So, "Gopal Krishna" is a Christian name, too? :)

So, there I was wondering if C-Span might have anything interesting (yes, "I heart C-Span"!!!) and two women were getting ready to sing the national anthem.  I lingered a little longer, at the live coverage of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.

Good thing I stayed there because otherwise I would have never have been shocked as I was when I saw an Indian-looking and Indian-accented guy move to the mic and recognize the guests.  C-Span identified him as Gopal Krishna.

If it were a regular GOP meeting, I would not have been surprised at all; I have known quite a few people from India who are committed Republicans.

But, this was at the "Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition"--a religious right organization.

And an Indian-looking and Indian-accented guy at the mic, and his name is Gopal Krishna.

You see why I was so stunned at this spectacle?

It doesn't end there.

This Gopal Krishna lets out a crazy rhetoric that no local government, or state, or Congress, or court, or president has anything to say about life.  As the camera panned out, I saw quite a few standing and applauding that statement.

A google search tells me that this Gopal Krishna was with the Christian Alliance.  So, even more surreal that a "Gopal Krishna" is a Christian.  I mean, this is like a BJP member being named Mohammed :)

The google search also came up with the following that Gopal Krishna apparently said at an earlier event:

America is “doing a slow dance with socialism,” “abandoning friends and apologizing to enemies” abroad, and even becoming “a multicultural haven for every weird and kinky lifestyle.” The activists in attendance thrilled to each assertion.

Let me see ... an immigrant from India complaining about the US being a multicultural haven?  Can't get more bizarre, eh!  At least, the Dave Chapelle skit on the blind black guy being a white supremacist was fictional!

Only in America, eh!

Turns out that Jon Stewart had commented about it :)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Why is my teaching an "alternative" style? It is all about thinking!

For a couple of years now, I have made sure to emphasize to students my view that this is a world that is vastly different from even a decade ago.  From even five years ago.  I mean this in the context of teaching and learning.  What s that difference?

Students can access all the information they could possibly ever want without coming to the classroom.  Enrolling in a university or coming to the classroom after registering for classes is not about gaining access to information and facts, but is to make sense of them.  To understand their meaning.  To be able to then ask questions, many of which, hopefully, will be troubling questions.

If they don't trust me on this ... wait, that too is an advice I give them: don't trust me.  Well, don't merely trust me, but verify too.

Anyway, I can now supplement that with observations from George Dyson--yes, the son of Freeman Dyson.

We now live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning? Only human beings can tell you where it is.

I tell students that this is where the power of Google (or any such tool) comes in--once we are able to craft questions that help us understand an aspect of this highly complex world, then getting information related to that is immensely less complex than ever before in history.  Again, Dyson:

Finding answers is easy. The hard part is creating the map that matches specific answers to the right question. That’s what Google did: They used the power of computing – which is cheap and really does not have any limits – to crawl the entire internet and collected and index all the answers. And then,by letting human beings spend their precious time asking the right questions, they created a map between the two. That is a clever way of approaching a problem that would otherwise be incomprehensibly difficult.

The net result is that my teaching and testing comes across as unconventional and as an alternative style.  In my classes, I engage students with questions.  When it comes to tests, it is not their ability to recall information that I am interested in; I am, instead, far more interested in providing them opportunities where students can demonstrate their thinking skills.  Which is why I remark to students that I feel like puking when I see tests in which questions are true/false or multiple-choice.  These do nothing to develop in students the ability to make sense of the fuzziness that surrounds us.

Even worse is to simply tell students that the course will require essays on topics of their choice.  Why?  Because most students have no clue how to ask questions.  Writing papers require that ability to formulate a question and then going after the supporting evidence when answering the question.  Higher education is then about understanding concepts enough to be able to ask questions.  In the format that most of higher education is, students rarely are taught how to ask questions.  And if they never figure this out after four years of university education, then all the access that Google provides will be of zero value.

One final comment from Dyson:

The danger is not that machines are advancing. The danger is that we are losing our intelligence if we rely on computers instead of our own minds. On a fundamental level, we have to ask ourselves: Do we need human intelligence? And what happens if we fail to exercise it?

