Free will and destiny

When we go to the edge of science, things get blurry and unsure.

Some of us were discussing the subject line yesterday. If 'time' as a scientific quantity is not absolute and morphs with 'space' as we know it today, then past, present and future all must exist concurrently as a continuum and must have happened already in the phase-space with space and time coordinates. We are simply sliding through the current scene of "now" (a unique point in the phase-space) to the next scene (another point in the phase-space) in somewhat like in a DVD movie. As characters in the movie playing the scene, we don't know the next scene. Nor do we know if the movie has  a beginning or an end? Is there a story, meaning? is there a maker of the DVD we don't know anything about those questions.

But individually we "feel", we have 'free will' to choose and decide our path! If 'free will' is also rolled up into the scene, is that also an illusion? Reminds me of the Hindu Professor's quote in the E.M. Foster's book, 'A passage to India'. "You do whatever you want, whatever will happen will happen!" That quote was uttered in the book to safeguard the personal interest of a selfish man. That sort of thought failed in the medieval times because every criminal can then blame the destiny for his action and thus claim unaccountable for the crime! All the laws, morals or rules to live by would be unnecessary which only leads to chaos and quick destruction. Quantum theory states that if you look things change. If you are not looking they happen in some way, if you look it may happen differently. That indicates we have the power to determine the path in the phase-space. So the paradox only grows.

Guess it is better to govern life for betterment of humanity as we perceive it rather than give it all up to the destiny. Feynman believed that it is better to live with doubt and 'not knowing' rather than believe in something wrong.

I watched the sci-fi movie "langoliers" recently. It is an attempt to move through time and return to 'now'.  Langoliers are sort of 'garbage collector' of 'time' that is past. Pretty spooky concept.

Dr. H Gobind Khorana and the words of life...

From the alphabets (bases) of a DNA,
U for Uracil,
C for Cytosine,
A for Adenine and
G for Guanine

scientists identified "words". For some reason they are all three lettered words by nature. Sequence of these words form "phrases". Some of the words marked the "start and stop word" of a phrase. This discovery has lead to our understanding of genetic code passed through ancestry and decipher its meaning.


Three letter words on DNA

One of the key individuals who discovered and defined these genetic words is Dr. Har Gobind Khorana, a noble laureate of Indian origin. He passed away this week near our neck of the woods at Concord, Massachusetts.

During my high school days, I remember my Biology teacher used to quote his work on genes. His journey of life from a small village in India is filled with remarkable achievements and relentless search for the meaning of life. In his journey he has given us something akin to the 'periodic table' of the fundamental building blocks of "life".

May his Soul rest in peace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/h-gobind-khorana-1968-nobel-winner-for-rna-research-dies.html

Fair and Tan

"The grass is always greener on the other side". That is true when it comes to establishing industries across the globe. People want opposite things on either side of the planet.

The tanning saloons are a growing business in the US. So much so that California has to pass legislation to restrict girls younger than 18 yrs old from using the tanning saloons. White skinned girls and women want to look brown, aka 'tanned' in the sun. They subject themselves to UV radiation in an indoor bed to turn the color of their skin to brown. Some research indicates that excessive use of tanning beds can be carcinogenic for young girls. So came the California law.

On the other side of the world, there is a craze for the fairness creams. A 'lovely' product is now advertising the fairness cream for men in India. There is fascination in trying to look white or fair instead of dark skinned or brown. The desire is so embedded in the culture that almost in every matrimonial ad people are looking for a fair girl. No one seems to want a dark skinned girl, unfortunately. At least they don't seek out.

The irony is that some of the same companies who make the tanning products for the western world also make the fairness products for the other market! The tragedy of capitalism is in trying to sell the rope if someone wants to commit suicide. No questions asked! Goes back to the edict 'buyer beware'. Why can't we all just look the way we are naturally born!?

Radio Astronomy

Related to the previous post, I came across this in TED today. Apparently, the field of Radio Astronomy is all about listening to the sounds of Universe. We learnt of the 'Big Bang' through the sound from space. The fabric of Space is the drum on which the matter and time bang on! Listen in to the sounds of the Universe.

