"Ignorance Is Bliss When It Comes to Challenging Social Issues"

Link.

The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. 

And the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware, according to a paper published online in APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  

"Beyond just downplaying the catastrophic, doomsday aspects to their messages, educators may want to consider explaining issues in ways that make them easily digestible and understandable, with a clear emphasis on local, individual-level causes," the authors said.

The voice of despair cries: Dumb it down for us will you?

The steady march of human progress continues.  

Builders Selling Foreign Fantasies

Of global dreams and local angst

What helps fortify the fantasy, and for the sceptic a sense of disbelief, is the usage of language itself. Developers of residential complexes eating up rich farmlands for lifestyle homes have begun reinventing English. 

One can still find residential complexes with indigenous names such as “Samarth Nagar” but the globalisation bug has bitten deep; developers cannot resist adding the suffix, “Heights” or “Residency”. But the more adventurous ones invent in a way that would have made Shakespeare, no mean coiner of new words, wince. 

Hoardings beckon you to “Capriccio”, “Apostrophe”, “Mont Vert”. The developers of “Wisteriaa” are taking no chances with the name of a flower. The extra letter of the alphabet could change fortunes. The creator of “Euthania” stops short of mercy killing. If that phonetic resemblance rattles the sensitive home-buyer, “Invicta” should compensate. 

At a surface level, this play with the English language appears crude and the work of demented builders. But it expresses the way globalisation transforms itself into a new creature of post-modernity that at first sight seems obviously syncretic.

Those are some surreal names.  May not be as bad in Bengaluru, though it may be that I'm not paying enough attention.  Some I can think of, with a little help from Google : more than three flavors of apartments named 'Gardenia'.  Venezia, Parkridge, Passiflora.  The following, while not torturing English, nonetheless are a bit on the fantasy side.  For instance, we have our own choice of Elysium's and one 'Manhattans' (yes, it is the plural.  Buy one get some free!) and our own Riviera.  We have transplanted Knightsbridge, Notting Hill, Kensington Gardens, Wellington Park here.  We have an apartment named 'perfumed toilet water' ('Canopy Cologne'),  one named after peafowl ('Confident Pavo').  And much before all that we got our own historical 'Acropolis'.  

For a country reputed to have that has 30 crore gods and goddesses and more than a few languages, we are running short of names for our apartments!  Then again, selling dreams requires that we go beyond the familiar.  Familiarity, contempt...

Weekend Conversations: Itzhak Perlman

The Devil IS In The Details

Devil found in detail of Giotto fresco in Italy's Assisi.

OK, I couldn't spot the devil.

The UN Predicts The World's Population

Visualized.

Global Wealth Distribution

Very interesting.

On Founding the Indian School of Business

Rajaratnam (via churumuri):

Kumar had introduced him to Rajat Gupta. The two of them wanted to start an Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. “I gave them [the school] a million dollars. I later found out they never contributed any of their money, and are listed as the school’s founders. And I’m not even a fucking Indian.”

Most Tablet Users Are Educated, Employed, Not Young

Found this a bit surprising (the 'Not Young' part). Most Tablet Users Are Educated, Employed, Not Young.

The Chicks

Have come home to roost (via Atrios):

I don't think it's an exaggeration. It's an understatement. You've heard me say here I think we are facing the worst financial crunch and crisis since the Great Depression. You have the entire banking system now that is virtually frozen and there are not just the sub-prime mortgage thing. There are other things called credit default swaps where they're going to lose as much money, 250 billion dollars on. The banks are frozen. They're not making loans because they have such huge debts that they have to take onto their balance sheets and nobody knows how to deal with that because you had a dramatic...you had two bubbles that have burst at the same time. The housing bubble which has collapsed in this country. The first time since the Great Depression that housing values have gone down for a year since the depression and it's going to go down even more next year. The credit crunch, you've just exploded the whole credit system in this country. We were way over leveraged. The banking system was over-leveraged. People didn't even know about it. The bankers didn't know about it. They didn't access the risk. Now that risk is piling in and every body's going to pay the price. Uh it's going to stimulate nothing other, I mean it's going to destimulate the economy. Nobody has money to lend. They're saving all their money to pay off their debts. They're borrowing money or looking at uh the rest of the world to enhance their capital and it's still not going to solve their problems.

This too!

Update: And it's all related:

Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, hit by mortgage-related losses in the US, were aggressive sellers during the day.

I bet these sellers are not selling at a loss. A note to the India Rising folks: the foreign money pours in, and pours out, India Rising or not.

Recession, Recession Everywhere

At least, the UN & Goldman Sachs think so (via this comment thread). More on the Goldman report here.

