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Closer  Look carefully. What do you see? Happy New Year.
Not Stingy The United States announced today a tenfold increase in aid for tsunami relief over it's initally announced package of $35 million reports the Washington Post. Hopefully, most of the money will actually materialise and, more importantly, most of it will go toward relief work rather than line the pockets of the go-betweens.
Edge  Life on the Edge - El Matador Beach, Malibu, December 30, 2004 Pic with better resolution available here.
Stingy? An editorial in the NYTimes points out some interesting figures, reproduced here in full, my emphasis President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.
A Beautiful Story  Every picture should be a beautiful story. Santa Monica, December 29, 2004
Ubercool For all you searchaholics out there, Google now suggests. I think this feature is ubercool, and if you don't find it ubercool, you either haven't really taken Google Search out for a test drive yet or you have been working too hard and not googling enough for fun and profit. Via The Unofficial Google Weblog.
Foreign Policy and Science Education Thomas Friedman weighs in on the palpable erosion of interest in the engineering and mathematics fields amongst American students and its expected implications in the next twenty years, If President Bush is looking for a legacy, I have just the one for him - a national science project that would be our generation's moon shot: a crash science initiative for alternative energy and conservation to make America energy-independent in 10 years. Imagine if every American kid, in every school, were galvanized around such a vision. Ah, you say, nice idea, Friedman, but what does it have to do with your subject - foreign policy?
Laguna Beach  Taken along the PCH, at Laguna Beach, 11/27/2004
More Pics  Fall, Northridge, 11/19/2004 I've posted a bunch of pictures at Webshots, all of them are high res, and most are nature stuff, check them out, if you are so inclined.
Dragon Rumble For those who have been paying attention, this will prove instructive. Via Illruminations.
Fall  Fall, Calabasas, 11/19/2004
10X10 Via Illruminations, this cool cool "interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time".
Wishes Shubh Deepawali, Eid Mubarak.
Sleep  Not a care in the world, Third Street Promenade, 10/9/2004
Vote I've had the fortune of voting once, and I rember being extremely excited and in awe of the process, the prospect of choosing a representative, exercising my franchise, it was almost a rite of passage for me, an adult thing and I'm exaggerating only very slightly. Anyway, the point is, I'm aware this is read by around three people, including me and my alter ego at work and I'm not sure if the third person is eligible to vote, but if you can, do.
Exactly I'm sick of it. Sick of Bush and Kerry. Sick of their wives. Sick of Cheney and Edwards. And their wives.From an article by Michael Goodwin in the New York Daily News, via WaPo.
Wrong War Bloomberg reports on a scientificstudy by reserarchers from the Johns Hopkins University and being published by The Lancet, which says, in part, About 100,000 civilians have died as a result of the war in IraqI'm not sure how close to reality that horrifying figure is but I'm just wondering if there is a standard by which this thing is measured, say X of your people are worth Y of ours? I'm wondering if Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney have these little books of equations where they calculate such figures before launching a war? Or do they just go by conviction, belief and bad planning? Wrong approaches both, to fighting a war.
Killing Children I have mentioned before the IDF's steady loss of moral clarity in its actions against the Palestinians and its out of proportion reaction to the most minor of infractions. This piece in the Haaretz talks about how easy it has become for Israeli troops to shoot and kill Palestinian children, how it's done with scant concern or fear of repercussion, under the guise of fighting the intifada and crushing the terrorists in the occupied territories and the Gaza strip. More than 30 Palestinian children were killed in the first two weeks of Operation Days of Penitence in the Gaza Strip. It's no wonder that many people term such wholesale killing of children "terror." Whereas in the overall count of all the victims of the intifada the ratio is three Palestinians killed for every Israeli killed, when it comes to children the ratio is 5:1. According to B'Tselem, the human rights organization, even before the current operation in Gaza, 557 Palestinian minors (below the age of 18) were killed, compared to 110 Israeli minors.The relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians is a constantly deteriorating mess and I don't see it moving toward any kind of resolution any time soon.