Music and Universe

I don't have to explain the power of music on life. Music is a universal language that reaches and touches every single human life on earth. We humans reach out to divinity through music singing, listening, composing, melting and absolving ourselves in the power of music. Historically music and world religions have grown hand in hand. Hindu depiction of Gods all have a musical instrument with them.

Yet the thought that there is no sound and hence no music outside of the earth is bizarre to me. Space is filled with darkness and light, as we know of it at this time. But no air and hence no sound and no music! This huge ball of earth is spinning at an incredible speed of 1070 miles/hour (approx) in total silence! When I speed up my car above 60 miles/hr I hear the penetrating sound of wind against the car. But rockets, satellites, planets and other objects in space are in perpetual motion in the friction-less silent space.

We store and retrieve sound as light signal in our digital music CD. Satellite radios transmit/receive signals through space as electromagnetic waves. Could it be that the light we receive from Sun and Stars have an encoded message for us as music to our ears...!? Musicians declare that all natural sounds have music, like the sound of ocean waves, chirping birds, barking dogs, etc. Could there be sound of music from outside of the earth!?

Our boy goes to KG!

A very exciting day today for Kailash. He started Kinder Garden today and took the school bus for the first time. I started this blog right around the time he was born in 2006. The teacher sent us this nice poem with him.

Thanks for lending me your child today

Your child started Kindergarten today,

A gigantic milestone along his way.

He's not a baby, oh no, not he,

As big as any in the class, you see.

This little hand that is so small,

Is starting school today.

This little hand that is so small,

With others will learn to work and play.

Till now you've been his shining sun,

Your positive influence is equal to none.

But now I'll share in his work and play,

Thanks for lending me your child today.

The first milestone in life...

Hilarious movie

a non-stop laughter...

Delicacies...?!

Last week I happen to travel to Albany, New York on business and went for dinner with the team at an Indonesian restaurant. This is apparently a famous restaurant in the area. The place was good and the service was great. The owner himself attended to us, thanks to our colleague who knew him well. They had some of the rare items on the menu. Although I didn't try any of them, thought I would share some of the items that absolutely caught me by surprise. Here is a sample.

Sauteed farm raised Alligator...

Yes! you read it right. It is alligator!
Here is more...

Veal sweetbreads
If you are wondering (like me) what it is...it is some internal organ of a calf. Use wiki.

Foie Gras
Another exotic item, I have no clue about.

The item that I was totally caught by surprise is....
Grilled Farm raised Kangaroo

Some of the brave souls in our team tried some of the items and said that Kangaroo tasted like Buffalo. Well, that is an animal I haven't seen on a dinner menu....yet!

If you are wondering if it is all for real, check out the menu for yourself.

Children of Heaven

A wonderful Persian (Iran) movie. A must watch with children. Go full screen and click on the cc button to turn on English caption. Enjoy!

A tribute to my nation....

Madurai Million

Census records show that the city of Madurai is approaching a population of million people. The 2011 census data is not out yet. I can only imagine the population has crossed over the million mark in the last decade.

City population nearly doubled between the years 1960 and 1980. The steepest increase is between the years 1970 and 1990 at the rate of approximately 20,000 people a year. That is an average of 55 child birth a day every day for 20 years, without accounting for any death. Migration from south and nearby villages to Madurai probably contributed to such growth in addition to the child birth.

Population seems to have slightly leveled off per 2001 data. I believe the growth hasn't slowed down really. The city has expanded widely in all directions in the last decade. Establishing of the High court bench in Madurai, splitting up of the central bus-stand into many bus-stands in different direction, increased connectivity to extended areas around the town through mini-bus service, setting up of passport office in Madurai and the IT outsourcing boom with SEZs all must have contributed to the population growth and resettlement in and around Madurai in the last decade.

SMS marketing

Short Message Service (SMS - text messaging) is a huge phenomena in India. My mother's cell phone received a load of text messages over the last year. She is not tech savvy and never checks those messages. I had to go through them and delete all. The painful part is that there is no 'delete all' option. I have to open up messages to read and then get the menu option to delete. It is funny to see the variety of messages. Here is a sample from the bunch. I took a shot at categorizing them for fun.

