Prajna

Stop Prisons for Profit!

2011-09-14T11:59:00.000-04:00

Compromise is not an option when it comes to defending the American Dream

2011-09-09T01:02:00.001-04:00

These kids will change the world

2011-03-11T21:38:00.001-05:00

The Electric Car Strikes Back

2010-12-13T22:19:00.001-05:00

"We live now in hard times, not end times"

2010-10-31T23:47:00.000-04:00

Night of the Vampires

2010-08-18T17:26:00.002-04:00

EMBED-Hilarious Prank - Watch more free videos

“Replace the mirror in a bathroom with a window pane, place a set of identical twins in identical rooms opposite each other and proceed to prank everyone who walks in. Theyve all become a vampires!”

At MOMA

2010-06-26T17:07:00.001-04:00

At MOMA
Originally uploaded by sukumarfineartphoto

Photo by Guenter Knop (June 21, 2010)

BP Spills Coffee

2010-06-10T18:59:00.000-04:00

Bet Against the American Dream

2010-04-26T14:43:00.001-04:00

Bet Against the American Dream from Alexander Hotz on Vimeo.

Hell No You Can't!

2010-03-28T11:20:00.002-04:00

The health care bill has passed and is now law. So where's the promised Armageddon? Have they come for your grandma yet? A recent Harris poll reported that 24% of republicans believe that Obama may be the Antichrist :-) Does this say anything about the state of education in the USA? And what kind of a pollster asks a question like this anyway? "Sir, do you believe Ronald Reagan was a unicorn?"

Communicating through Craft

2010-03-07T11:35:00.003-05:00

It was such a pleasure and privilege to visit Sujit's Shikshamitra Learning Center in Kolkatta in January and to watch students follow a couple of visiting Japanese artists and participate in the making of beautiful wind chimes from plastic bottles that most of us throw away. (I now know what to do with the extra bottles sitting on my desk!) Or see a slideshow here.

Joe Lieberman socks!

2009-12-17T23:56:00.001-05:00

Auto-Tune the News

2009-11-02T16:34:00.000-05:00

Warner Brothers can come rake my leaves for free

2009-10-31T13:43:00.000-04:00

Reconsider Columbus Day

2009-10-12T13:51:00.000-04:00

The anthropic principle and the water droplet

2009-10-05T22:51:00.007-04:00

I once meditated by a mountain stream. A drop of water landed on the rock next to me and said, "Oh my! How special must I be! Of all possible physical conditions, the parameters that had to be tuned just so in order that stars and galaxies could evolve, then for the temperature to be so delicately balanced as to allow liquid water to form on this planet. These mountains were truly created so that I might come into being, all these tributaries with their billions of water molecules feeding into this stream just for my sake and this rock placed here just for me to land, all those forces so delicately balanced so that I would be born out of this mass of water and land just here in order to fulfill my destiny!"

And then a little wave swept by and carried my drop away with the rest.

As I too would be one day.

Read Deepak Chopra's original article on the HuffingtonPost

Parallel Universes

2009-10-02T15:09:00.001-04:00

What is truly frightening is that we seem to be living side by side in two different countries or parallel universes. There are those who believe children are being brain-washed into singing paens for Obama and that Government is out to take over our lives (this after cheering on the systematic dismantling of civil liberties during the Bush years). If one gets one's "news" only from Fox, Beck and Limbaugh, one could hardly do better! Trust me, liberals are NOT singing Obama's praises; liberals are quite upset with Obama for not having the spine to stand up to this nonsense being put out by these shills.

Billionaires for Wealthcare

2009-09-15T12:37:00.001-04:00

No more Mister Nice Guy, Mr. President

2009-09-07T15:10:00.000-04:00

Revolt of the liberal base?

2009-09-03T14:34:00.000-04:00

Guess what? We AREADY have Death Panels!

2009-08-28T11:21:00.000-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Bottom line: You do NOT know how good your current insurance is UNTIL you suffer a catastrophic illness (i.e. until you REALLY need it!)

Rethink Afghanistan

2009-08-09T23:33:00.000-04:00

"Women have two equal rights: (1) The right to obey their husbands, and (2) The right to pray, although not in a mosque (that is reserved for men)." - The Chief Justice of the Afghan Supreme Court.

Lithium

2009-07-21T14:22:00.001-04:00

GOVERNMENT

2009-07-16T14:17:00.000-04:00

To all those who have been sending me those supposedly-scary emails, videos and other creative bullshit about BIG, BAD GOVERNMENT coming to take away my (non-existent) fortune (the same "fortune" that nice, friendly corporate pirates have been quietly sucking away) through **shudder** TAXES, here's my take on it:

* I do want the government to do more than just wage endless foreign wars;
* ... such as ensuring basic needs for its citizens;
* Health, Education, Safety, Clean Water and Clean Air are pretty high up there on the list for me.
* I am willing to pay taxes to the government to secure these rights. (YES, they ARE rights for me, much more so than being able to carry a rocket-propelled grenade into the neighborhood school).
* What's more, I'm quite comfortable with the government taxing YOU too to secure these rights for us all.
* Of course, I recognize your right to disagree with my priorities, but I think most of us are with me on this.

If that's "socialism", so be it! Whatever!
Feel free to pass this along next time you get one of THOSE emails!

Cleaning Up After Clementine

2009-07-15T22:04:00.001-04:00

It may be fashionable to decry pre-9/11 thinking, but as far as mining is concerned, we've been stuck in 1872 for well over a century. It is more than time to send the 1872 Mining Law to the dustbin of history.
Cleaning Up After Clementine

Anybody who's ever lived in India knows crows are the smartest!

2009-07-09T14:44:00.000-04:00

Spirit of the River

2009-07-07T14:38:00.000-04:00

Has Dick Cheney joined the Obama administration?

