Deonandia

Choices

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:42:00 +0000

DeeMack sends us news of the death of Robert McCall, the so-called "Picasso of the Space Age". My fellow space nerds may recognize some of his work:

Last night, I was a proud participant in one of the "Climate Justice Teach-Ins" that are peppering campuses across North America. Thanks to all who came out, and to my fellow professors who represented climate change perspectives in social science and chemical engineering.

I've written about Climate Change issues in this space many times before: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

I laid bare my anti-green lifestyle in my article about mass drivers and power satellites. It's not that I don't believe that ecological responsibility is better and more moral, it's just that I am weak and selfish.

More to the point, there's a common environmentalist attitude that I'd like to take issue with. Very often, the onus is placed on the common citizen to transcend his so-called greed and his innate tendency to make decisions that are immediately and personally beneficial in favour of options that are, presumably, better for society on the whole.

For instance, the choices not to drive, or to turn off more lights, or to eat locally grown foods, are considered ecologically superior choices because they impel lighter carbon footprints. The problem, of course, is that it's hard to walk rather than to drive. It's inconvenient to turn out more lights and to huddle under blankets rather than to turn up the heat. And it's more expensive to buy many local products, rather than to rely on cheaper, foreign-made products. I mean, there's a reason we Ontarians import our salads from California: somehow, they manage to get it to us more cheaply than do the farmers down the road.

The reason they are able to do so cheaper is that many such products and practices are subsidized, eithr directly by government programs, or indirectly through the weirdness of our economic system. For instance, the deleterious ecological impact of the CO2 emissions of the trucks used to transport my salad from California does not show on the price of the actual salad; the so-called "commons" of group environmental ownership absorbs these immense costs which, on most accounting sheets, only shows up as something economists call "externalities".

So environmentalists' call for individuals to make these extraordinary choices is in fact an appeal to the human animal to regularly choose options that are, in the immediate and tangible sense, disadvantageous to said individual. We are not very good at making such decisions. For proof of this, all we have to do is look at the global obesity epidemic. We would rather choose the fatty foods for short term pleasure, than the healthy foods for long term health, even though we all know what we should choose.

I've been trying to think of an historical example of an instance in which a society deliberately chose an option that was immediately economically deleterious because it was more moral to do so. The only one I can think of is Britain's decision to abandon slavery in the 1830s. This was a remarkable moment in world history: the call to dissolve the British slave trade was, to the best of my knowledge, the result of the British people's moral choice to distance themselves from a practice that, while immensely profitable, was nonetheless distasteful. For some decades afterwards, they paid an economic price, as goods such as sugar became harder to produce without paying labourers to replace free slave toil.

So what am I trying to say? I'm saying that environmentalist appeals for voluntary changes in individual behaviour are bound to fail on a large scale, because it is not reasonable to expect the common man to make decisions on a regular basis that are economically disadvatageous to himself and his family.

The solution has to be a governmental one and a macro-economic one. Specifically, governments must decide that products and behaviours must bear the real financial price that they truly represent. My California salad cannot be cheaper than my Ontario salad, because the price of the former must reflect the price of the gas to transport it, and the price of the ecologic damage caused by said gas. In this way, when individuals are compelled to make choices that are not only moral but economically wise, a behavioural change of sufficient magnitude may be effected to result in genuine gains in the battle against Climate Change.

End of sermon.

Meh

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:02:00 +0000

So I was in the elevator of my building the other day when an old lady walked in. We chatted. Then she asked for my profession. "I'm a professor at the University of Ottawa," I said.

"Really?" said she. "My grandson is also a professor!"

"Oh?" I said. "What does he teach?"

"He teaches grade 7 at Nepean public school!"

Tht's great. Just great.

In other news, one of my students (you reading this, Jenny?) recently bought a used copy of my first book off the Internet from a source in the USA. When she gave it to me to sign, I was surporised to discovered that I had already signed it... ten years ago! Not only had I signed it, I had added a personalized note to the ingrate who clearly did not appreciate my efforts.

I have vague recollections of who it was: some British balloonist. Seriously, a balloonist.

Well, I got over my huffiness and have since learned to appreciate the synchronicity that brought my signed book back into my hands ten years later.

In yet more "other" news, last week I woke up with mysterious bloody claw marks on my left shoulder. The obvious explanation is that I did it myself, in my sleep, but I bite my nails and barely have any left! I doubt my stubby little nails could have done this:

The rabble on Facebook thinks these are stretch marks. They are not. They are scabbed over scratches. The mystery persists.

What else? Nuthin'. Oh yeah, apparently I'm speaking at the Climate Justice "Teach-in" tonight at the University of Ottawa campus. Check out my news link for details.

Now, despite what the image suggests, I will not be having underage girls on my lap. Nor will I be dressed as Uncle Sam.

Oh, and apropos of nothing.... today is Osama bin Laden's birthday. Make of it what you will.

"Weekly" Twitter Tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:20:00 +0000

Weekly Twitter tweets from deonandan, since:2010-03-01

(Note: the new #fb hashtag indicates that that post was selectively reproduced on Facebook)

Gots to find me some international women to celebrate today. #fb
Mar 8, 2010 08:39 PM GMT

I didn't watch the Oscars or most of the films, but I do know that Kathryn Bigelow is full of MILFY goodness. #fb
Mar 8, 2010 03:14 PM GMT

Back to having just 2 hours of sleep. All is normal again. #fb
Mar 8, 2010 12:14 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 254 - "Name of a guide book / On Indian etiquette: / 'Hindus and Hin-don'ts'" #fb
Mar 8, 2010 01:58 AM GMT

3 nights in a row of 6+ hours of sleep. Gotta change that tonight!
Mar 7, 2010 01:07 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 253 - "Scam artist was caught / Spent jail time writing novel / Called it, 'Prose and Cons'" #fb
Mar 7, 2010 02:07 AM GMT

An airline is now following me on Twitter. I don't know how to feel about this #fb
Mar 6, 2010 04:36 AM GMT

Woke up with creepy Freddy Krueger-style scratches on my shoulders. And yes, I slept alone. #fb
Mar 5, 2010 05:12 PM GMT

post-funeral drunk is the worst kind of drunk :( #fb
Mar 5, 2010 06:48 AM GMT

thanks to porter air, i am now used to being in a permanent drunken state while flying #fb
Mar 4, 2010 08:53 PM GMT

Question for Google calendar: why did you delete all my appointments from Aug/09 to Dec/09? Just curious. #fb
Mar 4, 2010 05:30 AM GMT

I've lost 2 inches off my biceps. I found them again, though... on my waist. #fb
Mar 3, 2010 05:03 PM GMT

testing the selective twitter2facbook app #fb
Mar 3, 2010 01:49 AM GMT

:Twitter haiku 252 - "Caucasian parents / Failed to get Chinese baby / Two Whites don't make Wong"
Mar 3, 2010 01:23 AM GMT

do they actively cast the dumbest people for the Amazing Race?
Mar 3, 2010 12:32 AM GMT

Going forward, we need to touch base to incentivise our holistic approach to shifting paradigms. http://bit.ly/bN53K1 (expand)
Mar 2, 2010 09:06 PM GMT

Glad to know it would take 141.82 shots of espresso to kill me. Not quite there yet. http://bit.ly/afpP4p (expand)
Mar 2, 2010 06:20 PM GMT

Watching UFC 110. No nationalism, uniforms or jingoism, just grown men engaged in wholesome homoerotic violence
Mar 2, 2010 02:42 AM GMT

got a freaky craving for canned corned beef
Mar 1, 2010 09:08 PM GMT

"Weekly" Twitter Tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:34:00 +0000

Weekly Twitter tweets from deonandan, since:2010-02-20

Another brutal all-nighter done... but with two lectures and one complete CIHR application done on time!
Mar 1, 2010 12:33 PM GMT

Tonight's late night snack: ravioli stuffed with broccoli, with red pepper tomato sauce and a snifter of the finest, smuggled Guyanese rum
Mar 1, 2010 03:55 AM GMT

Today's lunch: two peanut butter, jelly & banana sandwiches on ancient bread, quinoa porridge with maple syrup, and SIX espressos.
Feb 28, 2010 07:16 PM GMT

The ultimate productive background music is Buddha Bar vol 21
Feb 28, 2010 04:46 PM GMT

Waiting to give my speech at Guyana Independence event... must... stay... sober...
Feb 28, 2010 01:07 AM GMT

Proud new owner of a murphy bed!
Feb 27, 2010 09:10 PM GMT

5:AM and cleaning my condo to the strains of the Buddha Bar
Feb 27, 2010 11:01 AM GMT

why bother making a medical appointment when they make you wait for an hour anyway?
Feb 26, 2010 03:16 PM GMT

Just spent 20 min karate chopping frozen slabs of bacon in half. Seriously, LOADS of fun!
Feb 25, 2010 09:42 PM GMT

Good morning, epidemiologiy students. It's midterm time! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Feb 25, 2010 02:00 PM GMT

Tonight's midnight snack: peanut butter, banana and maple syrup sandwiches
Feb 25, 2010 04:33 AM GMT

Gawd, how I dislike the Olympics.
Feb 25, 2010 04:24 AM GMT

Jeez... my favourite early Bowie song ("Width Of A Circle") is now 40 years old. I now feel very old.
Feb 25, 2010 01:32 AM GMT

Whatever happened to the "indoor voice"? #FB
Feb 25, 2010 12:37 AM GMT

:Twitter haiku 251 - "Bill Cosby when young / Once couldn't find his way home / He was a lost Coz"
Feb 24, 2010 03:43 AM GMT

My awesomeness knows no bounds.
Feb 24, 2010 01:34 AM GMT

I'm sure I'm not the only one enjoying the fashionable return of ultra-tight pants. (No, not on me. Sigh.)
Feb 23, 2010 03:42 PM GMT

Auuuughhh! My students claim I have noticeably more grey hair than just a week ago!!!!
Feb 22, 2010 07:32 PM GMT

:twitter haiku 250 - "NHL players / Who skip their practice sessions / Playing ice hookey"
Feb 22, 2010 04:10 PM GMT · from mobile web · Reply · View Tweet

WILL THE WORK NEVER END?!!!
Feb 22, 2010 12:58 PM GMT

Was there some sort of hockey thing going on today?
Feb 22, 2010 03:42 AM GMT

Bread And Circuses

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:10:00 +0000

Apparently there was a hockey game tonight, something to do with the Olympics. Judging from the noise on the street outside, I gather the favoured team won.

