Sriram blogs. A lot.

What does it mean to be human?

2013-05-19T18:10:00.001-07:00

The introductory class that I am teaching this term, made me wonder and question, yet again, what exactly higher education is about.

I have noticed over the past couple of years that students get a lot more focused when we discuss the economic rationale behind why anything that can be outsourced will be outsourced, and why activities that can be automated will be automated. It is understandable--students immediately see the link between the concepts and their own lives and futures.

From the back row, a student’s hand went up. "If robots do our work, then what happens to the idea that we find our purpose in life through work? What about human interactions?" Her voice seemed laden with emotions.

When it comes to such questions, students by this time of the term know what my answer will be. With a smile, I tell them that those questions are beyond the scope of the course, and that I hope they would take courses in the humanities and the social sciences to understand such important issues.

Technological advancements, which are difficult to keep up with anymore, will raise challenging questions on what it means to be human. Even now, most public policy questions that we are grappling with are all variations of that very question. The examples are endless and include abortion, healthcare, social security, unemployment benefits, and war. Technological advancements, whether they are robots taking our jobs or drones killing somebody somewhere, will only further muddy the issues.

Our responses to each and every one of these issues depend on our own constructs of what it means to be human, and what it means to belong to a society and to a country. Above all, what it means to be one of the more than seven billion humans on this wonderful planet.

One would imagine that education, especially at a level beyond high school, would prepare students for such inquiries. Unfortunately, that is not the case, for at least two important reasons.

The first is the simplistic formulation that higher education is about economic betterment. Hence, all the rah-rah for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) for instance. This is flawed for a number of reasons, especially when we think about the fact STEM jobs are subject to those same outsourcing and automation dynamics, perhaps even more acutely than the non-STEM jobs are. Further, unless one is highly innately talented, a mere undergraduate degree in STEM merely prepares a student to function at a technician level anymore, given that the complexity in science and technology requires a lot more than a four-year diploma.

The second reason that students do not get to systematically think about these questions is because colleges and universities have long abandoned those in their curricular offerings. On their part, students typically treat the humanities and social science requirements of a liberal education to be nothing more than items on a checklist to be completed on their way to getting the diploma. In order to attract the uninterested students, academia has gone after providing "attractive" courses, of which the favorite I have come across is about Lady Gaga. It will require quite some effort on a student's part to use that course as a vehicle to understand what it means to be human!

The result is that I doubt whether students will really have enough structured opportunities to think through the kind of profound questions that the student raised. If this is how we "educate" students and prepare them for the rest of their lives that begin with Commencement, then what have we really accomplished?

What else do you do after a 100-day hunger strike?

2013-05-19T12:13:00.001-07:00

When we were kids, my brother and I once were upset with something--the details I have forgotten now, and I am sure it was something absolutely trivial--and we decided that we would go on a hunger strike. I couldn't have been even at a double-digit age, and my brother is two years younger, and there we were refusing to eat my mother's tasty cooking.

What shocked me was this: my mother didn't get angry but was hurt. It was almost like we had punched her awfully bad. Yes, I know that kids do stupid things, but that image of my mother pleading with us on why we were torturing her that way was unbearable. More than the hunger itself, we brothers simply could not bear to inflict that kind of a pain on mother and we ate in silence. One of these days I ought to apologize to my mother for this. But then that is one in a long list of apologies that are way past due!

When we care about the other human, it is impossible to watch a fellow human starve himself/herself as a protest. I suppose Gandhi lucked out with his fasting to protest the British--the British were human enough to respond. Imagine if Gandhi had protested against Hitler! With that White Man's Burden, the British had no choice but to often yield to Gandhi's demands. And when Gandhi fasted in order to end religious violence, even the killer mobs had no option but to put an end to their fanatical killings. All because even the murderous mobs were not psychopaths--else, they would have gladly sent Gandhi off on an even earlier exit from this planet.

Hunger strikes are powerful. They test the human in each and every one of us.

Which is why I am so shocked at the lack of media coverage on the hunger strike in Guantanamo that is now more than a hundred days old. More than a hundred prisoners refusing food for more than a hundred days and yet this is being sidelined in favor of an incredible nonstop coverage of the hyped up Tea Party-IRS issue?

Out of 166 inmates, 102 are on hunger strike at Guantanamo, with 30 being fed through tubes. One inmate continued to be hospitalised but prison officials said his life was not in danger.
Inmates are restrained and a feeding tube is pushed through their nose and into their stomach - a practise the UN compares to torture.

Perhaps it is a sign of me getting old when I worry that we are rapidly losing any perspective on what it means to be human. But, I don't think it is merely my old age at play. There is something seriously wrong here.

The frozen status of the detainees has fueled the hunger strikes, which grew from about a half-dozen inmates at first to more than 100 now.
"This is kind of the only option they have left, to say, 'Hey, we're still here. We are still your problem. Are you just gonna let us rot in here until the end of time?' " said Cori Crider, a lawyer who represents several detainees.
About 30 of them refuse to take even liquid nutritional drinks and have to be fed through tubes shoved down their noses.
The American Medical Association has criticized the practice, calling it a violation of the profession's core ethics. "Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions," AMA President Jeremy Lazarus wrote in an April letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
The Pentagon says the feeding program is lawful and humane. But Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the detention facility, acknowledges that the options for the administrators are dwindling.

While the UN might consider this torture, the 100-days is nothing compared to the hunger strike on the other side of the planet--in India. Irom Sharmila began her fast twelve years ago as a protest against the use of the Indian military against its own people.

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (Afspa), against which Ms Chanu is protesting, gives sweeping powers to the armed forces when they fight separatist insurgents or leftist radicals - powers which critics say are often misused.

She has been force-fed as well, and now Sharmila is being accused of trying to commit suicide:

Metropolitan Magistrate Akash Jain told her: “Madam, there is an accusation against you that you tried to commit suicide.” To this, Ms. Sharmila responded with an emphatic “No.”
“On April 20, 2012, an order was passed against you charging you under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code [attempting to commit suicide]. Do you plead guilty to the charge,” Mr. Jain asked.
Ms. Sharmila replied: “I don’t want to commit suicide. Mine is only a non-violent struggle to live as a human being.”
Mr. Jain said: “But the law of the land does not permit you to take your life.”
“I love life. I love life. I don’t want to take my life. What I want is justice and peace,” Ms. Sharmila replied. “I am protesting against AFSPA. If AFSPA is repealed I will take food again.”
The Magistrate told the activist that while he respected her sentiments, hers was a political stance, while the courts were concerned with the legal procedure.

So, if a Sharmila can be set aside by a government for twelve years and be force-fed, then the Guantanamo prisoners can pretty much expect to be there forever? Until their eventual death?

"Irom Sharmila Chanu is force-fed through a pipe in her nose"
Source

Don't wish me sweet dreams, please!

2013-05-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

Paging Dr. Freud.

It is related to an important organ of mine for which he might have some answers.

No, not that organ. The brain.

I want Dr. Freud to analyze why I had an awesome dream about a carrot halva.

It was a wonderful dream. Some fuzzy face brought me a bowl of the reddish carrot halva. The halva made from the red carrots that are available during the winter months in northern India.

In the dream, the sweet was at just the right temperature. I took a spoonful to my mouth and it was just the perfect texture and the right amount of sugar. It was heavenly.

After I woke up, it was such a letdown to walk into the kitchen and realize again that it was all a dream.

I made myself a dull and boring toast with peanut butter while the coffee brewed.

And soon after breakfast and a few chores, I set about making my dream come true.

I grated carrots, as Pandora offered me beautiful music. I couldn't care about my tennis elbow as I repeated that same motion.

Cooking is magic. When everything is done, it is that awesome feeling of voilà! Cooking is instant gratification, unlike hobbies like gardening or sculpting where it is a long time between the idea within to become real. In the kitchen, the magic happens within a matter of minutes and hours.

I customized the recipe, true to my usual approach. It is almost like somewhere back in my young age somebody whispered into my ears, "leave no recipe untweaked!" Perhaps Dr. Freud can sort out why I am so unwilling to faithfully carry out recipes. Why that rebellious attitude even in such matters?

I couldn't wait for the finished product to cool down to the appropriate temperature. Anxiety meanwhile built up. What if the entire thing turns out to be a disaster? Not only will that be a waste of time and the ingredients, but the fact also remains that I am in an alien land where I can't casually walk to the nearest sweet shop and pick up carrot halva.

I took a teaspoonful to my tongue that was practically drooling all over.

It was awesome!

So, I then moved on to the next step.

A big scoop of vanilla ice cream in a bowl was the bed for a scoop of the halva. On top of the halva, a small scoop of the same ice cream.

No reading anything. No radio or music in the background. It was just me and this bowl.

If only making dreams come true were as easy as this carrot halva experience!

A toast to Pakistan: here is to hoping that democracy won't be toast!

2013-05-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

As unfair as it might seem, one-term US presidents simply cannot ever return as presidential candidates to give the presidency another shot. Thus, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush didn't need anyone telling them that their political days ended with their respective defeats. Further, the constitution compels the re-elected President to pack up and leave the White House after eight years. The presidency is the ultimate act in American politics.

This is not the case in most other countries, especially in the parliamentary systems where defeated leaders can come back again and again.

In the parliamentary system that Pakistan inherited from its erstwhile colonizer, Britain, Nawaz Sharif was elected prime minister for the third time. His first time was in 1990, and was given another opportunity in 1997. On both those occasions, Sharif did not complete the full five year term in office. In 1993, the military's opposition forced him to step down, and fresh elections were held soon after. He succeeded again in the elections in 1997, but his time in the prime minister's office was shorted yet again when Pervez Musharraf, whom he had handpicked as the army chief, ousted him in a coup in 1999.

