Ann Coulter, the darling of conservatives, was barred from speaking at her scheduled event at three Canadian Universities.   This sets a sad and dangerous precedent and especially when perpetrated by seats of higher learning since they should know better. 

I do not agree with 90% of what Ann Coulter has to say, being a 10% libertarian, 10% liberal, 10% conservative, 50% left-libertarian and the rest with other eclectic philosophies myself.  nevertheless I defend the right of Ann Coulters of the world to speak and express themselves freely.  This “defending the right” business is not an easy thing to do especially in personal relations among friends and family and I have to constantly remind myself of this “freedom of speech & expression” meme.   It is easy to forget and easy to go into a vigilante mode with perceived injustice.  

This is a good occasion to remember John Milton’s essay Areopagitica written in 1644 in response to the British parliament ordering censorship of all published materials in 1643.  It is a difficult read and will probably take up most part of your Sunday if you enjoy deep, grammatically correct convoluted expressions draped in beautiful words.  I have yet to read it in-depth and I put it in my list of things to read when on vacation. 

This week, Mark Milke, Director od Research at Frontier Center for Public Policy wrote an apt article and is worth quoting it verbatim here. 

“…   Still, the point of free expression is to have an open mind even towards those — especially those — with whom we disagree. Maybe they’ll point out some hypocrisy we hadn’t considered, or bring up a matter that will change our minds.  

Those who want to shut others up, or “advise” controversial speakers to watch their words as the University of Ottawa provost did, display a lack of modesty about their own intellectual limits. They fail to recognize we’re all a speck in a grand human drama over the millenniums. They assume that after dragging ourselves up out of primordial muck over the ages, that in 2010, we’ve evolved into perfect creatures with perfect wisdom. And, apparently, no one need intrude on our fantasy with contrary opinions.  

That’s hubris on a grand scale. A little modesty and sense require us to forswear persecuting people for opinions — in case the persecutor happens to be wrong and the persecuted right. It has happened before. See Socrates, Christ, Luther, Copernicus, abolitionists, suffragettes, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Martin Luther King, or any number of historical figures who skewed the political or religious establishments of their day. Instead, the various shut-Annup protesters, and especially the University of Ottawa, betrayed the very mission of a university — to be a centre of free inquiry.” 

Happy free speech!

Learning basic arithmetic skills is what all the billions of kids and adults around the world do as a first step toward literacy.  What better way is there then this wildly popular method with screaming kids to teach adding, subtraction, multiplication and division.

“Learning Landscapes” is a park like setting developed by Design H studios where 25 tires are planted in a 5 x 5 grid.  The effectiveness of this teaching method is obvious when you watch the screaming kids in the full length 6 minutes video at this link.

The greatness of this pedagogical design is that it involves intense physical play, it is universal in that it is language-neutral, kids are willing to do unlimited homework!, it is absolute fun for the kids, and costs relatively nothing.  The packaging and marketing folks are doing a great job in allowing the teachers around the globe to network online and exchange continuously evolving new games as they make them up for learning outcomes. 

Personally, I would like to see reading and writing skills included in this same grid system with slight modification and have kids recite, memorize, and write.  A more ambitious extension is to challenge traditional learning modalities and include poetry, logic, inference, sciences both hard and soft, and debate in difficult subjects and using theater as one of the media for instruction besides the Internet.

India had alternative learning mechanisms such as gurukulam in the ancient times and which are being recently revived by the University Grant Commission in encouraging Universities.  I know for sure that Andhra University has a running gurukulam program for the last few years.  In recent history, Shantiniketan started by Tagore and Kalakshetra in Chennai are two example which use outdoor facilities to achieve learning outcomes.  But there is nothing close to this wildly popular Learning Landscapes system.

Nature and evolution always made sure that the activities absolutely necessary for species survival are pleasurable and desirable like sleep (longer and comfortable the better), food (tastier the better), childhood play where we learn ALL the social skills we need as adults (more play the better) and all activities involved in procreation from conception to raising kids – I would not say more the better here .  Learning life skills is so important that all higher mammals such as humans, dolphins, whales and elephants raise their young ones till late teens (about 18 years average) and the reason is to allow for parents to teach complex life skills for successful adult hood. 

Teenage dolphins play-routines are well documented and their complexity boggles the mind.  In that context I was happy to see the Australian legislature table a bill declaring dolphins as “Non Human Persons” with legal rights and Spanish parliament debating the same issue for the great apes and primates.  Gandhi said that the proof of a country being civilized is in the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens.  I am sure he would have been excited by these advanced notions of “personhood” to these sentient mammals which share our deepest reasons for staying alive and not be brutalized – physically, socially and emotionally.  Sentience itself is a beautiful english word that describes, for me, my entire humanity in a single word and what gives profound dimensions to the concept of ”ahimsa” .

