T. E. Lawrence, the illegitimate son of an Anglo-Irish Baronet has been immortalized by Hollywood as Lawrence of Arabia. But there is another, less well known, legend about his years as Assistant to H. E. Hogarth, the renowned archeologist.
They were digging at Carchemish, a remote dusty outpost of Syria. The nearest town, Jerablus, was no big shakes either. But at least it gave the young men at the site the kind of diversions that young men look for everywhere in the world. This was strictly against camp policies.Jerablus was close to the Turkish border and one important purpose of the dig was to gather intelligence on a German ally, just as hostilities that were to end in WWI were coming to a head. A British student getting caught at some brothel in Jerablus would be a diplomatic disaster.
Young Lawrence was a hard worker, not distracted by such pursuits. So remarkable was his lack of interest in `going to town’ that rumors about his sexual orientation started to circulate. But after many weeks, the dust, the heat, the loneliness-and hormones- caught up with even Lawrence. He went up to his mentor
Dr. Hogarth, I am a young man and young men have needs. As you know, I have not broken camp rules. But it is getting harder and harder to follow them.
Hogarth:
You are right Ted. I have been working you quite hard. See my camel parked over there? You go to that camel, do what you need to do. I will just look the other way.
Just 45 minutes later, Lawrence was back.
Thank you, Sir. That was *such* a relief.
Hogarth was surprised:
What did you do? I didn’t even see you go into town on that camel? I wasn’t expecting you back till tomorrow..
Nobody speaks of Bush anymore. It is Cheney who haunts us as the ghost of errors past. Hard to believe that a little less than half of voters went for Bush in 2000, and then again a slight majority in 2004. Right after 9/11, Bush had the support of 90% of people. Even as he limped out of town, about a third of Americans approved of him. That is after the Iraq debacle, after the Katrina disaster,after the disclosures of torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Some one must have supported torture back when Bush and Cheney were waterboarding prisoners. Someone other than just Bush must have thought that Brownie was doing a heck of a job in New Orleans.
It is not just evil people who cause great harm to the world. It is well meaning people who try to fit in, somehow contorting their thoughts to fit the conventional wisdom of the day. Many of these same people are now for Obama, fitting into the new CW,forgetting where they stood back in the brief dark age after 9/11. “The Google”, which just happened to come online about the same time, allows us to look up the celebrities among us. (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…)
The Indian Railway is the world’s largest employer. The main lines were built in British times. Mostly to move the army around to quell rebellions in different parts. The Madras regiment in Punjab, the Punjab Regiment in Assam and so on. But later, it also became the common man’s mode of travel in India. For a few dollars you can go from Chennai to Delhi or from Mumbai to Kolkatta. The trains are slow and the bathrooms are–ahem–aromatic. The food is of questionable hygiene. But you will see the countryside, and most likely make some friends. In the long distance trains, if you have a sleeper berth, the journey is comfortable but not luxurious. I am not talking about the palaces on wheels meant for foreign tourists. (more…)
What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war…A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics…
As Sen. Clinton pointed out back then, this speech is the only thing Obama brought to the Primary campaign. It was enough. In that speech, of which only a few seconds of video remain, Obama laid out a vision for how to use (and not use) military force in the complicated world we live in.
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,
The headlines today make us look back at a time when the country faced even greater economic peril. Now we stare into the abyss. Then we were at the bottom of that abyss. Yet we survived, and even thrived. In no small measure it is because the people had the wisdom to choose the right leader. In 1932 that leader was Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, Governor of New York. He might have got around on a wheelchair, but his voice projected the confidence of a vital and ambitious nation. (more…)
What seemed only an idealistic dream a year ago has come to pass. Elections were held in Pakistan. Both of the main political parties took part. Musharraf has resigned. One of the intellectual leaders of the opposition to Musharraf’s military regime, Husain Haqqani, is now the Pakistani Ambassador to the United States.
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…)
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.
Like Los Alamos?