Sharif then spent years in exile in Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom. We in the US might think that his political story ended there, given our unique idea of there is no second act in politics. But, Sharif's recent election as prime minister for the third time reminds us that Yogi Berra was correct, after all, when he said "it ain't over till it's over."

Now, Sharif is in charge of the government. Ironically, his old tormentor, Musharraf is under house arrest after returning to Pakistan from his own exile in the UK. Our television daytime soap opera stories seem to have less convoluted scenarios compared to the dizzying merry-go-around in Pakistan.

Amidst all these is the historic first ever in Pakistan--a civilian elected government over a full term handing over the power to another elected civilian government.

Nearly 68 years after its creation as a country, Pakistan has its first democratic transition in government. It is a tragedy, no doubt, that it has taken this long, but what a welcome change when all other governments were interrupted by the country's powerful military. Since independence in 1947, Pakistanis have been ruled by the military for almost as many years as they have been governed by people they had elected to power.

Whether or not Sharif succeeds as the prime minister, we ought to recognize this remarkable moment in Pakistan's politics, which is also something that President Obama did in his congratulatory phone call to Sharif. According to the White House, "the President also thanked Mr. Sharif for his role in the historic transfer of power between civilian governments, a significant milestone in Pakistan’s democracy."

As with all elected governments, this is the honeymoon period when even opponents will remain quiet. But, not everything is calm and peaceful there. Violence continues on as it has over the recent years. On the first Friday after the elections, bombs exploded in two Sunni mosques, killing at least fifteen and injuring more than fifty. It is a gruesome reminder that Sharif and his government have a huge task of bringing about peace within the country, reducing tensions with the sibling across the border--India--and pulling the country out of its economic doldrum.

Perhaps Sharif will prove that third time is the charm. Let us hope that this third attempt will help strengthen democracy in Pakistan, and usher in peace and prosperity to the hundreds of millions of Pakistanis who have been patiently waiting for better days.

Aha! This is why pedagogy is paid so little. It is slave labor!

2013-05-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

One student in an online class remarked something complimentary (I hope so, at least) about me bringing in readings and other materials from so many different places that are not necessarily academic in nature. But then, that is what I have signed up for by opting for the teaching profession. Teaching is not merely repeating the same thing over and over to different batches of students, but to explore along with students the subjects that fascinate us. Every exploration is a unique experience guided by results of the previous experiences and new ways of thinking that I would have picked up.

If I didn't add to my repertoire, then, hey, shoot me dead. Fire me from my job. Banish me to Outer Mongolia. Anything but teaching because I will be unfit then. Hopefully, that day is far, far away.

I know for certain that this essay (sub. reqd.) that I read in the New Yorker will affect my teaching in many, many ways. Not that I will assign this to any of my classes--it will not fit into the currculum by any means. But, essays like this make me think a lot about what it means to teach and, therefore, students will, of course, get to experience that.

There are so many gems in that piece, of which I want to write only about a few.

For starters, this was a shock to me:

The word "pedagogy"comes from the Greek term for the slave who escorted a child to school.

Whaaaaat?

This being the New Yorker, with one of the best fact-checking process among all the publications, that explanation for the origin of the word has to be true. But, come on, didn't that make you also stop and re-read it?

The essay is about a hospital in New York--Elmhurst Hospital Center. But, it is more than that. It is about Dr. Joseph Lieber, who has worked there almost every single day for the past twenty-five years, "working from 4 A.M. until late at night."

Lieber doesn't simply work. People who have known him refer to him as a genius diagnostician and clinical educator--it is a teaching hospital. The quotes from different people about Lieber make it clear, without any iota of doubt, that he knows what he does really, really, well, and is very, very good at teaching that to medical students. But, here is the chilling truth: despite decades of such phenomenal work, he is only an associate professor without much of a compensation:

Lieber is an associate professor at Mount Sinai, and is paid less than the majority of doctors in New York. ... "You can't advance professionally just by being an amazing clinician and teacher." ... "Lieber's an absolutely incredible physician in a way that's now completely obsolete in the field of medicine" Krieger continued. "And let me be clear what I mean by 'obsolete': that's a flaw in how medicine is evaluated and rewarded, not a flaw in what he does. He's the best diagnostician and teacher I've known."

If you read the entire piece, then by the time you reach what I have excerpted, you would yell out, as I did, "what the fuck!"

It is one awful, awful, aspect of higher education--whether in medicine or in philosophy, it doesn't matter--that only research and grant money are rewarded, not teaching. Plenty has been written about it, but it is difficult to change direction, it seems like.

The author did ask Lieber about this:

[He] shrugged. "Oh, people are always giving teachers a hard time," he said. ... "It's true that it's research that gets the kudos," he said. "You have to love what you do."

Now, I feel so petty when complaining about how I was denied promotion to full professor level, and that I am condemned to be only an associate until I retire or die. Here is a guy who is universally acclaimed for his knowledge and teaching and he shrugs off the fact that he doesn't get paid like others or that he hasn't been recognized with awards.

Teaching is awfully difficult. It really is. The essay quotes another Mount Sinai specialist:

"Sometimes it feels like Sartre's 'No Exit': you find yourself saying the same things over and over again; you have to remind yourself that it's a new group of students, that they're not just the same people renewing their ignorance to torture you."

A good reminder, yes. Even if pedagogy meant in the original "slave who escorted a child to school." Am glad to be such a slave, and I look forward to many more years of escorting students, even if only as an associate professor.

All animals are created equal. Some are more equal than others!

2013-05-15T23:18:00.001-07:00

A few months ago, one day I saw a couple of ants in the kitchen. I went on a red alert after killing them--I was sure that the two meant that more were on their way.

Sure enough, they came. In increasing numbers. After a few more days of spot and kill, when I saw a long line of them marching, I called up the exterminator. I wrote him a check, and he sprayed chemicals inside the home, and on the periphery outside.

The ants are gone. So long, suckers!

A few years ago, when I returned home after being gone for a week or so, I found that wasps had made themselves a home right outside my front door. Wasp spray and then hosing it down. Wasps gone.

I kill spiders all the time.

The occasional fly either has to find a way back out, or die.

When I kill these bugs, I apologize to them. A sorry, within my mind. I feel bad I have to kill them. But, I kill them because they come into my home. I don't care if they are away from my property.

If it is ok to kill ants and spiders and wasps and snails--oh, I feel so awful when I hear their shells crack--then why do I feel awful when I see a dead goose? Or a dead deer? More so when I hadn't killed them at all?

On my way to work, I had barely gotten on to the ramp, when I saw a dead goose by the side. A collision with a vehicle. This being Eugene, I am pretty confident that the vehicle hit the goose despite the best attempts of the driver to avoid the encounter. The ant-killer me felt sad for the dead goose. Apparently I value one kind of an animal life more than another.

A few miles into the drive, I swerved just a tad in order to avoid a dead skunk in the lane. As I passed it, through the closed windows wafted in the Pepe LePew stink that stayed in the car for at least a minute. I realized that I have never felt my heart bleed over a dead skunk, unlike how much it weeps on the sight of a dead deer. A skunk's life is not worth the same as a deer's?

About a month ago, I noted how the lives of some humans in some parts of the world seem to be worth a lot more than others. There is one awful hierarchy of lives that matter: some select humans on top, then other humans, then some animals, and critters like ants all the way at the bottom.

Should I, therefore, be happy that I am not an ant? Imagine being an ant and Nancy Sinatra comes towards you singing "these boots are made for walking"--a terror movie it will be that any second those boots will come down and you are dead.

I suppose there are lots of metaphorical boots above us all the time. One of those boots will come down at some point and, if we are lucky enough to be important, we will at least get to become historical footnotes. I guess the overwhelming majority of humans perish without a trace--no different from how the ants and the spiders get killed.

It will be too late for me to realize after my death that I am an ant. I am a spider. I am a wasp. I am a skunk.

I am no deer. I wish I were one.

More on the Bangladesh factory catastrophe ... clothes cheaper than food!

2013-05-13T21:35:00.001-07:00

In an earlier post, I noted the logic that if we as consumers want to pay nothing more than $14 a shirt, then it can happen only with the kind of conditions that led to the catastrophe in Bangladesh. The New Yorker's James Surowiecki's point is the same:

The problem isn’t so much evil factory owners as a system that’s great at getting Western consumers what they want but leaves developing-world workers toiling in misery.

How much have American consumers benefited from textile manufacturing in countries that are desperate for economic growth and development that will bring in jobs?

U.S. consumers have become accustomed to spending relatively little on clothing compared with other items—and getting a lot for their money. Americans last year devoted just 3% of their annual spending to clothing and footwear, compared with around 7% in 1970 and about 13% in 1945, according to Commerce Department data.

The decreasing proportion of the annual spending doesn't mean we buy less clothes. It is the other way around: we buy a lot more clothes than ever before but at remarkably low prices:

"Apparel prices are lower in absolute terms now than they were in the 1990s," says Dean Maki, an economist at Barclays

Compare this fashion expense with food:

Since 1990, clothing prices in the U.S. have risen just 10% compared with an 82% jump in food prices during the same period, according to Jessica Tenvose, an economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles the Consumer Price Index. If adjusted for inflation, clothing prices would show a decline.

Our fickle sense of fashion, and an appetite for attire, means that the market works in overdrive to make that happen. That led to flexible manufacturing processes, writes Surowiecki:

Flexible supply chains are great for multinationals and consumers. But they erode already thin profit margins in developing-world factories and foster a pell-mell work environment in which getting the order out the door is the only thing that matters. Locke says, “Often, the only way factories can make the variety and quantity of goods that brands want at the price points they’re willing to pay is to squeeze the workers.” Suppliers in the garment industry rarely have contracts that last more than two seasons. “If you don’t deliver on time,” Locke says, “you don’t get the next order.” The problem is made worse by the fact that many of these factories are simply poorly run, with managers who generally have little training. This means that profits are smaller and there’s less money to pay workers or to invest in better conditions. And since in many developing countries, including Bangladesh, labor unions are frowned upon, there’s no one to speak up for workers in these factories. So safety becomes an afterthought at best.

