Thursday, December 31, 2009

The Dickensian Decade

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way …”

Can we use the stirring words of Charles Dickens to describe the first decade of the twenty-first century, the “Oughty-Noughties” (2000-2009 or the 00s) as it has come to be called?

Answer: A qualified “Yes.”

The decade began with the bursting of the dot-com bubble in March of 2000. Eight months later, George W. Bush claimed the presidency of the United States after the “hanging chad” farce in Florida and a strange and unprecedented 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On September 11, 2001, homicidal maniacs claiming Islam as guidance hijacked commercial airliners and crashed into what they perceived as American symbols of power, the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Close to 2,300 Americans and an estimated 500 foreign nationals from 91 nations perished in the attacks.

In response, the U.S. went after the Taliban in Afghanistan with almost universal support. The Taliban were swiftly routed but victory proved elusive as a quagmire set in, reminiscent of Vietnam. Eight years later, the war continues as a corrupt Karzai regime hangs on to power.

Support for American policy quickly dried up as President Bush used the pretext of weapons of mass destruction and a manufactured Al-Qaida connection to attack Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in March of 2003. The invasion, boasting technological “shock and awe,” seemed at first to be as easy as winning a video game but the occupation proved catastrophic. America’s moral authority came undone in waterboard torture pits and in the horror dungeons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

As of now, the Iraq war has alone caused almost 100,000 civilian deaths, euphemistically called “collateral damage.” Sectarian violence is a daily occurrence and the Iraqi government remains weak and dysfunctional. The toll the two wars have taken on the families of American soldiers killed and injured is incalculable.

In technology, the Internet gold rush that collapsed in 2000 regained some of its luster, as social networking became all the rage. MySpace (2003), Facebook (2004) and Twitter (2007) became household names. Web 2.0, the read/write Web, turned everyone (well, almost everyone) into a blogger and a “pundit.” How far the democratization of ideas and opinions go and what influence it has in speaking truth to power, however, remain to be seen. Apple revolutionized the music industry with its iPod products and leading universities of the world made many of their courses in various disciplines available online. Cloud computing went mainstream and software and hardware breakthroughs blurred the distinction between smartphones and PCs.

Amazon’s success with the Kindle, introduced in November of 2007, raised an intriguing question: Will eBooks replace physical books, and if so, when? “When” is difficult to say but it is clear that, where the technology is available, sale of eBooks is rising dramatically against the sale of ink-on-paper books. As Amazon Chief Jeff Bezos noted, however, the Gutenberg model has had a 500-year run, making the physical book probably the most successful technology ever.

Among many achievements in science, scientists mapped the human genome sequence and CERN’s Large Hadron Collider first sputtered and then came to life as two beams of protons collided head on at a combined energy of seven trillion electron volts, setting the stage for answering fundamental questions about our universe in the new decade.

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected the first African American president of the United States. Americans were drawn to his platform of change and hope. The world breathed a sigh of relief and the nation’s stature in the world went up almost overnight. But a global economic meltdown, brought on by Wall Street charlatans, Ponzy schemers, unscrupulous bankers and hedge-fund hucksters, threatened to undermine his presidency from day one.

Massive stimulus money pumped into the economy seems mostly to have rescued the industry titans and their acolytes, however. Financial future of the average American appears bleak at this point, with job losses and home foreclosures not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The crisis has spread worldwide and it will clearly be a while before the Great Recession is actually over.

Still, the election of Barack Obama to the highest office of the land was like light breaking forth after an unending night of darkness. Sadly, the president has committed more troops to Afghanistan, although withdrawal from Iraq is expected to take place during the middle of 2010. The new year will test the young president’s mettle, his ability to deliver on the message of hope and change that carried him to victory.


Perhaps the most significant global issue of the decade was climate change and our response to it. Most of us, with the exception of rabid right-wingers and congenital contrarians, recognize the existential threat that global warming poses to the earth. Yet consensus on how to mitigate this threat has fallen prey to nationalism. For the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – China, the United States, India, Russia, Japan – national economy trumps the survival of the planet.

Still, the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December of 2009 raised the expectations of common and indigenous people around the world to soaring heights, a reflection, perhaps, of the hope they invested in Barack Obama.

But while it roared in like a lion, the Summit went out like a lamb. There were no lasting binding agreements. A limited deal was reached in which both developed and developing nations agreed to “list national actions and commitments” on cutting carbon emissions. Wealthy nations also offered billions in aid to help countries like Bangladesh and the island nation of Kiribati, threatened with the worst effects of climate change. Significantly, leaders also gave their assent to a 2 degree Celsius cap on global warming.

The real success of the Climate Summit is in the impetus it has given to green technology and clean energy. Entrepreneurs are racing to produce energy-efficient devices and systems, ranging from innovative fuel-cells and green building materials such as ultra-insulated windows and glass to roof-top gardening, clean-coal technology and high-efficiency solar and wind systems.

It is also not without irony, and some measure of justice, that Al Gore, who lost the muddled 2000 presidential election to George Bush, won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to raising global awareness of man-made climate change.

So there you have it, a decade dominated by terror, bad governance, war, unregulated greed and financial terrorism, but also a decade in which sanity replaced insanity toward the end, in which Muslims overwhelmingly rejected Al-Qaida’s message of nihilism and asserted their message of moderation (the Nidal Hasans and the Abdulmutallabs reflected systemic failures), in which awareness of the earth’s fragility entered our consciousness and spurred us to action, and in which we recognized, as never before, that our prosperity and well-being depended on the status and education of women throughout the world.

We may have begun this decade in the winter of despair but perhaps it is not too far fetched to suggest that a spring of hope beckons as we end it.

Happy New Decade!

Monday, December 28, 2009

Sherlock Holmes Gets an Athletic Makeover

I became a fan of Sherlock Holmes in the eighth grade when I read “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.” I was hooked. Youthful passions pass, replaced by other passions that also fade, and then you grow up and suddenly there’s job, marriage, mortgage, kids and schools all over again. But Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation never relaxed its grip on me.


Sherlock Holmes was the epitome of deductive reasoning and bravery. Every few years I re-read all 56 short stories and 4 novellas and marvel at how Conan Doyle kept Holmes so fresh and contemporary, even though the setting was London of the 1880s.


Certainly the author’s skill with words was a factor, as this famous dialogue between a police inspector and Holmes shows in “Silver Blaze“:

"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

"That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

But it was the character of the super-sleuth that made the stories so enjoyable: single-minded focus, eccentric, brilliant, always one step ahead of the most cunning of criminals, and in no small measure, endearingly crazy. (Thinking about Holmes always brings another real-life character to mind: the late great physicist Richard Feynman, also a supreme magician of the intellect whose diversions included bongo playing and safecracking.)