2009-06-29T20:27:00.006-04:00

Recently reports surfaced that President Obama is drafting an executive order that would authorize a regime of indefinite detention without charge. Indefinite detention without charge is one of the most egregious of all human rights violations and is a hallmark of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes the world over. A handful of White House lawyers are now attempting to erase a bedrock principle of American justice by the stroke of a pen, without even the fig leaf of congressional approval. Background Information

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man... Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake." What an inspiring message! Can we have the person back who said that?

If there is enough evidence to indefinitely detain a person, then there is enough evidence to try that person in a court. If there is not enough evidence to try a person, then there is not enough evidence to indefinitely detain that person. The claim that some people cannot be given a fair trial and yet cannot be released is not only repugnant to the conscience, it is also irrational.

Attorney General Eric Holder told a federal judge that the suit by the families of four detainees who committed suicide at Guantanamo Bay should be dismissed because the issue is "fraught with political and military concerns" and Cheney and the government lawyers have immunity from prosecution.

Attorney General Holder again delayed release of a 2004 CIA report which paved the way for detainee waterboarding, sleep deprivation and physical abuse.

China Reports 66% Drop in Plastic Bag Use (Worldchanging)

2009-06-27T01:59:00.001-04:00

Worldchanging: Bright Green: China Reports 66 Percent Drop in Plastic Bag Use

Shared via AddThis
- Only 3.5% of plastics are recycled in any way.
- Each American sends an average of 63 pounds of plastic packaging into landfills every year.
- Broken, degraded plastic pieces outweigh surface zooplankton in the Central North Pacific by 6 to 1.
PDF

Why economic nationalism is unpatriotic

2009-06-23T12:07:00.001-04:00

Please give generously for our needy bank CEOs

2009-06-19T13:58:00.000-04:00

Artist Open House

2009-06-12T17:46:00.003-04:00

Artist Open House
Sat. June 13, 2009

4 PM – 9 PM

14 Wilde Dr.
Troy, NY 12180

Prints on Sale, Book signing, video program, refreshments

Could Monsanto Be Responsible for One Indian Farmer's Death Every Thirty Minutes?

2009-05-06T13:34:00.000-04:00

Republicans Defend Tax Havens Against Obama Crackdown

2009-05-04T21:00:00.002-04:00

Allow me to put this in ways that the Republican electorate can understand: Let's SURGE into the Cayman Islands, bring REGIME CHANGE to those corporate subsidiaries and FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY to those 18,857 mailboxes in the Ugland House. Let us not turn back until we achieve VICTORY in our WAR AGAINST TAX HAVENS. Are you FOR US or AGAINST US? Do you want VICTORY in the Cayman Islands or do you want to CUT AND RUN?
About Taxes
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Snowe: GOP Has Abandoned Principles; Specter Switch "Devastating"

2009-04-28T18:10:00.001-04:00

Brave words, Senator! You may not have abandoned the principles that had once been the essence of the Republican Party, but the GOP has redefined its essence and has effectively become just a hate group. Recognize that basic truth and come on over... or start a new party reflecting your true principles. It is too late to reclaim the Republican Party now and it is dishonest to continue association with its carcass.
About Arlen Specter
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The Torture Moment

2009-04-26T20:45:00.001-04:00

"Is Thou Shalt Not Kill a 'point of view'? " - According to Pat Buchanan and other "Christians", apparently yes!

"Isn't torture one of those things where there really is no legitimate other side?" - I used to think so, but now this seems to be a very different, almost unrecognizable, world we're living in ("9/11 changed everything"). I wouldn't be surprised if we started burning witches soon.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

American Ideals and Afghanistan's Women

2009-04-15T23:28:00.001-04:00

Education for us in the west is relatively uncontroversial; who can be against education? But the madrasas in Islamic countries are also imparting education. In Pakistan, this kind of education led to the rise of the Taliban (literally religious students), who were then exported to Afghanistan to perpetrate their horrors and repression there. Traditional education in these and other cultures has historically been used to keep women "in their place," to reinforce prejudice, to strengthen the hold of the ruling classes. So what kind of "education" are we speaking of here? Any promotion of a western-style or secular education would be perceived locally as exporting a "decadent" American culture or promotion of Western hegemony. The author says "Education about rights must come first." Very well, but the "rights" we are talking about here are NOT the fundamental rights that the US founding fathers held to be "self-evident," but the right of an Afghan husband to demand and receive sex from his wife four days a week, the right of a man to demand that a woman be stoned to death on suspicion of adultery, the right of an Egyptian professor to demand that his colleague be divorced from his wife because he is not a "good Muslim." Rights of women? Sorry, not in the dictionary. In fact, life in most Eastern societies is centered around duties, not rights. Individual rights are, rightly or wrongly, often perceived as a western import.
About Afghanistan
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

ASU Renaming Scholarship Program After Obama

2009-04-11T20:22:00.001-04:00

This just in... the Wasila elementary school has decided to confer an honorary kindergarten certificate on former president George W. Bush.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The Obama Economic Team's Flawed Cosmology: Still Believing the Universe Revolves Around the Banks

2009-04-06T20:18:00.001-04:00

> They are operating on the basis of an outdated cosmology that places banks at the center of the economic universe.

Ever consider that, following the collapse/systematic dismantling of our manufacturing industry over the past few decades, banks ARE now at the center of the American economic universe?

A robust manufacturing economy can NOT be rebuilt overnight (Hopefully some of the stimulus will help grow a new green manufacturing economy over the long term, if the political will is sustained). But all that can be done in the short term is financial jugglery, the kind I use when I borrow from one credit card to pay off another... or that Geithner is using in borrowing from future generations of taxpayers to pay off current shareholders.
About Timothy Geithner
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Essence

2009-04-01T12:27:00.003-04:00

I'm happy to announce the publication of my first fine art photography book, Essence (click to preview).

Please sign this letter from Archbishop Desmond Tutu supporting the Dalai Lama.

