Doggerel: Impending Doom

These "poems" are dedicated to my little cosine, Kavi.

And there I was in the sea
As deep as I could be
I saw a little hook, it looked nice
And now I'm being served with fried rice.

"Bark, bark, bark!" I said
As I snuggled into my master's bed.
He got up; "Don't disturb me" he said
And kicked me till I was dead.

I can carry fifty times my weight, you see;
No cube of sugar is a match for me.
But I am very scared of the shoe -
For, when it crushes me - there's only formic acid and goo.

I saw a lamb tethered under a tree
My mouth watered"That's a meal for me"!
After a very sumptuous feast,
In the Hunter's cabin, I am now a stuffed beast.

The End of a HDD

They say pride comes before a fall.

A couple of weeks ago, I was laughing at a certain "low-life" that was backing up data on an external hard drive. I called her paranoid. Look who's laughing now.

For, just a couple of days ago, I came to turn on the computer for the good ol' evening surf. And when I turned it on, I was greeted by the following words "Boot sector not found on internal hard drive". For a moment, I thought Wowbagger was pulling a fast one on me. (Wowbagger is an insult generating program which curses you every half hour. I wanted to get insulted every half hour, so I installed it). A cursory investigation exonerated wowbagger, thankfully - because a future without insults every half hour is just, well, unimaginably dreary.

Rather than panic for more than a couple of hours, I decided to see if I could recover data using Linux. The Tux has been always been there for me when windows dies. And believe me, windows has died on me on numerous occasions. I did hear a friend use something called Knoppix, which is essentially a Linux which runs off a CD-ROM drive. I downloaded it in the lab (the XP in the lab did not die yet) - and after the necessary combustion onto a CD, ran it on my Dell.

I was intrigued to see that Knoppix DID actually work! I did manage to boot up (in German, but something is better than nothing - even if that something is in German). After some forumming, I managed to get onto the wireless internet and read everything in English. But the Knoppix experience was wholly unstatisfying. I was unable to listen to music on Pandora; I was unable to watch videos on youtube.

And then I came across something they call PCLinuxOS. I was not put off by the obscure name. I downloaded it, and here I am, listening to some nut called "John Eddie" on Pandora (apparently he sounds a little like Knopfler) having watched a cat play the piano on youtube. A few fdisks off the command prompt give me the dire warning that the partition table on my hdd if as corrupt as the average Indian policeman. (This analogy breaks down when I try to offer my hdd Rs 50 or $1.10 to let me through. Maybe it is because I don't know where to stuff in the money. I could buy one of those vending machine type financial transaction thingamajigs - and somehow fit it onto my computer.)

It seems quite likely that all my data has reached the land of no return. Fortunately, there was nothing of importance on the computer (which I cannot find elsewhere). My programs are all on CDs - so is my thesis. No office work is done on my home computer - or whatever there is of it is already backed up in the office. And almost everything important is backed up on Gmail.

I did lose all my firefox bookmarks - which Included lots of interesting sites that I had encountered over two years. But that's not such a big deal. It just points the importance of using internet based bookmarks.

Right now, all hopes of data recovery lie in some talented Indian in some Surat computer shop. Failing which, I will give into this temptation of just formatting my hard drive and installing a robust version of Linux (perhaps Ubuntu?) on it and using LaTeX instead of word.

And, yes, I am off to India tomorrow FINALLY. Looking forward to those amazing restaurants in India.

Do we really need a president?

Every few years or so, India fights within itself to elect a new president. A president who is just a "head of state", little else. A president who, for all practial purposes, has no hands, no legs, no eyes (fuguratively speaking of course) - and certainly no purpose except being an inspirational figure. (who lives in luxury that the Indian can scarcely dream about).

So, let me say this out loud - let us consider abolishing the presidency. A president does nothing - just eats resources - which, frankly could feed an army. Let us not fall prey to blind faith in our constitution - let us Amend it and get rid of the president. And while we're at it, let's get rid of the governers too. After all, these people do not govern!

Dr. Abdul Kalam is a visionary. An outstanding intellectual, who would have been equally important had he never been the president of India. As a matter of fact, he would have been better used as a professor in Anna university, inspiring the students (yada, yada, yada).

Because sooner or later, you run into some idealist (like the most recent female nominee, Mrs. Patil) who decides to make her opinion heard. Her ideas of "not being a rubber stamp president" are antithetic to the very foundations of democracy. She has not been elected by the people: she should realize that and keep her opinions to herself.

That havnig been said, neither is the prime minister in our country elected by the people. He is usually elected (and often just "nominated") by the people who are from the party elected by the people of the nation.

So really, even the prime minister is not elected by the people! Some might argue (debatably so) that the president is a more direct representative of the people than the prime minister.

You have no idea how confused I am regarding what to think.

Why not Libertariansim.

There's many interesting political ideologies in the west, not the least of which is libertarianism. A libertarian is an individual who believes that (s)he is the owner of his/her own life. Libertarians hold that the state should not interfere with what they do with their property unless they are violating another person's liberty.

Libertarianism values free will and common sense - but frowns upon the welfare state and compulsory charity.

One can see why this is a very seductive ideology to lots of those who think. It basically boils down to this: I do whatever I want, as long as I don't harm anyone. This is surely what the people who founded most modern nations would have been thinking when they founded the nations!

And yet, I don't think this is the way to go for me. I am not a libertarian, and let me tell you why.

Firstly, let me come clean. I find the idea of libertarianism very comforting. Since people can do what they want to - there is very little reason to feel dissatisfied. And since there's very little reason not to be satisfied, there's no worry of a revolution waiting in the wings. This is almost as stable as I have ever seen a society be.

The main issue with this is that the world lives in Nations. The division among people into nations is a very bigoted and aritificial division. This division causes all the wars in the world. (What are wars about but land, now-a-days?) And there are usually lots of economic and immigration barriers between nations.

I hail from the third world. India. A more libertarian America would be an even more selfish America than it already is. A recent case in point: consider those Prophet Muhammed cartoons - and the subsequent riots in the Muslim world. Freedom of speech is a libertarian notion - perhaps as libertarian as a notion can be. A notion which is absolutely incompatible with the Islamic world's reverence for its founder. When people in a nation (or a culture ) do as they want to, they are bound to be insensitive to another culture - because they just did not know better. And this ferments hatred.

In a multi cultural world - it is very unlikey that this ideology will ever work (unless people everywhere are okay with eternal hatred). For libertarianism to really work, I feel the world needs compatible cultures - which is just not going to happen.

One might view this is as a failure of the system of nations more than that of libertariansim. One might be right in doing so. But it is unlikely that these ridiculous, unnatural political barriers will ever be lifted. So, that being a given - libertarianism is very unlikey to enlist me as a adherent - though I find it quite seductive otherwise.

American Politics

Until now, I have deemed it below my dignity to talk about American politics in this blog. I still do find it demeaning to talk about American Politics - considering that they don't let me vote for their president (and why should they?). But I will make an exception this time.

Firstly, why do I consider it below my dignity to talk about American Politics? Because, (and this is true) - America is the land of plenty. American politics are the politics of plenty. I don't know about you, but I do hail from a land of over-whelming poverty. A land where it would be an insult to discuss obesity or abortion on a national stage. There, accroding to me are more pressing issues than the above. And that's why I manitain (from a third world perspective) that American Politics is a sad joke.

But I will discuss it here, because these trivial concerns (abortion, gay marriage and obesity) govern the world today. That's because the American people elect someone based (mainly) on these concerns. And the elected individuals have the capacity to destroy the world many times over. They are demonstrating this power in Iraq right now. I do believe I have a stake in this: this is my planet too!