Now, it is not that I want us American consumers to apologize and feel sorry for such trends. Instead, as I noted in that post, if only we are willing to pay a few more cents per shirt, which can then go a long way to both pay higher wages and to enforce occupational safety.

In my post, I agreed with the following quote:

Real reform will mean paying a lot more than $14 for a shirt.

US and European retailers are working on responses to this crisis in their own ways, and I am sure soon they will work out a mutually agreeable set of conditions. Meanwhile, the Bangaldesh government is also responding:

April's collapse of the eight-story Rana Plaza, one of the world's worst industrial accidents, has put pressure on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government to address concerns about working conditions in Bangladesh. Ms. Hasina's administration said on Sunday that it planned to soon raise the minimum wage in the sector from $38 per month, about a quarter of China's wage. It closed 18 garment factories for safety violations last week and is planning broad inspections of other facilities.

And that is exactly what Surowiecki also had to say:

Even so, while there is much that companies can do themselves, the real lesson of the past two decades is that if labor standards are actually to improve government has to play a role. Private power alone won’t cut it: as long as consumers and companies insist on the lowest price and endless variety, there’ll always be factories that are willing to cut corners to get the business.

We have a long way to go. But, in our haste to do something good, I hope we will not drive out the manufacturers from Bangladesh; that will be terribly counter-productive because as horrible as the situation is, it will be worse if these jobs didn't exist.

Saira Banu, a seamstress from a factory in Rana Plaza who suffered broken ribs in the collapse, says she would like to quit. But Ms. Banu, who is in her 20s, says she doesn't want to return to a previous job as a housemaid, an informal position that isn't covered by a minimum wage and pays about $20 per month. "I'd like to find alternative work," she said. "But I don't know what I can do."

As my dissertation adviser once remarked in class, only the rich can afford to be unemployed.

Caption at the source:
Rozina Akter, a seamstress injured in the factory collapse, said she will go back to work as soon as she can, adding, 'Not all buildings will collapse.

Students ignore their debts as long as their athletic teams win?

2013-05-12T19:40:00.002-07:00

This blog post on the tax we are effectively imposing on the younger generation attracted quite a few visits, according the site traffic data. I commented there, rather sarcastically, that:

The youth are paying big time for all our irresponsible decisions. But, youth being youth, their focus might not be in the metaphorical screw but in the literal one, and it will be a while before they will realize how much we have messed them up!

I should have noted there that jingoistic athletic worship distracts students as much as, or even more than, sex does. How else could one explain students not only failing to protest against data--like the in map below, which is about the highest paid public employees in each state--but that they actually support increasing expenditure on athletics even though that only adds to their financial obligations come graduation?

As noted in the source for that map, such an allocation of money means:

This is money that is overwhelmingly going to field football, baseball, lacrosse, and other sports teams. It's not going to create new sections of Biology 101 or English 251 or underwrite the discovery of the next Streptomycin or publish the next Economics and the Public Interest or anything that remotely comes close to education or research.

I simply cannot understand how the public and elected officials alike can continue to engage in such a moronic and wasteful use of scarce resources that is not doing anything productive to make future generations richer and wiser!

In fact, it is the other way around: there is an athletic arms race.

The trend begins with the broadest comparison possible in Division I – the more-elite FBS programs vs. the smaller, less-wealthy FCS ones. While the cost of instruction rose 53.3 and 48.2 percent at FBS and FCS institutions, respectively, and tuition rose 54.6 and 47.0 percent, instructional salaries increased only 15.8 and 14.14 percent. Total athletic coach salaries, meanwhile, rose 67.1 and 59.4 percent, and football coaches’ salaries rose even faster: 80.8 and 61.9 percent.
Narrow that down to the most elite of the elite, and the difference becomes even more stark. In the Bowl Championship Series conferences, whose champions automatically qualify for a slot in one of the five BCS bowl games, instructional salaries rose 15.8 percent – which, as it happens, is 1.7 percent higher than the increase at FCS programs. But total athletic coach salaries rose 78.4 percent, and football coach salaries rose 96.6 percent.

These are the few occasions when I allow myself to say this: Fuck!!!

“Presidents should really start asking the question, what is the purpose for athletics on my campus"

Oh yeah? Good luck with that!

Meanwhile, students continue to pay for tuition and fees and don't even bother showing up for classes and don't care to turn in assignments. What the heck is going on?

It is all beginning to show up in the real world:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a new study, found that 30-year-olds with student loans were now less likely to have debts like home mortgages than 30-year-olds without student loans — even though most of those with student loans are better educated and can expect to earn more money over their lifetimes. The same pattern holds true for 25-year-olds and car loans.

“It is a new thing, a big social experiment that we’ve accidentally decided to engage in,” said Kevin Carey, the director of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation, a research group based in Washington. “Let’s send a whole class of people out into their professional lives with a negative net worth. Not starting at zero, but starting at a minus that is often measured in the tens of thousands of dollars. Those minus signs have psychological impact, I suspect. They might have a dollars-and-cents impact in what you can afford, too.”

The weak economy and tight credit standards remain the main culprits preventing young people just establishing themselves from making major purchases. But millions now face putting a substantial share of their take-home pay toward past debts rather than present needs. Student loan debt leaves them with less money for things like clothes and restaurant meals. And it is even more likely to suppress purchases of more expensive items that need to be bought with credit. A poor job market is compounding the problem

Who cares, right, as long as the athletic monster is well fed? Let me use that word once more: Fuck!!!

On Mothers ... wisdom from the old country

2013-05-12T07:09:00.001-07:00

A continuation of sorts of the posts over the years.

Growing up in India, there was no concept of a special day for mothers. Or fathers.

In my initial years in the US, the concept of wishing mother or father seemed strange. Very odd. The idea of wishing on a designated day is the strange part that is, not the idea of recognizing the mother's importance in life.

I would imagine that mothers were way up high in pretty much every culture's list of important people, and the old country emphasized it in so many different ways. A long, long time ago, we learnt a verse in the Sanskrit class in high school:

राजपत्नी गुरोः पत्नी मित्रपत्नी तथैव च
पत्नीमाता स्वमाता च पञ्चैता मातरः स्मृताः
- चाणक्य नीति

Transliteration:
raajapatnI guroH patnI mitrapatnI tathaiva cha
patnImaataa svamaataa cha pa~nchaitaa maataraH smRutaaH
- chaaNakya nIti

Meaning of the subhAShita:
The king's wife, the teacher's wife, friend's wife, wife's mother and his own birth mother - these 5 should be deemed as mother figures

The source from where I copied and pasted it has a commentary on the deeper meanings of this verse.

I have had an incredibly lucky life with wonderful motherly women. As I noted in this post, my mother, grandmothers, and aunts, made sure that my life was sweet--literally as well. Older friends here in the US sometimes treat me as their son. Life can't be that bad then.

Incidentally, another verse advises to keep mothers, fathers, and teachers also happy. I hope students in my classes are reading this post ;) It is from Manusmriti--the Laws of Manu--which is about 2,000 to 2,500 years old. Manu wrote:

तयोर्नित्यं प्रियं कुर्यात् आचार्यस्य च सर्वदा ।
तेष्वेव त्रिषु तुष्टेषु तपः सर्वं समाप्यते ॥

- मनुस्मृति

One must do all he can to keep his parents and teacher happy.

If they are satisfied it is equivalent to any (all) penance.

- Manu Smriti

It has been thirty-plus years since my last Sanskrit class. It has at least served one purpose--I continue to remember and value the verse on the five mothers.

We should rethink bump in salary for master's degrees

2013-05-11T20:46:00.001-07:00

Am re-posting here an op-ed of mine that was published in the Statesman Journal back in October 2011. It is a follow-up to the comment that Mike Thissel posted in response to this post.
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One can easily imagine that many school districts in Oregon will be in situations similar to the Salem-Keizer School District, which is about $20 million short in its budget.

We can expect education budgets to further tighten up because economic conditions might not dramatically improve soon—neither in Oregon nor in the country. The anemic recovery from the Great Recession means that serious budget issues will continue to dog school districts for a couple of more years, at least.

If ever a case can be made that a crisis is also an opportunity to reexamine how we have always done business, then, in this context, I hope that school districts and state officials will look into the issue of the master’s degree salary bump.

Oregon, like most states, pays higher salaries to teachers with master’s degrees compared to those who do not. However, when it comes to student learning and outcomes, there is nothing conclusive about differences between teachers with master’s degrees and otherwise. Yet, compensation packages for teachers typically are higher for those with the master’s degree.

A national study completed in 2007 estimated that about 2.1 percent of expenditures were caused by the master’s degree bump. The same study estimated that the master’s bump cost Oregon almost $110 million. When officials are searching for pennies in the budgets, and parents are ready to hold bake sales, do we want to overlook this expensive line item?

Advanced credentials alone do not make a successful teacher who can improve student learning. One only needs to check with students in my classes in order to find out that even a doctorate doesn’t make a good teacher out of me!

To make things worse, by paying more for master’s degrees, we have also instituted an incentive system for the generation of graduate degrees, which are also partly paid for by taxpayers at public universities, including where I teach. Thus, according to the same study, over a decade, the highest growth rate was in graduates in master’s degrees in education.

That means we taxpayers end up paying twice: first in partly subsidizing the production of these master’s graduates, and then paying higher salaries because teachers have those very degrees. We do all these even though a master’s degree is neither required nor sufficient to improve student learning.

I should underscore here that this is not any partisan position. President Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, stated a few months ago that “state and local governments should rethink their policies of giving pay raises to teachers who have master’s degrees because evidence suggests that the degree alone does not improve student achievement.”

