Accidental Blogger

Trains, Planes and Taxi Cabs

Be very afraid. They are not plain old terrorists any more.  Now we have Islamo-fascists, Islamo-Nazis and Islamo- commies. Having made a mess of tackling the real problem of global terrorism and with an election looming, the new right wing talking points require that glorious old wars and ancient enemies be invoked to scare the heck out of American voters. Bush and his supporters fervently hope that the latest scare tactics will succeed and citizens will forget the abject failures of their inept leaders. It is also a transparent and cynical ploy to once again conflate Iraq with 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden. Some suspect that it may even be an attempt to lay the ground work for an attack on Iran.

Donald Rumsfeld  recently compared the war on terrorism to fighting fascism and Nazism and compared those who oppose the Iraq war to craven appeasers - that would be 63 - 65% of Americans.  Today, George W. Bush repeated the same mantra about fascists and Nazis, adding communists to the mix - further raising the fear index by a notch or two. He grandly recalled US triumphs at Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal  so that we may forget his own failures in Baghdad, Basra and Baluchistan. If until now we are not sufficiently terrified of being blown up in air planes, trains and inside tall towers, surely we will start losing sleep over gulags and gas chambers.

"President George W. Bush said Thursday the war against Islamic militants was like last century's fight against Nazis and communists and that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would lead to its conquest by America's worst enemies.

"The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq," Mr. Bush said in a speech to rally support for his unpopular war strategy two months before congressional elections...

"Some politicians look at our efforts in Iraq and see a diversion from the war on terror," Mr. Bush said. "That would come as news to Osama bin Laden, who proclaimed that the 'third world war is raging' in Iraq."

The well orchestrated fear mongering by the Bush administration is having one tangible effect. Not in catching real terrorists but in making non-terrorist Asian men targets of undue harrassment, contempt and suspicion. Recently, we witnessed the tasteless Macaca incident involving Sen George Allen of Virginia.  An Iraqi American was made to remove a T-shirt with a protest slogan before boarding a plane in New York (via Leiter Reports).  Young Asian men face increased scrutiny at airports, be they Hindu, Muslim or Sikh because to the average TSA employee and American traveler, they all look alike.  During air travel, Asians now encounter from strangers a mindset similar to what African Americans have experienced for years on the streets.  Like DWB (Driving While Black), the newly coined acronym, TWA stands for "Traveling While Asian."  But it is not just at airports and subway stations where terrorists may be operating.  Senator Conrad Burns (R - Montana) warns us that taxi cabs too could prove lethal for travelers. (Needless to mention here that cab drivers in big cities are overwhelmingly from Asia and Africa).

"Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, whose recent comments have stirred controversy, says the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."  During a fundraiser Wednesday with first lady Laura Bush, the three-term Montana senator talked about terrorism, tax cuts and the money he has brought to his state.

He has drawn criticism in recent weeks for calling his house painter a "nice little Guatemalan man" during a June speech. Burns, whose re-election campaign is pressing for tighter immigration controls, also suggested that the man might be an illegal immigrant. The campaign later said the worker is legal.

At the campaign event with Bush, Burns talked about the war on terrorism, saying a "faceless enemy" of terrorists "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."

Perhaps Burns won't have to worry about those fearsome cab drivers of Washington D.C. for too long. He is in a tight race this November and hopefully, he will soon be able to retire in the civilized safety of Montana ( population: more than 90% white). I doubt there are too many taxi cabs on the wide open roads of Montana and I bet they are not driven by "terrorists."

Hydroquinone in the Limelight (Sujatha)

Widely used in several blemish/skin lightening creams in the US, the FDA has proposed to ban over-the-counter sales  (Thanks to Ruchira for the link and blog post idea!) of products containing hydroquinone, a drug that could be carcinogenic based on the results of tests in animals. The FDA says that the limited carcinogenicity of this ingredient in animal studies could imply that it could be carcinogenic in humans as well, and has invited comments on the proposal at this link.

What does this mean for the average consumer in US? There is bound to be an outcry from dermatologists who have been recommending or prescribing creams containing hydroquinone, since it was considered to be a GRASE (Generally Regarded As Safe and Effective) product by the FDA. Hydroquinone is not only in skin lightening/bleaching treatments but in a variety of hair coloring/bleaching/highlighting products and facial moisturizing products. Aside from the legions of women (men too??) who use creams and lotions to regain the lost glow of youth or just the right shade of frosting and highlights, will there be enough adverse comments to deter the FDA from going ahead with the proposed changes?

Globally, it's a different story regarding the quest for fair skin , especially in the
Indian subcontinent . It's a sad reflection (and a billion dollar business) on the
deeply ingrained cultural perception that fair skin is more desirable than dark.  African cultures are not immune either to the lure of lighter skin and there are several indications that the fairness craze has taken its share of victims there. The same cultural bias holds for the Far East and South East Asia, as is evident in the horror story of an unfortunate Thai waitress.

In my  earlier blog entry , I used a linguistic equivalent of denigrating 'dark' as in some way less desirable than light, without thinking of cultural implications, just using a cliched phrase. 'Tamasoma jyotirgamaya' - 'From darkness to light..', says the ancient Upanishadic hymn. Hmmmm, now here's an interesting conjecture. By extolling the virtue of light over darkness, does it betray an inborn bias that is rooted in Indians since time immemorial. Why didn't the opposite paradigm take hold- that of the growing embryo leaving the sweet, dark security of the womb for a world of light, chaos and physical separation from the mother. Would we have a hymn extolling the desirability of moving from the blinding light of ignorance to the dark depths of knowledge? Perhaps, we would have a darkness craze then, with companies scrambling to satisfy a culturally fuelled demand for skin darkening creams ( not quite the same as the tanning lotions, which promote a 'sun bronzed' look as opposed to blacker skin). Any comments?

Cheaper By The Dozen

Warren Jeffs, the leader of a breakaway fundamentalist Mormon sect of Colorado City, AZ, was arrested yesterday during a traffic stop near Las Vegas, Nevada.  Jeffs was on the FBI's Most Wanted list for child abuse and faces felony charges on multiple counts of rape and sexual conduct with minors in Utah and Arizona.  He will also be charged as an accomplice in the rape of a minor for forcing underage girls to marry older men.

Sordid as Jeffs criminal sexual activities are, religious and social practices prevalent in his and other similar polygamist sects are equally disturbing. Alarming stories of mind control, lack of education, physical and mental abuse in the guise of religion within secretive and isolated communities of fundamentalist Mormons have been heard from time to time by outsiders, usually reported by those who have managed to escape. Members are also involved in bilking the federal government for hundreds of thousands of welfare dollars.  The polygamists co-habit with multiple women but declare only one of them as a lawful wife to the government.  The rest of the "wives"  collect federal Welfare money as single women with children. 

".... The sect follows the original fundamental teachings of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, which include the practice of polygamy. The Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints left polygamy behind in 1890 and now excommunicates members who practice it.

While on the run from the law for more than a year, Jeffs told his followers that authorities would never capture him, because God was protecting him. Members of the church believed him; after all, he was their prophet — the "speaker of God's will." But on Monday night, Jeffs' faith bumped into the law, when a Las Vegas trooper pulled over a burgundy Escalade on a routine traffic stop. Sitting in the back was Jeffs, who has been on the FBI's Most Wanted List since May with a $100,000 reward for any tips leading to his capture. One of his estimated 40 wives, Naomi Jeffs, and his brother Isaac Steed Jeffs were with him as well as a number of on-the-run travel essentials, including: several wigs, $67,500 in cash, 14 cell phones, a radar detector, two GPS systems, seven sets of keys, a photograph of Jeffs and his father, and a Bible and a Book of Mormon.

It is estimated, that Jeffs now has 80 wives, some 250 children and millions of dollars at his disposal.

"Money, sex, and power is what fundamentalist polygamy is about and that is what Warren Jeffs represents," says John Llewelln, who points out that Jeffs is the leader of the largest and most secretive of the fundamentalist polygamy groups. Llewelln has authored four books on polygamy and is a former polygamist himself; he also worked as Salt Lake County's deputy sheriff, specializing in sex crimes investigations. "From the fundamentalist Mormon polygamist point of view, Jeffs is the quintessential Mormon polygamist because he does not hold himself accountable to any government or societal rules — only his religion. His followers view him as having done nothing wrong except to live his religion and do what a prophet does."

An informative and chilling book on fundamentalist Mormon polygamists, their history and current status, is Jon Krakauer's  "Under the Banner of Heaven", in which Krakauer investigates Warren Jeffs, his father Rulon and several other polygamists in the US and Canada.