I don't really care. Seriously, I don't care.

I don't begrudge any of you your joy; that is your right. This post is not about me being a curmudgeon and wanting the noisy people outside to quiet down so I that can finish writing the grant that's due tomorrow. People need to celebrate occasionally; I get that. Rather, this is about something a bit more disturbing.

Last week, back when the Canadian men's hockey team lost to the Americans (or so I'm told; I didn't watch it), the great national soul-searching that resulted was rather sickening. One particular Toronto newspaper had on its cover, in 4 centimetre high red letters, "OUR NATIONAL PRIDE IS AT RISK," or something like that. What followed were 6-10 pages of sports coverage and endless analysis about whether Canada would be able to rise above the shame of having a group of its favoured millionaire adolescents lose at a game.

All right. Fair enough. Whatever. I watch cartoons, German porn and reality TV. I'm in no position to pretend to be more sophisticated or enlightened.

But we are a lucky society indeed if our "national shame" is defined by a game. You know what else happened over the same time period that this "national shame" was getting 'round-the-clock coverage? The public supplement to the Iacobucci Report was released.

The Iaocobucci Inquiry's report is an official study of the complicity of the Canadian government in the illegal detainment and torture of Canadian citizens Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin. You can read it at www.iacobucciinquiry.ca.

Not surprising to any of us familiar with the present government's xenophobic tendencies, the Iacobucci Inquiry found that "Canadian officials likely contributed" to the "mistreatment and torture" of the named individuals. I won't go into the details of how they contributed; you can read that bit yourself.

But here's the thing: In the thorough, brow-wiping analysis of our gripping "national shame" (i.e., hockey game) that the aforementioned newspaper examined with such gravitas, was there a single mention of the Iacobucci report or its findings? None that I could see. In fact, I barely heard tell of it any of the mainstream media outlets that I follow, whereas discussion of the hockey game has been fairly overwhelming.

In this same period, a UN report on the status of women found that Canada had dropped from 10th place to 73rd place worldwide, among nations striving for the equality of women.

In this same period, Canada still has a prorogued Parliament, quite contrary to the overwhelming desire of the populace. Yet, our "hard working" Prime Minister can be seen nightly in the stands of the Olympics in his ridiculous red-and-white sweater, mouthing the national anthem. Get back to work, ya bum!

So you'll forgive me if I'm not filled with "national pride" right now. You'll forgive me if I'm not inspired to wave the Canadian flag and hoot and holler down the street with the rest of the revellers. I have a hard time swallowing the pablum of manufactured patriotism while no one seems to care that the same society that produces millionaire medal-winning hockey players also formally engages in the criminal torture of its own citizens, the degradation of the status of its women, the cynical stymying of its Parliament, and yet suffers no repercussions for this transgression.

Bread and circuses indeed.

Extra Bits of Tid

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:49:00 +0000

Just some housekeeping notes today:

My latest India Currents article, "Advantage India", was picked up and syndicated by New American Media under the title, "Why India Has An Advantage Over China".

The photos from my most recent trip to Guyana --described in this recent blog post-- are now posted over on Flickr.com. Here's a taste:

It's a photo of a government- or NGO-sponsored mural drawn on the famous Georgetown sea wall. The funny part is that they left out the "c" in "choose" and no one seems to have noticed.

And here's a video of the manatees in the botanical gardens:

The sad part is that their waters are polluted, even there in the park, with pop bottles and other trash thrown in. And due to drought, the levels of of their small pond are not being well maintained.

Depressed yet?

"Weekly" Twitter Tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:28:00 +0000

Weekly Twitter tweets from deonandan, since:2010-02-14

uh oh... emceeing a wedding and I have jungle belly!
Feb 20, 2010 10:31 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 249 - "Failed boxer turns tricks / Gives sloppy fellatio / Takes it on the chin"
Feb 20, 2010 12:33 PM GMT

Wahhh! I have a cold!
Feb 20, 2010 11:46 AM GMT

Just walked off a plane from the jungle to Ottawa and headed to a formal dinner. I love my life.
Feb 19, 2010 10:39 PM GMT · from mobile web · Reply · View Tweet

Trinidad airport has free wifi. Why can't Canadian airports be so progressive?
Feb 19, 2010 12:14 PM GMT

Weirdness: internet cafe in a Guyanese frontier town, with Bollywood music blaring everywhere.
Feb 15, 2010 07:06 PM GMT

On a 2 hr speedboat ride down the Essequibo river, with the loud engine drowning out my rendition of Journey songs. #fb
Feb 15, 2010 04:09 PM GMT

Today's late night snack: steamed broccoli and cashews. And rum.
Feb 15, 2010 03:33 AM GMT

Missives From Guyana

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:00:00 +0000

Feb 16 - Bethany, Guyana

It is Feb 16 and I've been back in Guyana for almost 4 days. As I write this, I am huddled under a mosquito net, recognizing the keyboard keys by the illumination afforded by my headlamp, and sweltering in heat that feels like 35 degrees or so. It is 9pm in Bethany in region 2, and I am presently visiting a clean, organized medical mission run by 7th Day Adventist missionaries. I expected to be sleeping on an open deck, knife clutched for fear of nocturnal aggressive dogs and other such creatures. Instead, the mission has given me a luxurious private bungalow in which to spend the night.

Luxurious is a relative term, of course. This is still mostly rainforest. My bed is shielded by a mosquito net. But all types of creepy crawlies are being drawn to the glow of the computer screen, and the net is now crawling with life. Oh, and there's a family of frogs living in my toilet bowl. The missionaries call them "surpprise frogs" for the obvious reason. They may regret their choice of abode tomorrow morning when my bean-heavy meal is fully digested. Then they'll be the ones who are surprised.

Yes, my line of work really is stressful. To greet us in Bethany, the college arranged for their top massage students to give us each a one our relaxation massage. Beneath starlight, nestled in the jungle's humid embrace and soothed by the otherworldly tweets and chirps of creatures unseen, we had the knots of our muscles expertly pressed away.

The college, by the way, is a training centre for vegetarian Seventh Day Adventist Bible workers who wish to attach medical skills to their missionary work. I have my hesitancies about mixing religion and medicine, but it's nothing new in the history of humankind, and there is no doubt that these are intelligent, caring people who --religion or no religion-- can provide some much needed health relief for the tens of thousands in Guyana who suffer without regular medical care. And there's also no denying that the college has created a wondrous, peaceful and comfortable home here in the Essequibo region, literally carved out of pure jungle. With all the holiness about, it's a wonder my unclean self doesn't burst into flames.

Their vegetarianism is also a boon. Despite my regular bacon fixations, I am mostly a vegetarian myself (mostly!), and prefer to remain strictly so while traveling. Guyana has proven particularly difficult to maintain such a diet, so it's a fantastic thing to be housed in a compound that produces very creative and healthy vegetarian fare.

This is my umpteenth trek to Guyana, each time with a different mission and purpose, and each time with a different destination. In the morning we travel to the AmerIndian village of Mashabo, where we will explore potential new development projects. Then it's back to Georgetown to await our Friday morning flight home. A medical team attached to the NGO I'm representing on this trip is presently in the deep interior, near the Venezuelan border; they are returning to Georgetown Friday evening and I'm sad that I won't be able to meet up with them before leaving.

Our first stop was the frontier town of Bartica, outpost of boatmen and gold miners straggling in from Brazil, Venezuela and all points within Guyana. Here's an object lesson for those North Americans among you who have never ventured abroad: one night, at dinner with four senior men of Bartica, they turned the conversation, in all seriousness, to the topic of whether one's first love can truly end. It's something I've seen throughout my journeys, but never in the "West": men from all walks of life --builders, miners, politicians, labourers-- gathering together to discuss the nature of love.

The bugs are spooking me now. Got to turn off the computer!

Feb 17 - Bethany, Guyana

Just returned from a visit to the AmerIndian village of Mashabo, which is home to 400-500 Awarak and Carib Indians, cared for by one overworked health care worker, the very charming and experienced Esther. Our job here is to scope out the community's appropriateness for a medical intervention. My personal agenda is to determine whether any smaller, low investment but high income, projects can be initiated here. The answer to both questions is yes.

Mashabo is a gorgeous set of wooden homes nestled above a seemingly pristine lake. Like all waters in Guyana, the lake is brown and muddy, but somehow seems cleaner and almost blue from a distance. Esther informed us that ongoing issues include malaria, maternal health problems, chronic pain management, blood counts and contraception needs, all within the NGO's mandate. Additionally, our visit to the underresourced primary school leads us to conclude that teaching aids, particularly with respect to language and science teaching, are most needed. This, I think, is a potentially cheap and impactive development initiative.

At one point, I went for a walk down one of the trails cut by a tractor (logging is the major industry here). Exotic plants and insects abounded, as well as the ubiquitous rustle in the foliage that was usually a splendid ground-dwelling bird or one of many species of large lizard. This is the jungle, after all.

I spotted another trail, mostly overgrown, that looked to have been cut by machete days earlier. Did I dare? How brave was I? This is, after all, the land of five very prevalent poisonous snake species, killer jaguars, poisonous spiders and a plethora of unnamed biting things that can cause disease, pain and even death. I've been to jungles in Guyana, Guatemala, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Uganda before. I've tracked wild mountain gorillas through the Congo jungle, bivouaced in a hammock on the Brazilian border to hear the jaguars patrolling, piloted a bamboo raft across a jungle river from Thailand into Burma, and have stared down forest foxes on the steps of remote Mayan ruins being overtaken by the forest. I contemplated the snake-proof gaiters in my pack, the mosquito mask in my back pocket and the hunting knife in my front pocket.

