Address Change

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The World Cup of Critical Thinking

For an atheist who does not care about religions, of which organized sports is also one, I do keep track of major religious events.  Like the soccer World Cup.

Why bother with something that I do not care about?

As I wrote in my commentary that was published on June 13, 2010, against the backdrop of the World Cup twelve years ago: "A sport is, thus, more than merely about the game itself.  It presents yet another opportunity to begin to understand the peoples of the world, and their cultures and politics."

To understand the people, their cultures and politics.  Best exemplified already by the Iranian team's response to their national anthem--they intentionally did not sing along and instead kept their mouths tightly shut as "an apparent show of solidarity on the world's biggest stage with the human rights protest movement that has swept their home country."  It is not merely a soccer team, is it?

Oh, and Iran lost to England. Note that Iran did not lose to the United Kingdom but to England. 

Meanwhile the US tied with Wales. 

Aren't England and Wales part of the UK?  How come they field separate teams? 

Aha, I have left you with more evidence that the soccer World Cup is a lot more than merely kicking the ball with the feet, unless god's hand intervenes, right?

The following is my commentary from June 2010:
*****************

How Soccer Explains the World

While India and China seem to be in the news all the time when it comes to economic matters, their noticeable absence from the World Cup tournament in South Africa might be obvious even to those who are not sports junkies.

With a combined population of about 2.5 billion, China and India account for almost two-fifths of the humans on the planet, and yet their teams did not make it to South Africa.  This is not merely the result of the preliminary rounds that determine the qualifiers for the tournament, but might be a reflection of the respective sociopolitical ethos as well.

When the Olympics were held in Beijing last summer, it was clear that China had morphed into a sports power.  Chinese athletes earned the most gold medals—51—but, the United States beat China in the aggregate medal count by ten.  This rapid rise in Olympics was triggered by the Chinese government’s extensive investment in facilities and athletes themselves.

It also turns out that political decisions to invest in sports mean that there is a lot more attention paid to individual performances—such as gymnastics or diving.  Team sports require a lot more planning and coordination at various levels, and are not amenable to delivering quick results.  Further, a football—er, soccer—team, for instance, is simply more than a mere collection of eleven players on the field, and is a wonderful illustration of the philosophical notion that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.  The net result is that China did not get past the third round of the qualifiers for this World Cup. 

The US offers quite a contrast to the Chinese approach in that there is no formal government investment in sports, including football, and expenses are met primarily through sponsorships and endorsements.  The extensive network of youth soccer programs has been slowly and steadily developing quality players and the US soccer teams are no longer taken for granted.

India has neither the Chinese approach to sports, nor does it have an American style bottom-up grassroots structure.  But, it is not because the Indian population or government is indifferent to sports.  For instance, later this year, in October, India will be hosting the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, and the government spending for it has generated immense controversy. 

Whether it is the Olympics or football, India does not suffer a shortage of television viewership either.  Millions, like my high school friend who lives in Chennai, even re-arrange their schedules in order to keep up with the telecasts from abroad.  But, this passion is not reflected in the results on the field—at the Beijing Olympics, India won one gold and two bronzes for a grand total of three medals. 

Such a situation is not a result of the attention on that other great game—cricket.  After all, teams from countries with significantly lesser population, like Australia or Sri Lanka, often humble the Indian cricket team.  And in field hockey, which is another popular sport in the Subcontinent, teams from the tiny Netherlands routinely rout the Indians.  In soccer, India’s team lost to Lebanon in the first round of the qualifiers.  It turns out that a billion people do not make a sports powerhouse!

A reason that is offered more often than not—even during my childhood years—is that the Indian culture advocates contentment.  Hence, the lack of a “killer instinct” that is needed to push oneself to be a winner in sports. 

As much as it is tempting to buy into this explanation, Sweden offers quite a comparison.  The Swedish folks, after all, have their own word for moderation—“lagom”.  “Lagom” is a way of life that emphasizes individual and social attributes such as enough, sameness, and average.  However, this has not precluded the Swedes from excelling in individual or collective activities. 

A sport is, thus, more than merely about the game itself.  It presents yet another opportunity to begin to understand the peoples of the world, and their cultures and politics.  Yet, if the game of soccer does not grab one’s attention, I suggest the following books as summer readings—“Soccer and Philosophy” and “How Soccer Explains the World.”

Fouls left to give

Every game has its own quirky rules.  American football has plenty of those.  Cricket is nothing but one quirky rule after another.  If one does not grow up playing the sport, explaining the rules of the game to a newbie can be extremely complicated.  Have you ever attempted explaining soccer's "offside" rule to one who has no idea about the game?

Remember how Calvin invented his own games?  Calvin had loads of fun inventing his own games and playing them--and it seemed like he never played the same game twice because he was always creating new rules, if not new games.  Like here, for instance:

Source

Once you step outside your fanatical interest in any particular sport, you immediately realize that all those are nothing but variations of Calvinball.  If you are not convinced that it is all Calvinball rules, try explaining, for instance, the rules of cricket to a third generation Cubs fan, or the rules of American football to a maniacal Arsenal hooligan!

Some Calvin in the past came up with a game.  A couple of buddies were the Hobbes.  They played and had fun.  A couple more kids wanted in. Soon, these kids became adults and indoctrinated their kids into the game.

At some point, kids stopped coming up with their own Calvinballs.  I suspect it is not because kids are no longer creative, but it is because adults preclude the creation of Calvinballs by teaching them the bizarre Calvinball rules of other games. We make Calvinball even worse.  As we grow older, we are even keen on paying others to play Calvinball.  And we pay them gazillions of dollars.  Instead of getting dirty and tired from playing our own Calvinballs, we pay to watch tennis players, and basketballers, and footballers, and golfers play.  One of the most remarkably stupid things that we humans could have ever come up with.

Even worse, we want players to win at any cost.  In sport and in politics, we Americans and many in the rest of the world too have decided that winning is the only thing, even if it means to bend the rules as much as we can.  Fair play is apparently for losers!

Fair play has always been important to me and that carries over to every aspect of my life, whether it was at work from which I was laid off a year ago, or with family and friends.  To such an extent that I walk away from people--colleagues and family alike--if they sharply deviate from fair play and express no regrets over their actions.

Fourteen years ago--yes, in 2008--I authored a commentary on fair play and sportsmanship.  As you settle down to watch the soccer world cup that is played in an authoritarian emirate, or the college football playoffs that add millions of dollars to a select few, keep an eye out on the total lack of sportsmanship and you will be shocked at the barbarians that these games make out of humans.

Here is my commentary from May 27, 2008:
*********************************************

Flicking through the television channels the other day, I paused at a basketball playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Utah Jazz, which was such a close one that it eventually was settled in overtime. 

The commentator made interesting remarks that are quite the norm in such contexts, analyzing who was in foul trouble and how many fouls each team had “left to give.” 

