Informed Comment

There are some blogs out there thatreally amaze me. The most impressive one I have recently stumbled upon is Informed Comment written by Juan Cole.When the Israeli army invaded Gaze I barely understood what was happening.

While most news channels choose to just report events during the invasion, I was a bit confused by coverage in the international media including the NYT and The Guardian.Most of these papers organized their coverage around the impact of this event on the other big event. Obama's swearing in.

Then I stumbled on this blog and was quite amazed at the length the author goes to analyse news from a variety of sources and his ability to make reading it relatively simple. And this is the middle east! Its quite complex and he really does help me understand the situation better.
He also vovers Islamic issues and studies. His clarity ensures I can just look up his posts and understand what's happening in that part of the world.

Stupid amerikan kids and intelligent indians ones.

To be part of the South Indian middle class(sim) involves, among other things, a form of chest thumping i call Amerika down down.
It involves various forms of insults, the most common one among middle aged sims is how they love to point out the superiority of Indian kids, especially south Indian, over Amercikan kids.

This hypothesis is proposed every time a South Indian name flashes on the screen of an Amerikan spelling bee telecast or an Indian wins some Intel or NASA scholarship. This incident is followed by self praise, self kudos and self back patting.

"Indians kids are smart and hard working!", "Look at how we are beating them in their own language!". Krishnamurthy and Swamis make up a big portion of students in the finals of spelling bees.But are AmeriKan kids really dumb and their school system so pathetic as my various self-congratulating friends claim? This belief is so prevalent that a large number of Indian parents return to India during the kids formative years(3rd standard till 10th atleast)!

The main argument on side superiority is our superior brain.Proof? Indians invented the 0!But that's for later. Can a group of people really be mentally more gifted? This idea generally flows from the observation of Afrikan/Afrika-American/Jamaican/Ethiopian athletes winning race after race in the various events of the Olympics. So OBVIOUSLY some traits like physical capability in their case and raw brain power in our case are more present in special groups.

Other than a total lack of proof to support the argument, there are sad repercussions of it. Our tough school system is not analyzed deeply enough thanks to this myth. The inferior Amerikan school system supports sports,extra-curriculursand even sex education! yuck!

"Not for US!" say sims.we don't need all that, a child's physical fitness is not the measure of his well being! his ability to know the capitals and flags of over 60 countries is. Can the ability to know the various types of grasslands thorough out the world compensate the skills learnt from taking up a drama or cooking class??? "YES it can!" again the sims.

The pressure an average Indian kid comes under is not only destructive but the following social stigma that s/he faces is something Indian society should be ashamed of. Most of these kids are the exact versions of Chinese gymnasts who are separated from family when young and then trained to perform in an Olympics or maximum another. Nobody knows the mental effects of such gruelling training on the Chinese children.

As for Sim's children, the mental effects are well documented.They become a sim. They force their children to take violin/vedic-maths/karate/abacus-maths/sloka-chanting and other such nonsense. They bask in the glory of their sons and daughters cracking top exams but rue about how children in their good old days were innocent and nice once the children take to drugs and alcohol under these pressures.

Any "superior" performance that an Indian kid delivers should be attributed to nurture and not nature.The Chinese gymnasts are responding to the nurture of a forced regimen of physical training.American kids are responding to the regimen of a comfortable life with little pressure to deliver academically only. They deliver in sports, in theatre and so many fields.Sim children are responding to the regimen of the Sim family. A regimen where a kid is known by his report card only.

A Few Good Men

As we're bombed by stories of atrocities in Myanmar and the next superpower China,i remembered reading many years ago about a brave Soviet Officer who saved the world single handedly. I searched and searched and found him and his stunning achievement well documented in this article.

Read on and realise that there will always be,even in this day and age,A few good men.

