Human mind a Procrustean Bed?

It was long time ago, time when I was in middle school. My class teacher narrated a scary story from Greek Mythology - 'The story of Proscrustes'. It is the story of an evil guy named Procrustes, son of Poseidon, who had a iron bed. He would invite innocent bypassers to spend the night in his den, provide them good dinner and have them sleep on his iron bed. He was somehow obsessed with fitting his guests to his bed. If his guest was longer then the bed, he would chop of the excess portion of the guest's legs. If the guest was shorter then then bed, he would stretch them. His original name was Damastes but was nicknamed Proscrustes which means ' the stretcher'. I had forgotten this story until it was brought back to mainstream discussion by Author/Economist Nassim Taleb, of the Black Swan fame,  whose new book is titled 'The Bed of Procrustes'.

In the early part of 2000's I received a email forward from a friend. It detailed that the right age difference for a married couple was three years. It had the reasons explained which I do not want to detail as they are very silly. Not surprisingly the age difference between this guy and his wife was, you guessed it, three. A few years later, I received a similar email with a forwarded message from another friend belonging to a different group. The email content was exactly the same with a single minor difference. The ideal age difference between a married man and woman was five in this email. No prizes for guessing how young this guys wife was - five years. Everything else remained the same in the two emails, word to word, alphabet to alphabet excepting the age difference. Procrustes was streching or cutting his guests to fit his bed. My friends were shortening or lengthening the age difference in the emails to fit their personal experiences. This stretching, shortening of facts to suit our beliefs is a common theme among us humans. The above email anecdote has no negative consequences other than light banter, but this nature of humans might have serious implications.

It was the year 2008 and the economy was in shambles. The financial markets were in turmoil and highly volatile. I was just entering the stock market. As is normal of amateur stock market traders/investors, I was confident that I could beat the market gurus out there. I decided to go short on the market especially the oil. It turned out to be a huge mistake. For a while I was making money, a lot of it. But the first rule is you don't make any money unless you realize the gains in your positions. That was a hard and expensive lesson. Greed and confirmation bias kept me piling on more money on the short side and then something happened. The market turned around and I did not close my shorts. Instead I added more to my shorts believing in my hypothesis - that the economy was in shambles and that oil was headed much much lower. A few months were gone along with a few thousands and I came to my senses. I covered my shorts after having almost lost my clothes. I haven't recovered from that whipsaw and am continue to shy away from the stock markets.

I have noticed this penchant for stretching facts to confirm of belief and decisions, instead of the other way round - Our beliefs should be stretched or shortened based on the facts. There is more to the story of Procrustes. For every villian there has to be a hero, atleast in mythologies. So the hero in this story is Theseus, who visits Procrustes and convinces him to lie on his own bed. Procrustes is longer than the bed and Theseus decapitates him. Thus, keeping intact the tradition of fitting humans to the bed of Procrustes. This story feels flawed now, but it resonates well the theme of how our mind works. I almost lost the savings  in my budding retirement account due to my bias. In this age of information, our search for confirmation is a just a click away. We can get confirmation to our beliefs for any sort of weird thing that one can imagine. You can also find staunch supporters too of your belief and all of this is just a click away. Some of these may be less harmful, but there will be occassions when the repurcussions are more than benign.

I conclude by quoting Nassim Taleb from his new book 'The bed of Procrustes' - we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion, has explosive consequences.

Malthus: Menace to Minority

Last month(September 2010) in the myriad of dreadful events like the floods in Paksitan, one news caught my attention. It was about a guy, James J. Lee who took a few employees of Discovery Channel Hostage. According to the news, he hated the shows like "Kate Plus 8" and "19 Kids and Counting." on the Discovery Channel. He had protested against them and had served some jail time. He demanded that Discovery Channel network air "programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility." He had the following on his website "Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what's left of the planet with their false morals and breeding cultures,". His myspace account appears to be shut down for now, but you can find some of his ramblings here and here. From his Save the Planet Protest site he demanded the following(bolding and italics, are mine)
Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it.
Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains until they get it!!

He rambles about a bunch of other important matters like War, Environment, Global Warming etc. But the gist appeared to me that he was paranoid about Human Population growth and he desperately wanted an end to Human Births. He blamed discovery channel for fostering shows that promote human population growth and war.

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A few years ago, my friend in India had the following(italicized) to say in one of our email communications.

I agree with you on the subject of the discrimination that our society exercises on Muslims. There could be many reasons for it. some (of) them could be the mistakes committed by Muslims themselves. Here, through sai organization I went to couple of Muslim Bastis on couple of occassions. .... the number of children in a house was observed around 6. Ironically, the bread winner is just one (father); in some places you may find one more (eldest son). This might be one of the reasons for their lower economic conditions. They are not interested in studies. Some of them also found to have inclination towards crime and get some intant(sic) money. Hence, reformation is required from both sides.

The views expressed above are not unique to my friend and are harbored by many more. Different versions of that opinion are expressed by people in the country of my dominion. Replace the Muslims with immigrants and minorities; Voila, the discourse is the same.

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The fear of population was originally stated by Thomas Robert Malthus in his three volume book titled 'An essay on the principle of population'. The central observation of this book, later came to be termed as 'Mathusian Catastrophe' is that if the population growth is left unchecked, it will be forced to subsistence levels as agriculture production(Arithmetic progression) cannot keep pace with human growth(Geometric Progression). 
He wrote this theory to refute his compatriot Marie Jean Antoine de Condorcet. Condorcet in his seminal work 'Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind' wrote about the perfectibility of human mind and society.

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The theory proposed by Malthus has become so widely accepted and twisted that crimes have been committed in that belief. History has proven over and over again that when bad ideas are taken in faith by the powerful, it can lead to some bad results for the powerless.

During the darkest days of Indian Democracy called the Emergency, Sanjay Gandhi, son of then Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi, committed crimes in the name of family planning program to limit population growth. According to author Mark Tully "His inexperience did not stop him from using the Draconian powers his mother, Indira Gandhi, had taken to terrorise the administration, setting up what was in effect a police state.[Mark Tully 'Amritsar Mrs. Gandhis last Battle, pp. 55, ISBN 81-291-0917-4]

During the emergency it was reported that he forced evacuation of a slum of 250,000 people, mostly muslim, near Turkman Gate and Jama Masjid in Delhi. The government officials and police officers forcibly performed vasectomies in order to meet quotas. By official orders, men with two children or more had to submit to sterilization. Many unmarried young men, political opponents and ignorant, poor men were also believed to have been sterilized. This forced sterilization program had wide repercussions for government led family planning programs later on. Luckily for India this period lasted only two years from 1975-1977 and Indira Gandhi herself restored democracy to India.
(P.S.: Compulsory Sterilization of a group of humans has been practised by law in several countries like USA and Germany until very recently.)

In China the 'one child only' policy was started in about 1980 and is still in place today. This created social consequences like gender selective abortion, female infanticide, girl abandonment, kidnapping by officials etc causing imbalance in the sex ratio of male to female in the population as a whole to its current level of 117 to 100. The young men in china find it diffcult to find a suitable mate as is expected. This has other repurcussions at the lower end of society like forced prostition, bachelors 'purchasing' wives, social unrest, violence by restless young men etc.

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Malthus has been proven wrong all along and for well over 200 years since the first publication of his theory in 1798. The argument has been that agriculture growth will not be sufficient to cater to the needs of humans and its high growth rate. Until about 1950, the farm productivity was limited by the availability of natural fertilizer which was manure from animal waste, labor which was mostly human and arable land which is limited or decreasing. The other inputs - sun, air and water are almost free. So the powerful, elite and regular folks alike bought into the notion that population growth should be limited by any means. That meant prevention of immigration, forceful sterlization, blaming large families(most of which happen to be minorities).

The argument for 'food supply running out' has been largely quelled by invention of synthetic techniques of making fertilizers that replaced natural fertilizer namely manure. The availability of cheap nitrogenous fertilizer has clearly prevented the long-predicted “Malthusian catastrophe,” or population crisis. The cost of food as % of household income has dropped from one-third of the average U.S. household income in 1955 to less than 15 percent today. The labor issue was resolved by Industrial revolution where large machines replaced much of human work on the farm. In developed countries unlike the developing countries, obesity is the problem and not malnutrition from lack of food.