 

Friends of Israel

Required reading for those who "really" want long lasting peace in the middle east. 

Desperately Seeking Ollie North

The US has long operated on the principle that tyrannical rules in Asia and Latin America are quite okay, in fact desirable, as long as they are "our" tyrants - democracy be damned. That unprincipled foreign policy made possible brutal, authoritarian regimes in Chile, Argentina Colombia, El Salvador, Iran, and yes, Iraq. Irrational and obsessive fear of communism gave rise to the "Domino Theory" which led to widespread devastation in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s. The same paranoia has kept alive a forty year long stand off with Cuba and is spawning new ones with Venezuela and perhaps even Bolivia. We are once again militarily engaged in reshaping foreign governments, this time in the middle east. The result is not pretty as we learn every day. Bush's iron fisted attempts at spreading democracy by shock and awe continues to bloody Iraq and Afghanistan  and their democratic future is very much in doubt. The Lebanese have been left reeling as they take stock of the shattered remains of the Cedar Revolution. But that hasn't curbed the arrogance of the reckless Bush administration. We are now interfering in yet another nation's internal politics - for the second time.  It's worth repeating here that  one definition of insanity is to repeatedly step in the same crap and expect to come out smelling like roses.

Flashback : United States intervenes — again — in Nicaragua.

Campaign season has begun in Nicaragua, and it feels like old times.

Sandinista Daniel Ortega, ex-president and three-time failed presidential candidate, again is running for office. And, just as in the Reagan years — or, come to think of it, the Roosevelt years — the United States flouts democratic values to intervene.

U.S. ambassador Paul Trivelli is working overtime pushing Ortega's rival. In May, Trivelli even tried ginning up a primary, hoping to unite the competition. (He failed.)

But the White House isn't daunted. Ortega has only grown more odious to the administration, thanks to his alliance with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

What the administration doesn't get is that this resentment predates Chavez. In Nicaragua, 19th-century mercenary William Walker and the U.S.-coddled Somoza dictatorship planted it long ago. Why feed it by again disdaining Nicaragua's sovereignty?

The United States needs to defend its interests. But there's a difference between wanting democracy, or even a candidate, and actively distorting another country's electoral process.

In the short term, this involvement actually could backfire. A tirade from the U.S. ambassador nudged Bolivian leftist Evo Morales closer to being president. And in Nicaragua, after Trivelli's failed primary foray, Ortega gained six percentage points in polls. Regardless of who wins the presidency, Sandinistas likely will be the National Assembly's largest bloc. They'll surely be in payback mode.

What if Washington's man wins? Our meddling still is poisonous business. Americans die daily in Iraq, supposedly in service of democracy. It does not escape world notice — or help those soldiers — when U.S. leaders mock democracy in their own backyard.

If the US wishes to proceed aggressively in Nicaragua, after beating the democracy horse to death in the middle east, it might be a tough sell.  Bush has two choices:

1. Have Cheney and his biographer concoct a false link between Daniel Ortega and 9/11, thus making an invasion of Nicaragua an inevitability. 

2. Commission retired right wing hero Oliver North to stage another Iran Contra debacle.

This time around, the second option may be quite interesting.  The original fiasco is twenty years old and the cloak and dagger strategery might appeal to the secretive neocons.  Except this time, we will not need an Independent Counsel to investigate the skullduggery.  We will be able to read all about it on Ahmadinejad's blog !

Greater Than Zero

The blogroll on the left has increased by one.  The site came to my attention through a comment left by its author on Accidental Blogger.  The author of the weblog uses the blogging nom de plume "Shunya,"  Sanskrit for zero. I am not sure why - perhaps he will tell us.  His site certainly belies the number when measured by the profusion of material it contains. Please check it out here.

Thus Spake Cruella Deville

Another ethically challenged, pious Republican has spoken out in favor of religious meddling in public life.  The notorious Katherine Harris aka Cruella Deville, the dishonest  Florida Secretary of State who helped put George W. Bush in office is overflowing with religious fervor.  Her nefarious role in the disputed 2000 electoral circus is not the only instance of Harris' less than steady moral compass - she is also entangled in a bribery scandal.  Now that the Republican bigwigs have withdrawn their support of her senatorial bid, Ms Harris is appealing to a higher power. 

"In an interview published online Thursday in Florida Baptist Witness, a weekly magazine of the Baptist State Convention, Harris also said the constitutional separation of church and state is a "lie" that has led people to think they should avoid politics. She said God chooses our leaders.

"If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you're not electing Christians, then in essence your are going to legislate sin," Harris said in answer to a question about why Florida Baptists should care about this primary election. "They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is all right. They can vote to sustain gay marriage."

In response to a question about what role "people of faith" should play in politics, Harris said: "We have to have the faithful in government, and over time, that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking they need to avoid politics, and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers. And if we are the ones not actively involved in electing these godly men and women... then we're going to have a nation of secular laws. That's not what our founding fathers intended and that certainly isn't what God intended."

Harris said that if leaders are not Christians, "then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don't know better, we are leading them astray and it's wrong."

Oh please! God chooses our leaders? In that case, the current crooked bunch was surely chosen to punish and put the fear of god in us sinners.   Perhaps Harris too was doing god's work when she lied, cheated, suppressed and intimidated Democratic voters in order to put G.W. Bush in office so that he could wreak havoc on all god's earthly creations.  God's work indeed, by hook or by crook - mostly by crook! 

Hurricane, Hüzün & Holy City - Book Reviews (Part I)

This is Part I of a three part book review that I have put off for too long. The longer I wait, the more I forget.  So it is time to put it together - to be published in three installments in the coming days (hopefully). All three books are non-fiction and each is about the history and the fate of a city. The first book deals with the hurricane portion of the 3-H title of my post.

Isaac's Storm:  Erik Larson's excellent account of the hurricane of 1900 that devastated the city of Galveston has been on my mind since last summer when Katrina and Rita terrorized the gulf coasts of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.  It is the story of the biggest hurricane to make landfall in the recorded meteorological history of the United States - a storm against which all subsequent storms have been measured.

On Saturday, September 8, 1900, the morning in the coastal city of Galveston, Texas, began calmly enough.  A hurricane that had been brewing off the coasts of Cuba was expected to take a northerly turn along the eastern flanks of Florida and the Carolinas - far removed from the gulf coast of Texas.  Isaac Cline, the resident meteorologist stationed in Galveston, a meticulous weatherman, had been thus assured by the headquarters of the US Weather Bureau. Yet on that September morning, Isaac was troubled by what he saw - deep swells in the waters of the Texas gulf that should not have been there if the predictions from the Washington D.C. office were to be believed. Isaac had no idea how wrong the reports were and what was to be unleashed by mother nature. Before he understood the true grimness of the event and could issue a warning, residents of Galveston were blindsided  by a monster storm which submerged the city in water that rose to the second floors of buildings in some areas of the island.  By the time the fury of the storm was spent, 6000 men, women and children were dead. The tiny island of Galveston (built along the architectural aesthetics of New Orleans)  with its ambitions of becoming the richest and most stylish city in Texas, lay in ruins. Galveston never recovered from this blow and neither did Isaac Cline, who lived out the rest of his life broken hearted and haunted that he, who had prided himself in accurately reading the sea and the sky, had been so fooled by both. But in reality, Isaac had been fooled by man as much as by nature.

Isaac's Storm is the story of a man, a storm and the city of Galveston . It is also a stern reminder that even with increasing knowledge and technology at our disposal, sometimes the only safeguard against nature's unmatched fury is to run and find safer grounds. The irony in the devastation of 1900 was that those with the superior technology had been instrumental in making the bigger blunder. The weather bureau in Havana, Cuba where the storm had made an earlier landfall, had predicted that it was headed for the Gulf of Mexico and not the Atlantic Coast as the US Weather Bureau had announced.  But due to an intense and petty rivalry between the two agencies, the chief of the US bureau, a pompous man, dismissed the Cubans' warning as so much "Latin melodrama" - not to be taken seriously by cool headed, scientific minded northern folks ! It was based on this arrogant and false assurance that Cline had felt relaxed about Galveston on that fateful September day - with lethal consequences.