Cruiser  Cruiser, Third Street Promenade, 10/9/2004
Debate Blogging Kerry can have a peaceful night's sleep, Bush will need a new pillow. Bush - Closing thanks are mumbled and grudging (Thank you mmm, thank you mmsenator), won't turn over America's needs to other nations Kerry - repeats war experience, plan on Iraq, strong alliances, "future belongs to freedom, not to fear". Good closing overall Closing Statements Kerry - "issue is what you DO about it" Bush - "saw same intelligence, came to same conclusion" AGAIN Kerry - using extra time to rebut China argument given by Bush before Kerry - touts his experience of going down into the KGB vaults Bush - good response on Putin, I thought that was a tough question but Bush is definite in his answer Bush - Mistake talking bilaterally to North Korea, reason - China won't be involved, "I don't think that will work" Kerry - "Nuclear proliferation biggest risk to national security" Kerry - "I've been consistent on Iraq" Bush - "I won't change my core values" Kerry - "You can be certain and be wrong" Bush - "I just know how the world works" Bush - "Mixed messages send wrong signals" N+1th time me - is Bush even interested in this debate? Bush - "I agree it is genocide as Colin Powell has stated" Bush - Completely lost on Darfur. "ummm, aaaa, ummmmm aaaa" Kerry - "we have a backdoor draft going on today" me - Kerry is a good debator Question - Darfur, neither one of you has pointed out what you plan to do about it Bush - We don't need bilateral talks, because Kim Jong Il wants that Kerry - For two years this administration didn't talk at all to North Korea. Very strong criticism on this one Kerry - "The President did nothing" on Iran Bush - "China has more influence on North Korea, perhaps more than us", showing he did his homework on that topic, of course Bush - 'nucular' ;) Bush - Takes swipe at the International Criminal Court of Justice Bush - finds "Global test" funny Kerry - Criticizes turning away from treaties, one being the Kyoto Protocol Kerry - I won't cede the right for a pre-emptive strike/war. Uses "Jim", shouldnt they address the people in general? Kerry - brings up Iran, North Korea, Darfur Bush - "Of course I know OBL attacked us, I know that", "Saddam Hussein would've made weapons" Kerry - points to Bush's attempt at making common cause of Iraq war and the WoT, calls it "unfortunate" Bush - "hopefully won't have to go pre-emptive again" Bush - "the enemy attacked us, Jim" Jim? Kerry points to NIE which gave "best scenario - more of the same" Bush repeats 100,000 troops trained line, calls Allawi brave leader I started watching halfway into the debate, if Bush has been like this throughout, well he's not winning this contest Kerry - clarifies 'bringing back troops position' Kerry - Defends with "you break it you own it/fix it" rule Bush - repeats for the Nth time Kerry's inconsistensy Kerry - "Vital for us not to confuse the war with the warriors". Good line. Live comments - Bush sounds a little out of depth, he's slurring at times and keeps repeating Kerry's inconsistent. Doensn't offer anything worth listening to or repeating
He Said What? DailyKos points to this amusing, in a looting-is-an-expression-of-freedom way, quote from the man directing America's strategy in Iraq, “At some point the Iraqis will get tired of getting killed and we'll have enough of the Iraqi security forces that they can take over responsibility for governing that country,”I'd fire him for sheer stupidity.  random image
A Review and a Rant "Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yoursef: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true." This paragraph from Balzac's Le Pere Goriot stands guard to one of the best written novels I've read in some time now. Resisting the charm of magical realism, Rohinton Mistry, in A Fine Balance, writes simply and masterfully, the book is so complete it fills you up, with sadness mostly, but also reminiscence and a longing to be back in the city by the sea. After the rather poorly written The Moor's Last Sigh, AFB was a welcome relief, it's been a while since I read a book that narrates, without any embellishments of fantastic exotica and incestuous innuendo. AFB in that sense is not at all multilayered, it is, to borrow an analogy from the story, a patched quilt of complex relationships and the hopelessly intertwined lives of its protagonists. The author was criticized for exaggerating the impoverishement of India's poor, and even of the middle class, by feminist Germaine Greer, he responded by calling her comments asinine, and I agree, her comments are blase. I have atleast one aunt who would be a good model for Dinabai, there was a Shankar outside the railway station I took my train to college from everytday, bereft of limbs, he used to roll on the scorching asphalt, his lean body glistening with sweat, teeth missing and scraggly beard, he used to call out for alms, banking on the pity his condition inspired. My mother used to give tuitions at home and some of her students came from a small slum close by, one of them, lived with atleast six siblings, father and an intermittently sick mother in a small shack with an improvised and shaky second storey across from what was once a river but now reduced to a convenient dump for everything from industrial waste to used motor oil. He often had trouble naming his numerous brothers and sisters. which brings me to two other issues, one, the growth in India's population, there seems to be no plan on the ground to control it, rather I keep reading India is poised to take over China as the world's most populous nation in a few short decades but I never hear of any major government initiative to deal with that problem, that worries me greatly, I don't see how our land, our infrastructure, our resources and our economy will deal with almost one fourth of the world's living. The second issue is about figures released by the Indian Census Bureau which cite a growth rate of 29% from 1991 to 2001 in the Muslim population, lower than the 33% in the decade before (and much lower than the goofed up figure of 36% initially touted which had the RSS and BJP rankled), but still a figure that raises concern. A friend of mine chided my concern saying Allah provides and there shouldn't be a concerted effort to reduce the population in accordance with Islamic principles, an argument I find both disingeuous as well as alarming because it is comfortably accepted in many circles. An article in Mid-day, a Bombay (nee Mumbai, nee Bombay ;)) daily, recently says, Muslims are incapable of social reform because they do not view change from Islamic practice as reform but as heresy.which is exactly the problem the Indian Muslim community faces, reform is a horrendously difficult task and I'm at a loss to predict how or when, and in what form, it will take place, if ever. Anyway, heavy and serious matters aside, if you have anything to do with Bombay or India or the Emergency, then you absolutely have to read A Fine Balance. Cross posted on LoI
Mostly Speechless.. ...in dumbfounded horror. Except for one thing, how is it that Russia seems to take this rather aggressive approach to hostage situations? This and the previous incident, seem to suggest the Russians don't really believe in negotiation, I'm not sure if this is because the terrorists or hostage takers won't negotiate or if the Russian police and commandos believe, erroneously as it has twice turned out, that they can resolve such situations without much bloodshed. More than two hundred people died in this case, more than a hundred in the theater hold up in October 2002 but I haven't heard too many people criticizing the approach taken by the Russian law enforcement. It is impossible to be certain whether a protracted negotiation process would really result in a smaller number of deaths but I have a feeling it would, simply because what has happened in both of these incidents is a worst case scenario rather than the best.