Number of Personal ads are more than double compared to other categories. The marketing guys obviously have no clue on the target segment. They are carpet bombing the masses with all sort of junk. Don't think they even study their success rate or ROI on these type of ads. Majority of providers in India offer free SMS option. So apparently these things cost nothing for anyone to send out. But it is a nuisance to the receivers. Unlike in email, there doesn't seem to be a "junk" mail box or filter option that will either block or remove these messages on the receiving end.

Even better blocking it at the source. Imagine how much junk SMS traffic is floating in the network that competes for bandwith with genuine messages and other wireless data exchange. For the Tata Photon+ wireless connection that I use in Madurai I am only getting  0.1 MBPS speed. That is terribly slow. I am sure these junk SMS messages contribute to the slowness of the net surfers, bloggers and other publishers.

I am not even sure if there is a "Do Not Text" registry of some sort. For the telephones in US, there is a "Do Not Call" registry to prevent tele-markerters from bothering you. If any of you know any such option for SMS in India, please share.

Lost and Found

I like the excitement of travel, especially a trip back home after a long time. Visit to India is never stress free for me. In effect, I tend to pack a year worth of work in the two or three weeks time and get that done while I am in India. We needed a real break from everything and this time we choose to stop by along the way for a few days at Switzerland. It was fantastic! All of us enjoyed the stay in Zurich and local visit to parts of the Alps and the pristine Swiss countryside.

The trouble started when we left for India via Frankfurt, Germany. When the Frankfurt flight started boarding, we were stopped at the gate and the stewardess insisted that we had to gate check-in two of our hand baggage. We were ok with it expect that we wanted to get them out at Frankfurt and not in Chennai. We had an overnight layover at Frankfurt and needed some of our stuff to go to hotel and change before the next flight. But the system won't allow that sort of flexibility. You can only checkin bags to one destination. Since we had already checked in our baggage to Chennai earlier, the additional checkins at the counter cannot go to an intermediate destination! That was a bummer. So we had to shuffle the contents of our pull-man into the kids back-bags and dropped off the hand baggage for pick up at Chennai. Due to this mess, we entered the flight as the last passengers before the take off. The air hostess hurriedly helped me stow away my carry-ons by picking up my laptop bag and putting it behind the last row of the plane. It was a short plane ride between Zurich and Frankfurt.

We landed in Frankfurt and were received by the airport bus to the terminal. The moment we got down from the bus at the terminal, my wife exclaimed "where is the laptop"?! Only then I realized I had left behind my laptop bag in the plane! We couldn't turn back to the plane. The moment you step out of the plane, there is no way you can go back into it...so I was sent to a Lufthansa information counter to report the 'loss'. I ran over to the counter only to find there a phone which will be answered when picked up before 7 PM. It was 7:10PM and no one was answering it on the other end. It was all mysterious. When I approached the counter nearby, the staff was so rude insisting that we should read our options posted near the phone. She was busy to pack up and leave for the day. I was only hoping we could get back the laptop while the plane is still on the tarmac.

Next we ran back into the baggage claim area to the 'checked-in baggage tracing counter'. All we got there was an email address and a fax number to report the loss! I insisted that I knew where the laptop bag was on the plane and gave the plane number, time, our names, etc. Unlike the checked in baggage that comes with a tracing tag, there is no way to trace an item left behind on a plane. So it is declared as 'lost' even if you knew exactly where and when you left it. Will it be found? what if not? There is no recourse, since there is no way to prove that I had left behind my laptop in the plane. Even to report the "loss" I had to email and report the loss. Until then, my 'loss' was not on the record in spite of speaking with couple of people. Without the laptop how am I going to email them? My hope was to go to the hotel and see if there is a business station to email. I was getting pretty nervous at this time.