Larson is a gifted writer - one with the rare talent for writing lyrically about stuff such as weather charts, meteorological instruments, latitudes and longitudes.  Having scoured numerous letters, telegrams, recorded testimony of survivors and rescuers, Larson has put together a weather story which is as suspenseful as a first rate mystery and as tragic as a melodramatic tear jerker.  He records in excruciating details the lives of ordinary citizens going about their business just before the storm and the same lives upturned and torn asunder in its aftermath.  He chronicles the history of each building that went down and those which withstood the battering. One of the most heartwrenching events depicted is the discovery of a group of young girls, students in a Catholic convent school, found dead with their teachers after the storm. The little girls were tied to each other with a rope - a safety measure deemed necessary by the nuns to prevent the girls from getting separated during evacuation. Interwoven through the account of the storm of 1900 are the history of Galveston, the world at large at the turn of the last century and the life story of Isaac Cline. Fortified with the current scientific understanding of storms, Larson spins a compelling  tale which is made all the more fantastic by the realization that it is all true. I thoroughly enjoyed  this book. Last year when Rita menaced the coast of Texas, I was reminded several times of Isaac and Galveston of 1900. In the end, Rita spared Houston and Galveston although she managed to issue a dire warning: if you live in a hurricane prone coastal area, it is only a matter of time!

I want to end with an interesting quote from Isaac explaining why he became a scientist and a weatherman instead of a preacher or a lawyer - two professions that he had considered at different times in his life.

"I first studied to be a preacher, but decided that I was too prone to tell big stories. Then I studied Blackstone for a while and soon learned that I was not adept enough at prevarication to make a successful lawyer. I then made up my mind that I would seek some field where I could tell big stories and tell the truth." -  Isaac Cline

Hence meteorology and the weather!

Note: In my article I refer to Isaac Cline by his first name rather than the customary last one. I did so following author Larson's example throughout the book, as also in its title.

Between Mom and Bomb!

There is a whole host of depressing reports about airline security, terrorist threats, diverted  flights and increased fear and suspicion of  Asian men, specifically those of Muslim descent. Buried amidst these stories of real and imaginary threats, paranoia, persecution and profiling, I came across a slightly bizarre and rather comical story which indicates that at least some men are more afraid of their mothers than of Homeland Security.

"CHICAGO — Cook County prosecutors say a 29-year-old man traveling with his mother desperately didn't want her to know he'd packed a sexual aid for their trip to Turkey.

So he told security it was a bomb, officials said.

Madin Azad Amin, 29, of Skokie, was stopped Aug. 16 at O'Hare International Airport after guards found an object in his baggage that resembled a grenade, prosecutors said.

When officers asked him to identify it, Amin said it was a bomb, said Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Lorraine Scaduto. He later told officials he'd lied about the item because his mother was nearby, Scaduto said.

He's been charged with felony disorderly conduct, said Andrew Conklin, a spokesman with the Cook County state's attorney's office.

Amin is due back in court Sept. 13. He told the Chicago Sun-Times that security officials did not give him a chance to explain the misunderstanding and that he would never use the word "bomb" while going through a security checkpoint."

On a more serious note, Muslim men may be facing  real problems not just in the air but on the ground too. 

Muslim men earn less post-Sept. 11

By ELLEN WULFHORST
Reuters News Service

NEW YORK — The earnings of Arab and Muslim men working in the United States dropped about 10 percent in the years following the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a new study.

The study, to be published in the Journal of Human Resources, measured changes in wages of first- and second-generation immigrants, from countries with predominantly Arab or Muslim populations from September 1997 to September 2005.

The average wage was approximately $20 an hour before the attacks in 2001 and dropped by $2 an hour after them, said Robert Kaestner, co-author of the study and a University of Illinois at Chicago professor of economics.

That drop persisted through 2004 but showed signs of abating in 2005, he said.

"I was surprised," Kaestner said. "We see an immediate and significant connection between personal prejudice and economic harm."

The study looked at 4,300 Arab and Muslim men, ages 21-54, from the 20 U.S. states where 85 percent of all Arab and Muslim Americans live. ..."

Planetary Politics and Pardigm Shift

So, the IAU voted to bump poor Pluto off the planetary line-up!  I am quite heartbroken.  Well, at least, very disappointed.  I was not wholly certain whether the three new planets would be inducted into the planetary family but I sure didn't expect Pluto to be expelled unceremoniously. Henceforth school children will have to memorize just eight planet names in the solar system, rather than the nine (since 1930) or the possible twelve, had Ceres, Charon and 2003 UB313 (or Xena) passed the planetary muster.

"Forget what you learned in third grade. Pluto is no longer one of the nine planets of the solar system.

The International Astronomical Union in Prague ruled today that the much-maligned Pluto no longer qualifies as a planet under historic new guidelines, thereby stripping Pluto of the planetary status it has held since it was discovered in 1930, news services reported.

The prestigious international group in the Czech Republic today spelled out the basic tests a celestial body needs to pass before it can be deemed a planet: "A celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a . . . nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

It's the last part of the definition that doomed Pluto. Its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's. Pluto will now be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what astronomers have long called "minor planets. Membership in the sun's solar system will be restricted to the eight "classical" planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The decision at a conference of 2,500 astronomers from 75 countries was a dramatic shift from just a week ago, when astronomers came up with a new definition that would have saved the tiny body's place in the sun's family.

That plan proved highly unpopular, dividing the group into factions and triggering an acrimonious debate full of angry denunciations that ultimately sunk Pluto."

Bummer! I will miss Pluto. But why? I have never visited Pluto and don't expect to in the future. I haven' even seen Pluto. My life is not affected by whether Pluto is or is not a planet. I never think about Pluto until the subject of planets comes up, which in my day to day life, is not often. But what I learnt in childhood about the planets is etched in my mind and in that memory, Pluto is the faraway ninth planet in our own celestial neighborhood, the solar system. I feel reluctant to shake off the notion, if for no other reason than dogged sentimentality.  It is indeed interesting how casual  familiarity with objects and ideas shapes our view of the world ... and the universe.  New words enter the lexicon every few years.  New gadgets enter our homes.  New knowledge enters the body of human wisdom. With advancing age, some find the changes unsettling. Most  however, adjust to  new facts and revise their outlook.  But what we learn in our childhood and early youth is our most "natural" knowledge and that is the most enduring yardstick by which we measure the world around us.  And that is what in part, gives rise to the generation gap.

Each year in August, since 1998, Beloit College in Wisconsin compiles a list of ideas and objects which the entering class of students has grown up with and which are therefore expected to have shaped their world view and cultural mind set.  This list is famously known as The Beloit College Mindset List. 

Here is a partial list of what contributed to the mindset of this year's entering class of 2010.  (For the entire list, check out the linked page.)

• The Soviet Union has never existed in their lifetime.
• There has always been only one Germany.
• They have never actually heard anyone "ring up" a register.
• They are wireless, yet always connected.
• DNA fingerprinting has been permissible in court.
• Smoking has never been permitted on airplanes.
• "Google" has always been a verb.
• There has always been a Disneyland in Europe and Asia.
• There have always been bar codes on almost everything including library books.
• They don't know what carbon copy is.
• "Outing" has always meant a threat, not an adventure.
• Professional athletes have always participated in the Olympics.

School textbooks will take a few years to update. Teachers will need time to tailor their teaching material to meet the new standards of planetary eligibility. New charts and models of the solar system will have to be constructed. Assuming that school children learn elementary astronomy in the 2nd or 3rd grade, in which year will the Beloit College Mindset list include college students whose view of the universe did not include Pluto as a "real" planet? 

A Comment As A Blog Post

In my blog posts, I tend to avoid addressing personal matters and observations not rooted in concrete fact. However, PIAW left a provocative comment on my last post, Hitler and Homework.  The subject is something that I have often wondered about. I decided to muse aloud instead of burying my response in the comments section. I will record my impressions (some of them from long ago) from personal experience, anecdotal evidence and common sense, unsubstantiated by statistics or any other verifiable data. I am open to hearing all sides of this issue.....

"PIAW:

I can understand where you saw the irony of the juxtaposition of the two stories, although I myself didn't connect the two events when I wrote the post. But I see your point about the dangers of incuriosity.

I presumed that Tutor Vista will be required to operate within the guidelines of the US school curriculum.  I doubt that as outsourcers, they will be at liberty to redesign the content of the study material.

The Hitler incident is appalling of course and I wholly concur with your opinion that it is a result more of ill education than a lack of education. 

India's laser like focus on science and technology (and bookish achievements) is a bit scary - and I say this as a student of science. I do believe that science, technology and commerce are the sure fire path for a country to extricate itself out of poverty and social / cultural stagnation.  But it should not be at the expense of a humane and ethical understanding of the world. Education is not only a means to feed the body. In its preferred essence, it ought to also enrich the soul.

