Grand old man of Travel

WSJ has a nice profile/interview of Paul Theroux on his new book.

Some nice gems in the interview.

Asked to reminisce about the old days:

"In Iran, in 1973, if you had blue jeans and a watch, people would
follow you down the street, saying 'Please, sir, sell me your watch,
sell me your jeans.' In Mashhad, I sold a pair of jeans for $15, quite
a lot of money, because they were real American blue jeans and everyone
wanted American blue jeans. It was cool. Hippies would go, and bring
three or four pairs and sell them in Iran, in Afghanistan."

Asked what's changed since:

"Some places haven't changed much -- Burma, for
instance. I still call it that . . . Burma. And the places that have
changed radically -- like India -- were hard to understand. It was
hard, hard, to understand where India's going. The people there are
lost in the change. Bangalore, for one, and a lot of other parts of
India can't keep pace with the change. They can't build roads fast
enough, airports fast enough . . . It's as though they're all having a
nervous breakdown

"But I love traveling in India," Mr. Theroux
continues, "because Indians are approachable. If I were traveling in
the U.S. and asked people some of the questions I ask in India, I'd get
a very dusty answer. People would say 'Who are you?' 'You work for the
government?' When you're in India, you can ask, 'Where do you live,
what do you do, how much do you earn, how many children do you have?'
It's the accessible poor. You can do that in Southeast Asia, too. But
in America you can't. Try asking those questions in Jackson,
Mississippi."

About Japan:

"Hmm . . . let me think," he responds, playing with his chin. "Japan
doesn't have suspicion of strangers. They just have an utter lack of
interest. They have a settled sense of themselves as an advanced
culture, a sense that other people aren't doing things right. They
think their food is best, their way of living is best. They lack space,
but in all other ways they feel they've got it figured out."

And then golden one - Singapore:

"Singapore," he says, stressing the "pore" and raising
visions of muggy, tropical discomfort. "Singapore is an example of a
place where people are self-conscious in the presence of foreigners,
because they feel that you're going to criticize them for having
accommodated themselves to their government and this way of living.

"It's like a gated community. You go in definitely
feeling (a) that you don't belong there, (b) that they're not
particularly interested in your staying there, and (c) that they're
very, very defensive. They feel they have to explain why they've
settled for Singapore. And do you know, the sex trade there is booming,
but their boast is, 'These aren't Singapore girls . . . they're
Burmese, they're Vietnamese, they're Filipina . . . but not us!'"

Whither Pakistan?

Lots of changes happening in Pakistan - new President (today); recent Prime Minister and the country continues to go downhill. The Americans have always supported Pakistan as an ally - but of course this was convinient to the Pakistanis. The American money kept flowing and the Pakistanis kept doing what they do best - feeding the Taliban monster.

An article in the NY Times questions Pakistan's loyalty. The Americans seem to have just woken up. But seriously, the direction is taking is really a ticking time bomb with real bad implications for India.

For once, Pakistan needs to get over it's obesession with India and create an identity for itself that different from being "not-India". Grow up guys, there is a whole world out there and lots of problems to solve in both our countries. So let's not waste people by blowing them up.

Does Osama bin Laden Still Matter

Time magazine asks this question in a recent issue...well I don't think so - I don't think he ever mattered. He was nothing more than a small time smuggler (of opium etc) who had some wealth that he was willing to spend on causes he thought would make him the next Imam of Islam. He has visions of grandeur - nothing else. He got lucky once (9/11) and was never been able to repeat anything like that ever. I don't think he will ever, either.

His vision of pan-Arabia Islam with him as the Caliph did not materialize. The Muslim world did not stand up together when America invaded Iraq - quite simply most of Muslim world are engaged in their own battle - to stay in power...

The Geo-politics of $130 oil

Stratfor which always has brilliant analysis of politics, geo-politics and history has a post on the geo-politics of $130 oil:

The big losers are countries that not only have to import oil but
also are heavily industrialized relative to their economy. Countries in
which service makes up a larger sector than manufacturing obviously use
less oil for critical economic functions than do countries that are
heavily manufacturing-oriented. Certainly, consumers in countries such
as the United States are hurt by rising prices. And these countries’
economies might slow. But higher oil prices simply do not have the same
impact that they do on countries that both are primarily
manufacturing-oriented and have a consumer base driving cars.

East Asia has been most affected by the combination of sustained
high oil prices and disruptions in the food supply. Japan, which
imports all of its oil and remains heavily industrialized (along with
South Korea), is obviously affected. But the most immediately affected
is China, where shortages of diesel fuel have been reported. China’s
miracle — rapid industrialization — has now met its Achilles’ heel:
high energy prices.

Now the we know who the losers are, it's time to see the winners - and unsurprisingly the answer is the countries of the Arabian Peninsla and Russia helping the rise of Russia.

The Chinese dilemma is present throughout Asia. But just as Asia is the
big loser because of long-term high oil prices coupled with food
disruptions, Russia is the big winner. Russia is an exporter of natural
gas and oil. It also could be a massive exporter of grains if prices
were attractive enough and if it had the infrastructure (crop failures
in Russia are a thing of the past). Russia has been very careful, under
Vladimir Putin, not to assume that energy prices will remain high and
has taken advantage of high prices to accumulate substantial foreign
currency reserves. That puts them in a doubly-strong position.
Economically, they are becoming major players in global acquisitions.
Politically, countries that have become dependent on Russian energy
exports — and this includes a good part of Europe — are vulnerable,
precisely because the Russians are in a surplus-cash position. They
could tweak energy availability, hurting the Europeans badly, if they
chose. They will not need to. The Europeans, aware of what could
happen, will tread lightly in order to ensure that it doesn’t happen.

Bush Presidency

This cartoon says it all (from the June 12th issue of The Economist):

The Value of social networks

Demographics and the future

Demographics play an important role in determining the future of nations and their evolution. Europe has seen a declining birth rate and it's certain that at least in our life time we will see the decline of Europe and the emergence of Asia along with America as a dominant political and economic force. Given the surging oil prices and the projection of them touching $200 by year end of course brings in one more group as a force - the Middle East.

