A tragic joke called Afghanistan

Why does god hate Haiti?

Religious believers tend to assume that all atheists are alike.  I suppose only atheists know that we are all very different in our socioeconomic and political outlooks.  For instance, the most visible face among atheists, Christopher Hitchens, might not have a whole army of atheists ready to take up the arms along his side, whether in Iraq or in Iran.  Equally interesting an intellectual is Heather Mac Donald who is at an interesting intersection of atheist outlook and libertarian-Republican politics.  She writes, in the context of Haiti and the latest of its problems, cholera:

Haitian-Americans in a Catholic parish in Queens, NY, have been ecstatically praying since an earthquake wiped out an estimated quarter-million of their island countrymen 10 months ago, following which Hurricane Tomas unleashed cholera in the survivors’ tent camps:

Certain women in [the] parish say so many Hail Mary’s on their own that [the pastor] no longer assigns them the prayers as penance for sins . . . In October, people packed into SS. Joachim and Anne, chanting and dancing and holding sick relatives’ pictures heavenward for healing.

Good luck with that.
(The New York Times displays the usual nauseating agnosticism towards the religious delusions of the left’s favored victim groups:

On a Saturday night in the basement of [the] mostly Haitian church in Queens, in a bare white room vibrating with hymns and exclamations, a young woman may find herself channeling the Holy Spirit to reveal news from Haiti.

Oh, really?  Yet let a Tea Partyer question the efficacy of deficit spending, and the Times will be certain at the very least to offer a contrary view.)
On this Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful for the human ingenuity that tries to foil such tragic Acts of God as the Haitian earthquake through heroic feats of engineering, and when such preventive efforts fail, that tries to save as many surviving victims through medical science.   I am grateful that human reason has conquered so much of the squalor and suffering that nature unleashes upon the world.  I hope that Haiti’s suffering comes to an end through tolerance, honesty, enterprise, and discipline.   
Happy Thanksgiving to all.

 Yes, here is to hoping that Haiti's sufferings will soon end

Image of the day: MIddle East peace

The success that Gandhi had in India

The real magic of the Mahatma was not a trick of popular charisma, but in fact a deft ability to recruit, manage, and inspire a team of talented individuals who worked tirelessly in his service. Gandhi himself was one of the few people to recognize how this phenomenon worked. “With each day I realize more and more that my mahatmaship, which is a mere adornment, depends on others. I have shone with the glory borrowed from my innumerable co-workers,” he wrote in 1928 in Navajivan.
Recognizing this fact does not diminish the rare and valuable qualities Gandhi himself possessed. Rather, it acknowledges that great work is the product of collaborative processes, and that many hands working together toward a common purpose can achieve monumental results. In Gandhi’s case, it was the relationship between a visionary leader and the team supporting him—and their collective use of the right resources, such as the books in Mahadev Desai’s library—that paved the way for extraordinary and lasting accomplishments.

An excerpt from a wonderful essay, after reading which I am all the more blown away with how effortlessly Gandhi was able to get so many talented, eager, and committed people to sign on to his ideas.  One heck of a personality he must have had.  Gandhi died barely 60 years ago, but the events of his life time now seem quite a few centuries old.  At the speeds at which we seem to move now, it is all the more real when I think about Einstein's comment that future generations will find it impossible to believe that such a real life person in flesh and blood actually existed on this planet.

"First World" India v. "Third World" India

During the last presidential primaries, Senator John Edwards, who has since disappeared from the political radars, constantly referred to “two Americas”—one America that struggles to get by and doesn’t have political clout, and another that has plenty of everything, including the ability to shape government policies.  While this duality is subject to debate, such a schism is certainly visible all the way across the planet—the “First World” India of commerce, call centers and high technology, versus the poor and backward millions of “Third World” India.

After being ignored by successive American governments all through the decades of the Cold War, India now gets considerable attention.  We have now had three successive, and successful, presidential visits by Clinton, Bush, and Obama.  Of course, the economic and geopolitical angles are what interest the US, and it is this “First World” India that we are increasingly familiar with.  It is also thanks to such a familiarity that NBC now features a sitcom, Outsourced, whose context is India and its call centers. 

And when the media reports about the world’s first billion dollar house, which will be home to the family of India’s richest individual, Mukesh Ambani, we are certainly impressed, and perhaps made a little insecure too, by the rapidly growing prosperity in a country that for years did not rank that much higher above Ethiopia in our mental impressions of poverty on the planet.

However, poverty has not really gone away; it is, unfortunately, alive and well in the “Third World” India.

While it is true that rapid economic growth has lifted quite a few million Indians from poverty, the poor are by no means any insignificant minority.  A multidimensional poverty index used by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) showed that the 421 million living in acute poverty in eight Indian states exceed in sheer numbers the 410 million in the 26 poorest African countries combined. 

A staggering number of poor, which does not show up in our calculated economic and geopolitical interests in India!  Even those skeptical about the accuracy of the UNDP estimates will not find it difficult to imagine that number of poor in India will be in hundreds of millions. 