Fouls left to give? There is no more talk of sports promoting sportsmanship, camaraderie and cooperation. Instead, it is about “fouls left to give” until players are ejected. 

Increasingly, fouls and penalties are no longer results of players’ accidents or mistakes. Coaches and players systematically exploit this as a loophole with the sole intention of restricting the opponent’s performance. 

It is not uncommon to see a basketball player intentionally grabbing an opposing team’s player if that will prevent a sure two points. 

It is so often used against Shaquille O’Neal that we now have the sports jargon, “hack-a-Shaq.” A football cornerback might commit pass interference if it appears that without that penalty the wide receiver might coast into the end zone for a touchdown. 

The manner in which fans respond to these fouls indicates that they, too, see it as legitimate maneuvering. 

I wonder, then, if involvement in athletics might end up doing more harm than good. What will children learn if their coach teaches them to grab the player in order to prevent an opponent from scoring? Is the lesson to focus on winning at any cost, fully understanding that they have “fouls to give”? 

It is bizarre that we have zero-tolerance policies in educational settings, even as we could instruct the same children that they have “fouls to give” on the playground. 

It is no stretch to argue that this notion of “fouls to give” is becoming common in society. 

The havoc that Enron brought upon its employees, shareholders and the rest of the world was nothing but a reflection of its decision-makers’ thinking that their transgressions were within their “fouls to give.” Professionals advise corporations on how to exploit loopholes in the law — a variation of fouls to give. 

Political campaigning is along the same lines: Candidates or their surrogates intentionally commit fouls, then pay appropriate penalties and carry on, because, hey, that is how the game is played. 

As an academic concerned about more than mere curricular issues, I am always perturbed when students and colleagues commit fouls. You can, therefore, imagine my sheer delight with the recent softball incident in a game between Central Washington University and Western Oregon University, where I teach. 

In case you missed that news item: A lot was at stake because the winner of that game qualified for the regionals. With two on base, at the plate was a diminutive graduating Western senior who had never homered in her life. She hit her first home run ever, then badly injured her knee at first base while making her way around the bases. 

Two fielders from Central carried her around the bases, which counted as a home run for Western. The gregarious Central team went on to the lose the game, while Western moved on to the regionals, and won the first round there, too.

It was a remarkable story of sportsmanship and offered an absolute contrast to the “fouls to give” calculations that are otherwise the norm. 

In the spirit of using athletics to forge a greater sense of humanity, imagine the following scenario, which might sound as if it is coming from another planet. Well, given that I am from India, it might well be an alien thought! 

The next academic year, when the Oregon Ducks play hosts to Pac-10 football teams at the loud and boisterous Autzen Stadium, it will almost always be a midday or late afternoon game. That means that there will be ample time for the Ducks to play a different type of host again: to sit down with the visiting team and have dinner after the game. The bands from the host and visiting teams can play a few numbers as entertainment for the evening. 

An outrageous idea, I realize. But what a powerful message it can convey, particularly to the youth! The university even can make a fundraiser out of this, splitting the proceeds with the visiting teams.

It would be a huge step in the right direction. The focus, after all, is on the common cause of developing one’s skills and learning and playing the game to one’s fullest. I can easily imagine that such an attitude will quickly lead to players and spectators alike relearning the forgotten idea that there is no place for “fouls to give.”

In my book, nice guys never finish last, but are winners all the time.

Sunday in the blog with Sriram

"Are you writing about events and people from memory, or do you look things up?" she asked about my blogging.

A fair question.

But, I didn't have to think much about it.

"It is mostly memory recall.  But, I do use Google in order to do my own fact checking.  I do not do any research like what students do in order to write papers, if that's your question."

I like to think that she was impressed.

I suppose like most writers, even this wannabe writer writes only about what he knows about.  I wish my English teachers, particularly in the high school level, had helped us understand that our essays need not be about grand narratives. If only they had suggested that essays could even be about the grocery store, or about an accident while bicycling, anything as small and part of everyday life that we knew and experienced in plenty.  Without guidance, I fumbled around and even got slapped silly!

Of course, her question about memory recall was not about blog-posts that draw on my personal life experiences.  Google does not know what happened in my ninth grade classroom or at my grandma's home in 1973.  At least not yet.  Who knows where technological advancements will lead us to.

What about when the post is about, say, something that was triggered by the rise of a man with Indian origins to political power in a country that once colonized the lands where his ancestors lived?  Such a post involves a lot of facts, and there's only so much that a rapidly aging middle-aged brain can recall, right?

In the old, old days, when we wanted to know something, we might have walked up to the elders around us and asked them the questions for which we sought the answers.  Almost always, the elders didn't know and they bullshitted.  But, we didn't know any better and took their answers as the truth.  There was no Google back then to do any real-time fact-checking!  

One reader, who was a colleague for years, knows well my distaste for bullshit and bullshitters, which I talked about--a lot--with students. She was so fascinated by my constant talking about Bullshit that she invited me to talk with her class.  A music class!  I did.  Students loved it.  After that, I was re-invited, more than a couple of times.  Talking about Bullshit is darn exciting!

A few years ago, when I came across a link to write up bogus job descriptions, I crafted this bogus description for myself and, of course, tweeted it:

How did I track that down?  Easy.  Because I remembered that I had tweeted something along those lines and had blogged about it.  Which is why I told her, "actually, before I go to Google, I search my own blog first."

(Go ahead, try for yourself by typing a search word in the box in the upper left corner of the blog and keep yourself entertained by reading old posts, especially whenever I take a break from blogging.)

The larger question anybody might have is also a straightforward one: Why blog?  Ahem, I already wrote about that! 😇

A bore walks into a bar

The neighborhood restaurant was buzzing with people when we walked in.  We were led to a corner that seated two at a table.

I looked around.  At almost all the other tables, there was no food but only drinks in glasses and beer bottles.  It was then it struck me: We had gone there for an early dinner just as the "happy hour" was winding down.  Two happy hours, according to the sheet that was tucked away by the ketchup.

I have no idea about the origins of the phrase "happy hour," nor do I care to know.  What strikes me as a non-drinker is the association of "happy" with alcohol.

When I was new to the country, I was struck by the significant increase in advertisements for beer and vodka in the days leading up to long weekends and special occasions.  All the people in the ads looked happy with the great time that they were having while holding alcoholic beverages in their hands.  There were moments when I wondered if I was not maximizing my happiness by not downing shots of tequila.

It was also damn discouraging at parties when I had no story to tell about the time that I got wasted.  A boring life that I had, according to what I understood from advertisements and party-goers. 

But then I have always enjoyed being boring.  I am happy being a bore.  I am exceptionally good at that.  After all, not for nothing did I earn the successive promotions from Captain Killjoy, to Major Buzzkill, to finally becoming a four-star General Malaise!

It is not easy to socialize as an adult, I came to understand, if I stayed away from alcohol.  Nor did I become a social drinker, as some people choose to describe themselves.