I was watching the Republican and the Democratic debates on TV. They don't have a shortage of candidates, both the sides. The canditates range from the sincere to the pretentious - and the, well, deluded.

Among all the Republicans that talked, I thought there was one person who made a lot of sense. And he was from Texas (the irony is palpable). He is a republican that even Noam Chomsky (uttering whose name is a taboo on American Media) would be proud of. A conservative that convices you that conservativism need not be chauvansim. An American politician who is not ashamed of admitting to a series of foreign policy gaffes that Chomsky has been crying himself hoarse about since god knows when. I am talking about Dr. Ron Paul, perhaps the only reasonable, non hypocritical person running the race.

The tragedy is (and he knows it as well) that he will never win - not even the nomination. That's democracies for you! The sensible person seldom does win. It is usually the blow-hard. Take his argument with Guiliani in the aforementioned debate. He beat Guiliani hollow in the debate - and the latter managed to salvage some pride by taking a cheap shot at invoking patriotism.

Even the media, it seems, has lost its capacity to make independent judgements - though some will argue it never had any. I would guess the risk of being branded "unpatriotic" is too much for the media in this country - or any country for that matter. For the immeditate result would be an en-masse withdrawal of sponsors - which is the life line of the media. How unbiased can reporting be if there is a strong financial disincentive from making calls that one deems rational? And thus, you get a "mainstream" line: a line toed by everyone - except by the often courageous jesters such as Stewart, Maher and Colbert - and ostracized rationalists like Chomsky (and international students like yours truly).

To me, this is the ultimate failure of democracy and capitalism. A system that elects jingoists and kills rationalists - that's what democracy is. Back in India, Look at Modi. How on earth do you think the BJP is holding on to the reins in Gujarat? Good governance? Perhaps only partially so. Nationalism thrives on fanaticism, something that people earlier reserved for religion.

Going Home

In a week, I will be on the familiar shores of Motherland. Perhaps that's where all the familiarity ends, for I will be staying with my parents who have just moved to a coastal town in India's most fanatically right wing state from a confused, electric power deficient, "quasi-industrialised" state. I will refer to my trip as "home-going" rather than home-coming. For I am going to an unfamiliar place (home) from a familiar place (apartment in College Station). Ironic. Further details regarding the location of home are with-held - in case some fanatic nut tries to beat up yours truly in the airport.

To say that Motherland has been missed would not be an exaggeration. Of course, when one thinks of home one cannot but help think of the stray dogs, the stray cows, the filthy roads, the honking horns, the unhygienic roadside food, the omniscient Auto-Rickshaws, the corrupt policemen, the utter lack of infrastructure, the slums beside the railway track to name a few. But there is something strangely peaceful and therapeutic about the chaotic streets brimming with life. There is never a lonely moment in India.

The frequent reader will testify to the fact that I have devoted almost all my posts to India in the two years that I have been beyond its borders. Going to India after two years (in both of which the 8% growth rate has been breached) - one does expect a few significant changes. I will tabulate some significant changes expected in this blog.

What I expect to see in Urban India is a much larger upper middle class - a more significantly prosperous section of society. I see more shopping malls, more multi-plexes to cater to this huge new market. I see lots of Walmart Clones.

And yet, I see lots of poor destitutes. I see lots of abused children, I see barking dogs everywhere. There's so many poor people in India that lifting some out of poverty is like emptying an ocean with a small tumbler. I don't see their number reduce in the near future, 8% growth or not.

I expect to see child laborers working for rich people, I expect to see vast stretches of lovely highways flanked by the occasional slum. I expect to see that familiar disdain for traffic rules on city streets, I expect to see a civic infrastructure absolutely incapable of handling the generous monsoon rainfall.

And before all that I expect a grumpy immigration clerk be rude to one and all. The first rude person I would have encountered in two years. I expect to see an Airport with too many people. I expect to see traffic that cannot even move.


The point is, if one expects the worst, then one can only be pleasantly surprised.

And I would also like to announce to the casual reader of this blog - that the motive of this visit is not mere tourism. There is a more significant reason for this trip, the reason being that the author is getting hitched, taking the plunge, tying the knot - basically indulging in matrimony. The little woman is halfway to India as I write this blog. Probably asleep flying over the Atlantic ocean somewhere.

India Guilty for G.W.?

Politicians never cease to surprise me - in their shamelessness and utter stupidity. And the latest Bushism, holding India among those "responsible" for global warming is just worth a good laugh - little else. I'm laughing so much that I'm not able to focus on work. So, I will rant and rave and get it out of my system.

It is a cynical laugh, a resigned laugh. A sad laugh which concedes that the world is run by individuals with negligible IQs and big mouths. And what scares me is that such people are in charge of weapons that can destroy the planet many times over - and history has shown - are not afraid to use them.

Picture someone, say Bill Gates (for want of a richer guy) walking down the street - nay - driving down the street in a Hummer (for want of a more polluting vehicle). Picture a grad student (for want of a poorer person) driving her bike innocuously on that "bike lane". And picture Bill Gates stopping beside the bike and exclaiming "You are so shameless, you {female dog}! Do you have any idea how much pollution making those tires of your bike causes? How much CO2 do you think the manufacture of that thing pumps into the atmosphere? You'll kill my planet."

A tad exaggerated, of course - but I trust you get my point.

A math course perhaps would have done these people a whole world of good. I idea of comparing nations as a whole (as opposed to per-capita comparisons) is incredibly stupid. It is incredibly stupid while comparing economies - and even stupider while comparing environmental effects.

I do believe that there is very little that outraged rhetoric can achieve, so let me change gears into full- blown satire. (Not that satire will achieve anything either - but it is much more fun!)

So, let me quote a report from an international Journal. Let's say, Science.
-----------------------------------

India IS Responsible For Global Warming

By Lunatic, Some.

Recent Studies by Exxon Mobil have shown that the Over-Indulgence of the Americans (OIA) is not a significant factor in increasing greenhouse gas levels in the world. The study further states that the carbon dioxide combines with oxygen and water under sunlight to produce acetone and sugar. Acetone has a low boling point - and actually cools the atmosphere.

The main reason for global warming, the study then goes on to say, is bovine flatulence in India. The report quotes "A cow in India is fed grass - which makes the flatulence contain a significantly high portion of methane. Methane is a global warming gas. It is anticipated that god lights methane up to keep himself warm - and some of that heat inevitably leaks back to earth. Even though, at a given time, the US has a billion live cows, they are not harmful to the planet - as they are fed a diet rich in meat made from other cows. This creates a sort of endless cannibalistic loop that would be extremely freakish if the species in question was Human Beings. American Bovine flatulence does not consist of mehane. And most of these cows are killed young for their meat. Studies have shown that only old cows can warm the globe"

The study has the following recommendations:

1. Abolish Hinduism as a religion since God created cows so that humans could eat them. People praying cows (as opposed to preying on them) are infidels. India can subsequently be colonized and the Indians (whatever we leave of them) will be forced to kill and eat cows.

2. More automobiles should be used. The use of cycles should be banned as the amount of CO2 emitted by their manufacture is inadequate. Hummers should replace SUVs and SUVs should replace sedans.

3. Hybrid vehicles should be illegal. This can be achieved by stipulating certain maximum mileage standards. Every car should achieve less than 11 miles to the gallon - failing which there will be a significant tax disincentive.