Yes, I dared.

And as I bravely set foot onto this path of new dangers, furtively congratulating myself on my masculine courage, I suddenly jumped back! I was surprised by six barefoot AmerIndian schoolboys, the eldest no more than 7, running happily from out of the "dangerous" path. Each turned to me and politely said in turn, "Good afternoon, sir!"

Yeah, I'm an idiot.

It's 7pm now and I'm back at the mission. The blazing stars glare down through crystal clear skies, and the oppressive heat sets in for the night. I must awaken at 5:AM to make the boat back to Georgetown. But I go to sleep now with a strange contentment. We heard tonight the members of the mission singing, broken youth who have come here to mend and to find a new way. Christian songs echoing through the jungle, like something out of a Jeremy Irons movie (you know the one). I am not a Christian, but I understand what they do here, and I appreciate it.

Feb 18, Georgetown, Guyana

I awoke at 4:AM to catch a speedboat to the town of Supenaam, where anotherboat would take us to Parika, followed by a drive to Georgetown. In the wee hours, the jungle is dark and silent, save for the constant buzzing of weird insects and the occasional crash of something unknown against a hard surface. I took the time to examine the stars, so brilliant and skewed than what I'm used to in Canada.

I heard another of those mysterious crashes coming from the thickest part of the snaking treeline, and flipped on my headlamp to have a gander. We are below sea level, in a genuine South American jungle. The air is as thick as soup, coarse with raw oxygen spewed forth by the greenery. In front of my lamp, a line of plankton-like objects swam in the air, reminding me that life is everywhere here, even in the breathable air, fully explaining my endless allergic reactions.

Hours of peaceful boat journey back to the "city" were instructive. Passing children --7 or 8 years old-- clean and lovely in their pressed school outfits, actually rowed their own boats to school. Children in Canada at that age whine about their electronic toys. Children here perform daily manual labour to earn the right to go to school.

We stop to pick up a mother and her three schoolage kids. One of them has been up all night with diarrhea, so they are heading to the hospital. There is a diarrhea epidemic across the country right now, as a mini-drought has gripped the nation, leading to improper use of stagnant waters. One child spends the boat time brushing his teeth with clean water in a cup, spitting into the myserious brownness of the river. It is a weirdly peaceful sight.

In Georgetown we checked into the Hotel Tower, my 5th time staying here in the last 10 years. Ironically, my father had been a waiter and busboy here 60 years ago. He wouldn't recognize the place today, with its contemporary discotheque, free wifi and in-house spa. Don't get me wrong --it's still a Third World inn, so it's no Ramada or Continental. But it certainly has changed since my father's day.

We met briefly with the people who run Food For The Poor, an international NGO that delivers --you guessed it-- food for the poor. Then topped off the day with a bit of tourism: a trip to the zoo.

Now, I'd been to the Georgetown zoo several times before, most recently only four days ago! But there's not much else to do around here. For the equivalent of US$4,two people enjoyed entrance and an alcoholic beverage each. Trust me, booze helps you accept some of the horrors you see in this place. My least favourite is the adult African lion, kept in a concrete cage no bigger than a king-sized bed. The poor beast looked bored and miserable.

Most fiercesome were the harpy eagles and various species of South American owls, each big enough and with talons broad enough to easily pick a human baby from its mother's arms. The harpy eyed me with malicious intent, until I distracted it by indicating a nearby child: much easier pickings.

Interestingly, there's a huge fenced in exhibit featuring.... a cow. Yes, a cow. With the cow was a toucan in a cage. A cow and a toucan. I think there's a Saturday morning cartoon there somewhere.

Further on is the tapir enclosure. A sign above it indicates that this tapir is on loan from the Philadelphia zoo. Why is this interesting? Because I've seen tapirs in Guyana before... wandering about, minding their own business. Tapirs are indigenous to Guyana. Why do they need to get one from Philadelphia, of all places?

Weirdest of all were the monkey enclosures. These are large metal cages holding many spider monkeys, howler monkeys, and other breeds I did not identify. The spider monkeys are huge, elegant and sad, with active prehensile tails and faces of red otherworldly delight. They are so bored that they shake the hand of any passing human, possibly writing on their palms in secret monkey script, "Send help!"

But several of the smaller monkey species have figured out how to get out. They treat the cage like a sort of townhouse, coming and going as they please, occasionally visiting other monkey species in their cages. I was concerned about one of them wandering into the anaconda or jaguar enclosure, so I alerted an employee.

"Oh those aren't our monkeys," she said. "They come from the outside."

Really? If there are so many monkeys just kicking about visiting their monkey friends in prison, why do we bother even having a monkey prison?!!!

Clearly, this is not the most progressive zoo in the world. I think the alcohol might have given it away.

Off to dinner now, then a long night of catching up on overdo work. Then back to the cold winter of Canada.

"Weekly" Twitter Tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:35:00 +0000

Weekly Twitter tweets from deonandan, since:2010-02-04

My Firefox weather app show's that it's -9 in Ottawa right now. BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAA!
Feb 14, 2010 05:28 AM GMT ·

Back in Guyana. Full of rum, Brazilian steak, coconut water and dread for the mountain of work I'm not doing.
Feb 14, 2010 04:34 AM GMT ·

aauuuuughhhhh!!!!
Feb 13, 2010 04:59 AM GMT

6 hours in the middle seat. My travel agent sucks!
Feb 13, 2010 02:40 AM GMT

Heading into the wilds of Guyana's interior. If you DON'T hear from me after the 19th, call Steven Seagal. He'll know what to do
Feb 12, 2010 11:42 PM GMT ·

Heading into the wilds of Guyana's interior. If you hear from me after the 19th, call Steven Seagal. He'll know what to do.
Feb 12, 2010 11:19 PM GMT ·

:Twitter haiku 248 - "An advancing bee / Wears dark colours in Autumn / Sting forward, Fall black"
Feb 12, 2010 03:14 AM GMT ·

There's an airport in Kitchener? Why? #fb
Feb 11, 2010 09:33 PM GMT

To my current and former HSS students: consider submitting your A+ papers to the IJHS. Deadline is Feb 20: http://www.ijhs.ca/
Feb 10, 2010 11:01 PM GMT ·

New experiment: can I write tomorrow's lecture a whole day early and in the MORNING? #FB
Feb 10, 2010 02:01 PM GMT ·

"Damn it, I'm MULATTO!" #4WordsOnObamasHand
Feb 9, 2010 11:05 PM GMT ·

testing.... #fb
Feb 9, 2010 05:32 PM GMT ·

This is a test... using "Selective twitter" to post to FB selectively via Twitter http://bit.ly/wTk0m (expand) #fb
Feb 9, 2010 05:31 PM GMT ·

:Twitter haiku 247 - "Disease transmission / Define 'fecal-oral' route: / 'To eat shit and die'"
Feb 9, 2010 05:18 PM GMT ·

I wish Facebook would stop messing about
Feb 9, 2010 12:07 AM GMT ·

Omigod. It's before midnight and I've already written all my lectures for tomorrow!!!
Feb 8, 2010 04:53 AM GMT ·

I'm a male cougar... a manther.
Feb 7, 2010 04:09 PM GMT ·

:Twitter haiku 246 - "Went to cougar bar / For Philanthropic event / Such milfy goodness"
Feb 7, 2010 05:11 AM GMT ·

A student who's reading one of my books: "Pretty eloquent for a guy who talks about his dick all the time."
Feb 5, 2010 09:12 PM GMT ·

:Twitter haiku 245 - "Geometricians / In old Italian town / Compute Pisa pi"
Feb 5, 2010 06:30 PM GMT ·

About to give a guest lecture in a Women's Studies class. Yes, yes, get the obvious jokes out of your system.
Feb 5, 2010 05:57 PM GMT ·

My latest invention: peanut butter, jelly, banana and BACON sandwich.
Feb 5, 2010 05:06 PM GMT ·

:Twitter haiku 244 - "An iconoclast / Wary of rice-farming ways / Goes against the grain"
Feb 4, 2010 07:39 PM GMT ·

Current Events Quiz #2

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:26:00 +0000

Remember back in November, I gave my 4th year class a quiz on current events. I then shared the quiz online and invited YOU to report your marks. This is how you did:

...which is slightly better than how the students did. But remember that online respondents could have cheated, and perhaps only those who did well took the time to report their results. The two sets of results are therefore not comparable and no conclusions can be made from these observations. It doesn't matter. This is not a contest, merely an educational opportunity.

This week, I gave the students their second current events quiz. This time, I narrowed the parameters significantly. The test would be on the news as reported by BBC World News radio broadcast (or their saved podcasts), within the period from Feb 1 to Feb 5 inclusive.

I haven't marked the quiz yet. But I thought you would like to take your shot, as well. As before, the answers are at the bottom of this blog post. And when you're done and you want to share your results with the rest of the world, click here:

http://doodle.com/6mbwmskkkxsdeph2

Remember: This is not a contest.