India's demographics is "heavy" around the centre - meaning that most of her people are young, China's demographic is heavy around the top - a sign of aging population and that's one of the reason experts maintain that India will probably overtake China politically and economically.

But the demographics of the Middle East have been largely ignored. There is an older article (which is now a centre of a free speech argument) which puts a point across quite well that we have a lot to fear from this group.

Monkey Brain?

All the papers have been reporting on a paper published in Nature on how researches have inserted sensors into the head of a monkey who was able to control a robotic arm to feed itself using it's brain waves. Remarkable!!

Such systems, Dr. Kalaska wrote, “would allow patients with severe
motor deficits to interact and communicate with the world not only by
the moment-to-moment control of the motion of robotic devices, but also
in a more natural and intuitive manner that reflects their overall
goals, needs and preferences.”

Perhaps this could be used for this person - very tragic.

Malthus - a false prophet?

A lot has been written about how wrong Malthus was with his theory and how all is well with the population v/s food balance in the world. The recent increase in food prices has helped re-ignite that debate and the Economist calls Malthus a "false prophet". I have a few disagreements:

1. Malthus first set out his ideas in 1798!!! Given the time, I think his study was probably way ahead of his time.
2. In 1803, Malthus published a second edition of his essay and softened the tone by introducing the concept of a "preventive check" - saying the problem could be averted if the birth/death rates changed voluntary. Again, way ahead of his time!
   
3. This was pre-industrialization and pre-green revolution so when these happened people came to the conclusion that Malthus was wrong.
4. However, the statistics today show more than ever that Malthus was right about the "preventive check". World population growth has reduced to an annual rate of 1.2% - probably the slowest ever.

This leads me to believe that maybe Malthus had it wrong in the 1798 essay but probably got it right in the 1803. Without a preventive check we will have a problem and that should be a warning to everyone. Increased productivity of food through better use to technology can only go so far.

Moral Duty to intervene?

Given the disaster in Burma and that Government's indifference to the pain of the people - the question to be asked is: should other nations have the right to intervene in a clear humanitarian crisis where the local government is indifferent? My view is yes - Burma should have been invaded and the regime changed a long time ago - much before Iraq or Afghanistan or the nations in South America.

An article in the Economist questions the legality of a unilateral intervention by the UN in Burma

Responsibility to protect is not yet dead, but it is fragile.
Supporters point to the power-sharing deal that stopped Kenya's civil
war in February as the concept's first success. The fact that the UN, in principle, retains the right to impose its will by force may have made it easier for the world body to broker a settlement.

Perhaps. But the idea will need some clearer successes than that if
it is going to survive. And Myanmar, apparently, is not going to be one
of them.

Inside a DOS attack

Over the memorial day weekend in the US - Revision3's website was shut down by a DOS attack which shutdown their website, RSS feeds, and corporate email. They decided to investigate what/who caused the attack - their investigation reads like a mystery thriller. What's really disturbing is that how the originator (MediaDefender) system decided to innundate a system with "pings" when Revision3 removed some back-door entries into the system. The question really is that while IP rights are important and should be enforced, how do you justify taking down a legit business thru a DOS attack because they removed certain back-doors (which were probably illegal in the first place) from their system?

First, they willingly admitted to abusing Revision3’s network, over a
period of months, by injecting a broad array of torrents into our
tracking server. They were able to do this because we configured the
server to track hashes only – to improve performance and stability.
That, in turn, opened up a back door which allowed their networking
experts to exploit its capabilities for their own personal profit.

Second, and here’s where the chain of events come into focus, although
not the motive. We’d noticed some unauthorized use of our tracking
server, and took steps to de-authorize torrents pointing to
non-Revision3 files. That, as it turns out, was exactly the wrong thing
to do. MediaDefender’s servers, at that point, initiated a flood of SYN
packets attempting to reconnect to the files stored on our server. And
that torrential cascade of “Hi”s brought down our network.

Grodsky admits that his computers sent those SYN packets to Revision3,
but claims that their servers were each only trying to contact us every
three hours. Our own logs show upwards of 8,000 packets a second.

Unbalanced success

It is really unfortunate that we have been able to translate the success that corporate India ha enjoyed recently down to the poor. I am not sure what is the point of this success if 80% of the people don't benefit. How many of us have turned our face away when we have seen beggars on streets, sometimes saying that they were part of a "gang" who make a lot of money.

Amelia Gentleman writing in the IHT, talks about one such have and have-not story somewhere near her home in Delhi. Very touching but I guess most of us Indians prefer to look the other way then actually help. Specifically, we'd rather feed stray dogs than human beings:

There is a kind woman who parks her car near my gate once a day to distribute parcels of rice, neatly wrapped in newspaper, to the wild and possibly rabid dogs who roam the quiet street in this rich part of central Delhi. She caresses them and addresses them by name. One mangy yellow, malevolent animal she calls Bruno.

It is an act of generosity that I still find confusing. Around the corner, sitting by the traffic lights, is a family of four, which receives no rice parcels. The mother, Sayari, is bony thin, and the children's matted hair has a dull orange tint, a sign of the malnutrition affecting nearly half of all under-fives in India.

Globalization Part 2

Globalization was supposed to bring down national borders - the world would be flat. Everyone celebrated the fact that government had taken a back seat to markets. The markets had won. Now it seems, nationalism is on the rise given the effects of globalization

The rising influence of governments can be seen in massive state-funded investment pools, many backed by countries that were reeling financially a decade ago. Sovereign wealth funds from Asia and the Middle East are now propping up wobbly financial institutions in the U.S. and Europe, and may hunt next for real-estate bargains. The growth of state power may also serve to make dealing with global climate change -- the most borderless of all issues -- even more difficult.

Globalization?

