Cartoons in the Indian Parliament :(

Thanks to Ramesh, who included the link to the cartoon and the news item, while commenting on this blog post of mine.

The cartoon is from 1949, and it creates a political controversy now.  Sixty-three years later!  Because, this cartoon, which is a commentary on the slow pace of the work on a constitution for the newly independent India, was included in a high school textbook!

The cartoonist, K. Shankar Pillai, was a much admired and respected commentator.  In the photo albums at my parents' home, there is a photo of my father reading Shankar's Weekly.  A neat self-portrait--he had set in the auto-mode and taken that snap .... even as a kid, I, therefore, knew about Shankar's Weekly even though I never read any myself--I was way too late for that party :(

It is, therefore, very disappointing to read the news item; as the paper points out, Shankar Pillai was highly recognized and admired for his work ... no unqualified crankpot he was ...

Every day, I read things like this and wonder what the world has come to, and then I begin to worry that perhaps I am getting old at a rather young age, ready to take over the vacancy that Andy Rooney created with his departure from this world!

Oh well, the only good thing is this: the US is not the only country with crazies.  Misery, as they say, loves company :)

Kali Ma, Beer De, er, Shakti De :)

From an email, yes, an email I received:

Portland (Oregon) based Burnside Brewing Company, which earlier announced to release its “Kali-Ma” beer on May 15; has apologized, postponed the release and would rename it.

In an announcement published on their Facebook page today, the Company wrote: In response to pleas from the Hindu community we have decided to postpone the limited release of "Kali-ma" our imperial wheat ale flavored with Indian spices and Scotch-Bonnet peppers. It is NEVER our intention at Burnside to offend or alienate any race, creed, religion or sexual orientation. The inspiration for the beer label simply came from a favorite childhood movie in the "Indiana Jones" series and we were unaware that it could be offensive to anyone. We are currently scrambling to re-name the beer and intend to release it soon afterwards…to anyone we have offended we sincerely apologize.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, who spearheaded the protest, calling identifying of the beer with Goddess Kali as “inappropriate”, has thanked and commended the Company for showing responsibility, respect and maturity by taking quick action and for having an understanding for the hurt feelings of Hindu community. It was a step in the right direction, he added in a statement in Nevada today.

I am not sure if the hassle was all worth it though ...



Update on May 15th:
The Hindu reports:

Strongly objecting to a US company launching a beer brand named after Goddess Kali, a demand was made in Rajya Sabha today that US Ambassador to India should be summoned and asked to apologise for it. 

Doesn't India's Parliament have other important things to worry about? Like whether sixty-year old political cartoons are harmful to kids and adults alike? :)

Are we teaching students how to think? Or, ...

How does this sound to you?

Today's college students are experts at pantomiming their classmates and professors. They can cram for tests and summarize books with gusto. But they are not learning to think critically. That involves questioning assumptions or finding patterns in what they see or read outside of the classroom. 

I hope this doesn't happen in my classes.  In fact, I am confident that in my classes, students cannot escape the thinking process.  There is no cramming for tests in my classes.  I don't care, I tell them, whether they have all the books with them or whether they rely on their memories.  Because, even if it is in the book and they don't know how to make use of it, well, the open-book doesn't help, does it?

Perhaps that is yet another reason why students shy away from my classes?

The feedback that I get from students, whenever they do offer them on their own, is encouraging.  My classes are providing them with content and the abilities to think through.  And, of course, they quickly learn to write well if they want to be successful in my classes.  After all, there is no scantron-test where they can bubble in their guesses.  And in the essays they write, well, they know there is no point awarded for bullshit :)

The problem, as I see it, lies less with students than with lazy faculty practices.  Conducting classes devoid of serious questioning--the Socratic method that most faculty love to pretend to like, and having tests that are nothing but multiple-choice questions that come from test-banks supplied by the textbook publisher can certainly ease faculty workloads.  But, then don't blame students who are merely being rational in their pursuit of the path of minimum resistance!  And even when the question calls for essay responses, well, merely telling students to "write a paper on any topic of your choice" doesn't really help develop critical thinking skills either.  For one, most students are yet to learn how to pose questions that they can then answer through the essays.  And, worse, there is no meaningful feedback to students on their papers--I have seen one too many papers that students have shown me where their bullshit papers have easily earned them "A" grades!

Hotel Afghanistan!

Yep :(

Born into, and growing out of, religions

 In the years past, I was a tad hesitant to reveal my atheistic thinking whenever I was asked about my religious beliefs.  The hesitation resulted from my own ambivalence and from a concern over how my response will be received.