Perhaps this is the right time to ask ourselves, “does one really need a master's degree to teach at the elementary school level?”

I love the pursuit of knowledge, and recognize that degree programs offer structured routes to advanced education. But, with a stalled economic recovery and budget shortfalls, can we afford to pay more for these artificial salary bumps in schools, especially when they do not necessarily improve student learning?

What if I get outed for who I am: an intellectual empty shell?

2013-05-07T20:01:00.002-07:00

I started reading Cass Sunstein's essay in the New York Review of Books because it was about one of my all time favorites--Albert Hirschman.

In that essay, Sunstein writes:

Hirschman sought, in his early twenties and long before becoming a writer, to “prove Hamlet wrong.” In Shakespeare’s account, Hamlet is immobilized and defeated by doubt. Hirschman was a great believer in doubt—he never doubted it—and he certainly doubted his own convictions. At a conference designed to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of his first book, who else would take the opportunity to show that one of his own central arguments was wrong? Who else would publish an essay in The American Economic Review exploring the “overproduction of opinionated opinion,” questioning the value of having strong opinions, and emphasizing the importance of doubting one’s opinions and even one’s tastes?

I ditched Sunstein and went after the Hirschman essay.

Wrong call!

It was a wrong call because the more I read Hirschman, the more I started feeling smaller and smaller and smaller ....

Let me explain.

It is a profound question that Hirschman asks: "Is it a good thing to have opinions?"

I have opinions on a whole bunch of ideas and people. Sometimes I blog them. And then there are times that I send my opinions across to newspaper editors. As I noted in that post, I try keeping my opinions under wraps as much as possible.

But, throughout all these, there is always a nagging worry: what if people find out that I don't know?

So, when Hirschman put up that question on whether it is a good thing to have opinions, I started worrying.

In developing his arguments, Hirschman then quotes from Chekov, Humboldt, Dante, and more. I have never read the Inferno, barely read and watched a couple of plays by Chekov, ... I realize, yet again, that I don't know a damn thing.

I suppose the hassle is that I have no idea what the measure is to be a small-time university professor. In terms of intellectual content, I am confident that I have more to offer than a typical kindergarten or high school teacher might. But, how much more than that average and how much less than a Hirschman am I supposed to know?

It will be wonderfully easy if there were something like how at Disneyland rides there is a board with a line across stating that one has to be at least that tall to be allowed to go on the ride. Is the mere possession of PhD enough to make me taller than that line to be a university faculty? What if my PhD itself was a sham?

Do other faculty walk around wondering about this? Or, unlike me, are they confident that they know quite a bit. Do they not feel thrown around for a loop when they read a Hirschman or watch a lecture by Feynman? I wish we faculty talked about all these. But, of course, we would never!

Is this how students feel in my classes? Do they worry and wonder that I might point out that they don't know, despite all my assurances to them that I don't expect them to know; after all, had they known the subject, they wouldn't have registered for my classes anyway. In case any such student is reading this post, hey, in case you ever doubted it, now you know that I truly feel your pain.

So, what is Hirschman's answer to that question of whether it is good to have opinions?

Given the "basic need" for identity in our culture, the forming and acquiring of opinions yields considerable utility to the individual. At the same time, if carried beyond a certain point, the process had dangerous side effects--it is hazardous for the functioning and stability of the democratic order. Under present cultural values these side effects do not enter the individual calculus--they are like external diseconomies. Hence there will be an overproduction of opinionated opinion.

Here is to hoping that I have opinions and that I am not opinionated.

And, a much bigger hope that nobody would ever find out that I don't know!

Making nuclear power double-D sexy!

2013-05-06T21:50:00.000-07:00

In what seems like eons ago, when I had started teaching in California, we were discussing nuclear energy in the economic geography class. One student, whose name I have forgotten all these years later, with a track record of wisecracks, raised his hand. I should have known better than to recognize his hand, but I did anyway. He had a question, which went something like this:

"That is a nuclear power plant, right, by I-5 on the way to San Diego?" I said yes, not knowing what was coming up after that.

"Why did they build it to look like two boobs?"

The class laughed.

Soure

By no means an original joke that was. It is such a cliche. One of those typical junior-high humor that giggles on seeing sex in everything.

I was reminded of that when I checked in with The Hindu, as I do every afternoon, and the story on Kundakulam carried this photo:

source

The news item is of critical importance to this nuclear project and to India:

The Supreme Court on Monday said there is no basis to the fear that the radioactive effects of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, when commissioned, will be far reaching.

The court noted this about petitions challenging the commissioning of Kudankulam nuclear power plant:

Few of them raised the apprehension that it might repeat accidents like the one that had happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Union Carbide and Fukushima and so on. Apprehension, however, legitimate it may be, cannot override the justification of the project. Nobody on this earth can predict what would happen in future and to a larger extent we have to leave it to the destiny. But once the justification test is satisfied, the apprehension test is bound to fail.

Yep. Often people, like the petitioners who are dead set against the nuclear power plant, confuse risk with uncertainty. All we can do is estimate the probabilities as best as we can.

Frank Knight was an idiosyncratic economist who formalized a distinction between risk and uncertainty in his 1921 book, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit. As Knight saw it, an ever-changing world brings new opportunities for businesses to make profits, but also means we have imperfect knowledge of future events. Therefore, according to Knight, risk applies to situations where we do not know the outcome of a given situation, but can accurately measure the odds. Uncertainty, on the other hand, applies to situations where we cannot know all the information we need in order to set accurate odds in the first place.

“There is a fundamental distinction between the reward for taking a known risk and that for assuming a risk whose value itself is not known,” Knight wrote. A known risk is “easily converted into an effective certainty,” while “true uncertainty,” as Knight called it, is “not susceptible to measurement.”

We can always invoke uncertainty in order to oppose any project. In fact, that is very much one of the arguments that some committed environmentalists use when they base their opposition on the "precautionary principle."

The Supreme Court also had observations on energy and economic development, and the critical importance of Kudankulam:

Quoting a report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Bench said: “The report highlights that to sustain rapid global economic growth, it is necessary to double the supply of energy and tripling supply of electricity by 2050. Further, it is stated billions of poor people need energy and other life-saving and job-creating technologies.”

India, as I have often noted here, is a power-starved country. Tamil Nadu, where this nuclear power plant is located, has acute electricity shortages--so much so that there are regularly scheduled rotating outages, which is more than 12 to 14 hours every day in the rural areas. India has a huge challenge in terms of electricity generation. In such a context, to oppose the Kudankulam project simply because it has the word "nuclear" in it is awfully stupid and irresponsible.

I wonder if the opponents in India are aware that one of the original founders of the no-nuke-movement--the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore--has long since ditched his opposition and has apologized for equating nuclear power plants with nuclear bombs. Or that even the climate change guru, James Hansen, calculates that nuclear power plants have saved lives that would have been lost because of pollution from coal-fired plants that would have otherwise been built. Do the opponents really prefer that India build more coal power plants instead? Or, do they want to condemn the hundreds of millions of India's poor to their poor and neglected state?

As a former minister for India's environment bluntly stated:

“I know the environmentalists will not be very happy with my decision, but it is foolish romance to think that India can attain high growth rate and sustain the energy needs of a 1.2 billion population with the help of solar, wind, biogas and such other forms of energy. It is paradoxical that environmentalists are against nuclear energy”

Yes, "foolish romance" indeed!

Why strange European music sounds right on warm days?

2013-05-06T18:24:00.002-07:00

It feels like hotter than hell, and the high was only 82 degrees. Yesterday it was even hotter--89 degrees, and about 20 degrees higher than normal. Damn this global warming!

Eleven years in the mild conditions of Oregon have spoilt me. Completely.

When the temperature goes more than 72, maybe 75, I feel like I might as well quit doing anything and take a long siesta. My brain doesn't want to work, and my body feels uncomfortable. I hate the thought of cooking anything when I consider the additional heat from the flames.

My lunch and dinner were the same yesterday: a tomato/avocado salad. No cooking at all.

I know it sounds hysterically comical given that I was born in the southern part of India, not even ten degrees north of the equator, and spent 23 years of my life there. I used to play outside, bike all over the town, and climb up mango trees, with no care whatsoever for the blazing sun. I simply didn't know anything better, I suppose.

A decade of Oregon has made me a wuss. Not California though.

Bakersfield, where I spent a decade, was muy caliente! It was a place where a string of triple-digit temperature days in the summer was not uncommon. I hated the heat there, too, but I could somehow tolerate it to some extent. Maybe because I was younger then.

Once, in the summer, a high school student from Sweden came to spend three weeks with us. Why in the Bakersfield summer? Long story there. Anyway, we picked her up from the airport on a 110 degree afternoon. Yes, a 110. We reached home and the inside of the structure seemed as hot as the outside--the air conditioning unit had conked out. The young Swedish girl quickly gained enough color on her cheeks, but she was a good sport who didn't complain. Unlike me now!

Perhaps conditioned by the number of movies in which the female actors wear summery dresses and with French or Greek music playing in the background, my mind seems to calm down and handle the heat much better when I let a vinyl spin out music in some strange languages.

I reached home and brewed myself coffee. The formula requires me to have cookies or cake with coffee with the music playing. While the coffeemaker was making its peculiar noises, I rushed to the front room and placed a Nana Mouskouri LP on the turntable. Soon, her voice wafted through the entire home and mixed in with the sweet aroma of coffee.

The coffee was ready. With cookies--lemon filling inside--I sat down with the laptop to blog about all these. I am now cool, though it is hot outside.

I am alive. I celebrate!

Halfway through the term, the verdict is in!

2013-05-05T17:40:00.001-07:00

Yes, we have completed only five weeks of the ten-week quarter. But, I am ready to call it a success.

