Seeds of Objectivism

From Jon Chait review of a couple of books on Ayn Rand:
Anne C. Heller, in her skillful life of Rand, traces the roots of Rand's philosophy to an even earlier age. Around the age of five, Alissa Rosenbaum's [Ayn Rand] mother instructed her to put away some of her toys for a year. She offered up her favorite possessions, thinking of the joy that she would feel when she got them back after a long wait. When the year had passed, she asked her mother for the toys, only to be told she had given them away to an orphanage. Heller remarks that "this may have been Rand's first encounter with injustice masquerading as what she would later acidly call ‘altruism." (The anti-government activist Grover Norquist has told a similar story from childhood, in which his father would steal bites of his ice cream cone, labelling each bite "sales tax" or "income tax." The psychological link between a certain form of childhood deprivation and extreme libertarianism awaits serious study.)
I'm an eloquent man, most of the times. When questioned or in need of an explanation I put forth my thoughts quite clearly that the listener doesn't need a rephrasing or a repetition of my response. But with the missus I'm another man. Today morning at 5 there was a barrage of accusations that I don't wake up enough times to put my child to sleep. God knows how many tons of hours of sleep I've sacrificed; alas, there's isn't a god. And today morning as usual I was stuttering, marshaling my argument skills with no effect while the lady shot point by point, instance by instance, quoting date and time leaving me wanting a glass of water. Had it been another person in a different setting, I'd have shot back too, but this time I was merely repeating the same thing again and again which she incorrectly discredited.
And this is not the first time nor am I the only husband. What happens to our skill to logically progress an argument with the wife in tight family corners?
Look at the evolution of a blogger. Amit Varma, author of IndiaUncut, the most popular Indian blog used to write some decent pieces for Mint & Cricinfo. After winning the Bastiat Prize for online journalism, competing with serious writers like Clive Crook, he's now the most popular media-porn columnist in India. He now writes this & that about India and Indians, mostly nothing of substance. Clive was not a push-over when he lost to Amit, but since then he's grown in stature. He writes lucidly on matters of importance to the general public. Anyone who writes on serious stuff is never going to be as popular as the gossip columnist or the frivolous writer flaming conspiracy theories. Did Amit intentionally steer clear of writing 8 paragraph columns about what's ailing the Indian polity and settle on picking snafu headlines from tabloid? Only he can answer. But I still don't understand his popularity - the blog was nominated for the best Asian blog award (came in an unbelievable 2nd) and he's now on the panel to judge this year's Bastiat winner. Where is this all heading?
Watching Federer battle Del Potro is like watching Tendulkar and Dhoni on two ends of the pitch. While Potro can get the ball across the net effectively it's clumsy to watch, especially when you have Federer on the other side performing a ballet.

Update: I spoke too soon - Federer's unforced errors in the fifth set exceeded what he's committed in this whole tournament. Kudos to Del Potro.
I wonder if there are any atheist or even agnostic musicians from India in the last 50 years (post-Darwin, generally speaking) whose legacy is half as impressive as that of Ilayaraja's or Rahman's or Balamuralikrishna's or M.S.Subbalakshmi's. I wonder if there's a direct relationship between submitting oneself to the divine and creating divine music.
Truly a useless observation but I have to point it out: After Federer won his first set and was walking to his chair, he took the optimum route so that the towel boy from the court corner didn't have to cover a few extra steps, which also means that Federer didn't have to wait a few extra seconds to grab his towel. Interestingly, he won the set without breaking a sweat.
After beating Robin Soderling 6-0,6-3,6-7,7-6 to reach the semifinals of the US Open, Federer said "It was cold in the beginning and I felt at home. After a couple of sets it was even cooler and he must have felt at home."

For those scratching heads - Federer's from Switzerland and Soderling's from Sweden.