There is no designated "happy hour" in my calendar.  I am happy at different hours of the day, I suppose, and via very different drinks.  Mostly coffee.  And sometimes it is a very happy concoction of half-caf and half-decaf.  Always with something to eat.  The drink might last only five minutes, but the buzz of happiness lingers on for more than a happy hour!

Using our discretionary time to down alcoholic drinks with friends or colleagues during "happy hour" does not sound like a plausible route to happiness in life.

As many posts in the pasts have made it abundantly clear, I walk around with my own quota of stress and unhappiness.  Life in the ashram for this swami is not simply eternal bliss. The good thing is that many, many years ago, I figured that it will be very, very, very rare for a human to be stress-free and happy.  It is normal to feel stress and anxiety and more.  Happiness, therefore, is something that emerges from and within the context of stress and unhappiness.  The "happy hour" is a mirage, a make-believe "happy" hour.

In her new book, Happier Hour, Cassie Holmes, a researcher and professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, "provides a treasure trove of ideas on how to reassess the way we spend our time and prioritize the things that make for a happier, more meaningful life."  I am willing to bet that weekly "happy hours" is not one of the ideas that Holmes suggests.  

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”  Indeed!

How do you plan to spend your days in order to have a life of "happy hours"?

Thinking and democracy

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is my favorite intellectual American politician from my lifetime.

I knew that name from my early years of reading The Hindu.  Moynihan was the American ambassador to India.  But, that's all I knew about him at that age.

Moynihan was a senator when I came to the US in 1987.  As I started reading up anything and everything that had nothing to do with the formal graduate schooling, I came to know more about Moynihan.  He had a PhD.  He had taught at Harvard.  His controversial report on poverty in America. 

An intellectual like him had also managed to win elections?

George Will remarked that as a senator, Moynihan had written more books than most senators read--all of them together!  For those of us who had idealized an intellectual-statesman along the likes of the philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius or Ashoka, it was always a thrill to see an intellectual like Moynihan in politics. 

After the fall of the Soviet Union, it was Vaclav Havel who grabbed my attention for that reason.  And then Mario Vargas Llosa ran for the presidency in Peru.  Manmohan Singh became India's prime minister.  It seemed like democracy worldwide was finally growing up beyond mere populism and slogans, and I was looking forward to enlightened intellectual debates in American politics.

It did not turn out that way.

The two terms of President W. Bush set the Republican Party on a clear path of anti-intellectualism.  In 2008, I blogged about the trend and quoted Professor Elvin Lim:

At the heart of democracy is the idea that citizens make civic decisions based on information. When presidents do not offer information, but instead offer only sound bites, platitudes, and vacuous slogans, citizens are ill-equipped to make those decisions. Even worse, they are persuaded to make decisions according to nonrelevant, tangential cues such as personality and partisan punch lines.

That was in 2008.

And then populism returned "bigly."

The Republican Party became virulently anti-intellectual.

Always aware that it is not what you say but it is about who said it but who you are when you say it, I quoted Paul Krugman in this post in 2017:

Republicans have changed in the age of Trump: what was already a strong strain of anti-intellectualism has become completely dominant. The notion that there was a golden age of conservative intellectuals is basically a myth. But there used to be at least some pretense of taking facts and hard thinking seriously. ... Now a powerful political movement basically wants to make America ignorant again.

The fanatical devotion to anti-intellectualism has propelled quite a few Republicans into the House and Senate.

In the Senate, where Moynihan pushed for legislation through his intellect, we now have the likes of Tommy Tuberville, whose only qualification was having been a NCAA football coach.  His Senate page refers to him as Coach Tommy Tuberville.  You don't contact the Senator; instead it is "Contact Coach."  You will draw a blank if you searched for his public service record in his bio!

Next month's runoff election in Georgia features a Republican who is famous among some for having been a star football player in the 1980s.  The following is a transcript of what he recently said at a campaign event:

“You ever watch a stupid movie late at night hoping it’s gonna get better, it don’t get better, but you keep watching anyway?”

“The other night I was watching this movie called Fright Night — or Freak Night or some kind of night — and it was about vampires. I don’t know if you know, vampires are some cool people, are they not? But I’m gonna tell you something that I found out: A werewolf can kill a vampire, did you know that? I never knew that, so I didn’t want to be a vampire anymore. I wanted to be a werewolf.”

Yes, that is what Herschel Walker said in a stump speech to become a part of the deliberative body that decides our collective fate.

I wish a reporter would ask Walker if he has even heard of a Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

I will wrap this up with an excerpt from Vaclav Havel:

The main task in the coming era is something else: a radical renewal of our sense of responsibility. Our conscience must catch up to our reason, otherwise we are lost. 

It is my profound belief that there is only one way to achieve this: we must divest ourselves of our egotistical anthroponcentrism, our habit of seeing ourselves as masters of the universe who can do whatever occurs to us. We must discover a new respect for what transcends us: for the universe, for the earth, for nature, for life, and for reality. Our respect for other people, for other nations and for other cultures, can only grow from a humble respect for the cosmic order and from an awareness that we are a part of it, that we share in it and that nothing of what we do is lost, but rather becomes part of the eternal memory of being, where it is judged. ... 

Whether our world is to be saved from everything that threatens it today depends above all on whether human beings come to their senses, whether they understand the degree of their responsibility and discover a new relationship to the very miracle of being. The world is in the hands of us all. 

So, what are you going to do?

The beginning of the end ... of gerontocracy

I ended the previous post on climate change that the young are worried about, and rightfully so, with a call for action.  I wrote: "Send all those Medicare-eligible wannabe presidents, Senators and Congressmembers home and elect a new, younger, generation to power."

It is not the first time that I have blogged about the gerontocracy that we call as democracy here in the US.  In August 2016, I opened this blog-post with:

The two major party presidential contenders are no spring chicken.  Senators who ought to have retired long ago continue to run and, even more bizarre is how they get re-elected; there are 25 current senators in DC who are at least 70 years old!  A quarter of the Senate!

I continued to rant about the tyranny of the old, like in this post from August 2017:

I have complained enough about the choke-hold that older people have on everything going on in the world.  I have called them names, like tyrannosaurus elderex!  Of course, I have screamed at the senior citizens in my profession to retire already.  For whatever reasons, we do not engage in honest conversations on senior citizens who don't want to call it quits.

The heavens finally heard my rants.

Nancy Pelosi, who is 82 years old, has announced that she is stepping down from leadership roles.  82!

There's more good news.  "Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the 83-year-old No. 2 Democrat, told his colleagues that he would not seek a leadership position in the next Congress."

83!

It is not that I do not appreciate the phenomenal work that Pelosi did.  If not for her groundwork, President Obama's health care plan would have gone nowhere.  There was no way that Obama was going to lead the battle, and it was left to Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid to win the war.  I am with Eugene Robinson, who writes that "Nancy Pelosi was the most consequential speaker of our time." 