What If Jon Stewart, Instead of John King, Interviewed Dick Cheney

2009-03-16T21:29:00.001-04:00

If any of these so-called journalists had been even remotely like Jon Stewart at any point during these last 8 years, things would have turned out very differently. There are the guys in the White House who perpetrated the crimes against humanity and on the constitution, and there are their enablers in the media.
About Daily Show
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Save New York PBS

2009-03-09T19:03:00.000-04:00

Gov. Paterson has proposed a 50% reduction in operating aid to public broadcasting.

If adopted, this budget cut will seriously impair the ability of New York’s PBS stations to produce local broadcast programming and deliver education programs, both on and off air, to K-12 teachers and students across the state.

Let’s restore funding to NY’s nine locally owned, Regents chartered public television stations.

Billions of dollars to the banks, yet we’re the ones in the soup

2009-03-02T16:12:00.001-05:00

From Brave New Foundation

Zombie banks - heads they win, tails we lose

2009-02-23T21:31:00.003-05:00

Paul Krugman writing in the New York Times

Gibbs V. Santelli: He Should Read President's Plan (VIDEO)

2009-02-20T16:18:00.002-05:00

To Mr. Rick Santelli: Excuse me, but I already subsidize you! Especially you folks with 5, 6 or more children. I have none and yet HALF my property taxes are school taxes that go towards educating your brats. You're happy to take that. Not to mention the bailouts that pay for your bonuses and spa treatments. But you rant about helping those who're in danger of losing their homes or those who have lost their health insurance?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Whining over Investment in Economic Recovery

2009-02-17T17:27:00.005-05:00

Some are whining over the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 that President Obama signed into law today. Here's some of what the act funds:

$17 billion for science agencies including:

$10 billion for NIH (National Institutes of Health) - including $8.5 billion to expand biomedical research and the rest for university infrastructure;
$1 billion for NASA (National Aeronautics & Space Administration) - nearly half of it for climate-change work;
$3 billion for NSF (National Institutes of Health) - for basic research;
$2 billion for DOE (Department of Energy) Office of Science - much of it for research in climate science and biofuels;
$830 million for NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration);
$580 million for NIST (National Institutes of Standards & Technology);

Green initiatives including:

$26.86 billion investment in energy efficiency to kick-start the economy by creating more than half a million jobs and saving hundreds of billion of dollars in wasted energy costs;
$18.95 billion for green transportation, including public transit and high-speed rail projects, to put more than 300,000 people to work building the transportation solutions we need to cut greenhouse gas pollution;
$32.80 billion for clean energy projects to reduce global warming pollution and cut down on pollution to rivers, lakes, and coastal waters, making them safe for drinking water, swimming, and fishing.

Yes, there are many aspects of the bill I don't like, but the people whining the loudest today are those who were silent (or worse, cheering on) even as hundreds of billions of tax dollars were poured into the sands of Iraq.

While Rome Burns

2009-02-10T13:48:00.001-05:00

Every additional day we delay the stimulus bill, another 20,000 get downsized.
"All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump." - Washington Post

"$1 billion federal investment in chemical sciences research and development gets amplified into a $40 billion boost to the nation's gross national product and can create or maintain 600,000 jobs." - Council for Chemical Research

The Grasshopper and the Ant

2009-02-08T14:04:00.005-05:00

A friend in India sent me a familiar retake on this old story... and I post it here, together with my own sequel:

Grasshopper and the Ant - Indian Version with a New Twist

Really a class analogy..

An Old Story:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

Indian Version:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant's house.

Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.

Mayawati states this as `injustice' done on Minorities.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance).

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for 'Bengal Bandh' in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.
CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ' Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act' [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes 'Special Reservation' for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in Government Services.

The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes,it's home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it ' A Triumph of Justice'.

Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice '.

CPM calls it the ' Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden '

Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later...
The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley,

100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India,
..AND
As a result of loosing lot of hard working Ants and feeding the grasshoppers,... India is still a developing country…!!

Sequel:

The Ant employs hundreds of software engineers (Indians, Chinese and Americans) to work at his up and coming Silicon Valley company.

The software engineers do very well and buy multi-million dollar homes on credit.

The Ant decides to take his well-earned money and retire, after appointing an American CEO and CFO to manage his company.

The new CEO convinces the shareholders to give him and the CFO more bonuses and perks than the company makes in profit.

The new CFO cooks the books to show that benefits given to him and the CEO are assets, not liabilities.

The CEO buys up other companies that are failing in order to save on taxes.

The CEO lays off all software engineers in order to cut back on expenses.

The CEO hires more sales staff and buys multi-million dollar ads to convince the shareholders that the company is doing great.

The software engineers, unable to pay the mortgages on their homes, lose their homes. When their children fall sick, they can't pay hospital bills because they lost their insurance.

All the software engineers (Indians, Chinese and Americans) emigrate to Bangalore and Shanghai and get good jobs.

The shares of the Silicon Valley company crash on the New York Stock Exchange.

The sales staff are laid off, but steal the computers, the wall paper and the toilet paper before they go home on their last day of work.

The US government calls for an investigation.

The CEO and CFO fly off to a a small island in the West Indies, where they have stashed all their money.

The US government puts the Ant in jail and confiscates his home.

The Ant's children emigrate to Bangalore.

The Ant's children and the software engineers raise a legal defense fund for the Ant.

A high-powered lawyer argues that the Ant is not responsible for his actions because of mental insanity. They point to his working hard in the withering heat all summer building his house when he could simply have bought it on credit. They ask whether these are the actions of a sane individual.

The jury is convinced and find the ant innocent by reason of insanity.

The Ant spends the remaining years of his life at a comfortable resort sanatorium in Colorado, where he skis regularly and writes this book on his life experiences.

Moral of the story: the grass is not always greener on the other side!

India visit '08-'09

2009-01-28T18:51:00.002-05:00

Spent a couple of weeks in India in Dec-Jan, visiting relatives in Delhi, Chennai and Kolkatta. A few concerts, a bit of shopping, a short trip out to the countryside, where I was treated to the delicious irony of scenes like the above image. A traditional-style party in Kolkatta, where Sujit dropped in for lunch...

