The Tangled Web — Part 2

Talk to Me

You can learn a lot from talking to people. Long train journeys were a prefect setting to have long conversations with perfect strangers, people who have a different point of view, a different set of life experiences. Now that these days there are very few train journeys, long cab rides are the substitute setting for me to conduct an impromptu interview. Books and other publications generally give you a macro-level view of the world. For a micro-level understanding, you have to talk to people who you would not come across in the pages of a newspaper or a book.
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I’ve Been Tagged

I got tagged by Raj In the past, getting tagged usually pins me against the wall and I end up not playing along. But it being a lazy Sunday, here goes nothing: eight random things about me.
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The Tangled Web — Part 1

Death

Someone I used to know in California died rather suddenly. It was about 20 years ago. She and her husband were casual friends of mine. The perfect yuppie couple, they had everything going for them. Then she started having back pain. They were into fitness and perhaps the back pain was due to some sprained muscle while at the gym. A few visits to the doctors, a few more to chiropractors, a bit of muscle relaxants and pain killers, a few more visits to the medical establishments—a few months went by and the symptoms kept getting worse. Finally, it was diagnosed as cancer. She died within six months of that determination. It was later said that if they had discovered what the problem was, she might have had a fighting chance against the cancer. As it happened, she had lost too much time while her misdiagnosed symptoms were being treated.
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E O Wilson and EoL

Oh wonderful new world of the web, that has such people like E. O. Wilson in it!

http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf

E O Wilson got his wish. “As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we’re still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; yet we’re still steadily destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), using the acronym HIPPO, and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere.”

“Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.”

Watching that video makes me appreciate how lucky I am that I can glimpse the world vicariously through the eyes of such a gentle human being.

Another SSRS Letter

Since the last few days, I notice that this blog is getting a lot of visitors from esatsang.net, a site devoted to Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. I am not sure why but my blog does get a lot of attention from the followers of SSRS. It is interesting that my knowledge of the Art of Living organization and its leader is only impressionistic. I never studied the organization or its head. I had a general idea that SSRS was one of the many gurus that India produces fairly consistently. There are many to choose from, if you are so inclined — Sai Baba, Satya Sai Baba, Osho, Baba Ramdev, SSRS, even a genuine medical doctor-turned-guru Deepak Chopra–the list goes on. In my opinion, they are useful, whatever their personal failings or their motives, because they help in promoting Indian thought globally and make the world a little better place. Like the purveyors of physical goods, these gurus compete in the marketplace of ideas and their successes indicate that they do produce something that the market values.
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A Fatwa on both your Houses

A report in the Middle East section of the NY Times contains the sort of stuff that you cannot make up. It is about fatwas.

A Compass That Can Clash With Modern Life

CAIRO, June 11 — First came the breast-feeding fatwa. It declared that the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women being together could be lifted at work if the woman breast-fed her male colleagues five times, to establish family ties. Then came the urine fatwa. It said that drinking the urine of the Prophet Muhammad was deemed a blessing.

For the past few weeks, the breast-feeding and urine fatwas have proved a source of national embarrassment in Egypt, not least because they were issued by representatives of the highest religious authorities in the land.

Ah the joys of monotheism!

Who’s India’s Wu?

I came across the name Gordon Wu in an item in a recent Knowledge@Wharton mailing. It was titled “Gordon Wu Sees Huge Opportunities in China’s Rapid Urbanization.” Wu, a Hong Kong native, graduated from Princeton in 1958, and in 1969 founded Hopewell Holdings, a civil engineering firm. “Wu’s Hopewell Holdings — where he serves as chairman of the board – has been a pioneer for nearly three decades in building highways, power plants and bridges in China and Hong Kong. In addition to Hopewell Holdings, Wu heads Hopewell Highway Infrastructure and other companies of the Hopewell Group, whose operations span property development, leasing and hospitality. Queen Elizabeth knighted Wu in 1997 for his contributions to Asian infrastructure – and in effect for building one of the continent’s largest civil construction firms.”
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Fake PM’s Speech – Part Punch

Of Economic Freedom and Bondage

This is the concluding part of my re-write of PM Dr Manmohan Singh’s speech to the CII. (Previous part on Social Contracts here.) The PM in his speech had quoted from Tagore’s Gitanjali. I suppose the irony of quoting Tagore in the context of the government’s sustained effort to divide the country along caste and religious lines is lost on him. Severe cognitive dissonance perhaps. I have critically examined the PM’s speech for what it was, an attempt to browbeat the Indian industrialists into further crippling the Indian economy. It is all very sad.
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Fake PM’s Speech – Part Chor

Social Contracts

I have a strong aversion to sanctimonious hypocritical idiotic talk (just to spell it out) but it happens, as they say. Perhaps it doesn’t just happen, it is demanded. A sort of reverse Says’ law, “demand creating supply.” If not actually demanding it, sufficient people are not disgusted by it that the supply is maintained. Lack of aversion, or at least a publicly stated aversion to the peddling of it.

With that, here is part four of my re-write of PM Dr Manmohan Singh’s speech to the Confederation of Indian Industries.
Continue reading “Fake PM’s Speech – Part Chor”