Rajeev’s Almanack

The most important election this year could be the one just concluded in Pakistan. In spite of the rigging, and the low turnout from an electorate in mortal danger, it looks like a fairly credible result. Musharraf’s allies lost. A good first step on a long road to recovery for Pakistan. (more…)

North Indian migrant workers in Mumbai are being attacked by a militant organization (known by the acronym MNS) which exploits the resentment of the local population. The most odious of the political leaders egging the violent mob on is Raj Thackeray. A generation ago the same folks (Raj’s uncle Bal was the leader back then) were targeting South Indians. What changed? (more…)

Whenever a nation has done something deeply embarrassing, which shames its decent citizens, moral philosophy thrives. As though the obvious atrocity can somehow be hidden behind sophisticated reasonings about abstract thought experiments. Psychologists must have some fancy name for this phenomenon.

We live in such a time now. You cannot open the New Yorker or the New York Times Magazine without running into a conundrum designed by the best and the brightest to teach us lessons on moral values. The difference between us and the ancients is that we look to science, not religion, as the source of our values. Thus, neuro-scientists emerge as the Deep Thinkers of our time. Supposedly their knowledge of how our brain is wired allows them to deduce ab initio what is right and wrong.

One the most fundamental of these puzzles is the Trolley problem. It goes something like this.

On your morning walk, you see a trolley car carrying five passengers. It is hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. The passengers are oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five people. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five? Almost everyone says “yes.”

But wait a minute. Here is the twist. The single worker is Mr. Average Joe, who is working an extra shift so he can pay off his mother’s hospital bill. You just received a text message identifying the five conscious occupants of the Trolley car as Steven Pinker, Niall Ferguson, Philippa Foot, Judith Jarvis Thomson and Joshua Greene. (You are carrying an iPhone. Duh.) And you have just enough time to Google these names before making the decision.

Now, which way would you throw the switch?

Who is more valuable? Five moral philosophers or an honest working man?

Those with the correct answer will be entered into a raffle for the complete works of Ayn Rand.

Everyone gets office spam in their email. I don’t mean the ads for Viagra or requests to help a worthy gentleman smuggle millions of dollars out of Nigeria. I mean the email where some colleague (say Tom) is replying to a note about some one else (Dick) by a third person (Harry) and you have been unnecessarily added to an ever growing list in the cc.

I say fight spam with spam. Adapt a technique used by some robots on blogs, called `comment spam’. The kind that Akismet deals with so well.

First, create an innocuous little article, or parable (such as the post below). The content is not important, but it must hint at hidden Deep Meaning. The sort of thing you would read with a knowing smile. A reference to Kierkegaard or other Deep Thinker would be great, but only if you can pull it off. Confucius or the Buddha are almost as good if you are not up to the German level of sophistry. Even Steven Pinker will do. Make sure to capitalize some randomly chosen words.

Then you reply to the latest message (not to the whole list, they are innocent bystanders just like you)

Tom, this reminds me of a little parable…

Cut and paste afore mentioned Deep Story here

Tom,most likely, has a sense of humor and will remove you from the thread after a chuckle. Or, after concluding that you are a clueless idiot. If neither, at least you will make him wonder what the deeper implications of the story are, slowing down the spam chain.

Try it. And don’t comment on the results here.

A parable, possibly of Buddhist origin:

The baker dangled the freshly made bread under the Bodhisatva’s nose. He knew it was overpriced, but the smell still enticed Him. So He breathed in deep. The baker, knowing he had lost the sale, said

“Hey, if you are enjoying the smell of my bread, you have to pay for it”

He shook the coins in his pockets:

“You can hear the sound of my coins in return for the smell of your bread”. And He walked away.

Only pay for what you have bought.

National Poll:

AP reports that Obama is catching up even in New York (Quinnipiac University Polling Institute)

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THE NUMBERS - DEMOCRATS

Hillary Rodham Clinton, 53 percent

Barack Obama, 39 percent

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A Quinnipiac poll on Jan. 22 had him trailing, 51 percent to 25 percent.

I am at my daughter’s birthday party the other day, chatting with the father of one of the girls.

“So, what do you do?”

” I teach at the U. of R.”

“What do you teach?”

“Physics”, expecting his eyes to glaze over.

“Oh, You must be smart”, unexpected response.

“I suppose so.” Not sure how to respond to that.

” So…Do you believe there is someone up there?” pointing to the sky.

“You mean God?”

“No..No way. UFOs man. You think there is someone looking down at us?”

“I don’t know. May be. …I have never seen one”

FermiLab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) is the premier High Energy Physics research facility in the US. Located outside Chicago, it is named for the renowned Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi. SLAC is the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the second most important center in the US for High Energy Physics. Both institutions are in deep trouble due to budget cuts mandated by Congress. FermiLab is planning to lay off 100 `permanent’ PhDs, a total of 200 employees; those remaining will be subject to a `rolling furlough’, amounting to a 7% wage cut. SLAC will experience an RIF of 250 employees, which ought to hurt more as its total size is smaller.

Cutbacks at Argonne National Laboratory (also near Chicago) and to Fusion research are even more drastic. If the current proposals are to become law, the US will also default on commitments to international agreements to create the next fusion research reactor.

FermiLab is experiencing what Los Alamos went through about ten years ago. (more…)