The Arrow of Love

My feedreader is overflowing with unread pieces. My Netflix documentary remains unseen for weeks. The weekly magazines are barely skimmed. I don't know where my library check-outs are. Personal time and space are lost. But the loss has flown into something more beautifully indescribable. When I wake up at 2 in the morning to sing a boring song without a hint of scale or tempo, my daughter listens as if that's the only sound that will put her to sleep. And the tiredness and frustration resulting from hours of sleeplessness melt away at her smile. And when she pulls the hair off my forehand when she cries, it isn't really painful. The disappearance of her blissful smile as soon as I focus my camera isn't that disappointing.
All the things that my wife and I do to keep her happy, healthy, safe, comfortable, asleep & active have heigtened my respect for my parents. I never realized the amount of work involved in caring for an infant can be done with such eagerness. I'll never be able to reciprocate the emotional investment my parents have made in me. Same way, I'll have to accept that my daughter will be able to unconditionally give all of herself only to her children (if & when) but not her parents.
Brilliant reporting & analysis from Steven Brill in New Yorker about incompetent New York teachers and the rigidity of teachers union in protecting them. Sample their attitude:
I asked the woman for her reaction to the following statement: “If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances to improve but still does not improve, there’s no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.”

“That sounds like Klein and his accountability bullshit,” she responded. “We can tell if we’re doing our jobs. We love these children.” After I told her that this was taken from a speech that President Obama made last March, she replied, “Obama wouldn’t say that if he knew the real story.”

The Afghan War

Diplomats and pundits and statesmen and politicians and professors and military men and reporters have written, spoken, argued, decried, urged, lauded and warned about the U.S war in Afghanistan. I earnestly add my share of bytes.

Obama has said a few times that the war in Afghanistan is a 'war of necessity' as against the 'war of choice', the one in Iraq. Few columnists recently delved into details of what actually constitutes 'necessity' and declared that this war cannot be called one such. (Briefly, a necessary war is when your security is threatened or when you can't pursue other options to resolve a conflict). But political speeches are such that complex ideas that require hours of explanations in thorough detail are conveniently simplified into understandable snippets for the common man. In that sense, what Obama implies is that the war in Afghanistan is more significant than the Iraq invasion which was launched on flimsy grounds and was executed without understanding their view of democracy.

But how necessary is this war, what are the stated objectives, how far are the U.S (and the International Security Allied Forces) in reaching them? After September 11, George W Bush decided to invade Afghanistan to root out Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that were harboring them. Presently, security analysts agree that there are very few pockets of the terrorist organization operating within the borders of Afghanistan. Most of them have moved east to the ungoverned tribal areas of Pakistan, some to Yemen and even as far as to Somalia. Understandably they seek Muslim countries with a weak state (and there are quite a few) and the U.S forces cannot keep stepping into these countries. And Al-Qaeda cannot forever hold a special place in the Pentagon/CIA/Whitehouse triad. If protecting American land and subjects is the point of 'war on terror', they should be lessening their focus on Afghanistan and adopt a zoomed-out view. (There are other forms of threat from grassroots terror camps that can easily target American embassy or personnel).

Two of the stated objectives after the fall of Taliban and driving away the Al-Qaeda is to institute a democracy and create sustainable conditions for nation-building. Theoretically, there's a democracy. Karzai was the democratically elected president in 2004 and as that term was coming to an end they had another election a week back and in a few weeks a winner will be announced. But how indicative are the subjects exercising their right to vote the vibrancy of their democracy? The government controls only one third of the area inside their political borders. Their army is poorly trained. The policemen demand bribe even if they're to do their part of the job. Money has to be pushed in almost all government offices - right from setting up a school to constructing a bridge. In spite of world's non-military assistance, it remains one of the poorest countries.

The U.S & allied troops are greatly outnumbered by the growing insurgents. There are approximately 29,000 US troops and 65,000 ISAF. The country's population is close to 40 million and for any adequate security, considering at least 1 armed person for 100 (such a ratio is not needed in a land of strong law enforcement) there needs to be 400000 troops, just to ensure that boys and girls can go to school and the lady can go to the market and the man can go to his office and all return safely. This is a whopping number. At this point, the international forces are not pitching in any personnel and U.S is the only active contributor. The chief of military operations there, Gen.McChrystal said that the current strategy is not working and it needs to changed radically. His aides suggested that he may need 40,000 more troops to plug the security holes. Considering the growing dissatisfaction at home at the way the war has evolved, the members of Congress may not approve for what could turn out to be another Vietnam.