The trend however is not wholly new. India's eagerness and enthusiasm to define its own destiny after independence was understandable. So was the need to have a fresh and forward looking start after a long and humiliating foreign occupation culminating in the bloody and cataclysmic partition of India. An educational system which encouraged cutting edge science and technology was a commendable effort towards that goal.  Massive national resources were poured into the establishment of the world famous IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), The All India Institute of Medical Sciences and numerous other science, engineering and medical institutions. Older research institutes like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore  saw their prestige soar. Middle and high school curricula were modernized and the National Science Talent Search program was introduced to identify scientifically gifted students and catch them young right at the middle and high school level. There is no doubt that this energy and effort bore fruit in as much as India started graduating top notch scientists, doctors and engineers at least from among the urban privileged class. But did this success come at the cost of something  vital which defines a nation's character and values?

The implicit caste system dividing science, commerce and humanities (in that order) was evident even when I was a student many decades ago. It was automatically assumed by most parents and teachers that the best students (the bias was not so strong towards girls as it was for boys) in high school were going to choose science, followed by commerce. The rest would study the humanities. I remember that it was only the very confident and ambitious boy who would choose to study history or English despite having secured good grades. And that  choice too was very often motivated by an intention of eventually entering the prestigious Indian  Administrative Service or the Indian Foreign Service - the next best thing (sometimes better) to being a doctor or an engineer.  So in effect, the wish to become a super bureaucrat drove many of these bright students to the humanities rather than the love of the discipline.

Having opted for science in high school, I was shut out from learning anything except physics, chemistry and mathematics from age fourteen. A few compulsory courses in English language and literature broke the monotony of the pure science rhythm somewhat in high school.  The only "choice" I had from ninth grade onwards was between biology and engineering drawing.  In college, English too was jettisoned after a cursory first year course which I had to merely "pass" and it didn't even figure in my transcript as a subject taken.

While I enjoyed my science education for the most part, I also desperately missed studying Bengali, taking an art class in college and if possible, learning a bit of history and philosophy.  The opportunity was not there.  My love of literature and art was indulged in my own time, fueled by my own enthusiasm and the encouragement of my parents. Many of my friends who were "good" science students seemed to know very little of the world outside the text book and the laboratory.  Neither did they care very much about broadening their horizons.

My children on the other hand,  were educated in the US and had quite a different experience.  Having followed a very similar path in high school - of math, science, social studies, English and assorted AP courses, they took different routes in college.  My daughter graduated with a major in philosophy but took college classes in organic chemistry, physics, linear algebra and statistics although she was not required to.  Conversely, my son, whose primary major was chemistry, undertook a second major (risking a brutal study load) in an integrated liberal arts degree, thus adding English, economics, history and philosophy to his course load. He even took a credit course in Indian classical music for one semester so he could play the tabla which along with the piano, he loves. This diversified approach in both their cases was instrumental in achieving a broader perspective than the narrow focus which the science curriculum in India offered me.  In the case of my daughter, science and math honed her analytical skills in philosophy.  In the case of my son, the liberal arts education helped keep his reading, writing and critical thinking skills intact. Also, I suspect it happily broke the monotony of a monolithic, cubicle approach to higher education. When my children shared with me their choice of courses every semester, I used to feel as excited as they did. At the same time I felt a twinge of regret and envy that I myself had missed the opportunity of sampling such a delicious smorgasbord of educational choices in my own college days.

Recently, on a visit to New Delhi, I had a revealing conversation with a neighbor who teaches philosophy in a college in Delhi University. The decline in the popularity of philosophy among Indian students is perhaps the biggest indicator of how utilitarian Indian education has become. During my parents' college days, philosophy attracted the best and the brightest among Indian students. It was considered at par with physics, chemistry and mathematics as a worthwhile and challenging discipline. In the last forty years or so, this  "non-practical" intellectual pursuit  has seen a precipitous slide in its popularity and prestige. My neighbor, the philosophy professor said that her teaching experience was akin to a stint in the purgatory - a punishment for both the teacher and the taught.  The students in her philosophy class were unmotivated and unqualified. Most alarming was the fact that these students were in the class only to earn an "easy" B.A. while devoting most of their energies to train for lucrative but mind numbing jobs at various "call centers" which dot the cityscape. They had enrolled in the philosophy program only because it was possible to get into it with mediocre grades.  A philosophy major occupies the lowest notch on the current Indian academic totem pole, along with Sanskrit and other Indian languages.

I should note here that like philosophy, natural sciences too are suffering a set back in Indian higher education. During my college years, philosophy had already fallen into a second tier status but was not quite scraping the bottom of the barrel as it is now. The sciences however, physics and chemistry in particular, attracted the cream of the crop among Indian college students - many of them foregoing a career in medicine or engineering in favor of basic science.  But recently I learnt that basic science too now suffers from the same "undesirable" stigma as philosophy.  The best and the brightest are opting for the  more "useful" applied sciences like computer science, medicine and engineering or lucrative degrees in business and finance. India and Indians are justifiably proud of the achievements of their doctors, engineers and  businessmen. But a huge nation without philosophers and ethicists? Without vigorous basic research in the sciences?  Becoming a giant clearing house for money, products and services?  No place and need for ideas?  Is that good?  Should that  be desirable?  Or does India, in its breathless  pursuit of a seat at the global table, not have the time or the patience for purely intellectual  flights of fancy?

I'd like to hear what others think.  I left India a long time ago. My perspective may be dated, aged and unrealistic.  It will be useful to hear from those who are more intimately familiar with the educational trend in India either through their own experience or by having interacted with others who came out of that system recently. Especially useful will be to hear from younger folks.

Gawker, Devan, Prasad, (or anyone else who may be reading silently)  if you are reading - what do you guys hear or think?  Please enlighten me.

 

Hitler and Homework

Two stories from India - one about smart folks setting up to help kids and the other about the abysmally stupid. The stupid one first.

Granted that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that perceptions of history and world events often vary across geographical boundaries.  For example,  the names of Fidel Castro, Yassir Arafat, Ho Chi Minh and Karl Marx don't quite bear the same negative connotation in many parts of the world as they do in the west, especially the US.  Countries which have themselves struggled for freedom from colonialism or feudal exploitation tend to sympathize with nationalistic movements in other parts of the world - even bloody ones.  But Hitler? Leaving aside racist neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, can any one still harbor a fond (and in this case, appetizing) image of Hitler in this day and age?  After all we have learnt in the sixty plus years since WW II?   Apparently yes.  Utter ignorance too can lead to the resurrection and rehabilitation of Hitler - at least as the symbol of an upscale eatery  in Mumbai, India!   

(click for enlargement)

Mumbai: Hitler is back. This time in Navi Mumbai. However, he's not building gas chambers but dishing out gastronomical delights. And of course, it's controversial.Stomach this! Hitler is "apparently" cool these days. Well, that's at least what the owner of a restaurant thought when he named his new eatery Hitlers' Cross.

"It's just that we wanted to give a different name. We wanted a good campaign. That's the main reason. Nothing else," Managing Director, Hitlers' Cross, Puneet Sabhlok said.

Billboards, balloons, lamppost kiosks, there's a mark of Hitler everywhere around Khargarh in Navi Mumbai, where the restaurant is situated.  Hitler may have ordered thousands to death but that isn't stopping people from visiting the restaurant.

"The name has a very negative impact because Hitler reminds you of a gas chamber. But, then, I thought, let me try what's this all about," a patron, Vaishali Shreedhar said.

However, Khargarh's Jewish community is appalled.  "I don't think anybody will eat at that restaurant. Because the word Hitler disturbs us," Sect. of the Bethel Synagogue, Joseph Massin said.

Feathers have been ruffled but regarding people’s emotions being hurt, the proprietor of the restaurant said, "I haven't thought about that."

Hmm... didn't think he did. What a dolt! The customers thronging the restaurant are not exactly of the enlightened variety either.  See a story here about the nature of the clientele and sponsors of the "Restaurant of Bad Taste".  (Link via Sepia Mutiny)

The next story describes an ambitious plan for the remote tutoring of US school kids in rural areas - from halfway across the world in India.  A Bangalore based company, Tutor Vista plans to fill in the gap left by the US education system. Hopefully, they will be able to get  Bill Gates' foundation and local phone and cable companies to pitch in. Good intentions alone will not get this venture off its launching pad. It needs high speed internet.

"One problem with the No Child Left Behind Act is that 80% of the kids entitled to after-school tutoring--at taxpayers' expense--aren't getting it, according to a new government report, and some rural districts offer no tutoring at all. But extra help is on the way. And like a lot of customer service these days, it comes with a distinctly Indian accent. The Bangalore-based TutorVista, which last fall began providing online tutoring to U.S. students in everything from grammar to geometry, last week announced it will provide a year of free tutoring to kids in the 10 poorest rural counties in the U.S.