-----

1. A handful of Americans face kidnapping charges for trying to "rescue" orphans --who turned out not to be orphans-- from what country? (Broadcast Feb 1)
a. Bangladesh
b. Haiti
c. Croatia
d. Iraq
e. Afghanistan

2. Attempts to move large numbers of people off their land in India is, according to the government, necessary to protect them from underground heat and fires. Critics suggest, though, that the government and industrial interests really want to gain access to what underground resource? (Broadcast Feb 1)
a. Uranium
b. Coal
c. Oil
d. Gold
e. Bauxite

3. The President of Iran made what surprising offer to the international community? (Broadcast Feb 3)
a. He offered to send Iranian uranium abroad to be enriched, rather that developing domestic enrichment capacity
b. He offered to abandon domestic nuclear production in exchange for direct financial aid and debt reduction
c. He offered to step down and institute open elections with direct international oversight
d. He offered to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel
e. He offered to decriminalize homosexuality in exchange for reduction in American and European economic sanctions

4. In Basra, Iraq, a new hospital called the "Sara Center" just opened. What does it focus on? (Broadcast Feb 3)
a. Maternal and reproductive health
b. Mental health
c. Treatment of children injured in the war
d. HIV/AIDS
e. The medical needs of American war veterans

5. A new study showed that in the UK, the cost per person for this disease is greater than that for cancer, heart disease and stroke, and concluded that this is probably also true for the rest of the world. What disease are they talking about? (Broadcast Feb 3)
a. Depression
b. HIV/AIDS
c. Obesity and/or diabetes
d. Dementia
e. Infertility

6. The international criminal court is facing an appeal that may see Omar al-Bashir charged with genocide. Omar al-Bashir is the current leader of what nation? (Broadcast Feb 3)
a. Yemen
b. Serbia
c. Rwanda
d. Sudan
e. Algeria

7. This country recently test-fired a ballistic missile (likely containing test animals), making many surrounding nations quite nervous. (Broadcast Feb 4)
a. Yemen
b. Iraq
c. Iran
d. North Korea
e. Cuba

8. India has offered to resume diplomatic talks with what nation, after relations were suspended due to a terrorist incident in 2008? (Broadcast Feb 4)
a. Afghanistan
b. Iraq
c. Iran
d. Pakistan
e. Sri Lanka

9. Which republic of the former Soviet Union had federal elections scheduled for Feb 7, 2010? (Broadcast Feb 4)
a. Georgia
b. Lithuania
c. Ukraine
d. Romania
e. Uzbekistan

10. What breakthrough at Cambridge University might help millions of people around the world who suffer from diabetes? (Broadcast Feb 5)
a. Genetically engineered insulin
b. A subcutaneous insulin pump
c. A rapid, safe weight-loss drug
d. A carbohydrate digestion blocker
e. An artificial pancreas

-----

Answers:
1. b
2. b
3. a
4. b
5. d
6. d
7. c
8. d
9. c
10. e

In Memory of Bo

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:27:00 +0000

No, not this Boe:

But rather, this Boa:

Boa was the last living speaker of the language Bo, named for the tribe of Bo, of the Great Andaman peoples who once populated the Andaman and Nicobar islands off of India.

If this link works, you'll be able to see a video of Boa singing in her now extinct native language.

Maybe it's hard for a non-academic pointy-head to appreciate the singular tragedy of Boa's passing, but give it a shot. Beyond the sad tale of military decimation by the British, then the effects of paternalistic colonial-style policies by both the British then the Indian governments, leading to the literal extinction of complete races of these aboriginal peoples, there remains the tragedy of our lost links to human pre-history. Yes, as with all things, the passing of Boa is being characterized first and foremost as a loss to the selfish modern world, and not so much as the legacy of a brutal crime committed by the modern world.

Very few anthropological links remain to human prehistory. It's remarkable how little we actually know about how the human animal lived, felt and thought prior to the innovation of writing and thus the recording of history. To examine such times would help answer some of the most fundamental questions of human existence having to do with what is natural and what is constructed. The perhaps thousands of years of human language prior to the advent of civilization a mere 6-10 thousand years ago reflect a sentient mind emerging from the grace of naturalism and into the realm of instrumentalism and exceptionalism.

With the passing of Boa goes one of our last connections to a language that reflected that ethic. In fact, it's believed that the language of Bo predates the Neolithic period, thus pre-dating what we define as civilization.

The continued paternalistic treatment of the surviving Andamanese concerns me greatly, as does modern civilization's treatment of extant tribal Aboriginals globally. In my review of the movie Avatar, some commenter made the annoying and all too common criticism, "I’m wondering why we don’t call Europeans in Europe with family ties dating back centuries aboriginals as well".

Well, fool, we don't call them that because the word "Aboriginal" refers both to a lengthy historical attachment to a place (typically lasting thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years) combined with a modern political, geographical and cultural marginalization of that extant and threatened race. I'll never understand why so many people feel threatened when the plights of such vulnerable peoples so rarely manages to make it onto the public agenda.

Species, peoples, cultures, languages, religions and ideas all go extinct. That's the way of things. But, you know what? It's not necessarily the fact of it that should worry us. It's the how of it. The Andamanese tribals are the victims of centuries of genocidal policies. As far as I can tell, one tribe remains.

You know what the first image I found when I Googled "Andaman"? This one:

Yeah, it's a British tourist ad. Boa is dead. Her race is extinct. And her ancestral land is now the domain of drunken, shagging chavs from England.

In Other News

My latest article is up at India Currents.

And I've begun to archive my haikus!

"Weekly" Twitter Tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:17:00 +0000

Weekly Twitter tweets from deonandan, since:2010-01-25

:Twitter haiku 243 - "Dentist on the stand / Was told to tell the tooth and / Nothing but the tooth"
Feb 3, 2010 04:18 AM GMT

Am I the only one not watching Lost right now? Where is everybody? HELLOOOO!!!!
Feb 3, 2010 03:11 AM GMT

:Twitter haiku 242 - "Failed sex in orbit / Houston, we've got a problem / Attempt re-entry"
Feb 2, 2010 12:49 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 241 - "Twitter warriors / Motto: never surrender / Never re-tweet"
Feb 2, 2010 03:39 AM GMT

Cripes. John Baird is on my flight. i knew I smelled something foul.
Feb 1, 2010 08:10 PM GMT

Magically completed, from scratch, a CIHR grant registration in the airport in under an hour, on one hour of sleep. Who rocks? I rock!
Feb 1, 2010 07:58 PM GMT

Ottawa Porter lounge: free wifi, free espresso, free cookies. Everything an underslept professor needs to complete a grant application.
Feb 1, 2010 06:48 PM GMT

Off to lecture... on less than one hour sleep!
Feb 1, 2010 01:03 PM GMT

Today: discount BACK bacon!
Jan 31, 2010 04:51 PM GMT

Rediscovering a neglected relationship with mayonnaise.
Jan 29, 2010 09:59 PM GMT

Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry. I now have a month's supply of discount bacon.
Jan 28, 2010 09:11 PM GMT

These late nights and early classes are killing fun-loving Raywat!
Jan 28, 2010 01:06 PM GMT

About to listen to Thomas Homer-Dixon. Wonder if he knows he has a funny name?
Jan 27, 2010 10:30 PM GMT · from TwitToday · Reply · View Tweet

Ahh, a day started right with a nutritional breakfast of oatmeal and discount bacon.
Jan 27, 2010 05:42 PM GMT

Because I'm a documentation nazi: http://deonandan.wikispaces.com/haikus
Jan 27, 2010 02:23 PM GMT

ZOMG... I just found the Planet Hulk movie online!
Jan 27, 2010 06:53 AM GMT

Booga booga.
Jan 27, 2010 03:51 AM GMT

Dear Yahoo Mail: I stuck by you through the rough bits, but you still suck. Yes, I've turned to that whore Gmail. Hope we can be friends.
Jan 26, 2010 04:11 PM GMT

I don't wanna go to the gym! I don't wanna!
Jan 26, 2010 01:36 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 242 - "Fox News 'tea baggers' / Tale of angry, petty, whines / Called, 'The Gripes of Wrath' "
Jan 26, 2010 12:14 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 241 - "Brat Pack gay sexers / Term for those in the closet / 'On the Rob down-Lowe'"
Jan 25, 2010 11:29 PM GMT

Memories of Student Journalism

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:31:00 +0000

Patricia Rozema

On Friday I was interviewed by the University of Ottawa's student paper, The Fulcrum. The interviewer was a first year student, and I couldn't help but recall my own student journalism days, many many many years ago.

I was a writer for the University of Toronto student papers, The Varsity, The Gargoyle and The Newspaper. This was back in the late 1980s and early 90s, so there were no websites back then, and even email was a rarity. Many would type out their articles on typewriters! Gasp! I know!

I wrote mostly arts reviews, and rarely something more serious. I wrote about 40 articles for those journals back in the day, and at least one was included (without my permission, I will add) in some Japanese coffee table book about an art installation I'd reviewed ("Ball Crowd Illuminates Riotous Architecture", The Varsity, Oct 2, 1992). The rest were of variable quality, but each had the fullness of my attention. The experience, without a doubt, helped me to develop the skills and discipline to become a professional writer.

My very first editor was Isabel Vincent, who went on to Canadian journalistic fame. The article I wrote for her was a review of a new TV show called Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'd concluded that the show would probably not have a long run. I was quickly pigeonholed as the "Star Trek guy", and was subsequently sent out to review a couple of Star Trek conventions. Yeah, chicks dig guys who write about Star Trek. Right?

My old high school friend Simon Houpt was my subsequent editor. Simon, of course, is now a superstar arts writer for the Globe & Mail, and author of Museum Of The Missing: A History of Art Theft. I remember that one of Simon's thrills was occupying the Gargoyle office once owned by David Cronenberg when he, too, was a student journalist. The lineage of such things is deep and important.

(A decade later, Simon and I would meet Ted Turner in the men's room of a movie theatre. Simon would go on to interview Billionaire Ted in an article that briefly caused a little stir in American print media. I mentioned the meeting briefly in one of my wrestling columns at the time.)

I recall fondly my first "big name" interview, which was arranged by Simon. It was with film director Patricia Rozema at the so-called "Festival of Festivals", which is what the Toronto International Film Festival was called back then. It's quite the giddy thing for a naive 20-something to be cast into the world of glamorous film festivals, with a catering room, press pass, press kit and everything! I would go on to review the TIFF for a variety of magazines years later, as my career matured.

Ms Rozema was very helpful, as she could probably tell how nervous I was. She told me to stop recording and check to see if the tape recorder was actually working. Now that I myself am sometimes interviewed, often by inexperienced journalists, it's something that I find myself doing: asking the interviewer to check on his recording device. I was such a pathetic sod, that at one point the interview turned into a therapy session as Ms Rozema attempted to console my broken heart, recently made so by an ended relationship.