Which was why I so looked forward to Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes,” starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as his sidekick, Dr. Watson. I wasn’t disappointed, although the special effects and relentless fight scenes were somewhat jarring.

One reason why Holmes endures is his malleability. He may be confined to 19th-century London, but his fight against evil transcends time. Downey gives Holmes an athletic makeover without diminishing his eccentricity. We know of his fondness for prize-fighting from the stories. Here, we get a slow-motion close-up of how tough and analytic Holmes can be in the ring. His mind is, as always, lightning fast, whether in anticipating his quarry’s next move or in putting people in their proper places. When inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard informs Holmes that in another life he would have made a fine criminal, Holmes responds with, “In another life you would have made a fine police inspector.”

But the transformation of Watson is equally dramatic. No longer a slow-witted, awestruck companion, Watson is impatient with Holmes’ air of superiority and gives as well as he takes. When Holmes tries to pry open the door of a suspect’s home with some fancy tools, Watson just kicks it open. When Holmes goes too far with an experiment on his own body and implores for help, Watson takes his time and, at the last moment, rescues his friend. Their vigorous verbal jousting is a key to the film's appeal.

The story itself has shades of Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons), with secret organizations plotting to take over the world. The villain, Blackwood (Mark Strong), has an uncanny resemblance to the late Jeremy Brett, whose 41 TV-films portraying Holmes over a decade brought the detective closer to the public than ever before.

The two “M”s are present as well: Mycroft Holmes and Professor James Moriarty. Mycroft is only spoken of, and we are left to wonder about this enigmatic sibling. According to Sherlock (The Greek Interpreter), his older brother is even more brilliant than him but his undoing is that he is a sloth. He has stamina only for intellectual calisthenics, none for action. In other words, Mycroft Holmes is the ideal consultant,

Without Moriarty, of course, Holmes cannot achieve greatness. Moriarty is his match, his ultimate nemesis. As the mysterious Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) informs Holmes, “he is as intelligent as you are but infinitely more devious.” Naturally, Holmes begs to differ.

In the end, all the stuff about returning from beyond the grave, the sorcery and the supernatural happenings turn out to be hocus-pocus. Holmes’ explanations are, well, elementary. But he also discovers that the mastermind behind the diabolical plot is none other than Moriarty himself. Unless he takes him on, Holmes has barely scratched the surface.

Clearly, this movie is “To Be Continued.” Look for a sequel. My hope is that director Guy Ritchie will weave a part of Holmes’ life as a bee-keeper in Sussex Downs (1903-04) into his sequel(s), in which the great man once again jumps into the fray and takes on whoever wants to "remake the world." Can you imagine Holmes retiring? I cannot. "Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!"

Sunday, December 20, 2009

An Epic for Our Time

Literature is replete with characters who give us insight into the mindset of the Bernie Madoffs of the world. We learn what drives the Wall Street charlatans, the greedy bankers and the hedge-fund hucksters through their fictional counterparts.

A New York Times article by Patricia Cohen (December 2008) pointed out how Mr. Voysey, in Harley Granville-Barker’s 1905 play “The Voysey Inheritance,” was an uncanny literary predecessor of Mr. Madoff. “You must realize that money making is one thing, religion another, and family life a third,” Voysey tells his son Edward when he discovers that his father, a pillar of society, has been operating a pyramid scheme for decades with his clients’ money.

Same is true of the unscrupulous financier Augustus Melmotte in Anthony Trollope’s 1875 novel “The Way We Live Now” and the swindling banker Mr. Merdle in Charles Dickens’s “Little Dorrit.” In America, we have novels from the 1920s that revealed the deepening divide between the haves and the have-nots - Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy," F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby” - that reached its climax in the Great Depression that followed.

But one novel that seems to have escaped the attention of critics is Halldor Laxness’s “Independent People.” The Icelandic author won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1955 for his epic. It is a book at once exhilarating, heartbreaking, comic and poetic, in short, a book that makes us understand what great literature is, even if we cannot articulate it.

As you savor the adventures of the book’s protagonist, Bjartur of Summerhouses, admiring his fierce independence while repulsed by his insensitivity, what is also profoundly moving is Laxness’s description of the slow disintegration of the simple life when money managers of various shades infiltrate it. It is almost too painful to read, particularly when wrenching stories of lives wrecked by corrupt financiers continue to appear daily in the media.

“Those who were in debt were given opportunities of incurring greater debts, while upon those who owed nothing … the banks smiled with an incredibly seductive sweetness … In some houses were to be seen not one but as many as four china dogs … womenfolk were walking about wearing all sorts of tombac rings, and many persons had acquired overcoats and wellington boots, articles of apparel that had been previously contraband to working people."

Notice the words “seductive sweetness.” Has anyone come up with a pithier description of the subprime mortgage?

The catalyst for the destructive lifestyle change in Laxness’s novel is a man by the name of Ingolfur Arnarson. He is determined to transform every backwater village in Iceland into thriving centers of commerce. He promises the “penniless crofters” roads, shopping centers, big houses and, of course, easy debt. With his silver tongue and aura of wealth, people are mesmerized. Here is how Bjartur’s son Gvendur, who fantasizes about marrying Arnarson’s daughter, sees him: “His splendor beggared invention … his face with its compelling eyes shone like a sun over the decrepit peasants assembled before him, and as he began to speak, in a voice sonorous and unforced, his small, snowy-cuffed hands moved in a gesture so smooth and graceful that one did not need listen to his words, it was enough simply to watch his hands …”

Has anyone read a more telling description of hedge-fund honchos or executives of companies like Goldman Sachs?

In the end, the bottom falls out and the farmers, including Bjartur of Summerhouses, lose their house, their sheep and their land. The interest on their mortgages had become impossibly high. In the final poignant scene of the novel, Bjartur is reunited with his estranged daughter and they head off toward a ruined farmhouse that he had rebuilt. “No lamentations – never harbor your grief, never mourn what you have lost. He did not even turn around and give his old valley a parting glance when they reached the top of the ridge.”

Thus he salvages his freedom – at least a part of it - from the wreckage around him.

It is ironic that Iceland was the first nation to declare bankruptcy in October of 2008, victim of the global financial crisis. One wonders what Laxness, who died in 1998, would have made of it. A consequential writer, he could envision the nature of progress coming to his country, borne on the wings of “seductive sweetness.” Still, I think he would have been devastated to see his beloved Iceland, so rich in lore and tradition and inhabited by free spirits like Bjartur of Summerhouses, become the first country to fall financially in the new century.

Here at home, our government is churning out statistics to convince us that the worst of the Great Recession is behind us and that the recovery has already begun. Facts on the ground do not match the rosy forecasts and predictions. Thousands of jobs are being shed every month; currently there are more than six job seekers for every opening. Financial killings by a few literally led to the deaths of many.