Over the years, this parallel existence of an India that is poor has also resulted in a growing radical and violent movement, who are referred to as Maoists.  Yes, the Mao as in China’s Mao Zedong, who has been pushed aside ever since Deng Xiaoping opened up the Chinese economy in 1979 and declared that “to be rich is glorious.”

It would not be a surprise, therefore, that India’s Maoists are active in the same states that are home to the vast numbers of poor tallied up in the UNDP study of poverty.  Decades ago, in a much poorer India, Maoist “rebels” were present in other states, too.  During my childhood, the adults in the family often spoke in hushed tones about a much older cousin of mine who had suddenly dropped out of college and gone “underground.”  As a kid who only knew the literal meaning of the word, I didn’t understand then that “underground” meant that he had joined the radical, and often violent, Communist groups.

But now, such groups are almost nonexistent in the southern parts of India that I visit—these states boast of homegrown multinational computer and automobile corporations.  Maoists have, hence, long exited these regions, which have experienced economic growth and prosperity, and where governments offer considerable support for the economically and socially disadvantaged.  It is also not a mere coincidence that this cousin later on completed his college education, had a successful banking career, and is now a retired grandfather!

Thanks for ... ?

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Music video for a snowy/icy day

Remembrance of things past

All the way from 1979!  A couple of years into my teenage years.  I suppose one needs to understand the contexts for why I still remember this song so much, and enjoy it even now :)



I do not recall watching this movie.  I wonder why. But then I don't recall watching very many movies anyway, other than the ones at the outdoor club ... boy, am I getting old, if I am recalling events from 31 years ago!

The crazy North Korean government!

This past Veterans Day, one of the students, "D," talked to the class about his service in the military, and focused on his duty in the Korean DMZ.  "D" was a 18-year old soldier selected to serve in the inner rings of the DMZ and was, thus, witness to a crazy series of incidents--the "axe murder incident"--that left his captain and lieutenant dead.  "D" said that for quite a few days they were on full alert, prepared for an all out war, all over again.

But, and thankfully, that war didn't break out.

According to "D", and the few readings that I did later, this bizarre North Korean attack was to consolidate the ascent of Kim Jong-il.   Now, it is Kim Jong-il's time to hand over the controls to his anointed successor--his son, Kim Jong-un  The timing of this latest bizarre attack can be at least partially attributed to this succession.

The NY Times:

Analysts say the regime may be trying to ensure that the Kim family dynasty continues for a third generation by winning the loyalty of the powerful military with shows of force.

Time:

Analysts in Seoul said the thread plausibly linking the nuclear revelations and Tuesday's attack in the West Sea is the leadership succession now under way in Pyongyang. Both underscore what has been a central political component of the Kim Jong Il regime, the doctrine of "military first" politics. In Kim's words, it means "placing top priority on military affairs" and turning the North Korean army into a "pillar of the revolution." Just six weeks ago, the regime in Pyongyang effectively affirmed that Kim's son Kim Jong Un would succeed his father as the next ruler of North Korea. That the North continues to upgrade its ability to make nuclear weapons — the regime already has between 8 and 12 bombs, according to U.S. intelligence — while lashing out militarily during a high-profile visit to the neighborhood by Obama's special envoy shows one thing: when young Kim takes over, nothing much in the North will change.
"Kim Jong Un," says Cheong Seong-Chang, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, a Seoul think tank, "is currently under the influence of more hawkish generals. The son's power base is derived from the military, and the power of military is greater than ever."

As David Letterman often jokes, it is not Kim Jong-il, but "Menta Ly Ill"

Woody Allen predicted the TSA scan porn ... kinda :)

In providing this hilarious Woody Allen video clip (from Bananas), Reason notes that all along we had the "solution to the problems posed by the underwear bomber" :)

America's Finest News Source will be on TV :)

Watching this video at the Onion, I wasn't sure if this, too, was a satire:

Onion News Network - Coming To IFC January 21

But then, there are news items, such as this one:

IFC plans to premiere Onion News Network and another new comedy series Portlandia back-to-back on Friday, Jan. 21. The network, part of Cablevision's Rainbow Media program unit, said Friday that the shows will debut that day in the 10pm and 10:30pm time slots, respectively. IFC previously also debuted The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret on Friday night, has been the go-to night for its comedy premieres under its "Always On. Slightly Off" slogan.

News, satire, comedy, politics, internet, television all merging.  Maybe this is the convergence that led AOL and Time Warner to merge; too bad they couldn't make money of it .... muahahaha

It does not come easily

कष्टं कर्मेति दुर्मेधाः कर्तव्याद्विनिवर्तते ।
न साहसमनारभ्य श्रेयः समुपलभ्यते ॥

- हरिहर सुभाषित

Idiots give up on a task assuming it would be tough to complete it. They do not understand that fame/success can come only when you start tasks (and complete it).

- Harihara Subhashita

Source

Poem for a cold November night!