There was another reason as well: "atheist" tends to be viewed as equivalent to loose morals and every possible bad habit that one can imagine.  Whereas my life is far from that, as a non-smoking teetotaler who doesn't even know the smell of marijuana, and gluttony or sloth or greed are not what I practice either.  So, it took me a while to overcome the concern that my atheism might project me as somebody that I am not.

But, then quite a few years ago, I emerged from the religion closet, and ditched my "agnostic" label in favor of a more open "atheist" one.  And, liberating it has been since!

It was a wonderful coincidence that soon after began the huge wave of bestselling books on religion and atheism.  There is no doubt that Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, among others, significantly elevated societal discussions on religion and god.  Though, I did worry that Hitchens' personal life could reinforce the negative stereotype of an atheist.

As Harris and Steven Weinberg and many others have pointed out, life is a lot more fascinating and rich and complex and human when moral guidelines have to developed and practiced devoid of religious prescriptions.  It turns out that living a life of an atheist is way more wonderful than I could have ever imagined.

Further, it turns out that people become naturally curious even if I were to mention merely in passing that I am an atheist.  They want to know more about my atheism--perhaps because of doubts they have about their own religious beliefs, or because they have never interacted, in-person, with an atheist, or ... I am more than happy then to engage in conversations with them.

From a strictly scientific perspective, I suppose I would clarify that my working hypothesis is that there is no such thing as a creator or a god.  After all, I don't have conclusive evidence.  But, if I were to remove those scientific qualifiers, then it is simply that I am an atheist.

If all these are too serious, then, hey, we can always lighten things up .... like so:

Here is Colbert explaining religion--Christianity

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

Every (academic) major's terrible!

Source

If India is energy-starved, how about Pakistan?

Today is one of those days when I happened to wonder whatever might have happened if India and Pakistan (and, therefore, Bangladesh) hadn't split and, at least, hadn't fought wars and engaged in expensive arms race.  Imagine!  The possibilities are simply limitless.

Instead, the Subcontinent, including Sri Lanka and Nepal, has been a tragicomedy of wasted opportunities and unfulfilled dreams.  Increasingly, the tragicomedy is looking more and more farcical.

Consider this: India and Pakistan blast nuclear devices whenever one feels the urge to demonstrate its testosterone levels when its government is getting battered internally.  Or, they shoot up missiles.  All these, as even a third grader knows well, is awfully expensive.

Meanwhile, as I noted a couple of days ago, there is a lot to worry about India's economy.  How is it across the border in Pakistan?  It seems to want to outdo India in making sure its people will not have enough electricity:

Demand for energy in Pakistan now outstrips its capacity to supply electricity to industry and households by several thousand megawatts. With preliminary census projections of a population of more than 192 million and the share of the urban population rising, the challenge to power Pakistan will only grow more difficult. Already, hours-long interruptions in power have dragged down productivity in key sectors like the textile industry and sparked confrontations between rural and urban political leaders and the transportation, agricultural, and manufacturing sectors for priority access to what energy is produced. 

 Of course, this is not entirely new; I noted here more than a year ago about Pakistan's floating power plant, which the government had leased from Turkey.

But, now the situation is getting even worse because the government is broke and can't pay up:

nine independent power producers -- which collectively produce 8 to 9 percent of Pakistan's energy supply -- now warn that they can no longer continue operations if government payment is not immediately forthcoming. With fresh borrowing plans, the government is likely to negotiate another settlement with these companies. 

How deep is the government in debts, you ask?  

approximately half of this year's federal budget expenditures were devoted to debt repayment, far eclipsing military spending, government salaries, or development investments. 

The Indian economy is sputtering, and the government seems to be hell bent on making sure there are enough and more to choke the windpipes.  As this column notes, it seems like it is three steps backward for each forward step!   Despite the government's best intentions, it is amazing that the economy grows at all, I suppose.

How did the Subcontinent get so messed up?  How much worse could it have been if there had been no partition?

This explains why nobody works with me? :)

It is graduation time. Which means, more cartoons :(

Over at the WSJ, Bret Stephens has some sharp advice for the graduates.

Sadly, all these only help re-confirm my own observations on higher education!

How murders happen in Oregon?

Two responses to my opinions: What contrasts!

First this, from an anonymous commenter, who was perhaps unhappy with my blog post on academic and football salaries:

You are a dumb dyke

BTW, that blog post has been trending upward with respect to what attracted visitors to my blog!

In contrast, the following was a letter in the paper in response to my opinion column on the overselling of college for everybody:

I’ve always enjoyed Western Oregon University professor Sriram Khe’s insightful articles on topics as diverse as the economy of India to his April 30 column, “College should be a journey, not a destination.”

