Quotes of the day: on teachers and education in India

Where have all these teachers gone today?

Real teachers simply do not exist. We as a nation erased the framework and the climate to create good teachers. In our hurry to become a superpower, we forgot the elementary. We started first with creating engineers, followed by doctors. Then we created ‘tech coolies' and ‘nurses'. Then we created an army of generalists who claim to be educated, have paper degrees and could easily take up any of the service sector jobs — ranging from being an ‘officer' in a corporate to the ‘fast moving' retail sector to the financial services sector.

Teachers, along with other nation-building professionals, fell by the wayside. 

The entire opinion piece here.

As for the drive to generate engineers, well, to use Dr. Phil's language, "how's that workin' for you?"  Here is one about Kerala, and from what I have read and heard, this is not unique to one state, but is a country-wide issue:

[Nearly] one-third of the students enrolled in many of these private self-financing engineering colleges end up never taking the university degree — they remain Bachelor divorced from Technology (for life). Those without even the basic mathematical sense succeed in sneaking into some of the private self-financing engineering institutions, only to fail all the way accumulating back papers semester after semester. Certainly, the money their parents dish out, by way of loans, nay mortgage, contribute to the overall liquidity and provides employment and business opportunities to many. Beyond that social function, what becomes of the family from which the forlorn student hails is the moot question. 

Simply awful :(

All the more the reasons why increasingly Indians are frustrated with the current situation, and are even tempted to turn to the likes of the fascist Narendra Modi for leadership and a government that can deliver, even if that potentially means infringements on freedoms.

Because, as China, Singapore, South Korea, and the likes have demonstrated, those countries have surged way ahead of India, whose only claim seems to be its "democracy." 

How I wish I could somehow force these opinion essays down the throat (metaphorically speaking, of course!) of the author of that one hell of a stupid op-ed on the "better" education system in India!

Your teenager troubles you? Read on ...

It was an inconsequential, and yet a serious, chat with "S" about parenting and children.  Coming from different backgrounds and age didn't seem to matter at all when he and I speculated that the troubling adolescent behavior is coded somewhere in the human genes only to ensure that the child will wean away from the parent.  Else, given the unique ways in which humans take care of their young, well, this split might not happen--in an extreme case--and that could threaten the propagation.

Hey, every casual conversation doesn't have to be about politics, you know.

Speaking of which, did you catch this beauty from Bill Maher on the allegation in the book that Sarah Palin did cocaine?  Maher said, “Sarah Palin doing cocaine? That’s ridiculous. That stuff can make you yammer like an imbecile.”

Ok, stay focused here. Adolescent behavior. No, for the final time, this post on adolescent behavior is not about Palin :)

One of the typical adolescent attitude is towards risk--they seem to care less about actions that we older folks might think are way too risky.  

Teens take more risks not because they don't understand the dangers but because they weigh risk versus reward differently: In situations where risk can get them something they want, they value the reward more heavily than adults do.

Interesting.  I had always worked with the assumption that the teenage behavior is framed by the context of inadequate information about the risks.  But, if they are aware of the risks, at levels comparable to adult understanding, then it has tremendous implications for public policies too, right?  Ok, I am getting ahead of myself.  The researchers add:

"They didn't take more chances because they suddenly downgraded the risk," says Steinberg. "They did so because they gave more weight to the payoff."
Researchers such as Steinberg and Casey believe this risk-friendly weighing of cost versus reward has been selected for because, over the course of human evolution, the willingness to take risks during this period of life has granted an adaptive edge. Succeeding often requires moving out of the home and into less secure situations. "The more you seek novelty and take risks," says Baird, "the better you do." This responsiveness to reward thus works like the desire for new sensation: It gets you out of the house and into new turf.

Risks and the high that comes from novelty, which are further enhanced in the company of peers.  Gets them out of the parents' shadows:

The move outward from home is the most difficult thing that humans do, as well as the most critical—not just for individuals but for a species that has shown an unmatched ability to master challenging new environments. In scientific terms, teenagers can be a pain in the ass. But they are quite possibly the most fully, crucially adaptive human beings around. Without them, humanity might not have so readily spread across the globe.