And, my, her clapback at tRumps' State of the Union address, and then a year later ripping up her copy of his address, well, only Pelosi could have done that!

But, hey, "To everything (turn, turn, turn) | There is a season (turn, turn, turn)."

Pelosi said this too when she announced her plans: "Scripture teaches us that for everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven."

On her way out, Pelosi took another shot at tRump when she said "I have enjoyed working with three Presidents."  She named the three: Bush, Obama, and Biden.  Now that is how she serves the revenge dish! 👏👏👏

We all recognize that there is a season and then the time's up.

Pelosi added: "For me, the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect. And I am grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility."

Who is the new generation of leadership?  "Representatives Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California were expected to seek the top three spots among House Democrats."  Jeffries is 52,Aguilar is 43, and Clark is the senior most at 59.  Nowhere near the 80s and 70s that has become common among leadership!

Meanwhile, across the aisle, the GOP is all set to elect yet another spineless Republican as the Speaker.  (Wait, are there any Republicans with any spine?)

Recent decades have seen the Republican conference led by a series of unsteady, uninspiring figures — Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Denny Hastert. Oof. And the current minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who is best positioned to be the next speaker, promises to be even weaker and more feckless.

In case you have cleared your memory cache, Denny Hastert was later found guilty of having sexually abused a high school student when Hastert was a coach, and for his illegal money laundering activities to cover up the scandal.  He abused more than one student, but the statute of limitations had run out.  The rotten bastard, who served as the Speaker of the House for eight years, led a political party that now hysterically lies that Democrats are pedophiles and groomers!

Such is the profile of the people on the other side. 

I am confident that there are plenty of younger people ready, willing, and capable of fighting for democracy and justice. You too will support those Democratic Party leaders, won't you?

Art and the future

During the orientation week, we new international students were given a choice of outings that we could sign up for.  The university provided transportation, and also paid for tickets if the place/event was not open for free to the public.

I signed up for an evening at The Hollywood Bowl.  I knew nothing about the setting nor the performer.  But, "Hollywood" I was familiar with.  I figured that I could not go wrong with an event that had Hollywood in its name.

It. Was. Goddamn. Awesome!  That was the best decision that I could have made.

I had never before been in an open-air facility with a large crowd for an evening of music.  The fact that it was music that was new to me mattered the least.  My only problem that evening was that I had no idea that Los Angeles cooled down a lot after the sun set on a summer day.  Totally under-prepared for the cool evening, I sat shivering towards the end of the show.

Choosing the Hollywood Bowl meant that I could not go to the other outing that was scheduled for that day--The Getty Museum.

In 1987, there was only one Getty, which is the one at Malibu, overlooking the Pacific.  It was years later that I finally went there, which was, ironically, after having visited the newer, bigger, and a lot more fantastic Getty Center tucked in the rolling hills from where one can get a good view of Los Angeles and the Pacific on the few days when the air is not smoggy brown.

The Getty museums were made possible by J. Paul Getty, who made his millions through oil extraction.  Oil, one of the fossil fuels that has been clearly identified as a cause of climate change, was how The Getty Center came to be.  I suppose this art collection is yet another piece of evidence that Pecunia non olet--money does not stink!

Getty's millions of dollars ought to remind us of Proudhon's bold and political assertion that "property is theft."  Oil, a fossil fuel, is a cause of climate change that is robbing from future generations in order for us to live a life of decadence.  Yes, I wrote "us" because you and I, too, are benefiting from this daylight robbery, even if we self-righteously proclaim that we are doing all the right things unlike "those" people.

As a commie-wannabe teenager that I once was, I completely sympathize with the young people who are so upset with the elders not doing anything about climate change that they have resorted to protesting at famous art galleries by even throwing paint and ketchup on paintings.

Caption at the source:
Gustav Klimt's painting "Tod und Leben" is seen after activists of Last Generation Austria (Letzte Generation Oesterreich) spilled oil on it in Leopold museum in Vienna, Austria, November 15, 2022.

Members of the group Last Generation Austria tweeted they had targeted the 1915 painting “Death and Life” at the Leopold Museum in Vienna to protest their government’s use of fossil energies.

After throwing the liquid on the painting, which wasn’t damaged, one activist was pushed away by a museum guard while another glued his hand to the glass over the painting’s frame.

The group defended the protest, saying in a tweet that they were protesting “oil and gas drilling,” which they called “a death sentence to society.”

I agree with the protesting youth's argument that we value art more than worrying about the destruction of the natural environment all around us.  We would rather spend gazillions on museums that treasure the past even as the future world that young people will inherit will be a dystopia that will be hotter than hell?

Meanwhile, estimates are that human population is now at 8 billion, and at least 2 more billion--perhaps even three--will be added before this century ends.  If 8 billion and more want to live like how we Americans live--and why shouldn't they?--and if we do not deviate from the path that we are on, well, the museums of the world, whose endowments come from stealing from future generations, will face a lot angrier youth who will not stop at mere vandalism.

Here in America, the political class, which is dominated by octogenarians and septuagenarians, has been extremely slow in reacting to climate change and is tone-deaf to the loud screams from the young.  There is only one clear solution: Send all those Medicare-eligible wannabe presidents, Senators and Congressmembers home and elect a new, younger, generation to power.

Apples and Cheetos

I have watched my share of James Bond movies.  War movies.  Masala movies.

But, that is like saying that I have eaten my share of potato chips. Cheetos. Corn nuts.

The salty, crunchy, lip-smacking snacks are fantastic, but only once in a rare while.  An Ambrosia apple is my latest go-to snack!  Dangle an Ambrosia and a bag of Cheetos in front of me and the apple will disappear from your hand in a nanosecond.  These days, I do not even look at my old flame, the Honeycrisp.

We recently watched an apple that a movie was.  It was a Honeycrisp but not an Ambrosia 😀

Early in my life, when I was beginning to read about "art movies" that I was not able to watch, I read in the news that a Tamil movie had won the national award for the best Tamil film: Agraharathil Kazhuthai (A donkey in a Brahmin street/ghetto.) Commentaries were written in plenty about the movie, and plenty of people were upset too.  But, it was never screened anywhere for me to watch it.  (To date, I haven't watched the award-winning movie!)

From the time I got to thinking and acting for/by myself, which neatly overlaps with the end of high school and the start of the undergraduate years, I have gravitated towards the non-commercial, non-formulaic, movies. One of my greatest complaints in the old country was that the "art" movies were not shown in theatres anywhere near me.  Only potato chips are sold everywhere!

Fortunately, television solved that problem.

Thanks to the only government channel, I finally could watch movies that I had only read about in newspapers and magazines.  The movies that rarely ever played in cinema houses but won awards both at home and abroad.

