental back-pocket, which I can then appropriately use in discussions. And I ran into this article (ht), which is a wonderful essay.  Even though to excerpt from that is a crime--it really needs to be read from the start to the end--well, here are the concluding observations:

If we do not understand that most people had no choice but to devote their lives to growing and cooking food, we are incapable of comprehending that modern food allows us unparalleled choices not just of diet but of what to do with our lives. If we urge the Mexican to stay at her metate, the farmer to stay at his olive press, the housewife to stay at her stove, all so that we may eat handmade tortillas, traditionally pressed olive oil, and home-cooked meals, we are assuming the mantle of the aristocrats of old.

If we fail to understand how scant and monotonous most traditional diets were, we can misunderstand the “ethnic foods” we encounter in cookbooks, at restaurants, or on our travels. We can represent the peoples of the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, India, or Mexico as pawns at the mercy of multi­national corporations bent on selling trashy modern products—failing to appreciate that, like us, they enjoy a choice of goods in the market. A Mexican friend, suffering from one too many foreign visitors who chided her because she offered Italian food, complained, “Why can’t we eat spaghetti, too?”

If we assume that good food maps neatly onto old or slow or homemade food, we miss the fact that lots of industrial foods are better. Certainly no one with a grindstone will ever produce chocolate as suave as that produced by conching in a machine for 72 hours. And let us not forget that the current popularity of Italian food owes much to two convenience foods that even purists love, factory pasta and canned tomatoes. Far from fleeing them, we should be clamoring for more high-quality industrial foods.

If we romanticize the past, we may miss the fact that it is the modern, global, industrial economy (not the local resources of the wintry country around New York, Boston, or Chicago) that allows us to savor traditional, fresh, and natural foods. Fresh and natural loom so large because we can take for granted the processed staples—salt, flour, sugar, chocolate, oils, coffee, tea—produced by food corporations.

Culinary Luddites are right, though, about two important things: We need to know how to prepare good food, and we need a culinary ethos. As far as good food goes, they’ve done us all a service by teaching us how to use the bounty delivered to us by (ironically) the global economy. Their ethos, though, is another matter. Were we able to turn back the clock, as they urge, most of us would be toiling all day in the fields or the kitchen; many of us would be starving.

Nostalgia is not what we need. What we need is an ethos that comes to terms with contemporary, industrialized food, not one that dismisses it; an ethos that opens choices for everyone, not one that closes them for many so that a few may enjoy their labor; and an ethos that does not prejudge, but decides case by case when natural is preferable to processed, fresh to preserved, old to new, slow to fast, artisanal to industrial. Such an ethos, and not a timorous Luddism, is what will impel us to create the matchless modern cuisines appropriate to our time.

Yes!
I am already pumped up for my classes; I wonder if my students are ready as well :)

Fahrenheit 451

This picture sums up all my earlier words!

Has India lost it on Kashmir? The intifada rages on ...

Looks like even the Israel-Palestine issue might be settled before peace returns to Kashmir.

If I were an athlete preparing to compete in the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, I would rather stay home, consistent with the advice from some of the countries.  With Kashmir exploding, Maoists threatening the inland, and Islamic militants always eager to blow themselves up, it might just about be safer to stay home. (editor: don't forget the threat of Dengue Fever too)

Kashmir is an unresolved issue all the way from 1947, and now we have youth who have known nothing but protests and massive Indian military and paramilitary presence.

Such a tense situation means, and to no real surprise, that the news of Quran burning in America became another rallying cry in Kashmir.  And, as protesters often do throughout the world, the American flag and an effigy of the President were burnt.  Like Obama or the American government had anything to do with the nutcase pastor of a flock of forty.

According to the BBC:

In Monday's protests, thousands of people defied curfews and took to the streets, chanting anti-India and anti-US slogans and burning effigies of US President Barack Obama, our correspondent says.

An angry mob set fire to several government buildings and a Protestant-run school, as well as attacking a police station, he adds.
Police fired live ammunition to break up the demonstrations, and confirmed that 18 civilians had been killed.
Several of the deaths were reported to have occurred in Budgam district, with others reported in the village of Tangmarg, where the school was burned.
One of those killed was a student aged 12 or 13, our correspondent says.

 One might wonder why the Protestant-run school had to be burnt ... But, a mob does what a mob does.

As eager beaver teenagers, my friends and I debated about Kashmir and my views haven't changed much: I don't understand why a territory and its peoples ought to be subjugated under military force if they don't want to be in the union. But, even then I was in the minority--the rest couldn't let go of Kashmir.

Perhaps India's approach to the Kashmir situation would have been different if Jawaharlal Nehru had been from, say, Bihar or Andhra, as opposed to hailing from Kashmir?  (Yes, Nehru was born in Allahabad, but was one of the Kashmiri Pandit families.)

Well, one can't re-write history. But, at this moment, it certainly looks like the Indian government and politics have completely lost any control of how the rest of the Kashmir story will be written. Let us hope that a lot more lives will not be lost, and not a lot more property will be damaged.