Psychohistory In Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation series, Hari Seldon develops an esoteric field of study called psychohistory that utilizes mathematical principles including statistics and probability with doses of psychology and historical data to predict within a fair margin of error, the future, or more accurately, behavior and social patterns on a broad scale for large social systems. Who was to know that in our own times there lives a man with a gift that would make even Hari Seldon envious, that man of course, is Senator John Kerry, challenger to the incumbent and psychic extraordinaire. If you haven't heard already, let me explain, from a fairly authoritative source, it can now be claimed John Kerry engineered his war record with surprising and admirable perspicacity, with an eye on a political (but till now 'insignificant') career. It is now easy to speculate the Vietnam war was really a stage show, completely scripted and directed by Mr. Kerry to further his political ambition, this is obvious from the facts, i) he first fought in the war and then went on to criticize how it was being conducted ii) his three purple hearts were variously the result of shooting himself, expertly self-inflicting minor shrapnel wounds and setting up fake ambushes through his contacts in the VietCong iii) he even threw Rassmann overboard and then pretended to save him, just to get a bronze star, all bunkum iv) the silver star too was gotten under suspicious circumstances, the VietCong who was supposedly shot by Kerry was in fact a plant, and had in his hands a pot of water, a lota (he came from behind a bush remember?) and not a B-40 grenade launcher as has been claimed v) Kerry ran for office eventually, and is now running for President using his war record to argue for his candidacy, how much more proof do you need? I'm just thinking, if Kerry could really plan for a shot at the Presidency thirty five years ago, maybe he deserves to be elected, then, with his clairvoyance and evil calculating mind he can fix all the world's problem spots including Palestine, Kashmir and Darfur, as well as all the issues that face America, from terrorism to outsourcing, don't you agree?
Sex and the DC To the long list of people you officially cannot have casual sex with add one more, bloggers who kiss and tell, especially if you are a married Hill staffer working for the government. The dubious honor of necessiating this caveat goes to Jessica Cutler also known, formerly, as Washingtonienne. In the blogosphere this is very old news and when I first heard of it I didn't think much of it, now, the Washington Post, in a long feature, discusses the entire affair (affairs?) and allows some perspective on Ms. Cutler's incredibly relaxed approach to sex, work and well, ultimately how she leads her life. Sometimes the episodes of Sex and the City seem exaggerated, I wonder what's driving these attitudes though, is it the media affecting the public or does it serve to, as has been argued often, hold up a mirror showing us the state of our times? It seems to me a bit of both, each feeding off the other, each extrapolating and inferring so that the reflection sometimes assumes the role of reality while reality becomes imagination. As for the immediate after effects of the Cutler affair, I assume, the bars of DC will now have the gentlemen adding "You won't blog about this, will you?" to their pick up lines.
McGreevey The NJ Governor went to Columbia, Georgetown and then Harvard, quotes Machiavelli, has had a stellar political career and at 47 was ready to run for a second term next year. Then he gave it all up, and for what? Not because he was gay or contrite about his adulterous affair I think, though that was part of the picture, what seems to me the reason for McGreevey's resignation is the fear of having this played out in the press while he denied it and the scandal of giving plum postings to his lover. Should a public figure's private life be the public's business? Certainly not, but if their private life severly (and adversely) affects the decisions they make and compromises in any way their ability to be faithful to their duties then it is critical they remove themselves from the public sphere and let others take up their responsibilities. McGreevey's fault here is not that he's gay, obviously, it is that he indulged in; one, an affair that made him vulnerable to blackmail, and; two, favoritism of a most eggregious nature which reflected a cavalier attitude to some degree in his governorship duties. Maybe it is best he leaves office immediately instead of waiting till November, which may, yet, happen too.
Groupthink It is amazing to me that President Bush continues to claim the accuracy of his decision to go to war in Iraq last year, inspite of the obvious lack of any imminent threat, the completely asinine handling of the post war situation and the worsening of the country's image everywhere from old faithful friends to avowed foes. As he barnstorms across the states, the President is selling the notion that America is today safer than it was roughly seventeen months ago, a hard sell to any reasonably minded person, surely, for when you consider the ill will generated by the war, not just amongst old allies but so also in every Islamic country and society. The Washington Post today, in a yeah-we-too-screwed-up article by Howard Kurtz says of the the groupthink leading up to the war, Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.The assertion that the war on terrorism is merely a conflict between self defined perceptions of Good and Evil is missing the motivation of Islamic radicalism, it reduces a larger, complex issue to black and white which Bush has been wont to do. Though I can't claim to even begin to fathom what could possibly drive those nineteen men to try and kill as many Americans as their plans would let them, I'm quite certain they did it with as much belief in their being right as President Bush does in his going to war with Iraq. I have little doubt the Al Qaeda continues to plot acts of terrorism and is bound to strike sooner rather than later, but perhaps not in the US, they seem to be focussing on softer targets including American interests and citizens in other countries. Had the war on terror spent more effort and resources, both financial as well as intellectual, in rooting out Al Qaeda cells in Europe, Saudi Arabia and other hotbeds, it would have been far more effective in protecting America and American interests, than the current strategy has been. To, however, pull out of Iraq now, would be an even graver mistake than going in was, we can only hope that the American troops along with Iraqi forces get the security situation in that country under control through a prudent and determined use of their situational advantages and superior numbers.
