. 2 ?

Point. 2. Ponder.

This funny observation by the early 20th century New York Times columnist Don Marquis...

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

Now, why am I unable to stop laughing at its relevance to our beloved President Bush. Or for that matter for any damn politician alive today.

Random Randomness

Things that I can never stop pondering about - well, there are always too many things. But the one thing that always fascinates me is the true measure of randomness. In short, how random is random?

For all practical purposes, we use calculated randomness - a random generator that has an initial seed. And that is the bias that prevents it from being truly random. It is like approaching infinity. Once you feel you are there, there is always something more. And more. And more. So, how do we actually achieve randomness?

Well, I suppose one way is to not strive for randomness at all. (Gulp! That is not a solution is it?). Well, maybe if we shrunk our perspective to something smaller, then events happening in that purview just might appear to be random. Note the keyword. Appear. Maybe that is all there is to it. True randomness doesn't really matter as much as the appearance of it. So typically human isn't it - the reality does not matter as much as the appearance of reality.

One final word I suppose - lack of bias or randomness maybe is crucial for a lot of our current applications and things, but in the grand cosmic scale of things, maybe everything is truly random and yet really programmed. Yes. Programmed, and random. Together. And yet disparate. Now I am totally confused. Heck. Who cares. Its 07/07/07 07:07:07 PM. Now, I have exactly one year, one month, one day, one hour, one minute and one second to come up with another such random tripe disguised as a blog-post. Boy, the summer heat is really causing my brains to go awry :)

Thank You For Smoking

Spin. Spin-doctoring. How you want to call it, whatever you want to make of it, the one thing that is constant in this day of instant media and instant news, is spin. Not the facts, not the news, but the interpretation of what that means to you and me, the ordinary joe. And not the interpretation that we choose for ourselves, but rather the interpretation of the news given to us, rather thrust down our throats by the so-called media and Government.

Granted, it has been proven beyond doubt that smoking is harmful to health (and no, don't even bother trying to convince me otherwise). Granted, the harmful effects of smoking need to be taught to people so that they can make informed choices. But is that the reality? Nope. Instead, we have pseudo advertising in movies and such that portray smoking as a cool activity that screen heroes do. Ergo, it must be a cool thing for teens and kids to do.

What we have is a total abdication of personal responsibility by parents and actually everyone around. Until we as individuals can stake and claim the responsibility for our own lives, no matter what happens around us, we are going to be stuck in this vicious cycle. Till we wake up, well....Thank you for smoking!!!

Good to be back

Life is changed. I am changed. The day has changed. And so has the year. I have a right-shoulder to lean on ( and a left-shoulder too: albeit belonging to the same person :P). But she and I won't let one thing change...our love for writing.

It is good to be back.

"Looking For Comedy In the Muslim World"

Diversity. In language. Mannerism. In speech. In contexts. Its everywhere. So it should be no surprise that people have a hard time understanding each others' idiosyncracies. Be it at the individual or family or ethno-religious or national context. A lot of times, we seem to be at logger heads. Being the curious people that we are, we want to try and understand the other.

And when we fall flat and fail to understand, it is because of one and only one reason - the effort was not honestly unbiased.

Looking For Comedy..the film, is the story of one such attempt by the American Administration to understand what causes the Muslims to laugh. Tragically, they use the means of a Hollywood comic, Albert Brooks to achieve their results, and well, the result is a comedy of errors, culture shock, and misunderstandings bordering on the comic. What is perceived as a job well done by the Brooks' character is actually a botched job that may have resulted in precipitating the already tenous relationship between India and Pakistan. (Talk about difference in perceptions).

What this movie so adeptly underscores is that, despite best efforts to actually try and genuinely understand something, when we go into an initiative inadequately prepared, the result is inevitable catastrophe. Especially when the funny guy sent in by the government has had no prior exposure to the cultural subcontexts of the places that he is supposedly scouting.

Two poignant scenes that underscore the theme of the movie happen within minutes of each other...first, the State Department cohort sent with the comic asks the comic's secretary to tell him to "break a leg". Her response..."Oh please. Thats rude." The second is when, the comic has tried in vain to get the audience to respond to some of his stand-up jokes, he asks in jest as to how many in the audience knows and understands English. And much to his chagrin, the entire audience lifts their hands up.

Two vastly different experiences - one at an individual level and another at a group level that has the same symptoms of the vastly under-rated problem - the problem of understanding and appreciating multi-culturalism. When an effort is made to understand a different culture through the same lens as we view ours, the result is a grotesque misrepresentation of the glorious concept of cultural diversity.