Nation building is an abstract term. For the sake of this piece, let's say that it means building roads and bridges for effective transportation of men and materials, building and maintaining schools for the effective long-term growth, building & training a strong army that can defend itself, instituting an honest police force to resolve and contain civil conflicts… A diplomat recently said that 10 agricultural experts are more powerful than 100 soldiers in building a country. But when the nation's political entity itself makes money by cultivating poppy (for opium), there's not much one can do. And in areas where the corrupt police don't have much voice, there are warlords who wield their power over their tribes or cities. For a fee they resolve disputes; for a fee you can run your own mom-pop shop; for a fee you can build an office so that they don't blow you up; for a fee they'll return your son safely after kidnapping; for a fee they'll not disrupt your business; for a fee the international aid workers can continue to help the locals…

Afghanistan has been a place of constantly quarelling tribes. A unified leadership for the whole political entity cannot command respect and power, even if the leader is worthy of it. Hamid Karzai is clearly not that material. People are now longing the benign rule of Taliban. American officials say that they have to fight the kleptocracy, not insurgents, to create pockets of safe zones. Karzai recently brought in an exiled Uzbek warlord from Turkey to appease and win the votes of Uzbek tribes. Even during this election, local warlords and tribal leaders congregated and decided who they all should vote for. (In some areas, it is reported, a delegate of the local leader will walk into the polling booth and vote for everyone in the town). When power is distributed in this manner the U.S cannot dream of building a nation, instituting a democracy and happily flying back.

Should the U.S gradually withdraw its troops and call it a day? What if the Taliban from Pakistan heads back and wrests control of major provinces? Would that increase the threat level to America? Is it time to ditch the Bush doctrine of preventive/pre-emptive war and focus on protecting citizens like other countries do? After 8 years into war, is Afghanistan moving towards peace and stability? Do Afghans really like the presence of foreign troops? Do they feel safe or anger at the sight of a humvee? Should Obama consider cutting down on war expenses to prop up his starving economy and help finance his mammoth health care bill? (Taking a breath) If Obama were to pull out, what would happen to America's credibility? Is creating a monster there to counter Soviet expansion in the 80's not enough, need they create another one by leaving before the job is done now? Wouldn't American absence from the region embolden the militants in Pakistan in advancing and destabilizing the nuclear state? Would revising the military and political strategy (currently underway) reduce the pain? Can understanding and respecting their religious/regional affiliations of the populace and including their 'tribal leaders' in a bottom-up, 'you-have-the-power', decentralized approach be effective?

WTF?

Respected film critic Andrew Sarris writes the following in his review of Knocked Up:
Knocked Up isn’t going to help change the world or anything, but at the very least it may help take one’s mind off the relentlessly dismal headlines. I don’t know what greater service a mere movie can perform these days.

Conservative Tributes

Two conservative columnists pay sublime tribute to Ted Kennedy. This is why I like George Will and David Brooks. Though I disagree with these two wonderful analysts sometimes, they present their views with great decency and force that it's hard to turn away. It's as if they demand respect for their opinions through the means of presentation.

New Rule for Bill Maher

Bill Maher should stop inviting Ashton Kutcher as a guest on his discussion panel for Real Time. He gobbles data and anecdotes and opinions, possibly from newspapers or podcasts or may be they're even his own and then regurgitates them. He stacks his words as if to ensure he doesn't miss any that he had studied for the show. That's not how a discussion evolves. You contribute, contradict or complement a point made by the previous speaker in an interesting, insightful or a funny remark. But he often digresses and tries hard to impress. To go on driving in your own track is not fun to follow. You can say a mundane truism, if that's all you have to offer. You can say "I didn't know that". The pressure to impress and get the audience to applaud when on TV is understandable. But when flanked by smart people, not diluting the standard is important.
I sometimes wonder what I'd be saying if were a part of a discussion that I'm watching or listening to. Some podcasts are by stalwarts - they're razor sharp in their observations. I'd just sit on the sidelines and listen, and if allowed I'd ask them to elaborate on a few points they've made.