But the fear of 'population crisis' is well alive today and raises its ugly head almost every year especially in times of economic crisis. It manifests as a case for stopping all forms of socail welfare programs to the poor, the recipients of which being the minorities in the society. It is cited as a case against immigration.

It is time for some fact checking. The global population growth has been in a decline for about five decades now. As per US Census Bureau, the world population rate is currently at 1.1% in 2010 from a high of 2.2% in 1962. Infact there are quite a few countries like Russia, Germany, Latvia, Italy and Japan that have negative rate of natural increase in population. For complete list of growth rates by country, see here. These countries face challenges of aging population with the median age shifting to the right, with fewer working young people having to support more aged and retired members of their country. The other factor is the fertility rate. The necessary replacement rate is about 2.1 and fertility rate of US is at 2.05. There are about 100 countries that have a fertility rate below the replacement levels.

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It might appear that I am in support of unlimited human growth. I am not. I am against the 'social darwinists' who took a leaf from Malthus and made this world a bad place to live creating unsustainable public policies, commiting crimes and suffering for the general public. The solution to the human population growth is economic growth itself. Help the underdeveloped sections around the globe grow economically; let people choose their path, provide education, give them independence to choose, let democracy prevail; and population growth as in developed countries will be controlled to a point where public policy has to be changed to support child bearing like that in Japan now. This is already happening in sections of developing countries like India, where the educated and economically well off couples in the upper and middle class prefer a single child.

To put it better in the words of Chris Anderson who in his book 'Free' said
A look at the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggested that we get smarter faster  
than we reproduce—human ingenuity tends to find ways to extract resources from the earth faster
than we can use them. This has the effect of increasing supply faster than demand, which in turn
depresses prices.
......[parts ommitted for brevity]......
Humans are wired to understand scarcity better than abundance. Just as we’ve evolved to overreact
to threats and danger, one of our survival tactics is to focus on the risk that supplies are going to run
out. Abundance, from an evolutionary perspective, resolves itself, while scarcity needs to be fought
over. The result is that ..., people were inclined to believe the very worst about anything and
every- thing; they were immune to contrary evidence just as if they’d been medically vaccinated
against the force of fact.

***********

I think it is time to put Malthus and his theory to rest.

To BP, or not to BP: Discourse on a modern moral dilemma

Abstract: This post will chronicle a moral dilemma I faced after filling my car at a gas station. I have some questions answered while raising some to myself as I always have.

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Before I begin, I have to confess of my bad habit. I wait for the yellow empty gas indicator to come up on my car to refill and it has caused me trouble in the past. I am not one of those who stick to a single gas station and pump premium only in my cars. I go whichever is closest and cheapest. However, I faced a dilemma after pumping gas in my car a few weeks ago.

It was one of those days when the indicator on my car showed that it was time to refill. I relocated recently to my current location and was not very familiar with the neighborhood. I have been around the streets here and there for groceries, coffee etc. So I was driving along a major road in search of a gas station. I knew there was a BP station on that road. I have seen it on my way to a coffee shop few days ago. My memory served me right this time and I reached the intersection to the left of which was the BP gas station. However, there was also a Sunoco gas station at the corner of the intersection after the traffic signal. The price was same, exactly to the tenth of a penny. I wonder when they will stop pricing to the 9/10^th of a penny though penny itself has become worthless. I went to the Sunoco gas station to fill my car instead of going to the BP gas station.

The moral dilemma started a few hours after filling the gas. There are multiple reasons why humans act the way they do. Most times self interest takes precedence over other reasons like social causes, environment concerns etc. In this case, I went through a considerable hardship at Sunoco for a simple task of filling the tank of my car. I did this to deny BP of my business. This was my way of showing dissent at BP for it’s handling of the Deepwater Horizon Drilling Rig crisis resulting in the biggest oil spill in continental US. The more I think about my actions now, the more I am convinced of my irrational action on that day.

Before I get into the details of my moral dilemma, let me narrate the troubles I went through in my act of trying to avoid BP. I waited for my turn at the traffic light to turn green so I can go to the Sunoco gas station while that would have been completely unnecessary had I gone to the BP station. The BP station was located before the traffic signal and I just had to yield to the opposite traffic, which was sparse, and fill up my car at the completely empty gas stations. There was not a single soul using the gas stations at this BP location. I drove into the Sunoco and waited my turn which had a queue of two cars at each line. It was 15 minutes before my turn would come up. When my turn did come up, I swiped my credit card and it was rejected. Now I had to go inside and speak to the attendant. There was again a line there. I had to wait 10 more minutes before I could speak to the attendant. The attendant took my card for some about $30 and told me I could go pump. The attendant somehow messed up activating the pump and I had to go in again. He had to cancel my previous transaction and charge my card again. After three more attempts due to errors made by the attendant, I was able to fill my car with some gas. I was sure the tank still had about 2 gallon left, but I was frustrated now to redo the whole process. I was now 45 minutes into the process and was getting anxious to get away from there.

Had this been six months ago, I would have been to the gas station and would be out of there in 15 minutes under normal circumstances. I had lost 30 minutes of my life (I say that as a matter of factly and I have been known to waste lot more time that the half hour without guilt) for a cause that I am not sure was right and worth it. I was trying to deny BP of my business, thereby hurt BP in my own humble way for causing the gulf oil spill and not responding in a timely manner. I felt that they denied taking responsibility for a long time, lied about the rate at which the oil was spilling out into the ocean, was trying half baked measures at containing the spill, tried to save money even while facing the worse oil spill disaster the US has known that has effected the livelihood of millions, immeasurable loss to the marine life and unknown damage to the Atlantic Ocean ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico. While all my reasons are my own and are debatable to some extent, my thoughts was going counter to my original thinking that lead to my decision of boycotting the BP gas station.

I acted against my selfish interests of going to the closest, cheapest and quickest choice which was BP in my current anecdote. Humans are social beings and we sometimes take actions counter to our selfish interests. I was not the only one boycotting BP on that particular day. It was evident when you look at how the BP gas station lot was empty, while there were people waiting in line at the Sunoco station on the other side of the intersection. This is not just a local phenomenon also. BP gas stations all over USA have seen a fall in their sales fall by about 20% on average. Over 850 thousand people liked the Boycott BP on Facebook.

While fighting for social causes, acting unselfishly may not be right choice after all. Like in trying to hurt BP by boycotting it, I think myself and many more like me are causing little harm to BP. Instead we might be causing much bigger harm to those other faceless people who are in no way related to the disaster. They are only guilty by association and we all fell into that trap. So who is affected by this ‘bigger harm’ and what exactly is this ‘bigger harm’ I am talking about?

The gas station owners and the people employed at the gas stations are the ones affected much more by the BP boycott in this case. As I have mentioned earlier, nationwide BP gas stations have noticed a reduction in sales by about 20%. In a struggling economy that might mean a lot for people who are making a living out of a low margin sales of gasoline. According to smartmoney in 2006, fuel sales made up 71 percent of revenue but only 34 percent of gross margins. With the profit margin just over 2% on a gallon of gas the gas stations owners depend on the sale of the in store items to the customers coming in. The in-store items are high margin items (profit margin over 30%) and bring lot more money than the gas itself. So when the gas sales go down by such big percentage, the number of people buying items in the store also reduces.

Even if we ignore the ‘bigger harm’ by the irrational notion that the gas station owners have to be punished as they are guilt of associating with BP, we have to understand how much of an impact if any ‘Boycott of BP’ has on BP. If the collective impact is big enough, then the boycott can be considered successful from the perspective of those boycotting BP. A naïve look at it might seem to have a big impact as the sales have reduced by 20% at the gas station. Digging deeper, one will be surprised to know that only a fraction of the gas at the BP stations actually originated from a BP crude oil facility or is produced at a BP refinery. The odds are, it is very unlikely and the reason is this. The gas at BP comes from a storage facility where the gas stored could have come from any number of refineries and not just from one producer. To be called BP gas, the gas has to be added BP additives and thats it. The difference between a gas at a BP and a gas at other station like Sunoco is nothing but the brand of additives added. The additives themselves are not any different. Also it is required by law that all gas stations have a certain amount of additives. If BP sees a reduction in demand from its own gas stations, they can sell their crude oil and gasoline from it’s refineries to others in the open market. The corollary is also true. Meaning that gas at a non BP gas station may contain gas from a BP refinery or gas produced by a refinery using the crude oil produced from a BP production facility. Beyond gasoline, there are  other products from BP that are rather invisible. Castrol brand of lubricants is owned by BP. When you get the oil changed in your automobile from a garage, you might not even know that you are using a BP product.  Beyond gas and lubricants, there are several products from crude oil that we use in our daily life that are not  branded. For example, the polythene bags, plastic containers for food and storage, trash bags. These synthetic products are made by non BP brands that might use the feed from crude oil derivative produced by BP. Overall the impact to BP from boycotting BP gas stations is very minimal and depending on the location and time it could be nothing.