Video/Song of the day: Offenbach's Barcarolle

Years ago, when I was just about getting to know what operas were all about (editor: ahem, so, you think that now you know something about operas?) I think Offenbach's "The tales of Hoffman"  and Barcarolle, in particular, was perhaps the first ever piece I listened to.  Even if my memory is clouded, and even if Barcarolle was not my first, well, it does not diminish my appreciation for this wonderful music.
The video clip here is from Andre Rieu's, whose concerts are always theatrical and entertaining, which probably the purists don't care for much .... I did go watch Rieu and his group perform, when they came to Portland a year ago; there were not many people younger than me among the audience :)

Kristof is on target on "Is this America?"

Usually, Nicholas Kristof's columns just depress me because of his "in your face" reports on godawful things around the world. So much so that whenever I see the word "fistula" I can only think of Kristof!

His latest column, however, is about the American scene. About the obscene and loud blatantly anti-Muslim rhetoric.  Kristof opens with a reference to a blog post in The New Rpublic:

Written by Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor in chief, it asserted: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.”
Mr. Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
Thus a prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms. Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews? How do America’s nearly seven million American Muslims feel when their faith is denounced as barbaric?

I read that last night, but blogged only about the other op-ed I read there--because I was that pissed with Friedman's column!

In a way, it proved to be for the better, because there is at least one leading commentator who has weighed in as well--James Fallows notes in his blog that:

I can't at the moment think of another mainstream publication whose editor-in-chief has expressed similar sentiments -- whether about Muslims or blacks or Jews or women or any other class -- and not had to apologize or step down. Or a national political figure: compare this with Trent Lott's objectively milder statement about Strom Thurmond, which cost him his job in the Senate leadership. Peretz can of course say whatever he wants. It's a free country, and he is entitled to the "privileges" of the First Amendment, much as I might think he is abusing them here. But Nicholas Kristof has set an example of people stepping up to say: That's him, not us. This representative of "us" is entitled to say what he chooses, but we think he's wrong, and on this he does not speak for us. 

I am glad that Kristof and Fallows are using their megaphones well, particularly on this issue of a virulent anti-Muslim sentiment ... As Kristof writes, "sweeping denunciations of any religious group constitute dangerous bigotry."  

I was once a faithful reader of TNR--but that was back when Michael Kinsley was there.  To some extent, I guess I have been following Kinsley a lot, even without realizing it!  Oh well ... I am not a TNR subscriber anyway.  And this hateful blog post by its editor, and its warmongering articles mean that I might not even care to scan through the magazine in the library.

Photo of the day: A wandering rhino

Not to be confused with RINO :)

The source has this caption: "WRONG JUNGLE: A one-horned Rhino takes refuge near high-voltage electric posts inside the flooded Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary in Morigaon district of Assam. Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar"

BTW, the reason for this rhino movement: heavy rains in India's northeast, which includes the Kaziranga National Park.  The wild Brahmaputra River becomes even wilder. An interesting name for a river, in the sense that while normally in India the rivers mostly (always?) have female names, this one is masculine: "putra" means son.

How colleges flush money down the athletic toilet!

Not a topic new to this blog. 

This time, let me quote from this LA Times piece by the hottest contemporary critics of higher education (and apparently not my university's favorites!) Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus:

If you look at how that added revenue is being spent, it's hard to argue that students are getting a lot of extra value for all that extra money. Why? Colleges aren't spending their extra revenues, which we calculate to be about $40 billion a year nationally over 1980 revenues, in ways that most benefit students.

One thing colleges are spending more on is athletic teams, which have become a more pronounced — and costly — presence on campuses everywhere. Even volleyball teams travel extensively these days, with paid coaches and customized uniforms. Currently, 629 schools have football teams — 132 more than in 1980. And all but 14 of them lose money, including some with national names. It's true that alumni donations sometimes increase during winning seasons, but most of those gifts go specifically to athletics or other designated uses, not toward general educational programs.

On a percentage basis, I suspect that athletics at smaller schools require a larger percentage of subsidy from general funds than larger schools do; yes, I am basing this on our own experience.

The average football squad has gone from 82 to 102 players, due to sub-specialties required by esoteric coaching strategies. The number of women's sports teams has also risen sharply. Since 1980, for example, the number of women's soccer programs has soared from 80 to 956. And teams cost money — often lots of it. Varsity golf at Duke, open to both genders, costs an estimated $20,405 per player per year. Because there are no revenues for most sports, the deficits often have to be covered by tuition bills.

When higher education is no longer about the education part, and is so focused on entertainment, is it any wonder then that America seems to be falling behind?  These costly investments are only as good as ... well, like that old Iceland adage of peeing on yourself when out in the cold: feels nice and warm for a second, but in the end you are worse off than before!

So, what is the bottom line according to Hacker and Dreifus?

A whole generation of young Americans is being shortchanged, largely by adults who have carved out good careers in places we call colleges.

Or, as I tell my students sometimes: "you are screwed"