I don't have to wait for any longer.

It is not that I don't have to classes anymore; I do. I have tests to assign and papers to grade. But, yes, the term is a success already.

Last week, I entered the hallway and proceeded towards my office when I saw "B," waiting outside my office door. Notice that I didn't write "my student" and I merely mentioned "B." My interactions with B are like some of those that we would not normally expect.

B has never been a student in any of my classes. Her academic interests are way outside my interests. As much as I can engage in conversations on many topics, well, not in what B is into.

So, how do I know B? Initially it was because of her sister, "A." And then, I suppose I became something like an academic godfather, an uncle, on campus.

Thus it was that B would swing by for a chat. And, often, she brought with her cookies or bread. Baking was her specialty. Not baking with stuff from a box, but the original way.

Last summer, B got married. I felt privileged when she invited me to that small gathering. Weddings here in the US are so different that way from those that I had attended in India. In the old country, a gazillion people get invited to a wedding that, typically, the girl's parents pay for. Almost always, the bride and the groom might not even know a third in attendance--the couple merely provide the reason for a whole bunch of people to gather.

In the US, because very few are invited to weddings, it says a lot when I am invited to one. I feel awesome knowing that I mattered even that much in somebody's life for them to invite me mark such a special and important milestone in one's life. It seems like except for the first three years in Oregon, I have been invited to a student's wedding every single year. The best compensation for me!

As I neared my office, it was obvious that B was carrying a package--she looked pregnant. "I wanted to show you this" she beamed in her face as she pointed to her tummy "and to also give you this." B gave me a well-wrapped parcel, with ribbons.

Home-baked cookies. Shortbread cookies, with jam in the middle. Just the way I like them!

We chatted for just a bit before she rushed off. I greedily ate a couple of cookies in my office, and then had the remainder at home.

Tomorrow, is another student's wedding. "G" and his fiancée will be wed tomorrow at the courthouse. That courthouse setting for a student's wedding will be the first for me.

Now, don't you also think that this term has been a success?

I wish B, G, and all the students a wonderful life ahead.

The Bangladesh clothing factory disaster and us. Not the US, but us

2013-05-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

We consumers want to pay the lowest price possible for whatever we want to buy. The market works, and works furiously, to get us products at those low prices.

This drive for low prices has led to China's rise as the world's factory. In an earlier post, I wondered whether China's "cheap" manufacturing is worth all that. I noted there:

We consumers all over the world are not willing to pay anything towards maintaining the environment, leave alone improving its quality. Simultaneously, we seem to be addicted to inexpensive goods that come from China. Even from a simple economic understanding, we can hypothesize that somebody is paying a price that we are not.

In China's case, there is one huge price that we already paying the piper: the effect on the natural environment. Smoke and smog, and erosion, and more.

China's economic growth and development means that slowly wages have risen there, which then has spread the "cheap" manufacturing elsewhere, to poorer countries like Bangladesh. Unlike China's environmental cost that we don't pay for because it is largely out of our sight, the drive towards lower and lower prices is a lot more visible in Bangladesh. The latest was the collapse of the multi-level factory that has resulted in a body count that has already exceeded 550!

As consumers, we might be able to ignore the impacts on China's environment, but the loss of human lives in Bangladesh makes us pause, at least for a while, forcing us to re-evaluate our drive towards low prices. What is the cost breakdown of the typical t-shirt manufactured in one of those factories?

Twelve cents!

To get prices that low, workers see just 12 cents a shirt, or two per cent of the wholesale cost. That’s one of the lowest rates in the world—about half of what a worker in a Chinese factory might make

But, those twelve cents are also why these jobs exist in Bangladesh. This low wage is:

a major reason for the explosion of Bangladesh’s garment industry, worth $19 billion last year, up from $380 million in 1985. The country’s 5,400 factories employ four million people, mostly women, who cut and stitch shirts and pants that make up 80 per cent of the country’s total exports.

We forget that Bangladesh is one awfully poor country. Matt Yglesias writes while situating "Bangladesh's GDP per capita in the context of American history":

It's common to compare Bangladesh to America's own sweatshop era in the late-19th century, but Krugman shows that Bangladesh is actually much poorer than that.

Yes, Bangladesh can do a lot more than it currently does to enforce labor regulations and occupational safety protocols. But, ultimately,

Real reform will mean paying a lot more than $14 for a shirt.

We consumers have the power to influence favorable working conditions and lives for Bangladeshi workers, or workers anywhere, for that matter. But, we have to be ready to put our money where our mouth is:

Babul Akhter, president of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation, said buyers have a responsibility to check the safety and security of those making the clothes they order, but most overlook this.
Abdus Salam Murshedy, former president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, adds: "The buyers and brands look for the most competitive offer. We cannot pay appropriate wages [to workers] unless we get proper prices for the orders."

It is easy to criticize "those greedy corporations" when they are merely responding to us greedy consumers!

As I noted in another post, it is bizarre that human life in some parts of the planet is held more valuable than human life elsewhere:

I find it terrible that a human life is not the same anywhere on the planet. There seems to be a collective ennui when it comes to the loss of the lives of humans who were doing nothing but tending to their daily lives in some parts of the world. The innocent civilians who die by the hundreds and thousands in many, many countries of the world do not make it even to the back pages of the papers, leave alone the front pages.

This Bangladesh incident will slowly move away from the front pages to some obscure spots, and will eventually disappear. Soon it will be the holiday shopping season and we consumers will line up outside the locked stores for the early bird prices. We will trample fellow-humans as we rush to pick up that remarkably low-priced product from China or Bangladesh.

The customer is always right!

New Portable Sewing Machine Lets Sweatshop Employees Work On The Go

Where have all the young men gone ...?

2013-05-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

To be out and about on a pleasant evening is a pleasure all by itself. There was no way I was going to waste an unusually awesome spring evening.

I picked up the copy of the New Yorker, which I planned to read while sitting in the car and overlooking the cityscape. Water bottle, cellphone, and wallet. The garage door was opening as I realized that I hadn't had dinner yet.

I drove up to the Taco Bell and waited behind a Pontiac Trans Am with its distinctive growl. After I placed my order, the voice through the box said "2.97 at the window."

We have to wonder how healthy the food will be when I am able to buy three items off the menu for 99 cents each. The Pink Lady apple that I picked up at the grocery store the other day was about 75 cents. For one apple. And here I am getting a dinner for $2.97?

I reached Skinner Butte. It was a busy, happening place. I wasn't the only one with the bright idea to enjoy the twilight from up there. And was I happy to slide into a parking spot in between a monstrous pickup truck and a sedan. Within a few minutes after, the place was packed with no parking space at all.

I finished the food with an enormous sense of guilt. As if I were doing cocaine in a public park.

More and more people were streaming in. Perhaps they had even hiked up the butte. It seemed like the entire town was up there.

The strangest thing was this: there were very few men. And, even among the few men that we were, it didn't seem like there were more than a couple of young men.

The overwhelming majority were young women. Young women in groups of threes and fours and fives and sixes. And they were all loud. Loudly having fun. Yelling and screaming in delight.

The monstrous pickup had a sole occupant. A non-white, like me. Out of his vehicle came the sounds of country music. But, that was drowned out by the loud pop music from the sedan, in which the three young women and the only guy were sitting and singing (in their atrocious voices) and waving their arms away to the beat of music that even I knew.

I stepped out to take in the air and the festive environment, and to admire the city lights against the slowly darkening sky.

Life is wonderful, indeed. The wonders come in different colors, sounds, shapes. That day, it was the gorgeous spring evening, spent on a butte overlooking the city, with a whole bunch of pumped-up people.

Very few men, however. And that was strange.

When I was younger, back in India, very few young women were out in the public. We young men had to compete against each other to get their attention. What a contrast to that was this experience. Perhaps this particular evening was unusual. But, given that this is a college town, and with colleges increasingly dominated by females, it is quite likely that it was not all that unusual.

As I walked around, I was impressed with the society in which I live where young women could feel so free. Atop one car where three young women chatting away. Sitting on the top of a large SUV were a bunch of young women. Another group of women at the observation deck taking turns posing for photos. Against all the horror stories of women and girls being raped and beaten up when in the public space, to see young women having such fun was reassuring that the world is quite ok, really.

The breeze picked up and the flag fluttered. The land of the free it certainly was that evening at Skinner Butte.

If I were a rich man ...

2013-05-03T15:54:00.002-07:00

As a starving graduate student--ok, "starving" is an exaggeration--every once in a while I played the lottery. I typically bought a quickpick lotto ticket for a dollar--this was back in California. It was always a disappointment that I never had even two numbers that matched with the winning ones. I comforted myself with "unlucky with money, but lucky in love."

And then I won.

Five dollars!

And those five dollars is all I have won all my life in playing the lottery. I was excited that I finally won something. So elated I was, I immediately spent it all on, yep, five lottery tickets. And, yep, no more wins.

The "starving" graduate student!

As life picked up, it seemed like I had gotten to be lucky with love and with money.

But ... it then became a stereotypical country music song that I live: dog died, wife gone, and no money :)

Of course, "no money" is one heck of an exaggeration.

What I earn now will place me in the global top one percent. Yep, I am one of those awful one-percent.

But, I don't feel like I am in that kind of an economic stratosphere because I don't get to see the more than six and a half billion whose lives are nowhere even close to my level of material affluence. I can, however, and pretty much on a daily basis, see those who are even more affluent.

But, I am almost always content and happy. One student, "D," who every once in a while pokes his head into my office, comments variations of "we shouldn't pay you because you look happy all the time." "D" is not wrong at all; I am sure my contentment shows.