American Muslims, particularly our young professionals, have a critical role to play in moving our country forward. To the extent that great literature, like Halldor Laxness’s “Independent People,” opens eyes, I see two parts to this.

First, we must give entrepreneurship a serious try. America is the land of entrepreneurs. It is the land not only of second acts, but of third, fourth and fifth. If we can create our own companies, difficult and risky as it is, and employ at least one American, we will have made significant contributions to the economy.

Second, it is time for us to start thinking on a larger scale. As we continue to feed the hungry and the homeless and provide medical help to the uninsured in places where we live, we also need to organize our philanthropic, apolitical work at a national level. We need to create an American-Muslim Peace Corps whose one and only mission would be to serve our fellow Americans, from inner-city ghettos to dying towns and from the Ozarks to Appalachia.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Students Make New Year's Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions are based as much on hope as resolve, which is why they are such fun. They make us smile, even when the smile is tempered by longing and a sense of time passing. That the resolutions are instantly shareable with friends in the age of social networking only enhance their pleasure.

What New Year’s resolutions animate college students?

For Natalie, it begins with a reflection on what she did and did not achieve in her last year’s resolutions. There were a few things she had no control over and few that she did and still they went wrong. She is determined not to repeat her mistakes. About one thing she is certain: in 2010, she plans to laugh, giggle and relax more with her friends.

Jennifer’s main resolution is to transfer to a university after passing the subject that has haunted her for several years: Math. She has tried tutors and spent countless hours trying to master its complexity but nothing seemed to work. For a while she was convinced she had a math blockage in her brain! But she knows there is no such thing. She has redoubled her efforts and is confident she will complete her math requirements and transfer to San Jose State University (SJSU) in 2010.

Glen’s resolutions consist of getting out of debt (don’t we all!), not to get declined from a state university because of budget cuts, and to continue to learn new things, not just for earning more but for the pleasure and joy of learning.

Gissel would like to choose a major in 2010, go to the gym and be a better person in every way. She would also like to move out of her parents’ house, get a job and become financially independent.

Karim has been carrying a story in his head for two years. He has only one resolution for 2010: “I will complete my novel, at least the first version of it. I have the structure, the plot, the characters. I will write at least one page a day.” He doesn’t care if his book is published or if it will sell. “I just have to write it.” He will find the time without the distractions of emails, Facebook or Twitter.

Ismael had a turbulent 2009 but in the end everything came through for him. On the verge of selling his beloved Ford Mustang to support himself, he got a job and so didn’t have to part with his car. In the New Year, he will not make any ridiculous goals that he cannot attain but complete small tasks one at a time. He will give thanks more often and appreciate everything he has. No matter how difficult the situation is, he reminds everyone never to give up hope.

Hannah is a dancer. Others may find her resolution silly but she is very serious about it. “I am a dancer and I vow this year not to take the lead but to follow my partner.”

Athena is set on losing some weight in 2010. She feels she is on the “chunky side” and losing 20 pounds would be “awesome.” She plans on joining a gym and using it three times a week. What will help is her PE class in 2010 that meets two nights a week. She is confident she will lose weight because of the support of her boyfriend. Her other goal is to transfer to SJSU in the Fall of 2010. Budget cuts and other restrictions may make admission difficult. Her alternative is California State University at Hayward but that’s too far to drive, so she is really hoping that she will be admitted to SJSU.

Liz is determined to graduate in 2010, for herself and to make her parents proud. But she also intends to enjoy life more. Life is not just studying and being serious. She has rarely partied or gone to a club but that will change in 2010. “I just want to enjoy every moment in life and be happy.”

Chris’s New Year’s resolution is to let things work out the way they will. “I put too much time and effort in trying to make things happen the way I feel they should, when in reality, all that effort is pretty much wasted.” By allowing things to work themselves out in their own time, Chris feels it will be a lot less work on his part and he will probably get better results. He over-exerted himself in 2009, working at various jobs while taking several classes. “It was a mistake not to make school a priority,” he says. Money is important but in 2010 he will focus more on acquiring knowledge and skills than on earning money. “Too much of life passes unnoticed because of too many interests. At least in my life I need to stop it before I lose myself.”

Procrastination has been a big problem for Ruth. She intends to overcome it in the New Year. She will pay her bills and complete her assignments on time. She will keep her appointments and plan her chores and not wait until the last moment to do them. She will also maintain her workout schedule. This year she let her health slip but she will not neglect it in 2010, because “nothing is more important than your health.”

Patrick’s resolutions remind us of life’s fragility and the inexorable march of time. He wants to stay healthy, become a better chess player, learn to play the piano and, most important of all, “develop a better relationship with my dad before it’s too late.”

Monday, December 07, 2009

Karen Armstrong and the Charter for Compassion

Karen Armstrong, authority on comparative religion and spirituality, was recently awarded a TED prize, given annually to the best thinkers and innovators of the world.

In her acceptance speech, Armstrong identified the critical difference between belief and faith. "Religion isn't about believing things. It's about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness." Studying the world’s religions, she realized that belief, about which we make so much a fuss today, was a recent religious phenomenon that surfaced in the West around the 17th century.

The word ‘belief’ originally meant to love, to prize, to hold dear. It meant, “I commit myself. I engage myself.” From the 17th century onwards, however, the word narrowed its focus to mean merely an intellectual assent to a set of propositions: a credo. It lost its transformational power. Instead, ‘belief’ came merely to mean, ‘I accept certain creedal articles of faith.’ It lost its mooring.

What Armstrong found in her research was that religion was about behaving ethically and morally. Instead of flaunting your faith and engaging in religious chauvinism, do something positive. Behave in a committed way. Then, and only then, you begin to understand the truths of religion. Religious doctrines are meant to be summons to action; you only understand them when you put them into practice.

Compassion is at the core of religious practice. “In every single one of the world’s major faiths, compassion – the ability to feel with the other – is not only the test of any true religiosity, it is also what will bring us into the presence of what Jews, Christians and Muslims call God or the Divine.” Why? “Because in compassion, when we feel with the other, we dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and we put another person there. And once we get rid of ego, then we are ready to see the Divine.”

Armstrong hopes that the Golden Rule will become the central global religious doctrine for our times. The Golden Rule can be stated either positively or negatively, both equally meaningful. “Do to others what you would like others to do to you.” (Treat others as you would like others to treat you.) Or, “Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you. (Do not treat others in a way that you would not want yourself to be treated).

Practicing the Golden Rule is difficult. Unfortunately many religious people prefer to be right, rather than to be compassionate. We also need to move beyond mere toleration and toward appreciation of the other.