A painful aspect in parenting.  But, a critical part of the remarkable success we humans have had as a species.

Hmmm ... so, "S" and I were really on to something in that casual chat; maybe I should forward this to him.

Remember the ancestors ... the reward in a few days is "sundal"

"The days before Navarathri is a special time to remember one's ancestors" dad said earlier when I called to check on my parents.

Something new I find out every single day!

I had no idea about this special time, though I am all too familiar with Navarathri.

One major reason I fondly recall the nine days?  Because of the wonderful "sundal"--every day a different one.

My favorite of them all is a sweet sundal made with jaggery, which my mother says is very easy to make but am yet to try in my kitchen.  Maybe I shall soon, and stop this awful, awful drool over the keyboard :)

BTW, I didn't care much about the tenth day, when we had to get back to studying!

Dad's comment about the days prior was news to me.  In the memory of the ancestors who made possible this wonderful life, he said he donates food to the needy.  And boy aren't there people in need in India.

"Ultimately it is to remember the ancestors, and not to forget those people, and helping others is a fantastic idea" I said.

"Yes" he said and asked me, "do you know the poem 'Abou Ben Adhem'?"

Of course I don't. 

Every single day is a revelation of my ignorance as well!

So, dad then proceeded to recite the poem, which I tracked down from the web:

Abou Ben Adhem
By James Leigh Hunt

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men."

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

So, hey, 'tis the season to remember. Go ahead and do your part.  And enjoy the sundal, too :)

On the death of Pataudi, and of cricket itself

As one who grew up in India, I have tons of memories rushing through my head after reading that Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi is no more.

Pataudi was the the charming player and captain, with a famous film actress wife to boot, when I started following the game in what feels like several lifetimes ago.

Those were the years in Neyveli before television.  Test matches were of the old style--five days with a rest-day in between, after the second or the third day of the match.  Listening to the radio commentaries, with expert comments by what always sounded as a senile Lala Amarnath, then reading about the day's proceedings in The Hiindu the next morning, and finally talking about it with classmates at school provided way more excitement than I could have ever wanted.

All these despite the fact that I was no good at sports!  I was one of those kids who was reluctantly picked last to be on a team in schoolyard or neighborhood games.  But, that didn't matter one bit--cricket was exciting.

The much talked about West Indian team came to India to play.  I was ten-plus years old and this was my first serious test match series as a cricket-crazy kid.  I had read about them: Llyod, Richards, Holding, Roberts, Greenidge, Julien ... as a kid rooting for India, I was convinced that "we" would lose, and lose horribly. 

Those were also the years that mom sent us lunch through the maid, "Thayee."  Along with the lunch that was packed in "tiffin carriers" mother always included a note on the latest score in the test after play began at about ten in the morning.  Perhaps, like most mothers, my mom too followed the game only because of the kids.

As tasty as the food was, it was the cricket score that I waited for whenever the tests were played.  If the score indicated that India was not doing well, or if the West Indies were doing great, then it was quite a sad afternoon.  I would race back home after school ended in order to catch the final few minutes of the radio commentary.

Thus began my cricket-mania.

Caption at the source:

(From left) Bishen Singh Bedi, Pataudi, B. Chandrasekar, Anshuman Gaekwad and G. Viswanath run towards the pavilion with joy after India defeated the West Indies in the 1974-75 series

But, soon, the game started changing.  It became increasingly competitive. Players engaged in acts that were no longer cricket.  As exciting it was when television made cricket matches wonderfully visual spectacles, perhaps it also quickly transformed the game for the worse.

Meanwhile, I, too, was changing, and found intellectual ideas to be way more fascinating than being a passive spectator for the five days of every test match.

Slowly I drifted away from cricket.

Slightly over a decade after that memorable first cricket series, I headed to the US, where I quickly fell in love with the local baseball team, the Los Angeles Dodgers.  I had barely figured out the basics of this game, which was so similar to cricket, and yet so different from it, when Kirk Gibson hit that memorable home run, Orel Hershiser was simply unhittable, and the Dodgers won it all. 

Hello baseball, and goodbye cricket.