Enjoying a daab outside Delhi's Tuglaqabad fort and tombs...

One day Shahid dropped by for a chat...

and then it was time for our return!

We Know You, John

2008-10-24T12:56:00.000-04:00

Chandrayaan-1 Launched successfully

2008-10-22T15:05:00.002-04:00

Chandrayaan lifts off successfully

Let the Blame Game Begin

2008-10-20T19:48:00.001-04:00

Blame game: How about the American public?

* The voter who chose to put the presidency in the hands of the guy he felt he could have a beer with;

* The "Security Mom" who is more worried about insurgents in Baghdad than about guns in her kid's school;

* The parent for whom scientific evidence does not matter when it comes to evolution, because the bible said so, can hardly blame Bush for inventing the fiction of WMDs;

* The guy whose patriotism was fulfilled by wearing a flag pin and sporting a "Support Our Troops" bumper sticker can have no cause to complain when Bush puts on a flight jacket and claims "Mission Accomplished" from the deck of an aircraft carrier anchored off San Diego;

* The taxpayers who funded generations of foreign wars and arms sales to dictators and fundamentalists have no call to be surprised when those weapons and fundamentalist ideology are eventually turned against us;

* The Minutemen who want to wall off our southern border should not be surprised when Sarah Palin wants to wall off "pro-America parts of the country" from the rest of the big, bad nation.
About Sarah Palin
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Climate Change and Energy Security

2008-10-13T20:11:00.004-04:00

If the United States focused on curbing climate change as soon as a new president took office - or sooner - it could help pull the world from the financial brink, environmental policy experts told Reuters. While climate change may be far from the thoughts of most people in the midst of an economic meltdown, it's not going to go away. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, predicts that the financial crunch will bring "soul searching about how society might act to reduce dependence on fossil fuels" and shift to renewable energies such as wind, solar or hydropower. A comprehensive energy and climate security plan for America should thus:
* Provide short-term relief to families facing pain at the pump;
* Help create new jobs by strategic investments over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future;
* Put a million plug-in hybrids (cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon) on the road by 2015, aiming to eliminate oil imports from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 years;
* Ensure 10% of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25% by 2025.
* Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050.
See The Obama-Biden New Energy plan and The Obama-Biden environmental plan. Some argue by pointing out that 2/3 of Americans want offshore drilling, which would worsen our impact on climate change. But, as I have pointed out elsewhere, nearly 2/3 of Americans changed their mind on the economy in the last three weeks. They will change their minds on this issue too. There are stronger forces at play today than even Exxon & cohorts. "Skyrocketing energy prices and the financial crisis have been a wake-up call that something's got to change," Cathy Zoi, chief executive officer of the Alliance for Climate Protection, told the Global Environment Summit this week. And besides, these polls are all loaded by framing the terms of the debate. We need to learn how to do that if we are to help shape public opinion and counter the media bias. It is a trick that every lawyer uses in cross-examination. If you ask whether SOME off-shore drilling should be allowed in an energy mix to escape dependence upon "foreign oil", 2/3 of Americans may say yes. Let us try asking instead:
* "Do you think off-shore drilling will solve America's energy problems?"
* "Will off-shore drilling eliminate oil imports?"
* "Would you rather have Exxon drill more wells off-shore to bring you 2% more oil 10 years from now while raising sea levels (Arctic sea ice shrank to its smallest ever recorded area in September 2007 and came close to breaking the record last month), drowning more coastal cities and generating stronger hurricanes or would you rather get tax rebates for installing solar panels on your roof (employing local labor), wind turbines on your farm and drive a plug-In hybrid getting up to 150 miles per gallon, so that we can eliminate our current imports from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 years?"

Conservatives' Race-Baiting Miscalculation

2008-10-10T19:34:00.001-04:00

I share your concern. One saw the same kind of intemperate name-calling and motivated rabble-rousing in Israel just prior to the tragic assassination of Yitzhak Rabin... and, of course, Israel -- and the entire middle east -- has been effectively ungovernable ever since.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Does McCain Still Agree with Reagan that Government is the Problem?

2008-09-30T19:36:00.001-04:00

Let me explain this in simple terms: government is not the solution to YOUR problems, Joe Schmuck; government is very much the solution to the problems of Haliburton, Exxon, Citibank,... And what do you mean by saying that "Big government didn't get us into Iraq"? The President and his lap-dog Congress (a.k.a.government) got us into Iraq. So please stop perpetuating the myth that republicans are against Big Government. Republicans are very much FOR big government, big government giveaways to defense contractors, for instance. They just don't believe in government FOR the people (you know, those pesky unromantic details in the lives of the masses such as schools, health care, roads, flood control).
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Not a Bailout - A Rescue

2008-09-30T18:03:00.001-04:00

Cheap credit will dry up and Americans will have to learn to save again? So sad! Let me shed a few crocodile tears. My grandfather saved all his life to buy his dream home. My father worked for years before buying his first car. Today we give new cars to teenagers for birthdays so they can contribute a few more tons of greenhouse gases. Ms. Chatzky must think we're idiots! My neighborhood will NOT turn into a desert without this bailout. The house down the block will not sit empty forever. Those empty houses cost somebody money. When nobody can afford the credit, home prices will fall to more realistic levels. And when the price is right, somebody will buy it, with cash or good credit. Simple supply and demand. Sure my 401K is losing value. But dumping $700,000,000,000 of play money on Wall street will devalue my dollar too. We're finally seeing the end of the era of "Trust us, this is good for you" politics. After trying to railroad this blackmail down the throats of a hitherto-supine Congress and the public, we're now seeing some weak attempts at justification, but still no details of what terms are being negotiated or what safeguards have been built in; still going with "This has to pass yesterday; its too important to lose. Trust us, we'll build in safeguards later." Sorry! If you want our money, you'll have to get it the old-fashioned way... you'll have to EARN it!
About Economy
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Scary Thought: Is Condi Rice Our Last, Best Chance for Peace?