Lucid Dreams

When I was a young boy I'd often have dreams where I would fall off from tall structures - temple towers, buildings, mountains... As I was falling off I'd paddle my arms and legs and the sound I made because of kicking my blanket was enough to wake me up. That essentially killed the dream. Later, when I was in high school or even after I graduated from my engineering school I would have dreams where I would be late for an exam or utterly unprepared and would hurriedly flip through the pages. The timeframe of these exams were years before the dream. As I would sit to write the exam, suddenly my conscious side would kick in and reduce the level of panic. It would say "hey, you already wrote that exam, you graduated, this is just a dream". But the interesting thing was I wasn't awake yet. I was still partly asleep.
In the past few years, my dream-consciousness has evolved. If I find myself in a tight corner, as often they're the themes of my dreams these days, my consciousness doesn't step in right until the crucial moment when I'm about to be caught/revealed/slapped/exposed. But exactly at that scene of the dream, something inside me is activated that not only assures me "hey you aren't in this situation really, this is all fake", but also starts taking control of the situation and guides through events. I'd like to say that it's me writing the story of the dream, but they're so brilliant, the dialogues spoken are so deep and touching and funny and sharp if I were asked to write them in a wakeful state I'd only draw a blank.
A couple of days back I was dreaming of this guy dancing amazingly and guess what, I'm the one choreographing. I don't know a from b when it comes to dancing fundamentals, but I'm the one directing his dance steps. Now, I don't recall any of the steps other than the fact that it was exhilarating to 'see' him perform. I had never thought I was alone in going through this phenomenon (appropriately called Lucid Dreams), but didn't know it was such a well established area of psychophysiology. Here are a few links if you interested: [1][2][3].