That means all students in, say, Texas' Zavala County or South Dakota's Ziebach County can get first-rate help--which ordinarily would cost $20 an hour--regardless of whether their school is performing poorly enough to be on the NCLB's watch list. (The only catch for kids in impoverished, remote areas: they must have access to a high-speed modem.) TutorVista chairman Krishnan Ganesh dismisses critics who lament the further siphoning of jobs overseas. "There is plenty of work to go around," he says. "The American educational system is pathetic."

   

"Your Son May Be Better Off Dead." ... Is That What He Means?

Cindy Sheehan may have a new ally - the mother of another dead soldier, shocked and grieved by an encounter with George W. Bush's heart of stone. Dolores Kesterson, whose son Erik was killed in Iraq in 2003, was treated with an amazing lack of grace by the Commander In Chief. During a recent meeting with military families, Bush met with Kesterson, who said that her dead son's favorite saying was, "Life is good."  To which George Bush replied with characteristic loose lipped candor and brusqueness, "How do you know his life would have been good?" !!!!   Another Gold Star mom callously dissed by our trigger happy president. Young men like Erik Kesterson and Casey Sheehan are just so much cannon fodder in the Bush administration's insatiable hunger for world domination.

(Bush's challenge to Kesterson ranks right up there with Ann Coulter's equally heartless and tasteless quip about the 9/11 widows of whom she said," "And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies?..."  Birds of a feather, indeed!)

Dolores Kesterson meets the president.

By Jeff Norman
August 11, 2005

Cindy Sheehan is not the only Gold Star mom who felt disrespected after a visit with George W. Bush. Dolores Kesterson, whose son Erik was killed in Iraq in November of 2003, was among several military families who last year were invited to meet with Bush as a group. Each family was allotted ten minutes with the president, but because she is divorced from her husband, Dolores asked to speak with Bush one-on-one.

Dolores reports exclusively for U.S. Tour of Duty that she waited alone in a small partitioned area, wondering if her request would be granted, before a Bush aide suddenly announced, "The president will now see you." As the commander in chief strode briskly toward her, it seemed to Dolores that he was trying to intimidate her. "He came marching in and got right in my face...eyeball to eyeball, and said, 'I'm George Bush, the president of the United States, and I understand you have something to say to me in private.'"

Dolores tried to give Bush a sense of what type of person Erik had been. She described her son as a "comedian" whose favorite saying was, "Life is good." The president replied, "How do you know his life would have been good?"

Dolores was shocked by Bush's eagerness to question the value of her son's life. She told the president, "Nobody wants to die."

Before he concluded their meeting, Bush proclaimed to Dolores, "We won't know in our lifetime whether or not Iraq was a success."

Here is an account of Kesterson's encounter with anothe right wing bully, Bill O'Reilly.

One man's god is another man's demon (Sujatha)

A little off-topic from the previous blog posts, the name Ahura (mentioned here) piqued my interest.I had faint memories of reading a primer on Zarathustra in Amar Chitra Katha comics in which he declares Ahura Mazda to be the One and Only Supreme Being. Dr. Daryoosh Vakhshoori, the founder of Ahura Corp. is listed as being a prominent Iranian-American. Hence the choice of name for his company! It definitely seems rather ironic that he chose a name that might have offended the current powers-that-be in Iran as a memory of the small but by no means extinct Zoroastrian Irani community. A small coincidence that this Iran connection comes within a week of Ruchira's referencing Iran on the blog.

Hindu traditions derived from Indo-Aryan tenets, consider Suras (or Devas) to be beings of light, gods of various kinds, while Asuras ('not Suras') are darker beings, largely with dark instincts and are most commonly portrayed as the embodiments of evil ( for instance demon king Ravana). In Zoroastrianism, the opposite linguistic paradigm holds true - Ahura is the being of light, all powerful and all good, while Daevas are the 'bad guys'. Here's more on the Ahura-Asura/Deva-Daeva dichotomy.

Liquid Explosives and Solid Lies

Bush and his Homeland Security chief remind us constantly that they are doing all they can to protect Americans from the perils of terrorism. As the November elections draw near, we will hear a steady rise in the drumbeat of this claim. They justify wars, suspension of civil liberties and draconian measures at airports by exploiting our fears.  After all, global terrorism is a real danger. But are Bush's security measures really designed to make us safe?  Time and again we have discovered that the Bush administration talks the tough talk but when it comes to funding real and effective measures for security, it doesn't walk the walk.

It has been revealed that the administration tried to divert funds from the HSD's bomb detection technology program. Anti-terror funds were slashed for New York City and Washington D.C  while cities like Omaha, Jersey City, Fort Lauderdale, Louisville, KY and states like Indiana, Wyoming and North Dakota had their funding increased many times. After the recent news of the terrorist plot to blow up airplanes using liquid explosives, we can no longer carry beverages, shampoo or toothpaste in our carry-on luggage during air travel.  The explanation given for this extremely alarmist step has been that the technology to detect liquid explosives is not available and it is too expensive. But guess what, like many other untruths told by the deceiptful Bush administration, this assertion too is a bluff. The technology exists and it is already in use - in the White House! Bush and his friends in the HSD just didn't bother to tell us. They are spending billions for a disastrous war but don't want to spend the money to protect ordinary citizens at home who must be subjected to increasing levels of indignities and  inconveniences. I wonder why. Could it be that keeping people perpetually nervous, stressed out and insecure, makes it easier to control and manipulate them for political gains?

The technology exists to detect liquid explosives -- at least three Massachusetts companies have created such tools -- but the federal government says it's still not ready to deploy the devices in the nation's airports.

The Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency in charge of airport security, is testing products from American Science and Engineering Inc. of Billerica; Ahura Corp. of Wilmington; and General Dielectric Inc. of Acton.

AS&E's SmartCheck system uses low-powered X-rays to scan passengers for hidden items like bottles of liquid, while Ahura and General Dielectric use lasers or microwaves respectively, to identify the contents of a sealed bottle. The TSA is also testing seven other devices made by companies in the United States, the United Kingdom , and Japan. But TSA spokeswoman Amy Kudwa says that none are ready to be deployed because of reliability and feasibility issues.

But after this month's foiled terrorist plot to smuggle liquid explosives aboard jumbo jets, the government may not have the luxury to wait. Charles Slepian , founder of the Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center, a transportation security firm in New York, said that technology for detecting explosives in carry-on bags is well understood and readily available, but the US Department of Homeland Security is reluctant to spend the large sums needed to deploy it at hundreds of airports.

"Now they're embarrassed because they have to say that we have nothing in place," said Slepian. "Shame on us. We've had the science for years."

Since the early 1990s, AS&E has made SmartCheck, a $50,000 low-intensity X-ray scanner that can spot a bottle of organic compounds in a passenger's pocket.

But is the liquid an explosive, or a batch of baby formula? Ahura says its $30,000 handheld laser scanner, the First Defender, can answer the question. The device can "see" through glass or plastic bottles and identify any of 2,500 different chemical compounds in about 15 seconds. The FBI and New York City police already use the Ahura system, which went on sale about a year ago.

Joe Reiss , AS&E's vice president of marketing, said his company's SmartCheck systems are used at the White House and the US Supreme Court. But they're not widely used in airport security. TSA agreed last year to conduct tests of the system. But Reiss said those tests had not yet begun.

TSA spokeswoman Kudwa said the agency has been evaluating the First Defender system in US airports since October, along with the General Dielectric system, but the devices have not always proven reliable. "We are seeing high false alarm rates for the solutions we are testing right now," she said.

Ahura spokeswoman Kerstin Barr said First Defender has an accuracy rate of about 95 percent."

The money that has been wasted to fund useless anti-terror measures in low risk cities in Nebraska, Wyoming, Indiana, Kentucky and North Dakota, could have gone towards the purchase of liquid scanning devices for most major airports. Instead we now must surrender our make-up, Gatorade and toothpaste like so many sheep. George Bush's hind-quarters on the other hand, are perfectly protected by the latest technology which has been ready and available for quite some time.

Note: Thanks to my co-blogger Sujatha for pointing out this disturbing story and providing the link.

Definition of Crap and Other Words. Views From Britain's Left and Right

A blogger in England has lost his job been suspended from his job with a cell phone company because of the content of his blog post on a Conservative Party website set up to discuss Tory issues. In his post, the Lefty Lexicon, Inigo Wilson undertook to define certain words and expression relating mostly to terrorism and Muslims, as left leaning liberals understand them, in his opinion. His dismissal suspension from the phone company came about mainly due to protests from Britain's Islamic community.   I don't think  he should lose his job with the company for what he wrote on a political blog.  This is indeed a freedom of speech issue. His dismissal will only strengthen the notion that the liberals can't take criticism.