FermiLab is experiencing what Los Alamos went through about ten years ago. (more…)
An analogy is often made between scientific research and exploration. In High Energy Physics, the accelerator physicists are the ship builders, the theoreticians the map makers, phenemenologists the navigators and the experimentalists are the sailors. The spokesman for the experimentalists is the captain of the ship, a dashing figure with power over life and death during the voyage. Ah, if only we were still in this romantic era..
Exploring in Canoes
The mega collaborations of thousands of physicists, that are being formed, are more like aircraft carriers. A good way of projecting power, but a bad instrument for exploration.
“But you can’t go exploring in a canoe”, I am told when I bring up this point.
Actually, you can. Canoes were exactly what the polynesians used to explore and settle the largest ocean on Earth, the Pacific. (more…)
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…)
Contrary to popular wisdom it really is the time now to assign blame. It lies squarely with the Pakistani Army and its Commander-in-Chief, Pervez Musharraf. The same army assassinated her father, Zulfikar Bhutto, after a sham trial. The same army has been plundering the country’s wealth and put its judges in jail in the name of security. (more…)
The shadowy machinations in Pakistan bring to mind another time and place where a President who had also been a General acted decisively to enforce a Court Order. The President was General (retd.) Eisenhower dealing with a crisis that started almost exactly fifty years ago today. The Governor of Arkansas, Mr. Orval Faubus, was determined to prevent black children from attending the same school as white children. In a bit of political grandstanding, he personally blocked the entrance to the school in Little Rock Arkansas to prevent the Federal Marshals from carrying out an order of the supreme Court (in Brown v. Topeka) to integrate schools. (more…)
We were just leaked a white paper on the situation in Pakistan written by up and coming analysts who used to man the South Asia Desk at State. Now they write in a blog named The Washington- Not!. For reasons of modesty they wish to remain anonymous. But they acknowledge the influence of the ponderous and inebriated Malarkey penned by a more senior former State Department official (from whom they hope to get a job some day). (more…)
Indians call the bay between Africa and India the Arabian Sea. Throughout the medieval times it was controlled by Arab sailors. They established settlements down the East coast of Africa, as far down as Malindi in Kenya. (more…)
One of the early achievements of Indian Mathematical Astronomy (jyotisha) was the system of latitude (aksha-amsa) and Longitude (rekha-amsa). The prime meridian passed through Ujjaini, the capital of the country of Avanti. (more…)
Politicians are despised everywhere. According to most of us, they are corrupt, devious, self-serving, lazy, unprincipled, ignorant and dumb. Not a day goes by that we don’t hear about yet another politician doing something idiotic or getting into legal trouble1.Yet, we need these rogues. (more…)
If you like what you’re reading, click an ad to say thanks.
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…)
A couple of thoughtful comments by Biswajit and Miuw on my last post have provoked me to write a follow up. Several points were raised and I will try to give my response to each.
Is Global Warming for Real? I have not made up my own mind mind about this, because I find the Earth’s atmosphere such a daunting physical system that I don’t know any one can make accurate predictions. However, people who know much more about it are doing so confidently so I have to concede that Global Warming must be for real. It is even harder to predict (more…)
Read First Part I: The Theology
For some one outside of the two ancient faiths, the power game between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church is interesting as a case-study in politics: the longest continuing political struggle in human history. (more…)
His All-Holiness Bartholomew I is the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the city now called Istanbul. He is considered the equivalent of the Pope for the 300 million Orthodox Christians in the world. He is the `first among equals’ of the four Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem who are successors to the Apostles. (Several Patriarchates have been added more recently to reflect the growth of the Church in Eastern Europe, such as those Serbia, Moscow and Bulgaria). (more…)
It is difficult to know when it is time to drop what you are doing and start something new. Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian was an exception. At the height of his fame he was willing to walk away from a deal worth a million dollars an episode, because he knew his show had lost its originality. But so few in the political world seem to know when it is time to quit. Some linger on, braving daily insults and votes of no confidence, in the mistaken belief that it shows strength of character. (more…)