While everyone has been talking about the good effects of globalization on the world economy, here is an article that comes at it from a different angle - the environmental cost of globalization needs to measured (the article specifically tackles the subject of food travelling all over the world). The cost to the environment of trucking wine from California to NY or shipping Kiwis from italy to NZ and the rest of the world need to be factored in - perhaps to the cost of the food.

Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight
carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists,
environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers
and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures.

The Ugly side of the media

The NYT has an article chronicling the rise and fall of a educator who dreamed of starting a school teaching Arabic to Americans. The media went after her - calling her a "9/11 denier" etc etc resulting finally in her resignation. Very sorry picture - the media's role is to report but to twist comments out of context?.......

The singularity

Wired's April issue has got a piece on Ray Kurzweil and his "singularity" mission. I think this is far-fetched - I don't think we will get pass this singularity (death) in the next 15-20 years - especially that machines will evolve to be conscious in the immediate future.

Kurzweil does not believe in half measures. He takes 180 to 210 vitamin
and mineral supplements a day, so many that he doesn't have time to
organize them all himself. So he's hired a pill wrangler, who takes
them out of their bottles and sorts them into daily doses, which he
carries everywhere in plastic bags. Kurzweil also spends one day a week
at a medical clinic, receiving intravenous longevity treatments. The
reason for his focus on optimal health should be obvious: If the
singularity is going to render humans immortal by the middle of this
century, it would be a shame to die in the interim. To perish of a
heart attack just before the singularity occurred would not only be sad
for all the ordinary reasons, it would also be tragically bad luck,
like being the last soldier shot down on the Western Front moments
before the armistice was proclaimed.

Technology Trends

April 2008 edition of Wired magazine lists the 9 trends affecting business going forward:

1: Open Source Tycoons

2: Social Networks Grow Up

3: Green on the Outside

4: Invisible Internet

5: Rise of the Instapreneur

6: Building a Better Banner

7: Invented in China

8: VCs Look for a New Life

9: The Human Touch

Mugabe

A good op-ed in the NY Times early on in April on Robert Mugabe - Heidi Holland tries to put a human face on Mugabe and tries in some way to explain (if it can be explained) how Mugabe feels victimized by the Western World:

So why talk about his heathen grandmother? I wanted to understand the Robert Mugabe who had been obscured amid the chaos and misrule. The one described by his classmates as shy, bookish, a loner deeply attached to his mother and resentful of his absent father. The one who was at first remarkably forgiving of white landowners when he came to power in 1980. (For instance, Mr. Mugabe allowed his predecessor, Ian Smith, who led the white minority government that ran Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known, to live on in Harare without harassment, even when Mr. Smith embarked on a campaign against him.)

But bitterness had clearly welled up within him. When I first met him at that dinner in 1975, he seemed to be a considerate man, asking after the health of my toddler son even as he fled into exile to a neighboring country shortly afterward. By the end of 2007, as we sat together again after 28 years of his rule, he exuded the air of a lost and angry man.

Why? Part of the answer came to me in our interview, as Mr. Mugabe expressed almost tearful regret at his inability to socialize with the queen of England. He feels that the West — and Britain in particular — has failed to recognize his “suffering and sacrifice.” As someone who by his own estimation is part British, this rejection has taken on the intensity of a family quarrel.

Much of the quarrel centers on the vexed issue of land redistribution. As part of the pact that created Zimbabwe’s independence, Britain promised financial aid to help the young country redistribute land from white farmers to blacks.

When this money was misused, the British government under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began to withhold it. Mrs. Thatcher’s successor, John Major, agreed to restore the money. But before he could do so, his successor, Tony Blair, reversed course, taking the aid off the table, where it remains today. It is this grievance against Britain for short-changing him on the land redistribution issue that Mr. Mugabe craves understanding

Burma and India and China

My view was that India failed to leverage it's influence in Burma - hence allowing China to cozy up to the generals and getting access to Burma's raw materials. India seemed to moving away from this position with the recent military and economic co-operation; but today I read this op-ed in the WSJ by Tarun Khanna - he has persuasively argued that India should use the softer approach viz. supporting the democracy movement and wait it out till the Junta falls. Tarun also advocates using Bollywood as a way to get into the hearts and minds of the Burmese:

India's true strength lies in projecting soft power. Unstinting support
of democracy, for example, is far likelier to work in the longer run as
the junta runs out of steam. India should not squander an opportunity
to lay useful groundwork in this regard. Even other tools of soft power
will likely work better. Bollywood, for example, has a large following
in Burma, and the over hundred thousand Burmese refugees in India will
likely embrace India over China. Trying to play China's game against
China is folly, not to mention unprincipled. It will no more work than
if China tries to project only soft power against India's tactics.

Joys of Parenthood

A new book talks about the joys of parenthood - and then relates that to happiness (specifically in the US) and then comes to the conclusion that conservatives are happier than liberals. The Economist has a nice article about this - the really amusing part is:

Happily for the reader, his book, “Gross National Happiness”, is not
a memoir. It is a subtle and engaging distillation of oceans of data.
When researchers ask parents what they enjoy, it turns out that they
prefer almost anything to looking after their children. Eating,
shopping, exercising, cooking, praying and watching television were all
rated more pleasurable than watching the brats, even if they don't
bite. As Mr Brooks puts it: “There are many things in a parent's life
that bring great joy. For example, spending time away from [one's]
children.”

Despite this, American parents are much more likely to be happy than
non-parents. This is for two reasons, argues Mr Brooks, an economist at
Syracuse University. Even if children are irksome now, they lend
meaning to life in the long term. And the kind of people who are happy
are also more likely to have children. Which leads on to Mr Brooks's
most controversial finding: in America, conservatives are happier than
liberals.

Tibet

While the world has been going crazy talking about the repression in Tibet - one newspaper article tries to look at what the Chinese think of what's happening. Looks like the Chinese Govt has used the media skillfully to play the nationalist angle - the general feeling in China seems to supportive of what the Chinese Govt is doing there.

