Here in the town of Gananoga, in upstate New York, a dog catcher is just what it sounds like: he (or she, but it has been a he for thirty five years) catches wayward dogs. In most cases, he finds the owner and returns them. Otherwise, it goes to the pound, to be adopted by someone. MacWho, the guy who has held the job these thirty five years, is a dog lover. No one bothered to ask what party he was. But, it appears, he is a registered Republican. In most off-off-years, he would have been re-elected with barely a whimper.
Not this time. Conservatives are angry that tax dollars are being used to feed runaway dogs.
That dog pound is a Socialist paradise for canines
thunders Eric Redbeard, in his blog. Redbeard lives no where near Gananoga. In fact he would not know where Gananoga is if his life depended on it. But where someone is getting fat on Government largesse, Eric finds a cause. He signed up the town whino, Coughman, to run against Joe MacWho. Only Eric messed up: Coughman is the whino from the next town over. In fact, Coughman has not even visited Gananoga for many years.
Still, Joe MacWho would have kept his job if it were not for Gov Sarah. From her Facebook page, (more…)
The Harish-Chandra Research Institute is located on the banks of the Ganga, within sight of where the Yamuna flows into it. From its magnificent gardens you can see the sand bank that marks the confluence of the two most sacred rivers of Hinduism. Everyone-mythical figures such as Rama and Krishna, poets such as Kalidasa and Gurus like Vivekananda- has been at the Sangam. Today I got to see it up close. After a trip to the city of Prayag that has existed at this point a few thousand years.
Allahabad, as it is now known, is a small city but with an exceptional influence on India’s history. Half of its Prime Ministers are from here. Of course, three of them are lineal descendants of Nehru, whose house here we visited today.
This is in the heartland of India. And people here are large hearted. If you can avoid the moneygrabbing priests at the makeshift temples, everyone is laid back and seem generally happy. A few dollars go a long way. We saw no tourists, unlike at Varanasi. This ancient land exerts a pull, a yearning to reconnect with the past that is not rational and all the stronger for it.
Shah Rukh Khan, the hero of many Bollywood movies, was detained by US immigration for two hours because his surname popped up on a watch list. Khan is the most common last name among South Asian Muslims; there are more Khans in the world than Smiths. Even in the US, it is the 665th most popular name.
Khan was an honorific title of Mongol tribes, and eventually was adopted as a surname by many people who are descended from a Khan or wanted to be associated to the name. Indeed, 0.5% of all men in the world carry a genetic marker believed to be passed on by Genghis Khan. There were strong selective pressures to help propagate the Khan name when the Mongols dominated the whole of Asia.
One among the hundreds of millions of people with the surname Khan is a very bad guy: AQ Khan, the man who built the Pakistani atom bomb and sold nuclear secrets to Libya and North Korea. But the surname alone has very little value in identifying a person in this case: US immigration should have known how common it is.
On the other hand, Indians tend to be overly sensitive in such matters. Only a month ago there was a furor because Indian employees of Continental Airlines frisked former President Kalam. This was considered an indignity: all Indian airports post a list of VVIPs (Very Very Important Persons) who are exempt from security procedures, a list that starts with the President and former Presidents. Indian culture accepts such special treatment for celebrities and retired politicians. (more…)
Here in Kerala, the teenagers are the busiest people. They start their day at 7:00 in the morning with classes to prepare them for the brutal competition in the entrance examinations to publicly run colleges. 9:30 to 3:30 is school. Then its off to classes again. Often till 9 pm. Weekends are even busier. Classes the whole day. Then homework.
When I came to the US thirty years ago, coffee was this brown muck that cost about a dollar per gallon. In the generation that has passed since then, coffee has become a spiritual experience, a political statement and a way to save the planet. Sleek new devices that hiss and purr when stroked have replaced the old coffee machines. The people who make the coffee have never looked better. Many of them have college degrees, even if they are unaware that Venti is simply the Italian word for twenty .
Starbucks just took out a full page ad in the NYTimes touting its exceptionalism.
They Want You To Think Coffee is Coffee. Well, It’s Not Just Coffee. It’s Starbucks.
It’s lotsa bucks actually. Until a year ago, $4.50 was considered a reasonable price for a cup of coffee. Starbucks is, like the Hummer, Enron and the AIG, an emblem of turn of the century excess. Now McDonalds is eating their lunch. The baristas at Starbucks still look upon with you with condescension if you ask for a “small cup of coffee” instead of a “Tall Americano”. But you can see the fear in their eyes. The Ad says that these are highly trained individuals, who can make 87000 different kinds of coffee. If so, aren’t they a bit over-trained? Punching a few buttons on a coffee machine is not exactly rocket science. (more…)
There are two sources of political power. The more obvious is that of patronage. When you hold office, you hold the purse strings,can make appointments, pass bills and set policy.