I'll never forget something she told me during the formal interview. She was talking about how people search for meaning through family and by doing good deeds, leaving their mark, etc. I asked her then what her purpose in life was, and she replied, "To make beautiful things through my art." At the time, I thought it was the stupidest, flakiest and most self-obsessive thing I'd ever heard. I'm not so sure anymore.

I'll also never forget the reception that my interview received, so typical of idiotic, self-important youth. The first line of the article was, "Patricia Rozema is a beautiful woman in every respect." Predictably, the newspaper received letters of complaint that I was "objectifying" her. Insert rolling eyes here.

One of the curious things about student journalism, especially at a big and important school like the University of Toronto, is that you never know who your coworkers will become. Another old friend of mine, Matthew Vadum, was big on the student journalism scene and now makes it big on American TV and print. Another gadabout in those days was Hal Niedzviecki, who has certainly carved out a niche for himself in Canadian culture.

Back in the Varsity days, I worked alongside many future big names. Two necessarily come to mind: Naomi Klein, who is now one of the most famous women in the world; and Tim Long, who is now a writer and producer for The Simpsons. (And I will personally attest that long before the Powers That Be noticed him, Tim Long was a reflexively hilarious writer and a naturally hilarious fellow.)

As a result, despite whatever small success my writing has afforded me, I hope you will forgive me for never quite feeling up to the task. Look to whom I must constantly compare myself!

So what's the lesson here? There is none, except to say that so much of student experience separate from the formal academics plays a role in shaping one's skills and path in life. I wonder who the young woman who interviewed me on Friday will become in 15 years.

More Mobile Data Woes

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:05:00 +0000

You remember this post, right? Here's an update.

When last we visited our feckless hero, he had somehow managed to move all his data from a Palm platform to the hated MS Outlook, at which point he magically was able to push it all onto his spanking new Windows Mobile device, the Palm Treo Pro.... whereupon he chose to enter the second decade of the 21st century by opting to sync with the Cloud, the Google cloud, to be precise.

Things were going okay for a few days until I made a horrific discovery. (Yes, I'm switching back to first person. Try to keep up.) It seems that everytime I modified a contact under Google contacts, silly Google, rather than deleting the pre-mod version and replacing it with the post-mod version, would either merge the two entries, keep both, or keep both with seemingly randomly merged data.

It gets better. Syncing with the mobile phone has become unpredictable, as memory errors keep accumulating.

Well, I figured, time to move away from Google, right? So I wisely exported all my Contact data into two separate formats --CSV and VCF-- just in case. Then, on the advice on a knowledgable friend, I got myself a premium account with memotoo.com and did all the right thingies to move my contacts data from Gmail over to memotoo.

Well what do you think happened? The sync was complete and.... the memotoo version is lacking all the profile photos.... and both versions (Google and memotoo) are missing about 200 contacts. They've vanished.

Well, then, time to delete all my Gmail contacts and reload them from my wisely saved backups, right? Um.... it seems that when Google exports an address book --regardless of the format you choose-- the profile photos do not export with it. So, I have lost all my profile photos.

Or have I? The data on my actual device remains pristine, right? I mean, minus whatever minor changes I recently made at the server end. All I need to do now is to successfully perform a device sync and all should be fine... until the next crisis.

But of course now the device won't sync. Why? Who knows. All I know is that, even though Google Still Owns My Ass, I'm no longer impressed by the owner's ability to maintain said ass.

"Weekly" Twitter Tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:28:00 +0000

Weekly Twitter tweets from deonandan, since:2010-01-05

2 lectures down, 1 to go... and it's only midnight!
Jan 25, 2010 05:00 AM GMT

Anyone looking for an apartment in Toronto? http://tinyurl.com/ya8qu3g (expand)
Jan 24, 2010 11:14 AM GMT

WTF? My dream this morning consisted of the GPS's verbal instructions as I drove through a German suburb.
Jan 24, 2010 10:46 AM GMT

Just scrubbed my condo from top to bottom. Is your Saturday night as fun as mine?
Jan 24, 2010 02:37 AM GMT

:Twitter haiku 240 - "Polygamous ape / Needs a name for his first wife / How about 'prime mate'?"
Jan 24, 2010 12:43 AM GMT

(Oops. Guess my comment was so nice, I needed to post it twice!) http://tweetphoto.com/9407233
Jan 23, 2010 10:37 PM GMT

It's some sort of strange Nordic Michael Jackson homage http://tweetphoto.com/9407233
Jan 23, 2010 10:34 PM GMT

Recovery, thine name be sleep.... sweet, sudden, bacon-induced sleep.
Jan 23, 2010 10:32 PM GMT

Just created the World's Greatest Omelette... complete with a half pound of bacon!
Jan 23, 2010 07:04 PM GMT

three hours sleep + half litre of sake = good times
Jan 23, 2010 02:09 AM GMT

:Twitter haiku 239 - "Female genitals / Models for new Swiss auto / Behold, the Vulvo!"
Jan 22, 2010 09:58 PM GMT · from mobile web · Reply · View Tweet

I just gave all my shoes to Haiti. Somewhere in the rubble, a Haitian child skips about in my knee-high Doc Martens.
Jan 22, 2010 09:42 PM GMT

Anyone looking for a Toronto-based project management job in mental health? www.tinyurl.com/y9vpdzt (expand)
Jan 22, 2010 06:33 AM GMT

Down to a mere 95 unread messages in my inbox. The goal: zero before going to bed!
Jan 22, 2010 06:05 AM GMT

Yahoo IMAP sucks.
Jan 21, 2010 09:50 PM GMT

Raywat Deonandan attending lecture on fetal alcohol syndrome. i think i need a drink.
Thurs at 11:50

Finished writing my lecture for tomorrow... just in time to get dressed and go give it.
Thurs at 03:43

Heard this on BBC. Real and hilarious: Sleep Talkin' Man http://www.sleeptalkinman.blogspot.com/
19 January at 17:23

Cadbury Inc's founder was Eggbert Cadbury. Why does no one else find this hilarious?
19 January at 11:23

In British crime drama, why is everyone always so angry?
18 January at 18:53

Two lectures down, one two hour meeting to go. Cue loopiness...
18 January at 13:27

Done!...Damn, it's 5:AM :(
18 January at 04:53

one lecture done, one to go...
18 January at 02:27

Raywat's Rule #6: when you're desperately trying to write two lectures for 8:AM, that's when you spill a bottle of red wine on your new rug.
17 January at 23:04

Just saw "Dr Parnassus", emphasis on the "ass"
17 January at 18:28

:Twitter haiku 239 - "Lo, Pat Robertson / Master of hate and self-love / You master-hater"
15 January at 18:27

Oooooh. 9:am meeting with chocolates and Jim Bean bourbon. Sometimes being a professor rocks.
15 January at 09:46

A late night snack consisting of chilli, yogurt and maple syrup makes for a very special morning.
15 January at 09:37

Yogurt and maple syrup is a balanced meal, right?
14 January at 21:21

Watching "Steven Seagal: Lawman" - equal parts BS, ego, unintended hilarity and actual undistilled coolness.
14 January at 17:13 ·

:Twitter haiku 238 - "My shelf stocked with books / Physics, Art, Sci-fi, Humour / The rest is hist'ry"
14 January at 08:12

I don't wanna write my lecture for tomorrow! I don't wanna!
13 January at 22:29

The Raywat Singularity: "the point at which one acquires so much work to do, that one cannot do any of it."
13 January at 08:34

I don't wanna go to the gym! I don't wanna!
12 January at 08:16

Washing down the chocolates from Russia with kiwis from, um, Kiwiland.
11 January at 23:01

Just ate six Russian mini-chocolate bars. Six more to go...
11 January at 21:55

An 830am Monday morning class? Someone hates me.
11 January at 10:20

Anyone looking for a Toronto-based writer/researcher job with the YWCA? http://tinyurl.com/yanb2j4
10 January at 23:35

Question for God: why did You make me so darned irresistable to flakey New Age chicks?
10 January at 19:39

:Twitter haiku 237 - "New economy / Markets for soil, mud and dirt / But grime does not pay"
10 January at 09:56

:Twitter haiku 236 - "Swiffer dry or wet? / Can't decide, but I do know / Vacuum cleaners suck"
09 January at 20:47

The flight attendant's name is "Wendii" with two i's. That's either cute or annoying. Or both.
09 January at 11:53

Sole joy of the early morning flight: being alone in the Ottawa Porter lounge! Yayyy!
09 January at 09:02

-20 and I'm waiting at a bus stop :(
09 January at 07:58

Today's 2:AM snack: sauteed chick peas with turmeric, ginger, garlic, black pepper and tomatoes. No bacon :(
09 January at 02:11

:Twitter haiku 235 - "Acupuncturist / Calls a telephone sex line / 'Stick it to me, babe!'"
08 January at 19:28

Polka-dot pink! Awwww, I'm too late :(
08 January at 08:59

Cravings must be appeased. Bring on the midnight bacon!
07 January at 23:46

Because I need to be in the loop: http://bit.ly/5p5IyB
07 January at 19:42

To all of you with colours as your status updates, what's going on? Me no like being out of the loop! It makes me scared and confused! Wahh!
07 January at 19:34

Note to self: in the future, when changing clothes in my ground-floor office, don't do so in front of the window.
07 January at 14:17

:Twitter haiku 234 - "New business idea:/ Market surveys by strippers! / Call it 'poll dancing'"
07 January at 11:33

Great discovery of the day: you can send free international SMS's through Yahoo messenger!
07 January at 08:01

Uhoh, bad move: still have to write a lecture and yet I popped some muscle relaxants. Gonna be a fun class!
06 January at 22:59

Off to get a haircut. Oh what the heck, I'll get them ALL cut!
06 January at 11:04

I don't wanna go to the gym. I don't wanna!
06 January at 08:19

Watching Bret Hart's return to WWE Raw. Man, he looks old.
05 January at 19:44

Door-to-door marketer just woke me from a great dream. It was about hockey. I hate hockey. Hey, maybe it wasn't so great of a dream.
05 January at 19:10

My 16 DVD set of BR Chopra's "Mahabharata" just arrived. Break out the papadam!
05 January at 12:38

Google Owns My Ass

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:08:00 +0000

Sit back, my droogies, and let me tell you a tale of techno-disappointment and e-frustration...