24 years on - The man who saved millions of lives

Sat, 22 September 2007

The date is 1 September 1983 and the Cold War between the Soviet Union and USA is in full gear, when from the New York skies Korean Air Lines Flight 007 flies from JFK, destination Seoul, South Korea. In the middle of the flight, while accidently passing through Soviet air space, Soviet fighter jets appear getting close the aircraft. The Soviets, who didn't know the plane contained civilians, warned the pilot that they will shoot down the aircraft if it doesn't identify itself, and the pilot, for some unknown reason, doesn't respond. Reports say the pilot never actually received the information, although theories about this are still unclear. An hour passes as the fighter jets still accompany the aircraft, and the orders from Soviet military is to shoot down the aircraft just as the plane was leaving Soviet airspace. The Soviet fighter jets shot down the plane, with the aircraft plunging 35,000 feet in less than 90 seconds, killing 269 civilians, including a US congressman. Hell broke loose. As the Soviets tried to defend their 'mistake', US President Ronald Raegan described the Soviets actions as "barbaric" and "a crime against humanity that must never be forgotten". The tension between the two mega-powers hit an all-time high, and on 15 September 1983 the US administration banned Soviet aircrafts from operating in US airspace. With the political climate in dangerous territory, both US and Soviet government were on high-alert believing an attack was imminent. It was a cold night at the Serpukhov-15 bunker in Moscow on 26 September 1983 as Strategic Rocket Forces lieutenant colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov resumed his duty, monitoring the skies of the Soviet Union, after taking a shift of someone else who couldn't go to work. Just past midnight, Petrov received a computer report he'd dreaded all his military career to see, the computer captured a nuclear military missile being launched from the US, destination Moscow. In the event of such an attack, the Soviet Union’s strategy protocol was to to launch an immediate all-out nuclear weapons counterattack against the United States with nuclear power, and immediately afterwards inform top political and military figures. From there, it would be taken a decision to further the military offensive on America. Stanislav Petrov The bunker was in full-alarm, with red lights all over the place as the missile was captured by the Soviet satellites via computers. Petrov wasn't convinced though. He believed that if the US attacked, they would have attacked all-out, not just sending one missile and giving a chance for them (the Soviets) to attack back. Petrov figured something didn't make sense, as strategically, just one missile from the US would be a strategic disaster. He took some time to think and decided not to give the order a nuclear attack against America, since in his opinion, one missile didn't make sense strategically and it could easily have been a computer error. But then, seconds later, the situation turned extremely serious. A second missile was spotted by the satellite. The pressure by the officers in the bunker to commence responsive actions against America started growing. A third missile was spotted, followed by a fourth. A couple of seconds later, a fifth one was spotted... everyone in the bunker was agitated as the USSR was under missile attack. He had two options. Go with his instinct and dismiss the missiles as computer errors, breaking military protocol in the process or take responsive action and commence full-blown nuclear actions against America, potentially killing millions. He decided it was a computer error, knowing deep down that if he was wrong, missiles would be raining down in Moscow in minutes. Seconds turned to minutes, and as time passed it was clear Petrov was right, it was a computer error after all. Stanislav Petrov had prevented a worldwide nuclear war, a doomsday scenario that would have annihilated entire cities. He was a hero. Those around him congratulated him for his superb judgment. Upon further investigation it resulted that the error came from a very rare sunlight alignment, which the computer read as missile. Of course, top brass in the Kremlin didn't find it so heroic, as he broke military protocol and if he would have been wrong, risked millions of Russian lives. He was sent into early retirement, with a measly $200 a month pension, suffering a nervous breakdown in the process. Due to military secrecy, nobody knew Petrov's heroic judgment until 1998, when a book written by a Russian officer present at the bunker revealed that World War 3 was closer than people thought, and a nuclear holocaust was avoided by a close shave. Petrov reminisces what could have been if he didn't get that extra shift that night Even though the Russian have little sympathy to the man who saved millions of American lives, the United Nations and a number of US agencies honoured the man who could have started a nuclear war, but didn't. In 2008, a documentary film entitled 'The Man who saved the World' is set to be released, perhaps giving Petrov some financial help, thanking him for the incredible part he had in keeping the US and the USSR out of a full-blown war. Without knowing on the cold Moscow night back in 1983, a badly paid 44 year old military officer saved the world, and made himself one of the most influential persons of the century in the process, saving more lives than anyone ever did. Most of today's people don't know it, but today's world as we know it, is like it is because of Stanislav Petrov.

Happy Feet

An absolute treat for the eyes and a sumptuous banquet for the ears. Happy feet is one of those rare animation movies which strikes the right balance between humour and a story with a message.

The movie is for all ages and from the first scene i knew it was something special. Each character is well defined and stays with you after you have left the movie hall.The choice of songs is amazing and only Lion King and The Road to El Dorado have comparable soundtracks.The graphics/animation is the best i have seen yet. The chase scenes are realistic and dramatic with grand camera angles and locations.

But what's most important is the message the movie tries to deliver.No its not about stopping global warming.Its the refusal to conform yourself to the views and opinions of society around you, a message that finds voice in the classic Dead Poets Society.Dead Poets has a bitter sweet end with the death of a student but opening up of the rest.While this option would not have been available to makers of an animation movie.Mumble the main protagonist is a penguin reject who's inability to sing in a colony of singing penguins makes him an outcast. But his ability to dance and his use of this skill is the movie itself.

A fresh movie which will make you laugh,cry,ponder and Dance!

Wikipedia Versus Traditional Encyclopedias.

The debate whether Traditional Encyclopedias like Britannica and the recent Encarta are more professional than the "Giant Killer" Wikipedia has been going on for sometime. Wikipedia occupies a place in the minds of the public very similar to Google. That of a revolutionary product which is going to change mankind's views of the world. Here's Wiki's take on itself . I've been following the Wikipedia growth for the past year including various news articles that appear all over the place and I have a few observations.

While it’s extremely impressive to say that Wikipedia is by the people and not by a couple of experts, that's not the point. What experts of a particular field have been replaced by are arm chair experts whose level of knowledge is from low grade sources like newspapers at worst and from Credible Encyclopedias at best. Thus while Wikipedia is a great source of information, the kind of credibility that is needed to really understand a subject is best left in the hands of experts.

So I'll continue to use Wikipedia because I can't afford any of the other encyclopedias but I've learnt that the majority of the content is "Cut, Copy and Paste" from various sources or in other words, experts. But the biggest edge Wikipedia has is on subjects like the following on Indian Street Cricket! And say a good movie like The Shawshank Redemption.

There are talks of Wiki starting a search engine to oppose the Goggle dominance. Talk about the Clash of Titans!