Is there a relationship at all between material affluence and contentment and happiness? I would think that the longest stretch of not at ease within were during the days--years actually--from the final phase of high school until I came to the US. That was one long stretch of about seven years. But, it wasn't because I was penniless and thrown into the gutters. It was simply because of angst within. The wonderful food that my mother cooked or the pleasing music or anything else were comforting, yes, but that angst triggered unhappiness was always there.

It is not without reason, I suppose, that we mouth that old wisdom that happiness comes from within. It is true, dammit. Money certainly helps, but I guess money is neither a necessary condition, nor a sufficient condition, to make one happy. Could I be happier with a tad more money? You betcha! But, do I do anything at all with a goal of increasing my material affluence? Hell no. My life isn't about making more money for myself.

My interest in economic development, which led me to graduate school, meant that I read up about this happiness aspect of economic development as well. A mere maximization of the GDP didn't appeal to me as the be all and end all of how to think about poverty in the developing countries. After all, I had seen plenty of poor in India who seemed to be having fun in life. They seemed happy from what I observed. Many with money seemed nowhere that happy from what I observed.

One of the articles I read was by Richard Easterlin. Interestingly enough, Easterlin was on the faculty at USC at that time, and two graduate students from India, who were friends of mine, were working with him on their doctoral dissertations. Anyway, the article was about the "Easterlin Paradox"--happiness across countries did not seem to relate to per capita incomes. Simply put, more money doesn't mean more happiness.

That paradox, as one can imagine, appealed to me right away. It was consistent with my own life experiences, though I hadn't had all that experience when I was barely 25! It made intuitive sense that money alone does not get happiness.

But, I would think that if one is literally starving for food because of poverty, then money could bring in immense relief and happiness. One could then theoretically argue that as we climb up those economic levels then the happiness brought in by the additional dollar is not as much as the happiness brought in by the first dollar.

Ronald Bailey writes in Reason that, well, I am wrong--more money is more happiness:

Two economists at the University of Michigan, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, reject the Easterlin Paradox. Their new article, published in the May American Economic Review—argues that more money does buy more happiness. As evidence, the two compare happiness measures between rich and poor countries and between rich and poor people within countries.

After discussing the research findings, Bailey winds down to this:

There is no income threshold when it comes to procuring more of this kind of happiness. It is certainly wonderful and valuable to enjoy the moment, but real and lasting pleasure comes from a life well-lived. More money can’t guarantee a satisfying life, but research shows that it sure does help.

My point exactly. Money is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for happiness. But, having money does help.

Bombs and missiles are ok in Syria, but gas is not ok? WTF!

2013-05-01T22:25:00.002-07:00

Last night, even as my eyes were half-closing, and with my right arm tiring quickly holding the New Yorker thanks to the tennis-elbow issue that I am dealing with, I simply had to, had to, finish reading the absolutely depressing narrative on the people in Aleppo burying their dead.

If it was depressing to read, I cannot imagine how awful it was for the reporter to be there. And even more awful for the Syrians who live in Aleppo. And way more awful for those whose friends and family are dead. What a terrible situation there!

The entire essay is bloody depressing. Within that insanity, one of the most insane was this: there is a bridge that divides the rebel area from the regime's. People use it even as there is fighting all around because, well, they have to keep going with their lives. And then this happens:

In several places, to evade government snipers, you must run. Nearly every day, the snipers kill people--but, if you reach the bridge, chances are that the soldiers on the other side will let you in.
The snipers shoot commuters in order to bait rebel fighters and would-be rescuers. Often, it is women and children who are shot.

Even Catch-22 didn't include such levels of insanity.

It is now more than two years of fighting. The UN has registered and processed more than 1.2 million refugees. As one can imagine, a lot more are internally displaced.

So, when all these are happening, why should the use of gases be some kind of a red line that Assad's government cannot cross? The 1.2 million refugees don't matter? The 75,000 dead is within our tolerance limits? The regime's use of aircraft and missiles against its own people is normal?

This artificial notion of gas used against Syrians as some kind of a barometer on whether or not we should act is just bizarre. Stupid, actually!

It is a long corridor of geopolitical instability from Kashmir all the way to the Mediterranean. We need to draw a red line around the thousands of miles of this corridor. And there isn't enough red ink for that!

All I can do in such contexts is rely on the old masters; here is Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms

"There is nothing as bad as war. ... When people realize how bad it is they cannot do anything to stop it because they go crazy. There are some people who never realize. There are people who are afraid of their officers. It is with them the war is made"

"I know it is bad but we must finish it."

"It doesn't finish. There is no finish to a war."

"Yes there is."

Passini shook his head.

"War is not won by victory. ... We think. We read. We are not peasants. We are mechanics. But even the peasants know better than to believe in a war. Everybody hates this war."

Is higher education hurting working class students, instead of helping them?

2013-04-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, a student, "K," who was in one of my classes last fall, knocked on the office door to say hi, and we ended up having a wonderful conversation for more than half-an-hour. I told her it felt like I was talking with my daughter and not with a student.

"That's a good thing, right?" she asked with a smile.

It is a good thing, indeed. Taking such an interest can also mean that I end up worrying about things I don't really have any business worrying about. Because, I can't change a damn thing, which is what the personnel officer tried telling me even at the campus interview as I was wrapping up my undergraduate degree.

I worried about her sister's college admission. A high school senior I haven't even met! Later that night, I wrote in an email to "K":

you may want to pass this along to your sister. This news item will also provide you folks with a perspective on what makes a college "selective" and why it matters.

It is a dirty, rotten, secret in higher education that is rarely ever openly discussed: it is not merely the diploma. A diploma from a college like where I work doesn't have the same weight as a diploma, in the same academic major, from a different college. The selectivity of the college and its prestige matter a lot. I would think that it is the same case anywhere in the world. On top of that, the possibility for post-college career connections at those selective institutions dwarf what a student at the university here can even hope for.

Add to all that the family background.

And then the dollars that students shell out.

The bottom-line then is a disastrous reality:

If you are a low-income prospective college student hoping a degree will help you move up in the world, you probably should not attend a moderately selective four-year research institution. The cards are stacked against you.
That’s the sobering bottom line of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality (Harvard University Press), a new book based on five years of interview research by Elizabeth A. Armstrong, an associate professor of sociology and organizational studies at the University of Michigan, and Laura T. Hamilton, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California at Merced.

But, those students do not have any idea of how much higher education is becoming yet another brick in the wall!

The co-author of Academically Adrift, Richard Arum, whose research famously showed that a striking number of students learn little to nothing of intellectual significance in college, said in an interview that the book powerfully demonstrates that that lack of learning is not just attributable to student laziness. “This current work shows how students can – from their perspective – come to understand and interpret the life of being a student, the life of being in college, as having very little to do with academic engagement,” Arum said. “The institution itself has basically built this into the structure of higher education today.”

What I don't get is this. It is one thing for a loony tune blogger like me to keep writing about all these issues with nobody listening to me. But, what about all these researchers from a lot more prestigious places and think-tanks whose findings are also pretty much ignored?

Institutions like the one where I work have a significant number, I would think more than a simple majority, of students who come from working-class backgrounds. Many are the first from their families to attend college. They, innocently, believe that if they somehow manage to get a college diploma it will be a guaranteed pathway into the prosperous upper-middle stratum. All is not on the level:

More affluent students have parents who can help them figure out how to get through college — what courses to take, and when; how to manage time, get help or mercy from professors, etc. They can also use connections to get the kids jobs regardless of academic performance.

Slightly more than a year ago, two sisters wrote about their educational experiences and decisions they made in an essay with a provocative title: "Should Working-Class People Get B.A.'s and Ph.D.'s?"

Briallen has a Ph.D. from Princeton University and is a lecturer in the English department at Yale University. Johanna is a high-school graduate working full time at a bakery for slightly above minimum wage.

It is not that Johanna was any less capable than Briallen; they were "equally bookish and academically inclined." So, why college for one and not for the other?

For both of us, decisions about education have been limited and complicated by our class status.

Sisters, equally capable, from the same family background. First the elder one:

Briallen worked in child care and food service for a while after high school, went to community college, and was accepted to a selective four-year college but was not offered enough financial aid to go. She finally graduated from a local college with the help of Pell Grants and a lot of debt. She can't imagine her life without higher education, but as a non-tenure-track academic in a tough job market, she has limited job security, and she owes more than $800 a month in student-loan payments. Her student debt makes it impossible for her to save money or start a family anytime soon, and she is entering her mid-30s.

The younger sibling processed her sister's experience, and had some of her own:

Johanna was wary of graduating with substantial debt and no family safety net, so she took a year off to work and save money and try applying to college again. Her financial-aid offers the next year were no better. She ended up taking classes at the local satellite campus of a state university while living at home and working long hours at a salon to pay her own way.
But after a couple of quarters she discovered that, because of the poor academic advising she had received, none of the introductory courses she had taken were actually required for her degree. Her AP credits from high school should have qualified her to start as a sophomore, but she was mistakenly placed in freshman-level courses.
After learning that she'd spent almost all of her hard-earned savings on classes she was not even required to take, Johanna lost her faith in the wisdom of investing in higher education. She left school and is now working full time for $13,000 a year. She's proudly debt-free and self-supporting, and in her limited free time she is pursuing reading, writing, and the free or cheap cultural and educational opportunities available to her.

Their conclusion?

Although we both continue to struggle with the stressful economic implications of our different education levels, we are proud of each other and of our very different choices. We just wish we'd been given the opportunity to make them more freely.

As I noted in this op-ed:

We push teenagers into higher education by scaring them about the earnings they could lose. Here, we commit two huge mistakes. First, we simply define higher education as nothing but a passport to a job, instead of a means of instilling in the young a joy for lifelong-learning as a path toward understanding their own potentials, of which earnings is merely one. On top of this, by constantly dangling the dollar sign in front of them, we are almost brainwashing teenagers to think that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is nothing but the pursuit of money.
Instead, the young ought to understand something entirely different — that life entails making decisions all the time, and that this will mean difficult tradeoffs, which sometimes can be expensive. Thus, we would not simply push teenagers toward college because they would otherwise be losers, but we would help them think and act every time they reached a fork in the road of life — the tradeoffs that Robert Frost so elegantly articulated as “the road not taken.”