Two more decades have passed by, and now I couldn't care for baseball either.  Every morning, while reading the newspaper over breakfast, I do look up the box scores and the standings out of sheer habit, and it makes my day if the damn Yankees are not on top :)

Cricket?  Up until a month ago, I didn't even know that the rest-day concept had been abandoned a long time back!

But, Pataudi I remember. And I thank.

Quote(s) of the day: on the shameful business of college sports

“I’m not hiding,” Sonny Vaccaro told a closed hearing at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2001. “We want to put our materials on the bodies of your athletes, and the best way to do that is buy your school. Or buy your coach.” ...
“Why,” asked Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, “should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?”
Vaccaro did not blink. “They shouldn’t, sir,” he replied. “You sold your souls, and you’re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir,” Vaccaro added with irrepressible good cheer, “but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.” 

Simply awful.  Faustian bargains!

This is merely the beginning of a lengthy essay by Taylor Branch on "The Shame of College Sports" (ht.) Read it, pass it around, and talk about the essay even when you are watching the ball game on TV.

Branch writes:

Today, much of the NCAA’s moral authority—indeed much of the justification for its existence—is vested in its claim to protect what it calls the “student-athlete.” The term is meant to conjure the nobility of amateurism, and the precedence of scholarship over athletic endeavor. But the origins of the “student-athlete” lie not in a disinterested ideal but in a sophistic formulation designed, as the sports economist Andrew Zimbalist has written, to help the NCAA in its “fight against workmen’s compensation insurance claims for injured football players.”...
Dale Brown, the retired longtime basketball coach at LSU. “Look at the money we make off predominantly poor black kids,” Brown once reflected. “We’re the whoremasters.”  

A long time ago, at least it feels that way, I used to follow college football, primarily because of the school I attended.  Through the years, I have slowly drifted out of it.  To the level that when a few days ago, on game day, when I ran into two neighbors and one of them asked me whether I was stepping out because it was half-time, the other answered for me, "he doesn't follow football."  I added "That is true. I couldn't care."  A long-running joke about the business of college sports that another neighbor has is this: "Hey, until recently I didn't know that there is a university and a whole lot of buildings associated with the Oregon Ducks."

But, I do care--about the horrible business it has become, and which has led higher education far, far, away from its educational mission. Away from the pursuit of knowledge to the pursuit of dollars on the backs of unpaid labor. So much so that even a small school like the one where I teach wants to emphasize athletics more than it wants to do anything about education and the long-term success of its students.

Branch concludes the essay with these comments:

“Scholarship athletes are already paid,” declared the Knight Commission members, “in the most meaningful way possible: with a free education.” This evasion by prominent educators severed my last reluctant, emotional tie with imposed amateurism. I found it worse than self-serving. It echoes masters who once claimed that heavenly salvation would outweigh earthly injustice to slaves. In the era when our college sports first arose, colonial powers were turning the whole world upside down to define their own interests as all-inclusive and benevolent. Just so, the NCAA calls it heinous exploitation to pay college athletes a fair portion of what they earn.

All the more the reasons for me to stay away from college football.  Oh, and when I made a comment about how even my faculty colleagues, who normally spew socialist language, are college-sports crazy and even organize betting pools during March Madness, well, they went ballistic.  These "leftist" rabid fans of college sports who defend the big business of college sports are the most hypocritical of them all.  They are so ready to criticize, for instance, Wal-Mart, yet are so religiously faithful to college sports.  Compared to the mercenary tyrannies in NCAA sports, Wal-Mart is a gazillion times better as an employer and as a provider of goods and services.

The crazy language called English ... and the wonderful game of bridge.

I loved the following description:

It defies logic. If English made any sense, the word 'lackadaisical' would refer to a shortage of flowers

Awesome, no?

It didn't come from some obscure pedant.  This is from the column by Frank Stewart--his daily columns are on the game of bridge.  I read his bridge columns not only because I play bridge, but all the more because of the wit and word play he brings to the discussion.

We siblings learnt playing bridge from dad (and mom, who would reluctantly join us.)  Now, I play online, which eliminates the need to organize a bridge-playing group in the real world. 