In those art films, which did not cater to any set formula, the endings often left the viewer exploring the story and the characters because, well, there was no real ending.  No bow tie to wrap up the box.  A few years ago, I read an interview in which one of those art-films great, Mrinal Sen, described such storytelling as: "Life itself is uncertain and inconclusive,” he has said. “Then why should I make a creation conclusive? Thus, all my films are open-ended.”

Uncertain and inconclusive.  That's how the movie that we watched also was.  

Bulbul Can Sing does not play in any local movie hall.  Once again, viewing an art movie was possible only thanks to television.  Well, we watched it on television as it was streamed not via a government channel but a for-profit corporation.  Life has changed a lot since the bad old days.

As this helpful essay on how to find and watch quality films notes, there’s more to life than escapism that we find in the Cheetos that commercial movies are, and film has reflected that:

There have always been filmmakers concerned with pondering the realities of everyday life; with looking at and portraying the world with curiosity and compassion. (I am not merely alluding to documentaries, but to all kinds of films.) In the right hands, a movie can touch us – emotionally and intellectually, culturally and philosophically – in ways mostly neglected by the mainstream ‘product’ churned out as if on a conveyor belt, its raison d’être not artistic worth but profit.

The streaming world in which we watch everything has opened up the world of cinema to people like me who otherwise had to work hard to watch movies about peoples and cultures that are different from what I am familiar with.  It is like how Ambrosia and Honeycrisp are now waiting for me at the grocery store, and I rarely ever swing by the chips aisle!

The woman behind Bulbul Can Sing does it all: Story, dialog, directing, editing, producing, and maybe I missed something else that she did.  Yes, a woman, which is also unlike the bad old days of male storytellers.

What is the latest art house film that you watched?

Dam(n) it!

Reading essays and books and online reports always remind me of the old days when I spent lots of time browsing the bookshelves at USC's libraries.  Coming from India where a single library with a few books was a sign of affluence, I was suddenly thrust into decadence at USC's libraries.  It was beyond my imagination that a university could have many libraries, and that every library could be filled with books and journals and microfiche and videos and whatever else that humans had invented to store information.

USC Doheny Library, summer 2009

It was also intellectually terrorizing to realize that I might not be able to make any contribution when so much had already been said about the human condition.  If all the great thinkers and lesser intellectuals, whose works were in the collections, hadn't figured things out, what were the chances that I would make a breakthrough?  

Intellectual humility has always fascinated me.  I have blogged about that here.  A lot.  Like this one in 2012 in which I quoted Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, who was known as Chandra and after whom a NASA named an important observatory satellite.  Or, like when I quoted Montaigne who said, Que sais-je? “What do I know?” was Montaigne’s beloved motto, meaning: What do I really know?

Years, decades, later, I developed and offered a seminar on the importance of intellectual humility.  I titled the course as "Intellectual boldness through intellectual humility."  In that, I essentially channeled my philosophy on education and life--to admit that I don't know.  The key, however, is to rise beyond that.  Emulate Benjamin Franklin and say, "I could be wrong, but, ..."

I don't know if students got it.  Get it? 😀

Anyway, reading essays and books and online reports never fail to remind me that there is so much to know, when I am far more interested in playing bridge online.  Today's exhibit: iatrogenesis.

There I was reading a depressing essay on how the extreme rains that followed extreme heat submerged a third of Pakistan under water.  As I wondered whether I should cut bait and get away from an essay that described a hopeless situation, I read this paragraph:

There is a term in medicine, iatrogenesis: illness that comes as the result of treatment (in Greek, “brought forth by a healer”). It can be an infection acquired in a hospital, or the nasty side effect of a prescription drug, or a superbug arising from the misuse of antibiotics—a medical riff, according to the Yale anthropologist James C. Scott, on the adage that the cure can be worse than the disease. Scott, who researches peasants and nonstate societies in Southeast Asia, is writing a book on the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar. He argues that modern management of rivers—for instance, the vast canal irrigation system that exacerbated flooding in Pakistan—has brought about the environmental equivalent of iatrogenic harm.

Imagine if engineers and financiers had had in them even an iota of intellectual humility.  They would have thought long and hard about constructing vast networks of dams and canals in order to tame the Indus.  (I wonder if the Army Corps of Engineers is required to think about iatrogenesis.)  Humanity might have then developed a different and better relationship with rivers and all the natural landscape that gives us life.  To quote Subramanyan "Chandra" Chandrasekhar again:

[There] seems to be a certain arrogance toward nature that people develop. These people have had great insights and made profound discoveries. They imagine afterwards that the fact that they succeeded so triumphantly in one area means they have a special way of looking at science which must be right. But science doesn’t permit that. Nature has shown over and over again that the kinds of truth which underlie nature transcend the most powerful minds.

Books and authors make me think

There are schools, and then there are schools.  A lot can happen in one's life depending on the school.

Some of my cousins who lived in smaller towns deep south in peninsular India were highly impressed by the school that my siblings and I went to.  The buildings, the science labs, and English as the medium of instruction were a complete contrast to the schools that they attended.

I didn't know any better, until  I came to know about schools that were a lot more impressive.

Sometime during my middle school years, when students from a couple of other schools came to participate in what I would now refer to as an academic decathlon, I sensed that there were schools that were even better than mine.  Some of those students were from a "public school" and carried themselves with confidence that I did not think was achievable until one reached adulthood.
(A note to my fellow Americans: The "public schools" in India are private boarding schools modeled after the British ones.)

So now there was a new tier that I hadn't known about. Until then, I had only known about government schools, and tuition-funded private schools like the one that I attended.  A public school?

When I started following politics as a pre-teen, and when Indira Gandhi's younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, was all over the news for all the controversies that he generated before his aeronautical and acrobatic fall to death, I understood that there were schools that even among public schools there were highly exclusive ones like the Doon School that Sanjay Gandhi attended.

The commie wannabe in me began to understand that the typical government school student faced a lower chance of "succeeding" in life compared to the typical student in my school, and a typical student at my school would not stand a chance against the typical Doon School student.

I suppose it was one of many eye-opening revelations on the unfairness in life, which has been one of my favorite topics here in this blog.

A few months ago, we hosted my companion's acquaintance.  I was meeting him for the first time.  During the chat over cake and tea, he said in his fading British accent that his sons were finishing their high school education in India, at a public school.  He preempted my question; it was the high school that he attended and that was the reason for his sons to go there.

No foreign student came anywhere near our school!  And I have never been anywhere near the part of India where those exclusive public schools are located.  The India of public schools is not the India of private schools, which are certainly not the India of government schools.

I am now reading a work of fiction by an author who is a Doon School product.  The Calcutta Chromosome is by Amitav Ghosh, who was born and raised in India.  Wikipedia notes:

Ghosh was born in Calcutta on 11 July 1956 and was educated at the all-boys boarding school The Doon School in Dehradun. He grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. His contemporaries at Doon included author Vikram Seth and historian Ram Guha.  While at school, he regularly contributed fiction and poetry to The Doon School Weekly (then edited by Seth) and founded the magazine History Times along with Guha.