It is to also highlight the other road that I emailed "K"--as long as her sister has seriously considered the different roads that could take her in different directions from the intersection where she currently stands. Because, blindly taking any one route can be disastrous, especially for those from working-class backgrounds.

Half a world away ...

Macho men also can hear the sound of violins ...

2013-04-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

My version of macho is all about standing up for ideas. It is never macho in the sense of muscles. Which is also why I have often commented that Hillary Clinton has a lot more cojones than many American males combined!

When people see me, and hear me talk, there is a high probability that they think I am an easy pushover. Poof you blow and Sriram falls flat, they assume. Except, that is not a correct estimate. They then find me, and annoyingly so, a hard rock to even nudge. My version of macho is different.

I suppose the level of empathy I have for the suffering can also make me look less macho. But, I have always wondered how one can not feel that pain. And, at the other end, how can one not find pleasure in the intoxicating bubbly laughter of a two year old? Such emotions do not make one any less macho.

So, why all this rambling on machismo? All because of Michael Bublé. I think I was finishing up my toast and coffee on a pleasant Sunday morning when I heard him say on NPR:

I don't know what happened to this world where - look it, there was a day when these guys from Elvis Presley to Frank Sinatra and The Rat Pack sang these incredibly romantic songs. And you know what? It was macho. You know what? There was something that was very manly about having the strength and having the courage to sing about love and romance. And that was looked at as [macho]. And I don't know what happened in our world where that was turned into being soft, because I don't think it's soft at all. I think a man can be in touch with his emotions.

I agree with Bublé. Presley or Sinatra or Dean Martin or Sammy Davis ... were not any less macho. Certainly different from the John Wayne machismo, yes. Macho is not about beating the daylights out of somebody else. Perhaps that is also why I wasn't a big fan of John Wayne's movies?

A few years ago, thanks to my wonderful neighbors who paid for the ticket, I got to watch Bublé perform live in Portland. I still remember his cover of Fever. The first finger snap signaled to the audience that it was Fever and we were pumped up right away.

Back in graduate school, when I was rapidly immersing myself into the popular music that I didn't care for when I was in India, two young men (I was also young then!) seemed to be creating their versions of this image of singing macho men with emotions: Chris Isaak and Harry Connick, Jr. Who can ever forget that awesome video of Wicked Game!!!

YouTube quickly answered my question of whether Bublé had performed with either of these guys. Here is Bublé "swaying" with Isaak, for a double-shot of macho:

So, what's so special about a man and a woman holding hands?

2013-04-28T20:53:00.003-07:00

"Make hay while the sun shines" confused me back when I was a kid. Because, in the parts of India where I grew up or vacationed, the sun always shone, and mercilessly it seemed like. Except for those few weeks of monsoon rains when everything everywhere was damp. Damp enough that sometimes mold grew and mother would attack that with bleaching powder.

Language is cultural, and to make hay when the sun shines probably came from a culture where there were quite a few days, weeks even, when the sun practically disappeared. That statement makes a lot more sense to me in my middle age here in Oregon. It is such a pleasure when the sun comes out, especially in the spring. Flowers everywhere, bees buzzing, people biking ... and me walking by the river to take advantage of the sunny spring day.

Even the birds were sunning themselves on the rocks!

I crossed the bridge to walk along the river's west bank. A young couple walking hand-in-hand were laughing and talking. There is a reason I write about them.

The young man was in jeans and a tight-fitting athletic short-sleeve shirt. I am sure if I were as fit as him, with well developed muscles, I too would wear that kind of a tight fit. But, the muscles I have are puny, and even those hurt some time that I have to go in for physical therapy!

The young woman on that guy's arm, well, to go with the image one might expect her to be in shorts or jeans and a t-shirt, and big sun glasses. That seems to be the typical outfit for young women on the bike path. But, she wasn't. This young woman was wearing a black abaya over something colorful underneath that showed in the gap between her sneakers and the abaya. And, she had a hijab also on.

A conservative outfit. Yet, holding hands in the public? In the traditional Hindu Brahmin context in which I grew up, this would be like the woman wearing the sari in the madisar style and walking about while holding her husband's hand. Chi-chi, as my grandmother would say to dismiss such possibilities.

My great-grandmother wearing the sari in a madisar style

We passed each other. Like young lovers, this couple was also lost to the world. I could have picked the guy's pocket and he wouldn't have noticed. Ah, to be young and to be in love!

As I continued walking, I remembered that once before I had spotted a young woman wearing a hijab and smoking a cigarette. A few days ago, as I was heading to work early in the morning, I saw a woman in an abaya and sneakers and walking the brisk walk of an exercise walk. I suppose there is a lot more to women in abayas and hijabs than what meets the eye.

It was one of those rare walks when I paused to take in the scenery. I walked away from the concrete path towards the river. The lack of normal levels of rain was the reason why the volume was much lower and I could walk in areas that would usually be accessible only late in the summer. The gently flowing Willamette was clear over the rocks. Clear enough for me to notice the sunlight dancing on the ripples creating mesmerizing patterns on the dark stones. Nature is beautiful, indeed.

As I looked around, to my left was a middle-aged couple a little bit away. We were separated by the wild growth and I could see them through a gap in the greens.

It was, really, a good day to be out with another person.

I, the solitary man, kept going. Why I know not..After all, there is nobody waiting for me.

But, we do what we have to do to make hay while the sun shines.

Struggle of the Uighur people is quite real

2013-04-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

If you are thinking that my blogging, yet again, about the Uighurs can mean only one thing: their situation hasn't improved and something serious happened recently, yes, that is, indeed, the unfortunate story.

In the deadliest ethnic violence in China since 2009, 21 people were killed in confrontations Tuesday between police and Uighur residents of Kashgar, the country’s westernmost city.
Among the dead were 15 police and neighborhood security officers and six people that the state media described as “mobsters.’’
Kashgar, which lies close to China's borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, has been a frequent site of violence between the dominant ethnic Han Chinese and the Uighurs, a Muslim minority.

Terrible! We can only act polite from afar:

The US has urged China to conduct a transparent investigation after clashes in the restive Xinjiang region left 21 people dead.
US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell also urged that "due process protections" be given to all Chinese citizens, including ethnic Uighurs.

Even worse is that we really don't know what is going on in Xinjiang:

Beijing's media blockade has been successful. Instead of allowing some access to Western reporters, Beijing a few years ago resumed an old strategy and restricted their ability to enter Xinjiang, and almost entirely banned them from entering the mountainous, 460,000-square-mile Tibetan Autonomous Region.

That means that there is no independent verification of the "official" version of incidents in Xinjiang:

[In Xinjiang, Hou Hanmin, a Xinjiang propaganda bureau spokeswoman] is sticking to the message. Tuesday's violence is "certainly a terrorist attack," she told reporters, comparing the incident to the Boston Marathon bombings. And until Western reporters can investigate, her version of the events will remain the last one standing.

While the US is now urging China to protect its Uighur minority, it was also the US that made it so easy for the Chinese to refer to anything in Xinjiang as terrorism. In a post four years ago, in July 2009, I quoted James Fallows, who wrote:

it is a lasting error and embarrassment that after 9/11 the U.S. won Chinese government support by agreeing that Uighur separatists -- formally, the East Turkestan Liberation Organization -- should be seen as part of the world terrorist threat. After all, they are Muslims.

Screwy! The guy who ushered in the Global War on Terror, meanwhile, gets to open his Presidential Library!

In that first post from four years ago, I wrote about the Kafkaesque Guantanamo scenario in which the 22 Uighurs found themselves in. Where are they now?

The U.S. refused to grant them asylum. Nearly a dozen now live in Albania, Bermuda, El Salvador and Switzerland. Three remain in custody at the U.S. Navy prison in Cuba.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/17/3291352/in-chinas-shadow-guantanamos-former.html#storylink=cpy

From a part of the world with a long and rich history. A part of the old stories of the Silk Road. In reviewing a book on the Sufi shrines in Xinjiang, Ian Johson writes in the NYRB :

Looking at these bright, numinous images, we begin to sense something inexpressible but more profound than any of the region’s difficult politics—a glimpse at the intangible traditions and beliefs that have given shape to Xinjiang’s Muslims over many centuries.

I suppose no god can be of help!

What does it mean to be college educated anyway?

2013-04-27T06:30:00.000-07:00

Even if I am a total dud in helping students in my classes understand and appreciate the materials, I bet there are very few who doubt my commitment to liberal education. If they paid attention to me, then they also know that even as they go through a rigorous liberal education, they have to keep thinking about their career plans as well.

In this structure, problems are in plenty. Universities offer such a diluted and distorted version of liberal education that we insiders are the ones giving liberal education that awful stink. Here is an example: at my university, a student can major in the social sciences and minor in geography, and successfully graduate with not even a tenth of the requirements coming from the sciences. This is merely one of the gazillion possibilities of students legitimately avoiding being liberally educated even as they earn their diplomas at the colleges and universities all over the country. Not the well-rounded liberal education at all.

My point has always been that such an education is a waste of time and money. We might as well merely offer professional training. We should stop referring to what we do as liberal education. Why call it liberal education and offer something else?

At the same time, we have been completely marginalizing professional education too. Instead of providing career and technical education to those students who might prefer that, we put that down as some kind of an inferior option and we force all students to go through the hoops of whatever that is we do at four-year schools anymore.