In the small town where I grew up, there were some serious bridge players, who organized tournaments at the local Park Club.  I mean, it was more than a game to them--serious, serious looks they sported.  I particularly remember one of them because of the picture he presented: he was an engineer, with a traditional brahmin tuft of hair, and there he was playing bridge in a room which was cigarette-smoke filled.  Strange juxtapositions.  In a way, a more visible version of the mixed bags that each and every one of us are.

Mom taught us the other thinking game--chess.  My brother and I have fought quite a few physical fights only a few minutes into a round of chess--perhaps rarely ever did we complete a game :)

One of my favorite movies from India also deals with the game of chess--Shatranj ke Khilari.  

Anyway, back to English. One hell of a crazy language it is.  I joke with students that most of them lucked out with English being their first language--they, therefore, have no idea what a pain the rear end learning it can be!  More here, and here, for starters.

Men are finished! Save the males :)

So, the Intelligence Squared debate on whether men have lost out in the battle between the sexes ended yesterday :

After hearing the arguments, the audience made its final decision. With 66 percent voting in favor of and 29 percent against the motion, and 5 percent remaining undecided, the majority of the audience agreed that men "really are finished."

Before the debate began, as is customary in this format, the audience was polled about this, and "22 percent of the audience voted for the notion, 54 percent against and 26 percent said they were undecided."  That is some serious swaying of the audience then!

Of course, these debates are not to establish the ultimate proofs for either side, as much as they are to help us think through some of the pressing issues of the day.  The difference in opportunities and performance of males and females is one of those, and one which has significant implications for social policies too.

The debate hasn't ended by any means.  Well, maybe it is the beginning of the end ... of males :)

The Indian-Chinese pissing match in the waters of the South China Sea

We are fast nearing the fiftieth anniversary of the war between India and China.  A little after Jawaharlal Nehru, India's prime minister at that time, loudly and proudly proclaimed "Hindi Chini bhai bhai"--Indians and Chinese are brothers--China decided to re-enact a recurring theme in the story of humans: a battle between brothers.

It was a short war in which India was humiliated. Even after all these years, territorial claims remain unresolved.

As if those land-based issues were not enough for geopolitical tensions, the two countries now seem to want to take their fight to the open seas. In the South China Sea, to be specific.

Why?

To borrow from Bill Clinton's election slogan, it's the energy, stupid!

More than two years ago, Robert Kaplan wrote in Foreign Affairs:

Already the world's preeminent energy and trade interstate seaway, the Indian Ocean will matter even more in the future. Global energy needs are expected to rise by 45 percent between 2006 and 2030, and almost half of the growth in demand will come from India and China. China's demand for crude oil doubled between 1995 and 2005 and will double again in the coming 15 years or so; by 2020, China is expected to import 7.3 million barrels of crude per day -- half of Saudi Arabia's planned output. More than 85 percent of the oil and oil products bound for China cross the Indian Ocean and pass through the Strait of Malacca.

India -- soon to become the world's fourth-largest energy consumer, after the United States, China, and Japan -- is dependent on oil for roughly 33 percent of its energy needs, 65 percent of which it imports. And 90 percent of its oil imports could soon come from the Persian Gulf. India must satisfy a population that will, by 2030, be the largest of any country in the world. Its coal imports from far-off Mozambique are set to increase substantially, adding to the coal that India already imports from other Indian Ocean countries, such as South Africa, Indonesia, and Australia. In the future, India-bound ships will also be carrying increasingly large quantities of liquefied natural gas (LNG) across the seas from southern Africa, even as it continues importing LNG from Qatar, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

As the whole Indian Ocean seaboard, including Africa's eastern shores, becomes a vast web of energy trade, India is seeking to increase its influence from the Plateau of Iran to the Gulf of Thailand -- an expansion west and east meant to span the zone of influence of the Raj's viceroys. India's trade with the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf and Iran, with which India has long enjoyed close economic and cultural ties, is booming. Approximately 3.5 million Indians work in the six Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council and send home $4 billion in remittances annually. As India's economy continues to grow, so will its trade with Iran and, once the country recovers, Iraq. Iran, like Afghanistan, has become a strategic rear base for India against Pakistan, and it is poised to become an important energy partner. ...