“We couldn’t believe our government was being so weak and cowardly,” said Ms. Meng, 52, an office worker, who was appalled that the authorities had failed to initially douse the violence. “The Dalai Lama is trying to separate China, and it is not acceptable at all. We must crack down on the rioters.

Extending China's reach

While we in India fight over caste and other issues, China has been busy building a road from Kunming to Bangkok going through Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and then onto Thailand. I guess this will use part of the old WW II road - the Burma road. India has been lobbying (unsuccessfully) to get the Stillwell road going to link India's East to the Burma road and then onto Kunming. A lot of money was spent on the road:

The Chinese spent $4 billion building the highway from Kunming to the border. One particularly difficult stretch of road required the construction of 430 bridges and 15 tunnels. That portion of the road is also monitored by 168 cameras centrally controlled by highway department officials who watch for elephants — there are an estimated 275 in the area — and other stray animals. The cameras also assist the police in catching suspected criminals.

The net benefit (as always) is trade:

The new roads, as well as upgraded ports along the Mekong River, are changing the diets and spending habits of people on both sides of the border. China is selling fruit and green vegetables that favor temperate climates to its southern neighbors, and is buying tropical fruit, rubber, sugar cane, palm oil and seafood.

“You never used to see apples in the traditional markets,” said Ruth Banomyong, an expert in logistics who teaches at Thammasat University in Bangkok.

China has blasted shallow sections of the Mekong to make it more easily navigable for cargo barges, allowing traders to ship apples, pears and lettuce downriver. The price of apples in Thailand has fallen to the equivalent of about 20 cents apiece from more than a dollar a decade ago. Roses and other cut flowers from China have displaced flowers flown in from the Netherlands, making Valentine’s Day easier on the wallet for Thais. Traders now have the choice of shipping by barge, truck or both.

The earliest audio recording - discovered!

In 1860, a French scientist - Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville - recorded 'Au Clair de la Lune' on a piece of paper blackened by oil smoke. Scientists have now reproduced that recording and and the article and the recording is on the NYT

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville has certainly been obscure, at least until now. Researchers say that in April 1860, the Parisian tinkerer used a device called a phonautograph to make visual recordings of a woman singing “Au Clair de la Lune.” That was 17 years before Thomas Edison received a patent for the phonograph, and 28 years before his technology was used to capture and play back a piece of a section of a Handel oratorio.

Making Beijing sweat

Dream for Darfur has done a good job of pushing China on Darfur and it seems to be working as per an article in the NYT magazine. A lot of work by Mia Farrow who coined the term "Genocide Olympics" via an op-ed in the WSJ a year ago.

Book of the week

The making of a monster - attempting to explain Robert Mugabe. Read the review in the Economist

Explaining Religion

The Economist has an article in it's Science and Technology Section attempting to explain religion. There are many studies and tests done on persons to test if religion is really linked to some chemicals or process in the brain:

It is an ambitious shopping list. Fortunately, other researchers have
blazed a trail. Patrick McNamara, for example, is the head of the
Evolutionary Neurobehaviour Laboratory at Boston University's School of
Medicine. He works with people who suffer from Parkinson's disease.
This illness is caused by low levels of a messenger molecule called
dopamine in certain parts of the brain. In a preliminary study, Dr
McNamara discovered that those with Parkinson's had lower levels of
religiosity than healthy individuals, and that the difference seemed to
correlate with the disease's severity. He therefore suspects a link
with dopamine levels and is now conducting a follow-up involving some
patients who are taking dopamine-boosting medicine and some of whom are
not.

Cartoon of the week

From the Economist: KAL's cartoon | Economist.com

Tibet

I have blogged here and elsewhere that the world needs to move beyond condemning China and try to find a real solution in Tibet. Clearly, China is not going to change it's stance on Tibet (will we on Kashmir?) so it's in the best interest of everyone to find a practical solution. If autonomy is what The Dalai Lama wants then India should help in setting up talks (3-way) between India, China and the Dalai Lama.

An Op-Ed in the NYT by Patrick French talks along similar lines, starting with the following:

NEARLY a decade ago, while staying with a nomad family in the remote
grasslands of northeastern Tibet, I asked Namdrub, a man who fought in
the anti-Communist resistance in the 1950s, what he thought about the
exiled Tibetans who campaigned for his freedom. “It may make them feel
good, but for us, it makes life worse,” he replied. “It makes the
Chinese create more controls over us. Tibet is too important to the
Communists for them even to discuss independence.”

The Dalai Lama likes to declare himself as an admirer of Gandhi - however the contrast is stark. Where Gandhi believed in passive resistance, the Dalai Lama has gone and tried to get support of Hollywood and others in the US - this is simply not gone down well in China. To take another example: Burma's Aung San Sui Kyi has been in house arrest for ever - she has believed in passive resistance and stuck to her ideals choosing to remain in Burma even when her husband passed away (the Junta told her that she was welcome to leave to attend his funeral but she would not be able to return).

Why Old Technologies are still kicking

NYT has an article on the IBM mainframe and why it's still popular - essentially because it serves a business need and does it very well:

“The mainframe survived its near-death experience and continues to
thrive because customers didn’t care about the underlying technology,”
said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, who led the technical transformation of
the mainframe in the early 1990s and is now a visiting professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Customers just wanted the mainframe to do its job at a lower cost, and I.B.M. made the investments to make that happen.”

GDP per person

Very perceptive piece in the Economist on measuring GDP v/s GDP per person. I remember this from my EMBA class - that even though it looks like Japan is having a bad time with its economy, even if Japan does 0% growth in GDP on GDP per person basis they would have still grown (due to declining population):

Once you accept that growth in GDP per head is the best way to measure economic performance, the standard definition of a recession—a decline in realGDP over some period (eg, two consecutive quarters or year on year)—also seems flawed. For example, zero GDP growth in Japan, where the population is declining, would still leave the average citizen better off. But in America, the average person would be worse off. A better definition of recession, surely, is a fall in average income per person. On this basis, America has been in recession since the fourth quarter of last year when its GDP rose by an annualised 0.6%, implying that real income per head fell by 0.4%.