Looking for Comedy is a fantastic indie that atleast has the guts to hint at our seeming inability to understand diversity on its own merits.

On Education

Came across a rather interesting portrayal of education by the famed English economist John Maynard Keynes on the web earlier today...and sat down to think as to how truly it resonates atleast in my personal experience with the education systems in India and the USA.

"Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent."

Brevity befitting an Englishman. Easily confounding just as easily comprehensible. Must be why the best education people generally receive is in the school of life.

Perpetual Error Correction

A swinging pendulum is going about its lively, frolicking and music-filled way from this way left to that way right, on and on and on for perpetuity. If it were to have intelligence, would it wonder at its fate? Would it think of itself as a device thats not just swinging to-and-fro in a merry never-ending dance, but rather as a contraption that is ensnared in its own fight against the spirits of nature - its own version of perpetual error correction?

Many times, when I notice people falling into traps and troubles of their own making, again and again, with no flicker of recognition of the recurring issues in their memories, no sign of hope of resolution in their desultory faces, and I am put at deep wonder - are we just the human version of pendulums, stuck in perpetual error correction mode?

"You think you know who you are?"

...
"You've absolutely no idea" (from the thought-provoking movie Crash)

Have you thought lately on how prejudiced you are or can be? Especially when it concerns the matter of another race of people? Or even when it just concerns the matter of people that "look" differently than you do?

We've made our own lives so complex, so profoundly shallow, so irresponsibly ego-centric, we may have just forgotten what it means to be a person. We can argue about morals, morality, right, righteousness, God, etc till the cows come home. But until that time comes, when fraught with danger and faced with hurdles we stop resorting to racial slurs and epithets against any one or more perceived communities, we maybe all are doing a Jim Crow, albeit to every discriminated race.

And economic progress and how long a country has been free has apparently nothing to do with it either. India has been and still continues to be victim of its own prejudices; Australia, France, Britain, Germany and the US also boast an ignominous record. Yes, statistically the developed nations maybe have a leg up on the rest of the world, but the fact still remains - almost everywhere is a prejudiced society. Many places, we've managed to hide it under a veneer of sophistication that passes off as tolerance and acceptance.

I am not sure where we can start to unlearn the prejudices that we've learnt, but I suppose, by accident or by design, we have begun moving along that path of accepting diversity, because we're atleast acknowledging that there are problems. And the new economic realities also seem to be spurring this acceptance along.

To quote documentary film-maker Bill Brummel's words - "Imagine we are all the same. Imagine we agree about politics, religion and morality. Imagine we like the same types of music, art, food and coffee. Imagine we all look alike. Sound boring? Differences need not divide us. Embrace diversity. Dignity is everyone's human right." (Starbucks' The Way I See It #61)

If you want to run with the big dogs...

...you got to stop pissing with the puppies.

The BBC's Delhi-based South Asia bureau editor Paul Danahar writes this excellent piece on the India - US diplomacy and the new row sparked this week by the US Ambassador to India, David Mulford's remarks to the Press Trust of India.

A fantastic analysis, even-handed in explaining the points as they played out on both sides of the row. Especially considering that both sides are neither right nor wrong. Each is just trying to play the cards to their advantage - the US in getting an all-important vote to get the UN to refer Iran to the Security Countil, India in not upsetting the apple-cart vis-a-vis its special relationship with both Iran and the US.

In George W. Bush's world of black and white, the choices in this issue are mut-ex i.e. mutually exclusive. And in a rarity for me, I completely agree. But unfortunately for Georgie (and me), world politics is never played out in black and white. Rather, the viewer needs binoculars capable of interpreting the billion shades of gray that are possible in this drama.

Cooler heads are bound to prevail in this spat, and after all the posturing on both sides (Condi Rice apparently joined in the chorus, warning that the US Congress might not approve the deal if India voted against the US position, and David Mulford had to do the classic back-pedal "the remarks were taken out of context/I was quoted out of context" charade after getting a dressing-down from the Indian government). But it has queered the pitch for the Indian government...thanks to a moment of tactless lapse by a professional tactician.

I mean, how thick do you have to be, to not get the simple fact - nations do not like being bullied around, especially those that have aspirations of their own.

It is too soon to make a comparison, but if this keeps up, I cannot help think of future India-US relations on the same scale as the current French-American relations - quibbling step-sisters who cannot stop arguing/fighting/spitting at each other, and yet cannot be divorced off each other.