4. Anybody Driving A Hybrid Should be: given lethal injection.

More recommendations will be aired on Fox soon.

-------------------------------------------------------

I hope I did not overdo it this time.

A.

N'Kisi

Are birds really that stupid? My previous article would seem to say so, but the reality is far, far different. Birds are actually very intelligent. Empirical Evidence suggests that they do indeed solve non-linear partial differential equations while they fly; they do have a reasonably philosophical insight into quantum mechanics. I regret the stand taken in my previous post and I retract the same in all humility.

Their genius lies in looking aloof. The are great at looking like they're stupid, when in reality, they are little Einstiens flying around deriving E = m * c^2 in their heads. It is birds, not us who run this planet. We spent millenia trying to imitate them (by flying) - and we still need airports with huge conrtrete run-ways. How smart can we be?

How do I know this? Ah, that's because of N'kisi, the parrot.

Birds, in general, are quite good at keeping secrets. They have not let us know that they are incredibly intelligent. (When I say "all birds are intellegent", I mean "all" with the exception of dodos. Only idiots would go extinct before taking over the world. Evolve better or die.)

Just like every dam has a leak and every rose has its thorn, every species has its lunatic. Someone who would love to let the proverbial cat out of the bag. And that someone is N'kisi, the parrot.

N'kisi is a foolish bird. It pays no attention in school when the teachers are discussing the commandment of secrecy. It is busy eating some worms. So when the teacher goes onto "we shall never let any other species even suspect....", N'kisi is eating the aforementioned worm with great relish. It licks the slimy scales of the worm and ingests it like a grad student would ingest a Ramen Noodle. To N'kisi, the teacher is as good as inexistent.

In a few days after "graduation", N'kisi lured a human into captivity - a moved "frowned upon" by the feathered elders, but not strictly taboo. N'kisi made the human pamper it with milk - and loads and loads of sumptuous maggots. In return, N'kisi derived the grand unification theory of quantum mechanics and general relativity on a peice of paper, but the human thought it was some illegible garbage and threw that paper away.

N'kisi then realised that the average human would not know opportunity if it bit them in the bottom. So, N'kisi decided on a slightly more devious course of action. It would excite the humans by uttering some "cute words" every now and then. It could laugh its head off by looking at the interest generated amongst people.

So, next time someone showed it a picture of a guy popping his head out of a car, N'kisi bellowed "Uh-oh, you put your head out!". On smelling some nice oils, it exclaimed "Pretty smell medicine". You can see how much excitement it would have generated (and it did).

Feathered Elder the Esteemed Kiki was not a very happy parrot. It was a learned bird with greying feathers and a flowing white beard to boot. It was in the twilight of its life, but it was a passionate philosopher, nevertheless. It had written down the grand unification theory in a poem form which went:

Water bird eat pig
I buy you new wig.

Brick cat eat mat.
Happy bubble is cat.

Big fat man is meat
When he dies we will eat.

We will become big fat bird,
Big fat man will eat us then.

This poem was considered a gem. That the last two lines did not rhyme added to the mystery, the intrigue of the poem. This poem was Kiki's highest point in life. But I digress. This is N'kisi's story. Kiki's story will be told. Not today, though.


Kiki had never seen anything like this before. No bird had ever been stupid enough to spill the beans to the humans. If the humans ever got to know the secret, there would be hell to pay fo all the birds. It was okay that dogs knew : they never could harm anyone except each other. But man was a particularly stupid yet malicious animal. An animal that should have been pecked into extinction by those negligent vultures millions of years ago.

Kiki was apalled that N'kisi was so insensitive. It decided to have N'kisi killed. Brutally snuffed.

Moral of Story:

Independent thought is a dangerous thing, even if you are a parrot. You must always conform to society, or else someone will kill you. Brutally snuff you.

(I would also like to tell you that I did not think of this story myself.)

Three Stupid Birds

Birds are not known for their intelligence. As a matter of fact, most of them are just plain stupid. They don't solve partial differential equations in their free time; all they do is make those irritating chirping noises. They don't ponder over the meaning on life while sailing the silken blue sky; they chase worms instead.

Three instances demonstrating the intellectual negligibility of birds are documented herewith, lest some people succumb to the temptation of conceding that birds are actually intelligent. After reading this article, the reader will never look at a bird and go "If only I could understand what that little guy is thinking!". Because that bird is probably thinking of worms to eat, little else.

Let us go back to July 2004, a time when lots of people I knew were graduating from IIT Madras. I was not, but a lot of my colleagues were. And we were sitting in that jam-packed auditorium in that miserable Chennai Heat (it was 38+ outside). And guess what was flying inside the auditorium? A bird. Damn thing was trying its best to get out. But all it would do is try to fly out, bang into a transparent window, fall down and repeat the aforementioned procedure ad nauseam. Rather than watch my friends graduate, I watched the bird confuse itself. It made me wonder: how did the damn thing ever eat? How did it grow so old?

Say whatever you might want to about the average bird, but you would never expect to see a bird make mistakes while flying. The bird might not have a philosophical understanding of Quantum Mechanics, but it surely knows where it is flying. No chance of it banging into a tree or something. No chance of it hitting a gradual cyclist, you might say. But you're wrong. A clueless crow actually banged (beak first) into yours truly - when I was biking near the hostel. I had a scratch for a couple of days on my person as evidence for the vicious attack.

This stupidity is certainly not just limited to avians in the sub-continent. The lack of intellect is universal - as evidenced by a recent incident in College Station. Here's what happened. I was walking down the street and I heard a mild "thud". I thought it was a meteor or something and was shocked for a moment. I looked around to investigate and there was a pigeon which appeared shaken. It was stumbling on the ground. What happened was that the stupid bird forgot to flap its wings and hit the ground. (It probably was thinking: "I know I'm supposed to be doing something now. What could it be?").

Of course there are stupider birds in the world. There's the sparrow which hit the fan in my bed room once, but I don't want to document it as stupid as the poor soul is no more. There's the parrot which bit me when I was two years old - but I don't want this post to look like personal vendetta, so I won't mention that either.

For once I feel thankful that I am a human and not a bird. But lots of people will contend that I am as stupid as one of the birds for writing this post. I can't say that they are entirely wrong.

Why the IITs are Dying

It really breaks my heart to launch this vicious tirade "against" my alma-mater. I hope this assault is not viewed as ingratitude or malice. Because I had five of the best years of my life at IIT Madras, where I met the best people in the world and worked with some of the finest brains in Indian Academia.

There is a virus infecting the IIT system in India. And this virus is not Ramiah, everybody's punching bag. Neither is it Bansal nor Fiitjee. The whole thing goes much deeper. IITs are actually a very unique institution. They are Nehru's brainchilds, relics of a socialist era that India has left behind.

In a land with almost no quality educational options, IITs are a guarantee of a six figure salary - a guarantee of a life filled with relative prosperity. And it is this natural quest for money (and often, sadly, an American Job) that makes parents coerce their children into studying for a horrendously difficult exam. Crammeries such as the aforementioned Ramiah and Bansals abound - and with their draconian regulations, they "coach" the average student to "crack" the J.E.E.

In a land with over-whelming poverty, the very idea of "interest" is a luxury. It is often very likely that a certain student's major holds no passion for the student. Whilst a student might love finance, he might find himself working on Civil Engineering.