China - The new colonialist

The Economist (here and here) has a article on China's insatiable appetite for commodities and how that is driving it's foreign policy:

THERE is no exaggerating China's hunger for commodities. The country accounts for about a fifth of the world's population, yet it gobbles up more than half of the world's pork, half of its cement, a third of its steel and over a quarter of its aluminium. It is spending 35 times as much on imports of soya beans and crude oil as it did in 1999, and 23 times as much importing copper—indeed, China has swallowed over four-fifths of the increase in the world's copper supply since 2000.

And then later:

The worst fallout from China's quest for natural resources will be seen not in the countries they come from, nor in the countries that are competing for supplies, but in China itself. Over the past few years the volume of raw materials it consumes per unit of output has risen sharply. In particular, China has gone from miser to glutton in its use of energy, and is now struggling to diet. That has involved bigger imports of oil, gas and coal, and so more foreign entanglements. But it has also led to the rapid depletion of resources that China cannot import, such as clean air and water.

Gorkhaland - Still Alive

Indian Idol winner used to fan flames on Gorkhland - this is how the new trend of reality shows are being used by smart politicians. However, the good news (if any) is really that:

But Gurung insists his will be a peaceful struggle.

"We want the right of self-determination within the Indian Constitution," he said. "We would not like to repeat the violence of 20 years ago. All protests will be held in a democratic and peaceful manner."

Globalization

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

NYT has an article on how globalization is bringing in rose growers in Kenya much needed jobs and money.

Look at the global economy one way and Buyaki earns the equivalent of seven bunches of roses for a month's labor. That smacks of exploitation. Look at it another and she has a job she'd never have had until globalization came along.

The article ends on sad point - given the recent violence in Kenya:

But life has been hard recently. Kenya's many tribes have long flocked to the Rift Valley for economic opportunity. So when a disputed election sparked ethnic violence, the local toll was heavy.

Longonot was shut down; Luo employees fled to the west and have not returned; a camp down the road houses about 1,300 refugee Luos in tents.

This violence reflects many things, among them how critical African job-creation is. "These clashes are really about poverty. If people have money, they care less who's ruling," Julius Njuguna, a manager, told me.

Think again: roses, refugees and righting African wrongs are linked. A rose that's a social tool can smell as sweet.

Wronged wives

Great piece in the Boston Globe and IHT on Elliot Spitzer's wife. What was he thinking??

Jonestown - cult of murderers

Saw a documentary on Discovery channel on Jonestown in the late 1970s. Nutcases......

Border Crossings

A NYT article discusses the effect of money being transferred by emigrants back to their home countries - this particular article talks about a World Bank official sending money back to his family in a village in Orissa, India and then goes back to see the impact that money has made.

The International Monetary Fund said the Philippines received $122 million. Mr. Ratha produced an estimate 51 times higher: $6.2 billion. His tallies, first published in 2003, showed that remittances, once dismissed as the equivalent of rounding error, were nearly three times greater than the world’s combined foreign aid...

...Back in Sindhekela for the first time in three years, Mr. Ratha went from being a migration expert to mere migrant again, with the attendant tensions. He was annoyed that the money he sent his father for medical treatment went to a relative’s wedding. His father was annoyed that Mr. Ratha refused to honor his caste by wearing a sacred thread.

Father and son had long wrangled over the house that Mr. Ratha had built as a gift. The son is proud of the big master bedroom. His father finds its size off-putting and sleeps on a living room cot.

Mr. Ratha gave the village high school a new classroom, which he intended as a science hall. The state never sent the equipment, and the room now houses some aging computers of uncertain utility.

Mr. Ratha, who named the building for his long-deceased mother, professes no donors’ remorse. “The building has served a great purpose,” he said.

He does worry that his generosity may have hurt his half-brother, Tarun, who spent the money on gadgets and a motorcycle and did not finish high school. At 23, he is unemployed and the family blames remittance dependency. “I think it has affected his drive in a negative way,” Mr. Ratha said.

At the same time, his sister Rina said that without his support she would not have earned her degrees or married an architect. “Whatever I am, I am because of him,” she said of Mr. Ratha.

Iraq

There seems to be no end in sight to the mess in Iraq. You'd imagine that after Saddam's fall and with the 2nd (or 3rd) largest oil reserves in the world, some of the oil revenue would trickle back into helping people rebuild their lives. Not so, writes the NYT

The sea of oil under Iraq is supposed to rebuild the nation, then make it prosper. But at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq’s largest refinery here is diverted to the black market, according to American military officials. Tankers are hijacked, drivers are bribed, papers are forged and meters are manipulated — and some of the earnings go to insurgents who are still killing more than 100 Iraqis a week.

“It’s the money pit of the insurgency,” said Capt. Joe Da Silva, who commands several platoons stationed at the refinery.

And then later, the article says:

Before the invasion of Iraq, eight gasoline stations dotted the region around Sharqat, an hour north of the refinery at the northern edge of Saddam Hussein’s home province, Salahuddin. Now there are more than 50.

Economic growth? Not exactly. It is one of the more audacious schemes that feed money to the black marketeers. Most tanker trucks intended for Sharqat never make it there. “It’s all a bluff,” said Taha Mahmoud Ahmed, the official who oversees fuel distribution in Salahuddin. “The fuel is not going to the stations. It’s going to the black market.”

Life for the ordinary citizen has changed dramatically.

With her fair skin and large brown eyes, Ms. Abood is considered a beauty in these parts. A Shiite teacher, she married Amjad Ubeid, a Sunni electrician, in 2002, back when the two sects lived peacefully in many neighborhoods. She was 28; he was 31. The young couple owned a three-story home in the comfortable Huriyah neighborhood of Baghdad. They filled it with the luxuries of a middle-class life: nice furniture, a CD player and a large television.