Vive diplomatie...

The Inevitable Overload

Ok. So it is the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Superhawks that are going to play for the Lombardi Trophy this year. The Championship game of the National Football League. Or as affectionately referred to by us aliens, "American Football". Or as affectionately referred to by us natives, the "World Championship" game.

The game I can live with, even manage to watch, especially for the fantastic commercials that are a result of the millions poured in by companies who are presumably dazed/drugged into thinking that these spots were worth that much.

But please, oh please, spare me the hype. Spare me the bull that the NFL is the national pastime. Spare me the marketing blitz that would tell me that if I miss the Superbowl, I am missing a part of life. When it has reached the point that the hype and hoopla surrounding the game is bigger than the game, when the media circus surrounding the game has the audacity to criticize a host city for short-comings for a mere game, when the league has the audacity to hold league cities to a ransom, forcing the citizens to pony up a tax to pay for a stadium that will fund their pockets, count me out.

Am I enraged? Of course I am enraged. Especially when I am paying a tax to pay for the new stadium for the backbone-less franchise helmed by the leech named Bill Bidwill just so they can put spineless spiritless teams on the field and wallow in mediocrity, while those fat cows fatten themselves even more.

In a sense, the next two weeks will mean a lot more time for myself - what with all the time I will save from not having to watch ESPN drum the Super-hype-bown in to my head...

Thank God for small mercies...

Dissing Intellectuals

In these times of unprecedented assault on intellectuals (dissing them as liberals, for instance), it is always fun to give the right-wing off-their-rocker types more ammo to diss us with...

One, from a comic, who said whats on his mind and got dissed by his own people...Bill Cosby...in his sensational DVD Bill Cosby: Himself

"Intellectuals go to class to study what others do naturally."

Another from a sixteenth-century French essayist Michel de Montaigne via the Quotations Page

"I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly."

The Golden Quadrilateral

In typical New York Times international columns fashion, a fantastic, yet just a little-bit condescending feature on India's most ambitious infrastructure project to date - The Golden Quadrilateral. A map of this project. A snap-shot of the status, as of the end of September.

For all the condescension that I may have detected in that write-up, I also noticed an under-current of wishful thinking on the part of the writer, that maybe we Indians should not sprint entirely down the exact path that the West has taken and maybe pause, just a bit.

Coming soon to a house near you...

Kids gone wild.

Unruly. Out-of-control. Loud.

Parents wringing hands.

Doomsday for families.

Really? Maybe. Read more.

Paging Mrs and Mr Cosby! You are wanted in Help-me-my-kid-is-wild aisle for clean-up.

Irreverence

indiacorporatewatch

India's answer to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show? Blah...couldn't care less or more. But for sure, it is cut of the same irreverent cloth as Jon Stewart. Maybe both were knit and yarned at Tiruppur or Surat!

As a middle-of-the-roader, I can see how some of the imagery and portrayals may be hideously offensive or insensitive to people. But, hey, if people are going to listen only when they see over-the-top portrayals, then, so-be-it.

Thought. Evolution. Idealogy.

There can be no restrictions on thought, which is a constantly evolving process. There should be room for fresh thoughts and ideas.

It is difficult to pinpoint the final principle of any ideology. It is therefore not right to adopt an attitude that what we have accepted as the final principle of our ideology is the ultimate truth. It is essential that our ideology stands the test of being beneficial for humankind as a whole. The thought process will not come to a halt at any time.

Paraphrased version of a statement by Atal Behari Vajpayee, former Prime Minister of India.

I suppose the only relevant question at this point is - Is anyone even listening? Because what this is, is one man's wisdom that actually rings true for the billions in the mob. The mob of fundamentalists everywhere that have taken up a cause, and believe beyond themselves that their chosen cause is the one true cause. The mob that believes that anyone that refuses to believe what it believes, deserve to die.

The subversion of the mob mentality, the group ego, the immovable object becoming the irresistible force, will all of these be intervened by a saner mind? By a saner thought? History says yes, and no. And that sad and conflicted answer is why India's Hindus are still fighting the caste-related issues, while simultaneously displaying remarkable progress in redressing the issues. It is why even after so many years and so many conflicts and so many so-called crusades, the holy land of Jerusalem has yet to see peace amongst its Moslem, Christian and Jewish people. It is the primary reason why the idealogues on the right-wing conservative Republican party bash the idealogues on the left-wing liberal Democratic party in the United States. And it is precisely why foul-mouthed idiots like Ann Coulter, with her immense intelligence, yet manages to spew rhetoric and half-truths.