I doubt that there is any government school in India where students run a weekly publication.

Back in 2013, I wrote in a blog-post that Americans only get to see the successful Indians--here in the US or back in India--who are often people like Amitav Ghosh and me and many more, who come from privileged backgrounds.  Well, Ghosh was raised with a lot more privilege than I was.  A government run school in India rarely produces students who are able to make their way to America at a young age in pursuit of their educational or business dreams.  If only politicians and the public here in the US would understand that people like me do not represent the average person in India.

From the reunion in 2011.
The one wearing a dark shirt and holding a plastic bag is Vijay.

Putting lipstick on a pig

Though I was new to the country, I immediately latched on to following American politics for all the drama that it provided.  When the campaign for the 1992 elections got underway, I was a seasoned pro compared to most Americans.

One of my favorites during that campaign was not a candidate but one who was gifted with awesome rhetoric and the sarcastic lines that she delivered with a deadpan and a sharp twinkle in her eyes--Ann Richards.

Sharply critical of President Bush's (the father, not the son) decision to send US naval ships to protect oil  tankers in the Middle East, Richards said "you can put lipstick on a hog and call it Monique, but it's still a pig."

While a few Americans may have been familiar with a version or two of that idiom, Richards saying that was the first time ever I had come across that expression and I loved it.  Of course, Richards saying that with her Texas twang and with an impeccable timing for the punch to land made it all the more exciting.

So, by the time Barack Obama used that expression of putting lipstick on a pig--it was during his first presidential campaign--I was familiar with it being a rhetorical ploy that never fails to excite the audience.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are nothing but vehicles with lipstick on the problems that vehicles are.

Four months ago, I blogged about the death of the small car market here in the US. The four-door hatchback, Honda Fit, that we rely on is no longer sold because Americans want bigger and bigger and bigger vehicles.  I wrote there that it is nothing but evidence of how the market system works.  The manufacturers are not to be blamed when American consumers are making it clear that they want bigger and even bigger!

This is why even in the EV market, the electric pickup truck was always talked about as the game changer for the EV industry.  Because, if those massive pickup trucks, and the SUVs that are nothing but "car-like" bodies on truck frames (talk about lipstick on a pig!) can become electric, then Americans will become gung-ho about EVs. 

But, what if the problem is not gasoline-powered vehicles vs. EVs, but the very fact that we have too many vehicles and that they are also huge?

This op-ed in MIT Technology Review reminds me about something that I had forgotten.  A year ago, President Biden went to Detroit to talk up the infrastructure spending that has been passed.

When Biden arrived at General Motors, he jumped behind the wheel not of a Bolt, the company’s electric subcompact car, but the new Hummer EV, a vehicle that’s the embodiment of everything wrong with the trajectory of vehicle design in the past couple of decades. After taking it for a spin, he declared, “That Hummer’s one hell of a vehicle.” Days later, GM announced that Biden’s publicity stunt had boosted reservations for the massive vehicles, so we’re likely to see more of them on the road.

A hummer that is powered by a battery pack is still a Hummer.  It is a bright red lipstick on a big fat pig!

The opinion essay continues:

EVs are often termed “zero-emission” vehicles because they produce no tailpipe emissions. But that doesn’t mean they are clean. Their large batteries require a lot of resource extraction from mines around the world, with significant environmental and human consequences that include poisoning water supplies, increasing rates of cancer and lung disease, and even making use of child labor. If we’re to embrace the transition being sold to us—one that relies heavily on electrifying personal vehicles—demand for key minerals will soar by 2040, according to the IEA, with an estimated 4,200% increase for lithium alone. The batteries in increasingly massive electric trucks and SUVs must be much larger than those needed to propel small cars or even e-bikes, which are not the focus of American policymakers or industry players. (They’d be far less profitable.)

The American fascination, fixation, on trucks and SUVs is why the Honda Fit is no longer sold here in the US.  A Honda Fit with a battery pack will not sell either, when consumers prefer a Honda Pilot with a battery pack instead.

The trend toward larger vehicles has had bad consequences for both road safety and the environment. Continuing  it through the transition to electric vehicles means that EVs will require bigger batteries, and thus more minerals will have to be mined to power them. But there are other options that can address some of those problems. 

As the shift to EVs accelerates and commodity prices increase, there’s good reason to promote smaller cars that cost less, require smaller batteries, are better suited for the trips most people take, and pose less of a threat to pedestrians.

To use the line that Dana Carvey often employed in his fantastic comedic impressions of President Bush, "not gonna do it."  Neither the industry nor the government (at any level) will work towards policies that promote small cars, public transit, denser cities, and a whole lot more that we need to do in order to address climate change.  Instead, we will spend a lot of money putting lipsticks on big fat pigs!

(I couldn't track down a short clip of Ann Richards delivering the lipstick line.  So, instead, I offer you the awesome one that made me absolutely thrilled with American politics when she addressed the Democratic convention in 1988)

Meta Schadenfreude

Once the basic needs are met, the "want" that drives the consumer economy is all about creating a demand for goods and services that never existed before and convincing people to spend their money on them.  Of course, such consumption is also the reason that we have ended up with the greatest challenge that humanity faces--climate change.  But, though COP27 is a great context to talk about the role of consumption, that blog-post has to wait for another day.

Because, these days I am constantly grinning with schadenfreude every time I read the news.  No, the schadenfreude is not from the "red wave" that did not happen, as a result of which Republicans are all twisted in shapes that would impress even professional contortionists.  The schadenfreude is over the free falling social media stocks.

Ironical it might when I embed a tweet even as I celebrate the collapse of social medial stocks, but hang on with me:

Last September, #Zuckerberg was worth $140 billion, meaning he's lost over $100 billion since he adopted his #metaverse strategy https://t.co/HM3UKaSbNh via @YahooFinance #Meta #schadenfreude #Facebook

— I am elon musk! (@congoboy) October 31, 2022

It was just over a year ago, Facebook became the fifth to become a trillion dollar company.  And then Humpty Dumpty took a great fall--it is now worth less than $300 billion.  You can see from how far the share prices have dropped:

My Facebook schadenfreude goes back to the days when Facebook went public, which was back in 2012.  In this blog  post ten years ago, I commented on how Fuckerbeg and his pals created a scheme for themselves to become uber-rich. Facebook is not the only social media company that is in doldrums.  In the news, it is dwarfed by Twitter's collapse.

A year ago, after reading an essay, I tweeted in agreement with the premise:

"Wouldn’t it just be better if fewer people posted less stuff, less frequently, and if smaller audiences saw it?"
To put it simply, STFU!@ibogost in @TheAtlantic: https://t.co/3m0dZwYynE #Facebook #SocialMedia

— I am elon musk! (@congoboy) October 26, 2021

Before the consumer economy, when people lived mostly in villages, there was gossip, yes, but by and large people had little time to talk about stuff.  Now, all we do is talk, talk, talk on Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, WeChat, WeShit, Whatever!