But then, it is not the students I am worried about: I am disappointed with faculty--not merely at my university--who think that their role is to be that cliched "sage on the stage."  I feel like puking--yes, my favorite phrase!--when I walk by classrooms and see nothing but text-filled PowerPoint slides.  And even that "information" is often incorrect.  Once, I paused outside a classroom where a full professor of criminal justice was lecturing about the US Supreme Court.  It was depressing to see the slide listing the justices because the information was old--no Sotomayor or Alito, but the names of retired justices!  The guy hadn't even bothered to update this basic information.  When a google search would provide the accurate information. 

A bonus for you, dear reader, if you read until here: a while ago, the Atlantic had a fantastic essay about Freeman Dyson's climate change oddities, and in that context also discussed the father/son relationship.

Burn, burn, burn. Bill O'Reilly's book, that is :)

Photo 1: A box of falafel Bill's book sent to troops in Afghanistan

Photo 2: those books being burnt by the soldiers

Why?

Some jerk sent us two boxes of this awful book (SPOILER ALERT: George Washington - Patriot; George Soros - Pinhead) instead of anything soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan might need, like, say, food or soap. Just burned the whole lot of them on my Commander’s orders.

Muahahaha!
(source and ht)

Pakistan+Afghanistan+US+Kashmir+India = Aaaaaahhh!

Hillary Clinton is blunt with Pakistan:

you cannot keep snakes in your backyard and expect they will only bite the neighbours

So far, it does seem like Obama and his team are doing well with the AfPak situation. Their next moves will be crucial.

Pointing out that the coalition forces and the Afghans had increased pressure on the Taliban on the Afghan side of the Pak-Afghan border, she said: “Across the border, we look to Pakistan to take strong steps to deny Afghan insurgents safe havens and to encourage the Taliban to enter negotiations in good faith.''

Where do we go from here then?  Obviously, the same-old same-old cannot continue.  What might be a different approach?

With U.S. relations in Pakistan at a low point and the two countries' strategic disagreement over priorities in Afghanistan on full display, it is time to review U.S. strategic options. One that deserves a close look is a grand bargain: give Pakistan what it wants in Afghanistan - but on two conditions: Pakistan assumes responsibility for preventing terrorism out of Afghanistan, and Pakistan agrees to settle Kashmir along the present geographic lines. This is not a panacea, nor would it be easy to execute.

Well, it won't be easy to execute.  That much is for sure.  I cannot imagine that converting the Line of Control in Kashmir into permanent borders going well in India, even if such ideas were in the back-channels negotiations. The current government is already on shaky grounds, and the fanatical BJP is already smelling blood.  In this grand bargain, the authors suggest that the US would:

give India advance notice of this announcement. U.S. support for a settlement along the Line of Control would in all likelihood pull additional international support in that direction

Yeah, right!  The BJP will win the voters way too easily by campaigning that the Congress is a nothing but a CIA stooge.

We are now into the eleventh year of the war in Afghanistan :(

Caption at the source:
A soldier prays near a tank on Dec. 10, 2001, on the hills overlooking Tora Bora, Afghanistan.

"Thanks for your alternative teaching"

When a student has a positive comment about my teaching, that is often enough to carry me through the term.

We are barely at the halfway mark this term.  Class ended and students were rapidly exiting the room, when one student, while slowly packing up her backpack, said "thanks for your alternative teaching. I really like this."

It caught me off guard for a simple reason that while in the past I have heard comments that my approaches are not quite conventional, nobody had ever complimented me on my teaching as an "alternative" style.  I suppose I am "alternative" even when many of my colleagues mistakenly think that I am a rapid Republican!

I wanted to make sure I hadn't misheard the student. "Say that again" I told her as we both stepped out of the room.

"I just wanted to say that I like your alternative teaching style."

"Oh, thanks, if you think this is an alternative style, then you will like all my classes--they are all the same way" I said.

"I feel like puking when I see scantron sheets" I added.

"Me too. I thought I was the only one who felt that way" the student responded.

