Month: January 2012

Information may be free but knowledge is never free. I am disappointed in you, my dear Wiki

There is a distinction between information and knowledge, which is worth keeping in mind.

As had been reported, Wiki (English language version) has done dark. This is the landing page image.

SOPA, PIPA, and Indian Censorship

Sometimes looking at the way the government does things one wonders whether the lunatics are running the loony bin. But perhaps the truth is not funny at all, and more horrifying: the people running the country are not crazy but rather they are terrifyingly smart and know exactly what they are doing and why. Their game involves controlling the masses through lies and misdirection.
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Voter Turnout and Identity

Scientific American Mind (dated Jan 10th) has a piece titled, “Voter Turnout Is Tied to Sense of Identity.” Unfortunately it is behind a subscription wall and therefore unavailable to me. But the short summary (reproduced here below the fold) is sufficient for us to get the general idea.
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On Identity Politics, Personality Cults, and Democracy in India

Who you are determines what you do. That’s not the most incisive of observations but one’s identity is inextricably mixed up with what motivates one. Consequently identity does have predictive and explanatory power regarding the behavior of people. Naturally political parties – who must understand crowd psychology to be successful – understand that. Particularly in India, identity based politics has been refined to an impossible degree.
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