Inglourious Basterds

Allow me to indulge, for this is not a review, only a ramble. First, let me get this off my chest - Time's Richard Corliss is an asshole for revealing the final scene in the first paragraph of his review. I usually read the first and last paragraphs of reviews from people I respect (Corliss not being one of them). I was just flipping the pages of Time and read the first paragraph a few hours before stepping into the theater. Imagine the bitterness in my mouth. But then he says something sensible in the last paragraph, and I quote here: It's just possible that Tarantino, having played a trick on history, is also fooling his fans. They think they're in for a Hollywood-style war movie starring Brad Pitt. What they're really getting is the cagiest, craziest, grandest European film of the year. The Europeanness Corliss means is that the action is in the words. And sometimes the simmering tension between conversationalists is so hot that when they finally pull out their guns the atmosphere seems to cool down.
*
Every review I've read is head over heels with Christoph Waltz's performance as the smooth Nazi criminal. He's good. But not all of them are talking about Melanie Laurent's portrayal as Shosanna Dreyfus. In one of the trademark QT scenes where dialogues and photography and acting skills come together: Laurent and Waltz sit together in a restaurant in Paris; he's a Jew hunter, she's a Jew under an assumed French name; he hints that he knows her identity by ordering a cup of milk (she was raised in a dairy farm). The talk is plain but we can feel her pain and fear. I've seen such control with other European actresses like Julie Delpy, Kristin Scott Thomas & Emma Thompson.
*
There are five chapters in the movie, all loosely related but contributing to the final chapter's momentum. The first chapter is titled 'Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied France...' - lending a fairy tale feeling and totally quashing anyone who expects historic authenticity. The second chapter is not titled, it simply says 'Chapter 2'; this is Tarantino's symbolic middle finger, somewhere between casualness and lazy arrogance to even name his film segments. And even when he comes up with a title, it doesn't make much sense. The final chapter is called 'Revenge of the Giant Face' or something like that, but has no significant meaning.
*
The beauty of individual sentences doesn't always add to the beauty of the scene as a whole. This is mostly the fault of the editor, not Tarantino, for he can't distinguish between the goodness or mediocrity of his dialgoues as they all are his children and he loves them equally. There's a scene where random German soldiers play a version 'find out who I am in less 21 questions'. And then the same game is played by characters of interest to the screenplay. This was a stretch. There's another scene where a German-speaking British soldier with a special interest in pre-German-war movies is picked to play a spy. The scene bothers us with details of German cinemas now and then. There are a few other examples of such sag and it would have been a taut experience had they been edited out.
*
We know that Tarantino is self-indulgent and sprinkles his works full of references to other movies, mostly B, sometimes parodying, sometimes celebrating. Another quote, this time from TNR's Chris Orr's review: Inglourious Basterds is far better than those films, but it is still, in some fundamental sense, less movie than "movie." And if Tarantino hopes to reach his full potential as a filmmaker, someday he's going to have to find the nerve to work once again outside the quotation marks. I can't agree more with the sharp Orr. Tarantino is a serious filmmaker and his talent cannot and should not be wasted on borrowing and punching classics and exploitation flicks. Though his 'Pulp Fiction' paid homage, it was ultra-refreshingly original. 'Kill Bill' is in a sense a Hong Kong kung-fu dance and 'Inglourious Basterds' in that same sense a spaghetti Western.
*
I'm not sure if there's anyone in Hollywood who enjoys writing and listening to dialogues more than Tarantino. And the way he places them in his meticulous script, every scene grows a personality of its own. Be it the talk about tipping waitresses in 'Reservoir Dogs', or the foot massage before getting into character in 'Pulp Fiction' or explaining karma to a little girl whose mother is just murdered in 'Kill Bill'. They don't add much to the flow of the screenplay and the movie wouldn't be diluted without those scenes, but it is these little pearls that make the movie glitter. And then there's his boyish delight in shocking the audience and ignoring it altogether - the accidental killing of a man in a car from 'Pulp Fiction' elicits the response "may be you went over a bump or something". This is the real fanboy Tarantino. I can't wait to absorb 'Inglourious Basterds'.

Raja Kaiya Vecha

I was 11 years old when the movie Aboorva Sagotharargal was released. I was in a remote part of Gudiyatham at that time and on a typical day parents with their kids will sit in their broad verandahs with piles of mini wooden planks for lining up safety match sticks (one side of which will be immersed in a chemical compound and later dried) and weavers would occupy the roads to work on their blue & white thread rolls and the third major chunk of populace will be rolling beedis
What I strikingly remember is that almost every house would have their radios blaring because a good chunk of the household is outside working. Add to that tea shops, who have since the invention of radio abused them. And barber shops. And there's the 'audio' shop which would proudly display their black speakers as tall as me. And the bunk kadai. Even medical shops had them on in a low volume. On my daily commute to the school, I would get to listen to the complete song in varying volumes, with varying degrees of clarity with rare bits of silence.
And this one time - sorry about the much needed digression - I was sent to some shop to buy something and the song 'Raja Kaiya Vecha' was broadcast. The song starts with a bickering between a mom & son, I stand in front of a house to listen, and then onto the hero's talent as a car mechanic, I stop in front a tea shop, and then onto an irrelevant comparison between women and cars, now I'm in front of a barber shop. I had to grasp the song because one of my classmates had hyped up how inventive this song was in terms of sexual connotations and I had to illustrate my coolness and contribute to the discussion by what I made out of the lyrics the next day. After listening to the song I remember brainstorming about what word implied what and trying to come up with interesting theories. All this came back to me as I watched this song today.