Some entries from Mr. Wilson's Lexicon:

Islamophobic - anyone who objects to having their transport blown up on the way to work.

Palestinians - archetypal "victims", no matter how many teenagers they murder in bars and fast-food outlets. Never responsible for anything they do - or done in their name - because of "root causes" or "legitimate grievances".

Al-Qa'ida - Muslim "militants" who for some reason continue to kill far more Muslims than people of any other faith.

Religion - Christianity: irrational, dangerous belief that material things may not be the principal motive behind human behaviour. Judaism: most Israelis are Jewish, so probably "intolerant". Islam: always needs to be "understood".

Hate-crime - same as "normal" crime as far as victims are concerned - but much more distressing for lefties.

Terrorist - no such thing. Only people suffering from "root causes" and "legitimate grievances".

In other news from Britain, the British Deputy Prime Minister has defined the Bush administration simply as "crap". 

John Prescott has given vent to his private feelings about the Bush presidency, summing up George Bush's administration in a single word: crap.The Deputy Prime Minister's condemnation of President Bush and his approach to the Middle East could cause a diplomatic row but it will please Labour MPs who are furious about Tony Blair's backing of the United States over the bombing of Lebanon.

Harry Cohen, the MP whose constituency includes Walthamstow, scene of some of the police raids in the alleged "terror plot" investigation, said Mr Prescott had definitely used the word "crap" about the Bush administration.

"He was talking in the context of the 'road map' in the Middle East. He said he only gave support to the war on Iraq because they were promised the road map. But he said the Bush administration had been crap on that. We all laughed and he said to an official, 'Don't minute that'." Mr Cohen added: "We also had a laugh when he said old Bush is just a cowboy with his Stetson on. But then he said, 'I can hardly talk about that can I?'

Certainly this will not go over well at the US State Department or with the GOP.  But diplomatic furore or not,  many Labor MPs are siding with Prescott and against Blair.  Also,

Labour agrees: Bush is crap : (some of the MPs' words here) 

Make It An Even Dozen

(Click for enlargement)

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has redefined what constitutes a planet.  Based on that definition, a panel of astronomers, writers and historians has suggested adding three more to the current number of planets in our solar system, bringin up the total from 9 to 12.  It is possible that more may be added to the lineup.  The panel's recommendations will be presented at a meeting of the IAU in Prague. The Union's general assembly is expected to formally vote on the recommendation next week.

If approved, the new additions would be: Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt that  inhabits the space between Mars and Jupiter; Charon, once considered Pluto's (which has long had its own problems with identity among the elite group of planets) moon will now become its companion in a "double planet" system;  and an as-yet-unnamed object, larger-than-Pluto and far beyond the orbit of all the other planets , with the unwieldy label of 2003 UB313 which was discovered by Cal Tech astronomer, Michael Brown and his colleagues in 2003 who tentatively named it Xena.

For the first time since 1930 when Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, school children all over the world will have to learn new names of planets and more material will be needed for designing all those planetary system models for the science fair.  Under the newly defined system,   Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — will be characterized as "classical planets." Ceres, Pluto, Charon and the unnamed planet will become "dwarfs," -  planets smaller than Mercury, which has a diameter of about 3,000 miles. 

This is so cool - revisiting and renaming heavenly bodies. It is like a breath of fresh air in the midst of the putrid smell of war, terrorism, unrest, unease and name calling by slimy politicians.  Broadening the horizons of human knowledge and expanding our consciousness of the universe by inquisitive visionaries, as opposed to the fast shrinking humanity and myopic visions of small minded political leaders.

There is just one small problem.  For years, American school kids have memorized the the following handy mnemonic "My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" to remember the planetary order from the sun.  Now with the introduction of one "C" between Mars and Jupiter, another after (or before?) Pluto, and possibly an "X" at the end, can any one suggest a new aid to memory?  Readers?

Here is an article from the Scientfic American.

The original definition of planet is wanderer, from the Greeks who watched these bright lights wander through the firmament of fixed stars. Observers discerned nine of these travelers over the course of human history, the last being Pluto in 1930. But recent discoveries of more objects orbiting the sun, both bigger than Pluto and similarly rounded in shape, called into question the arbitrary limit of nine, with some proposing that Pluto did not merit its planetary status. Now the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has crafted a new definition for what constitutes a planet that would expand the solar system to Pluto and beyond, encompassing 12 bodies in all.

The new proposed definition of a planet is: a celestial body with sufficient mass to assume a nearly spherical shape that orbits a star without being another star or a satellite of another planet. By this definition, the list of planets in order from the sun now reads: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto-Charon (considered a double-planet system) and the newly discovered and officially unnamed 2003 UB₃₁₃, otherwise known as Xena. The committee also proposed a new category of planets, called plutons, be applied to those bodies that, like Pluto, both take longer than 200 Earth years to revolve around the sun and have eccentric orbits outside the typical orbital plane.

No Child Left Behind - If Your Mother is Barbara Bush

Conservatives like to admonish others (especially those who are financially strapped) to stand on their own two feet, even when the feet are wobbly.  Governmental assistance for education, health care, disaster relief etc. is looked down upon as handouts and quotas. Yet some of the most powerful and privileged in their class think nothing of manipulating the system to benefit their own. The rich feed at the public trough with a natural sense of entitlement but grumble when the needy come knocking at the door and ask to be bailed out of dire straits.

Nearly five months ago, I wrote about Barbara Bush's novel plan of financially enriching her good for nothing son, Neil Bush who has failed at several business ventures, including some that were less than above board.  Nothing wrong with a parent helping a child. Except, Mrs. Bush's family assistance scheme  came disguised as charitable donation to victims of Katrina!  The convoluted plan for funneling  money to her own son through the Houston Independent School District (HISD) smacks of money laundering. Today it was reported in the Houston Chronicle that the Bush family deal using Houston school kids with learning disablities as a front, is even shadier than originally thought. It also involves peddling educational material of questionable value and Neil Bush stands to receive money from the school district over and above what his mother and her friends are donating to the fund. Please read the whole report and you will see why it is not a surprise that the other good for nothing Bush brother is blithely wrecking the world.  The apple (rotten ones included) doesn't fall far from the tree. 

Neil's deal
HISD's decision to buy more educational software from the son of a former president raises red flags. The Houston Independent School District board has authorized spending up to $200,000 for educational software and projectors sold by a company founded by Neil Bush, the son of former President George and Barbara Bush. It's a waste of tax dollars that doesn't pass the smell test.

Ignite Learning is an Austin-based venture that markets learning programs tailored for children with short attention spans. Its reliance on jingles, cartoons and other snippets seems more likely to reinforce that limitation than to nourish intellect and learning.

Neil Bush started the business in 1999 with millions of dollars from Middle Eastern and Asian business and political figures connected to the Bush family. The business has not made money and has required repeated cash infusions from his parents. Taiwanese interests that had given Neil a job consulting for a semiconductor manufacturer provided $2 million; $3 million came from Saudi interests.

The youngest Bush brother has led a checkered career notable for his involvement in the failure of Colorado's Silvarado S&L in the '80s. Since then he has worked as a consultant, mostly for interests having or seeking connections with his family.

HISD's participation in the Ignite program began with the donation of private funds raised by Bush associates and donated to the philanthropic HISD Foundation. Those donations paid only half the software's initial cost; the school district provided the rest.

Critics complain that the Ignite computers and software are of questionable value, the contract was not competitively bid and the program was not adequately evaluated. Visitors to Ignite Learning's Web site will tend to agree. The samples on display barely scrape the surface of the subject. Tariffs, for instance, are represented as a monster created by a mad scientist. The taxation of imports is never mentioned.

An eighth-grade student is quoted as saying how much he prefers looking at cartoons and singing songs to being taught by a teacher. Quelle surprise. The company claims its product makes connections between program content and students' lives. Isn't that the job of the teacher, who is actually acquainted with the students' lives?

HISD cannot take money from Bush family interests, then spend public dollars on a program benefiting Neil Bush and avoid a conflict of interest.

Barbara Bush violated district policy when she used her visit to Fleming Middle School last spring to promote the Ignite program. She also attracted publicity when she earmarked part of her contribution to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort to be spent on purchases of Neil's software.

