The Theatre of the Absurd
As you may have heard, George W Bush is in India briefly and will be in Pakistan as well. I am sure that there is much rejoicing going all around among the movers and shakers in India about how wonderful the visit by an American president is. Lavish dinners and a lot of hoopla can be distracting. Who cares who the person is. We are really interested in what is in it for us. (The “us” is not people of India at large but the movers and shakers.)
Continue reading “The Theatre of the Absurd”
Fragments – 2
The Missing Middle
“Often in Indian you can find a very fancy Rs 12,000 a night hotel room, and you can find a flea-ridden Rs 700 a night hotel room. Why can’t you find a good clean comfortable Rs 2,000 a night room? What is with this missing middle?”
“Hey, same as in food. I can go and get high-priced medicore food at a fancy restaurant at a fancy hotel and get low-priced low-quality food at a hole in the wall. But it is hard to find a reasonably priced restaurant serving reasonably appetizing food. Again, the missing middle.”
“How about eduation? High priced and fancy, or almost free and totally worthless. How about decent education at reasonable prices?”
Why the excluded middle?
The Holy Land of Nehru
Most regular readers of this blog figure out soon enough that when it comes to the question of India’s ills and its causes, I refer to Jawaharlal Nehru. Like all roads eventually leading to Rome, all my explanations into what India is suffering from and why lead to Nehru, the Nabob of Cluelessness, at some point. I look around the country and marvel at how much damage has been caused by one single individual. It will take centuries to clean up and the cost in terms of lives lived in abject poverty and misery will amount in the billions. According to estimates, fully 700 million people in India are below the poverty line defined by international standards which is approximately less than $2 a day. Nehru and his descendants — both direct (Indira Gandhi and her progeny) and intellectual (the communists) — are responsible.
Continue reading “The Holy Land of Nehru”
Fragments — 1
Bush and Indian Journalists: Evenly Matched
The most powerful man in the world is an average moron. Considering that average Americans voted him into office — not once but twice — tells you that the average American is a moron. So how does the US economy do so well if the majority are stupid, you may wonder. They do so well because the minority are so bloody bright that they create stuff of such great value that in the aggregate, despite the stupidity of the majority, it is positive.
Continue reading “Bush and Indian Journalists: Evenly Matched”
Storm over the Amazon
I am continuing to read E. O. Wilson’s The Diversity of Life and recently I quoted from it. Today I continue to quote some more.
The best of science doesn’t consist of mathematical models and experiments, as textbooks make it seem. Those come later. It springs fresh from a more primitive mode of though, wherein the hunter’s mind weaves ideas from old facts and fresh metaphors and the scrambled crazy images of things recently seen. To move forward is to concoct new patters of thought, which in turn dictate the design of the models and experiments. Easy to say, difficult to achieve.
Dancing at the Edge of the World
The world of technology is magical. There are not enough hours in the day to even begin to scratch the surface of what amazing things that exist today, leave alone what is going to come down the technology cornucopia which is beyond imagination. You do get brief glimpses of tomorrow, occasionally. For instance, check out this Crazy Multi-input Touch Screen video clip. (Wait, don’t click on the link before you read the entire entry.)
Continue reading “Dancing at the Edge of the World”
The Diversity of Life
The great entomologist E O Wilson’s The Diversity of Life (Harvard University Press, 1992) should be required reading for all who care to understand the complex web of life that we all are part of.
What is urgently needed is knowledge and a practical ethic based on a time scale longer than we are accustomed to apply. An ideal ethic is a set of rules invented to address problems so complex or stretching so far into the future as to place their solution beyond ordinary discourse. Environmental problems are innately ethical. They require vision reaching simultaneously into the short and long reaches of time. What is good for individuals and societies at this moment might easily sour ten years hence, and what seems ideal over the next several decades could ruin future generations. To choose what is best for both the near and distant futures is a hard task, often seemingly contradictory and requiring knowledge and ethical codes which for the most part are still unwritten. (page 312)
Thoughts Without a Thinker
Many years ago I had read a book by Mark Epstein called Thoughts Without a Thinker, which is about psychotherapy from a Buddist perspective. I enjoyed the book immensely of course, but there is something in the first chapter that I cannot resist quoting in full.
Continue reading “Thoughts Without a Thinker”
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 