China's Respect for Intellectual Property

An NYT report on WTO's ruling that China had violated international free trade rules by limiting imports:
Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative, praised the panel’s legal finding. “This decision promises to level the playing field for American companies working to distribute high-quality entertainment products in China,” Mr. Kirk said, “so that legitimate American products can get to market and beat out the pirates.”
Mr.Kirk knows pretty well that this is just a baby step of a diplomatic pressure. When Harry Potter books and DVDs are available for less than 1/10th of the marked price, only the insane and the high-on-ethical-pedestal will be paying a visit to the original showrooms. The U.S producers have long whined at the possibility of missing the huge Chinese boat and have constantly engaged in soft nudging since the Clinton days. You can't blame the Americans - when they're the Chinese's largest consumer, the U.S fiction writers and movie producers and software coders and chip manufacturers expect the potential Chinese consumer to return the favor.
Respect for intellectual property is not big in developing countries. The general public wants to enjoy the fruits at a much cheaper cost. There's an Asian edition by the original publisher for a lot of products which are quite less than what their western counterparts pay. But that pales in comparison to the bootlegged version available at the mom & pop store. In countries like India where law enforcement itself is weak, one can't do much but whine. But China has an iron grip on what its subjects can see and buy and can effectively enforce what should and should not be available for consumption. Their current lax ethics seems like an open policy of negligence to what the west has got to say.
China's stronghold is manufacturing and it's not easy to pirate and make them take a plunge. Of course you can manufacture a lesser quality shirt or a cheaper toy, but obviously it doesn't make business sense to 'copy'. Where as most of the western economies' export revenue is knowledge based which can be duplicated with relative ease and hence made money or gotten free. For China to take this issue seriously most of state's revenue should be earned through companies and institutions that are knowledge based. When the treasury coffers aren't getting filled because of shady deals under the tree, the police will wield its baton.
And China is morphing itself away from manufacturing. There are English classes held in football stadiums. It is luring Americans who can't find a job because of the recession. With trillions in foreign reserves, they have started to invest substantially in R&D and communication technologies. They just executed a mass transfer of their population from lower class to middle class by taking advantage of the rapid globalization; even the recession has not bitten them hard - in fact their stimulus package is touted by economists to be the most effective. The government has stepped up investments in sceince and technology studies & firms.

But their opaque bureaucracy has its drawbacks. The state recently instituted a policy where every computer bought will come with a software installed that's supposedly designed to filter 'inappropriate content'. Not just pornography (what's wrong with that?) but any foreign site that riles the Chinese action & policies. Youtube and blog sites are banned on whims and fancies. The press is not free; the judiciary has its limits; one needs permission from the local authorities for a peace protest march. Add to this other social problems like the imbalance in male/female ratio because of their one-child policy (which obviously leans towards a male progeny) and an educated middle-class that has been clamoring for more information and freedom.

China has had and will have a hard time trying to transform its huge young population into knowledge force and at the same time checking their tweets and facebook status (figuratively speaking). If the state loosens its hold and unleashes the power of cooperation in every sense, I believe they'll command a bigger piece of 'services & innovation' pie. Until that happens, their markets (not so black, they're quite open in the streets) will continue to support pirates. Of course, there will always be some sort of violation - copiers, scanners, video tools will be put to use. But it wouldn't as flagrant as it is today.

Humor is Hard

Hawkeye writes:
If aliens were observing social patterns of earthlings, their report would read something like this - the younglings discard waste products from their intestines, which are emitted out through fissures on the back of their bodies. Curiously the male's social standing among other human beings is determined by how many times, how quickly and how desirously he cleans the youngling's intestinal discard. Cleaning the backside of younglings and removing intestinal waste with passion and love shows that the male is progressive, sensitive, caring and responsible.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is without a doubt the best movie I've seen this year, and probably will for the rest of the year. From a script by Guillermo Arriago, who is best known for his collaborations with Inarritu, Tommy Lee Jones simply sparkles as the lead actor and the director. I think I've written about this before - I see Jones in drabs like 'Fugitive' and 'MIB' which hardly leave an impression and then he blows me away in In the Valley of Elah. In a scene from this movie, we see him sitting in a jeep doing nothing. He doesn't twitch his lips or shake his head or play with his eyeballs; but somehow we can sense his pain and anxiety with that still look. Now, that's just terrific acting.