Every TED winner is granted a wish. Armstrong wished for the creation and propagation of a Charter for Compassion, to be crafted by a group of inspirational thinkers from Judaism, Christianity and Islam and to be based on the Golden Rule. “We cannot confine our compassion to our own group or countrymen or co-religionists. We must have what one of the Chinese sages called ‘jian ai’: concern for everybody. Love your enemies. Honor the stranger. God created nations and tribes so that we may know one another.”


What Armstrong hopes for is to “a movement among people who want to join up and reclaim their faith which has been hijacked … We need to empower people to remember the compassionate ethos … Jews, Christians and Muslims, who so often are at loggerheads, have to work together to create a document which we hope will be signed by people from all the traditions of the world … I would like to see it in every college, every church, every mosque, every synagogue in the world, so that people can look at their tradition, reclaim it, and make religion a source of peace in the world.”

You can join and affirm the Charter’s principles here.

You can also read a fuller version of this article at bdnews24.

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Creating a Life Around Your Passion

Kozhi Sidney Makai was born in Zambia but grew up in Texas. The youngest of nine children, he has made it his life’s mission to help people rise above their potential. A motivational speaker and an author of such books as How Can I Come Up? and Born Beating the Odds, Dr. Makai was the featured speaker recently at a local college. He had wit, style and substance and kept us in stitches with his mimicry of Texan mannerisms.

Success, according to Makai, is not about wealth or leisure but about having options. All of us have options. We just have to have the vision and the confidence to see them. Sometimes life makes decisions for us. The options are still there. We just have to seize the ones that can enrich our lives. Those who settle for limited options and feel defeated by adverse circumstances lead depressing, unfulfilled lives.

Conventional wisdom says that we are judged only by what we finish. Makai disagrees. Our lives are also defined by what we begin. Even if we cannot finish some of the projects, they can positively influence those that we do. One way we can rise above our potential is to question everything, particularly conventional wisdom. It is not that we will get answers to all our questions. The power lies in the act of questioning itself. A writer must ask questions to write well. “Why am I writing this? Why will anyone be interested in this? Why should my characters evolve this way and not that?” Too often we settle for What, When and Who but not Why. Yet critical thinking often springs only from the Why.

Life, as Makai sees it, is more wrestling and less dancing. Everyday we wrestle with choices. That’s the source of growth. Life is lived in the moments. A life fully engaged in the present is rich. Makai, who played professional basketball for five years abroad, often observes parents who show up at their children’s games. They are present physically but absent emotionally or spiritually, constantly chatting on their phones or texting on their BlackBerries. Children can see through that.

When we become complacent and comfortable, we stop growing. That’s why it is so important to be open to new possibilities and beginnings. “I changed my major five times. You may think it is easy to find what you are passionate about. It is not. You may have to change direction a few times before you find your life’s calling, even if you have a general idea of what you want to be.” Many of us want to be successful but are unwilling to pay the price - of responsibility, accountability, hard work, dedication, being true to ourselves. Makai’s advice is that if we are receptive to our own thoughts, passions and dreams, we will know when changing direction is for our good and gladly put in the extra effort to succeed.

One question that reveals how we feel about ourselves is: “How is that working for you?” We become self-conscious when asked such a question. It soon becomes clear, however, that many of us are dissatisfied with our lives. “But here’s the thing,” said Makai. “You don’t have to keep publishing the same story. If your story is messed-up, if it sucks, if it is wrong, you have the option to change it. You are in control. Mediocrity is something you impose on yourself. If you think life has been unfair to you, turn that into an advantage. Learn how to turn the inevitable setbacks of life into opportunities

We succeed when we create our lives around our passions and dreams. “No one is more qualified to be you than you. Be what you want to be, not what others want you to be.” As a thinker, writer or whatever you choose to be,” said Makai, “you carry a signature that is uniquely your. It’s like your fingerprint. There’s nothing else like it in the universe. Be a first-rate version of yourself than a second-rate version of someone else."

Saturday, November 14, 2009

To Write, First Forgive


“There are no accidents in life, only opportunities. I really believe that.”

Holly Payne, author and writing coach, was addressing budding writers at the Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, California, as part of the institution's November 2009 authors’ series.

Her latest book, Kingdom of Simplicity, was named a Bay Area Best Seller by the San Francisco Chronicle. Payne was recalling the origin of Kingdom, and how the events associated with it shaped her life.

She was 22. An avid hiker, she was exploring the trails in Colorado’s Crested Butte at 9000 ft. in the summer of 1994 when she saw two bikers in the dark. Out of concern, she held out her flashlight for them. Next thing she knew, a drunken driver had hit all three of them.

As she lay on the ground, not sure if she was dead or alive, she looked up at the mountains and an inexplicable thought came to her. “It was surreal. As the seconds stretched into eternity, I told myself, if I survive this, I will be a writer. I’m going to write.”

Payne had just graduated from college and dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent. She had grown up in the sheltering Amish country of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and longed to see the world, to tell stories of people in faraway places.

But now, not only were most of her bones broken, her dream seemed shattered too. She had a choice. She could stay angry at the driver or she could work her way through what fate had dealt her.

She chose the latter. Or thought so. She began writing, finding it to be cathartic, “a little bit of science and a lot of craft.”

But had she let go of her anger? Six months after the accident, a letter reached her from the driver who had hit her, imploring for forgiveness. She would have none of it. She put the letter away in a pile of medical and insurance papers and forgot about it.

Twelve year later, in October of 2006, a horrified Payne read about a schoolhouse shooting in the Amish country of her childhood. A lone gunman had killed five girls execution-style before turning the gun on himself. She returned and discovered that the parents of the slain girls, and the larger Amish community, had already forgiven the killer. In fact, they had opened a fund for his family.

Suddenly, the idea of forgiveness became real for her. The Amish did not believe in holding onto events, however wrenching they might be. They found freedom in forgiveness. In private they were angry and sad but by consciously choosing to forgive the killer, they were able to move to the present and maintain the continuity of their community, their “beautifully complex culture.”

For Payne this was a revelation. She realized that by rejecting the drunken man’s plea for forgiveness, she was living in the past and was, in the scheme of things, perhaps more to blame than he was. Her exterior may have healed but inside, she was still limping.

In forgiveness, Payne discovered her kingdom of simplicity. “If you cannot forgive, you cannot love. And without love, how can you write?”
She wrote Kingdom as a response to the letter she refused to read twelve years earlier and dedicated the book to its writer. She was finally free.

In her travels in Europe, Asia and America, Payne has found that all of us have a unique story to tell. Her advice to aspiring writers is to have the courage and the confidence to become story-tellers. “Through stories, we get to know ourselves. If a hotshot editor or agent from New York tells you that your story has 'already been done,' tell him that it hasn’t been done like this.” Learn how to be vulnerable,” she said, “and as you involve yourself with the world, let go of what is holding you back and sit down to write.”