India has also been expanding its military and economic ties with Myanmar, to the east. Democratic India does not have the luxury of spurning Myanmar's junta because Myanmar is rich in natural resources -- oil, natural gas, coal, zinc, copper, uranium, timber, and hydropower -- resources in which the Chinese are also heavily invested. India hopes that a network of east-west roads and energy pipelines will eventually allow it to be connected to Iran, Pakistan, and Myanmar.

India is enlarging its navy in the same spirit. With its 155 warships, the Indian navy is already one of the world's largest, and it expects to add three nuclear-powered submarines and three aircraft carriers to its arsenal by 2015. One major impetus for the buildup was the humiliating inability of its navy to evacuate Indian citizens from Iraq and Kuwait during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. Another is what Mohan Malik, a scholar at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, in Hawaii, has called India's "Hormuz dilemma," its dependence on imports passing through the strait, close to the shores of Pakistan's Makran coast, where the Chinese are helping the Pakistanis develop deep-water ports.

Indeed, as India extends its influence east and west, on land and at sea, it is bumping into China, which, also concerned about protecting its interests throughout the region, is expanding its reach southward. Chinese President Hu Jintao has bemoaned China's "Malacca dilemma." The Chinese government hopes to eventually be able to partly bypass that strait by transporting oil and other energy products via roads and pipelines from ports on the Indian Ocean into the heart of China. One reason that Beijing wants desperately to integrate Taiwan into its dominion is so that it can redirect its naval energies away from the Taiwan Strait and toward the Indian Ocean.

The Chinese government has already adopted a "string of pearls" strategy for the Indian Ocean, which consists of setting up a series of ports in friendly countries along the ocean's northern seaboard. It is building a large naval base and listening post in Gwadar, Pakistan, (from which it may already be monitoring ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz); a port in Pasni, Pakistan, 75 miles east of Gwadar, which is to be joined to the Gwadar facility by a new highway; a fueling station on the southern coast of Sri Lanka; and a container facility with extensive naval and commercial access in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Beijing operates surveillance facilities on islands deep in the Bay of Bengal. In Myanmar, whose junta gets billions of dollars in military assistance from Beijing, the Chinese are constructing (or upgrading) commercial and naval bases and building roads, waterways, and pipelines in order to link the Bay of Bengal to the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. Some of these facilities are closer to cities in central and western China than those cities are to Beijing and Shanghai, and so building road and rail links from these facilities into China will help spur the economies of China's landlocked provinces. The Chinese government is also envisioning a canal across the Isthmus of Kra, in Thailand, to link the Indian Ocean to China's Pacific coast -- a project on the scale of the Panama Canal and one that could further tip Asia's balance of power in China's favor by giving China's burgeoning navy and commercial maritime fleet easy access to a vast oceanic continuum stretching all the way from East Africa to Japan and the Korean Peninsula

All of these activities are unnerving the Indian government. With China building deep-water ports to its west and east and a preponderance of Chinese arms sales going to Indian Ocean states, India fears being encircled by China unless it expands its own sphere of influence. The two countries' overlapping commercial and political interests are fostering competition, and even more so in the naval realm than on land. Zhao Nanqi, former director of the General Logistics Department of the People's Liberation Army, proclaimed in 1993, "We can no longer accept the Indian Ocean as an ocean only of the Indians." India has responded to China's building of a naval base in Gwadar by further developing one of its own, that in Karwar, India, south of Goa. Meanwhile, Zhang Ming, a Chinese naval analyst, has warned that the 244 islands that form India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago could be used like a "metal chain" to block the western entrance to the Strait of Malacca, on which China so desperately depends. "India is perhaps China's most realistic strategic adversary," Zhang has written. "Once India commands the Indian Ocean, it will not be satisfied with its position and will continuously seek to extend its influence, and its eastward strategy will have a particular impact on China." These may sound like the words of a professional worrier from China's own theory class, but these worries are revealing: Beijing already considers New Delhi to be a major sea power.

As the competition between India and China suggests, the Indian Ocean is where global struggles will play out in the twenty-first century.

Geographers immediately pounced on this argument, and denounced it as old-fashioned geopolitical theories that have been thrown out.  I disagreed with them, and worried all the more after reading Kaplan's essay.  (Though, there is a little bit of tiredness and ennui when I see Kaplan talking up anarchy and disorder over and over again!)