In the interest of "fair and balanced," here is a link and a short excerpt from Neil Bush's rejoinder to the above article, published in today's edition of the Houston Chronicle's Letters to The Editor section.  Mr. Bush provides no satisfactory answer to clear the air regarding his own past or the shady financial deal between the HISD and his benefactors, including his mother. He does defend his mother's honor with appropriate generic outrage. He also does not respond substantively to the merits of the Ignite! educational software that his company sells - except with some vague references to using music and animation to promote better learning. He energetically extols the virtues of an Ignite! device called "Curriculum On Wheels,"  whose unfortunate acronym is "COW"!

"The Chronicle's Aug. 15 editorial ("Neil's deal") demonstrated ignorance about my company, of deeply rooted problems with educational instruction in public schools and of the Houston Independent School District's policies and procedures.

Ignite! believes the teacher is at the epicenter of classroom instruction. And yet, teachers, who often work with more than 100 kids a day with different learning styles, cultural backgrounds, and levels of academic achievement, are the poorest equipped professionals in our modern economy. Ignite! has developed more than 5,000 media pieces over the past four years that comprehensively cover the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills test standards, and we have put that curriculum into an easy to use device we call "Curriculum on Wheels" [COW]. ....

Finally, the personal attacks and repeated misrepresentations about my past are troubling and show the editorial board's political bias. I'm in a high-profile family, and low blows come with the territory. But the Chronicle crossed the line by attacking my mother. Barbara Bush has spent a lot of her time while serving as first lady and since retirement raising millions of dollars and unselfishly supporting various education initiatives. Her literacy efforts are the cornerstone of this heroic effort, but she's done a lot more. Putting a negative spin on her good will is offensive and serves to discourage community support of innovative approaches to public education."

NEIL BUSH founder and chairman, Ignite! Learning, Houston

YouTube Keeping the Boobs on the Small Screen and off the Public Stage (Anna)

It looks like Senator George Allen (R-VA), who has his eye on the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, may have sunk his chances in the national arena by singling out and belittling a South Asian man, the only person of color in the audience, at a campaign rally in southwestern Virgina. Is it any wonder our foreign policy is such a mess, when this is who we have serving on our Senate foreign relations committee? I find it telling that, immediately after publicly humiliating S.R. Sidarth, Allen segues to "We're in the midst of a war on terror." I guess brown people can can serve as useful visual props for the particularly slow pitchfork wielders.  Slate's John Dickerson, who skews, like many of Slate's political correspondents, toward the New Republic/DNC conservative side of the Democratic spectrum, oddly seems to spin an almost sympathetic take on Allen's situation, using it as an example of the difficulty candidates have contending with the ease of capturing and disseminating their most awkward moments through internet video. Personally, I fail to see this as anything but a heartening sign that wink-wink, local prejudice baiting politics may become increasingly hard to pull off in a YouTube age.

A New Blog of Interest - From Tehran

Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a passionate and garrulous leader. You know that if you have heard one or more of his public utterances, like the interview with Mike Wallace on past Sunday's edition of "60 Minutes". But an unimpeded access to the bully pulpit of an entire nation and the nervous attention of much of the world may not be enough of an outlet for his thoughts and musings.  Ahmadinejad has now launched his own blog ! I just logged on to it. It is in Persian and there is no Site Meter. Will it be required reading for all Iranian citizens?  I bet the majority of the blog traffic will come from the Mossad and the CIA.

A useful update from Sujatha: " If you want to read the English translated page of  Ahmadinejad's blog, click on the second flag to the right of the title. You get an exhaustive translation of his childhood struggles etc.etc.  Wonder when the Chimperor will try to emulate him!"

TEHRAN (Reuters): Iran's president has launched a Web log, using his first entry to recount his poor upbringing and ask visitors to the site if they think the United States and Israel want to start a new world war.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose speeches are riddled with anti-U.S. rhetoric, also described how he was angered by American meddling in Iran even when he was at elementary school.

Ahmadinejad swept to a surprise victory in last year's presidential race by promising the country's poor a fairer share of Iran's oil wealth and emphasizing his own humble origins that led many to vote for him as an "outsider" to Iran's ruling elite.

"During the era that ... living in a city was perfection, I was born in a poor family in a remote village," he wrote in a blog dated Friday, after opening with Islamic greetings.

Analyst Saeed Laylaz said the site -- available in Persian, Arabic, English and French at www.ahmadinejad.ir -- may be seeking to win support from abroad.

But he admitted his opening blog, which runs to more than 2,300 words in the English version, was too long. "From now onwards, I will try to make it simpler and shorter," he wrote.

Pas de deux - Pakistan and Terrorism

A few months ago, I had described Pakistan's sinister role in global terrorism using another dance analogy. Nothing much has changed since then in the continuing Danse Macabre and Pakistan's role as its major choreographer.

The recent bust of the British terrorism plot of blowing up airplanes using liquid explosives was facilitated by the cooperation of the Pakistani government.  So that makes Pakistan a good guy in the war on terrorism, right?  Not quite. The answer is not so simple. It appears that Pakistan has decided to play a complex, dual role in the world theater against terrorism. Pakistan hopes to inoculate itself against the wrath of the west by catching those who wish to harm the US and Europe, thereby gaining the accolades necessary to keep all attention averted from what it wishes to do in its own neighborhood. Especially when it comes to its historical enemy, India.  The recent bomb blasts on trains in Mumbai and the unconfirmed rumor about a possible attack during India's upcoming Independence Day celebrations, all point to miscreants crossing the border from Pakistan or local terrorists recruited by them. Until the long festering problem of Kashmir is solved to Pakistan's satisfaction, instead of a costly full blown war, a sustained psychological warfare with India, involving frequent terrorist attacks may be the method of choice and convenience. The government of Pakistan can thus retain public deniability while India continues to pay a high price in terms of human lives and damage to infrastructure and public confidence. 

I hope that the Indian government realizes that it is on its own when it comes to terrorism within its borders. No matter that the US and India are cozying up to each other for mutually beneficial economic deals. When it comes to national security matters, real politik will decide how much help to expect from western allies.  As long as Musharraf helps catch some Al Qaida big fish for the benefit of the US and Europe, western nations will more than likely turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to India's problems with Islamic terrorism.  It is in India's own interest to develop good relations with Muslim countries, especially old allies like Iran. Better still, it must find a way to make peace with Pakistan at long last. It may be less exciting to mend fences with old enemies than to build bridges with new friends, especially those fueled by the glittery allure of free market and economic boom. But boring may triumph over glamorous when it comes to ending terrorism. Until then, India, like the US and Israel, must live in fear and look over its shoulder at every street corner, train station and airport.   Here is a chilling story about Pakistan's dangerous penchant for playing both sides of the field.

Focus on Pakistan shows it as enemy of, haven to terrorism
Al-Qaida leaders have been caught, but other groups often are tolerated

"The trail of evidence in the British terrorism investigation is leading to an uncomfortable question for the Bush administration: Is Pakistan — rather than Iraq, Afghanistan or some other country — the central front in the war on terrorism?

The conspiracy described by British and American authorities serves as a reminder that one of the administration's leading allies in the region is also host to some of its worst enemies. It also is igniting a debate on whether the Bush administration's effort to support Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has done enough to stem Islamic radicalism in a country whose citizens are among the most strongly anti-American of any in the world.

Pakistan announced Friday that it had detained several suspects this week, including a British national considered an important figure in the alleged British plot. U.S. and British investigators say that some of the 24 arrested in Britain, most of them British citizens of Pakistani descent, may have had ties to radical fundamentalist groups in Pakistan. Similarly, militants who attacked the London transport system last year had ties to Pakistani groups.

While Musharraf has helped the Bush administration fight some terrorist organizations in his country, he has done little to halt others, or bring to justice the government officials who support them. Yet the Bush administration, already pressing Musharraf for help on a number of fronts, fears that pushing the weak leader of an unstable, nuclear-armed government too far could make matters worse.

President Bush, who has called Musharraf a "man of courage," has given the Pakistani leader billions of dollars in aid, offered critical political support and approved the sale of such advanced weapons as F-16 fighter planes.

In return, U.S. officials have been given many investigative leads on terrorism suspects, including members of al-Qaida. Americans also have received help on the Afghan border and pledges to halt nuclear proliferation activities.  Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks; Ramzi Binalshibh, who managed the attack; and Abu Zubeida, al-Qaida's one-time operations director, all were captured in Pakistan.  U.S. and British authorities have strongly praised the Pakistani authorities, who arrested as many as 17 suspects, for their help in the alleged plot.

But Musharraf has balked at other U.S. requests, denying access, for example, to Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, who as the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program was a key figure in the spread of nuclear know-how around the world.