Here are some more links to recent news items that will shed more light on this topic.

Chicago Tribute - Bypassing BP stations won't KO oil giant.

NY Times - Punishing BP Is Harder Than Boycotting Stations.

Market Watch - Gas-station owners, not BP, feel sting of boycotts.

Yahoo News - Time to scrap BP brand? Gas-station owners divided.

I decided to revert to my selfish choice: to go to the nearest, cheapest gas station with minimal traffic. But I knew all the above facts well before I made that fateful decision leading up to this rant. So what made me make that irrational decision and what is causing this casual reversal? What if I had a more pleasant experience at the Sunoco on that day? I am sure I would have felt happy for sticking it to the evil multinational in the remotest, humblest, irrationally possible way – by boycotting the evil brand.

I shop at Wal-Mart that has bad reputation for wage and working conditions of its workers. I occasionally eat at McDonalds that is alleged to causing obesity in US, and violating animal welfare. I buy coffee at Starbucks that is criticized for anti-competitive practices. And I own a Tobacco company(do I say more) in my investment portfolio. My irrational action was based on a recent incident; that of an oil spill disaster. And a 45min trouble brought me back to my senses. Or have I? 

Success Formula for Communities in Certain Fields

What's Happening at Brownsville, TX
I was watching a show on HBO called 'Real Sports with Bryant Gumbell'. It is a show covering various social issues in the sports world in our society. On the episode I was watching, there was a feature on Chess in a small town called Brownsville in Texas. Synopsis of episode can be found in text here. Brownsville is a very small town bordering Mexico with a population of 175,000 of which 90% is Hispanic. I was drawn to the feature not because I was looking for an answer to the question of my current post, but becuase I have a small connection to that town.

I have been to the town of Brownsville, Texas way back in the tail end of year 2004. I stayed overnight in a small hotel and the next day crossed the border to Mexico to pay an 'immigrant's pilgrimage' to an American Consulate in Matamoros. I have to get my Visa and one of the oddities of an immigrant life in USA is that, an immigrant has to go out of USA to renew the immigration Visa on the Passport at any American Consulate. I was living in Texas and the closest consulate was in Matamoros. If you have to go to Matamoros, the closest town with an airport was in Brownsville, TX. After getting my Visa at the consulate, I visited my home country where I met a beautiful and smart girl who a year later became my spouse.

So given my small connection to Brownsville, I wanted to know what did a brain game like chess have to do with such a small border town. Brownsville like any town bordering Mexico is more likely to be known for issues with the border, security, minorities, drug traficking and violence. This is where the story gets interesting. The small city of Brownsville and the schools in this town have achieved great success in the game of Chess. The high school chess teams from this town have been the winners of US National chess championships and for many years consecutively. Most Recently in April 2009, at the collegiate level the team representing University of Texas, Brownsville(UTB) defeated Stanford University for third place in the President's Cup. In 2010 they stood second behind the perennial winners from University of Maryland at Baltimore County (UMBC).

The combination of minorities, border town in Texas and phonomenal success in chess over a long period of time intrigued me and I did some search into history of Chess in Brownsville. Here from the UTB website is what I found.

Chess in Brownsville
Chess in Brownsville started in the later 1980's and early 1990s. The Russell Elementary School chess team paved the way of future events to come when they won seven consecutive Texas state championships from 1993-1999. Inspired by this success, several kids at other high schools took interest in chess with the assistance and promotion from school administration and facutly. Another school in Brownsville, Morningside Elementary School which started Chess in the summer of 1997, went on to come second in a national tournament by 1999. They were just half a point behind the winning team Hunter College Campus Elementary School from New York City. Without having the required financial resources by itself, The Morningside Elementary School was able to attend the national championship with the support from the local people and businesses who raised funds required for the chess team to travel and participate in the national championship. Later on different schools at different levels in Brownsville have all won national chess championships; Paredes and Hudson elementary schools, Oliveira and Vela middle schools, and Hanna and Porter high schools, led by Paredes’ seven national championships.

All this began in 1990 by Jose Juan Guajardo, when the principal of Russell Elementary School assigned him to teach at-risk fourth grade students. He decided to engage the students in chess learning from the experiences of teaching his own son and the rest as we see today as they say is history. This short history however hides a lot of different facets, like the hardwork, hours of practice put in by the minority kids, the encouragement provided by their parents and community etc., all of which are required for success. To me this story provides a theme, a small beginning by a single individual followed a big initial success inspires more people to join in and thereby more success and the spiral continues. The small start by Jose J. Guarhardo was met by big success at the state level relatively quickly by 1993. The initial success is very important as it demonstrates to the other members of the community, that success can be achieved despite the odds. This success was supported by the families of kids. The community where the kids lived participated and took pride in the success of the kids. The community recognized the success and provided encouragement when needed by raising funds to send the kids to national events.

The Sucess Template
If one were to arrive at a theme based on the above story, it would go like this.

• Barrier Breaker
• Willing Takers/Followers
• Continuing Success
• Network for Practicing and Competing Opportunities

I think the first point 'Barrier Breaker' is the most important. To Quote one of my favorite author Malcolm Gladwell from an interview with ESPN .

One of the things that always interests me in sports is how extraordinarily sensitive athletic performance is to social expectations. My favorite example is the four-minute mile. For years, no one even comes close. Then Roger Bannister breaks the record in 1954, and suddenly, everyone can break four minutes. Did runners get "better" in 1954? Not really. They simply became aware that running four minutes was possible. Same thing with baseball players and the Dominican Republic. Dominicans are not "better" infielders than everyone else. But if you are a nine-year-old kid playing in San Pedro de Macoris, you know that it's possible to be a major leaguer, in a way that the same kid growing up in Maine does not. When symbolic barriers are broken -- the first man from the Dominican Republic to make the majors, the first person to break four minutes -- the context in which we think of achievement changes dramatically.


The complete interview of Malcolm Gladwell quoted above can be found here.

The success of Hispanic community in Chess from the Brownsville area is not an one off phenomena. Certain immigrant and minority communities in USA and elsewhere have shown that they can achieve success at rates that are of envy to the rest. Case in point is the success of Dominicans in Major League Baseball as was also mentioned in the quote from the author of Tipping Point above. Breaking the barrier by achieving a widely recognized success causes an explosion of followers who are motived to follow the lead. The remaining points mentioned in the theme are needed for the continued dominance of the group in a particular field, be it Hispanics from Brownsville in Chess, Dominicans in Baseball, Russian Jews in Violin, Kenyans(of Kalenjin tribe) in marathon, South Korean women in WPGA (In 2007, 45 out of 121 international players in the LPGA tour and 8 out of top10 to play in US Open are from Korea ) etc.

Exploring the Theme with Dominicans in Baseball
Let me explore the theme I highlighted above by examining the success of Dominicans in Baseball. The brief history of Baseball in Dominican Republic can be found here and here. Baseball teams started playing baseball in Dominican republic in the year 1894/95. Until about the year 1956 there was not a single player from Dominican Republican playing in MLB. In the year1956 the guy named Osvaldo 'Ozzie' Virgil made his debut in MLB with the New York Giants. This barrier breaking by Ozzie was followed within a short span by many other Domican Republic players like Juan Marichal, the Alou brothers, Manny Mota and others making it to the highly competitive MLB. By 1965 Juan Marichal won the Most Valuable Player award in that year's All Star game. He was the most dominant pitcher in the 1960's. This made the game highly popular in Dominican Republic. The baseball league within the country intensified after the barrier on entering the MLB was broken by Ozzie Virgil and the success achieved by Juan Marichal. Money and Scouts followed from USA to Dominican Republic in search of ever expanding talent in the small country. So far over 500 players from Dominican Republic played in MLB. Here is the list of them all. In 2009 81 out of 748 active players in MLB are from Dominican Republic. It is the most by any other foreign country. 