I plan to follow-up on this “Learning Landscapes” system and see how I can contribute, in my own small way, to its adoption in rural and urban areas in India, Africa and everywhere else including developed countries.  I hope that institutions like Stellar schools in India license and incorporate these methods into their traditional curriculum.  An educated world citizenry is our safest bet from being annihilated by War.

Cheers,

Subbarao

Greetings friends and lets welcome this 2010 and hope, pray and act to make this year a turning point for the planet toward life-sustaining, life respecting and stewardship frame of mind with respect to the planets resources.

I had a good 2009 personally in that I have a son to welcome into the world – born in Visakhapatnam, India on August 26.  Needless to say it is an amazing experience.  It reminded me of a comment made by my good friend Bruno Biberon, a chartered accountant by profession and an avid surfer, regarding his own son.  He wanted to save the oceans biomass which is disappearing at an alarming rate BECAUSE his son won’t have the opportunity of experiencing the wonders of the oceans as we, in this generation and ALL previous generations, have had the good fortune of enjoying it.  I was amazed, impressed and taken back by the scale of his objective and bringing the global problem home as it addresses his immediate and compelling concern.  Saving the oceans biomass comment does not seem so far-fetched and distant to me now after my own son was born.   If the majority of ordinary citizens of the world share this scale of sentiments then a sustainable world is well within our reach. 

A more important change that I experience now after my son is born is that I should not take myself too seriously.   The planet will do just fine and the human spirit is amazing, resilient, adaptable and smart to boot.  Here is a case in point.

I came across Emily Pilloton’s Design H project on sustainability this morning and as usual with this type of information, it blew my mind with the simple, yet powerful philosophy underlying the project.  Buckminister Fuller always maintained that there are enough resources in the planet to make all the billions of people comfortable and yet be sustainable if we employ innovative engineering designs that use only fraction of inputs than we currently use.   Society was “forced” to acknowledge his genius only after many years of marginalizing his ideas and work and it begs the question as to why that is so.  My opinion is that it boils down to simplistic tendencies of “easy” profits – for the suppliers of raw materials like steel, oil and lumber and for the value adding services sectors of transforming those raw materials into useful engineering artifacts.  There was no upside to reducing the inputs or worrying about letting tons of noxious gases into the atmosphere or tons of effluents discharging into the water ways and oceans destroying the biomass. 

The economic model in the world today tends to glorify, indeed deify, the capital inputs needed for economic activity and marginalize the effort (labor) and “entitlement” to use, thrash and claim the planets natural resources.  Essentially, someone with a fist full of dollars or euros or yuans can buy / lease 10,000 acres in most corners of the earth, mouth some niceties to the local politicians or “leaders” as they term themselves, and proceed to ravage, pilfer and rape the landscape and exploit the local inhabitants with  ”economic growth opportunities”.  I am referring to projects such as 5000 acres to open a nuclear power plant for electricity near Vizainagaram, a quarter kilometer wide canal diverting Godavari river waters for industrial development and leaving dried up silt land to the local farmers in East Godavari district, or opening a VW plant at Vizag that requires 1800 acres of land primarily for exports.  Of course the modern MBA types get shocked at the suggestion that these projects might not be a good idea. 

The arguments are well-known, commonplace and simplistic.  But what they fail to realize is that by building a nuclear power plant at a site, you are altering the local mini eco system – the biological, botanical, atmospheric and social aspects in about 5000 acres and you are doing this for eternity or for a time frame so far in the future it is hard to fathom.  What gives ANYONE the right to alter a land mass of 5000 acres FOREVER from a finite quantity available on this planet that belongs to ALL life on the planet and that belongs to the planet earth itself.

The reference to ALL life gets deeper with this native american saying ” This land belongs to my people.  Some of my people are living, some are dead, but MOST are yet to be born”.  So to all those MBA types and pseudo MBA types (who think they are brilliant business men), I say this – remember who owns this land (despite your politician designed ownership title deeds) – it belongs to all LIFE yet to be born and you are just a steward, a guest and a visitor who has come for a short stay.  If you believe in reincarnation, then you and your uncle parthasaradhi will probably revisit this planet many times in the future.  Don’t mess it up and more importantly, don’t do things that alter the environment permanently forever.

So whats the alternative to a nuclear power plant given that we are not advocating anyone to go back to living in the jungles.  May be the bloom box from Bloom energy, solar thermal installations covering every street and highway, or an automated computerised driverless public transportation system that operates like a private car – point a to point b door to door with electricity (thus making your VW plant redundant but then you already altered the mini eco systems in 1800 acres permanently).  Heck, if we can track Al Faida operatives with drones, then driverless mini-buses are a cake walk. 

Alex Steffen of www.worldchanging.com proposes “smart cities” of which New York is a good example and a harbinger of what is possible because of the compact and efficient living, working and playing environment of high quality.  If we solve people’s need for a good life in a sustainable way, then everything else will fall in place because of good education and general well-being.

Lets encourage Emily Pilloton’s work – comment, donate, participate and at the least take a few minutes to read about her wonderful work for the betterment of humanity.