Quote-time Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of the car is separate from the way the car is driven. -Edward De Bono, consultant, writer, and speaker (1933- ) via Wordsmith
What Actually Happened I was the hamster of Alexandra's sister, Vanessa, and she, on balance, was a good person, although a bit of a tickler. On this occasion, as the family gathered on the pier to depart for a vacation, somebody - I'm not saying it was Alexandra; I'm not saying it was on purpose - "bumped" my cage, and the next thing I knew, I was in the water and sinking fast. Hahaha. From here.
Curiouser and Curiouser! The New Republic Online in an article by John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari on July 19 reported the following, This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a "sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. "The problem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better," he said. Today is July 29, the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention, John Kerry is giving his acceptance speech for his nomination to the Presidential ticket at this very moment and the following piece of news broke some hours ago, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who is among the 22 people on the F.B.I.'s most-wanted-terrorist list, was arrested Sunday, Pakistani officials said Thursday night. The HVT (I'm ready to bet that acronym is not a Pakistani creation ;)) was captured Sunday, and the news was broken eight hours before the Presidential challenger's address to his party's convention, that is far more coincidence than my credulity can take. Meanwhile, there is news from Florida of happenings that would stump Alice surely, like servers with voting records without backup, heck even my spam is backed up. Okay, exaggeration, but again, it is extremely poor system design that does not take into consideration a server crash, especially for such an obviously important set of records. The election officials in the sunshine state have either displayed gross incompetence of they are simply covering up something more sinister, either of which possibilities, are rather disconcerting.
San Francisco  When the say the ice cream's good they do not lie...
Glorious Genocide Nicholas Kristof, in an NYT Op-Ed piece last week talks about Glorious Appearing: The End of Days, the latest in the runaway bestseller Left Behind series by authors Tim LeHaye and Jim B. Jenkins, which has passages like this one, "Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again." This unabashed and apocalyptic vision where everyone but those who have accepted Christ will have their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated, is perhaps taken by a worrisome portion of its readers (the books have totalled 60 million in sales worldwide) as the literal, and Biblical, truth, the coming destiny of mankind. Kristof asks, Could devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell? A serious question, and something that followers of any of the Abrahamic religions should have to grapple with, I wonder what answers or explanations they arrive at. The Return of the Warrior Jesus is an older article on the issue by David Kirkpatrick, it appeared in the NYT in April this year and examines the broader issue of the image of Jesus morphing from an effeminate/marshmallowy/bearded lady one to that of a vengeful warrior intent on delivering a terrible form of justice to those who have refused to believe in him or who have transgressed his laws. Recommended.
The Eagle Has Landed, 35 Years Now I was still eleven years in the future, yet to be conjured up by Mom and Dad, on this night in 1969, when astronaut and fellow USC alumnus (tongue firmly in cheek) Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon and uttered one of the most famous phrases of the past century...   Mission Logo and Earthrise pictures via here
Hold On Time to hold on to your jaws folks! Microsoft has announced a 32 billion dollar payout, yup, you read right, that's 32 of the biggest Bs, as part of a $3 per share one-time special dividend. Of this, Gates' share is $3.3 billion, which has been pledged to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the country's largest foundation of its kind. Microsoft has estimated cash reserves of almost $56 billion, the payout will reduce that figure to a more earthly $20 billion, though the company does continue to add an amazing $1 billion every month in extra cash to its coffers. (source - this article from nyt)
Just Another Day What do you call a day when your wisdom tooth gets pulled in the morning and then your car gets rear-ended in the evening? Today. Darn.
A Century Pablo Neruda, by far the greatest romantic poet of his time, would have been a hundred today. Nobel laureate, communist, exile, diplomat and an incredibly prolific poet, Neruda died in September 1973, within weeks of Pinochet's coup that overthrew the poet's friend and Chilean President Salvador Allende. The Washington Post has a very good tribute by Edward Hirsch and the New York Times takes a look at the pomp and celebration marking the event in Chile. Here's a sampling (from WaPo and Plagiarist), I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
Kerry and Edwards I just saw a news report on CNN of how the the late night talk shows are having a swipe at Kerry's search for a VP and his new found love for Edwards. Particularly funny was the segment from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno where the two are shown hugging, patting each others' backs, and in one particularly hilarious shot where Kerry seems to be petting Edwards' bottom. This brought to mind the warnings we, as fresh imports to USC were given by the crowd that had been around for a year, "Do not walk around with your arms around the shoulders of your friends, no hugging and absolutely no holding hands, they'll take you as gay" we were told, rather ominously. Not many of us are much inclined to hug and kiss other guys but Indians do tend to be more physical when greeting each other without raising any red flags. However, not wanting anyone casting any sort of aspersions on our sexuality the desi crowd maintained a studied distance from each other, all the hugging and petting was done behind closed doors. Nope, I'm just kidding, there was no hugging or petting, that's reserved for candidates on the Presidential ticket, haha.