Oil Prices Spikes

Crude touches $100 a barrel. Of course, Goldman Sachs had predicted this two years ago. Are they clairvoyant?
Update: Here's someone who was not clairvoyant:

Rupert Murdoch, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq: The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country

Please Do Something

From NYT:

“China and India are closely studying South Korea as a trendsetter in Asia,” said Chung Woo-jin, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. “They are curious whether the same social and economic changes can occur in their countries as fast as they did in South Korea’s relatively small and densely populated society.”

Please complete your studies quickly and do something about it. If I remember correctly the ratio in some states is 685 to 1000.

Godmen And Indian Classes

Rahul Dravid (skip to page 12). And note the headline : Blessings Before Big Series!

What is it with these people - politicians, cricket stars, movie stars? Does popularity, fame and wealth addle the brain? Or do they become so insecure?

Howard's Loss

Why Howard went:

The attempt to tarnish Mr. Rudd’s character caused no lasting damage to him, but scored three own goals for the coalition. First,it brought the most vulnerable part of the coalition’s record — truth in government (cue Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, reducing terrorist threat, asylum seekers in a leaky boat being turned away with no mercy and lots of lies, more lies with children overboard, the government backed AWB as the biggest defrauder in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, election promises broken because they were non-core, leadership deal with deputy Peter Costello that was brushed aside, ministerial code of conduct that was abandoned because too many were having to resign) — front and centre in election year.

That matches exactly what I heard from someone from down during my cycling trip - he was sick of John Howard's lies. So it was a bit surreal to hear an analyst/correspondent on CNN dismissing Iraq as a factor, and attributing the defeat almost wholly to climate change policy! Thank god for The Hindu.

Of Roaches

A letter to The Hindu's editor:

The article “Cockroaches abandon their better instinct” (Nov. 17) makes a mention of the unique egalitarian system in cockroach societies. The fact that there is no social stratification as in some other insect societies caught my attention. On reading what Jose Halloy said about roach societies — that they are simple, egalitarian and democratic — I could not help thinking how much the description about these otherwise squalid creatures tells us.

We in India, who are struggling to overcome social stratification (in the form of the deep-rooted caste system), have a lot to learn from these lowly-rated, abominable insects that invite disgust from one and all. We stand much higher in the ecological hierarchy but we are no match for them in such a basic principle of living. Cockroaches are living in a self-made heaven but where are we?

A Diversion

From the usual politics, US-bashing, and similar dreary stuff.

I did a mountain bike race and wrote about it briefly here. Hoping to write a bigger post here soon.

The results of the race are here.

Indians, Africans Or Aliens

Couldn't help smiling as I read this article!

"If we do not balance off the Chinese with Indians, Africans or aliens, by 2050 China will annex Russia’s Siberia up to the Ural Mountains.”

Neat Lines

From The Hindu:

..the way in which the avatars of untrammelled capitalism quickly change their tune when the going gets rough.

Not as neat as the second quote from this post, but neat enough. Avatars of untrammelled capitalism ... peddlers of distilled male fantasies... Mmmm... Yummy!

Another (Re)viewpoint

kmp responds [Spoiler warning: plot details below]:

It is so true that as one moves from one “culture” to the other, if you still have links with the original (however feeble or indirect it may be) you become a “confused soul” (lack of better word in my vocabulary). And that leads me into another question: i.e. should it be a sweeping statement such as “Neither American nor Indian” or should it be (more consolable tone) of “being both American and Indian”

There's that too. Thinking it over, probably Mira Nair was trying to bring out the tensions between the two viewpoints in the movie. For example, during the first half - everything is breezing along and the Ganguly family has no doubts that it is American (except for Tabu, though she too adopts the host culture quite well). But in the second half, during the most personally testing moments following the death of the father /husband, the son Gogol and later Tabu, both seem to reject their adopted country. The son gives up his American girlfriend for almost no reason. Tabu finally leaves America for Calcutta.

A Review

Went to the movies after a long gap of three years, our only son having abandoned us for his grandmother's house. 'The Namesake' by Mira Nair, based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. A film about Ashoke, a Bengali, who emigrates to the US and the family he raises there. A nice story told well. But as it got over I was trying to think what message was being conveyed. Damn! Why couldn't there have been a nice summary at the end with the key takeaways listed clearly? True, Tabu gives something almost similar at the very end - about Ashok's ashes being in the Ganges, but his real spirit and memories residing in the circle of his (mostly Bengali) friends and relatives in the US. But was that all?

Then a complete stranger helped me out as I was squeezing the car out of the parking lot. He was in converstation with his friend, obviously regarding the film we'd all just finished watching. And this is what I overheard:

"neither they become american, nor they become indian".

A simple review cutting right to the heart of the matter! Fair with regard to the Indian diaspora in the US? I don't know. But when I thought it over, it described the characters in the movie perfectly!