Such compliments, from those who truly matter, more than compensate for the "please shut up" that I hear from my faculty peers who simply couldn't fathom why I wouldn't shut up and sign the f*ing form :)

Global warming is for real. Any which way you measure it.

The Economist reports about the latest study (Berkeley Earth):

as described in four papers currently undergoing peer review, but which were nonetheless released on October 20th, offer strong support to the existing temperature compilations. The group estimates that over the past 50 years the land surface warmed by 0.911°C: a mere 2% less than NOAA’s estimate.

Perhaps the deniers don't read The Economist too? :)

Out in the Republic of Texas, Rick Perry and his dashing cowboys wouldn't care:

Two Texas lawmakers have accused the state's environmental agency of censoring information about global warming in a state-commissioned report about Galveston Bay.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, who has questioned the validity of man-made global warming during recent presidential debates and appearances. Officials defended their actions, saying they did not censor mentions of global warming and that the information was not relevant to the focus of the report.

A researcher from the group writes in the Wall Street Journal:

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.
Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate. How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that.

Perhaps the deniers self-censor this WSJ piece too?

Greg Mankiw, who was in Bush's economic team and is now advising Romney, yet again endorses the idea of a carbon tax when he approvingly cites this:

The need for taxes on energy externalities such as carbon emissions is central to our ability to reduce the harmful side effects of economic growth. It is striking how the political dialogue in the US has ignored a policy that has so many desirable features. Perhaps, in the near future, faced with the deadline of a dire economic situation, negotiators will formulate such a policy. It would generate substantial revenues while bringing so many long-run economic and environmental benefits. Simply put, externality taxes are the best fiscal instrument to employ at this time, in this country, and given the fiscal constraints faced by the US.

I am sure the deniers think that Mankiw is a liberal hippie :)

Too many kids go to college

That was the motion at the Intelligence Squared (US) and the audience response:

Before the debate, 39 percent supported the motion, 40 percent were against, and 21 percent undecided. After the debate, 47 percent are for the motion for the side for the motion. That's up eight percent. Against is 46 percent. That's up six percent. Undecided seven percent. The side arguing for the motion, just barely wins this debate.

Even if by only one percentage point, the results are an indicator that there is way more than merely a few people, including me, who are worried that we waste resources and burden our students with debt by pushing college for all.

I am willing to bet that this is a question that will dog us, whether we like it or not, definitely for the rest of this decade.  And that will determine the state of higher education in years after 2020. 

India v. China: Yet another take

I have blogged often about the Chinese approach to development, Gandhi, and Narendra Modi (question, like, and hate in that order.) Which is all the more the reason for me to quote this from Martha Nussbaum's essay:

India has bypassed Narendra Modi by energetically reasserting its commitment to free speech and a free press, in the refusal to ban Great Soul at the national level and in a general commitment to freedom of expression. Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar disagreed on some things, but on one point they were of the same mind: uplift for the poorest would be worthy of the dignity of the human spirit only if pursued within the context of constitutional rights for all and the zealous protection of civil and political liberties. The political vision of the Hindu right mars the insight that has made India, sixty-four years after its founding, a thriving democracy that honors human dignity in a way that its rival China has not.

When Nussbaum and Hitchens, to name a few, write, it is such a pleasure to read even if there are observations that I don't agree with.  I have watched them both on different occasions on C-Span's  three-hour in-depth conversations series.  These writers are gifted talkers and debaters too.  I would, therefore, think that Nussbaum's classes and seminars would be wonderfully rich experiences. 

Back to Nussbaum's observation on democracy and human dignity in India.  Yes, of course, I cannot imagine a life other than in a free society.  But, to the poorest of the poor, who number in the millions in India, and who have been poor for generations, will they be willing to give up a little bit of that freedom and dignity if they can get access to water supply and sanitation and living space and ... Where is the dignity in living life on a sidewalk, or defecating by the railroad tracks?

No money. Yet, new academic programs and hires? Screw the students, eh :(

I used to be a contributor to the university's Foundation.  Yes, “used to be.”

Over the recent years, I have come to understand that the university has sharply deviated from a focus on the education and success of students and has, instead, pursued, and continues to pursue, a calculated strategy of treating the university as a business enterprise and is failing at that as well.

