The virus that wouldn't die

In her routine, the stand-up comedian and actor, Sarah Silverman had a valid observation: She said that she is a product of her upbringing.  Her liberal activism is not a surprise, she said, given that she grew up with progressive Jewish parents.

You are perhaps nodding in agreement.

What about the children who grew up with parents who taught them to hate?  It is not difficult to imagine that there are adults who hate pick-your-group, and these adults have kids.  They are not going to teach their kids to love everybody when they are filled with hate for some "wrong" kind of people, right?  (Here's a lengthy essay on one such real life person, if you are interested.)

modi, putin, trump, duterte, and the like (all men?) have mainstreamed hate.  What previously was said and done only behind closed doors and in secret is now openly said and done.  Unlike the small pox or polio virus, hate apparently cannot be completely eliminated, and it keeps coming back to cause epidemics over and over again.  And, in the process, the hate virus infects even people who were brought up by parents who taught their children well.

Over the past few years, it seems that Muslims have displaced Blacks as the most hated group.  It is just bizarre that the hate virus goes after new targets if attacking the old targets do not produce the virulence that was once possible.  It does not matter to the religious that their messiah preached about love, and not about hate.  We humans are messed up.

Even the Buddha's name cannot stop his followers, it seems.  Yes, I am referring to the crazy hate-filled Buddhist monks leading the war against Muslims in Myanmar.  I first blogged about this back in April 2013.   Imagine that!

In 2014, I wrote that it is practically game over when even Buddhists commit genocide.  In 2015, I was shocked that even the Dalai Lama could not get the attention of the Myanmar politicians; they didn't care for what the respected religious leader had to say.

Earlier this year, before the fascist's official swearing-in, I wrote that we should stop saying "never again" given how much we have stood by witnessing the Myanmar genocide.  Should we be surprised then that the rest of the world has gone on with its business of hating immigrants, Muslims, Blacks, gays, trans, ...

Is hate, or evil,  a permanent feature of the human condition?  Or, "As the American clergyman William Sloane Coffin put it: “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, and nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”"

Something fishy about robots!

In my classes, I use plenty of contemporary examples in order to highlight the rapidly changing economic geography that makes our lives so fascinating.  Of course, not all students like my approach.  In her review of my teaching, one student wrote in the university's evaluation process that the "class is completely worthless and Sriram Khe should not be allowed to teach the way he does."  "Sriram and his shitty teaching style" made it hard for her to learn, she wrote.

Different strokes for different folks, eh!

I am sure that I will use during this academic year the example of the sushi robot; too bad if a student will not understand and appreciate its significance.

Sushi, which I have never even tasted, has been one of my favorite examples when discussing the geographic diffusion of culture.  Now, keep in mind that food is not merely cultural but has market value too.  Sushi can now be found in practically every grocery store in the US.  In the store next to mine, there is a sushi table where two chefs can be found rolling the sushi.

Sushi is not "native" to this land; it came from elsewhere.  Like how the chicken tikka masala is not native to the UK.  We live in an exciting world of awesome food possibilities.  Sushi, when first introduced in the US, was not a hit.  American consumers gasped at the very idea of raw fish.  And then Breakfast Club happened.  The rest, as they say, is history.

The making of sushi, too, has been automated.

Suzumo Machinery Co.’s robots are used by about 70,000 customers around the world, ranging from sushi chains to factories, and account for about 70 percent of the market for the equipment at restaurants, according to Suzumo’s estimates. Kaiten sushi, also known as conveyor-belt sushi, has become a $6 billion industry in Japan alone, partly thanks to Suzuki’s invention.
Cheap sushi “couldn’t have happened without our machines,” says Ikuya Oneda, who succeeded Suzuki as Suzumo president in 2004, a year before the founder died, and took over his life’s work. “You can certainly say that.”

So much of what we eat these days is a result of machines doing the work.  A while ago, I watched a video in which a creative Indian had mechanized most of the vadai making.  I am not sure if that became a hit in India.  But, it is only a matter of time before vadais become products of full automation, after which a few restaurants will advertise "traditional, hand-made" vadais.

Of course, sushi robots were met with resistance in Japan.

In 1976, sushi was still largely a food for special occasions. It was mostly sold through a legion of small restaurants, where artisan chefs dispensed morsels with no price tags and charged how they saw fit.
Not surprisingly, those chefs were up in arms when they heard about Suzumo’s plan. In their view, it took 10 years to train someone to make sushi. No machine could possibly do the job.