March 19 also marks the 5th anniversary of the start of the war. In another great analytical article in the NYT the author looks back on the war and talks about what went wrong (in hindsight) and what (if anything) good came out of the war:

It was not long, of course, before events in Iraq began giving everybody cause to reconsider. On April 9, the day the Marines entered Baghdad and used one of their tanks to help the crowd haul down Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square, American troops stood by while mobs began looting, ravaging palaces and torture centers, along with ministries, museums and hospitals. Late in the day, at the oil ministry, I discovered it was the only building marines had orders to protect. Turning to Jon Lee Anderson, a correspondent for The New Yorker who had been my companion that day, I saw shock mirrored in his face. “Say it ain’t so,” I said. But it was.

The harsh reality is that many Iraqis, at least by the time of the two elections held in 2005, had little zest for democracy, at least as Westerners understand it. This, too, was not fully understood at the time. To walk Baghdad’s streets on the voting days, especially during the December election that produced the Shiite-led government now in power, was inspiriting. With 12 million people casting ballots, a turnout of about 75 per cent, it was natural enough for President Bush to say Iraqis had embraced the American vision. In truth, what the majority produced was less a vote for democracy than a vote for a once-and-for-all, permanent transfer of power, from the Sunni minority that ruled in Iraq for centuries, to an impatient, and deeply wounded, if not outright vengeful, Shiite majority.

The laws of physics

Something seems to be wrong with the laws of physics writes The Economist

Even Einstein, however, may not have got it right. Modern instruments have shown a departure from his predictions, too. In 1990 mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which operates America's unmanned interplanetary space probes, noticed something odd happen to a Jupiter-bound craft, called Galileo. As it was flung around the Earth in what is known as a slingshot manoeuvre (designed to speed it on its way to the outer solar system), Galileo picked up more velocity than expected. Not much. Four millimetres a second, to be precise. But well within the range that can reliably be detected.

Battling the Babu Raj

The Economist has a special briefing on India and what's holding India back.

RIGZIN SAMPHEL, a 33-year-old civil servant, wakes to the screeching of peacocks outside his bedroom window. Stepping into the gentle sunshine of a north Indian spring morning, he hears the lowing of three brown cows tasked with providing his milk. A scuffling attends him, as armed guards, peons, gardeners and orderlies—tasked with catering to Mr Samphel's other needs—hop to attention.

A four-year veteran of the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Mr Samphel is the district magistrate of Jalaun, in Uttar Pradesh (UP) province. More often called the collector, or district officer, the district magistrate is the senior official of India's key administrative unit, the district. In Jalaun, an expanse of arid plain between the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, Mr Samphel is in charge of 564 villages and 1.4m people.

After a hearty breakfast, he leaves his residence—requisitioned from a local maharajah around 1840—and gets into his car: a white Ambassador, curvaceous clone of the 1948 Morris Oxford, complete with siren and flashing blue light, which has symbolised officialdom in India for six decades. Mr Samphel takes the back seat; a policeman rides machinegun in the front; and in two minutes they arrive at Mr Samphel's main office, the “collectorate”.

There for the next four hours, beneath a portrait of a beaming Mohandas Gandhi, Mr Samphel receives a stream of poor people. A turbaned flunkey regulates the flow, letting in a dozen at a time. Many are old and ragged, or blind. Paraplegics slither to the collector's feet on broken limbs. Most bring a written plea, for the resumption of a widow's pension that has mysteriously dried up; for money for an operation; for a tube-well or a blanket. Many bear complaints against corrupt officials. One supplicant wants permission to erect a statue of a dead politician: a former champion of the Hindu outcastes who comprise nearly half of Jalaun's population.

Mr Samphel listens, asks questions and, in red ink, scrawls on the petitions his response. For desperate cases, he orders an immediate payment of alms, typically 2,000 rupees ($50), from the district Red Cross society, of which he is president. More often, he writes a note to the official to whom the petition should have been directed in the first place—or, wretchedly often, to whom it has already been directed: “Act upon this according to the law.”

Mr Samphel reckons he spends 60% of his time dealing with individual supplicants—also outside the collectorate. As the Ambassador turns back on to the road, it is waylaid by a tractor bringing a cartload of petitioners in from a distant village. Then one of Mr Samphel's three mobile phones bleeps. Someone wants firewood; Mr Samphel calls a forestry official to relay the request. It is a hugely impressive performance. Mr Samphel works 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and reckons he has had two days off since 2003. But this is hardly an efficient way to minister to a needy population almost half the size of New Zealand's.

Why Shariah?

The New York Times Magazine has a great article on the history of the Shariah and what it was supposed to be and what it has become. Very interesting read.

Singapore's severe lesson in complacency

How this guy with a limb managed to escape and still remains at large is mystifying. Complacency is probably the best way to describe this.

India's bestselling author

IHT article on Chetan Bhagat - India's best selling author.....

Tibet

Lot of news on Tibet today, specifically on the riots on Lhasa and how countries like Nepal and India are stopping protesters in their cities.

Of course, the world decries the oppression in Tibet while the Dalai Lama sits in India. The question I have is - what should India do? Have the Tibetans in India over-stayed their welcome in India? My own view is yes they have. For anyone who has been to Dharamsala or McCleodganj can testify, the Tibetans there are a law onto themselves. An Indian cannot buy property there without the permission of the Tibetans, young Tibetans thrive on the hefty UN grants they get (in US$) drinking and committing crime. Quite frankly, I felt like a foreigner in Dharamsala.

And what of the Hollywood actors who support the Dalai Lama? Well, I think they should be told that if this is a problem that's close to their heart they should go petition their government to accept all the Tibetans as refugees - something Washington will never do...

Mother's influence

Great Article in IHT on Obama's mother and her influence on him. Great read!

The long silence

Great article in the WP on a project in India on recording history of the Partition. It's high time someone did it before that generation dies out. I've members of my family who are displaced by Partition and they've always been reluctant to talk about it. Urvashi Butalia's book was a great first step

Bridge on the River Kwai?