Pitfalls: Failure, Size and Hope Factor
So far the theme fits well. However, it is only anecdotal and is a far fetch to make into a Theory. There are some more questions that need to be answered. How did the barrier breaker do it? Was it the hard work or single individual defying all odds? Was it just luck? Why do some communities lose it; like field hockey lost to Cricket in India? Are they just event driven like the winning of World Cup by Indian Cricket in 1983 that coincided with Indian Hockeys beginning of a sudden death.

I think the size of the community matters. The communities achieving success have all been small with very competitve circuits for the young lads to hone thier skills, compete at a high degree among themselves. If the community becomes too big (eg., cricket in big country like india after 1983) it is very difficult to sustain the initial success and stop special interests in picking the correct talent to next level. The popularity can sustain for decades after the barrier breaking success, but the continued success becomes difficult to execute. There  is probably an optimum size mix for the field in question. If the community is too small it is difficult to find talent, if it is too big it falls on its own weight with special interests and other evils creeping in.

The field in which the community wants to succeed has to provide for the 'Hope Factor'. The success in the field has to be the ticket for their way out to a higher ground in society. The higher ground could be standard of living , status or anything that matters to the community. To quote a Russian violinist Vadim Gluzman* "At least for Russian Jews, that was the only way out of settlements. If you were accepted into the St. Petersburg Conservatory, that was your way into the big city. So the violin became a tool of hope, because it was convenient. They were the children of hope: Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein. That was the way for them and their families to move and have the legal right to bigger cities." 

In a future post, I will explore the success of Indians at the Spelling Bee with the theme I derived above.
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* Did Jews invent the violin?

Why Are Kenyans Fast Runners?

Why Korean golfers are dominating LGPA Tour?

Dim Sum Funeral, Grandma and Gandhi

I was watching a movie 'Dim Sum Funeral' on HBO couple months ago. The movie is about a Chinese-American family that meets for the funeral of the mother. The kids have nothing but bad memories of her. But it turns out that the old woman had a better side. The grand daughter who has been watching the drama unfold says this to her mom 'In just few hours there were hundred people who came to see Grandma. May be she is not that bad'. That was the touching moment of the movie.

Around the same time in May, my wife HAD to attend the funeral service of a lady who died very young of cancer. That young lady was the daughter of a very influential guy at her work. Needless to say the funeral service was very grand and attended by many. My wife was truly amazed at the grandiosity of the funeral service, there were six priests offering prayer service in the church, lots of flowers lined up and many more people in black suits, grand enough to evoke the following statement from my wife 'if you have money and power you can celebrate death like a marriage'.

Once in while I think what kind of funeral service would I have. How would I be remembered? There is no way to know. But then, I cant stop thinking about it. I want to people to think nice about me. May be I should be nice and friendly to everybody. But naively I been that guy about 10-15 years ago. The fact about life and people is, you can be nice to everyone, but there will be a guy, actually more than one, who just hate you for no reason and you can see right through them. What are you going to do about it? Nothing, so I stopped worrying about being nice to everybody. Do I want a lot of people attending my service? I have to be very popular and hold lots of money and power. But I don't want people to hate me on my death like I am sure of people who HAD to go to the funeral service of the lady I mentioned above. Do I want to be known by my colleagues for my work? Who am I kidding? I cant remember more than half the people I worked with at my first job. It is reasonable to expect the same from them. Gone are the days when men took a job for a lifetime. I have changed jobs equivalent to four lifetimes of my Dad. I don't think any of my colleagues care about me and I should not expect them to. The current work culture is as such. There will be an email circulated about your funeral service. If you are lucky, you would be talked about for a minute at a staff meeting.

The only funeral I attended in my lifetime was that of my grandma. I cried like a baby. There were almost everyone from the village at the funeral service. But the events that happened after the cremation of my grandmas remains left an indelible impression on me. My grand mom had a lot of gold ornaments on her which was normal for her age and times. There was "family" claiming that she said on some date and some occasion that some part of her gold ornament will be theirs. It is very strange that people can remember every detail of the event when claiming something, who otherwise would have very spotty memory in regular lives. It was all about the material remains of the old lady. There were witnesses for the claims too and the witness also had a similar story claiming some other ornament belonging to my grandma. Guess who was the witnesses witness this time. Yes the first claimant. You get the point. And then there were the complainers at the eleventh day luncheon for 'family', 'friends' and Brahmans. It was as if they did not come for a condolence ceremony, but to a grand restaurant opening and they were the critics from a food magazine. Of course there were fond remembrances from a lot of other folks in the village who are mostly unrelated. The surprising fact is that she was a very nice lady, took care of many in need, especially the 'family'.

Every year when the Indian Independence Day arrives, I can only think of a distant family friend visiting our home to deliver the news. The news was that my grandma died. The other person that I can think of on Indian Independence Day is Mahatma Gandhi. I greatly admire him. However there were and are a lot of people who criticize him. If an educated historian criticizes Gandhi, he provides an analytical, fact based reasoning, which is acceptable. Most people who criticized Gandhi and called him names, provided no proper explanation other than their biased opinion that Gandhi split India and catered to whims of Muslims. Most of these guys have no idea of the events in Indian Independence History.

The reason for my above rant is to convince myself of the following. The two persons that I most admire, were not spared after their death. I sure would have even slimmer chance of being treated any different when I am dead. So with that in mind, I can move on with my current existence on earth without any worry or regrets.

Indian Buzz at the Spelling Bee

Scripps Spelling Bee is an annual competition for kids who have neither turned 16 nor passed beyond the eighth grade. I have been following the competition since 2000 and it has come to become lot more popular now than in 2000. Kids of Indian origin tend to win the competition beyond comparison and there leads to a lot of stereotypes and spite. I will address them in this post.

I started this post about a year ago. I left it unpublished having not found clarity to my thoughts. Having struggled with vocabulary for the GRE exam, I had a sense of what is invloved in the spelling competition. I appreciated the effort put in by the young kids who manage to spell out arcane words that nobody has heard and they do all this under the glaring eyes of the TV spolight and pressure from fellow contestants. The first few years I saw this contest on TV, I felt deep sympathy for the kids. The stress was very visible on the faces of the contestants. It is hard to not notice that majority of these kids are geeky looking and more so that they belonged to the minority South Asian(Indian) community. Over the years the geekiness of these kids is replaced by a witty sense of humor in some of these kids. That was a welcome change.

The South Asian kids have dominated the event(ever since I have been following it) and their participation has grown over the years. Eight out the last twelve winners were of Indian origin. Here are some links on 2010 spelling bee champion
Spelling bee winner part of Indian-American streak
Veeramani wins for Cleveland
Washington Post Image gallery on National Spelling Bee

It is astounding if you see the statistics of how many Indian kids make it to the top and win it. Consider this, last year 14 out of 41 spellers in the semi-finals were Indian Americans. This year(2010), an estimated 30 Indian americans will compete among a total of 273 - 11 percent in all. This is a big if you know that Indian Americans are about only 1% of the US population. The winners of the last three years were all Indians. In 2008 it was Sameer Mishra from Lousiana, in 2009 year it was Kavya Shivashankar from Kansas and this year it is Annamika Veeramani from Ohio. The list of all the champions so far can be found here

However every success by an ethnic minority surely leads to stereotyping and mockery of the group by regular folks and mass media alike. I know the sterotypes associated with successful children of immigrant parents - they have pushy parents, not well rounded, book worms, geeky etc. Here is a recent article by Washinton about spelling bee contestant stereotypes - 'Spelling bee participants work to dispel the stereotypes'. While trying to find the stereotype on Indian parents, I found a clip from a famous sitcom Goodness Gracious Me. You can view it here or embedded video below



To see the sterotype associations, one just has to view the comments on any of the articles covered in the major news websites to see how much negativity is fostered by people. The negativity is fostered in International portals as well as in Indian websites by both Indian and Non-Indian readers alike. Here are some excerpts of some negative comments on news about kids of Indian origin winning

Belittling the efforts is a comment at slate.com -
Rote memorization is a waste of time. They should focus on more creative problem-solving skills: science, math, even art and literature. Thankfully, neither I nor any other Indian kid in my area cared about the spelling bee.


Mockery in a comment at nytimes.com
14 year old Anamika Veeramani from Ohio won the National Spelling Bee. She won when her opponent was unable to spell “Anamika Veeramani”.