I am a Mechanical Engineer. I was in a batch of 75 students, most of whom are very intelligent. The top few in the batch were excellent mechanical engineers. They made their way into MIT, Illiois-Urbana and the like for a Masters Degree - and look! It now disgusts me to say that they have currently prostituted themselves into working for companies such as Capital One and Standard Chartered as business consultants. Why did the Indian taxpayers spend 5 lakhs per head on each of them? So that they can go to a foreign land and work on a foreign field? Return on investment, I don't think so.

But one must not blame the students entirely. Passion is a difficult emotion to cultivate - especially in the dog-eat-dog world of many, many Indians battling for the same scarce resources. In the U.S. even a waiter at McDonalds gets enough to live well. And since ample educational opportunities are available (albeit at a price) - a person interested in finance actually can pursue finance in the undergraduate years (change branches, if necessary). Not so, in India. It is either an engineer or a doctor - unless you are some sort of a nut.

And let's not let the teachers off the hook, either. I had a few miserable experiences back there at IIT (and I won't name names right now). [Though more than 60% were fantastic!]. I have issues with the kind of research they do there: philosophical and profound:yes, but realistic? That is debatable. In most good US universities, the industry funding model is quite robust - forcing a degree of realism. India will get there soon, one hopes.

I reallty don't see any hope for the undergraduates at IIT. Though there are a few students who do pursue PhDs in the long run, (and make a difference to society in the field they were trained to work on at IIT) - that percentage is dwindling - thanks to seductive offers made by those "investment bankers" in India itself! I think India should also upgrade its other colleges to IIT level. Nothing could be better than making all local colleges as good as IIT at the U.G level. (But where will be get the teachers from?).

The only hope for IITs is to reinvent themselves as good graduate schools. And the IITs have started work in that direction with the introduction of "dual degrees" (like yours truly). I wish them all the best in the future. And I also hope that they get some competition from the scary monopoly they have on talent.

The Rise of Fundamentalist Atheism

All faith systems, alas, even the much hyped "scientific method" are prey to the disease of intolerance and fanaticism. This extends to nationalism (who can explain the blind reverence that some Americans have for their Second Amendment despite numerous shocking and crippling shooting incidents?), to religion (of course) and even to research - but that is a different story, altogether.

And I shall join hands with those irksome pop-culture "philosophers" , Trey Parker and Matt Stone in assaulting one Richard Dawkins - the closest Atheists have come to a suicide bomber. And in critiquing Dawkins, I must say that I am not in the best place: I have not read even one of his books. But I have heard him speak on youtube, which, people will certify is the next best thing to reading his books. And for smug loudmouths like yours truly, those speeches provide ample fodder to judge him.

I am not debating Prof. Dawkins' beliefs. I am an atheist myself and I do appreciate why he thinks the way he does. I do get irked when I see irrational blind faith, but I have the good sense to keep it to myself. Prof Dawkins does not.

Being an evolutionary biologist, Prof. Dawkins must realize that this "susceptibility" to believe in a supernatural being has evolved alongside humanity. Every culture in the world demonstrates this susceptibility- from the Pagans in the days of old to the Scientologists of today. The Egyptians had their Gods and Godesses as did the Greeks, as did the Indians (and they still do!). They might have been delusional - but this delusion kept them organized. And organization kept them resilient. Organization let them live long enough (by defeating and killing other not-so-organized tribes) to pass on their "delusion-susceptible" DNA.

And in the days of old where record was kept primarily by word of mouth, it is easy to see how an individual deemed exemplary and inspiring by his/her contemporaries (or even evil and ruthless, for that matter) gets deified in time. Grandparents would be telling their grandchildren "I knew this man who laid down his life for saving the whole town from the pack of wolves". The grandchildren would then tell their grandchildren "There was a great man with two heads who was eaten by savage beasts". And so on, until the "great man" becomes a deity. Because people like inspiring / horrifying stories.

People like inspiration. People like to know that there is someone out there who is better. And this whole thing ultimately formalizes into organized religion. Usually, the diktats issued by "holy books" are usually compassionate and constructive to society. And the stories help define, to the average clueless human being, the difference between good bad. Prof. Dawkins ignores the fact that most human beings have better things to do in their lives than decide what is good and what is bad using their own common sense. What religion does is that it serves it on a platter for them. It makes sure that people do not reinvent the wheel.

What prof. Dawkins' must do is focus on the real virus. The very concept of nationality.

Prof. Dawkins' views on how the world ought to be are impractical, that is a given. If he is prepared to have impractical views, why not have anti-border views? Borders create all the wars in the world. Not religion. The differences based of nationality are more bigoted and dangerous than religion.

Or is he uncomfortable with the idea of a Bangladeshi farmers (say) settling down in Oxford (or Cambridge or wherever he is)?

Design of Religion: A Case for Universal Scaling

A lot has been said about evolution by notable scientific minds, right from Darwin to Dawkins, throwing in the odd Gregor Mendel and the odder Khorana. Engineers have exploited this too: the use of genetic algorithms to in optimization problems has gained mainstream acceptance. Even if it has not gained "mainstream acceptance", it is quite a nice tool to obfuscate and obscure paper titles and give them an aura of erudite sophistication. “Fin Heat Transfer Enhancement: The Genetic Algorithm- Aritifical Neural Network Approach”

Evolution is a philosophy which explains why things are they way they are. Of course, it explains why manta rays are shaped they way they are; why elephants are so large and humans are so (allegedly) intelligent. But it also applies to the laptop that I am typing on right now, the car which is giving me such a hard time of late (but that's a different story). It applies to the chair that I am sitting on, the music I am listening to. Everything. And also to the religion that some people, alas, believe in and kill in the name of. Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism and anything else that I might have left behind.

Let me elaborate on what I mean by the evolution of the chair I am sitting on. The first chairs, in the world were, presumably tree stumps (or something similar) that people sat on. Then, some enterprising guy (or gal) decided that having something portable that could be sat on made a lot of sense. So they probably chopped a block off a tree and sat on it at home. And in time with commerce arose a "breed" of people (if I may use that therm inoffensively) who were adept at fashioning tree stumps into stools that other people could use. And these people used tools, which had, in a similar process evolved to make the task of creating a rudimentary stool easy. Chairs made of banana tree trunks would not have worked at all, while chairs working out of teak stems would have worked very well. So, no chair would be made of banana - and more would be made of teak in the future.

Human selection.

And in a few thousand years - presto - we have leather swivel chairs, plastic molded chairs, fold-able outdoor chairs, massage chairs in the airport, those extremely uncomfortable university chairs .. all made to be as comfortable and durable as they can be made for the price they are sold at. Future innovations on chair design, just like the innovations in the past will continue to be market-determined - evolution will move in a direction dictated by overall profits of the chair manufacturing concern.

This brings us to a paradox of sorts.

The chair designers are indeed intelligent. And there have been a large number of intelligent designers working on chairs. This could mean that creationism and evolution can both exist. Or this could also push us into greater irrelevance.

For creationism to be compatible with Human Evolution, one must allow for the possibility of a designer fiddling with the DNA of any living thing and shaping every little variation of weather, every little earthquake, every little green man from mars .. you name it. To do all this, one must envisage a perfect being that does all these things – or an army of less than perfect beings, who design everything in the universe. To them the human being is like a chair. Humans use chairs to sit on. What does this army of omnipotent beings use humans for? Presumably not for sitting on. Maybe we’re just a toy for their children (assuming they do have children). Or maybe we’re reality show (Universal Idol?).

Or maybe, the very concept life is overrated. Maybe in the larger scheme of things, we’re just as significantly insignificant as DNA is to us macroscopically. Maybe we’re all just the DNA for the monsters that we create -viz. Religions, Nations, Sects, Cricket Teams... Maybe the evolution of religion (or Nationalism) is just like the evolution of man; with the DNA strands and RNA strands replaced by men and women – just information carriers. All “intelligent” choices that man makes could be analogous to the randomness and mutation that human evolution survives on.