The clincher for me was in the summer of 2010 when I read in the Statesman Journal the following statement by the previous president:

Since moving from NAIA to NCAA Division II in 2000, Western Oregon University has been adjusting to the economic realities of competing at a higher level.  More money was needed for scholarships, travel and increased investment in facilities, such as the new Health and Wellness Center opening this year, that will relocate the football team from the Old PE Building on campus.

Occam’s Razor principle offers a different adjustment to the economic realities: put an end to the financial disaster that the NCAA Division II requirements cause, and return athletics to the ranks of the NAIA.  Such a practical response would have then precluded the multiple millions of taxpayer and student dollars that went into an expensive facility that is far more luxurious than most local gyms, and for which students are now mandated to pay a fee every term, whether or not they patronize it.

So, that summer, I decided to cancel my small monthly contribution to the university's advancement and, thereby, stop enabling such wasteful and unnecessary expenditures.

Since then the economic conditions have not significantly improved in the state and the country.  Against such a background, was a near simultaneous reporting in the local media about:

• The possible end to the tuition promise—because of the need to balance the university’s budget;
• The renegotiation of staff compensation, which included belt-tightening measures and furlough days; and
• A six percent salary increase over two years for faculty (including me)

Here again, I am struck by the contradictions. When economic conditions are unfavorable, and are expected to be so for a couple of more years at least, triggering the university to abandon the idea of holding tuition constant , I would think that there will not be money for faculty pay raises.  In an email to the campus, the president noted that "WOU will realize deficits this biennium in excess of $5 million. This is after removing $2 million of costs from the budget" and yet the investments in faculty and facilities for newly initiated undergraduate and graduate programs.

At the end of it all, it seems highly likely then that all these wasteful expenditures in athletics and academics alike will result in students facing significant increases in tuition and fees, yet again, in the coming years.

It is not that economic conditions worsened only a few months ago and that we have been caught unprepared—it is now four years of doldrums as a result of the Great Recession, on top of the trend of decreasing allocation from the state over the years.  I worry that the university is not being prudent, especially in its social contract with taxpayers, and students and their families.  Even more worrisome is the distinct possibility that all these are being played out at other universities too!

But, who cares for what I think, right? 

When an unemployed PhD meets with his employed PhD friend ...

I heard the following joke yesterday on public radio, in the context of the crisis in Greece.

Two guys completed grad school together as they worked on their PhDs. One found a job and the other is unemployed.
The jobless PhD decides to meet with the employed PhD at his work place.
After a few minutes of chit-chat, the employed PhD has to return to work, and asks the jobless one, "would you like fries with your order?"

Yes, this is a re-working of an often repeated joke about liberal arts degrees here in the US.  But, yet another tragic-comedic reminder of the academic credential inflation all over the world.

I liked the other joke also in the same news segment: (at least, this is what I recall)

Did you know that the Greek finance minister was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry?  It was for turning the Euro into shit :)

We can only laugh at all the insanity that surrounds us.  Else, the option is to jump off the nearest cliff and that ain't attractive :(

Steve Jobs goes to heaven. Correction: is reincarnated as ...

The New Yorker cover was far from the original thinking that I expect from the cartoonists there.  Oh well, they can't deliver every time, I suppose.

Many cartoonists had played around with similar "i" themes ... except the following one that I came across:

Now, that is some creative thinking.

Jobs, as many commentators duly noted, was a ruthless business guy as much as he was innovative. 

Last term, I think, I had my students watch a couple of video segments that were interviews with Mike Daisey, who in a serious and funny way makes us think about the ethical issues that we conveniently forget when we use an iPhone, or any smartphone, or any latest electronic gizmo for that matter.  Made students think, it seemed like.

We are all complicated mixed bags, but we seem to prefer clean and simple narratives like the nonexistent saintliness of Jobs.

Occupy Wall Street explained ... in a venn diagram

Pretty good, right?  Kudos to the person who created this.