Ethnic insult at rediff.com
Indians are best "parrots"..they can like parrots memorise words and keep uttering..rediff reporters are junk..


Jon Stewart, with all due respect for the topics he covers, could not avoid the stereotype either. But his daily show takes aim at everybody and that he what he does best-satire on current affairs.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Headlines - Asian Fusion
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Brushing aside the stereotypes, the competition itself is gaining in popularity and was telecast live primetime on abc this year. The journey to primetime has been slow but is aided by the documentary Spellbound made in 2002 which was very popular. In 2005 there was a movie titled 'Bee Season' staring Richard Gere. Then in 2006 the movie 'Akkelah and the Bee' starring Lawrence Fishburne was also based on the Spelling bee competition. Spelling Bee is now mainstream and covered as a sporting event on ESPN every year.

Popularity is good as it brings exposure to the competition and hardwork of the kids. But the real question stills remains. Why are Indians so good at Spelling Bee? My Google search did not give me a closure.

Here are some links to what I found myself looking for answers to the above question. I answers ranged from
Silly by joe six packs at Yahoo Answers! -
How come indians or east asians always are the winners of Spelling Bee?
to sensible at Slate - Why Are Indian Kids So Good at Spelling?
and rumination at The Root -
Is Spelling a Cultural Activity?

While success can bring stereotypes, it can also bring patronizing people to the front. Look here - Indian Americans: The New Model Minority. You can find refutation here -Nobody's Model Minority

I am still looking for answers. Let me know what your thoughts are on this.

---------------------The End-------------
What to know more, here are some more links
Striving in America, and in the Spelling Bee
Once again, yet ANOTHER Indian kid wins the National Spelling Bee
Spelling Bee contest in US: Indians cast a spell
Kansas gal Kavya Shivshankar bee-comes spelling princess
W-I-N-N-E-R! Desi Kid Wins Spelling Bee, Again

Why Blame Culture?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about blaming the culture. I felt that it was incomplete without some more questioning as to why people do that. This post will outline some thoughts on why people blame culture. I conclude this post with what an individual can do without falling into the trap of blaming culture.

In the wild, most animals stick to their own type. It is mutually beneficial for their long term survival to trust their type. Trusting a different species can most times mean end of life or severe physical harm. It is the reason you see birds flocking together, fish swimming in a school, lions hunting in a group and hyenas hunting with their gang etc. It is very easy to find this mistrust of other types in humans as well, after all humans are descendants of vertebrate animals. However we humans have become so vast in numbers that we have sub-groups who differ in the way we look physically. This difference is loosely called race sometimes, it is also referred by the term ethnicity. Whatever name we call it; there is an inherent mistrust among these different looking people. May be we are genetically disposed to mistrust.

My previous post had two anecdotes where people were blaming culture. My European colleague did not say that Japanese hide truth, he just said 'It must be Japanese Culture to stay silent in crisis'. The colleague of my friend did not say that Indians lie, he just asked 'Is it common in Indian culture to lie.' But they can be linked indirectly. When a person belonging to a different race does something negative, our genetic mistrust is switched on and we seek answers. We need to associate that negative trait to something and somehow satisfy our animalistic mistrust. According to me, satisfying this animalistic mistrust is the key.

I would like to know what my colleague would have to say about the current corporate disaster from a company bearing the name of his home country - BP. Toyota had always been apologetic about the safety of its vehicle. But BP had constantly lied about its involvement, it never owned the problem, had been blatantly trying to find a victim, lied about how much oil was flowing into the ocean (Recent estimates put the outflow of oil at 11k/day while BP stated it is close to 6k/day). I could generalize this behavior from BP to a statement - it is in British Culture to lie. While colonial history can be cited as a validation of that statement, I cannot agree to the generalization of this statement to represent the habits of common English people, and I am sure my colleague would agree with me.

Thanks to some great social and political movements, we live in a time where it is a must to be sensitive and politically correct at work. That has not stopped some people making unacceptable comments, but by and large today's work environment is very conducive for people from different races and countries to work harmoniously. So this expectation of diverse workforce does not allow the negative association with race, a nation, religion or a region. However, culture is a term that is associated with all the above and not with a single person. When a person blames the culture, the person is safely blaming the race, religion or region of the person who looks physically different than him/her.

What can we do? Though this is a very sensitive issue, there will always be people who will hold on to the theory that other people hold value systems different than themselves. They attribute culture to these values. It is important to take a stance and refute these claims whenever they are mentioned. But do so subtly and without being argumentative. While defending your values, do not fall into the same trap yourself. It is very easy to get carried away in conversations when it involves a third person that is different than all the people in the conversation. The same guy who gets offended when his 'culture' is blamed will not think twice when it comes to a different persons 'culture'. It is the nature of the conversation and our inherent mistrust that causes us to do it. It is important to subdue that subconscious criticism. Be very careful of what you say in such conversations. Don't get carried away. It is important to listen rather than say something irrationally to be a part of the conversation. Most times our urge to get heard makes us say something, that in retrospection, we do not even agree with. It does not mean that you have to stay silent, but just think and know what you are saying. The world will be a better place for others and yourself when you do that. It is also time for me to put these principles in action myself.

Blame it on, hmm.. let's say, culture

A few months ago there was a discussion about safety recalls by Toyota with some colleagues of mine. I shared an information with them about finding the safety recalls and coincidentally I wrote an article about Toyota's trouble at that time. This lead to an intriguing comment from a colleague of mine who was European. This is what he said "I do not trust Toyota. I don't think they are revealing the real truth as it must be cultural to stay silent" or something along those lines suggesting that the reason for Toyota's remaining silent is related to that country's culture. What he was insinuating is that hiding facts during crisis(I could read it as lying) is ingrained in Asian culture. This is not the first time and will not be last that someone will invoke culture as the cause whenever a negative connotation is to be associated.

A friend of mine narrated a similar incident at his workplace involving a mix of diverse international workforce. Apparently an employee at their company called in sick. It turned out that the guy had actually taken up a new job offer at some other company and used the 'sick' excuse to buy some time to switch. It was very apparent to everyone that the guy had lied about being sick. To my friend's surprise, his European colleague asked him 'Is it common in Indian culture to lie.' My friend and the guy who left his company for a greener pasture were both Indian and my friend's European colleague was linking lying to Indian culture. I have been asked similar questions associating something negative to my culture or some other immigrant's(the guy under scrutiny in the discussion) culture.

The culture paranoia is not limited to regular folks like the ones I mentioned above. In a book titled 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins, the author expresses his concern where culture could be transmitted genetically. He gives the examples of faith, mythology and perils associated with religious fanaticism. Infact he coined a word Meme and Memetics is now studied and researched as a science. Richard Dawkins is a very famous British Ethologist who had published several books, mostly on Evolution. While I am convinced about the evolutionary concepts, I feel the genetic transmission of culture, a little far fetched and based on paranoia. The case against Memetics as a science can be found here.

All the proponents of the culture blame theory, in the examples cited above, were coincidentally Europeans. I do not however believe this is a belief held only by Europeans. I can recite several anecdotes where this association of negative traits to a culture came from my Asian and American friends and colleagues alike. The topic of debate is not who does but rather why they do it. Is it because it is easy? Is it because it is convenient? If they are quick in associating negative connotation to culture, are they equally likely to associate positive traits of other fellow humans to their culture. I do not believe so. The positive traits are ignored because we take it to be natural for humans. How can we explain this dichotomy of association to culture? Are these guys consciously perpetrating the negative association to culture with someone belonging to different culture. I don't think so, but there are times I doubt my own assumption. It is done at a subconscious level?

Walking Among The Dead

It was a Saturday morning and I was having breakfast, muffin and cold coffee, at a franchised coffee shop. I sat there reading a newspaper and saw out through the glass wall, a local cemetery. I always felt strange about cemeteries. They are spooky at once, all the dead people buried there for ages among other dead people. But somehow they had an allure for me with the all the grand tombstones, located in the serenity of the woods. They always felt out of the world, and out of the world the buried people are, but the area itself is kind of isolated from the hustle and bustle of the urban world, kind of serene.