Lunch and Buffett From the New York Times, On Thursday, the virtual paddles went down on eBay for what, at $202,100, can be billed as a very pricey power lunch. For the fourth consecutive year, Warren E. Buffett, the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, has donated lunch with himself to a fund-raising auction for the Glide Foundation, a nonprofit social services group in San Francisco.
Plog Amazon gave me today a preview of my PLOG. What's a Plog? here's what, Your Amazon.com Plog is a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things. Just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. When we think we have something interesting or important to tell you, we'll post it to your Plog. I've been a huge fan of Amazon for a long time now, they just keep doing things better every time I return to buy something, and this latest idea sounds quite interesting, pretty innovative, a winner? maybe.
Talibanization of the NWFP? One of the problems inherent with democracy is that there is an exceeding likelihood of an agenda of oppression under the guise of traditional, cultural or religious legitimacy being imposed by groups of people who have sufficient finesse or appeal to grab power. The increasing anti-American sentiment in Iraq bodes well for Islamic extremists that intend to impose a rather strict, Talibanistic version of the religion on the people of Iraq, and this concerns me. These ill winds of the state defining virtue, determining what's vice and interpreting the vast body of Sharia to fit their visions of how Islam is meant to be followed, are blowing rather strongly in the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, where the ruling alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal or MMA, is proposing what it calls the Hisbah Bill, that is intended purportedly to curb corruption and root out social evil. Obviously, the problem with legislation of this kind is that it reflects, merely, one point of view, a filtered interpretation, that ultimately stifles a social structure, it kills the child instead of disciplining it, so to speak. By focussing on trufles like ads showing partially clad women, and thus diverting scant resources, legislators would much better serve their constituents by addressing the broader issues, like education, emancipation of women, better healthcare and infrastructure development. Admittedly, I don't have much knowledge of Pakistan's internal political organization and structure but they have suffered from a rather wobbly democracy in their fifty seven years of independence and it would only serve the Pakistanis better if their governments spent more time on governing and less on infusing the laws of the country with narrow definitions of virtue.
Follow the Google Microsoft has thrown in the gauntlet with a leaner and meaner search page, much in immitation of Google's and is working on its own search technology (techpreview.search.msn.com - may not load properly) while Yahoo's search engine powers them now. Google is the real search company, and has been so for a while now, Yahoo is no pushover either, it will be interesting to watch how this particular battle plays out in the coming months. Via here. Update Looks like the search page has reverted back to its former self. Weird. Update 2 Back to spartan look.
Fuzzy Logic The Oracle of Omaha weighs in with an Op-Ed in today's Washington Post on a bill to be considered by the US House of Representatives which proposes to treat company stock options in a manner that Buffett characterizes as mathematical lunacy. Until now the record for mathematical lunacy by a legislative body has been held by the Indiana House of Representatives, which in 1897 decreed by a vote of 67 to 0 that pi -- the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter -- would no longer be 3.14159 but instead be 3.2. Indiana schoolchildren momentarily rejoiced over this simplification of their lives. But the Indiana Senate, composed of cooler heads, referred the bill to the Committee for Temperance, and it eventually died.
Before Time Homework: Read The Myth of The Beginning of Time on SA, Was the big bang really the beginning of time? Or did the universe exist before then? Such a question seemed almost blasphemous only a decade ago. Most cosmologists insisted that it simply made no sense--that to contemplate a time before the big bang was like asking for directions to a place north of the North Pole. But developments in theoretical physics, especially the rise of string theory, have changed their perspective. The pre-bang universe has become the latest frontier of cosmology.
Eeeeyaahooo! I'm happy today :)  Maria Sharapova created history today at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships
Anti-Anna I'm falling in love again...err with tennis.  maria sharapova - tall, russian, blonde, and in the
The Graduation Stole as a Heckler's Tool Al-Muhajabah points to this excellent commentary by Juan Cole of Informed Comment on the recent graduation stole controversy at UCI.
Most Ridiculous Item of the Day Christiane Amanpour is one of the best, and most memorable journalists on television I've ever seen, right from the days when CNN was covering the Gulf War in 1991 to her current coverage of the situation in Iraq. Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor today suggested she should perhaps cover "movies or something" since her spouse, Jamie Rubin, is deeply involved with the Kerry campaign. This is an incredible suggestion, Amanpour has had a stellar reporting career in which she's covered not only the Gulf War and Iraq, but also did substantial work in Bosnia, Rwanda and Pakistan besides interviewing a range of world leaders. Here's a look at the awards she's received, For her reporting from the Balkans, Amanpour received a News and Documentary Emmy, two George Foster Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards, a Courage in Journalism Award, a Worldfest-Houston International Film Festival Gold Award and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. She also was named 1994 Woman of the Year by the New York Chapter of Women in Cable and Telecommunications, and she helped the network win a duPont Award for its coverage of Bosnia and a Golden CableACE for its Gulf War coverage. Now Mr. O'Reilly wants her to give up political journalism, that, to borrow a line from The Factor, is the most ridiculous suggestion I've heard today. It's funny how full of himself Bill O'Reilly really is, he hawks "Boycott France" bumper stickers, threatens Canadian guests of boycotting their country or cutting off US trade with them, casts aspersions on the Justices of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and repeatedly calls people unpatriotic, he were, as if, the sole guardian and arbiter of what patriotism is. I find it more than a little rankling to hear talk of an individual's or a group's patriosm being questioned based on their belief system. Back home, in India, for example, I was once asked by a friend in all seriousness, who my loyalties lay with, Pakistan or India, during the Kargil conflict. The implication of being a closet supporter of a country merely because I followed the same religion as they did, was absurd in the extreme for me, I don't identify with Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan or Pakistan, atleast not with any sense of allegiance, my identification with the peoples of those countries is the same as it would be with the people of any other nation, in a basic humanist sense.