That was my work laptop, losing it would have caused me enormous pain. Luckily it was protected by safeboot encryption. So there is no worry about the data security. But I needed the email archives, docs, code, etc back. More over I have to go back to the business and explain what happened. Unnecessary stress. When we walked away from the counter, the man who heard our case, ran behind and said he radio'd someone in the staff and said they found a "Dell" laptop. I was like, yes! Mine is a Dell machine. He was kind enough to explain that he has to go over and get it himself and we had to wait. He gave us all some water to drink and we waited patiently until 8:40 PM. He came back with a bag. Unfortunately, it was not mine! It was a bag from an Amsterdam plane. Our brief hope vanished and I was beginning to freak out at this time. Now our option was to go and email the loss for the record, come back the next day to pursue the recovery. There was no guarantees that it will be found. It continued to be a mystery if we will get back the laptop the next day.

We took the shuttle to the hotel. I had to convert some USD to Euros at the airport. I realized I got a bad deal on that conversion. That was small compared to the laptop. My only worry at this time was to recover the laptop before we leave Frankfurt the next morning. We ordered modest dinner at the room from the hotel bar since the restaurant was closed by the time we reached the hotel. I enquired at the front desk and found a computer with internet connection. I promptly emailed the airline about the loss. I could not sleep for a long time. The next morning we checked out at 6 A.M and went straight to the airport. It was a busy morning. There was long queue in many checkin counters. We were there at the phone counter at 6:50 A.M. Couple of others were waiting there as well. When I picked up the phone and explained, the lady on the other end asked me to wait and she will call back after checking. It was a short two minutes. But it felt pretty long. When she called back she said she found a laptop on that plane and will bring it back to the counter in half hour or so. Again the waiting continued. I went around, got some croissants and coffee for breakfast and patiently waited. A lady walked in with the laptop finally! It was mine. I had to sign up a paper with my id and got the laptop.

We rushed to the Chennai gate and continued our journey peacefully from then on. It was one hell of a night. But it ended well. We are in Madurai now. Sleeping at odd times and staying awake at night! I am glad to type the experience on the very laptop that I lost and found at Frankfurt airport.

Donkey and Horse

Once a reporter went to Gandhi and asked, "You walked long distance for the Dandi March, launched the Civil disobedient movement, went to prison many times and lead various other struggles for India's freedom. Mr. Tagore on the other hand writes poems, patriotic songs, but never participates in any of your freedom movements. Yet one of his poems is selected as the national anthem of India. How do you see this gap? What do you have to say?"

Gandhi replied, "A donkey does a donkey's job and a horse does a horse's job in the world!"

Friday, the 13th

West has this huge superstition for the number 13. Doubly so when the 13th falls on a Friday! Radio talk shows were mocking and receiving calls on the topic today. I have seen multi storied buildings skip the numbering of the 13th floor and call it the 14th. So if you get on an elevator you will 11, 12, 14, 15, etc!

Perhaps Friday the 13th is not good for the incumbents in power. Looking at the election results in Tamilnadu, one would think that! :-)

A corruption map!

Cognos Software deal with Massachusetts State Government The House Speaker Dimasi is indicted on corruption charges.

This is a map of relationships unearthed by the Boston Globe,  news paper in Boston on a corruption case. This article has the who's who description on the case. Wish we had such a map for the Spectrum case. May be it is out there and I am not aware of it. Could any of you share an outline of the players in that case?

"Maintenance" Vs "Development"

http://www.sastwingees.org/2011/03/16/maintenance-an-untouchable/

A fantastic post on our attitude towards 'Maintenance' Vs "Development" work.

Mythologically, Hinduism enunciates that Vishnu the protector, the God in charge of maintenance and growth visit earth many times in different Avatarams for executing his job.Creator Brahma is banished from having temples because his cleverness leads to low moral ethics (he lied). People celebrate the destroyer, Shiva who paves way for creation and the protector Vishnu, but not the creator Brahma! Yet vast majority of our people are keen to create rather than maintain and grow.

On the other hand, a more basic and practical difference between the two jobs in software is the fear of losing touch and locking up oneself in an old and outdated technology stack, not to mention the potential loss of revenue associated with the experience in the latest, greatest technology. If the remuneration structure is adjusted such that maintenance folks make as much as or more than the folks in development, things can change.