2008-07-17T19:38:00.001-04:00

About Dick Cheney
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Impeachment On The Table -- But Not Up For Vote

2008-07-17T18:47:00.001-04:00

About George Bush
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Globalisation and the 'White' population explosion

2008-06-21T18:13:00.003-04:00

Here is an essay penned by my cousin's friend, Mr. Chandra Bhat, a Senior Customs Officer based in Sydney:

"I read an article in The Indian Express some 30 or so years ago by a certain Gwynne Dwyer who had statistical evidence that Europe and Europeans are actually the cause of the population density disparity. (Ever since I read the article in the late seventies the germ of an idea for an essay along these lines had been gestating in my mind; the trigger for it came with your e-mail. These reflections are far too important to be hidden away):

"He wrote that but for such fortuitous developments in their history which began with the invention of the square sailed rigger which helped them colonize the New world, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and other developments such as the Industrial revolution which accelerated their technological leap, their capture of the world’s fossil fuel markets that allowed them to pollute the earth willy nilly and the French revolution which saw the overthrow of monarchies (read dictatorships) and ushered in democracies, Europe would have a population density exceeding that of India and China.

"He wrote that if you add up and total the white population in North and South America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and replant them in Europe and by Europe I mean excluding Russia, Ukraine and Scandinavia, which would make Europe about the same size as Greater India (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh combined) or the same size as China (excluding Tibet, the Gobi, Sinkiang and Uighur areas, which isn’t part of China anyway) Europe’s population would approach 1.25 billion. Even as it stands today Europe’s population excluding Russia, Ukraine and Scandinavia is still a bit more than half a billion, subtracting 288 million which comprises the total population of Russia, Ukraine and Scandinavia.

"The total population of all of North America is 337 million of which 12.9 percent are of races other than European.

"The total population of Latin America is 576 million of which about 25 percent are of races other than European.

White population of North America = 293 million
White population of Latin America = 432 million
White population of Australia = 23 million
White population of New Zealand = 3 million
Total Ex-Europe = 751 million
Total Europe= 500 million

"So Mr. Dwyer writes that the Whites enjoyed their white explosion from around 1500 AD to around 1980 AD a period of around 380 years helped in no small measure by restrictions on migration placed upon Non-European races a strategy the whole world is well aware of.

"Now the 'Yellow', Brown and Black races are exploding but similar to the Use and Abuse Strategy the European populations adopted with Fossil fuels the hypocrites are crying foul and claiming that only the “Whites” can have their cake and eat it too, and are getting increasingly nervous with the juggernaut called Globalization let loose upon the world since the concept of the Free Trade in Goods and Services protocols adopted by the World Trade Organization and its predecessor “GATT” The General agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

"A uniform and fair free trade agreement however is not just the free movement of goods and services but should include the free movement of people as well, but here the western countries are allowing the free movement of people only amongst themselves and are still placing restrictions using Immigration very cleverly to pay only lip service to a free and fair globalization in the true sense of the term.

"It also uses tools such as Quarantine,Tariff and Subsidy barriers to limit the free and fair movement of goods, but Services is where the West is left scratching their heads, because Capitalism being unbridled by its very nature has no concept of borders where there is a profit to be made, hence the miracles of India, the Philippines and a large part of Asia.

"The world turns on a coin, and level playing fields are a myth, so it will not be a great mystery to me if the West continues to try and retain their current and historical status quo, by artificially raising the price of Oil and Food, Oil over which the West always had control over, using their lackeys in Iraq, the Emirates, Kuwait and and SaudiArabia and the Food surplus advantage they have always had primarily becausethe population density equation has always been in their favour.

"These two issues are cleverly interlinked. Use a large percentage of Crop yields and keep them aside to use as an energy alternative thus raising the price of food, throw in a few natural disasters such as the cyclone in Burma, floods in China and Midwestern U.S, couple that with a prolonged drought in Australia, add a pinch of a man-made calamity such as the Sub-Prime Mortgage crisis and use it continue your hold over the seething black, yellow and brown masses.

"Countries like Venezuela, Russia and Iran however are the jokers in the pack for obvious reasons. The West cannot control them hence the demonization of these countries in the media.

"China and India too have become too powerful and Western capital has invested far too much money in them to see them fail.

"The world is teetering on the edge of a major upheaval. A similar upheaval took place in the early 1500’s which oversaw the invention of the square sail and the early 1900’s that was the vanguard of the mass production of the petrol engine.

"The success of the utopian idea of having a truly free and fair movement of goods, services and people, in other words true globalization will depend again on the turn of a coin, the success of countries such as Venezuela, Russia, Iran, India and China, the warmongering policies of Bush and Cheney discredited and the victory of policies of men such as Barrack Obama and Al Gore.

Terrible Simplificateur

"The dramatic shift in social and cultural consciousness that occurred in the last few decades left a deep imprint on the gestalt of our societies and calls for active reflection. The time has come to seek a unique and creative mode of transmitting these reflections around the world in order to make an impact felt far beyond one’s backyard."

Chandra Bhat

Light Bulbs to Leadership

2008-06-11T14:48:00.000-04:00

Problem solving differences

2008-05-03T13:47:00.001-04:00

This is the fundamental problem solving difference between Senator Obama and the Bush-McCain ideologies...

1 tank of gas = 232kg of corn = feed a child for a year

2008-04-15T13:28:00.004-04:00

Back in the days I was growing up in India, a primary national goal was for our country to be self-sufficient in food, so we could forever leave behind the famines of the past. This was achieved thanks to M.S.Swaminathan and others, but now in our "flat world", self-sufficiency has come to be seen as quaint and old-fashioned. But these stories show why it is absolute suicide for a nation of any size to not be self-sufficient in food...
Global warming rage lets global hunger grow
UN body urges agriculture reforms to stave off food crisis
Food and the spectre of Malthus

Endless war on the installment plan

2008-04-10T14:09:00.002-04:00

Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

2008-03-08T16:14:00.001-05:00

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Environmental News and Commentary

2008-01-10T20:21:00.000-05:00

What Are They Waiting For?