We humans hate change.  We are wired to be conservatives.   That is how we survived in the wild.  But then we humans are also quick to adapt to changes--once we see the benefits of change.

Suzumo stuck with the task, and two years later the sushi chefs finally said the machine was usable. In 1981, the company completed its first robot, which formed sushi rice into balls called nigiri. These days, it offers 28 different sushi machines.
“What they’ve done is allow kaiten restaurants to democratize and make good Japanese food affordable and accessible,” says Robin Rowland, chairman and chief executive officer of Yo!, a U.K. sushi chain with almost 100 restaurants globally.

And, thus, the conveyer-belt  sushi that we have seen, where people point to which box they want.  Further, in a market system, customers know what they want, especially if the price is right:

Already, about three-quarters of Japanese people say that when they eat sushi, it’s from a conveyor belt, according to a survey published by fishery company Maruha Nichiro Corp. in March. Almost half of them choose which restaurant based on price.

I tell ya, whether students find all these to be awesome or shitty, I have a great time understanding this fascinating world through my preferred framework.

Climate Change? Bullshit!

One of the many, many, many problems that trump has created for me is this: The fascist sucks up so much of my time and energy that I have very little left for the world outside.  I used to have plenty of time for the rest of the world; now, despite being on furlough, I barely have time to keep up with his shit!  And boy does he shit by the truckload every single day!!!

I don't even have the time anymore to talk about the old country.  Well, ok, that is also because I have given up on that old land.  But, it is not as if I don't keep up with the news about the Subcontinent.  For one, talking to my father every other day means that I have an idea of life there, however skewed that reporting might be.

As I have blogged before, one of the regular features of our conversations is about water.  Yep, water.  About the water shortage in Chennai.  About groundwater depletion in Sengottai.  And, of course, the monsoon.

We might be far removed from the village and farming life of our ancestors, but we father and son always worry about water, and the rains.

Therefore, the monsoon floods in different parts of India, too, have been regular topics.  "Remember the old news reels before the movies that you kids made fun of?  "பீகாரில் வெள்ளம்" (Floods in Bihar) in that grave newscaster voice?" he remarked.  Because, well, there have been floods in Bihar.  And in Assam. And ...

We humans are messed up; we do not understand how integral water is to our existence on this planet.  Despite scientists searching for water in the universe as signs of life, we fail to truly understand the preciousness of water.  We continue to abuse and mis-manage this life-giving resource.

But, hey, we humans are nothing but pesky irritants on this planet.  The more we try to mess with the planet, the more our own very lives will be threatened--either as water shortage, or as floods.

This summer, more than a thousand have died in the floods in South Asia; "while flooding in the Houston area has grabbed more attention, aid officials say a catastrophe is unfolding in South Asia"

“This is the severest flooding in a number of years,” Francis Markus, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said by phone from Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.
...
Asked how the situation in Nepal compared with that in Houston, Mr. Markus said, “We hope people won’t overlook the desperate needs of the people here because of the disasters closer home.”
India has also suffered immensely. Floods have swept across the states of Assam, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and other areas.

It is not over yet.

And the rain keeps coming.
On Tuesday, Mumbai, the sprawling financial capital, was soaked to the bone. Nearly all day, the rain drummed down. As people scurried up the sidewalks, the wind tore umbrellas out concof their hands.
The sky seemed to fall lower and lower, pressing down on the building tops, cutting visibility to a few blocks, then a few yards. By midafternoon, it was so dark it felt like nightfall.

And, yes, like with Hurricane Harvey, climate change likely played a role:

"This is not normal," Reaz Ahmed, the director-general of Bangladesh's Department of Disaster Management, told CNN. "Floods this year were bigger and more intense than the previous years."
Climate change appears to be intensifying the region's monsoon rains.

Climate change?  News to me!

 Unchecked urban development has also left many communities in the region without proper drainage systems, which only compounds the problem when a natural disaster strikes. "A lot of the urbanization ... has happened in a largely unplanned matter," Abhas Jha, the World Bank sector manager for Transport, Urban and Disaster Risk Management for East Asia and the Pacific, told CNN

It is one thing if my blog-posts and op-eds echoing such logic are ignored; after all, I am but a lowly academic at a podunk university.  But, it is a shame that real experts continue to be attacked by the fascist and his adopted party.  What a fuck up!

Caption at the source:
Flood-affected people sleeping by a highway toll plaza in the Indian state of Bihar last week.