BTW, if you like Venn Diagrams, then here and here are two posts from the past

More on college degrees and employment

Adding this to a long running series in this blog:

The current generation of college graduates will only see a higher standard of living if "they get graduate degrees and are willing to give up a lot of free time," says Diane Swonk of Mesirow Financial. She says that while falling incomes may make up lost ground, the issue will be the distribution of those gains.

Incomes are being held down by persistently high unemployment and tepid economic growth, and the situation isn't expected to improve much in the foreseeable future.

I told my department colleagues that I don't know what to advice/suggest to students anymore regarding jobs and careers. Especially when with every passing day I am more and more convinced that higher education and job-credentialing ought not to be thought of in the same vein, and that it is a disservice to explicitly or implicitly suggest that jobs and prosperous middle class lives are guaranteed upon graduation--particularly at public universities catering to low-income students.

Either the Al-Koran or the sword

Read the title of this post, again.

Now, think about who said that.  Yes, the name of the person who said "Either the Al-Koran or the sword."

If you are like me, well, you will attempt to guess.  So, come on, go ahead and give it a try.

You are probably thinking that it was one of the crazy militant Islamic fundamentalists, like bin Laden, for instance.

Prepare yourself for the correct answer.  Ready? 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—hereafter known as the Mormons—was founded by a gifted opportunist who, despite couching his text in openly plagiarized Christian terms, announced that "I shall be to this generation a new Muhammad" and adopted as his fighting slogan the words, which he thought he had learned from Islam, "Either the Al-Koran or the sword."

Every day I learn plenty of new stuff from Christopher Hitchens.  I would never have guessed that the LDS founder said it was the Al-Koran or the sword!

In his latest column at Slate, Hitchens writes that whether or not Mormonism is a cult is not as important as::

the weird and sinister belief system of the LDS, discussion of which it is currently hoping to inhibit by crying that criticism of Mormonism amounts to bigotry.

Pitchforks, the "Occupy" movement, and insecurities

Over to Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini about Occupy Wall Street:

is a symptom of the economic malaise that we're facing not just in the United States, but all over the world. It started with the Arab Spring, and of course, poverty, unemployment, corruption, inequality eventually leads to people becoming restless. But now, you have middle-class people in Israel saying we cannot afford homes; you have middle-class students in Chile saying we don't have education; you have riots in London; people smashing Mercedes and BMWs of fat cats in Berlin and Frankfurt; you have an anti-corruption movement in India. It takes a lot of different manifestations, but we live in a world with a lot of economic insecurity, of worries about the future, of inequality, poverty, of concerns about jobs. And [Occupy Wall Street] is the manifestation in the U.S.

And, Roubini seems convinced that we are in for another recession--the only question being "whether it's going to be a plain-vanilla recession or one as severe as the last."

I can't see anything to disagree with the following that Roubini says:

The U.S. might not be Europe, but the U.S. is not used to having an unemployment rate so high -- and staying so high. Usually, when you get a recession the monetary and fiscal stimulus leads to a recovery of jobs in short order. But this is becoming chronic and longer term. Either the United States becomes like Europe -- and we've already extended unemployment benefits three or four times over -- or otherwise you have a much bigger social welfare state and safety net. Or you'll have people rioting in the streets. We have to do something either way. Either we'll have a fiscal problem or a social problem.

Well, maybe it is not "we'll have a fiscal problem or a social problem" ... we could have a third scenario, which is both fiscal and social problems.

About the Republicans:

They've taken a Leninist approach, you know, of the worse is the better. This is an election year. If the economy gets worse and they don't pass, this plan then the chance that Obama gets reelected is smaller. They think he'll be a one-term president. If so, they'll inherit not just a nasty recession, but something probably worse. But I think it's a political calculus they're playing -- even if it's going to hurt the economy. 

Paints quite a picture--Republicans taking a Leninist approach.

So, why the pitchforks in the title of this post?  Roubini reminded me of that:

In 2009, [President Barack] Obama told the bankers, "I'm the only one who's standing between you and the pitchforks." The bankers got the bailouts; they were supposed to extend credit, extend mortgages. They did pretty much nothing, and they went back to the same actions as before: making money through trading. At this point, I think people are fed up with it. Rightly or wrongly, there's a huge amount of anger.