I am, as they say, an "early adopter", someone who tends to embrace technological innovation slightly earlier than the bulk of humanity. I had an email address in the late 1980s, back when you had to explain to people at parties what that meant and why it was useful. (Sort of like explaining Twitter to non-Tweeters today, and always getting the ignorant, dismissive response, "Why would anyone want to do that?!!") I got my first PDA, a Palm Pilot, in the late 1990s, and enjoyed its various short term progeny, the Palm III and Palm IIIe for years before moving on to the Handspring Visor, which was the shiny "Mac"-type version of the Palm workhorse.

At parties I would get ooohs and ahhhs because my Visor also came equipped with a module that you could stick into its top, the "Eyemodule", which --gasp!-- allowed you to take a digital photo! Here's a standard, tiny and blurry black-and-white self-portrait taken on the Eyemodule about 10 years ago:

Most people at this time enjoyed internet access via dial-up service. Kids, that meant that you had to use the phone line to check your email and download your porn, on something as slow as a 56K connection. My PDA was ahead of its time because it had a phone jack that allowed me to plug in to any phone line, dial up my ISP, and download my email... to my handheld device!!!

Around this time, cell phones were coming into common usage. The first generation Watphone was this monstrosity, built by Sony, and provided by ClearNet, the precursor to Telus:

It was heavy enough to use as a weapon, inefficient enough to burn a hole through the fabric of your pocket, and bulky enough to get the ladies' attention if you kept it in your front pants' pocket.

Eventually, the Visor also came with a game-chaning new attachment, the Visorphone, which allowed you to dial your phone directly from the PDA! Worlds of wonder, indeed!

Predictably, the PDA world and phone world finally came together. Thus, the "smartphone" was born. (See this 1996 Podium article on the ascension of the smartphone by Andrew Currie.)

Since my data was all in the Palm world, I gravitated to the Treo line of smartphone products, beginning with the flip-top 90, mostly because I could pretend I was using a Star Trek communicator:

The 90 and 180 both had the fun flip top, but were tragically fragile. I documented by early attempts to repair them in this 2005 post.

And so I progressed from the 90 through to the 180, 270, 300, 600, 650 and 680. My first attempts to deviate from the Palm world are documented in my June 2007 post, where I briefly --and foolishly-- attempted a brief flirtation with Windows Mobile 5.

Eventually I moved on to the Treo 680. My 680 has kept me in good stead for the past few years:

(Or, as my technophobic massage therapist calls it, my "C3P0")

So what's the big deal? Frankly, Palm OS is a sufficiently stable and useful platform. More importantly, it syncs with Palm Desktop, the lightest, most stable and useful PIM (personal information manager) I've ever found.

But Palm OS was invented for an unwired world. It really hasn't changed much in over 10 years, back when it revolutionized the industry on the Palm Pilot. The world abandoned Palm OS some years ago, and no updates have been forthcoming. The OS is crappy for web browsing and for integrating the new generation of "cloud" services; thus its phones often crash when you try to make a phone call while an email message is downloading. It really cannot multitask.

But all the new smartphones have crappy PIMs. Now, I write a monthly blog for MicroSoft, which means I really shouldn't rag on their products. But you know what? Outlook sucks. It really does. It's bloated and virus-friendly, often crashes, and tries to take over every function on my computer. Palm Desktop beats it in every category that is important to me. But Outlook is the preferred PIM for pretty much every existing smartphone on the market.

Thus my dilemma: if I wish to evolve beyond the confines of Palm OS, I also need to give up Palm Desktop. My blog post of Jan 2009 detailed this dilemma, and even reported that I found a solution: Airset. Except that Airset isn't a real solution, just a stop-gap to ensure that some of my data is stored somewhere Cloud-like.

The news: I have purchased a Palm Treo Pro, which runs Windows Mobile 6, but is still friendly to the lineage of Treos that I adore so much. Yes, I would buy a Palm Treo Pre, but they are way too expensive right now. In either case, I still need a solution for converting all my data from Palm Desktop format to something --anything!-- else. It seems I cannot avoid using Outlook.

Okay then... where to begin? There is supposedly an easy way to do this. Palm offers a special "conduit" for syncing the old Treo directly with Outlook and thus creating a whole new world of data. The problem is that... it does not work. At least not for me. At least not entirely. Custom fields created in the address book need to be manually mapped, one by one. I have 1500 address book entries, so that's not gonna fly.

Then there's the issue of the profile photos I associate with each of my contacts (yes, each of YOU). They also do not transfer over to Outlook, neither 2003 nor 2007.

So, to make a long story short, I spent several days trying solutions. I tried something called Companionlink, which sounds like a Seniors dating service, but is actually a third party syncing solution. Not only did it not work, but my attempts to force it to work eventually caused a core dump on one of my computers, forcing me to shift work over to another computer. (Luckily, my tiny condo is populated by 6 computers, none of which is particularly useful.)

Then I tried PocketMirror, which sounds like something you'd buy at Pervs-R-Us, but which is in fact a third party sync solution specially made for Palm OS devices and Outlook. It works... sorta. But it doesn't transfer over those all-important profile photos.

Then I tried PocketCopy, which is meant for a one-time transfer of data from Palm Desktop to Outlook. Weirdly, this worked partway... which was a start!

Long story short, after trying a slew of third party solutions --some purchased and some pirated-- and after literally rendering one of my computers unusable and crashing two more --and after having to painstakingly convert several items by hand-- I now have one computer fully loaded with a version of Outlook that also has a complete mirror of my Palm Desktop data.

And that's 90% of the problem solved right there.

The remaining 10% has to do with syncing my device to Outlook, which is a special kind of hell. The activesync process doesn't always work, is heavily bloated and sometimes results in corrupted data (in my experience). So the solution I found was this: sync once to get the data from Outlook to my device, then from then on, sync "over the air" directly with the Google Cloud using Google's MicroSoft Exchange service.

First attempt: works like a charm. Google owns my ass.

Lingering problems:

Sometimes it doesn't work
It doesn't sync tasks or notes
Google calendar doesn't seem to go back more than a year, whereas my data goes back many years
If I update a profile photo on Google contacts, that photo does not get transferred to my device during the sync
Google Calendar has the annoying habit of stretching all the birthdays in my contacts list across 48 hours

All this to say.... Maybe I'll get a Palm Pre after all.

More Bits of Tid

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:41:00 +0000

My friend Mieke K., who's now living in London, UK, went to an auction and found the following for sale:

It's cologne made by Dean and Dan Catenacci, founders of DSquared. The cologne was going for some unZodly amount.

Why is this relevant? Because Mieke and I went to high school with Dean and Dan. Strange to find a product made by high school friends being sold with such aplomb at a London auction house, no?

Okay, I thought it was interesting.

What else have I got for you today? DeeMack sends us this feature about fan stories surrounding some famous movie narratives. Trust me, they're much more interesting and plausible than the movies themselves. I particularly like the far superior theory surrounding the Matrix (*cough* crap *cough*) movies.

Also from DeeMack, apparently the Washington Post's Mensa Invitational asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are the winners:

Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
Decafalon (n..): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Glibido: All talk and no action..
Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. And the winners are:

Coffee (n.): The person upon whom one coughs.
Flabbergasted (adj.): Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
Abdicate (v.): To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Esplanade (v.): To attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly (adj.): Impotent.
Negligent (adj.): Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
Lymph (v.): To walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle (n.): Olive-flavored mouthwash.
Flatulence (n.): Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash (n.): A rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.): A humorous question on an exam.
Rectitude (n.): The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
Pokemon (n.): A Rastafarian proctologist.
Frisbeetarianism (n.): The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
Circumvent (n.): An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

In Other "News"

You never know where a blog post is going to end up. My H1N1 vaccination post has been popping up all over the 'Net, including on the blog of Keith and Darcie Dow. I don't know who these people are. They're welcome to my words, as is everyone else, so long as my name remains attached, as the Dows have done.

Sadly, my post on Obama's failures thus far appears on this discussion forum, resulting in not quite the quality of discourse I had hoped for.

And every now and then some wingnut conservative discussion forum picks up my 2004 blog post about Belinda Stronach (scroll to Jan 16).

Recent Facebook Profile Pics

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:33:00 +0000

"Weekly" Twitter Tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Weekly Twitter tweets from deonandan, since:2009-12-28

Now the canned ravioli is giving me a headache :(
Jan 5, 2010 06:52 AM GMT

:Twitter haiku 233 - "Oil prices rising / Consumers bent over pumps / Screwed in the gas hole"
Jan 5, 2010 04:29 AM GMT

Canned ravioli?!! What was I thinking?
Jan 5, 2010 03:24 AM GMT

Hmm. My plants are alive, but it smells like something died in my condo. Wait... did I have a pet?
Jan 4, 2010 06:19 PM GMT

Amazed by the rudeness of line-budding Americans at PorterAir this morn. Yes they're all Americans. I checked!
Jan 4, 2010 03:20 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 232 - "Only get aroused / While reading The Odyssey / Homersexual?"
Jan 4, 2010 02:53 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 231 - "Tough economy / I even tried turning tricks / But I got laid off"
Jan 4, 2010 05:18 AM GMT

My houseplants have been untended for almost 3 weeks now. have they been overrun by mushrooms? HAVE THEY?!!
Jan 2, 2010 10:05 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 230 - "Cutting back on porn / Excessive masturbation / Getting out of hand"
Jan 2, 2010 07:38 AM GMT

:Twitter haiku 229 - "A philologist / Made love to a female sheep / His students cried, 'Ewe!'"
Jan 1, 2010 07:31 PM GMT

*hic*
Jan 1, 2010 07:39 AM GMT

:Twitter haiku 228 - "Afghan accounting / Has now been prohibited / Known as 'tally ban'"
Dec 31, 2009 06:45 PM GMT

So where should I spend New Year's? Toronto or Ottawa?
Dec 30, 2009 07:24 AM GMT

Your Dream Is Still In Reach

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:52:00 +0000

Here on the second post of the new year, I've already begun to cheat. Today's post is actually my January entry in my MicroSoft Small Business Forum column. Don't judge me!