The less obvious is the power of insurgency. When you are out of power, you get to sit back and criticize, watch for abuses of power, put your opponent on the defensive by exposing corruption. To do this effectively you must be aggressive and passionate. You need to have a cause that will unite your base, which might whither away without patronage.
The best situation of all is to be able to do both. As you are reforming the Government in your own vision, the past abuses of the previous Government come out. The more embarrassing the revelations, the more dispirited the opposition’s base will be. They will be too busy defending the indefensible to launch any offensive against you. And you can use that breathing room to further your own agenda. (more…)
The Railway was a failure when it was a monopoly. Now it has competition from trucks plying the recently built highways. So they had to shape up to survive. The Government owned airlines are struggling due to competition from the newly licensed private carriers. The Indian Airlines (the domestic airline) has already been folded into Air India. So why did the Railway thrive under competition and not IA? (more…)
I mentioned to a colleague that Varadhan, a mathematician of Indian origin at NYU, won the Abel Prize. One of the top honors in the field. My colleague turned to the person sitting next to him, a visiting academic, and said:
In the middle of all that corruption, they are good in statistics. It must be because the British were good at it.
He was expressing a common view of India as a corrupt place where nothing works, perhaps with an occasional genius. Even Americans whose knowledge of India does not extend beyond watching “Slumdog Millionaire” feel free to pass such judgment. (more…)
Today is Easter Sunday. The day that Jesus is said to have resurrected himself after being executed by a State that found him guilty after a trial. This could explain why the modern Catholic Church is against capital punishment. A cross is the best reminder that a Government’s system of justice can go horribly wrong.
The Popes of recent years have opposed executing even hardened criminals. Pope John Paul II during a visit to the US in April of 1999:
I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform.
So why was there no protest when George W. Bush was given an honorary degree by Notre Dame in 2001? During his six years as Governor, Bush presided over 152 executions in Texas: any of which he could have prevented by an executive order. In the case of Karla Faye Tucker, he ignored a personal appeal by the Pope himself. And yet when Obama is invited to address the graduating class and receive a degree there is a firestorm of protest. (more…)
There is an apocryphal story about Gandhi, said to have taken place when he was working as a lawyer in London. It was unusual for an Indian to have an Englishman working under him, but Gandhi had an English assistant. One day Gandhi asked him to do something and the Asssistant asked,
As if to confirm that much of our so-called legitimate financial world has been six degrees of separation from Bernie Madoff, GMAC’s chairman was none other than J. Ezra Merkin. In addition to presiding over losses of nearly $8 billion at GMAC, Merkin had a separate investment management business that threw away another $2 billion by feeding other people’s money (including the endowments at N.Y.U. and Yeshiva University) into Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
It is a small world at the top of the pyramid schemes of the Bush years. The impending bankruptcy of GM, with the hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake, is directly connected to its financial shenanigans. The “Real World” of blue collar jobs cannot escape the contagion of greed that brought down Wall St.
Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves.
We have all heard these explanations.
These are complicated companies.
We’re competing for talent on an international market.
The President was having none of it.
Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that. My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
The pitchforks are out. And not just on Wall Street.
Typically, people like their own boss. But ask anyone and you will hear complaints about extravagant benefits and salaries that others in their company are receiving. Unlike other People, Americans are not resentful of the wealthy. Those who become wealthy by talent and effort are admired. People do not mind their bosses being paid well as long as they feel they are doing a good job.
But there is a lot of anxiety out there. There is a suspicion that too many people are in administrative positions and too few in productive roles. I posted a (whose author is still unknown to me) on this blog about layoffs. It has been an instant hit. Everyone feels they are Andre’.
Obama understands the public mood. He made sure that the bankers understood as well.
The titans of finance — men used to being the most powerful man in almost any room — sized up a new president who made clear in ways big and small that he expected them to change their ways.
….
“The anger gentlemen, is real,” Obama said
It had been a landmark day in the history of American capitalism. Unbeknownst to the financial executives, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner was also on Pennsylvania Avenue that day, meeting with Obama’s auto bailout task force. Although the finance CEOs got a meeting with the president, Wagoner saw only Obama’s senior advisor Steven Rattner at the Treasury Department. During the meeting, Rattner demanded Wagoner’s resignation.