Walmart Comes to India

Five hundred years or so after the British East India Company came by to India and dropped anchor for a good four hundred years, another global Goliath, Walmart is deciding to set sail for India - to sell extremely inexpensive goods to India's more-than-a-billion Davids, sourced presumably from China and India. This article is an attempt at prognostication: it will try to put a human face to lives ruined by this capitalist foray.

Turn front the clock six years (in the spirit of turning back the clock). The year is 2013. Walmart has completed its foray into India - having set up in excess of four hundred stores - almost at least one per each and every economically significant community in India.

The Singhs

Mr. Balbir Singh Jr. was a eleven year old child in Luknow. His father (Balbir Singh Sr.) was what was called a "procurer - seller", and individual who would buy foodgrains from farmers for Rs 0.50 per kilo and sell them to retailers in the same town for Rs. 4 per kilo. The grain would be brought to a government constructed godown by the farmers on their trusty bullock carts, and would be picked up by truckers operating on behalf of city-based kirana stores from the same godown. Balbir Singh Sr. would pocket this Rs. 3.50 per kilo as profit and educate Balbir Singh Jr. in an expensive English Medium School. Mr. Singh Sr. was what academicians considered "a middle man". He was so much a middle man that if middle men ever formed a political party, it would be quite probable that Mr. Sing Sr. would be their poster man. The party would probably be called CPI (M), with the "M" standing for Middlemen.

Mr. Singh's business model was quite robust. He was exploiting the illiteracy of his suppliers by paying them only Rs. 0.50 per kilo. And by paying them only Rs 0.50 per kilo, he would ensure that none of their children could ever afford to go to school. So, they would never learn how they were being ripped off.

Yet Walmart put a big question mark on Mr. Singh Jr's future and Mr. Singh Sr.'s livelihood. Here's how.

• Walmart was cheap: Much cheaper than local Kirana stores. Despite the fact that the shops were 30km away, the villagers sent their wives to Walmart to buy food every week. They would go walking and come back walking with a cardboard carton on their heads - just like they carried water from the well 40km away on other days. They started doing this as soon as Walmart opened. On looking at their Walmart bill, they realized that they saved Rs. 50 ($1.10) on average every month. They used this to educate their children in the local school. And somewhere in 2011, their children realized that Mr. Singh was ripping them off.
• Walmart Started Buying Direct: An enterprising walmart manager, in 2009, realized that they could buy the groceries directly from farmers. This was a breakthrough as they paid the farmers Rs. 3 per kilo of rice (and sold it at Rs. 3.50 per kilo). Soon, word started to spread that the farmers were getting a good deal from Walmart. More started to sell to walmart.
• The great middle man strike: Some idiot in the local faction of the CPI came up with the brainwave of crippling the society by making the middle men go on strike to protest the "unfair business practices" adopted by Walmart. Needless to say, society flourished like never before. This was the end of the middle men.

The Venkataappans

When little Liela Venkataappan was asked what her father did for a life, she would stand embarassed for a little while, and then say what she was taught to say: her father was a "political operator." And that, of course was a euphemism for "goonda". Her father was one of Tal Bhakeray's minions in Mumbai. He had taken pride in digging up the pitch in the match against Pakistan in Mumbai long ago - as a matter of fact, he held that as the pinnacle of his career. He was also instrumental in burning theaters that screened Mira Nair's movie about lesbianism, "fire". (We will let the fact that he was in actuality a closet homosexual be for now.)

When Tal Bhakeray learned that Walmart was giving the middle men (one of his most important constituencies) a tough time, he decided to end Walmart. So, he sent Mr. Venkatappan to a walmart with an army of people to create entropy. After Venkatappan went to Walmart to strart wrecking the asiles, be came to the television asile. There, he saw a 29" flat screen color T.V for Rs. 2500. ($60)

He bought it. This great deal ensured that he did not have the heart to destroy walmart. He called off the attack. This enraged Tal, and Venkatappan was fired. And Ms. Leila's future was in the same trouble that Mr. Singh Jr's was.

Mr. Robson Walton

Mr. Walton was Mr. Walton's son, the latter being the founder of Wat-Mart. He had had high hopes for India. A billion customers made his mouth drool and his eyes open wide in 2007. So, he set up more than 400 stores in India, just like he would have set up in the U.S.

He set them up with massive parking lots in sub-urban areas.

Any Indian would tell you that this was a recipe for disaster. Not many people have cars in India. They have scooters and cycles and they use public transport. His business model was benefiting only 5% of the population. This kept the registers ringing, profits were modest - but not astronomical. The poorest of the poor would seldom use Wal-mart, save the odd woman from a nearby village who would carry the food back at home in a cardboard carton.

These were not happy days for Mr. Walton. He saw his business margins decrease over time, when other Indian retailers started delivering goods for "free" at home. Mr Walton had reformed retail in India - but had not got a big slice of the initial pie. Much like Kelloggs revolutionized corn-flakes in India - pushing up drastically the sales of their competitors by their advertising. Mr. Waton got together a team to do some further brainstorming. He had some serious food for thought.

Obtituaries of a Car and a Team

Death of Car

My car (an antiquated Eagle Talon) has passed away. This post is being written in its memory. There shall be no funeral and cremation. It will be unceremoniously trashed in some junkyard. You see, a couple of days prior to D( Death ) -Day, the car was doing fine, save a mildly disconcerting low frequency noise when the steering wheel was operated. So, the vehicle was driven to Houston and back at speeds around the speed limit. The car held up. In hindsight, that was a miracle.

And then next day, it's drizzling a bit : and we're at that benign parking lot at H-E-B where the car is moving. And all of a sudden, I realize that it is no longer on four wheels but is actually on three. Further investigations showed that one of the wheels, in a brazen display of gross insubordination to the engine of the vehicle, decided to go its on way - separating from the axle after breaking some critical components.

After a rather panicky call to the AAA guys, the car was towed to a Firestone (a grossly overpriced automotive repair chain in the U.S.) . The next morning, the price of the repair was quoted to be of the order of the price one would get on selling the god-forsaken vehicle (after repairs). Futile attempts to get the repair done were quashed by wiser counsels, who did not seem forgive the car for almost killing one and all.

The car, at this moment in time has been pulled from Firestone and is currently languishing in the parking lot of my apartment complex. Attempts to resurrect the same using other mechanics (for half the cost) have come under attack too - for the aforementioned wiser counsels contend that the resurrected vehicle might physically ascend to heaven (along with all passengers carried within) in around 40 days from the date of resurrection.

The death of the vehicle forced one to rent another to do some mandatory travel. We used a Jeep Liberty, as all the smaller vehicles were out of stock. This "other" vehicle, in my opinion, is one of the causes of all the problems in the world today. It is causing the Iraq war by demanding and guzzling oil. It is spitting out lethal amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere heating up the world. I am trying to make up for all the pollution caused by the vehicle by riding my cycle to work - even to Turbolab, which is 4 miles away.

Death of a Team

More startling than the perishment (sic.) of my car was the recent perishment (sick.) of the Indian team in the West Indies - first against Bangladesh and then against Sri Lanka. As a matter of fact, the two most populous cricketing nations, India and Pakistan crashed out of the world cup. This is, in my opinion, a farce of astronomical proportions perpetrated on the general populace of both the nations by monopolistic cricket boards. Because, if you choose the best from a billion people, then you ought to produce a better team than choosing from 20 million people (Australia).