I was recently riding the public transportation system of a major North American city, where I saw an ad for a local college's continuing education program. The ad featured a slogan, something like, "Your dream is still in reach", and a big glossy photograph of an astronaut conducting a spacewalk.

The intent of the message is obvious, that one's dreams are often linked to one's career, which is often dependent on one's education, which is often cut short by life's unexpected demands. Furthermore, the message is a hopeful one, that the opportunity to return to the path of achieving one's dreams can be had by simply returning to school... Not just any kind of school, but a continuing education program, which is specially designed to service the educational needs of individuals who typically must continue to work full-time and perhaps have been out of the formal education system for a while.

It's an excellent message, and I applaud it. When in doubt, more formal education is rarely a bad option in life. In fact, for literally millions of dispossessed, marginalized or simply poor people around the world, it's education that offers the sole hope of ascension through society's hierarchical ranks.

It's a message that I wish more of my university undergraduate students would take to heart. In a Western liberal democracy, especially one with socialized services like we have in Canada, it is a historically rare and invaluable service to have formal taxpayer-subsidized post-secondary education available to anyone who can make time for it. Indeed, it's a gift that hundreds of millions of people globally would give much to receive. Yet, it amazes me how many take this gift for granted.

In an increasingly globalized economy, especially in these dire times of worldwide depression, the vital need for marketable and demonstrable skills has never been greater. The number of students opting for the easiest path through their educational experiences is nonetheless great indeed, and saddeningly so. Many deliberately choose programs that require minimal or zero writing, for example, or trivial amounts of mathematics. In short, many students eschew educational experiences that may challenge the extant gaps in their skills sets. This is precisely the opposite to what they should be doing if they wish to maximize their educational experiences to enable an advantage in the workplace.

The problem, I think, is in the distinction between education and certification. We are, I believe, entering an era wherein certification --the obtaining of a degree or diploma-- is less important than the extent to which one can prove and demonstrate the skills that the certification purports to represent. In other words, days of the "paper chase" may be coming to an end. In my post-PhD days, when I was enduring several job interviews per week, it was not unusual to undergo skills testing for specific knowledge and skills that my expensive and lengthy doctoral degree presumably conferred upon me. Having the degree was not sufficient for many potential employers; proof of its value was needed. And this is as it should be.

The saddening part, though, is the unspoken lie that subtends the ad. While it's true that further education is an excellent lever to improve one's position in society, it's also true that there still exists a window of opportunity for optimally effecting that improvement. It is unlikely indeed that someone returning to that college's school of continuing studies could aspire to the position of astronaut, as the ad suggests, because, frankly, they'd be in competition for that prized position with individuals who'd never taken any educational breaks, and who'd committed their lives to obtaining the requisite skills at a world class level.

Despite this caveat, I believe it remains an important truth that the path out of economic distress is a combination of many factors, among them luck, industry, enterprise and, most inaccessible of all, education.

2010: Odyssey Two

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:22:00 +0000

Know what's sad? A Google image search of "2010" and "Odyssey" results in scores of images of freakin' Honda minivans.

Those of you in the know, however, will recognize the reference is to a classic novel by the late great Arthur C. Clarke, whose recent demise is still felt these many months later by a science fiction industry yet to find someone of his stature to fill the empty seat of Grandmaster. No, Bradbury doesn't count.

The thing about the book, and subsequent movie, is, of course, is that the world of 2010 described bears little to no resemblance to our world today. For one thing, Clarke failed to anticipate the fall of the Soviet Union, and still couched his story within the confines of the Cold War, a conflict of which today's young people have little concept. And Clarke's depiction of thinking, feeling and creative artificial intelligences really has no place in a world in which my email filter tags emails from myself as spam. The lesson, of course, is that, as far as I know, no one has ever accurately predicted the future. How's that for deep?

Regular readers of Deonandia know that the tradition here, going back to 2001, is that the first post of every year is when I list the things I was thankful for during the past year. Here are my comments from 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 (you'll have to scroll to the bottom for those), 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. So, at the risk of being maudlin, let's begin...

1. My family. You know the drill.

2. The University of Ottawa. I mock the U of Zero, but Zod knows how grateful I am to be a professor there. It really is the greatest job in the world, despite the mountains of work and frustration.

3. My students. See "frustration" above. They drain me and infuriate me at times, but for the most part their genuine desire to learn fills me with joy.

4. Facebook. Yeah, you read that right. I still have my various websites, endless email accounts, Twitter, text messaging, etc. But Facebook has provided a one stop shopping locale for accessing all of the above. It also provides a fake social life for those 3:AM late worknights.

5. Physiotherapy. Finally, after more than a year of agony due to herniated discs, I'm on the path to a life of manageable pain.

6. The women I've dated. Like other years, 2009 brought me more delightful women generous enough to spend their time with me. I believe I even managed to squeak out something resembling a relationship once or twice, but don't ask me to confirm details.

7. The Interwebs. For rescuing me from commercial TV, an office, isolation and paper.

Is that enough? Can I go now?

In Other News

Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.... there's going to be a LIVE ACTION STAR BLAZERS MOVIE! (For you not in the know, the Japanese name is Space Battleship Yamato, one of the finest anime products of the 1970s!)

For comparison, here's the opening to the original 1974 anime:

Shantaram

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:28:00 +0000

After literally months of stealing a few minutes here and there, I finally just finished reading the 936 page novel called Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. The book is already an international bestseller, and was recommended to me by my Australian friend Phil after I'd related to him my joy at reading Suketu Mehta's Maximum City. While the latter is a non-fiction account of life in Mumbai (Bombay), Shantaram is a novelization of the true life story of Roberts, a New Zealander heroin addict serving prison time for armed robbery, who escapes from prison to Mumbai, where various circumstances compel him to become a slum doctor, a mafia soldier, a counterfeiter and a gun runner to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

It's a very large story, replete with intricate, fascinating detail about multilayered life in Mumbai. But, at its core, it's a study of the nature of love and freedom, in the sense of those words that Plato would have most enjoyed. Before his downfall, Roberts had been on an academic path to become a professor of philosophy. His study of violence and meaning, intertwined with the poetry of pain, both psychic and physical, is in many ways a masterpiece of meditation.

The book is rife with laughable purple prose at times, such as this description of a sex scene: "My body was her chariot, and she rode me into the sun." But more common are somewhat profound studies on the essence of free will, like the book's powerful opening:

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when its all you have got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving,can become the story of your life."

If you're interested in an honest and intimate portrayal of the Indian ethic, and/or a unique perspective on the motivations and fragilities of masculinity, I recommend the book to you. You'll be inundated with talk of it soon enough, though, since Johnny Depp and Amitabh Bachchan are making the motion picture version pretty damn soon... unless, of course, rumours that the film has been shelved are to be believed.

During my traditional post-read research, I came across some interesting lectures and interviews by Gregory David Roberts. First is a five part interview with the dizty Indian hostess, "Sexy Pooja". Part 1 is here. Here is part 2:

And here are links to parts 3, 4 and 5. They're sort of worth it just to see a white dude speak streety Hindi and Marathi.

The next three videos (parts 1, 2 and 3) are of Roberts giving a lecture to some social group. He tells a good story or two.

For those who've read the book, I think you'll really enjoy this four part interview with Roberts on CNN Asia, in which he takes us on a tour of the slums in which his book was set:

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

In Other News

My review of James Cameron's new science fiction movie Avatar is now up at Skiffy.ca. Go have a look.

And because I'm sick in bed and sort of bored, here's a great photo I found on the Interwebs. Is this not the definition of elegant?

"Weekly" Twitter Tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:43:00 +0000

Weekly Twitter tweets from deonandan, since:2009-12-10

:Twitter haiku 227 - "Downsides of Christmas / Fat man breaking into house / Reindeer shit on roof"
Dec 26, 2009 12:52 AM GMT

:Twitter haiku 226 - "Garden of Eden / Built December twenty four / First chick: Christmas Eve"
Dec 24, 2009 04:55 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 225 - "A supermodel / Has turned necrophiliac / Victims: lucky stiffs"
Dec 22, 2009 08:39 PM GMT

Abercrombie & Fitch: the whitest place on Earth.
Dec 22, 2009 07:13 PM GMT

One benefit to having a cold: built-in excuse to drink brandy.
Dec 21, 2009 09:22 PM GMT

:Twitter haiku 224 - "Keen on good grammar / Santa's elf got new title / 'Subordinate Clause'"
Dec 21, 2009 03:59 AM GMT

Almost bought a real life medical reference book until I realized, "hey, this is why God and Al Gore invented the internet!"
Dec 20, 2009 07:23 PM GMT

Had long talk with Sudanese cab driver about battle of Khartoum, Gordon-pasha, the Mahdi and Lord Kitchener. Erudition lives... in cabbies.
19 December at 17:23

I am a banana!
19 December at 11:19

Am proctoring my 4th year exam right now and Facebooking at the same time. Ah what glorious times we live in.
19 December at 09:34

:Twitter haiku 223 - "Christmas in da 'hood / Santa frontin' like a pimp / Chanting, 'Ho, ho, ho!'"
19 December at 00:06

:Twitter haiku 223 - "Homeless hedonists / Wand'ring explorers of flesh / Hobosexuals?"
15 December at 17:54

Drunken massages are overrated if you're too numb to enjoy it... Unless it's the masseuse who's drunk!
14 December at 18:35

Am drunk at Nordik spa in Quebec, awaiting my overpriced massage. Ahhh, hedonism.
14 December at 16:49

:Twitter haiku 222 - "Once told a girlfriend / I was multi-orgasmic / She said, 'Come again?'"
12 December at 18:30

Overdosing on TED lectures.
12 December at 16:05

A morning of weak coffee, strong eggs, no email, and the Temper Trap on a loop. Yet the tweets keep coming.
12 December at 10:11

A Christmas Video

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 01:57:00 +0000

Earlier this month, I commented negatively about the growing intimacy between the UFC and the US military.