2007-12-21T13:21:00.001-05:00

The climate crisis will be the biggest challenge facing the next president.

But the top Sunday hosts don’t seem to think so.

In 2007, they have asked:

2275 Questions

3 mentioned global warming!

What Are They Waiting For?

My carbon neutral Memorial Day weekend

2007-05-30T20:28:00.000-04:00

I had to do something! After watching the shameful drama in Congress last week between a flock of dumb sheep on one side of the aisle and a school of spineless jellyfish on the other, I couldn't just keep on accepting what they ostensibly do in our names. So I said, oh no! Not on my account, you don't; scrapped my travel plans and spent a carbon neutral Memorial Day weekend. No driving, no greenhouse gas emissions from me (except for the occasional fart!) Mind you, Memorial Day weekend is when Americans do their maximum driving, Exxon and the other robber barons rub their hands in glee, raise gas prices and watch the billions come pouring in.

As the rest of the country reeled under record high prices at the pumps (perhaps cussing and venting frustrations by signing futile petitions against "price gouging"), my premiums were paid up front, when I purchased my hybrid Toyota Prius and now I go as much as a month before needing to even look at the gas tank. But my carbon neutral Memorial Day weekend involved no driving. Even my lawnmower runs on battery power, I purchase all my electricity from wind energy and small local hydroelectric power sources (Community Energy) and what little hot water I use is heated by my rooftop solar panels (which also suffice to keep my house warm on brighter winter days).

But what has all this to do with last week's shameful drama? Look at the number one Benchmark which was passed and signed into law last week in the name of "supporting the troops": no privatization of Iraqi oil, no reconstruction funds. In other words, if the Iraqi Parliament refuses to pass the privatization legislation, Congress will withhold US reconstruction funds that were promised to the Iraqis to rebuild what we have destroyed there. This privatization law, written by American oil company consultants, would leave control with the Iraq National Oil Company for only 17 of the 80 known oil fields. No prizes for guessing who's gonna get the long term (20- to 30-year) contracts for the remaining 63. (Incidentally, no other nation in the Middle East has privatized its oil; they give only limited usage contracts to international oil companies for one or two years). More American troops to defend the assets of the robber barons for the next 20-30 years. Memorial Day, that sombre day when Americans remember those who have sacrificed their lives in past wars, seems to have come and gone without our having learnt any lessons at all.

But apparently, we're not the only idiots on the block. My cousin Down Under reports on the multi-year drought that is shriveling Australia's farmland that the reservoirs are only around 30% full. The government gives tax rebates to buy cars and incentives if you clock a higher mileage each year. Driving 60k a year gives you more tax rebate than driving 30k a year! But they have refused to extend the same benefits to those taking public transport. And they still refuse to ratify Kyoto! Their Prime Minister's suggested solution is "Pray for rain!"

Save Darfur

2006-12-10T11:18:00.000-05:00

Today, December 10, is International Human Rights Day. On this day, please express solidarity with Darfuri women and activists around the world by wearing white, the universal color of mourning, and by signing the petition below.

Click Here to sign the Darfur Petition!

The lynching of Habeus Corpus

2006-10-26T20:37:00.000-04:00

Go ahead... Make a difference! Get involved...

A Period of Consequences

2006-07-04T12:25:00.000-04:00

Last week we went to see "An Inconvenient Truth" and to me it seemed reminescent of a sociopolitical process more common in my own country. Al Gore says in the movie, "What changed in the U.S. with Hurricane Katrina was a feeling that we have entered a period of consequences." Now in Indian culture, we have always believed that our actions do have real consequences in this world, not just in some distant hereafter after this world comes to an end. So it is not an alien concept to us that nature would react to our actions; we do not need a theory of Gaia to tell us that the earth is a living organism. "An Inconvenient Truth" reminds us that WE will determine, in the next few years, whether we pass on a habitable earth to future generations or a world swarming with a hundred million refugees. Al Gore spent a generation in Congress and 8 years in the White House, but could not get Congress to ratify the Kyoto accord or the American people to curb profligate gasoline consumption. He now seems to have found his true calling: stumping from city to city with his Powerpoint presentation, in lecture hall after lecture hall and now movie hall by movie hall, converting people one by one, winning a mayor here, a student there. I am reminded of a London-educated lawyer returning to his native India from South Africa a century ago. The comparison may seem presumptuous, but the potential consequences are at least as monumental.

Perturbation

2006-05-13T00:05:00.000-04:00

"When your head is chopped off, you don't say that your health is perturbed." - Prof. P. Raghunathan, quoted in Prajna, 1979. Yet the Government of India euphamistically refers to the Narmada oustees as “Project Affected People”.
Somnath Mukherji writes in The Statesman:

Affected? People whose home, hearth environ, history and religion are submerged are not “affected”; they are ravaged. People who have never had a share of the State’s benefits and stand to gain nothing from the dam, to say the least, are the ones paying the price... The government needed to be reminded by the Supreme Court that clean water is a basic need for human existence. So beholden is the State to the corporation that it bestows upon it total impunity in mere anticipation of the economic benefits to flow... de-linking development from grassroots aspirations will only delegitimise the State and its agencies in the eyes of the very people who justify its existence.

So complete is this delegitimization in the post-Katrina US, that the only way the administration feels they can keep a rein on us any more is by constant monitoring of the entire population (a la "1984") with the entusiastic support of your phone company and ISP. Brave new data mining worlds!

Found some more old photographs

2006-05-03T14:08:00.000-04:00

From the dinner at the Red Rose, August 1977

High gas prices... is America hurting?