Only an absolute idiot or an absolute optimist would ever want their children to play professional (first class) cricket in India, because of probability of success is almost zero. Being good at sport will not get you anywhere. Engineers and Doctors can be relied on to put food on the table, not first class cricketers.

A business model that respects the talented and pays then enough to take the game seriously is the most important need of the hour. And it's not as if this model is unheard of. Consider this. This is a shameful Statistic. Since we all agree that regional cricket matches in India are not really a crowd magnet,

Number of ODI tickets sold in India per year = 15 * 30,000 = 4.5 lakh
Number of "Football" tickets sold by Texas A&M Univiersity in College Station = 6 * 82,000 ~ 4.5 lakh again!

The number of ODI tickets sold by India (which by far exceed any other sport in India) ~ Number of Tickets sold by a large American University for its team for its most popular sports. And consider this. There's a lot of other universities in this country. There's a lot of other sports (basketball comes to Mind). And this is just "college athletics" There's also professional athletics, which is much more popular than college athletics in the US.

India is a MASSIVELY UNDERTAPPED MARKET when it comes to cricket - or sport in general. There's a lot of big bucks to be made if some entrepreneur comes up with a more effective business model - maybe of a more compact model of cricket (20-20, perhaps?). The BCCI monopoly should be challenged. And this should be done by revoking the BCCI's exclusive license to represent India.

Of Engineers and Math

Just like mechanics need to know how to use their wrenches and hammers, engineers need to know how to use their mathematics. Engineers need an intuitive (as opposed to abstract) understanding of mathematics - even more in this era of specialization. Almost all empirical work has been done preservers like Edison more than 100 years ago. Edison's mathematical illiteracy could not let him see the Benifits of Nicola Tesla and Alternating Current. His approach to solving problems was not good enough even during his own life!

Today, almost every simple economically viable thing has been invented. All further "empirical" work is best left to managers, not engineers. Engineers (the good ones at least) emphasize more on understanding and exploiting complex phenomena. And the understanding of complex phenomena often implies a comprehensive and intuitive understanding of Mathematics - as opposed to the abstract understanding (or lack thereof) that mathematicians restrict themselves to.

It is this sentiment that has suddenly dawned upon yours truly. I have realized that I have wasted a significant portion of my life developing only a cursory understanding - certainly not comprehensive and intuitive - of mathematics. Am I letting myself atrophy into one of those mediocre, uninspiring researchers whose papers I see so often in journals?

It is here that I can start to count my blessings. I am in one of the World's largest universities which offers a plethora of courses in every conceivable field. Mathematics. Physics. You name it. I am now going to build a plan for my doctorate. Because nothing inspires more than old fashioned classes.

I need to cover the following more topics in Physics, Math and Engineering Before I pack my bags from here.

1. Hydrodynamic Stability Theories; Transition to Turbulence
2. Multiphase Flow
3. Statistical Thermodynamics
4. Microfluidics
5. Radiative Heat Transfer in detail
6. Convective Heat Transfer in detail

Math:

1. Tensor Analysis (I've done enough to "develop a feel" for it in Turbulence and CFD).
2. Complex Analysis
3. Perturbation Methods
4. Dynamical Systems and Chaos

It might look a little ambitious - but that's just 10 more courses. With a more comprehensive understanding of math, I will no more bow my head in shame when someone talks of Banach Spaces, Cayley-Hamilton Theorems, Christoffel Symbols (which I have been seeing a lot of late in the CFD class).

To the engineer, a formula is of little use unless it comes with an intuitive meaning. Take the Fourier transforms, for instance. Or let's just stick to Fourier series. If you ask a mathematician what the integral over the period of the function actually means, he/she will wince uncomfortably. But a competent engineer will come up with his but of "intuitive" bit of understanding which could go something like:

Consider a periodic funtion with a zero mean value. The integral over the period of the periodic function with sin (or cos) tells you how "similar" the function is to the sine or the cosine. The largest possible absolute value is when the function is an amplitude-scaled replica of the sinusoidal function, the lowest when there is no similarity at all - zero. The integral actually gives you the "contribution" of the sine signal of that particular frequency to the total signal. This can be repeated for other frequencies. And a Fourier series can thus be constitutive. That these amplitudes are additive stems from the orthogonality of the sine functions at different frequencies.

It would be great if I could put meanings to equations more comfortably. And you know what that is called: PHYSICS. After all, an engineer is a physicist with a more comprehensive understanding of economics than math.

How the west was won over by utter irrelevance

The year was 2012 and the Americans were about elect a candidate from the L.A.U.G.H Party president. His name was Jay Letterman - and is now Jay Brown (after a divorce).

This is his story - and an inspiration to one and all. To all those people who feel ashamed that their beloved media is spending too much time on frivolities such as bald musicians (and I use the term "musicians" loosely). To all those people who feel disappointed that the most important news story in the world is the untimely death of one B-grade (grotesquely voluptuous) model - when gazillions of people are perishing in a humanitarian disaster perpetrated (on flimsy grounds) by their beloved government. To all those people have not even heard of the recent terrorist attacks on the train in India from their media outlets - but would have wanted to hear about it. You might be non-conformists right now - but you can conform. There is still hope for you: you can still lower your standards substantially and pander. And then, you can be president of the "free world". A world where you are free to talk about bald actresses and celebrities behaving badly.

Jay Letterman wasn't doing anything right earlier. He was the president of International Red Cross, he was the director of Green-Peace (American Chapter). He was actually wasting time in Iraq by sending food to the starving population of that country. And when he was in the US, he was negotiating with the auto-companies a significant reduction on the numbers of SUVs. He was letting himself atrophy with these politically irrelevant activities. In the meanwhile he missed Paris Hilton's public embarrassment when she wore the wrong shoes on the wrong feet. He missed Britney spears forgetting to brush her teeth. It was almost as if there was no hope at all.

And then one fine day realization dawned. He saw God in a dream. God reportedly chastised him for not doing something that the American People really cared about. He told him that he (Letterman) was a prophet and his sole job was to tell the American people about what really mattered: bald Britneys and the like. He told him that the rest of the world was a mere barn for America to milk. Just like cows are inferior to man (in that men eat cows), the rest of the world was inferior to anything from America - even bald actresses.

So, the next day, Jay Letterman stopped all his follies in Iraq and at home. He spent his life talking about bald actresses and gay marriage. He debated with finesse. He was both clean and articulate. He formed a new political party called the LAUGH. (League of Adventurous, Useful and Great Homo-erectusses (sic)) . The American people found the issues put forth by the party particularly germane to their way of life. The Laughs' take on the number of brush strokes per tooth brushing session (32 - one per tooth!) was found to be exactly what the people wanted.

And with all American "conscience" focused on Bald Britneys, Ballihurton ( a firm CEOod by Cick Dheney) Conquered the entire middle east and charged exhorbitant rates for a gallon of oil. Their reign was cut short by an intellegent Indian inventing a solar cell with 80% efficiency. Though they (Ballihurton) managed to get the Indian killed, he had posted a blueprint on wikipedia.

Entropy Decreasing?

A few days ago, I had a big scare. The scare came from the home of the Loch-ness Monster, Scotland. The scare almost destroyed me.

My career looked like it was going to go drown the drain. The middle east looked like it would not be in so much trouble anymore; and Exxon Mobil stocks would be on the verge of plummeting. And global warming looked like it was about to stop happening.