Turns out that Kaplan was quite on the mark--India and China have upped the competition for access to oil and natural gas.  And, it is not in the hilly terrains by the Brahmaputra or Burma, but near Vietnam.

The Hindu reports:

The Chinese government on Monday reiterated its opposition to exploration projects by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Videsh and Vietnam in the South China Sea, saying any deal without its approval would be “illegal and invalid” and an infringement on China’s sovereignty.

The comments from the Foreign Ministry came as Indian officials said ONGC Videsh would continue with exploration projects in two blocks, located near the Paracel Islands, over which Vietnam claims sovereignty. India has reportedly taken the position that Vietnamese claims were in accordance with international laws.

China, however, has conveyed its opposition to the Indian government about the project, citing its claims of sovereignty over all the South China Sea and the disputed islands. China’s claims are contested by a number of countries, including Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Asked about India’s reported decision to go ahead with the projects, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei, without directly referring to India, said on Monday that China enjoyed “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea islands.

“Any country engaging in oil and gas exploration activities in this jurisdiction without the approval of the Chinese government,” he said, “constitutes an infringement upon China’s sovereignty and national interest.”

The Times of India adds:

Soon after India announced its decision to go ahead with oil exploration in South China Sea with Vietnam, China on Saturday said it would expand its exploration of 10,000 sq km of seabed in southwest Indian Ocean. This was announced as part of its 2011-2015 oceanic development policy. ...
In an opinion piece in Xinhua, China asked India to wise up and "refrain" from moves in the South China Sea, where China retains "absolute sovereignty". "For countries outside the region, we hope they will respect and support countries in the region to solve this dispute through bilateral channels," the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said while responding to a question concerning ONGC's plans to explore in two offshore oil blocks in South China Sea.

As the old Swahili saying goes, "when two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers."

Of course, China has most countries in this region quite tense, even without this showdown with India.  Richard Rousseau notes in Foreign Policy Journal:

The importance of the sea routes, the presence of hydrocarbons and the abundant marine resources in the South China Sea are the three main causes of sovereignty disputes over the high number of islands. Guaranteeing sovereignty to any country over any part of the sea, and thus laying the basis for its legal right to exclusive exploitation of the seabed and the surrounding waters and islands, remain a controversial issue. This situation is further complicated by the strategic interests of the United States, which for its part consider the area vitally important for its strategic interests.

So, hey, why not change the name from South China Sea, eh!

Some ASEAN nations proposed a name change of the South China Sea to the Southeast Asia Sea.

The South China Sea has been known as the East Sea to the Vietnamese, the West Philippine Sea to Filipinos and the South Sea to the Chinese. The South China Sea has been used so long by Western mapmakers without Southeast Asian people’s consent.

It might have originated from mapmakers in Europe who were not conscious of the probable impact afterward. The naming of the sea is becoming a sensitive issue to ASEAN nations, as much as that of the sea between Korea and Japan is for the Korean people.

National Geographic has accepted a dual name, the East Sea/the Sea of Japan. Some proposed a neutral sea name such as the Blue Sea or the Green Sea. 

I wrote about a similar name issue quite some time ago, in the context of the Persian Gulf/Arabian Gulf controversy.  We humans can make a fight out of anything!

Ganesh v. Hitler. Fight canceled, already?

Have we forgotten how to have a good laugh? (ht)

Ganesh Versus the Third Reich is yet to open at the Melbourne Festival, but news of its storyline has caused consternation among the Indian community.

In the play, which has been described by its producers as rambunctious fable brimming with humour, the elephant-headed Hindu god rampages through Germany on a quest to reclaim the ancient Hindu symbol of goodwill from the Nazis.

What is the big deal?  Laugh it off, folks.

BTW, there is a difference between the Hindu and Nazi swastikas:

Cartoon of the day: Obama and poverty in America

More here.

And, here is how a Republican Congressman responded to proposals to increase taxes (ht) and why he cannot afford a tax increase:

By the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over

Yes, let them eat cakes!

Where have all the (public) intellectuals gone?