No wonder then we are finding ourselves all twisted trying to figure out the "real payoff of a college degree." To a large extent, Ronnie L. Booth, president of Tri-County Technical College, near Greenville, S.C., articulates the points that I try to get across to people:

A vocational degree is not for everyone, he readily admits, but many of his students are arriving with four-year degrees in hand, looking for something practical. In coming months, he will direct Tri-County's academic counselors to more aggressively steer students away from fields and majors that might prove a bad fit. Don't like the sight of blood or the smell of bodily fluids? Nursing might not be for you. Interested in engineering? Let's have a serious talk about your grades in algebra.
"Better to find out on the front end," he says. "I believe in truth in advertising."
More parents and students, he says, need to "understand that someone has to pay the bills." In his region, he frequently meets waiters and waitresses who have four-year degrees, and he has a friend whose daughter went to college to study dance. She is working in retail.
"That is not what Daddy had anticipated," Mr. Booth says in a Southern drawl. "I believe in a broad educational program, things that make you a good citizen, but I am not sure that it is necessary to rack up $50,000 or $100,000 in debt to get that—and then not to be able to get employment. I have told my children that one of Daddy's goals is to get you off my payroll."

In healthcare, which has been one of the fastest growing sectors, ""It looks like B.A. is now entry-level, or it's becoming that way." The jobs that didn't require a four-year degree are rapidly evaporating:

The erosion of midlevel jobs goes beyond nursing. Experts say several forces are at work. Automation has eliminated many transcription and clerical jobs. Cost pressures have led hospitals and other health-care providers to push many routine tasks onto medical assistants and other lower-paid workers.
Pharmacies, for example, increasingly employ a mix of licensed pharmacists—who now often need a doctorate—and technicians who fill prescriptions with only limited training.
The shift to electronic medical records, meanwhile, has eliminated many traditional jobs maintaining patient records but has created a wealth of new opportunities for those with coding skills.
At the same time, the increasing complexity of medicine, along with an increased focus on measuring and improving patient care, has raised the bar on educational requirements for some jobs. An Institute of Medicine committee in 2010, for example, recommended that 80% of registered nurses have bachelor's degrees by 2020, meaning nurses with associate's degrees may soon find themselves in the position LPNs face today.

The system is so rigged that the youth seem to have no choice but to get a college degree, even if it means that they will be underemployed:

In the short term, we're still obviously digging out of the jobs hole left by the recession. Unemployment for college graduates is higher than normal. Underemployment is more prevalent, though it's less severe than college critics portray, and perhaps no worse than during the Reagan days. It's the long view that's cloudier. Maybe, as the recession's impact fades, the economy will naturally go back to quickly churning out more jobs for high skill workers, and academics like Beaudry and his colleagues will be proven wrong. Or, perhaps they're right, and we'll need to wait for another great tech revolution before the market for educated workers goes back to growing the way it did 15 years ago.We can't say for sure. But we do know that young people are safer with a degree than without one.

One would think that all these mean that now is a real good time to seriously think about what it is to be educated. Here is an example: how much math should we require that students do? Or, even if we think that the math will do them good for critical thinking skills, which I believe it does, should we reconsider how we teach math? We need to look into such questions because "less than a quarter of U.S. workers report using math any more complicated than basic fractions and percentages during the course of their jobs.":

And, here is the interesting aspect of it all. Remember how we systematically treat technical training as some kind of a second-class option that the young should be discouraged from? Ahem, they need math!

Upper level blue collar, e.g. craft and repair workers like skilled construction trades and mechanics

Lower level blue collar, e.g. factory workers and truck drivers

So, quo vadis?

My life might be a "C" .. .not because of these "C" places

2013-04-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

By April 1986, I had quit my first job straight out of college at Coimbatore. I had spent all of three months on the job in Calcutta and was convinced that I did not want to waste my life in engineering.

Those were the days before the proliferation of phones in India and, therefore, my parents did not know anything about me having quit the job. And that, as it would turn out later on, I would simply loaf around doing nothing for a few months after that.

My parents lived in a small town called Choudhwar, a little outside of C ttack. Father was the consulting engineer there for an industrial construction. I showed up unannounced, with the few belongings that were packed into one suitcase and with a briefcase in another hand. I told them that I was done with my job in Calcutta and that I needed time to figure things out.

I am sure my parents were worried that I would turn out to be one heck of a loser. (There is a fair chance that they don't think that anymore. I know the reality that I am a loser! But, hey, I am in America!!!)

After a few days of puttering around there--nothing much to do in that small town--I headed to Madras. Yes, it was Madras those days, before it went through the name change to Chennai.

In those old days, newspapers and radio were pretty much all we had, with the Indian television (Doordharshan) news on a competition against itself on how much lamer its soap operas could get. I recall thinking that the C ernobyl disaster must be a serious one if the Swedes were complaining about the radioactivity detected in the sky above them.

After more loafing around, taking up a job that I quit after three weeks, and then taking up another job in which I lasted for nearly six months, I took off for the US with a conviction that I had figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I bet my parents were relieved that I was no longer a nasty reminder of a wasted life.

A couple of years after that, the Soviet Union itself was gone. As more than one commentator, like this one, has pointed out when looking at the events in the rear view mirror of life,

Chernobyl, then, represented a fundamental shift in the relationship between the Soviet citizenry and the state. Before the explosion, most Soviets were not discontented dissidents; they believed in the Soviet system, forgave its flaws, and hoped for a better future within its confines. But after Chernobyl, the system seemed potentially unredeemable—and actively dangerous. In the early days of glasnost, stories of Stalin’s mass murders decades earlier slowly bubbled to the fore, but those generally receded, so far removed were they from everyday life. After Chernobyl, though, every citizen’s safety was at stake.

On this anniversary of that Chernobyl disaster, I am reminded of a dinner from two years ago. I had invited for dinner a visiting Ukrainian environmental attorney,Olga, and her host, "M,"who is a friend. Of course, I couldn't wait to ask Olga about Chernobyl, and so after dinner I did.

"Where were you when Chernobyl exploded?" I asked her.

Olga said that they lived in Kiev, which is just about 100 kilometers from Chernobyl. But, 100 km in the Soviet era was a lot more than the mere physical distance, particularly given the state of telecommunications then. Thus, they had no news about the disaster for days, and went about their daily business. Children played outside. And, children and people marched like they did every year to celebrate May Day.

But then, Olga said, there was one notable absence--the children of senior party and government officials were not in town but had gone away to far away places like Moscow. A week later, many of them were not present at the rah-rah May Day parades and celebrations. Only later when the news of the disaster started trickling in did they understand that those with the inside information had scooted away their children to the safer environs of Moscow, far away from potential radiation fallout.

Olga's father was apparently one of the many men who volunteered to go to Chernobyl to help move women and children out of that place. And, like many of them, he now lives with a thyroid problem as a result.

Chernobyl is, thus, a symbol not only about the huge downsides associated with a careless and reckless use of nuclear energy but also a tragic reminder of the horrible totalitarian state that was in existence up until a mere two decades ago. The Fukushima event from two years ago is a stark contrast--when the entire world could watch and follow in real time how that nuclear accident was being handled.

Over the years in between Chernobyl and Fukushima, I have certainly figured out what to do with my life. It was about eleven years ago about this time in 2002 that I submitted my notice to quit the job that I had in California. Yes, there are plenty of people who would prefer that I am not one of their colleagues where I now work; but, I have no plans to quit what I am doing. Especially when I live in a place that proudly proclaims that it is a nuclear-free-zone!

On two old women from two countries ...

2013-04-25T18:04:00.000-07:00

As I often note here, I feel incredibly lucky to have been born and raised in a wonderful country with lots of stories of its own, and to then to make myself at home in another wonderful country on the other side of the planet.

In the old country, a music legend died yesterday--she was 94. In the country that I now call home, today would have been the 96th birthday of a music legend.

Shamshad Begum in India, and Ella Fitzgerald in America.

In all my growing up years in India, I never knew anything about Ella Fitzgerald. Not a clue. It seems very strange now, and the Indian past feels like a previous life sometimes for the stark contrast that is against my contemporary American life.

Google's doodle to commemorate her 96th birthday

It is not that I grew up without any music interests at all. I did, with plenty of music that was almost all Indian, with very little from the West. Thus, it wasn't until I was in graduate school at Los Angeles that I got to know about Ella Fitzgerald's magic. Ironically, it was another Indian student, Praveen, who provided me with that taste when I heard the sheer wonder of Fascinating Rhythm pouring out of the speakers. When I heard Fitzgerald team up with Louis Armstrong for Dream a little dream of me, I was way too ecstatic with that scat way of singing. I got hooked. Much later, in a mixed-tape that he gifted, the first song on Side A was that Fascinating Rhythm.

A lucky guy I am to be able to relate to, and enjoy, the music of a culture that I never knew about. And, at the same time, continue to enjoy the music of that old country. Old-time music at that. One of those legends of that old music from India died yesterday.

Shamshad Begum, one of the earliest and most versatile playback singers from the golden age of Bollywood music, died at her residence here on Tuesday night after prolonged illness. She was 94.

A contemporary of Fitzgerald's halfway around the world. I wonder if the two ever met; I suppose not.

Shamshad Begum's film songs were in a language, Hindi, in which I had no fluency even back in my India years. But, they were always wonderful melodies and hers was an unmistakably distinct voice. My all-time favorites of hers are these two duets: "Leke Pehla Pehla Pyaar" with Mohammed Rafi, and this one which is like a duel, more than a duet, with Lata Mangeshkar.

Last December, when I spent a few days with my parents, father played his collection of old Hindi film songs. He was pleasantly surprised that I was familiar with those songs, perhaps like how earlier this afternoon I was surprised with the musical taste of a student, "K," that was expressed on the t-shirt that was wearing. Anyway, we talked about Shamshad Begum too.

All good things come to an end. Eventually. That is life!