I graduated from WOU, which was then Oregon College of Education, in the early 1960s. There was zero pressure from my family to attend college, and only 30 percent of my Newport High School graduating class did so.

That was in an era when tuition was less than $100 per term and college costs were easily met with part-time work on campus and summer jobs. I left college with nearly $4,000 in my savings account.

Five decades later students leave college with debts ranging from $5,000 to $150,000, depending on their academic programs.

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, societal and family pressures scare kids into college; it’s the proverbial carrot on the stick, dangling higher lifetime earnings and family prestige as the primary goal for many college-bound students. Our grade schools, middle schools and high schools should promote critical thinking and creativity rather than instilling in students from kindergarten through high school that college is the endgame.

Is college for everyone? I don’t think so. A better idea for high school graduates may be as simple as taking a break for a year, acquiring life skills through temporary jobs and travel, then considering attending college.

Mike E. Walsh

Eugene

Whenever I have received negative feedback, especially those that are not constructive, it turns out that they do not want to reveal their identities. "Anonymous." Well, at least the anonymous commenter this time was not as hateful as once earlier :)

More on the deplorable state of contemporary higher education!

At the BBQ to which my neighbors/friends had invited me over, I slipped into a rather serious and depressed/depressing mode while talking about education.  It has become one giant ponzi scheme at so many levels, I told them.

Almost a day and a wonderful grilled steak and conversations later, here I am reading more during my solitary lunch break, and .... yep, more depressing stuff.  If only students would understand how much the system is sucking them dry!

Exhibit A: This WSJ report that "Only 49% of graduates from the classes of 2009 to 2011 had found a full-time job within a year of finishing school, compared with 73% for students who graduated in the three years prior."  Despite a plethora of such reports, students don't seem to care, and I have often wondered why.  Could there be a great deal of truth in the report's simplistic/sarcastic comment?:

Many students nonetheless express optimism, though perhaps that's simply the Lake Wobegon effect: They might believe they're all above-average after years of positive reinforcement from their parents. In the same vein, they may see themselves as exceptions to the rules of the job market.

And then there is the whole aspect of athletics versus academics. 

We might even cut down the number of classes we offer, and reduce the numbers of full-time instructors, but never shall we even marginally reduce our commitment to athletics.  It is similar to the maniacal Republicans adamantly holding the line on military budget.  Exhibit B: This Bloomberg report on the supremacy of athletics at public institutions:

Rutgers funneled $28.5 million from the university budget and student fees into sports, the most among 54 U.S. public universities in the biggest football conferences, based on data compiled by Bloomberg for the fiscal year ended last June. It was at least the second straight year at the top of the list for the state university of New Jersey, despite cost-cutting after lawmakers and faculty protested that academics were losing out.
(To see Bloomberg’s data on sports spending at Rutgers and 53 other schools, click here.)
“Rutgers puts too much money into athletics at the cost of basically every other department,” said Stephen Sweeney, the Democratic president of the New Jersey Senate, in an e-mail. He applauded efforts by Athletic Director Tim Pernetti to increase revenue. At the same time, he said, “the faculty, student body and the families of students who are supporting them through school simply pay too much.” 

So, ok, those are at the undergrad levels. The typical cure offered by the higher education industry is, well, more schooling. So, we then have excited people going in for PhDs in fields like history, which is Exhibit C:


If it were not for the fact that it is a brilliantly sunny and warm spring day, this would be one hell of a depressing Monday!

2012: the year of elections. Maybe the Mayans were correct?

China watchers often remind us that the passing the leadership baton in the Communist Party involves a great deal of politics, and this year we have had quite some intense drama already, with Bo Xilai and then Chen Guangcheng.

And, of course, there are the November elections in the US, though sometimes it seems like we are always in an election and campaign mode..

The outcomes of the Chinese and American leadership struggles will have global impacts, yes.  But, these are not the only elections this year with far-reaching implications.  Consider the following list, which is by no means a comprehensive one:

• Russia: Putin continues to rig the system to his advantage.  Wonder how long he can keep behaving like the tsar of Russia.
• France: Early reports indicate that Sarkozy has been defeated by Hollande, and Europe and the rest of the world will have to watch and see how this will affect the Euro crisis, among other issues.
• Israel: Netanyahu calls for early elections, which many analysts see as a kind of referendum on his plans to attack Iran in September/October, ahead of the American elections, if he were to win.
• Egypt: One heck of a confusion in its elections, with protests growing by the day, and the prospect of an elected Islamist government worrying the US.
• And there is Greece, the epicenter of the Euro crisis.

Hmmmmmm .... wake me up in 2013, if the world is still around then :)