Friday, November 06, 2009

Shock and Anger at Ft. Hood Rampage

A deranged U.S. Army major opens fire at Ft. Hood in Texas and takes 13 lives, injuring many more. There are no ifs and buts about this: No matter what his personal grievances may have been, he is a killer, a cold-blooded murderer, and must pay the price for his heinous crime.

The killer’s name is Nidal Malik Hasan, a Virginia-born American Muslim who joined the Army right after high school, against his parents’ wishes. Nidal justified his decision to join the Army this way: “I was born and raised here. I’m going to do my duty to the country.”

He started out with a noble intention but when it came to preserving that nobility through life’s trials, he failed miserably. He became an Army psychiatrist, trained to heal soldiers suffering from the stress and trauma of war. But the healer turned into a killer, unable to control his inner demons.

Americans of all creed and color have expressed grave misgivings about our involvement in Afghanistan and the illegitimate war in Iraq. But if you are a member of the armed forces, you are bound by certain rules and obligations that the average citizen is not exposed to. If the rules violate your moral and ethical codes, you have several recourse, all spelled out in the Army code of conduct. They are difficult choices, but choices nonetheless.

Nidal Malik Hasan did not want to be deployed to Afghanistan. He became increasingly paranoid and hostile toward his country and its policies. And then one day he cracked and innocent Americans paid with their lives.

Reports are filtering out that he was taunted by fellow soldiers for his faith, that he posted blogs praising suicide bombers and denouncing the U.S presence in Muslim lands. If that is indeed the case, and the FBI and the Army knew that Malik Hasan was a ticking time bomb, what action did they take, if any? This is a question that must be answered. It is one thing to be sensitive about minorities; it is quite another to be lax about behavioral issues that can have deadly consequences.

One detail about the Major stands out: After the death of his parents in 1998 and 2001, “he became more devout.”

The implication seems to be that more devout means becoming prone to extremist behavior.

The argument is too silly to consider. It is enough to point out that if greater devotion led to more carnage, the world as we know it would have ceased to exist long ago.

What probably happened was that Major Hasan found comfort in his own volatile mix of rage, fear and frustration, and acted on the irrational impulse it created. He may have channeled it through a religious subtext of seductive certainty but we shouldn’t be fooled by it.

American Muslims are understandably nervous and disgusted. Even more so are the thousands of Muslims who serve in America’s armed forces. According to the Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, there are currently 20,000 Muslims serving with honor in the U.S. military. Can they shake off that look of suspicion from fellow soldiers, that unspoken, subtle doubt about their loyalty to the nation? It will not be easy but one can only hope that it will pass with time

Meanwhile, our deepest sympathies are with the families of the fallen. The light of their lives was snatched away in a moment of cruelty. We mourn with them and pray for peace and justice for them.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Missing the Big Picture

One of the profound paradoxes of life is that the average person can see through an issue with a clarity that eludes the best and the brightest.

Such is the case with deploying more troops to Afghanistan. What exactly is the strategic importance of Afghanistan to the United States at this time? The Soviet empire has collapsed, so there is no question of any contest for supremacy there. A reminder for Iran to behave and Pakistan to crack down on the Taliban? Questionable. To stop Al-Qaeda from returning to that graveyard of empires? What a laugh!

Yet our leaders and military commanders continue to act as if saving Afghanistan from Osama Bin Laden and warring warlords will translate into making the world safe for democracy.

What would happen if America were to withdraw from Afghanistan or reduce its footprint? Tom Friedman of the New York Times offers this analysis: In the Middle East, all politics happens the morning after the morning after. Be patient. Yes, the morning after we shrink down in Afghanistan, the Taliban will celebrate, Pakistan will quake and Bin Laden will issue an exultant video. And the morning after the morning after, the Taliban factions will start fighting each other, the Pakistani Army will have to destroy their Taliban, or be destroyed by them, Afghanistan’s warlords will carve up the country ..."

Judging from nationwide polls, this seems to be how many Americans feel. Yet President Obama is weighing requests by his top military commanders to send more troops and deepen America’s involvement in Afghanistan. Given his penchant for consensus, the president will probably not send as many troops as requested but overall, is likely to prolong the war there. Note that by 2010, America will have been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviets were in their catastrophic attempt to bring the country under their control.

Consider another perspective by Nicholas Kristof, also a columnist for the New York Times. “One of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there. It is hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years – well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D.”

Kristof also notes that “Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed."

So there you have it. But an “expert” may say, “Well, these guys are not on the ground. They are armchair generals, as most of you are, so you really don’t understand the complexity and that’s why you offer these simplistic solutions.

Not quite. Consider Matthew Hoh, the Foreign Service officer and former marine captain, who resigned from a civilian post in Afghanistan this week to protest U.S. policy. We can’t win, he said in his resignation letter, and our presence is only fueling the insurgency. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

Indeed, why and to what end? The stark truth: There is none. Yet the cost in lives and wasted resources in Afghanistan are beyond calculation.

And democracy? Impartial observers have confirmed that Hamid Karzai stole the recent election and that his brother has been on CIA's payroll all along. “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!"

We return, then, to the paradox: How is it that the smartest brains cannot see the forest for the trees, particularly when their claim to fame is that that’s precisely where they tower above you and me?

Is it because power and an inflated sense of self blind one to the obvious? Can it be because they think that the fate of the world depends on them and that their decisions today will change the course of history tomorrow? Or is it because they are such believers in technological superiority and manifest destiny that they have become immune to history’s lessons?

Humility and a sense of the big picture seem to be missing from our leaders and commanders. The solution: heed the wisdom of the average citizen, do not be goaded into prolonging this war by the exhortations of rabid right-wingers, and know that history keeps its own timetable, indifferent to the might and machinery of mere mortals.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Happiness and Terror

Which is stronger, happiness or terror?

It must be terror because each occurrence of it bears its unique unexpectedness, its singular set of demons and diabolical characters. Happiness, on the other hand, is more fleeting, its source more common. And therefore, more easy to miss. The contrast is similar to how Tolstoy described happy and unhappy families in Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Substitute terror for unhappy families and Tolstoy's insight remains equally compelling.

I got to thinking of this after watching "Where the Wild Things Are." Maurice Sendak's 1963 classic has been turned into a movie and shows Max fleeing from his "monstrous" mother into the arms of wild things who are torn between eating him and hugging him (well-meaning relatives who pull your ears and squeeze your cheeks, selfish siblings who have no time for you, absent father, hectoring teachers, bullying neighbors - take your pick). But Max manages to convince them that he is their king and so the wild rumpus starts.