Well, hey, prepare for an eventful Guy Fawkes Night!

Occupy Wall Street heading towards ... Guy Fawkes Night ...

Looks like we are slowly moving towards what could become an eventful Guy Fawkes Night, three weeks from now on November 5th.  People are protesting (causes for dissatisfaction is all across the spectrum) and politicians and governments seem to be quite helpless at figuring out hot to get to address the dissatisfied Americans.

In such grave economic contexts, one would imagine reconsidering all the major expenditure items, especially at the federal level, which means talking about the massive military spending that we do.  But then how do you counter a propaganda campaign-by the government and the military industry--that it will be doom and gloom if we cut our defense budget even a tiny bit!

Energy politics worsen--in India, and South China Sea

Consider this: in a rapidly growing economy, to go along with a huge population that is hungry for electricity, a power generation facility is ready for commissioning after years of construction.  While one might hypothesize that this will be a welcome relief from the blackouts and energy rationing, it has become controversial. Because, it is a nuclear power station--the Kudankulam project in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

People's activists want the Kudankulam nuclear power plant shut down completely; Tamil Nadu's politicians have the less ambitious aim of halting work on the project until the fears of local people are allayed. The plant was originally scheduled to begin operations later this month. 

A combination of the Fukushima aftermath and the nature of politics in India have brought this about.  The Fukushima angle is not only because Kudankulam is a nuclear power generation facility, but also because of its location by the sea, and the populated peninsular India.

Looking at the map, one might be reminded of the Indonesian earthquake that triggered the tsunami, which reached the coastlines of India and wiped out people and communities.

In a tropical country like India, where it is the sea that guarantees limitless water supply, well, nuclear power plants tend to be located very near the coast: as the Union of Concerned Scientists explains:

Nuclear power plants are usually built next to lakes, rivers, and oceans.1 Not for the scenic views that such locales provide, but because water can absorb the waste heat produced by the plants. Nuclear power plants consume vast amounts of water during normal operation to absorb the waste heat left over after making electricity and also to cool the equipment and buildings used in generating that electricity. In event of an accident, nuclear power plants need water to remove the decay heat produced by the reactor core and also to cool the equipment and buildings used to provide the core’s heat removal.

So, ... One can easily imagine the complex politics in this context.  A country with severe electricity shortage while demand rapidly increases; a facility constructed at quite an expense in a country that has nearly half a billion poor; the location dynamics affected by the consequences of earthquakes and tsunamis; politicians and activists who are only too eager to seek short-term victories; cavalier statements by officials; and endless commentaries (including this one!)

This will, however, not be the final battle over nuclear power. 

as for China, India, and South Korea -- countries with a growing appetite for nuclear power that account for the bulk of active plant construction -- only the first has put any of its nuclear plans on pause, and that's just pending a safety review. India and South Korea have vowed to tighten safety standards, but have otherwise forged ahead with plans for nuclear expansion.

The battle is far from over because the energy demand simply cannot be met through renewable "green" sources of energy.

There are three reasons why hydrocarbons will continue to dominate the global energy mix for decades to come: cost, the slow pace of energy transitions, and scale.

Further, carbon-based sources are already being contested, as I noted even recently, when  I worried about the growing tensions, primarily between India and China, over valuable oil and natural gas in the South China Sea, off Vietnam.

The South China Sea war of words is escalating as well:

India is playing with fire by agreeing to explore for oil with Vietnam in the disputed South China Sea, a major Chinese newspaper said on Sunday, advising the Indian company to reconsider and pull out. ...

The China Energy News, published by Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, said cooperation between India and Vietnam in these seas was a bad idea.

"India's energy strategy is slipping into an extremely dangerous whirlpool," it said in a front page commentary. ...

"Challenging the core interests of a large, rising country for unknown oil at the bottom of the sea will not only lead to a crushing defeat for the Indian oil company, but will most likely seriously harm India's whole energy security and interrupt its economic development.

"Indian oil company policy makers should consider the interests of their own country, and turn around at the soonest opportunity and leave the South China Sea," it said.

I can only imagine that these resource issues will worsen this decade before they can get any better.