I decided to take a drive through, may be take a stroll as I had some time to kill. At the entrance read "All seasonal decorations need to be removed by March 31st". They might as well make it July 4th. I will tell you why later. The speed limit was set to 10mph which is understandable. There were few cars here and there and handful of people walking or jogging there while I was driving slowly. It was a nice day and calm. I bought down the windows of my car and could hear the birds chirping and cool breeze. It’s been a while since I took some time off with nature though I live in a region very close to several beautiful valleys and parks.

After a few minutes of driving I decided to take a walk. I parked my car to the side of the driveway and started walking in the woods. Since it was a cemetery, the ground was lined with tombstones with the name, date/year of Birth and Death of the person buried underneath. It felt kind of strange and creepy, but as time passed I felt some strange peace take over me. It was calm, cool breezy day. My thoughts quickly wandered to the people I had personally lost during my lifetime. I remembered my maternal grandfather who was grace personified. He was a farmer and strongly believed in hard work. Then there was my paternal grand mother who had a personal presence like no one I have known. I can still remember the look in her eye that had shades of strength and sorrow from her life experiences. She had lost her one eye when she was young in an accident while painting her house in the village when my dad was in school. My grand mom died on Indian Independence Day(Aug 15th) when I was a kid, whereas my grand father died about 5 years ago from old age. They both had a huge impact in my life. There were other relatives and friends that passed away, whose memories were both good and sad at the same time. Some of them struggled in their last days like my father-in-law who died of complications from CKD. I regret not being able to spend more time with him.

I continued my walk and tried to lose my thoughts by observing the various kinds of burial descriptions and decorations. I began to observe what people had placed on the burial grounds of their loved ones. It was clear that there was a social hierarchy among the dead as well. The richer among the dead, I think, had bigger almost cathedral like structures. While most were regular folks with regular stones. There was one shaped like a pyramid, probably representing free masonry. May be the dead guy was a mason. There were some gothic roman styled structures. Some even had gates in the front with dome shaped roof like a pagan temple. I am sure the dead cared less about social structure and hierarchy. It is the alive, loved ones of the dead that wanted to show their social status by throwing in money. It could even be an innocent gesture of love by constructing a unique structure and uniqueness can sometimes be shown by making the home bigger. Either way, every burial had a story to tell about the dead person and about the people related to the dead person.

The other observation I had was the decorations on the ground. If the dead person was really young, they had toys like Angels and Easter bunnies on the ground, while some older person's had weird stuff like golf balls. Some had flowers mostly plastic, but some had natural flowers and flower pots placed on the ground. The most popular adornment was surprisingly the American flag. Nationalism and patriotism did not escape the dead. The sign at the entrance could as well be read July4th or removed entirely as there can be no end to a season for patriotism. Some stones had the picture of the dead person's face on the stone. The oldest person I saw was born in 1811.

While I was making these silly observations, I got a call from my wife and I decided to head back to my car to go home. While I was going back, I saw an old white woman adjust some flags and decorations on the burial grounds of someone she probably was related to. The dead could have been a soldier. She gave me a distrustful stare. I smiled and said an audible “Hello"! She continued staring at me without a reply. I did not want to bother her anymore and continued walking towards my car.

My car was parked about half a mile away from where I was and the road I was walking was narrow with tall trees on the side with grass lawn. A few yards from where I was on the road, I had to take a right to go to my car and I saw the old lady, I saw earlier, driving a white van taking a left towards me. She was still staring at me and I came out of my philosophical self to being myself - regular pragmatic cynic. I can see why she had a distrustful look. There she was the lightest white old woman taking care of the ground under which her loved one was laid and here I was the darkest brown guy who could not have anyone buried there related to me to the sixth degree. I quickly took two steps to the right onto the grass and slipped behind a tree to let her pass by me. I did not want to be buried there from an accident caused by an angry old woman. I wanted to live another day. I saw her pass by me, with her continued mistrustful stare that truly caused me discomfort. I continued my walk to my car and I was greeted by another old lady who was jogging there. I regained my composure, went to my car and drove home slowly to have lunch with my wife.

Golha in Phila; Full Court Press for Public Libraries

On March 17th, 2010, I attended the Closing Event celebrating the One Book, One Philadelphia project conducted at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Per the handout given at the event 'One Book, One Philadelphia is a joint project of the Mayor's Office and the Free Library of Philadelphia. The mission of the program is to promote reading, literacy, library usage, and community building thoughout greater Philadelphia.'

The closing event was celebrated by the recreation of a Persian radio programme called Golha. Golha was introduced in 1956 by the Iranian government owned radio and ran through 1979 before being shut down by the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979. Being lazy, I reproduce what the closing event handout says about Golha -'Each week, the foremost Iranian musicians, vocalists, literary critics, poets, and radio announcerswere invited to perform a selection of the best modern and classical music and poems.'

The recreation of Golha at Philadelhia was conducted by Jeri Lynne Johnson, Music Director of Black Pearl Chamber Orachestra. The event included recitation of poems by Ursula Rucker, Homa Tavangar and Jahan Tavangar. I am not a big fan of poetry, often times I dont understand them. But one poem by a legendary Persian Poet Rumi impressed me. You can find the transalted version of a Poem by Rumi here . This Poem titled 'Not Ever Sea Has Pearls' is translated by Jahan Tavangar. I found a shorter version of the same peom online and here it is.

My heart, sit only with those who know and understand you.
Sit only under a tree that is full of blossoms.
In the bazaar of herbs and potions don't wander aimlessly
find the shop with a potion that is sweet
If you don't have a measure people will rob you in no time.
You will take counterfeit coins thinking they are real.
Don't fill your bowl with food from every boiling pot you see.
Not every joke is humorous, so don't search for meaning where there isn't one.
Not every eye can see, not every sea is full of pearls.
My hart, sing the song of longing like nightingale.
The sound of your voice casts a spell on every stone, on every thorn.
First, lay down your head then one by one let go of all distractions.
Embrace the light and let it guide you beyond the winds of desire.
There you will find a spring and nourished by its see waters
like a tree you will bear fruit forever.

--from the website http://www.rumi.org.uk/divan.htm
Rumi: The Hidden Music
by Maryam Mafi & Azima Melita Kolin

The program also had a intrumental music recitation by Cello artist Udi Bar-David, Santur artist Kazem Davoudian and Negin Moshtagh on Daf. I was familiar with the know what Santur is from watching famous Shuv Kumar Sharma as a kid. Daf is Dapli in Hindi. I enjoyed the classical music as I was somewhat familiar that was played live at the event. As they say, music and art are beyond boundaries and there is something about live music - It is as if classical music comes to life when heard live.

The recreated Golha at the Free Library of Philadelphia is one of the several such events conducted by the public libraries across the country. The public libraries serve several important roles in the society, not just places to get free books on loan and restooms for the homeless. They are a wealth of knowledge, great places to find information for research. But those are expected roles on the outset. Libraries also play other key roles, that of community gathering, policy dissemination by the local, state and federal government, cultural exchange, author events, book reading, writing and art workshops for the kids and adults, free access to internet, resume critique and job search workshops, free advise to small business people and several more. Most of these services are provided for free of cost to all. In the absense of the public libraries, the underprivileged have to pay up which they cannot afford.

In the last couple of years, the city of Philadelphia as part of its budget deficit trimming efforts have begun plans to sadly shutdown some public libraries in the Philadelphia region. This seems not just a Philadelphia event, rather a state wide and possibly nation wide course of action to trim budgets. It makes me cringe when any city/town targets the libraries whenever there is a discussion of fat trimming. Libraries as a fat of the city budget is a very wrong notion. In an increasing divisive society where the difference between the rich and poor is growing, libraries are one of the prime resources for the poor and underprivileged to know what is happening in the society, what policies are available to them to improve their lives and ofcourse free books for knowledge and entertainment.

Research has shown that the education gap between the rich and poor kids can be explained by the number of books(thereby greater reading oppurtunities) and words(vocabulary) the kids are exposed to in their environments(home, school, friends etc). Libraries help in supplementing this deficieny by providing books to read, events to participate and interact with other people.

This in earnest is the gist of my rant; the next time you see a library, get yourself and your family member a membership card, make use of the library, participate and/or volunteer in the events conducted by the library. Be a part of your library community and that simple act can save the library from closing. Your town administration is definitely looking at the number of people using the library. You will be helping the underprivileged indirectly by keeping the libraries open. Also if you find out that your local library is closing, call or write to your local administration and express your support for keeping the library open. I did that along with thousands of other libraries in my local community. Hopefully the powers that be are listening.