You see, I work on Energy Technologies. My guide makes his $$$$ by helping incrementally increase the efficiency of gas turbine engines by the order of 0.0000001%. My entire career depends on two things:

• Energy Scarcity
• Bitchiness of Navier-Stokes. (this will be discussed later).
  

So, when I read that some people invented a genuine microscopic Maxwell Daemon, I was shell-shocked. (The U.S government invented the macroscopic Maxwell Daemon. I have scrutinized it here a long ago). Doing some horribly complicated nano-molecular chemistry (in the description of which the term "rotaxane" is employed), a molecular ratchet has been developed by Serelli et.al . in Edinburgh, Scotland. Undoubtedly, they developed it to keep the Loch Ness monster company.

A real Maxwell Daemon will destroy energy scarcity. Here's how.

• Suppose you have a room filled with slow molecules colliding with each other. They form the "cold fluid".
• Suppose you then introduce some really fast molecules to the room. This would be the "hot fluid".
• These fast molecules will collide with the slower ones - and they will keep colliding forever- eventually each and every molecule has the same velocity on average. The system attains a state of equilibrium. The molecules still keep colliding, mind you. But they do not transfer any energy on the net to each other. The gas it as the "equilibrium" temperature.
  
• Though the odd molecule might get as fast as the one of the original "hot fluid" molecules, it will be a statistical anomaly. You won't be able to extract a set of "fast" molecules. The introduction of the "hot" gas is an irreversible process.
• A Maxwell Daemon would do the needful, actually.
  
• Suppose you introduced an "impenetrable" barrier dividing the room into two. Suppose, you then employed the aforementioned daemon to let only the faster molecules across. Presto! You have hot fluid on one side - and cold fluid on the other side. Build an engine and you can generate electricity.
  
• The Edinburgh daemon does something like this.
  
• A PMM2 could have been achieved. No more energy scarcity.
  

You can imagine how scared I was on reading the Nature article. Scared, I was, until I realized that the Daemon sought photons as renumeration. The Daemon is light powered. You need to expend energy in ensuring that the Daemon does what it is supposed to.

The second law comes across unscathed - at least for now.

Superpower India

The Indian press seems to be saturated with deplorable and delusional reports of India's immediate future as a superpower. Some joker always writes an article in Rediff touting India's "rapid" rise to prominence; NDTV carries an opinion poll on whether India is already a superpower - and all this happens when 60% of the country lives below / near a poverty line. (near enough for discomfort).

While I do not doubt as much that India will rise in power [There's a caveat of course: global warming] in the decades to come - I do not see it happening right now. Such irresponsible banter about "Superpower-dom" shifts the focus from the real issues: hunger, poverty and misery. So, I just had to write the following article.

SUPERPOWER INDIA

Yes, India is a superpower. And it will become a superer power soon. As a matter of fact, it is the Indians who will protect the planet from the green men from outer space who will (presumably) attack us with the intent to terminate all life on planet earth.

Taming the Colonizers

The seeds of superpowerdom were sown by the reverse colonization of the United Kingdom. It is common knowledge that Pt. Ravi Shankar introduced Lennon & Co. to LSD. Do you know what Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds actually stands for? L.S.D as in Lennon - Shankar - Dope. One can therefore say that behind the origin of western pop-culture is a significant Indian hand.

Ethnic Indians, for all vaguely practical purposes, annexed Birmingham (a nondescipt Punjabi city slightly to the northwest of London). They then furthered their reverse colonization cause with the movie "Bend it like Beckham" and by inflicting with Chicken Tikka masala all McDonaldses in the UK. And finishing the job was Ms. Shilpa Shetty's miraculous victory in something called the Celebrity Big Brother (more due to the Indian media throwing a tantrum than anything else). The destruction of one Jade Goody's career and her subsequent presumable conversion the Hinduism seemed to have almost made the sun set on the British Empire.

Then the Tatas took over Corus for $12 billion. It looked like it was all over for the British - even their cricket team was being humiliated down under. The proverbial "last nails" in the coffin. [We will conveniently forget Indian misadventures in South Africa]. But UK still seems to be putting up some sort of fight. Vodafone (a British phone company) procured Hutch for $19 billion. Looks like the Indians will have to crush England mercilessly - just like the British Crushed India in 1919 in Amritsar.

Taming The Empire

Since the neo-natives of the North American empire are extremely jingoistic, the Indian invasion of North America has been far more subtle. Cavalier impositions of Chicken Tikka on McDonalds restaurants will come under attack by Bill O'Reilly or someone - so they won't bring the US to its knees, unlike Britannica. So, the Indians have used a more careful approach. Indians have surreptitiously landed in control of 17% of the US economy (larger than India's economy!). South Asians (another term for Indians) more or less run silicon valley and dominate academic institutions.

India tries to paint a pathetic picture of itself by buying decades old naval vessels and second hand military aircraft. Talks, presumably, are on to buy used American Toilet paper.

But all this is to catch the Americans off guard. To divert the world form the real issues. Indians are ready to conquer this land. And proof of the pudding will be when Abhijit Sawant wins American Idol.

The Farce called "Going Green"

US President, George Bush grudgingly acknowledged that global warming was real in a recent, nationally televised speech ("The State of the Nation"). He suggested a 20% reduction of oil consumption by contemplating "mandating" certain "mileage standards" that automobile manufacturers have to adhere to. And consequently, the American media is saturated with incredible stories of the "oil" president becoming the "green" president.

Companies such as Walmart are trying to do their bit for the environment by stocking more energy efficient lights and "increasing the efficiency of their vehicle fleet by 30%". [A story from CNN]. Oh, and Hybrids and "flex-fuel" vehicles are being sold by everyone from Toyota to GM. Watching the TV here, you would get the feeling that the world is in safe hands.

The bottomline is that all this is a mere pittance. A nothing which shall only delay Armageddon by a couple of years, if at all. [If one were to go by certain estimates]. Perhaps from 2050 to 2052. I might conk off in 2051, but most people won't be so lucky. Let us get this very, very straight: If at all there is a climate change problem facing the world, It's the Americans, the British, The Japanese, the Germans, the South Koreans etc... (the first world, essentially) who are responsible for it. The Americans, more so than anyone else - they have the highest per capita emissions in the world. The average American pollutes the world more than any living entity has ever polluted the earth until now. [Take this wikipedia article with a pinch of salt. Kuwait and Quatar etc. are small export (to the US) oriented industrial countries. And the Virgin Islands is a US colony] The Americans, essentially got the planet into this mess.

They got us (humans and all other living species on this planet) into this mess. They should help get us out of this. But the Americans are actually making money out of it. The American people are nice, well intentioned people. They feel for the planet and they will do anything to save their planet. So, when they are sold eco-friendly products priced slightly higher, they go ahead and buy them. They get that warm feeling in their heart: they believe they are helping make the world a better place. The capitalists have realized that "green" is actually a selling point. They have realized that putting a price tag on that warm feeling is actually profitable. So, they are making more green products.

Corporate America voluntarily going "green" makes a token difference in actuality. It makes a larger difference in perception. The people perceive Walmart as a green company and give it a larger business.

The solution to this mess lies, to a great extent, in the Hands of the spineless (in this respect) US administration. There is only one solution. It is the most obvious solution - a solution that Al Gore dares not dare mention in his documentary ( An Inconvenient Truth). The solution is to impose a significant "green" tax on petrol (or Gas, as it is known in the US). If fuel were priced at $4.50 a gallon in the US (double the current rate) - then emissions would plummet. Innovation in efficiency would get an incentive, as would innovations in alternative energy technologies. That's how to use markets to keep tabs on pollution.