2006-05-01T21:39:00.000-04:00

Grist writes: "Rising oil prices send lawmakers into frenzy of empty gestures. The American public will take lots of things lying down -- inaction on climate change, ill-conceived wars, erosion of civil liberties -- but expensive gas? Hell no!"
But are Americans really hurting? Well, this past weekend the kid next door in my very middle-class suburban community spent the entire weekend tearing around the neighborhood in an ATV, belching blue smoke, presumably preparatory to tearing up the forests with it. A guy across the street left his car engine and car air conditioner running for over half an hour while his car was parked in front of the house with his dog in the car (Outside air temperatures were 65F). If this is how much we're hurting, we need to hurt some more!
Nations across the world have had higher petrol prices for decades. Sure, most of those high prices go towards taxes and some advocate similar taxes here to curb demand. But if my neighborhood is any indication, I don't see this happening anytime soon and given how the govt.spends my tax dollars, do I care if Lee Raymond (outgoing Exxon CEO) gets a heart attack guzzling my money or Haliburton?

Elegy for an infamous hoax

2006-04-12T00:32:00.000-04:00

One of the most pernicious and mischievous theories to have blighted humanity in recent times is slowly but surely being discredited.

Anyone who comes to scrutinize the theory will find that it suffers from a ‘double infection.’ In the first place, the theory is based on nothing but pleasing assumptions and the inferences based on such assumptions. In the second place, the theory is a perversion of scientific investigation. It is not allowed to evolve out of facts. On the contrary the theory is preconceived and facts are selected to prove it.

No, this is not some modern-day politician or scientist talking about creationism or intelligent design', but Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891 - 1956), speaking of the 'Aryan Invasion theory' of India, a theory with no support whatsoever from Indian records, literary or archaeological, yet which provided the basis for racism in the Imperial context by suggesting that the peoples of Northern India were descended from invaders from Europe and so racially closer to the British Raj.
In the 1850's the young German scholar Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900) introduced into English usage the unlucky term Aryan as applied to a large group of languages. The idea of a corresponding 'Aryan race' was rapidly taken up both in Germany and in England. The Aryan Invasion Theory served as a theoretical underpinning of the historical legitimacy of the British presence in India. But forty years later, one of the loudest European voices against the whole Aryan construct was none other than Max Muller! In 1888, he conceded that "the home of the Aryans" could not be pinpointed more precisely than "somewhere in Asia" and he denied having ever spoken of an Aryan race:

I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language... To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is a great sinner...

Twenty years before the Nazis' rise to power, Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) warned:

So great is the force of attractive generalizations and widely popularized errors that all the world goes on perpetuating the blunder talking of the Indo-European races, claiming or disclaiming Aryan kinship and building on that basis of falsehood the most far-reaching political, social or pseudo-scientific conclusions.

British imperialists and Nazis were not the only ones to sieze upon this drivel; racists from both the Indian right and left wings have sought common cause in this mischief. In Dr.Ambedkar's words,

The Aryan race theory is so absurd that it ought to have been dead long ago. But far from being dead, the theory has a considerable hold upon the people... The first explanation is to be found in the support which the theory receives from the Brahmin scholars... The Brahmin scholar believes in the two-nation theory. He claims to be the representative of the Aryan race and he regards the rest of the Hindus as descendants of the non-Aryans. The theory helps him to establish his kinship with the European races and share their arrogance and superiority. He likes particularly that part of the theory which makes the Aryan invader and conqueror of the non-Aryan native races. For it helps him to maintain and justify his overlordship over the non-Brahmins.

On the left of the political spectrum, we who were schooled in India have only to recall our textbooks, authored by prominent Indian historians with Marxist leanings, that dinned these dangerous myths into our heads.
Well, what does the genetic evidence indicate? Mitochondrial DNA is inherited solely from the mother, while the DNA of the Y chromosome is inherited solely from the father. These special DNA are not involved in sexual crossover and provide direct links to our maternal and paternal ancestors, respectively. They only undergo random mutations from generation to generation and the extent of mutation provides a timeline to the past. Analysis of the divergence of the DNA sequences of living humans from different locations around the world results in a family tree.

Our current understanding is that modern humans arose ~150,000 years ago, possibly in East Africa, where human genetic diversity is particularly high

write Peter Forster and Shuichi Matsumura in their Perspective in SCIENCE VOL 308, 965, 13 MAY 2005.

Early humans even ventured out of Africa briefly, as indicated by the 90,000-year-old Skhul and Qafzeh fossils found in Israel. The next event clearly visible in the mitochondrial evolutionary tree is a remarkable expansion

which

led directly to the only successful migration out of Africa, and is genetically dated by mtDNA to have occurred some time between 55,000 and 85,000 years
ago. Studies of the paternally inherited Y chromosome yield time estimates for the
African exodus that are in broad agreement with those derived from mtDNA... Which route did the first Eurasians take out of Africa? Most obvious, perhaps, is the route along the Nile and across the Sinai Peninsula leading into the rest of the world ... But if that were so, why was adjacent Europe settled thousands of years later than distant Australia? In Europe, Neanderthals were replaced by modern humans only about
30,000 to 40,000 years ago, whereas southern Australia was definitely inhabited 46,000 years ago and northern Australia and Southeast Asia necessarily even earlier.

Mitochondrial DNA variation in isolated ‘relict’ populations in southeast Asia supports the view that there was only a single dispersal from Africa, most likely via a southern coastal route, through India and onward into southeast Asia and Australasia. There was an early offshoot, leading ultimately to the settlement of the Near East and Europe, but the main dispersal from India to Australia ~65,000 years ago was rapid, most likely taking only a few thousand years.

(Macaulay, et al, SCIENCE, VOL 308, 1034, 13 MAY 2005)
Kumarasamy Thangaraj, et al, have reconstructed the origin of the Onge and Great Andamanese Islanders by analysis of their complete mtDNA sequences (SCIENCE, VOL 308, 996, 13 MAY 2005). Their

data indicate that two ancient maternal lineages... in the Onge and the Great Andamanese, have evolved in the Andaman Islands independently from other South and Southeast Asian populations. These lineages have likely been isolated since the initial
penetration of the northern coastal areas of the Indian Ocean by anatomically modern humans, in their out-of-Africa migration ~50-70,000 years ago. In contrast, the Nicobarese show a close genetic relation with populations in Southeast Asia,
suggesting their recent arrival from the east during the past 18,000 years.