Links of interest:
http://www.radiogolha.com/
http://www.nalbeki.com/RADIO/golha.htm
http://radiotime.com/station/s_81726/Radio_Golha.aspx
http://www.javad-maroufi.com/pageid=7.htm
http://www.khamush.com/works.htm
http://www.rumi.org.uk/divan.htm
http://freelibrary.org

Not Every Sea Has Pearls

Not Every Sea Has Pearls

O my heart, sit with someone who is enlightened with the matters of the heart.
Sit in the shade of a tree that is alive with the blossoms of spring.

Don't go around aimlessly in the market, like those who are lost.
If you are after sugar, go to the one who sells sugar.

If you don't possess a scale to weigh the merchandise, the shopkeeper will cheat you.
Someone will produce a fake piece and you will mistake it for gold.

You sit by the front of the house, waiting for one who goes inside and cleverly tell you to wait there.
Don't sit there waiting for him. This house has another door, and he is already gone.

Don't take your bowl and sit by every pot that's boiling with some brew.
Every pot is cooking something different. Know what's inside.

Not every cane contains sugar, not every down has an up.
Not every eye has vision, not every sea has pearls.

Cry out, O soulful nightingale,
For prayers said in the wilderness of suffering are answered.

Your enlightened hear is like a lamp; protect it under your robe.
Pass through these storms, for the winds are blowing hard.

When you pass through these storms, you will discover a spring of living waters.
You will find a companion who is enlightened.

When your heart becomes enlightened, you will be like a verdant tree,
whose branches continually bear fruits, and you reflect the light of the universe.

--Rumi, Translated by Jahan Tavangar.
Recited by Jahan Tavangar at One Book, One Philadelphia concluding event on March 17th, 2010 conducted by Free Library of Philadelphia.

Planning, Procrastination and Life Leeches

The last couple of weeks, there was heavy activity at my home. The day was coming close for the return of my sister-in-law to our hometown in India. I am not a big fan of airports which I disclosed with ample detail in my previous post here. International travel causes a lot of stress to me, with the shopping, packing, weighing bags with no end until the departure of the flight.

My sister-in-law began packing a month and half in advance. She would weigh the bags(which is not suitable for weighing bags) every weekend. However, there would be more shopping every weekend and more items added to the bags. So the contents in the bags would be rearranged and weighed again. I concluded that my sister-in-law is a kind of person who likes to get things done ahead of time and likes to be in control. The lesson I learnt through my international trips, is to postpone packing until the last couple days before the day of journey.

The day of the departure finally arrived. While we were driving to the airport I saw the bumper sticker on a car ahead of me saying 'I was gonna procrastinate today... but I'll wait till tomorrow'. I like bumper stickers messages like that; It was funny and messages like that bring a smile on your face unlike the serious and sensitive religous and political messages. I felt that my sister-in-law should take a cue from the message. But is there a broader lesson to be learnt for my sister-in-law and myself included who like to be in control of every aspects of our lives.

During the senior(final) year of my Bachelors, I was travelling in a train from Kolkata, what was then called Calcutta, to my hometown after a disappointing performance at a job interview. Train rides have left great impressions and memories on me. While I was watching through the cabin window, I saw rows of fields; sugarcane, corn, rice paddy immaculately swaying in the distance. As I watched the fields and electric ploes passby, I thought about my performance and blamed my poor lack of planning and procrastination. I pondered and repented the number of hours I wasted each day instead of practising or reading a book in preparation for the interview.

My friends tried to help me by saying that they didn't do any better either. They always denied doing well in an exam. Even good students deny they did well and that re-assurance was of little effect as I felt they were lying and I could care less if they did any worse than me. The competition was with other students from the entire country and not just a bunch of my classmates. I concluded that I should plan better if I was do good in future for my GRE, GATE and other upcoming competitive exams coming up later that year. A few months later, I got the job offer from my interview in Kolkata.

As I grew older, I did not grow any wiser. There are still ocassions where I blame myself like a guy on deathbed thinking about not having spent quality times with his family. I think most humans fall into that pschological guilt trap. And sometimes life chores can be burdensome, they can be simple but their multitude can be overwhelming. Also the randomness of life can throw something unexpected at you inspite of all the detailed planning.

We live in an age where 24 hours is not enough to do the things we need to do. Each one of us have things to do every day and every month of the year; rent, mortgages, utility bills, credit card statements, automobile maintenance, laundry, home and lawn maintenance, health, life and home insurance, immigration, investments, retirement planning, vacation planning; and responsibilities; kids, spouse, parents, sublings, relatives and friends.

The above items are just the personal tasks. The list expands when we add the tasks from that we have to do at work. In the current world where multi-tasking is not a 'good-to-have' trait but is required, one has to juggle between projects, meetings, scheduling, prioritizing various tasks, follow ups, documenting etc.

All these life leeches(tasks and chores) can leave a perpetual mental burden on us. This overwhelming list can cause us to procrastinate till the last day. Then there are modern inventions; the killers of limited productive time; Internet, TV, Sports, Cell Phones. There is no doubt that these all add value when used optimally and when consumed in moderation. These modern day distractions have caused much unwanted procrastination for many of us.

Over the last couple years of pondering, reading and watching, utilizing many or all of the aforementioned modern day inventions, I did come up with some ideas and tricks that I utilize to accomplish the various tasks. Some of these are not so modern and might need a pen and paper. Neither are these ideas in any form earth shattering(I am fully aware of the limitations of my brain) but they work for me. These ideas and tricks can be found in the concluding post to this article.

Note: The concluding post will be linked to this article later when it is published.

Did the Bee beat the Beatle?

Recently NPR, the much revered Public Radio Station, ran an article titled Bee Vs. Car: Who Gets More Miles Per Gallon?. You can listen to it on the embedded mp3 link below.


The article states that the new VW prototype will be giving a mileage of 170 mpg. I was very much surprised and felt happy that someone out there is working on creating better cars with vastly improved mileage.

The sad part is that NPR would not let the carmaker have their day of glory. I don't think NPR is anti-technology or anti-science. If anything, they are the opposite. One would wonder why they would run such an article under the science section. The only reason I can thing of, is that the creators of the segment thought it was funny. But sometimes, being funny can be out of character for somebody like NPR that’s known for its sincere, thought provoking, serious news content. Also at time the naive joke can do unintended harm to other worthy causes. I know VW has a long way before they can have a successful car on the road with 170mpg and this article will have little impact if the technology advance becomes a reality. Here is a CNET review from the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show. This car can be on the roads by 2013.

So, what is the beef that I have with this article? The article states that VW new car is promising 170 miles per gallon of car fuel gasoline. They think that a Bee beats this car hands down with its 4.7 million miles per gallon of bee fuel i.e., honey. They also had a bee expert supporting their claim who came up with the number for bee mileage - 4,704,280 mpg.

So I did a small math. A bee weighs 80-100 milligrams, lets take the upper end 100 milligrams. Also lets say it carried twice it's weight during the test which is being very liberal. A bee typically carries about 50% of its body weight in the form of pollen during its regular daily job. So a bee carries a weight of 300 milligrams and covers 4.7 million miles on a gallon of honey. With those numbers, the bees takes 1.41 miles to move a ton of weight. Let us compare this with the VW. A car weighs anywhere from 3 to 12 tons; 3 tons being the compact care and 12 tons being the heavy pick up truck. A compact car gives about 30 mpg. So a car not including the passenger, can move a ton of weight to about 90 miles. To me the math is very simple, 1.41 is far less than 90 and the car is the clear winner. There are other problems with this article as well. But I don’t want to list them all out and appear that I am anti-bee. On the contrary, I thank the bees for producing the sweet honey I use in my tea. For all the other views against the article, please view the comments in the NPR site at the end of the article.

What about the unintended harm that this article causes? Consider this; it took decades for the NHTSA fuel economy regulations to enforce fuel economy improvement of 5-10mpg by the carmakers. If a car maker tries and succeeds in making a car that improves the fuel economy from 20-30mpg to about 170-200 mpg, I would give them all kind of support. They are attempting to achieve something far beyond the minimum standards set by the government regulatory bodies. When fuel economy is improved by 8 times, it significantly reduces the current fuel consumption and thereby, provide the fruits of the current cheap fossil fuel we enjoy now to couple more generations. Any endeavor to extend the life of fossil fuel and the benefits we enjoy to future generations needs all the support.