A lot of death and destruction accompanied the construction of the bridge by Japan in WWII. Even after so many years, governments are still choosing to ignore hardships their own citizens went through. Life is indeed cheap!

The end of TV as we know it

Great sets of articles in the NYT (here and here). If you look at the statistics in the first link, 9M viewers saw the The Office Season 4 Premiere on the TV and 3 M saw it on-line. Amazing.

Big Brother is watching....

Scary Stuff - now it seems there is way to know if you're a dog on the internet

Baba Amte - RIP

Great obituary of Baba Amte in the Economist - really nice to read about someone who really made a difference to the lives of India's villagers - unfortunately we have forgotten Gandhi's ideals - village development is key to our success as a nation.

Business in South-East Asia

Great article in the Economist on the former South East Asian "Tigers" - references a book by Joe Studwell on Asian Godfathers. Joe has also written a previous book on the "China dream" - highly recommended.

Top 3 trends in IT

In IT

1. SOA
2. Green computing
   
3. Web 2.0
   

The Truth about Autism

Wired magazine's got this fantastic article on Autism

Watch the video:

The YouTube clip opens with a woman facing away from the camera, rocking back and forth, flapping her hands awkwardly, and emitting an eerie hum. She then performs strange repetitive behaviors: slapping a piece of paper against a window, running a hand lengthwise over a computer keyboard, twisting the knob of a drawer. She bats a necklace with her hand and nuzzles her face against the pages of a book. And you find yourself thinking: Who's shooting this footage of the handicapped lady, and why do I always get sucked into watching the latest viral video?

But then the words "A Translation" appear on a black screen, and for the next five minutes, 27-year-old Amanda Baggs — who is autistic and doesn't speak — describes in vivid and articulate terms what's going on inside her head as she carries out these seemingly bizarre actions. In a synthesized voice generated by a software application, she explains that touching, tasting, and smelling allow her to have a "constant conversation" with her surroundings. These forms of nonverbal stimuli constitute her "native language," Baggs explains, and are no better or worse than spoken language. Yet her failure to speak is seen as a deficit, she says, while other people's failure to learn her language is seen as natural and acceptable.

And you find yourself thinking: She might have a point.

Cycle of Violence - will it ever end?

One more attack in Israel - there will be reprisals from Israel for sure. How long will this go on? How will (will it) this end? The other day I heard over BBC radio that a UN resolution over condemning the attack could not pass because some Middle Eastern countries opposed the resolution - they wanted language in there condemning Israel's attack on Gaza a few days ago which killed about 50 civilians. The Libyan delegate to the UN said (and I agree with him) that passing the resolution meant that we valued Israeli lives more than Palestinian lives - why doesn't the world get together and condemn Israel when they launch an attack in Gaza killing civilians?

In closed-door discussion among the 15-nation council's diplomats, Libya insisted the statement should be "balanced" by including condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza, a Libyan U.N. representative said after the meeting.

The reason for this endless cycle of violence between the Muslim world and rest is in my opinion a flawed US foreign policy - nobody looks at the real reasons behind why the Muslim world is unhappy but choose to focus on the manifestation of that anger. This has to change.

For a background of the Palestine mandate and the formation of Israel see Alistair Cooke's brilliant Letter from America.

Did you notice something that Lord Balfour's declaration and the famous United Nations resolution have in common?

A fatal omission of one word.

Balfour said Britain favoured "a national home in Palestine". The Jews took this to mean Palestine would be it - the national home.

The Arabs said - No, no the declaration says only "a national home" meaning in part of Palestine.

A quarter century later the UN resolution said Israel must withdraw from occupied territories, which to the Israelis meant some territories. To the Arabs it meant the, all the occupied territories.

Each of them through decades of bloodshed and unstinting hate have held to these opposing interpretations. All because of a missing "the".

Next time you draft a treaty pay attention to the simplest English words that can say so much like "by" and "with" and "from" and "for" - and pay special attention to the definite article, the harmless word of three letters: T H E.

Zimbabwe - Regime Change anyone?

Why didn't anyone look at regime change in Zimbabwe? This nutcase of a guy who started by meaning well and leading the country to independence against the British and white rule under Ian Smith (and here) is out of control. Inflation is running at a whopping 100,000% and Zimbabwe has gone from a economic bread basket of Africa to her basket case. Hopefully the elections bring an end to this but it looks dismal for now...

Sri Lanka

Conflict in Srilanka seems to be getting worse - the truce seems to be off and the Tamils and Sinhalese are at each other's throats - yet again. And to think the whole thing really kicked off due to the majority (Sinhalese) trying to push down their language on the Tamils. Talk about short-sighted political leadership

Empowering India's villages

Tarun Khanna puts a strong argument forward that India must do something similar to what happened in China in the late 70 and early 80s - bring villages up and get them to share in "India Shining". If that doesn't happens then India will never be able to catch and India's farmer will not be able to improve their lot. The following is an excerpt from the article

So India should take a page from China’s book and fix its villages, but not by trying to do it China’s way. China’s strong government forced the rapid dissemination of the Anhui experiment. India’s weak state cannot accomplish anything remotely comparable. Rather, India should play to its private-sector strengths. Corporations need a seat at the table of village reform. India’s vibrant indigenous entrepreneurial class – unlike China’s counterpart, largely decimated by the socialist experiment and the Cultural Revolution – must be courted. Reliance Fresh is an indigenous example in India. Even multinationals should be welcomed, the task is so enormous. Metro Cash and Carry is an example, and joint ventures between indigenous entrepreneurs like Bharti Enterprises and multinationals like Wal-Mart can complete the private-investment picture. A modern agricultural supply chain linking the village tomato farmer to his urban market could reduce waste by 25 percent and end-user prices by 21 percent.

Only then will the 70 percent living in villages begin to share in India, allegedly “rising” today.

Books - The Sexual Paradox

Book by Susan Pinker in the NYT.

The book seems to provide a different and interesting view on why girls do better than boys in school but "seem" to drop off later in life. As the author points out, it has nothing to do with decrease in intelligence but really how the brains are wired. The excerpt below says it all..