These findings are further strengthened by the data on complete Indian genomes collected by Sun, et al, Mol. Biol. Evol. 23(3), 683-690 (2006), which is in good agreement with a rapid, initial dispersal of modern humans along the Asian coastline some 60,000 years ago.
There is now general agreement in the scientific community that Indian caste and tribal populations share a common late Pleistocene maternal ancestry in India. The large number of deep-rooting, Indian-specific mtDNA lineages cannot be explained by a recent introduction from neighboring regions and is consistent with the archaeological data, suggesting an initial settlement of South Asia 40-70,000 years ago, most likely over the southern route from Africa, followed by local differentiation, because the most frequent mtDNA component in India is virtually absent in the Near East and Southwest Asia. However, in contrast to the relative uniformity of mtDNA, the Y chromosomes of Indian populations display relatively small genetic distances to those of West Eurasians, which has been used to argue in favour of hypothetical migrations by Indo-Aryan speakers. Sanghamitra Sahoo, et al, have analyzed the prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes (Proc. Natl Acad. vol.103, no:4, 843-848, January 24, 2006). Their study significantly increases the available sample
size for India by typing 936 individuals from 77 populations, representing all four major linguistic groups. The greater range of mutations studied permits more detailed resolution of geographic patterns. The Y chromosomes were analyzed in the context of available data from West Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Europe, the Near East and Ethiopia. They conclude:

It is not necessary, based on the current evidence, to look beyond South Asia for the origins of the paternal heritage of the majority of Indians at the time of the onset of settled agriculture. The
perennial concept of people, language, and agriculture arriving to India together through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny. Recent claims for ... a contemporaneous origin for the majority of the Indian castes’ paternal lineages from outside the subcontinent are rejected.

In 1946 B.R.Ambedkar concluded:

the Brahmins and the Untouchables belong to the same race.

Illegal Immigration

2006-03-29T17:06:00.000-05:00

I came to this country without papers, admits the illegal alien
But I did not steal the land of the people who were here
Nor plunder your houses nor rape your squaws
Nor wage war on your tribe nor exterminate your people
As did your valorous forefathers...
I guess that makes me illegal.
We came from far and near, you and I
But I seek not to destroy your Gods
Nor to liberate your souls
Nor civilize ye savages
As did your learned forefathers...
I guess that makes me illegal.
We came uninvited, you and I
Fleeing poverty and oppression
But I brought no slaves
And I brought no guns
To ease my life in this nation...
I guess that makes me illegal.

The power of irrational ideas

2006-03-10T23:02:00.000-05:00

I just returned from a performance of The Passion of Joan of Arc by Albany Pro Musica at the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Albany. The movie was simultaneously shown on overhead screens. Yesterday was the announcement of the closure of Abu Ghraib. The coincidence was not lost on me. Has anything really changed? What I came away with was that this uneducated peasant threatened the power that important people wielded upon the minds of others. Whether it is the authority of the Church as the sole arbiter of salvation or the authority of the President to spy on citizens and wage an illegal war or the authority of mullahs to barter 73 virgins for jihad, when this authority is challenged, the establishment comes down heavily. Girls are burnt at the stake, fatwas are issued on authors and cartoonists, spies are outed, scientist fired, hapless folk found at the wrong place at the wrong time are waterboarded. Today Joan is a Saint in the Church and a holiday is observed on the birthday of Martin Luther King, but the institutions that perpetrated these injustices are intact. A century later they apologize for their role in the inquisition, the trial of Galileo, the holocaust, Japanese internment, slavery, the extermination of Native Americans, one day maybe for the dropping of the bombs, the creation of the Taliban, the arming of Saddam with chemical weapons, the School of the Americas, the shredding of Geneva. Sorry if I'm mixing metaphors and actors, but life is mixed up. We wage a so-called "War on Terror" when we should be waging one instead on fundamentalism, because it is irrational ideas and respect for irrational ideas that maintain us in our state of ignorance and terror and maintain the power of tyrants over the rest of us. Only the truth shall set you free. But there is no truth, only "truthiness". In our brave new world, science is merely one point of view, yielding equal time to fundamentalism, fact is spin, dissent is treason, racketeering is a state secret, protest is "ecoterrorism".

Time for a more recent picture from my end

2006-01-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

Waiting for dinner at Singha Thai Honolulu last Dec.

Kitchu the great monopole owner

2006-01-08T05:15:00.000-05:00

University of Hyderabad
Home of Dr T P Radhakrishnan

Radha joined Princeton a few years after us. He was in the group of Prof Zoltan Soos.
I am here visiting them for a day and having a great time talking to Kitchu, his son.
Kitchu believes he can create a magnetic monopole :-)
He wanted to know about blogs and I showed him this site.
The pictures below show Kitchu the great, Radha and Latha and yours truly.

You want pictures? You got pictures!

2006-01-07T15:09:00.000-05:00

Let's start with Cornell University, May 1980

A couple of more images of Akbar

Then on to Montauk Point, March 1981

A visit to the Pittsburgh temple in June 1982

Yea, yea, that was me, but now to the Princeton reunion, Nov.1983

Name Nostalgic

2006-01-06T05:18:00.000-05:00

Prajna! Is this the same name we had for the wall magazine that we started in 1978?
Suku and Gayathri, how about continuing your interesting discussion on teaching, learning and the socio-economic realities on the blog? Paste the past few mails back here and it will be a fantastic document.
I am in Hyderabad now. A pre-joining middle of the course intervention - had a good time teaching a fivesome class of potential bioinformatics majors 'mechanics of the microscopic world' a one and a half hour chalk and board spiel on empty spaces make us to the ultimate reductionist particle in a box explanation for phenolphthaline changing its colour with pH.
I join here formally on 1 Feb - going back to Chd via IISc on 11 Jan.
I love photographs. Guys, post your digpics on the blog.........l.