If you gaze long enough... Israel daily Haaretz reported last Friday of an exhibition going on in Tel Aviv right now showcasing the excesses the IDF habitually commits in the occupied territories near Hebron, Yehuda Shaul still can't put his finger on the exact moment in which "it all clicked" for him. Maybe it was the day when some settler girls were sitting and playing a few meters away from his post, in Gross Square in the heart of Hebron. An elderly Palestinian woman passed by, loaded down with baskets, and the girls "picked up rocks and started stoning her. When I asked them, `What are you doing?,' they said, `How do you know what she did in 1929?'" A sampling of the images at the exhibition here.
Losing the fight The New York Times reports on a soon to be published book, Imperial Hubris, by a senior (and current) CIA officer, "U.S. leaders refuse to accept the obvious," the officer writes. "We are fighting a worldwide Islamic insurgency — not criminality or terrorism — and our policy and procedures have failed to make more than a modest dent in enemy forces." I agree with the thrust of this analysis and the book is probably rather incisive in this regard. However, a review of a previous book by the same author raises some questions. Purportedly, that book, Through Our Enemies' Eyes has some bizarre analogies comparing Osama bin Laden with Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, [B]in Laden’s character, religious certainty, moral absolutism, military ferocity, integrity, and all-or-nothing goals are not much different from those of individuals whom we in the United States have long identified and honored as religious, political, or military heroes, men such as John Brown, John Bunyan, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Paine. The review does credit the author for his perspicacity in the overall sense though, UPDATE: I’ve gone back and revisited the remainder of TOEE—the part which details the historical evolution of bin Ladin and his network—and would commend that portion to you. It’s easily the best one-volume treatment that I’ve seen on that account and does a superb job of crystalizing the nature of the threat we face, in a way that is still not grasped by most analysts even two years later. While Anonymous’ cutesy historical analogies and word games early in the book are annoying, he gets the threat analysis right. The review is highly recommended, as is this interview of the author on Talking Points Memo by Spencer Ackerman.
Spade An article in today's Guardian by Martin Jacques takes a critical look at democracy and it's fallibility in a global context,
Hat tip to illruminations.
Computational Origami Open your eyes and believe. Haha, truly fascinating.  pic via nytimes.com Meanwhile somewhere above the Mojave desert, freshly, and uniquely crowned private astronaut and veteran test pilot Mike Melvill had what he described as almost a religious experience. He said it felt like touching the face of God, a reference to the poem High Flight by Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr,
I particularly liked this report.
Midnight's Children - Tribute When reading the historical novels of James Michener, I'd always lament the fact he'd never bothered to write about my Bombay and my India, it was an aching loss, something I wanted to fix in good time, when I indulged in the fantasies of my own prowess as a spinner of tales. What I never really realized was that such a book had been written, only a few years following my birth, and it was a book I'd read too, but never grasped, not in the least. That book I've just finished reading, a second time, and the import of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, is heavy and obvious. Undoubtedly one of the great books of our generation, a brilliant work, acute and impeccable, it is an enthralling bit of literature, written with deep feeling and by an uncommon talent. The narration of the first thirty years or so of India's independence, the hopes that freedom and democracy brought, and the hopelessness that invariably accompanies those ideals are captured with a magical and apocryphal look at historical events, through the eyes of an observer who sees in him reflected his country's birth, adolscence and gawky jump into adulthood. Much water has flowed under the bridge since the novel was first published, the generation hinted at by Saleem Sinai, born of the late seventies and the early eighties, is today's yuppie, the generation of IT services and economic booms that don't reach the masses, the generation of a billion people, an immense teeming mass that is as yet uncertain about what which way to go, of changing city names and dreams of lunar travel, my generation. I've jumped ship, so to speak, and write while sitting in a city a full twelve hours behind the city of my birth, but the ties remain, strong as ever. I've said this before, and say it again, it is pitiful that such an important writer, important both to Indian as well as world literature, a man who has held up the mirrors we gaze our images in, has been treated like a pariah by the country of his birth and that of his fecund fantasy.
A Mole A mole on the face of the sun. No but it was too evanescent, so perhaps, an adolescent's pimple?
Irreverent At the risk of sounding irreverent, could we have please please have some real news on the networks instead of an interminable series of final goodbyes? Back in 1994, when India's ex president Giani Zail Singh died in a car accident, Door Darshan, the state run TV station, and, at that time the only programming on the Indian air waves, ran nothing but really bad, mournful music for seven long days. Though this is not evem close to that sorry experience, I'm watching more of Bravo, USA and TNT than CNN, FoxNews and MSNBC, and I'm not happy.