Most damaging, while Musharraf has gone after terrorist groups he believes may threaten his government, he has resisted efforts to crack down on other organizations that he believes serve Pakistan's interests against rival India, or have substantial domestic support. He has not been seen as energetic in helping U.S. forces find Taliban fighters in border regions, and has refused to go after groups that support the insurgency in the disputed, territory of Kashmir.

While some of these groups may appear distinct from al-Qaida, many share a web of contacts, Abbas said. Musharraf "tries to differentiate between the two kinds of groups, but you can't," he said.

Root of All Evil - Then and Now

Totalitarian vocabulary does not evolve much with time - be it from the left or the right. Especially  when it comes to angry catch phrases and code words to describe enemies of the "cause." A while ago readers were asked to try and tell Hitler and Ann Coulter apart.  Now another conservative commentator points fingers and complains about Sen Lieberman's recent electoral defeat using rhetoric that is an eerie echo of a similar lament from the past.

You've Got Mail... And Your Medication

Remember when in its zeal to catch domestic terrorists, George Bush and Tom Ridge's incompetent but draconian Homeland Security Department had toyed with the idea of enlisting the mailman, the UPS delivery person and the gas meter reader to spy on US citizens and report suspicious activity?  Fortunately, that ridiculously intrusive plan for "friendly, neighborhood spying" did not gain any traction.

Reuters News reports that the government of one Indian state is using the local mail delivery person for a more useful civic activity.  Apart from distributing mail to villagers, the postman also brings them anti- malaria drugs to combat a recent spike in the malarial activity in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.  The WHO approves of such innovative approach to disease control.

Indian postmen deliver mail, also fight malaria

"KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of postmen in India's Jharkhand state are delivering anti-malaria medicine along with letters to combat a spike in malarial deaths in the east part of the country, a senior official said on Friday.

"The postmen travels everyday to otherwise inaccessible territories and knows almost everybody and they seem to be our best bet to beat malaria," Shivendu, the health secretary of Jharkhand, who uses one name, told Reuters.

"We have trained them to carry bottles of chloroquine and other medicines like pills and distribute them to hundreds of villagers and report back to us," he said by telephone from Ranchi, Jharkhand's capital.

The postmen will not only give medicines to people suffering from fever but also monitor health in remote malaria-affected areas by filling up questionnaires during mail runs. ...

"The Jharkhand government's ways are indeed novel and can be adopted by other states for good results," said Prabhakar Chatterjee, a senior World Health Organization official."

From The Broom Closet To Best Seller

I came across this story about three weeks ago in a South Asian tabloid, Voice of Asia,  published in Texas. (I read this paper whenever I visit the local south Indian eatery where it is available to the patrons.)  It was a remarkable enough tale and eminently blogworthy. But I didn't write about it  then because I wasn't sure if I could find a web link to it. Being familiar with the rigors and drudgery of the life of an average domestic servant in India, I recognized that this particular life story  is noteworthy not just for the determination of the protagonist but also due to the generosity and kindness of her  employer.  Today, I found the story of Baby Halder, the maid servant in New Delhi who has become a best selling author, in the New York Times. 

Haldar's first book "Light and Darkness"

NEW DELHI, Aug. 1 — Abandoned by her mother at 4, married off at 12 to an abusive husband, a mother herself at 13 — there is little in Baby Halder’s traumatic childhood to suggest that she would become an emerging star on India’s literary horizon.

A single parent at 25, struggling to feed her three children by working as a maid for a series of exploitative employers, Ms. Halder had no time to devote to reading or to contemplating the harsh reality of her existence until she started work in the home of a sympathetic retired academic, who caught her browsing through his books when she was meant to be dusting the shelves. He discovered a latent interest in literature, gave her a notebook and pen, and encouraged her to start writing.

“A Life Less Ordinary,” this season’s publishing sensation in India, is the result of her nighttime writing sessions, squeezed in after her housework duties were finished, when she poured raw memories of her early life into the lined exercise books.

Prabodh Kumar, the retired anthropology professor who discovered her, was impressed with what he read and encouraged her to continue. After several months, he sat down with her and helped edit her text into book form. Written in Bengali and translated into several other Indian languages and English this year, Ms. Halder’s autobiography has become a best seller.

In a sense, this is an Indian “Angela’s Ashes”: Ms. Halder echoes Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of his miserable boyhood in Ireland with her story of a bleak upbringing in northeastern India in the 1970’s. Ms. Halder’s style will never win her literary prizes; even with Mr. Kumar’s editing, the narrative is rough, and the horde of characters who flit in and out can be confusing. Nevertheless, her book provides a moving depiction of life for millions of impoverished Indian women, and of aspects of Indian society not usually the focus of novelists’ attention....

Despite her book’s success, Ms. Halder says she has no plans to change careers. She is writing her second book, continuing the narrative of her life, in between domestic chores.

“I want to be a writer and I will continue to write,” she said. But for now, she said, she cannot abandon Mr. Kumar, “so I will go on working here.”

And then she left, to prepare lunch for her boss."

Beyond The Celestial Belt: Such A Long Journey

Here are two stories about a couple of pioneers of astronomy, physics and space exploration - Clyde Tombaugh and James Van Allen, and their amazing journeys through life and death.

Clyde Tombaugh

WASHINGTON - In articles about his life, they always called Clyde Tombaugh "a Kansas farm boy," as if to draw sharp contrast with the cosmic magnitude of his signature achievement.  Discovering a planet, after all, is a rare distinction, and Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930, is the only American to discover one of the nine named planets in our solar system.

His story sounds too all-American storybook to be true, as though Frank Capra and Horatio Alger somehow conspired to come up with the unlikely tale. When he discovered Pluto, Tombaugh lacked a college education, having taught himself the fundamentals of astronomy on the family farm north of Burdett, Kan. Endless hours in the fields imbued Tombaugh with a love of the stars. The sky just looks bigger, more intense out there with nothing to block it, said Tombaugh's daughter, Annette Tombaugh-Sitze. ....

Tombaugh-Sitze said questions about whether Pluto merited the status of a planet always bothered her father. But she's sure he's having the last laugh: His ashes are aboard a research spaceship hurtling toward a 2015 encounter with Pluto, his majestic discovery, whatever it is.

"Dad's on a great adventure," she said."

______________________________________________________________________________

James Van Allen

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) - Physicist James A. Van Allen, a leader in space exploration who discovered the radiation belts surrounding the Earth that now bear his name, died Wednesday [Aug 9, 2006]. He was 91.

The University of Iowa, where he taught for years, announced the death in a statement on its Web site.

In a career that stretched over more than a half-century, Van Allen designed scientific instruments for dozens of research flights, first with small rockets and balloons, and eventually with space probes that traveled to distant planets and beyond.

Van Allen gained global attention in the late 1950s when instruments he designed and placed aboard the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, discovered the bands of intense radiation that surround the earth, now known as the Van Allen Belts.

The bands spawned a whole new field of research known as magnetospheric physics, an area of study that now involves more than 1,000 investigators in more than 20 countries.

The discovery also propelled the United States in its space exploration race with the Soviet Union and prompted Time magazine to put Van Allen on the cover of its May 4, 1959, issue.

The folksy, pipe-smoking scientist, called ``Van'' by friends, retired from full-time teaching in 1985. But he continued to write, oversee research, counsel students and monitor data gathered by satellites. He worked in a large, cluttered corner office on the seventh floor of the physics and astronomy building that bears his name.

"Jim Van Allen was a good friend of our family. His loss saddens Christie and me,'' Gov. Tom Vilsack said. "His passing is a sad day for science in America and the world.

Though he was an early advocate of a concerted national space program, Van Allen was a strong critic of most manned space projects, once dismissing the U.S. proposal for a manned space station "speculative and ... poorly founded.''

In 2004, he spoke out again, arguing against Bush administration plans for a space station on the moon and a manned mission to Mars.

"I'm one of the most durable and fervent advocates of space exploration, but my take is that we could do it robotically at far less cost and far greater quantity and quality of results,'' he said.

I'll end with an amusing anecdote as related by Bengali author, Sunil Ganguly (aka Sunil Gangopadhyay) in his reminiscence, Ardhek Jiban (Half A Life) that I read some years ago.  As a budding young author, Ganguly lived in Iowa City and attended the famous Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa. One day, he was to attend a university banquet and while getting ready for the event, discovered that he couldn't find the one and only belt he possessed. When his host, a professor at UI came to pick him up, Ganguly explained his problem. The professor said that he had to pick up another professor from his home on the way to the banquet and perhaps Ganguly would be able to borrow a belt there.  That professor whom they went to pick up next was James Van Allen - who lent Ganguly one of his own belts.  The author joked in his book that he therefore earned the bragging rights to have actually worn one of Van Allen's Belts.