I'm pleased now to forward a tweet redirected by UFC commentator and stand-up comedian Joe Rogan. Here's the video, which I believe is quite relevant for today:

Merry Xmas.

India or China?

noreply@blogger.com (Raywat Deonandan) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:20:00 +0000

During the first session of every class that I teach at the University of Ottawa, I relate to my students some of my observations from giving a lecture at Jawarlahal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, back in 2007. Essentially, I tell them about how the students at JNU take their education much more seriously than do students in Canadian universities, about how they don't complain about extra work or the difficulty of classes, but rather appreciate the increasing competitiveness of a globalised economy and therefore the importance of every small iota of knowledge or skills that an educator can provide. This experience is contrasted with some of the complaints I get from some Canadian students, who moan about "too much math" or having to do --gasp!-- written assignments or, Zod forbid, write two exams on the same day.

I tell them this in order to bring home the truth, as I see it, that the West is losing the education war, and that we North Americans need to work very hard indeed to match the work ethic of our Asian competitors. After all, I want my students to be as competitive as their Asian brethren, and to be able to work, produce and excel at a global pace.

This sentiment is touched on briefly in Hans Rosling's famous TEDIndia lecture, in which he states that in his experience students in India study much harder than do students in the West.

I observed a similar trend during my tour of India's major cities in 2007, where I noticed that every young person with whom I interacted seemed willing and able to sacrifice and to endure great hardship to do his part to push himself, his family and his country to the world's economic forefront. I've seem similar work ethics in other parts of the world --China, Indonesia and Thailand come to mind-- but never with the same weird mixture of optimism and desperation.

It's almost a truism now that a handful of formerly impoverished nations are poised to be the superpowers of the next century. The so-called BRIC nations --Brazil, Russia, India and China-- have the world's fastest growing economies, and are posting expansive economic stats, even during a global recession. Two in particular --India and China-- are seen as the great emerging powers of the world. Indeed, it should be noted that in the history of human civilization, the two strongest economies on Earth have always been India's and China's, with the exception of the colonial period of the past 200-300 years.

Currently, most US and Canadian foreign policy, with respect to these nations, has focused on China being the likely rival to the USA's throne of hegemonic dominance. This is reasonable given the overlap between American and Chinese military interests (security of the Formosa Strait and arms deals in Sudan among them), and also because of the current dominance of Chinese products in US markets. Chinese GDP is 7-8 times that of India's, her per capita GDP six times greater, and her inflation substantially lower. China's infrastructure, her road quality, civic amenities and electrical grid, for example, are comparable to those of Europe or North America, making for relatively efficient goods production and transportation. And Chinese military power is well proven and disciplined, making China the great regional superpower of Asia.

In the comparison of Chinese and Indian economies, a practice increasingly popular in the parlour rooms of academics, China seems to win according to every traditional metric. But there are qualities that hint at a dramatic shift in coming decades. I would like to respectfully suggest that it will be India, not China, that will take the world's economy and culture by the collars and shake it till the human race takes note. Assuming that a global economy still exists, and assuming that Climate Change or some other apocalyptic event hasn't ravaged humanity back to the Stone Age, I predict that the close of the 21st century will see India as the world's leading nation.

Here are my reasons:

The demographic dividend. China has an age profile comparable to that of Western nations, specifically Canada. In other words, the Chinese are old. As a result, they are heading for the same economic precipice as is the West: in 10-30 years, the number of workers will be fewer than the number of retirees. This is a considerable economic strain. India, on the other hand, is a very young nation. The bulk of its population is just entering the work force.

English. There's a reason one of the more dynamic industries in China is English language training. They recognize that English is the current global lingua franca and the language of commerce. This will not be changing anytime soon, due to centuries of British then American global dominance. As a result of their colonial past, the elite and mercantile classes of India are already either functional or fluent in English, affording them immediate linguistic entry into the global market. It is not unusual or difficult to find fluent speakers of French, German, Portugese, Russian or any number of important world languages on the streets of India; the same cannot be said of China.

British law. Another dividend of post-colonialism is the inheritance of a relatively functional, reliable and more-or-less fair judicial system, at least to the extent that it needs to be for business purposes. China's legal system is functional, as well, but individual rulings at the local level are theoretically subject to the whims of the central ruling party. This is relevant to business because trans-border contracts need to have legal heft. An agreement with an Indian firm is guaranteed by the Indian legal system; there is recourse, at least in theory and more-or-less in practice, should a contract go awry.

Politically engaged diaspora. Both nations enjoy large global diasporas which have sought and received commercial success. But the Indian diaspora has gone further by achieving political success. Canada, the USA, the UK, the Caribbean, Africa and beyond... all are seeing elected officials of Indian extraction who, while serving the needs of their electorate, nonetheless maintain a connection to the Motherland. This is serving to accelerate commercial, philosophical, cultural and political connections between India and the world.

Energy profile. Both growing economies are emerging energy hogs. However, China's model is a factory-based industrial one, depending on coal-fired plants to churn out cheap consumer goods that flood Western markets. India does some of the same, but is known more for its virtual products and human resources --information technology, call centres, medical tourism, etc-- all of which have fewer industrial energy demands than does strict manufacturing. The result is that as energy production becomes increasingly prohibitively expensive, the Indian model for wealth generation will become more labile and efficient than the Chinese model. This may be the difference in sustaining Indian growth when the energy crunch really hits hard.

Democracy. It's somewhat propagandistic to suggest, as the West did during the entirety of the Cold War, that democracy is a prerequisite for national wealth; Singapore proved that assertion to be false. However, history suggests that democracy remains the best political system under which to build a thriving, stable economy. India's functional democracy, unlike China's one-party ruling system, is arguably more robust against major perturbations. A revolution, the argument goes, leading to a vitiation of trade deals and dramatic shifts in economic philosophies, is less likely under India's system than under China's.

Soft power. Whereas hard power is military brute force and money spent by one nation to affect the behaviour of another, soft power is that exercised to encourage others to become acclimatized and sympathetic --almost desirous-- of one's lifestyle and perspective. There is official, government-funded soft power and unofficial, cultural soft power that flows naturally from a nation's character and enterprises. Both India and China have pursued the former, by sponsoring cultural exchanges and by investing in development projects and other goodwill gestures abroad. China, perhaps, has been more acutely involved in this activity, especially in regions of specific geopolitical interest, like energy-rich portions of Africa. However, the unofficial kind of soft power is arguably what is more pertinent to assuring a nation's supremacy atop an increasingly monolithic world economic culture. After all, what has done more to promote US interests abroad, America's vaunted military supremacy or Coca Cola, Hollywood and Britney Spears?

Chinese cultural soft power has flowed slowly but consistently over the years, bringing kung fu, acupuncture and Chinese cuisine to all parts of the globe. But in recent years we've seen the explosion of Indian soft power. The ancient art of yoga is now, ironically, a fast growing multimillion dollar global industry. With it has come Indian styles of meditation and Ayurvedic medicine, all the rage in trendier parts of the West. India is now the centre of the English-language book publishing world, surpassing both the USA and UK in this category, and regularly producing Booker and Pullitzer Prize-winners from her sprawling diaspora.

An increasing global acceptance of vegetarianism as a lifestyle, championed by celebrities and medical authorities alike, is being fueled both by rising food prices and by realizations that meat production is not an environmentally sustainable practice at current global levels. With the increased popularity of vegetarianism has come a gravitation toward the world's most recognizable vegetarian culture in India. This, too, is a kind of soft power.

Bollywood is, of course, the dreadnought of Indian cultural soft power. Bollywood images of beauty, athleticism, wealth, talent and vivacity are replacing extant world views of Indians as mystics, fakirs and impoverished indigents. The Oscar win of Slumdog Millionaire has permanently cemented the Bollywood ethic into the global mainstream, and with it a growing comfort with doing business with Indians, in all the ways that that phrase suggests. To paraphrase Shashi Tharoor, in today's world it's not the country with the biggest guns that wins, but the country who tells the better story; and India is quite adept at telling stories.

The import of cultural soft power is being seen in the rise of Indian educational centres; a few of whom, such as the Indian Institute of Technology, are rivaling the top schools of the USA in quality and name recognition, and are attracting foreign students in increasing numbers. China has some excellent schools, as well, but the global branding of Indian schools is allowing their graduates to leverage those brands in trans-national commerce, by force of name recognition alone, a feat that was once the sole domain of top US and UK colleges.

Both India and China suffer from that great worrisome blight of the Global South: the gaping chasm between rich and poor, both within city centres and between rural and urban poles. In the Chinese case, this has been managed centrally, by establishing specific zones of economic activity. But within those zones, tragedy abounds in the form of child workers and conditions rumoured to be occasionally medieval in their brutality.

In India, the oceans of working poor underwrite the middle class's rapid accumulation of wealth. In the streets of Mumbai, street-side sellers, sweepers and construction workers sleep in the streets or in temporary slums so that the important work of erecting skyscrapers and servicing the business class will not be slowed by the inconvenience of worker health or happiness. Neither the Chinese or Indian case is a sustainable model for labour rights or popular stability.

Both nations must solve their worker rights issues before economic stability is achieved. Frankly, the nation who can do so first may, quite literally, inherit the world.