Quote To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
Crabwalk - a quick review Gunter Grass is an iconic figure in German, rather, world literature, with a resounding classic like The Tin Drum in his portfolio and having been awarded the Nobel in 1999. I didn't really enjoy The Tin Drum but that I attribute to a shortcoming on my part and not of the writing itself, now my appreciation of that kind of literature has only, well, appreciated. Crabwalk is an examination of what was one of the great maritime disasters of the last century, the greatest actually, as the author keeps reminding us throughout the book. This book has been called one of Grass' most accessible works, and it is, unless the translator (Krishna Winston), did a terrible job, but we'll give him the benefit of doubt here. The title refers to the erratic manner a crab makes progress, sliding this way and that and the narration tries to hold true to that notion, but the book is still fairly simply structured. The narrator was born, amazingly and miraculously, at the very instant the Wilhelm Gustoloff sank after being hit by three torpedoes from a Russian U-Boat. I find it a little amusing and very instructive, this emphasis on births of coincidence in some of the great books I've read, for example, Rushdie has his protagonist being born at the very instant of India's independence in Midnight's Children and Omar Khayyam Shakil, hero of Shame, again by Rushdie, is born seemingly of three interchangeable moms. Being a very short book there are some obvious shortcomings, though it is a quick read and none too demanding, the characters fail to make a lasting impression, from the mother who is obsessed with that single event of her life, to the son that lets himself be misled and misguided enough to be absolutely certain of his flawed convictions. The author tells of the assasination of the person Wilhelm Gustoloff an incident that resulted in the christening of the ship after him, Gustoloff's assassin David Frankfurther who committed the act with a hope to rally the Jews against rising Nazi atrocities, of of the U-Boat captain who was motivated by a little more than duty and patriotism when he took those shots and of the narrator's son who is enraged by the fact that this significant loss of life remains buried in a sense of shame amongst the Germans. The end of the book is poignant, almost hopeless, as it concludes with the refusal of history to leave us alone, of its habit to keep repeating, like a crab walking in incessant, imperfect circles. A decent Sunday afternoon read, I couldn't help feeling a slight sense of having missed out on some nuance that may have been lost in translation.
another poem It's been a while, so here's a poem I came across in Stephen King's On Writing, it's by his wife, and novelist, Tabitha King, A Gradual Canticle for Augustine
history repeating? Can we kick Israel from the community of nations now? No really, what about now? The IDF's actions in Gaza are bringing back memories of the Shoah for some, via today's Washington Post, "On TV I saw an old woman rummaging through the ruins of her house looking for her medication, and it reminded me of my grandmother who was thrown out of her house during the Shoah," or Holocaust, Lapid (Justice Minister Yosef Lapid - ub) told Israel radio in an interview after the weekly session. There are some wars you know who to take a stand with and some where the protagonists spiral the violence to include civilains without any regard for who's culpable and who's not. I don't see how the Palestinians or the Israelis are moving toward any sort of solution or lasting peace, it is just not happening, and a pitifully small number of people seem to realize that.
nick berg I tried watching the Nick Berg beheading video a couple of hours ago and am still reeling from the worst kind of visual and aural offense I've ever been subject to. The first couple of seconds show the about to be brutally slaughtered Nick being tackled to the floor as loud voices ring out with seeming righteousness "Allahu-akbar! Allahu-akbar!", to reconcile the recitation of God's name with the horrifying scene I was seeing, was like being dealt an extremely violent and very painful blow in the stomach. I'd stopped the video without watching the actual beheading but did skip forward to again confront the image of a severed head being held up like a filthy trophy, a sorry mistake. What a sad, depressing day this has turned out to be.
twenty four. phew!
hallelujah! Go ahead, leave a comment, make my day!
bush gets a tongue lashing As one of the Iraq war's staunchest supporters, this diatribe by Tacitus against George W. Bush and his handling of the occupation does come as a little surprise, though there had been a build up. Fool, fool, fool he repeats. One wonders in stupefaction at the magnitude of this folly. Trite phrases spring to mind: in particular, "It is worse than a crime -- it is a mistake." In this case, the mistake is the crime, and it is terrible indeed. It is hardly too much to call it dereliction of duty: with the United States in a global war of extermination not of its choosing against a jihadist foe, the one man ultimately responsible for protecting our nation from that foe ordered our forces to stand down when the enemy was trapped and doomed. Now they live. Now they go free. Now they tell their tales, share their lessons, regroup and re-arm. And why? Because George W. Bush feared Arab public opinion? Because George W. Bush, incredibly, caved to pressure from the United Nations? Because George W. Bush didn't have the backbone to finish the job? One thing I don't agree with in this analysis is the assertion that GWB is fearsome of Arab public opinion or that he caved to pressure from the United Nations, that is an incredibly silly thing to say considering this is the man who defied world opinion in his single minded purpose of taking Iraq. The real reason for the mess in Iraq is that GWB in not a true statesman, he's not a nation builder, he may stay the course but he lacks the foresight that is the mark of a great leader, he is a demagogue, an inarticulate man whose obvious incompetence still seems to be lost on a large proportion of the people of America. And he seems to be heading a group of ideologues who are more interested in enforcing an agenda, an idea, which is not only flawed in reasoning, but ultimately, destructive. Instead of being a safer place, instead of rooting out terrorism, we've seen Iraq being metamorphosed into the fountainhead of terrorist activity, the results of which are getting horrifyingly obvious in every part of the world with every passing day, with every bomb attack that strikes at the heart of everyday life with chilling destructiveness. This country of great thinkers, architects, engineers and economists, doctors and Nobel prize winners, Fortune 500 companies and their CEOs, the world's most technologically advanced country, the representative of all that's good in the West, the beacon of prosperity, now seems stranded, stupefyingly, in a hopeless leadership void. Democracy stands hijacked by ideology. Flawed ideology that is.