We are in an age where every scienctific view is questioned. Consider this article by USA Today - Is the global warming movement cooling? The problem with the article is not the content but the title itself. Most people read just headlines. They conclude that global warming movement is cooling off and don’t trust any news in support of it adding to the feedback loop. Thanks much also to the conservative political and news media who have already discounted scientific evidence on global warming. They think that green house gas effect is a myth and they drill their way into having their way of life.

Articles like the bee humiliating a car can only cause more people lose interest in scientific and technological advancement. So this is my advice to NPR. Leave the thoughtless, provocative ridicule to someone else (the world has enough of those) and act your normal responsible way. Being serious can be nerdy, but the world needs the nerd to spread the scienfic word out. NPR please be that nerd. You are lot cooler that way.

Mr.Toyoda goes to Washington

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is an american classic movie starring James Stewart. It is about a boy ranger who is appointed to the senate by his state's governor who wants a puppet in that post. James Stewart character named Jefferson Smith(cleverly deduced from Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith) goes to capitol hill and ends up fighting the evil political machinery of US Senate through filibuster process. A detailed review and story of the film can be found here. This fictional movie was released(in 1939) during the great depression era.

Cut to current great recession non-fictional age. Last week, the grandson of the founder and president of Toyota was invited to the hearing of the US senate committee. Here too is a guy not familiar with the DC and it's politics. He comes to DC unwillingly and is asked several uncomfortable questions. Though Mr.Akio Toyoda is no country bumkin, a guy from Japan is as comfortable in the Capitol Hill answering to the Senate committee as Jefferson Smith was answering about his alleged profiting from the land purchase he proposes in his bill. Mr. Toyoda was appointed as President of Toyota less than 9 months ago and is faced with the daunting challenge that his company has ever faced. The similaries are very few, but it made for a good beginning for my post and I could not resist invoking the famous movie.

But getting to the actual point. I loved Toyota for several years. Infact I own a 2007 Corolla and I absolutely love it. It is a great car. I loved the fact that, unlike the US big three car makers, Toyota put reliability, safety and fuel efficiency as the primary goals and it won significant consumer following over the years. Infact they became the number one car seller in 2009 pushing GM to #2. But just within a span of few months from October 2009 to January 2010, the reputation of Toyota went downhill. The stories of the recall have been in the news for some time now. I first heard and read about the recall of Toyota vehicles at my delear during one of my 15K routine maintainance of my Corolla.

If you look at the newspapers they are filled with several articles about Toyota and the mess they are in. Here below you can find some of them that I have read just in February.

Toyota’s Blind Spot dated February 5, 2010.
Twitter Toppled Toyota? dated Wednesday, February 17, 2010.
Toyota Official Says Recall May Not Fully Solve Safety Problem dated February 23, 2010.
Back to Basics for Toyota WSJ op-ed dated FEBRUARY 23, 2010.
Toyota chief blasted by lawmakers despite apology dated 02/24/2010.
Toyota loses rank to Honda
Analysis: Cultures Collide With Toyoda Testimony dated Wednesday, 24 Feb 2010.
'Toyota defense' might rescue jailed Minnesota man dated Thursday Feb 25, 2010.

I spoke to several friends and colleagues. Surprisingly the opinion was divided on the lines of immigration status. Immigrants had the opinion that Toyota is being penalized to make way for the American Big Three to regain share. US Citizens(born and naturalized alike) felt that this is just a beginnging of a lot more recalls, that Toyota is hiding facts and domestic companies should be preferred and incentivized over international firms. (A thing to note is that recent naturalized citizens tend to think like immigrants and citizens naturalized about a decade or long tend to think like citizens.) I dont agree with either of them. I think the above two opinions are prejudiced.

Audi, Ford and GM have had recalls that caused severa damage to the reputation and market share of the makers. Only GM seems to have managed to escape recall crisis with less damage. But what we have now are different times. Audi and Ford had lot of time to fix the faulty vehicles before the actual news of the recalls became widespread by the news dispensing mechanisms-newspapers, TV and Radio of that time. In the current times, news can spread repidly and instantly to almost every corner of the world with Internet and more so with the help of social networks. In the current social networking world, one doesn't have to depend on traditional media to get the news. For eg.:The earthquake in Chile was delivered to me not by the traditional media but through my family and friends way away in India. So politics had nothing to do with the bad publicity that Toyota is getting. It is just the instant news dissemination age that is compounding the trouble for Toyota. The politicians in DC are always late to react and react only to appease their constituencies, vote banks and special interests.

A recent news mentions the call from a southern republican senator who advised the senate hearing committee to tone down on the criticism and political rhetoric against Toyota. It is not surprising given the fact that Toyota has some maufacturing facitlities mostly in the southern states and that it employs about 36,000 people in the maufacturing facilities directly and employs about 166,000 people indirectly through dealerships and suppliers in the U.S. The myth of a naive foreign company in U.S. caught in the storm like a deer in a headlight can be dispensed of when you look at the list of Toyota’s powerful friends in Washington in the linked article dated Mon., Feb. 8, 2010.

Lets get to the other side of the criticism. The criticism that this is not an end of the recalls cannot be either supported or discarded as only time can tell. Leaving speculation to speculators, we can only deal with facts at hand. The slow response of Toyota in responding to the recall and publicly accepting, apologizing for the faults has given some fuel to the critics. But this delay could as well be attributable to a different managerial style-that of a Japanese rather than to Toyota trying to hide facts. It is definitely a failure of US PR wing of Toyota. Despite this debacle, Toyota is still in top three in the recent report card from the independent and widely popular Consumer Reports. In spite of the criticism and bailout from the government, Chrysler dropped to the bottom, and GM held on to it's bottom but one position. Only Ford improved one position better than last year and that position is very far from the top three. So the Big Three are still a far distance away in quality and reliability ratings of foreign makes.

So where did Toyota go wrong. Between the highly reliable period of the 90's and the deadly late 2000's, something went wrong. Before we look up the history, I want to express my own impression of Toyota of that period. My impression is purely based on watching their promotions on TV and talking to people. I felt that Toyota cars were highly reliable, cheap and very good with mileage; infact best in the market. They were the first to bring in Hybrid vehicles with Prius. But if you watched their promos on TV, none of these aspects were highlighted. Take a look at this Toyota Tundra commercial video. More of those can be found here, here and here. Infact Tundra dominated Toyota's commercials, emphasizing power over every other positive side of thier company. Commercials for their flagship Corolla and Camry were far and in between. In fact the cost of these two models fell by a few percetage points during this period. It is as if they were trying to move into a new direction.

I looked at the history of toyota to find who led toyota during the 2000's. The president of Toyota from 2005-June 2009 before Akio Toyoda was Katsuaki Watanabe. His Wikipedia entry will tell you that he was responsible for building a full-size pick-up truck manufacturing plant in San Antonio, Texas U.S.A. It utlimately resulted in a huge loss for Toyota. He also led a rigorous effort to cut cost at every possible oppurtunity, thereby sabotaging their quailty and the Toyota Way. He and his predecessor also rigorously led toyota into nascar. On hindsight the shift from traditional emphasis on quality to quantity and getting to No.1 in a rush is conspicous. But one does not have look at history to get to that conclusion. Mr. Akio Toyoda himself has mentioned that during several press conferences.

What can Mr.Toyoda do now. With toyota death count at 56, the time for action is now. They should be frank and find a fix for all the faulty vehicles and do them quick. It is easier said than done, but that is the only way to do. Redo their commercials on TV around the fixes and reliability and give up their power dream of Tundras. Emphasis on quality and fuel economy(with oil close to $2.75 and expected to rise) will surely bring back the customers. Until then they just to wait out the media damage and not do anything stupid.

I am sure Mr. Toyoda is doing what is best for him and the company of his forefathers including public apologizing and crying. But what can we as customers do about it. Keep a watch for Toyota recalls at autoblog's ultimate toyota recall guide and at Toyota's recall site. Contact your dealer if your vehicle is on the list and get it fixed. While driving on the road, if you see a Toyota approaching you, get out of it's way if you can. I am kidding but watch out if your own toyota has problems with acceleration and braking systems. In case you are stuck in a car with unintended acceleration, here is something you can do and hope for the best.