It is not all play and amusement, however, as the presence of Max brings to light hidden wounds and grievances among the wild things, leading to murderous rage and rampage. Cowering in fear with a kindly being in a cave, Max is told that "being a family is not easy."

At that moment, the thought of home fills his heart and Max sets sail across the ocean for suburban life with mother and sister.

Max fled terror, experienced terror and some happiness with wild things , and returned willingly to his family. Once back, he sees his mother in a new light of love. The daily terror of living in an adult world with its autocratic and cruel ways will certainly continue but now there is a difference. It's okay, it's bearable, because now there is love.

And like Max, we suddenly realize that terror, both internal and external, is what makes happiness possible, however elusive it may be.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The Wonder of Stargazing

Jupiter shone like the full moon and four of its satellites - Lo, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto - hung beneath it like pearls on a pendant.


I was viewing the celestial wonders through a 7” refractor telescope at the Montgomery Hill Observatory of Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, California.


Once every month, the astronomy department organizes a “star party” for interested viewers when conditions are suitable.


On this warm October night, the sky was clear and moonless and about 20 families from around the area had gathered for a glimpse of the universe. Parents were having difficulty keeping up with excited, voluble children discovering the treasures beckoning from above.


A 5-meter dome building houses the 7” telescope. Next to it is a 16' x 16' roll-off roof building that houses a 14” reflector telescope. Its targets tonight were the Andromeda Galaxy to the north and the Ring Nebula to the west.


Once we had our fill of telescopic viewings, the real fun began. We scanned the sky with unaided eyes. Dr. Celso Batalha, astronomy professor at the college and the main organizer of the event, was ready with his laser pointer. One by one he traced the Aries constellation, the Pleiades star cluster ("we also call them Seven Sisters") visible just above the hills, the W-shaped Cassiopeia constellation to its left and the Pole Star that could be located by drawing a line from one of its stars, and the Pegasus constellation overhead.


There was hushed awe as the voyage progressed through the stars blazing in the darkness, along and beyond the arc of the Zodiac.


What’s most impressive about the monthly star parties at Evergreen is the sense of wonder they evoke among visitors, particularly among the young. This is how scientists, and poets, are born.

The thought must strike us who flock to the observatory that we can roam the universe on any dark, clear night of the year. All we need to do is step out of the house and gaze upwards. The stars will do the rest.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Give the Body a Chance to Heal Itself

The sharp pain in my right ear made me wince. I was having difficulty eating. My throat was hurting. Should I or should I not? Call the doctor, that is. Since the weekend was coming up, I reluctantly made the call. I have a bias against burdening an over-burdened system.

The kind and compassionate doctor checked my throat and ear. "No infection in the ear," she said with relief, "but your jaw muscles are inflamed." One possible reason was that I had visited my dentist two day earlier, and opening the mouth wide and clenching for x-ray might have caused the inflammation.

She prescribed the tablets that would cure me of my pain and I left with gratitude. Normally, I go straight to my neighborhood pharmacy. But this time I had an idea. Why not give the body one more day to see if it heals itself. I could put up with the pain for 24 hours but not any longer.

It worked. The pain began to subside and within 72 hours there was no pain whatsoever.

I am not trying to draw any general, high-sounding conclusion from this. It is always better to err on the side of caution than to be cavalier about one's health. Certainly, and in most cases, one should consult the doctor and take the prescribed medication.

But too often we underestimate our body when it comes to common ailments. At the slightest hint of a sniffle or a headache, we panic and think that without a doctor's intervention, or without some medicine, we will fall apart physically.

The body has its own natural, check-up mechanisms, and as long as we eat healthy food, do not overeat and do some form of regular exercise, the occasional flare-up is actually no cause for concern. The best medicine in such situations is probably to wait for a day or two while taking commonsensical precautions.As ancient cultures know and have practiced for generations, the body has the capacity to heal itself far more than we give it credit for.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Nobel Barrier is Falling

This year, a record number of women were awarded the Nobel Prize. The Nobel committees have been overlooking worthy female candidates for some time now, with the possible exception of the literature prize, and their acknowledgment of the oversight is good news for all.

In Physiology or Medicine, two of the three winners were Elizabeth H. Blackburn (60) and Carol W. Greider (48) who, along with Jack W. Sozstak (57), were honored for the discovery of "how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase."

In Chemistry, one of the three winners was Ada Yunath (70) who, along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (57) and Thomas Steitz (69), was awarded the prize for "studies of the structure and function of ribosome."

Herta Muller (56) won the Literature prize, "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."

And finally, one of the two winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was Elinor Ostrom (76) who was cited "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons." The first woman to win the Economics prize, she shared the honor with Oliver E. Williamson (77).

Only Physics and the Peace prizes were without women laureates this year.

A total of 5 out of 13 winners in 2009 may not seem much but when you consider that the Nobel committees honored a total of only 41 women from 1901 to 2009 for the various prizes, you can see what a breakthrough year 2009 has been. Of the 41 winners, Marie Curie was honored twice, first for Physics in 1903 and then for Chemistry in 1911. So, in reality, the Nobel committees awarded the prize to just 40 women until now.

You can expect to see more female laureates from now onwards, a recognition by Nobel committees that women have been ignored and denied the prizes for too long. You can also lay to rest all those stereotypes about women not being good enough to compete with men in the sciences. Such myths have persisted for too long. Let the best women, and men, win!

Sunday, October 11, 2009

The Pastoral City

It's in October that cities takes on a pastoral look. Pumpkins on bales of hay in front of grocery stores and in stalls set up on empty lots by the roadside. Orange on yellow evokes autumn, as do falling sycamore, maple and sweet gum leaves. Cars drive over and the leaves swirl, rise, and descend like confetti, only to rise and fall again as other cars follow.

You can see the anxiety on people's faces as the uncertain times claim their toll. Morning mist there's aplenty in the city but mellow fruitfulness seems a thing of the past. Children bundle up against rain and wind. They too sense the struggle confronting mom and dad and do not smile like before.

Yes, falling leaves continue to remind us of our mortality. And yes, the times are tough. The way out, though, is to shed old thinking and to reinvent oneself. The temptation is strong to settle for a job, any job, that will put food on the table and help make the minimum payment on credit cards, but that will be extraordinarily shortsighted. Go through the hardship but resolve not to work at a thankless, passionless job ever again. For everyone, there is a second act in America that promises to be better than the first. If there ever was a time to be an entrepreneur that reflects one's passion, this is it. We cannot achieve our dreams unless we burn the old bridges and begin anew. What's there to lose?