The voice of reason. The song of thought. The verses of sensibility. The music of this trinity. Sadly they are getting trampled beneath our own weight of stupidity and utter lack of sense. People, for reason or lack thereof, simply want to listen to the jarring notes of stupidity, and forego any claim to thought after hearing it. Simply said, we are all zombies.

Warning: A Closed Mind is a Dead Mind - T.J.S. George

Disclaimer: The content below is a total reproduction in its entirety of a column by T.J.S. George that ran in the New Indian Express on Sunday, October 23, 2005. The only reason for this total reproduction is that I am not sure of access to this excellent op-ed piece without a login ID.

In case you would rather read it off of the horse's mouth, go --->here<---.

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It's a month since A.B. Vajpayee made the most visionary statement of post-Nehru India. He told his partymen in Delhi: "There can be no restrictions on thought, which is a constantly evolving process. There should be room for fresh thoughts and ideas."

Simple words, but they encapsulate the best of philosophy, political theory, social history and wisdom. Unfortunately the theme has not been taken up for any kind of debate. In the Indian-BJP context, the words immediately got mixed up with the Advani-RSS controversy. But the idea expressed by Vajpayee has a wider universal dimension and all our parties can profit from quietly digesting the meaning of his words.

Not running away from controversy, Vajpayee explained: "It is difficult to pinpoint the final principle of any ideology. It is therefore not right to adopt an attitude that what we have accepted as the final principle of our ideology is the ultimate truth. It is essential that our ideology stands the test of being beneficial for humankind as a whole. The thought process will not come to a halt at any time."

Vajpayee was merely putting in words what history has repeatedly taught us. The ideology of capitalism survived only because it yielded to evolving thought and ceased being a system of cruel Robber Baron exploitation. The ideology of Soviet Communism failed precisely because it refused to give up its rigidities. By contrast the ideology of Chinese communism has withstood the pressures of globalisation by bending with the wind.

In moderistic terms, the British Labour Party changed its ideology from "trade unionism right or wrong" to "trade unionism for growth." Countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, while adhering to their Islamic ideology, have not allowed it to stand in the way of progress. In such an entrenched political system as Japan, Prime Minister Koizumi recently won re-election with one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern history with a plank of radical reform.

All these are the results of paying heed to the constantly evolving process of thought, of recognising that ideologies do not have full stops. Putting a full stop means closing the mind. Fundamentalist ideologies, whether religious or political, close the minds of their followers so that unapproved thoughts won't enter them. They destroy questioning minds lest questioning minds destroy them.

Political-philosophical schools that have found acceptance in history are based on the twin principles of individual liberty and the equality of people _ precisely the principles that are anathema to fundamentalists, be they fascists or Stalinists, Taliban or Bajrang Dal.

There was mass suppression of writers in Stalin's Soviet Union; according to KGB archives 1500 writers perished, many hundreds were exiled into Siberia. Fascist regimes in Europe regularly burned whole libraries of books. Taliban shot the Bamiyan Buddha into dust. Pol Pot's first order in Cambodia was to kill every citizen who had had an education. Why, during emergency time, Kerala's Youth Congress, aided by the police, burned several public libraries in North Malabar because they had been established by the Communists.

The slogan popularised by Mussolini's Italy said it all: "To believe. To obey. To Combat." Rather different from the theme of the French Revolution: "Liberty, equality, fraternity." Today Italian fascism is gone. Pol Pot, Stalinism and the Emergency are gone. The spirit of the French Revolution remains as a permanent ispiration to people. Vajpayee didn't say it in so many words. But the meaning of what he said was: "My friends, change with the times. Or you'll be gone too."
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Hope for a centrist state

http://seetheforest.blogspot.com/

This weblog by proclaimed liberals who are fed up with the right-wing is a good resource in an effort to get the country to veer off from the far right and into a more centrist mainstream.

Hope, it seems, is still there. And if you want to fight back them rightwingers, here is how.

Compassionate Conservative? What a bleeping piece of bullshit

What a joke of a response. The official US response to what is seen as the worst natural disaster of the last 40 years, is pathetic to say the least. Does it take a bleepin rocket scientist for a redneck goddamned prez to release a bleepin statement?

Atleast, on the brighter side, the American public were not in the same insensitive pathetic vein as the so called leader of the nation.