The author of that essay from a year ago, Ian Bogost, has a follow up in which he writes:

Social media was never a natural way to work, play, and socialize, though it did become second nature. The practice evolved via a weird mutation, one so subtle that it was difficult to spot happening in the moment.

Bogost continues:

If change is possible, carrying it out will be difficult, because we have adapted our lives to conform to social media’s pleasures and torments. It’s seemingly as hard to give up on social media as it was to give up smoking en masse, like Americans did in the 20th century. Quitting that habit took decades of regulatory intervention, public-relations campaigning, social shaming, and aesthetic shifts. At a cultural level, we didn’t stop smoking just because the habit was unpleasant or uncool or even because it might kill us. We did so slowly and over time, by forcing social life to suffocate the practice. That process must now begin in earnest for social media.

We can easily live without any of the social media.  Facebook or Twitter disappearing will, in fact, end up enriching our lives because we currently fail to see how much we have become addicted to all those avenues.  It is also such an addiction that gave us the poisoned tRump, Musk, and Kanye, writes Jaron Lanier in the New York Times.

I have been a big fan of Lanier for a long time.  The NY Times essay continues with comments and warnings that he has been making for a while now about technology and social media.  In this essay, Lanier writes:

Twitter poisoning makes sufferers feel more oppressed than is reasonable in response to reasonable rules. The scope of fun is constricted to transgressions. Unfortunately, scale changes everything. Taunts become dangerous hate when amplified. A Twitter-poisoned soul will often complain of a loss of fun when someone succeeds at moderating the spew of hate.

Twitter poisoning is a little like alcoholism or gambling addiction, in that the afflicted lose all sense of proportion about their own powers. They can come to believe they have almost supernatural abilities. Little boys fantasize about energy beams shooting from their fingertips.

You can easily see tRump, Musk, and Kanye as Twitter-poisoned people, who go around poisoning hundreds of millions more.

My schadenfreude over the problems at these companies, and the layoffs across a number of tech firms, does not mean that social media will go away.  They are here to stay, and will even morph into versions that will further threaten what it means to be human.  But, for the moment, I am absolutely enjoying watching the collapse of Facebook and Twitter.

And I cannot thank the Germans enough for giving us the word schadenfreude that describes this emotion so well!

Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma Khamenei

As I get older, I notice that I am not as quick as I used to be in recalling details.  Sometimes, incidents and people have faded out.  It is no surprise then that my father recently commented that every so often he wonders if the events that he recalls really happened or whether he dreamt about them.

A good chunk of life fades in the rear-view mirror.  I suppose I should be glad that I am able to recall whatever it is that I am able to.

The principal of the wonderful school, where I was a lifer,  had plenty of laudable goals that were almost always badly executed.  We students had many mean jokes about him, and continue to do that even now whenever we get together. 

One of his goals was that students ought to be interested in local and global current affairs, which is why during the weekly assembly under the morning hot sun, we students stood there as one of his hand-picked favorites read out a few news stories for a couple of minutes. 

(No, I have never been any teacher's favorite.  Not anybody's.  Not even my parents' favorite. The story of my life!!!)

Once, the guy who read the important global news at the assembly was the younger brother of a classmate of mine.  When reading a few sentences about the Iran-Iraq war, he referred to the then-new leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, as "Mr. Ayatollah." The news junkie that I was even back then, I thought it was bizarre that he said "Mr. Ayatollah."  I can't help but smile even now, though decades have gone by. 

It was during the early stages of the Iran-Iraq war and The Hindu provided reports on the war every single day.  That war was a big reason why "Mr. Ayatollah" was often mentioned at the news reports during the weekly assembly.

"Mr. Ayatollah" Khomeini has been gone for a while.  There is another "Mr. Ayatollah" in place--Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini, as if the theocracy was hell bent on making us as confused as one can be when watching the old Abbott and Costello routine on "Who's on first."

In yesterday's post, I referred to the Subcontinent as has always been in the middle of it all, with people coming in from the west or the north, and occasionally over the waters, despite being bordered by mountains in the north, desert in the west, and open waters around the peninsula.  Iran doesn't enjoy such naturally protective boundaries all around, and has truly been in the middle of it all, and this was also key to its magnificence:

It is not an accident that Iran was the ancient world’s first superpower. There was a certain geographic logic to it. Iran is the greater Middle East’s universal joint, tightly fused to all of the outer cores. Its border roughly traces and conforms to the natural contours of the landscape—plateaus to the west, mountains and seas to the north and south, and desert expanse in the east toward Afghanistan. For this reason, Iran has a far more venerable record as a nation-state and urbane civilization than most places in the Arab world and all the places in the Fertile Crescent. Unlike the geographically illogical countries of that adjacent region, there is nothing artificial about Iran.

India is a made-up country, an artificial construct.  Iran, however, has a long and rich history with a clear identity.

How do women fit into that identity?

A good number of women in Iran decided that they have had it with Khamenei and Khomeini defining womanhood.  Now, men too have joined their protests against the theocracy.

It is more than eight weeks of protests, which have not let up, and the world has not figured out how to respond to it.  Even doctors have taken to the streets chanting "death to the dictator."  The response from the dictator, Khamenei, has been brutal:

Security forces, mostly plainclothes agents, had set up positions around the building and vans were parked nearby to transport detainees. Then, without warning, riot police on motorcycles began shooting metal pellets at the crowd, two witnesses told The Washington Post. 

“They were shooting with guns, nonstop, everyone started running,” said a doctor who provided a written account of the attack. 

“They used shotguns [with pellets], batons and tear gas without any limitation,” another doctor recalled. “They beat a young woman dentist and an old physician about 70 [years old] on their heads and they fell on the ground.”

Back when I was in high school, I would never have imagined that forty years later Iranians would be fighting for their rights and risking their lives while protesting against "Mr. Ayatollah"!  Forty years.  Four decades under two Mr. Ayatollahs.  How godawful that such oppression is carried out under the name of god!

From the source:
A top Iranian actress has posted an image of herself on Instagram without a headscarf to signal solidarity with anti-government demonstrations.
Taraneh Alidoosti - best known for her role in the Oscar-winning film The Salesman - also held a sign reading "Woman, Life, Freedom" in Kurdish.

I am no Juggernaut

I thoroughly enjoyed a type of column that I wrote in the local newspaper.  It was when I jumped on a local news report and tied something from it back to the old country.  It was fun.  Sheer delight for me.  And, according to the emails that I received in appreciation, apparently many readers too liked those columns.

Once, a reader wrote in an email that he (she?) had no idea about India's long and rich history and connections to various aspects of life.  I was, and am, glad to be an ambassador representing the old country!  