One can see why Mr. Gore dares not suggest this - he would be committing political suicide if he did . No more "Gore for president" ever. How dare someone try to raise taxes in the US? How dare some conscientious soul ever force the Americans to stop stealing the future of the planet?

The west (this applies more to the US than to Europe) is not serious about actually doing anything about Global Warming. It is serious about looking like it is doing something about global warming - so that its people can think that it is doing something about global warming. And if the West can get the people to think it is doing something about g.w. without actually doing anything - then, bully for it. Because, in a real democracy, it's what people think that matters - and not what is really happening. You see, Gore might go ahead and win the damned Nobel Peace prize - despite skirting the real issue - the hedonistic overindulgence of the west.

You know what I think? The world will go "token green". Global warming will change the world as we know it. And Fox News will still deny it.

We all know democracies are not perfect. The response of democracies to this crisis shows us again how imperfect they are.

Utopia

What is Utopia?

The year is 2142, and the world has changed. The world is, against all odds, undergoing an unprecedented era of prosperity. And this era of prosperity has come as a consequence of true globalisation. In the old, primitive 1900s and early 2000s, globalisation meant the unrestricted flow of capital, with a severely restricted flow of labour. Nations had impervious borders.

But today, anyone can live anywhere. A Sri - Lankan peasant has a fair chance of landing a job in Seattle; as does a Seattle peasant have a chance of landing a job in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan will not have that miserable, lengthy wait for a Visa. He can just pop into a plane and find himself in Seattle - just like he would travel from Colombo to Jaffna in the 2000s. [The ticket, of course, would cost a tad bit more].

The world is no longer a set of little nations. It is a just one large nation. The various (erstwhile) countries are analogous to states in a Federation - they are divided just for administrative ease. Borders are also purely for administrative purposes. Movement is not hindered at all. And since there is absolutely no patriotic nationalism, there are no wars. Just like Ohio is unlikely to wage a war against Florida, or Andhra is unlikely to wage a war against Uttar Pradesh, America is unlikely to wage a war against Iraq. The horrific imperialist reality of war is a relic of a barbaric bygone era dictated not by democracy but by corporate agenda (in the name of democracy).

A brief history of Utopia:

The situation back in the early 2000s was one of major disparity. The difference between the developed world and the developing world was huge. The difference between the rich and the poor in the developing world was even greater. The rich in the developing world led lives more prosperous than those in the developed world: and the poor lived like animals. The people in the developed world ignored the problems in the developing world; taking the the token developments as competitive threats. For instance, commentators such as Thomas Friedman painted blissfully ignorant pictures of India in the west.

Islamic fundamentalism was being waged a propaganda war (and a real war) against by American Fundamentalism. For most of the war, the Americans were not winning against fanatic will of the islamists. Neither were the muslim fundamentalists prevailing against the lean mean killing machines that the Americans used against them. The war pointlessly continued for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, After a lot of innocent bloodshed, the Americans crushed the Fundamentalists.

In the meanwhile, India, China and Latin America were still growing as was a lot of the rest of the world. Though from a per-capita point of view, India and China could not hold a candle to US and Europe, they had a lot more people. Their overall economies were forces to be reckoned with.

And then came the weather. Well, it had always been coming. More typhoons, cyclones and hurricanes each year; shorter winters and longer, murderous summers. Extremely intense monsoons in the sub-continent. That was just the beginning. Then, in a span of 10 years, Europe punged into deep freeze. The polular press was harping about the irony of a global warming induced ice age.The onset of misery was quick. Climate modelers had been caught unawares.

This time coincided with the rise of China and India. Both countries had been devastated by Climate Change too - the whole world had been devastated. The US suffered a huge loss: the east coast and the west coast suffered a pounding. The city by the bay became the city under the bay.

The developed countries were held responsible of continuing with greenhouse gas emissions despite having explicit knowledge of the consequences. In other words, short sighted corporate agendas had let the west down. This resulted in something unprecedented in History. The rich nations were sanctioned by the much poorer nations in the UN. And these sanctions are viewed as a turning point in human history; the triumph of Human beings over corporations.

Wheras the treaties of the old days forced poor countries to open their borders to Capital Investment, the new treaties forced the "rich nations" to open their doors to human beings from everywhere. This was unprecedented in the history of the world. The poor farmer in drought ravaged Darfur had a chance finally, to go and start a business in Houston, Texas. Real globalisation finally happened. Milton Friedman was turning in his grave; yet Adam Smith was smiling.

Of course, the developed world opposed this tooth and nail. Lou Dobbs and O'Rielly were quite vocal about this. But they really had no choice. If India and China booted out American Coporates, and stopped buying weapons from the USA, then an economic depression exceeding in magnitude that of 1929 by a few hundred times would doubtlessly ensue. The US' arm was being twisted. The hunter just got hunted. "Intellectuals" started saying "Our culture will get diluted". But they were brushed aside, much as resistance to British Imperialism in India was brushed aside by the barbaric conquerors in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Setting Global Warming Right


In order to set the world right, the new powers of the world had their work cut out. Human beings are extremely good when it comes to crisis management.

A rather interesting refinement of the European carbon exchange was used to set global warming right. It went something like this: each person was allowed a "carbon quota". Carbon quotas were distributed equally among all human beings. A labourer in Cairo, a slum dweller in Mumbai and a little child in New York City - they all were allowed to pollute a "set" amount. They could "trade" their individual carbon credits, much like money. If you wanted to buy a loaf of bread, you would pay Rs. 10 and 0.0001 carbon credits. If you wanted to buy 5 litres of coal gas (no oil anymore!), you would pay Rs. 400 and 0.01 carbon credits. You were allowed to spend only 1 carbon credit per year. If you overshot your alloted carbon credits, you would have to purchase them from, say, a farmer in South Africa. The price that you would have to pay for this would be market determined. The going rate for a carbon credit right now is $400,000 - or half the annual per capita income of the US. You could purchase even minute fractions of carbon credits.

And the market worked. For the first time in the history of humanity, the market really worked. It did not deceive people into thinking that it was working like in the Thatcher-Reagan era. It really worked. For the poor people sold their carbon credits to the rich and became richer. Resources began to reach the poor people like they never did before: and the rich had a severe disincentive from actually consuming a lot more than they were entitled to.

Utopian Society

Since there is almost no more poverty in the world, it is a much safer place. But prosperity does not stop child molesters. Prosperity does not stop greed, it does not stop crimes of passion. And people don't stop being evil just because they are rich. If that were true, the US would have been a utopian society in the 2000s.

Crimes of need have halted. Crimes of greed have not. The words "stick-em-up" have been consigned to museums of history; yet a large company was in trouble for fudging its accounts last year. And the number of children molested keeps growing every year in the world.

People still believe in religion - but the religions have lost the extremist fringes. Islam realized that there was no point in fighting for its holy land when the whole world welcomed it. Christians and Jews make trips to Israel-Palestine. And Hindus pray everywhere from Pittsburgh to Madurai.

The people of the world go about their daily lives. Their worries are only the usual ones: they are worried about getting food on their family's plate. About retirement and how to deal with heart attacks. They are not worried about being bombed the next day. They live carefree lives.

Until today. Today, SETI will make a discovery of alien life on a planet far away. And what is worse is that the planet will have had picked up radio signals from earth, will have had interpreted them as threats and will have had sent an army to annihilate all intelligent life from Planet Earth. Deja Vu?