Another interesting link that puts the American Governments effort in sharp contrast to its shameless ventures into Iraq in search of oil. Also an expose on the pathetic twisting of facts that typifies the rightwing bastar**zed media. And the venerated WSJ is at it again, calling environmentalists as a bunch of hysterical leftwing liberals. And if I maybe so bold as to copy their style of news and analyses, they also called the liberals as anti-Americans and as un-American as they can be.

As for my parting guess...it is these so called left wing Americans who have probably provided the most for the disaster relief in south Asia.

Interesting point and counter-point..

Namma Nanganallur : Is this an undesirable shade of Pride called VANITY?

Excellent points and counter-points with regard to the now-infamous email forward that has been doing the rounds for a long time. Yeah the same one espousing how we Indians need to be proud of our country because......

Read it for yourself and draw conclusions...

Me? I consider it a fair beginning, only, I wish there was more factual backing of the same, something more substantial than the supposedly official Tourism of India website.

Baseball, we have a problem!

Disclaimer: I am a fan of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and since they play the San Francisco Giants as a division rival, my views and opinions of the Giants are not necassarily fair and objective. What I am meaning to say is that I am enjoying all this hoopla surrounding Barry Bonds and drug-use in the sport of baseball.

Those of you who follow American sports closely, probably know by now all the issues relating to BALCO (the Bay Area Labs Cooperative or some such moniker) and its supplying performance enhancing drugs to various US athletes. Primarily suspected are track and field athletes and baseball players. Anyway the point of this all is that Barry Bonds claims that he used substances provided to him by his trainer and that he did not know they were steroids. Yeah right!

For those not in the know, Barry Bonds, one of the better baseball players to play the game, and a graduate of my school ASU, went from being a spindly (in comparison to his bulk now) frame when he debuted in the Major Leagues with the Pittsburgh Pirates to a rather bulky/hulky frame. Conventional wisdom, and the talking heads on all sports shows that have dedicated themselves to yapping away at nothing (ESPN and FSN, take note!) would have you believe that it was all because of Bonds dedication to his body and work ethic, especially his strenous off-season regimen. And that may be the case too. But can that explain this sudden spurt in his body after the age of 35? Can this explain how a guy who never hit more than 45 home runs a season suddenly exploded for 73 in 2001?

US law has it that anyone is innocent until proven guilty. And it is nigh, but a good value to adhere to. But circumstantial evidence, emanating from the time of Ken Caminiti admitting to steroid use, to the sudden increase in the body mass of these superstars, which amazingly enough, coincided with their increased power production, has left many with questions in their minds - are Bonds achievements that of a supremely gifted super-star athlete? Or is it a Ben Johnson-esque flash in the pan fueled by steroids?

I will admit, we are living in an era when there are a bunch of super-star athletes around. World-wide, almost all major sports - team and individual - are seeing newer blood and talent, challenging the way we conventionally thought about the games.

We have 40-plus year old pitchers still pitching in the Major League Baseball like they were in their 20s and 30s.

We have a 35-year old quarterback leading a history-laden franchise of the National Football League (American Football) and still celebrating every score like a 5 year old kid on a playground, and this after having set some amazing records of durability and endurance.

We have bowlers who have set and reset records for maximum scalps in a career in International Cricket, and we have teams setting and erasing and re-establishing records for runs scored and chased to win Limited-Overs International matches.

We have tennis-artiste par excellence Martina Navratilova, at age 47, still competing in Grand Slam tennis tournaments.

So maybe it is just our lucky timing that we are getting to see tremendous offensive output in baseball. But it is still disturbing how callous the players union and the league have been treating the premise of drug-use and abuse in the sport. The National Football League has become pretty good at enforcing the substance-abuse issue and as a result, been able to establish itself as a league that is currently enjoying tremendous popularity amongst the American masses.

Hopefully, the league and the players union realize the hurt being put on what is a tremendous product. Baseball as a game, is a delight. No time constraints whatsoever, and hence the exquisite game generates pressure the unusual way - outs. Hopefully, this storm will come to a pass too, and Major League Baseball would be back up with a straight-face and claim that its atheletes do not use performance-enhancing drugs.

In the meanwhile though, I am going to sit back and enjoy the obvious discomfiture that these allegations must be causing to the fans of the San Francisco Giants. Hey, payback is often sweet you know! You should've known better than to put down the Diamondbacks franchise during our heydays from 1999 through 2002. Well, enjoy your currently rotten luck.