In the Eurasian landmass, the Subcontinent has always been in the middle of it all, with people coming in from the west or the north, and occasionally over the waters.  These "others" came to trade or to wage wars, but the result was the same either way: The Subcontinent offered them plenty and also absorbed much from them.  So, yes, of course the connections are vast and complex.

Here's an example from 2008.  "A juggernaut" was how a state politician described the retiring president of the university, which is attached to a massive football team owned funded by pHil kNight, who failed in his attempt to defeat the Democratic candidate for governor.

The word juggernaut became the inspiration for my column that was published on May 12, 2008.

****************************

Act Locally But Speak Globally

Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney described Dave Frohnmayer as a "juggernaut" for his influential role at the University of Oregon and in shaping higher education in the state. The offhand use of the word "juggernaut" is another example of how immersed we are in a globalized environment.

As with many words in the language, which my students say that I speak with a very strange accent, "juggernaut" is a borrowed word. The word owes its origin to India, to a very specific Hindu festival. 

Along India's east coast, by the Bay of Bengal, lies the state of Orissa. In this state is a town called Puri, which is one of the many cities considered holy by Hindus. The presiding deity at the Puri temple is Jagannath, a Sanskrit name that means "lord of the universe." 

One of the temple's main festivals is the rath yatra, a chariot procession. Hundreds of faithful devotees pull the ropes attached to three towering chariots, or temple cars as they are sometimes called. 

According to my parents, this is quite a spectacle. These temple cars are huge - about 45 feet tall - and are constructed every year according to traditional specifications. It is difficult to get them moving, as one can imagine - and it is not easy to control their movements, either. 

The British, who ruled India for a good number of years, were so impressed with this towering spectacle that they soon adopted it into the language as "juggernaut." Now it is in our daily U.S. vocabulary. 

The British brought away many words from their experiences in India. Rarely do we pause to ponder the geographic origins of words. Some of the favorite examples I share with students include "mulligatawny soup." Mulligatawny is derived from "milagu thanneer," which means "pepper water" in the Tamil language, which I grew up speaking at home in India. 

Of course, globalization is not a one-way street. India has its own experiences with foreigners - and not merely with the British Raj. 

Thus, daily life in India reflects centuries of cultural interactions - some voluntary, others forced. 

For instance, when the British introduced railways in India, the English phrase "railway station" became a part of the Tamil vocabulary. That is, there was no special Tamil word to describe the place where the trains stopped; instead, Tamilians too called it a "railway station," using the local script. 

Even vegetables such as potatoes and cauliflower were introduced into India by Europeans, which is why my grandmothers referred to all such produce as "English vegetables." They had to keep track of the geographic origins particularly because only Indian vegetables and fruits could be used in traditional and religious rituals. For the longest time, vegetables such as beans and carrots, which are referred to by their English names, were available only in the cosmopolitan cities. Now, I am pleasantly shocked to find even broccoli in smaller towns. Yes, there are people who do like broccoli! 

My grandmothers, who did not attend school beyond the eighth grade because they were married in their early teens, used a number of English words as well, even though they never learned to read or write English. Later on, as we grandchildren attended schools where English was the medium of instruction, my grandmothers always were fascinated with our bilingual environment - sometimes even trilingual. 

Whatever our personal opinions might be on the effects of such globalization, as the usage of "juggernaut" indicates, we are all products of centuries of interactions among different cultures and traditions. With English as the dominant language on the Internet, in intellectual activities and in commerce, we can expect more and more infusion of English into other languages and, simultaneously, an inflow of foreign words into the English language. 

By the way, if you are fascinated with the original juggernaut - the rath yatra - this year it will be on July 4. Watch out for mega-crowds, though: They are expecting 5 million visitors. Perhaps a trip for the local "juggernaut," Dave Frohnmayer, in the summer before his retirement?

The GOP hates Surya Namaskar

It turned out that the midterm election was not about punishing the party and its candidates who explicitly supported or failed to stand up against the insurrection on January 6th a year ago.  Even abortion rights that the Supreme Court overturned did not become a rallying cry for voters.  People have practically abandoned Ukraine from the political discourse.  And, climate change was not even talked about as a high priority.

As always, crime and immigration were played up.  And, of course, the price of gas.

Source

We are screwed!

There was one moment when President Biden spoke about climate change and renewable energy and, therefore, about coal.  Biden said on November 4th, a mere three days before the election Tuesday:

Folks, it’s also now cheaper to generate electricity from wind and solar than it is from coal and oil.  Literally cheaper.  Not a joke. 

I was just — and so we can accommodate that transition.  I was in Massachusetts about a month ago on the site of the largest old coal plant in America.  Guess what?  It cost them too much money.  They can’t count.  No one is building new coal plants because they can’t rely on it, even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of their existence of the plant.  So it’s going to become a wind generation. 

And all they’re doing is — it’s going to save them a hell of a lot of money, and they’re using the same transmission line that transmitted the coal-fired electric on.  We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.

Biden is correct in claiming that it is getting awfully inexpensive to produce electricity from wind and solar, and over time we will be shutting down coal plants across the country.

There are such facts.  And then there is politics.

Recall what happened when Hillary Clinton spoke about the dying days of coal during her presidential campaign?  Her opponent, tRump, jumped on it and promised that he would make sure that coal does not go away.  Guess who won the contest?

In his column, David Leonhardt wrote in 2019:

The G.O.P.’s radical turn means that climate activists can no longer search for a compromise between the two parties, in the hope that their leaders will try to sell it to skeptical voters. Republicans have made clear that they will instead stoke the skepticism for their own ends. Doing so pleases the oil and coal industries, which are generous campaign donors. It also helps win elections.

So, when President Biden spoke about shutting down coal plants, one would expect Republicans to push back, yes?

It was a Democrat who immediately pounced on Biden's words.  A Senator.  Joe Manchin "erupted" reports CNN:

Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who has longtime ties to the coal industry, seized on the comments in a statement on Saturday, calling them “not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs.”

“Comments like these are the reason the American people are losing trust in President Biden and instead believes he does not understand the need to have an all in energy policy that would keep our nation totally energy independent and secure. It seems his positions change depending on the audience and the politics of the day. Politicizing our nation’s energy policies would only bring higher prices and more pain for the American people,” Manchin continued.

With Democrats like Manchin joining forces with Republicans, it is clear that our future depends on what state and local governments are able to push through.  In this framework, the race for the governor's mansion in three states matters a lot, argues this Washington Post report.  The three states are New Mexico, Michigan, and Massachussets.  Interestingly enough, the Democratic gubernatorial candidates in these three states are women: Michelle Lujan Grisham, Gretchen Whitmer, and Maura Healey.  All three women won their contests.

I suppose that yet again it will be left to women to clean up the mess that men leave behind!  But then, maybe we won't be screwed?

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