Incidentally, in Japan, people start with the development work and slowly graduate to the customer facing maintenance work! Maintenance work comes as a reward for good development work It makes sense if you think of it. People who tinker with existing stuff find new ways to grow and invent new stuff that helps people immediately which is good for business. Development without association with the customers may or may not succeed.

On the lighter side

I watched a show yesterday in which is this scene. The main character in the show gets sold into a pyramid/MLM scheme and goes out to recruit resellers for him so he can "become rich"! Two religious evangelist walk up to his door steps on their mission and this guy tries to make a deal with them. "You buy this stuff and I will convert to your religion!" That was hilarious. I was lol for a long time.

When I was in college one of the hostel guys was influenced by a religious group. He started attending their prayer meetings and indulge in the belief system until one day they declared that watching adult Malayalam films is forbidden by the religion. The guy was offended and stopped going to the meetings from that time and dropped off from the group eventually! It was very funny then as it is now.

People are sometimes presented with such unusual dilemmas!

Thoughts and Reality

Universe seems to express itself in dual forms. At a fundamental level, scientific discoveries prove that space and time, matter and energy are expressions of one and the same. At an experimental level, we see wave - particle duality that takes us deep into the quantum reality of nature and the idea that 'things change just because we observe it!'

Now that is a bizarre idea. The near 14 billion years of universe history wherein organic life forms like us on earth emerged less than a billion year ago could influence the behavior of universe! If we look and stuff change because we looked, what happened when we were not even around? Did someone else from other earth like planet looked and it changed the course of history of Universe? We know not. The more closely we see, it feels like the more we don't know!

Einstein proved that nothing can travel faster than light. Yet we know that thoughts can travel almost instantaneousness to the center of Milky way galaxy and back to this blog in less than a second. What is thought and consciousness if it is not a physical entity that obeys nature's law as we know it so far? Well we only know 4% of the reality anyway. There is dark energy and dark matter that fills the 96% of the universe that we have no clue on and hence the name dark stuff. May be one day the future humanoids will find.

Bharathiyar's song on reality and dreams come to mind.

ponathellam kanavinaipoal
puthainthalinthe poanathanaal
naanum oar kanavo
intha nyalamum poi thaano


Kaanpathellam maraiyum entral
Maraindhathellam kaanpamandro
naanum oar kanavo
intha nyalamum poi thaano


What a wonderful thought! Every 125 years approximately (max age of humans so far), earth has completely new set of human beings. There is no single human born on or before 1885 today. No one who is born today will live to see the year 2135 with the current medical technologies. Yet we know about the history of Universe and our thoughts travel into the realm of dreams all the time.


After I started writing this blog, I notice that there are scientific papers on this topic. The line between physics and meta physics blurs when we think that thoughts and reality can be a dual expression of nature.

India and the 2nd Amendment of US constitution

I watched two Tamil movies recently and was surprised to see a new trend. In old time movies, there will be a clear cut villain and an all powerful hero who overcomes evil and either changes the villain to be a good guy or hands him over to police. Then they portrayed heinous criminals as villains and they got killed by the heroes. We saw portrayal of bad guys as kings, jamindars, politicians, police, dadas etc. That changed overtime and we started seeing stories of gangsters and paid killers fighting with each other. The level of violence on screen meanwhile went through the roof.

Now we have a new trend. Innocent victims revolting in novel ways to kill the bad guys! "Yutham Sei" and "Easen" portray smart little guys, who mind their own business in general, get victimized by criminals and they scheme and succeed in killing the evil doers! Of course, this trend culminates from a total lack of faith in the institutions in India. The state of affairs signifies that common man has entirely lost confidence in the police, justice system and the social security. Everyone is on their own. Jungle law, the survival of the fittest prevails! A total systemic meltdown in other words. Unfortunately it is not far from reality in places like Madurai (sic).

For a long time I have noticed in Indian society that for the sake of security and protection, people with means need to ally themselves and play subservient to those with muscle and political power. If you are a salaried individual you probably don't come face to face with this power dynamics of the landlords, businessmen and agriculturists. In an increasingly urbanized society that sort of clan-ship is lost. That gives bad apples more opportunity to go after innocent unprotected common folks, especially in urban settings. When the bad guys go unpunished and those who are supposed to protect the innocent play cahoots with the bad guys or stay ineffective with ludicrous case backlogs that takes years to bring someone to justice, more number of people act bad and more innocent people will have to take charge on their own. Thus a vicious cycle is set in motion.