in the name of islam... ...they are proposing to burn churches (via Tacitus) and poisoning six year old school girls. Revolting.
the dictator's dead! long live the dictator? Not a day goes by that new examples of horror don't emerge from Iraq. In this latest instance of why things in Iraq just get uglier, the BBC reports (in turn from CBS' 60 Minutes), CBS says the pictures it obtained show a wide range of abuses, including: The article further talks about Sgt. Chip Fredrick, one of the soldiers charged by the Army saying he wasn't aware of Geneva Convention Rules. What kind of a moron is he to need the Geneva Convention to realize how appallingly wrong his conduct was? This guy is a prison officer in Virginia, is this the way he behaves with prisoners here in the US? I hope not. There are some rather graphic pictures here (via Tacitus).
a frightening prospect A very disturbing article in today's New York Times talks about growing support for Osama bin Laden and his heinous ideology in the UK and other countries in Europe. Rising dissent, a perceived sense of betrayal and persecution is gaining the terrorists an ever growing network of hopelessly misguided young men seemingly ready to give up their own lives and take those of innocent civilians under the justification of fighting a rather skewed holy war. Sheik Obar Bakri Mohammed, a cleric from a town near London gives this chilling ultimatum, "All Muslims of the West will be obliged," he said, to "become his sword" [Osama bin Laden's -- ub] in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, "It is foolish to fight people who want death ? that is what they are looking for." How do you fight a foe that is not fighting for life or its defense? Islam, as many other religions, trivializes the life we have now as compared to the one after death. The prospect of the afterlife, with it's promised eternity and none of the baggage that comes with living as we know it, mixed with the philosophy of blaming America and the West with all sorts of crimes against Islam and Muslims is steadily worsening a highly charged situation. There is, however, one more aspect to this issue, America, with the war in Iraq, it's image as a supporter of Israel rather than an honest broker in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and a series of bad foreigh policy decisions, is very close to, if it hasn't already, losing the propoganda war to the terrorists. Having grown up in India, America was for me the beacon of success, truly the land of answered dreams and now, having seen this country from up close for almost three years, being afforded an opportunity to more closely scrutinize its flaws, my overall opinion remains unchanged. Perhaps what's needed in the war against extremism is not more sophisticated weapons or the invasion of recalcitrant regimes, perhaps what's needed is the selling of a more positive image to the Islamic world of America. There is no denying the deep rooted resentment for the West amongst sections of society in the Middle East, but I don't see how waging war in their backyard will solve the problem. Even if the Iraq war, in Tacitus' words, was a 'low-hanging fruit', it's selling was ridiculously inept and the handling of the occupation is confoundingly ill-planned. The image of a democracy in Iraq as the be all and end all of all problems related to Islamic extremism that seems to be firmly rooted in the Middle East, is merely a fantasy, a hypothesis that is far from the reality on the ground. What the West sees as the justified response to extremists in Falluja on CNN is seen by the Arab world as an out of proportion response and the targeting of civilians on Al Jazeera, with the truth lying ignored somewhere in between. I don't have a solution to this, but the "war on terrorism" is not it and it most certainly is not working at this point in time.
badmash! If you are from South Asia and Badmash is not part of your weekly comic relief, you've been sorely missing out. And yeah, absolutely do check out the Singhsons.
scalia's america Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia apparently does not like being quoted, abhors TV cameras and goes so far as to ban recordings of his public speeches. A deputy US marshal forcefully erased the recording of Scalia's speech made by two reporters at the Presbyterian Christian High School in Mississippi. The deputy's superior defended her actions saying they were merely enforcing the Justice's wishes,
Scalia, however, chickens out (ducks?) in his apology, In his letter, Justice Scalia said he did not have the power to "direct security personnel not to confiscate recordings."
powered by google Google is the technology company that is doing with its insanely brilliant engineers, smooth cash flow and cult status amongst techies and finanacial markets alike what Microsoft should have been doing for atleast ten years now. Though I've admired Microsoft for its strengths I've also often felt they could have done far more in computer science research and technical innovation than they have, juxtapose IE against Mozilla FireFox and you'll know what I mean. Comparing MS's achievements with the initiatives undertaken by Google puts this in perspective, consider this,
From this post on the Topix.net weblog, via Illruminations. Two people I've known at USC, who, in my judgement and experience with them, are extremely smart and have had GPAs of 4.0 made it only half way through the Google interview process which, by the way, inspires even more awe and dread than that of Microsoft's. Google has a finger in a lot of pies besides just search, including comparison shopping, news, targeted advertising, blogging, the recently announced mail beta and even what's being called social networking, through Orkut, which as of now is merely a project by a Google employee but could end up as a critical arm of the internet search company. |
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