Pinker, a psychologist and a columnist at The Globe and Mail in Canada, is careful to remind her readers that statistics say nothing about the choices women and men make individually. Nor does she entirely discount the effect of sex discrimination or culture in shaping women’s choices. But she thinks these forces play only a bit part. To support this, Pinker quotes a female Ivy League law professor: “I am very skeptical of the notion that society discourages talented women from becoming scientists,” the professor writes. “My experience, at least from the educational phase of my life, is that the very opposite is true.” If women aren’t racing to the upper echelons of science, government and the corporate world despite decades of efforts to woo them, Pinker argues, then it must be because they are wired to resist the demands at the top of those fields.

Thus, Pinker parks herself firmly among “difference” feminists. Women’s brains aren’t inferior, she argues, but they vary considerably from men’s, and this is the primary explanation for the workplace gender divide. Women care more about intrinsic rewards, they have broader interests, they are more service-oriented and they are better at gauging the effect they have on others. They are “wired for empathy.” These aren’t learned traits; they’re the result of genes and hormones. Beginning in utero, men are generally exposed to higher levels of testosterone, driving them to be more competitive, assertive, vengeful and daring. Women, meanwhile, get a regular dose of oxytocin, which helps them read people’s emotions, “the truest social enabler.” Then there’s prolactin, which, along with oxytocin, surges during pregnancy, breast-feeding and caretaking. Together, the hormones produce such a high that mother rats choose their newborns over cocaine.

India and the Olympics

Well, at least some one is trying to do something about India's pathetic show at the Olympics.

The "old" economy finally catches with up the "new" one

Silicon valley is seeing movement of staff from start-ups to old established companies. People are seeing an imminent recession and moving to safer grounds - WSJ article has an article here

Mr. Kher grew concerned, especially when several colleagues fled for nearby Cisco and other large Silicon Valley companies. A self-professed "Wall Street junkie," Mr. Kher trades his own portfolio of tech stocks, and his fears heightened after he watched reports on CNBC about the stock market's volatility and a possible recession. "The economy will go down eventually," he recalls thinking.

In December, he posted his résumé on several Internet job sites. His wife, also a software engineer, encouraged him to pursue a variety of options. But "I wanted to go back to a big company," he says. "Start-ups throw money at you, but after two quarters, they can disappear." He adds that he and his wife have discussed buying a house this year, despite the area's high home prices. In January, the median price of a single-family home in Santa Clara County was $750,000, according to the California Association of Realtors.

On Langauge

Brilliant article by William Safire in the NYT on language - especially on the new adjective Transformative doing the rounds in political debates in the US. The last piece on use of Presumptive was simply brilliant!

MSFT and Online Services

MSFT is launching on-line services - looks like SaaS but the devil is in the details. Looks like the Portal (Sharepoint) is the front end of the hosted mail/calendar etc. As the article on ZDNet says, it looks like the same strategy of Windows = DOS 5 + GUI. Time will tell....

Microsoft opens Pandora’s box on online services, betting convenience is the killer app by ZDNet's Dana Gardner -- And what Microsoft must do, in addition to making the true cost-benefits analysis murky, is to absolutely win on packaging and convenience. And this is where Google is vulnerable. Google has still to show, aside from costs, how businesses of all sorts can adopt their services and approach in an easy to manage way, that packages things up neatly for the IT folks, and that make a transition from the hairball easy, convenient, and well-understood.

Base of the Pyramid

WSJ has an article on what the BoP guys are doing in Andhra Pradesh - creating slum roof-top gardens encouraging slum dwellers to grow their own food.

The Trouble with India's IT strategy

Sramana Mitra has given very good reasons on what is wrong with India's IT strategy. Outsourcing as a strategy will fail eventually as India's salary rise makes it more productive for IT companies to go elsewhere (Eastern Europe etc etc). What is lacking is really a strategy to create products - I haven't seen this by any of our IT giants - TCS, WIPRO, Infosys etc. Zoho (featured in the article above seems to have got something right at least.

Outsourcing motherhood to India

This can't be right - ethically, morally or whichever way you look at it. This is bound to have serious social consequences down the road.

The Torture of Turning Everything Off

Great Article in the NYT on turning off your cellphones, PDAs etc and do some old fashioned reading and relaxing. As one of my friend used to say - spend some time with no input or output - just let the mind wander.....

Chandigarh

Great article in IHT on discarded furniture from Chandigarh being auctioned in NY

Russia

Great Article in the NY Times on Edward Limonov one of Russia's opposition politicians by Andrew Meier. Also read Andrew Meier's great book on Russia - Black Earth. especially the chapter on Chechnya

Kosovo

Great op-ed in the NY Times by Serbia's foreign minister. While the world is generally excited about the Kosovo breaking free - it does raise an interesting question - what stops every province (not withstanding their troubles) in every part of the world to break free and declare independence. The US and the UK seemed to have gone along with Kosovo - that's just not right.

Prince Harry in Afghanistan

There seems to a lot of support for Harry's service in Afghanistan - based on what I've seen on media - although on TV there were a couple of guys from South Asia based in the UK saying they don't support. Wonder why - was it because he was fighting in Afghanistan or because they didn't like the idea of putting the life of the 3rd in line to the throne in danger ?! The New York times has a very complimentary article.

SaaS - Business Model or Feature

SaaS: Business model or feature? It depends by ZDNet's Larry Dignan -- Software as a service is about to approach a crossroads in a few years and at issue is whether it becomes a dominant business model or a feature that becomes just another way for a vendor to deliver an application. To Salesforce.com and NetSuite SaaS is clearly the dominant business model–or at least will be in [...]

Google Sites - Hype??

Google Sites: evaluate first and don’t believe the hype by ZDNet's Dennis Howlett -- Nice article - good point about sending your enterprise's data thru your firewall to Google's server. Here is the complete article -

Google takes on Microsoft SharePoint with Google Sites