Cheers for now

“Unless you’re a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you’re one illness away from financial ruin in this country,” says lead author Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School, in Cambridge, Mass. “If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that’s the major finding in our study.”

Thats in todays news.  An earlier stat I heard a few years ago is that 75% of bankruptsies are related to medical bills.  What makes these statistics significant is that over 70% of these medically related bankruptsies are for families with some form of insurance.

The lessons to learn from this are that insurance companies happily collect your premiums when you are in sound health.  The minute you start claiming your entitlement and get excessive about it, then the small print and the full force of the “contractual law” in the US comes to bear and one missed payment or delayed payment will make you loose your coverage.  You CAN NEVER get medical coverage again with a fist full of dollars because of – guess ??? pre-existing conditions.  That is when you are on the road to ruin as a hard working American family going down the drain.

Why is this so?  How come no one cares about this or talks about this?  Bringing up this topic for discussions will get you the cursory “sympathetic noises” for 30 seconds accompanied by a smile that indicates deep knowledge of the efficacy of the great American way and that such fringe thoughts are nice but what else is going on? How is the weather in Canada.  End of problem.

A genius friend of mine at Citibank always insisted that “Insurance companies are private, for-profit organizations and every dollar that they pay out is a dollar loss from their bottom line.  It is in their interest to reject ALL claims for the first five times and then look for loop holes to fight and not pay – they fight for every single dollar and hope that you get worn out and give up the claim”.  That is exactly what happens.

Do you blame the insurance companies?  They are for-profit companies and we cannot expect them to “care” and in fact it is illegal for them to care and not “save” every dollar - The CEO for every publicly traded company will get sued if he does not maximize profit (obligated by law).   So why do we have an arrangement where a money grubbing company is supposed to “pay for my well being in exchange for collecting a monthly premium (like a chit fund)?”

I will tell you a why.  The health care nexus of regulated morass was created, fully controlled for YOUR SAFETY, with legislation that permits them to charge what ever they deem fit and since what they would like to charge is beyond the reach of 70% of Americans (the top 30% with family incomes exceeding 1 million a year can afford it – Sotomayer cannot), they have this shaningan called medical insurance.

This regulated morass extends across the globe, but progressive countries somehow figured out a combination of government supported insurance-like arrangements with all their citizens covered for health care.  The US holds back and it boggles your mind as to why especially when the reason is a simple one like the top 30% not giving a damn about the bottom 70% and if they must do something, the members of the top 30% will create these for-profit insurance companies and screw over the bottom riff raff.  I am in the bottom riff raff.  I accept the rules of the game and I am busy trying to claw myself up the top 30%.  Once I get there, I still may write an occasional piece like this but I will have the safety net against bankruptcy due to medical illness and I will look down on the 70% with pity and an “I told you so..” attitude.  Of course I may make bad investment decisions and still end up ruined but that is another blog post.

Have a nice day – June 5, 2009

Here is the full story – http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bills/

Subbarao

Lovely weather today, Saturday, May 30, 2009 at Hamilton, Ontario.  Starting my day and this blog with Albert Schweitzer quotation

“Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.” –Albert Schweitzer

I argue that generating compassion is a function of ”capacity for empathy” and this I believe is not learnt behavior but something you are born with – similar to “Sruthi Gyanam” and other genetic traits that for the basis of ones life choices.  But if the capacity for empathy exists, then I believe the “nurture” part of evolution kicks in and it can be improved upon or supressed by the environment.

This leads me to believe that there will be always kind and cruel people around, but both types can be legally legitimate and powerful members of a given community.  Man made law cannot touch any one who is law abiding and a model citizen complete with mouthing off the right combination of oos and aas and intonations and that is the stuff that politicians are made of.  Not just politicians striving for electoral votes, but all players in everyday life who are political by inclination.  They learn early in life that if they say the right oos and aas and follow the law, they can enjoy the freedom to scheme and rip people off with impunity as long as they operate within the law. 

This argument is the basis of Suras and Asuras in the Indian mythology where battles of good and evil rage within the context of Dharma.  When the asuras follow dharma (universal justice) to the tee - then even gods cannot touch them and then as the legends go, the gods come up with convoluted plans to trap the asuras in the wrong.  Makes perry mason novels fade in being gripping and interesting.

For those so inclined, the English translation of Bhagavat Gita and upanishads by Eknath Eshwaran is one of the best in the world.  He is/was a professor of English Literature in California for over 25 years so brings all the language sophistication required for contemporary thinkers to appreciate the subtelities of the original sanskrit work.  It is a blessing that Dr. Eshwaran is equally adept at the sanskrit language.  Be warned neverthless, that all translation is indeed an opinion and a point of view.  There can never be an absolute translation of the original work and sanskrit being complex, deep and precise will always call for shades of meaning that can never be fathomed fully especially that we will never know the full context in which it is written.   But do get the book set in barnes and noble and it is well worth it.

Let me go and make the best of a lovely day and you enjoy yours too..

 

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