Looking at these smiling people, you would never think that the topic of the day was possible layoffs, reduction of employee benefits, and other such matters. As promised in my message a couple of days ago, we held the first of a series of town meetings yesterday to explain our financial situation and to solicit ideas and suggestions from people as to how we might meet this year’s budget gap. Keep those ideas coming. This company is about you. If you were not behind me I would not not be able to lead you to a promising future. (more…)
The best part of Stewart’s merciless takedown of Jim Cramer was the old videotape where Cramer brags about manipulating the market. Just a few months ago people would have watched that tape and nodded in admiration. But now it exposes him as a fraud and possibly a criminal. Every time Cramer would try to weasel out, Stewart would call out a time “2:20″ and his flak would play another damning clip. Why is this guy Cramer not in jail?
It is not just fools who are taken in by market mania. Even Sir Isaac Newton lost twenty thousand pounds in the South Sea Bubble back in 1720. This time around, the victims of Bernie Madoff include a Nobel Laureate (Elie Wiesel), a newspaper tycoon (Mort Zuckermann) and several foundations. (more…)
Rush Limbaugh is Bobby Jindal’s main sponsor in the Republican Party. They need a couple of dark skinned guys and a gal or two to show that they are open-minded too. As long as the new faces obey the guys who run the Party they are allowed to stand in front of cameras. Bobby understands that. That sycophantic smile on his face is to reassure them that he knows he is pwned.
But Michael Steele does not. Just because they chose him to be head of the RNC, Steele thought that he was the head of the Republican Party. Not only that, he went on a TV show run by another uppity fellow and declared ” I am the head of the Republican Party”. And then called Limbaugh some ugly things.
Such as, he is ugly. Was calling Limbaugh `incendiary’ a reference to the low burning point of all that body fat?
That is why Steele was taken behind the woodshed, his trousers lowered and beaten but good. That was not just to teach him a lesson. A lesson for Bobby too. If ever Bobby thinks that just because he is a Governor he is his own boss, let this be a reminder to him. Sarah Palin is on a looser leash.
I had to write a report this week and was looking through my calendar from last year. Noticed a curious entry, a talk I missed because I was out with a cold. Who exactly is Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley, this denier of Global Warming? The magic of Google and Wikipedia allows us to find out easily. The drawback to such convenience is that such information is often superficial.
In President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, there is a Nobel Prize winner, a former mayor, and a veteran CIA agent. Surrounding him in the White House West Wing are a former four-star general, one of the nation’s most eminent economists, and a handful of this generation’s most talented political operatives.
There are no former CEOs in the Obama Cabinet. And among the people who make up his daily inner circle, there is only a dollop or two of top-level private sector experience.
As soon as I saw a picture of Rod Blagojevitch (back during the Dem Primaries) I knew he was up to no good. This judgement, now vindicated, did not come from deep knowledge of IL state politics. I just knew that someone with such a lush growth of hair on his head had to be a bounder. This would be true even if the hair were fake. Donald Trump. Gary Hart (in the eighties, not now). Bill Clinton. Elvis. All talented people, all got in trouble. What do they have in common? Hair where it is supposed to grow, not on their ear or back.
IL has a second chance now with Patrick Quinn. He is different from Blagojevitch in every possible way.
“He’s the anti-Blagojevich, for sure,” said State Representative Jack D. Franks
Mr. Quinn, 60, can be so unassuming that he watched the inauguration of President Obama in Washington crunched down on his knees so that people behind him could get a better view. When prone to boasting, which is not very often, it can be about miserly stuff, like staying in budget hotels and eating discount meals.
More to the point I am making,
And with a hairline more John Lithgow than Elvis, he does not even look the Blagojevich part.
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.
Drona was the greatest teacher of his time. He had no peer in his command of the martial arts and sciences. But, at the end of many years of studying and perfecting his skills, he found himself destitute, and with a wife and son to support. He decided to pay a visit to his best buddy from elementary school, who was now King of the minor country of Panchala. Perhaps his friend would arrange for a job. (more…)
Something odd is happening with environmentalism. It is being opposed vehemently by American Conservatives. What is strange about this is that usually the drive to preserve nature comes from conservatives. It is not a coincidence that the words `conservative’ and `conservation’ have the same root. (more…)
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What is the date today? A simple question, but with a complex answer.
The story of calendars is the story of human civilization itself. The millenial 1 article by Amartya Sen tries to disentangle fact from fantasy in the history of calendars. Never an easy task in history, especially hard in the keeping of time itself. (more…)
I need to hurry up and launch my own brand of yoga before the inevitable yoga backlash sets in. It must be distinctive, eye-catching and easily patented. More than a set of exercises. A whole way of life, which will require many accessories. (more…)