In this context, I see the 2nd amendment of US constitution as a mechanism to increase protection of innocent people. For a long time, I didn't understand the meaning of this bill of right.
"well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The fundamental belief here is that because a nation need to keep an army, individuals have a right to keep weapons to protect themselves!


If you think of this in the mindset of a bad guy, before he dares to commit an evil act against innocent people, if he knows that he may get hurt, do you think he will hesitate a little? Won't there be increased courtesy in dealing with all people? If a stranger walks in to a home and the home owner shoots him down, it is identified as an act of self defense and the home owner is protected by law. House break-ins are the lowest in US! Police treat everyone with respect. You cannot abuse a decent, educated and honest man or women if there is a possibility that they could be armed. It may sound strange. But increasing licensed arms to rightful people who are responsible citizens of the society will reduce crime. After all that was proven by the former commissioner of police Mr. KPS Gill in Punjab in the 80s to defeat the Khalistan movement. He armed and trained the villagers to protect themselves from dacoits and fight against terrorists. Isn't it every individual's right to defend themselves and their loved ones from mindless thugs who run around with swords and terrorize innocent people?


Our college Professor Sri Krishna used to say, "A man with integrity and not intelligence is not bad. A man with intelligence, but not integrity is dangerous" One way to disarm the people without integrity is to arm the people with integrity. Of course there will be a period of lull when the crime may seem to increase when the bad guys learn the effectiveness of the new reality. But I am sure more bad guys will be affected than good ones and the society will benefit by far.


Having said that, a very strict policy should be administered to license the arms to the right kind of people. I am mindful of the literacy levels and maturity of minds of the majority in India. Perhaps a psychological profiling is necessary. A training program and evaluation on ethics and values should be mandatory. If we can conduct professional colleges exams, train reservations, civil services, passport issuance etc in a corruption free manner, this should also be doable.


What do you think...?

Life's a mystery...

Kittu Mama - an innocent spirit from our family, unlocked and liberated from his physically and mentally challenged self this week. Call it a gene mutation, Down's syndrome, a genetic defect or by any other name, he was a helpless creation that toiled in life for nearly over 50 years. Nature's experiments are beyond comprehension to us, the mere mortals.Somehow the 23 pair of chromosomes didn't sit well for him and no force on earth could change that.

My memories of him go way back to when I was a child visiting my sister's house. Only a few memories of him stuck with me. He had six fingers in his hands and lived almost in hiding most of his life in a dark corner of the house. Those days they were growing couple of cows at home. He was good with cows! Somehow it felt like he could speak with them and they spoke back to him. He had no conception of value for money. Anything you give becomes meaningful only after he exchanged it for coconut pieces and snack dal (pori-kadalai) from the corner shop. Be it 25 paise or 10 rupees. Didn't matter. Days, months and years passed and he grew older physically, yet his vision dimmed. His mind and senses were left behind.

The question that persists in me is "Why?" We humans are forever limited in our understanding of the purpose of life and have to rely on our imagination to answer that question. I understand Karma is one possible explanation, if you believe in rebirth and the continuity of soul outside of bodily existence. I don't know. May be it is true, may be not. The question shall remain unanswered and forever a mystery.

Evolution chooses subjects at random to experiment. Some decisions in the ancestry might have increased the probability of those experiments in the family. Many lives are bound by the consequences of such decisions and the nature's experiments that followed. Today, we remain as helpless witness to more than one spirit that didn't flourish, incapable to lead a productive life and thus wither way in the end. Literacy that teaches to avoid marriage between kins, medical tests during conception, general awareness of health would have all helped. But hindsight is 20/20. Call it fate or destiny. What happened, did happen for unknown reasons.  To mourn the passed and witness the living forever unknowingly enslaved in life as dependents of others is today's reality.