From this essay by Jessa Crispin (ht):

Twenty years after the Velvet Revolution, Havel gave a public speech in which he assessed the current state of the free Czech Republic. “On the one hand everything is getting better — a new generation of mobile phones is being released every week,” he said. “But in order to make use of them, you need to follow new instructions. So you end up reading instruction manuals instead of books and in your free time you watch TV where handsome tanned guys scream from advertisements about how happy they are to have new swimming trunks... The new consumer society is accomplished by a growing number of people who do not create anything of value.”

The artistic and literary scene that flourished paradoxically under censorship and repression has died off. The public intellectual is, for the most part, no longer invited to the most important parties. Anna Porter writes, “Now that everyone can publish what they want, what is the role of the intellectuals?” and she can’t find an answer. It’s no longer the police state that’s attacking the intelligentsia — it’s disinterest and boredom. It’s distraction. It’s a trade off. And it’s one that we should be able to acknowledge and be allowed to mourn. When the historian Timothy Garton Ash visited Poland in the 1980s, he admitted to an envy for the environment there. “Here is a place where people care, passionately, about ideas.” The people of Central Europe traded in ideas for groceries and for not being beaten to death by the police. No one could possibly blame them, but at the same time, Havel and the other leaders had no sense of the true cost of democracy.

If only Havel were correct in opining that instruction manuals are the only books that people read--I suspect they don't even read that much, which is why we use the abbreviation RTFM :)

Seriously though, it is depressing that the profit motive invariably leads us away from intellectual pursuits.  I do not mean to imply that these are necessarily mutually-exclusive.  Any television interview with many of the ultra-rich shows that they have deep intellectual pockets as well, and most of them do seem to value intellectual activities.  But the vast middle class ...?

The author observes in concluding the essay that the overwhelming economic culture:

is stripping us of our environment, our creativity, and our personal happiness. We are, for the most part, bogged down in the daily struggle for survival, too worried about losing our fragile position within a corporation to envision an entirely different way of being. It’s going to take another Havel, someone who can see the world for what it is and find a better story to tell.

I am afraid we left that station a long time ago, and there is no going back :(

Details on the Arab Spring in a series of graphics

The Economist uses technology better than most publications that I care to read.  This one here is really cool (except for the annoying part that it doesn't begin with "1 of 40" and you have to manually go to the beginning!):

There is ozone, and there is ozone. The US doesn't care for either?

Thanks to a friend, whose Facebook post led me to this news item, I came to know that there is something called International Ozone Day, which was a couple of days ago on the 16th.  In this case, it is to remind ourselves of the need to preserve the ozone in the stratosphere, about 20 miles above us.

So, what was the news?

Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan said developed nations were hesitant to vow for such a step during discussions on climate change-related issues.

“The transfer of technology is the most important issue. And developed countries took the responsibility under the Montreal Protocol, which has not yet happened under other discussions that we are having,” she said, while addressing International Ozone Day celebrations in New Delhi.

She said the widely ratified Montreal Protocol dealing with the issue of ozone layer depletion could serve as a model of global cooperation while addressing serious environmental concerns.

Ms. Natarajan’s remarks came a day after she made it clear that India will press for developed nations to agree to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the Durban conference on climate change later this year. 

My first thought was this: Natarajan is the environment minister? What happened to Jairam Ramesh?  Wikipedia notes that he has been moved to a different ministry now--I suppose it was because how his closer-to-truth statements and decisions were triggers for discomfort all around.  Let us see how much of an old self he is after this "promotion."  Too bad; as I have blogged before, I liked that guy!

Anyway, Natarajan correctly points out that developed countries need to do a lot more than they say on these global issues.

Meanwhile, there is also a ground-level ozone issue--well, way closer to the ground, that is.  And this ozone is not something we want to protect, but want to reduce instead.  This is the ozone that causes a great deal of health problems.  Here too, the US recently said that we simply don't care!  

Maybe we ought to celebrate the consistent approach the US takes? :)

As even the business-friendly Wall Street Journal notes, Obama's decision to scrap proposed rules to toughen air quality standards was a "political bet."  And then, after such actions, we walk around as the world's cop complaining about the emissions from India and China?  And expect them to fold?