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Muse of the Romantic Poet

The star in "Bright Star" is Fannie Brawne, the love of Romantic poet John Keats's (1795-1821) life. On the screen, it is Australian actress Abbie Cornish, whose luminous, heart-breaking performance as Fannie makes her the star of this lovely, lyrical, poignant movie.

Keats died of tuberculosis when he was only 26. You can sense the tragedy developing frame by frame between the poet and his muse as the lovers desperately try to overcome poverty and prejudice to consummate their love. But it is not to be, and as played by Cornish's Fannie, far more than British actor Ben Whishaw's Keats, the pathos is almost unbearable throughout the movie.

Fannie is a self-assured seamstress but to win Keats's love, she attempts to learn the finer points of poetry from the young master himself. In one of the lessons, she tells Keats that she is going to "work" the poems, no matter how long it takes. An exasperated Keats exclaims: You don't dive into a lake to reach the other shore. You dive in to feel the sensation of body meeting water, to feel only the presence of the water. You don't work the lake!"

Keats could not make money with his poems to support himself, which was why he could not marry Fannie, and died in distant Rome away from his beloved, convinced that he was a failure. Time has redeemed him and many of his poems are considered among the finest ever written in the English language. Fannie lived with her beloved's memory for the rest of her life. In the very last and long scene, she is seen taking a walk in the snowy woods, reciting the lines of "Bright Star."

Each line of the poem evokes a distinct expression on her face, sorrow and longing combining to convey how love can conquer time and space. As she recites the last lines of the poem, "Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast/To feel for ever its soft fall and swell/Awake for ever in a sweet unrest/Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath/And so live ever - or swoon to death," we become believers in timeless love ourselves.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Obama Delivers with Health Care Speech

President Obama delivered on health care reform through his speech to Congress on September 9. Yes, it was only a speech but after months of vacillations and wrong signals, he cut through the lies and innuendos of Republicans and laid out his plan in clear, powerful language. It was vintage Obama and a persuasive call for action. The President’s health care bill has now a realistic chance of becoming law.

Obama had help, although from unexpected quarters. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina screamed “You lie!” when the President declared that illegal immigrants were ineligible for health care. Wilson was wrong and his indecorous behavior revealed the bankrupt tactics of the Republicans to undermine the President at any cost. Support for Obama swelled after the speech.

What also helped was Obama’s quoting the late Senator Kennedy’s last thoughts on the subject that he considered the ultimate goal of his life. "What we face," Kennedy wrote, "is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country." (Here is Kennedy's final letter).

A companion piece to read with Obama’s speech would be Food Guru Michael Pollan’s take on Big Food vs. Big Insurance. Much food for though there.

Now, full steam ahead on health care.

Monday, September 07, 2009

Obama's Tough Advice to Nation's Schoolchildren

"But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed." - President Barack Hussein Obama


Our schoolchildren needed to hear this, and I am glad President Obama was the one to say so in his speech to the nation's kids.


With all the talks about incompetent teachers and bad neighborhoods and missing parents, students might have gotten the idea that they didn't have to apply themeselves. As soon as all the external factors were fixed, they would be successful!


In this timely reminder, however, Obama tells them in clear terms that their success depends ultimately on their effort and struggle and sacrifice.


Read the full text of the President's speech.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Edward Kennedy's Quest for Justice

The date is etched in my memory. February 14, 1972: First day of spring in the newly independent nation of Bangladesh.

Ted Kennedy arrived at the Dhaka University campus with his wife Joan Bennett and Robert Kennedy, Jr., escorted by popular student leader Abdur Rab. I was a student at the University then. 8,000 of us had crammed into the courtyard, lecture hall balconies and roofs, wildly applauding the 39-year-old US Senator who was among the first to draw world attention to the genocide unleashed by the military government of Pakistan on unarmed Bangladeshis.

“Even though the United States government does not recognize you,” Kennedy said that morning, “the people of the world do recognize you.” (The United States recognized Bangladesh on April 4, 1972. Bangladesh became an independent nation on December 16, 1971).

Joi Kennedy,” we roared, a play on the “Joi Bangla” slogan that carried our country to independence. (Joi is Bengali for victory).

The Pakistan army had launched its attack on the night of March 25, 1971. 10,000 Bangladeshis were massacred in the first three days alone. Over a period of nine months, as many as 3 million were killed and 10 million had to flee to India for safety. Kennedy witnessed firsthand their plight when he toured parts of India and spoke of “one of the most appalling tides of human misery in modern times.”

On that spring day, our hearts filled with gratitude for the man who had denounced the Nixon-Kissinger policy of “tilting” toward Pakistan. Kennedy compared our struggle for independence with the American Revolution, drawing tumultuous applause.

Bangladesh had found a friend in need who would remain a friend indeed for as long as the new nation existed. And so it had been.

That is why, when Edward Moore Kennedy passed away on August 25 at the age of 77 after a year-long battle with cancer, Bangladeshis took it personally. Many of us had made the West our home now but who could forget his fight on our behalf during those fateful days of 1971?

I replayed the scene of his visit to Dhaka University over and over again in my mind, reliving those magical moments when anything seemed possible and freedom resonated in every fiber of our being. A human wave brought me close enough to shake Kennedy’s hands; the next minute another wave carried me back to the periphery. When Rab, the student leader, finally managed to establish some order in the crowd, Kennedy planted a banyan sapling at the spot where another banyan tree was uprooted by the Pakistan army.

It was under that ancient and historic tree that students had first planted the seeds of Bangladesh’s independence movement. Kennedy’s sapling was a reminder to tyrants everywhere that while you could uproot a tree, you could never uproot the sapling of freedom that sprouted in every human heart.

In subsequent years, Kennedy experienced both triumphs and tragedies. We learned of his undisciplined personal life, his reckless pursuit of pleasure. But in a second act of self-renewal that is unique in American history, Kennedy conquered his personal demons to become, in President Barack Obama’s words, “not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy … For nearly five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts. His ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives - in seniors who know new dignity; in families that know new opportunity; in children who know education’s promise; and in all who can pursue their dream in an America that is more equal and more just, including me.”

Kennedy was most animated by the quest for justice. Although he was the prince fated never to be king, his achievements far exceeded those of many presidents. He had no taste for abstract ideas. He excelled in the particular, in the painstaking and prosaic legal processes that resulted in laws that brought meaning to millions of lives. He inspired us by proving that we could overcome our failings, however deep and many, if we dedicated ourselves to causes larger than ourselves.

Once asked what he considered was his most valuable trait, Kennedy replied, “persistence.” His persistence was the product of his convictions – justice, equality, opportunity for the marginalized and the forgotten - on which he staked his political fortune. “I have believed,” he once said, “that America must sail toward the shores of liberty and justice for all. There is no end to that journey, only the next great voyage. We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make.”