May the spirit of Kittu mama be free at last. Some religions belief that earthly life is misery and after life is bliss. Wish it is true for his sake. Rest in peace or pass through another body, let him flourish next time around.

Interests and Values

It is often quoted that "Nations don't have permanent friends or enemies, only interests". We saw an example of that in the past weeks. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was an ally of United States for a long time and helped maintain peace in the middle east by focusing Egyptians away from Palestine and Israel. But when Egyptians rose to demand freedom and democracy, US supported the people's struggle much to the dismay of Mubarak and other similar rulers in the adjacent countries who are allies of US.

Often times a nation finds itself having interests and thus dependency on other nations whose values don't match up with it. U.K and U.S. sided with Soviet Union, a dictatorship under Stalin to defeat the common enemy Germany in the second world war. U.S values are democratic. Unalienable rights of individuals and freedom, protection of life and liberty, and equal opportunity for the pursuit of happiness are the cornerstones of US belief system. Yet, we live in a world where much of those values are only dreams to citizens of many nations. Is it possible for a nation to isolate itself and/or work with only countries that share its values?

For a long time, almost the entire 19th century, US lived in isolation that ended after the attack on the Pearl Harbor during second world war. Technology innovations followed, and the globalization of the world became inevitable. Needs are every where. Nations that produce or can produce valuable goods surplus to their needs, should be able to trade and share the goods with where ever the needs are present. Resources should similarly be traded and used to build goods that benefit everyone. And there starts the dilemma!

Middle East has oil, a precious natural resource that is needed to run today's world be it US, Europe or the emerging economies. Whereas values of the nations that host the oil resource are far from democratic. What do you do? When your core values and your national interests conflict, does a nation isolate itself and not serve the national interest?! Consciously with the awareness to benefit the citizens of one nation, the fate of the citizens of other nation are seen as a jurisdiction of the rulers of the other nation. You protect and serve your national interest, I will take care of mine, went the logic. Much like how families work at a smaller level. But from time to time when heinous crimes, abuse or genocide is witnessed, nations of the world cannot standby and leave that as a domestic issue. UN was established for the very purpose to protect the citizens of the world from their governments and facilitate the world forum to intervene as necessary. It is a different story that UN stood watching over what happened in Rwanda, Darfur and Srilanka in the recent history. But I digress.

Coming back to the topic of interests and values, the recent events in Egypt show that the technology is enabling people of the world understand and demand their rights from their rulers and governments. To what extend will it be successful and how quickly across different nations is yet to be seen.

After pressure from the King(s) of the Middle Eastern countries and also to protect its national interest, US has softened its tone now with a statement that "US will help maintain stability in the region". That is, it will not express its enthusiastic support to the people of Bahrain, Libya, Algiers, etc wherein there is copy-cat gatherings and protests following successful toppling of Mubarak in Egypt. Of course, US will issue strong statements to condemn any violence against innocent people and ask the rulers to exercise restrain. National interests once again triumphs over the core values!

This is much in line with how the choice was handled historically in America. Some of the founding fathers of US, including Jefferson and Washington, while they wrote in their Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal", were slave owners! It took a civil war in Lincoln presidency to abolish slavery. It took another century until Martin Luther King Jr came around to abolish segregation.It is neither easy nor fast to change the hearts and minds of people.

Hopefully in future, the choice between values and interests will vanish and a nation need not have to choose one over the other. Freedom and justice to all citizens of the world, free and fair elections in all countries, trade partnership among nations for the mutual benefit of the citizens of both nations rather than just the rulers of one nation, may sound like an idealistic state of the world. But one that is not impossible; most likely probable in this century.

Welcome Watson!

This is one very smart computer! If knowledge is power, the human race is about to lose it to this machine!

Ambition and paths of glory...

Recently I read these powerful lines from the poem "Elegy written in a country church-yard" by Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.


Apparently Thomas Alva Edison liked to recite these lines to his close associates! A man who was an ardent inventor and profoundly changed the life of entire humanity with his inventions was mindful of his gifts in life and was humble enough to walk by these lines.

A hilarious short film

Very talented fellows!

Winter 2011 - Jan 12 Blizzard