The temperature has taken a dive in this part of the world.  Way below normal.
I was scanning for poems that would tell the story of a cold night in November, when we expect the first frost and snow.  I lucked out; here it is:

November Night
by Adelaide Crapsey
Listen. . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

It is great that even reading poems have become so easy thanks to the internet.

Thanksgiving Awards :)

From Saturday Night Live

Joke of the day: Psycho

It is amazing that fifty years hasn't made Psycho any less stellar; the movie seems that much more better with every passing year.  I so wish they hadn't tried that pathetic remake, which I refused to watch anyway.

So, there I was funnily analyzing what triggered the transformation of a young Norman Bates into a psychopath.  And here it is

Little Norman was born into well to do family, whose friends were rich enough to have butlers at home.

The family would often visit with their friends over the weekends.  And it was the butlers who, without their knowing, made a killer out of the playful and friendly Norman.

Why?

Because, the butlers always announced the arrival of the family as:

Mister Bates, his wife Missus Bates, and their son Master Bates

Muahahahaha
Though, I am sure that I am not the first one to have thought about this.  But, hey, so what if I am late to the party!

The forgotten radical founder: Thomas Paine

How important was Thomas Paine and his Common Sense to the American Revolution and the founding of these United States of America?  Here is Brendan O'Neill, reporting from New York:

Prior to the publication of Paine’s Common Sense in America in January 1776, only around a third of the delegates to the Continental Congress, the political body of the American Revolution, supported separation from Britain. The rest wanted only for the ‘mother country’ to grant its American subjects more rights and to ease the tax burdens. As late as 1775, the year before Common Sense was published, George Washington was still toasting George III after dinners and Thomas Jefferson said: ‘There is not in the British Empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do.’
Paine changed all that. This Englishman, not yet 40 and of no significant social standing, argued in Common Sense for the immediate and complete separation of America from Britain. ‘Even the distance at which the Almighty hath placed England and America is a strong and natural proof that the authority of one over the other was never the design of heaven.’ Ridiculing Britain’s hereditary principle and imperfect democracy, Paine urged Americans to ‘make a true revolution of their various struggles’ (3), and to create a single nation state with a government constituted for ‘respublica... or the public good’, in which there should be a Bill of Rights and ‘above all things, the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience’ (4).
Americans read it in their thousands. A New Yorker wrote to his local newspaper: ‘This animated piece dispels, with irresistible energy, the prejudice of the mind against the doctrine of independence, and pours in upon it such an inundation of light and truth as will produce an instantaneous and marvellous change in the temper, in the views and feelings of an American.’ Within months, Jefferson made his Declaration of Independence, and Paine joined Washington’s armies against Britain as a kind of intellectual soldier, writing a 13-volume series called The American Crisis in the bloody era of 1776 and 1777. If Common Sense helped to give rise to the desire for independence, The American Crisis sustained it in the face-off with the ‘mother country’. ‘These are the times that try men’s souls’, wrote Paine (as quoted by Obama in his inauguration address in 2009).
Not content with having created an intellectual ‘land-flood that sweeps all before it’ in America, as one of his readers put it, Paine later went to France and stirred things up there too. His defence of the French Revolution, The Rights of Man, published in 1791 (part one) and 1792 (part two), was burnt by conservatives in Britain, and devoured by radicals in France. Paine later co-authored the French revolutionaries’ Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and was elected to the French National Convention (where he had to have his speeches read out by other people, on account of the fact that he didn’t speak French).

How easily we forget, eh ...

A floating power plant?

A most intriguing news report I read today:

The world's largest ship-based power plant has arrived off the Pakistani coast to try to mitigate the country's chronic electricity shortages, a company official said on November 19.

The new supply still won't come close to ending electricity shortages that plague Pakistan, increasing widespread public frustration with the U.S.-allied government as it struggles to contain the Taliban insurgency.

The ship, which burns furnace oil, will generate about 230 megawatts for the national power grid, said Asad Mahmood, a spokesman for the vessel's Turkish owner Karkey Karadeniz Electrik. The owner has a five-year contract with the Pakistani national power company.

Now anchored off the southern port city Karachi, the Kaya Bey will begin feeding into the national grid within four weeks after a dedication ceremony on November 21, Mr. Mahmood said.

The ship's contribution will only make a dent in the overall power crisis. Pakistan's energy demands outstrip supply by an estimated 5,000 MW, thanks to a lack of investment, soaring usage and a crumbling electricity generation infrastructure that heavily relies on hydropower. 

What a story at so many levels ... I had no idea that there could be such ship-based power generation plants!  and then issues such as

the state of infrastructure in Pakistan
the effects of internal unrest and floods
the growing energy needs in the developing countries
technological solutions--as in a ship-based power generation!

I was curious about this ship-based power generation.  It just sounds way too surreal.  To be able to generate 230 MW?  Turns out that this is old news, and there are even proposals like:

Scientists at Cambridge University have outlined a 20-year master plan for the “global rebirth” of nuclear energy.
The two-stage plan involves giant, ship-borne power plants moored next to cities

Something new everyday, eh!  As Johnny Carson used to say, "I did not know that" :)