27 Jun 2020
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Even though I do not know much about video games, I’d like to make a video game analogy to make my point. Why? Because some people I wish to get through to know a lot about it. If I am not exactly right about the granularities, do cut me some slack and go with the broad flow.
Imagine you are a gamer who has been playing regularly but not making as much progress as you’d like. Then, a friend suggests a tactic/strategy to try. You do it and it works. You keep dong that, or a slight variation of it, and you keep winning (or at least doing better). Then, the same friend, or another friend, tells you another strategy and that helps too. Over a period of time, you have accumulated a bunch of strategies and tactics and you have become much better at the game.
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16 Apr 2020
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This was written on the April 12, 2020 and published here a few days later. If you are the kind of person who likes to shoot the messenger that brings unpleasant news, I’d suggest you stop reading now. I am not going to pretend that I know the answer. I will try to create a back-of-the-envelope map of the territory we currently occupy and chart the possible routes ahead. You should make your own inferences.
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04 Feb 2018
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Note 1: This started out as a letter to my daughter who goes to college this year. But once I started writing I thought that others who go through the college application process (and their parents, perhaps) might find it useful too.
Note 2: I have no specific qualifications to comment on college or children, other than that I went to college once and have had the pleasure of growing up with two kids of my own. Since I lack credentials I make my argument by drawing on the work of others who have real credibility.
Continue reading →12 Sep 2011
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I must confess that I was not entirely surprised to read that the results of ‘mass-produced agriculture’ can sometimes be less than satisfactory. Allow me to summaries some of the human and environmental effects of using using ‘modern industrial production systems’ to grow tomatoes :
Hundreds of herbicides and pesticides are sprayed on the fields. Many of these are known to have negative health impact. There are known documented cases of birth defects among the farm hands. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and then they are artificially ‘ripened’ by spraying ethylene gas. The fruit is bred for volume and not taste or nutritional value. Which has led to yields tripling while the amounts of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C has dramatically reduced. Perhaps one of the key cost-saving device being employed is modern-day slave labour. Yes, they are bought and sold. They work horrendously long hours and can not negotiate their terms of ‘employment’. If they escape they are tracked down. There are many known cases of children being used a slave labour. What I was surprised by however, is that this description is not from some small village, in some third-world country. This story is unfolding just a couple of hundred miles south of Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
Continue reading →02 May 2011
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A little bit of clean water can save lives. And change lives. This short animation video show how important water is. For those who don’t have it.
More info about the charity that created this video..
Continue reading →27 Apr 2011
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It is interesting that almost exactly to the day of the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, India has decided to approve a new nuclear power plant in Jaitapur in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. While experts have written tomes about it (and mass media has not given a jot of attention to them), here is my quick attempt to dislodge some friends who I know are sitting on-the-fence.
The safety features argument:
Continue reading →24 Apr 2011
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Continue reading →12 Apr 2011
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To be honest I seriously considered going to Jantar Mantar, perhaps even participate in the fast. But I couldn’t. I kept following the event closely but I could not participate. Not because I want more corruption, of course not.
For some strange reason the ‘topi’ sitting on the head of Anna Hazare reminded me of the real Gandhi and the story about the kid who eats too much sugar. For the benefit of those who may not be familiar, the story goes like this: A woman brings her son to Gandhi and asks him to talk to her child to stop eating too much sugar because it is not good for his health. Gandhi asks the lady to return in two weeks. When she comes back he just asks the child to stop eating sugar. Apparently he did not give this advice to the kid earlier because he himself was eating too much sugar.
Continue reading →11 Apr 2011
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What inference can you draw form the following two facts:
When Irom Sharmila sits on a hunger strike in Manipur she gets arrested for ‘attempt to commit suicide’ and is force fed (nasogastric intubation) through a tube in her nose, it gets little media attention. She has been on hunger strike for years now but most people don’t know who she is or what she is protesting about. A token ‘economic hunger strike’ conducted mainly through Facebook, where people pledge to not ‘eat/drink outside’ (can’t go to KFC, but it may be ok to deep-fry your chicken at home), makes it to the cover page of at least one major national newspaper.
Continue reading →06 Apr 2011
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While ‘India’ was busy cheering its cricketers to win the world cup for the nation, some couple of hundred people, who had probably laboured through the day, hauling stuff in a under-construction swank high-rise, were sleeping in their shanties in sector 61 in Gurgaon. It was close to mid-night, when India won the epic battle. Urban Gurgaon broke into a rapturous celebration with full-fledged fireworks and these people slept through it
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