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when hate and prejudice against Islam and Muslims gripped America, Senators Kennedy and Richard Lugar sponsored a "Cultural Bridge to the Islamic World” program. Addressing visiting Muslim students in June, 2004, Kennedy said, "After a year here, each of you are now unofficial American ambassadors to your home countries. I am sure you don't agree with everything the United States says and does, but I hope that you'll be able to explain our country and our values to your friends and family. Each time you do, you'll be sending forth a new ripple of hope.”

On September 27, 2002, a year before the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Kennedy gave a prescient speech in which he voiced his opposition to the war. “War with Iraq before a genuine attempt at inspection and disarmament, or without genuine international support - could swell the ranks of Al Qaeda sympathizers and trigger an escalation in terrorist acts.”

In another speech on January 9, 2007, he called the Iraq War “George Bush’s Vietnam.” The Iraq war, he said, “is the overarching issue of our time, and American lives, American values and American honor are all at stake … Congress can demand a justification from the President for such action before it appropriates the funds to carry it out … This bill will give all Americans – from Maine to Florida to California to Alaska and Hawaii – an opportunity to hold the President accountable for his actions.”

Another person who worked hard to focus world attention on the genocide in Bangladesh was former Beatle George Harrison. Along with Ravi Shankar and other musicians, he organized the Concert for Bangladesh in Madison Square Garden in New York City on August 1, 1971. Harrison’s signature song was “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

Musicians and politicians, of course, use different media to express themselves, each effective in its own way, but there was no gentle weeping for Kennedy when it came to opposing injustice and atrocities. Rather, he thundered. No equivocation or considerations of political expediency. Simply state the truth as you see it and reveal the crimes, wherever the chips may fall.

As I was reminiscing about the events of 1971-72, I tried to articulate anew my thoughts and feelings on that spring morning in Dhaka almost four decades ago when Kennedy came to our campus. Then I read these memorable words of Kennedy himself, delivered at the 1980 Democratic convention in Madison Square Garden, and knew that I had found what I was looking for: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”

Thanks to Ted Kennedy and those like him, our hope endures and our dream of a just world moves toward reality step by step, moment by moment.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Moment of Truth for Obama’s Health Care Plan

Will it or won’t it? That is the question.


Will the public option, a government health insurance plan to compete with private insurers in the open market, remain a part of ObamaCare or will it have to be jettisoned to salvage the remaining reform pieces?


That the United States needs a better health care plan than what exists today is almost universally accepted. 47 million Americans are uninsured. Current health care is discriminatory and unfair. Administrative inefficiency is excessive. We spend almost 18% of our GDP on health care. That’s about 2.5 trillion dollars!

But Obama has so far failed to convince voters that his reform plan is the way to go.

In downtown San Jose recently I saw noisy protesters condemning the proposed program as inhuman and unacceptable. “We are not shovel-ready yet,” read a banner, held aloft by a couple in their ‘70s. In spite of the exponential growth in technological connectivity, we remain isolated in islands of ignorance and prejudice.

But this also is true: There is a strange lack of passion in the president’s attempt to convince voters of the soundness of his health care reform plan. What calls for rolling up the sleeves has instead brought us a theoretician’s ruminations, something the nation – rocked by recession - is in no mood for.

Forget the rabid right-wingers and manipulators, their outright lies about death panels, “pulling the plug on grandma” and socialism. The average American is beginning to question the president’s commitment to health reform. Has compromise been the goal all along? Is appeasing his most vocal opponents the president’s priority?

There is widespread fear and anxiety about what the future holds for health care in America that the White House hasn’t been able to dispel.

It is not too late for Obama to put his health care reform back on track, with the public option in place as it ought to be. But this will require the president to infuse his advocacy with the same passion that he poured into his presidential campaign. Too many voices from his corner are crowding out his message, leaving many perplexed and confused, while allowing his diehard opponents to spread their lies with impunity. “These are the reasons why you should vote for my health care reform plan,” the president should say, and then list his top 5 points with a clarity that anyone can understand. The only way he can combat the fiction of FOX and followers is with facts expressed in clear language. For a gifted orator and wordsmith, that shouldn’t be difficult.


P.S. With Ted Kennedy's passing today, it becomes that much more urgent for his fellow legislators to make health care available for every American. It was the goal that Kennedy worked for, "the cause of my life," until the very end of his life.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

MERLOT 2009 International Conference

I attended the MERLOT 2009 International Conference in San Jose, CA (August 13-16) as a presenter. MERLOT is the acronym for Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (www.merlot.org). Title of my Poster Session was “Acing K-14 Algebra: An Online Case Study.”

Education is going through a radical transformation, given the vast array of Web-based tools available to teachers and educators. Yet in his electrifying keynote speech (Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation), John Wilbanks, Vice President of Science at Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/), made the point that the Web has transformed our culture and commerce but its impact on education has been relatively small. Arcane copyright laws, artificial controls and obsolete business models have thwarted the emergence of value creation that is the hallmark of the Web. We have to take down all barriers to scholarly communication so that as more people are able to engage, possibilities of intellectual breakthroughs that we sorely need in our times dramatically go up. Innovation is an emergent property of networks. Many smart people around the world cannot make scholarly breakthroughs because they lack access to integrated information. A sustainable and scalable digital commons increases the flow of scholarly knowledge.

Educators are fond of forming “Standards Bodies,” said WilBanks, but these do not lead to breakthroughs. “Solving real problems do.” “If we can make the things we know more useful in the evaluation of hypotheses and models, we are simply increasing the mathematical odds of discovery. This is the transformational potential. It is treating the literature and data online as elements in a vast periodic table of knowledge, a common reference point against which we can test how things fit together.”

This was probably the most intellectually challenging and provocative keynote address I have ever heard. It may take a while to realize the vision that Wilbanks articulated but now we can at least hope that the Web’s radically disruptive (as opposed to traditionally incremental) effect on education will become a reality, at par with its effect on culture and commerce.

Several presentations and workshops ran in parallel during the conference’s 4 days, an abundance of riches that made me dizzy. What amazed me were the number of teachers committed to helping students get ahead in life by introducing them to innovative tools and practices. Online teaching and Web 2.0 tools are now a fact of educational life and we will see more and more of these with time. The challenge is to ensure that we are not using the Web merely as a wrapper to digitize face-to-face classrooms but to use its transformational power to bring about real and lasting changes in the ways we think, teach, learn and innovate.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Exercise to Lose Weight? It's a Delusion!

For over a decade, I have been hitting the gym with a regularity that is downright scary. Five times a week, sometimes even 7. The idea was to keep the brain alive against the ravages of time and age, and also to tone the muscles and develop at least a 2-pack, if not 6.

But the main reason was to become lighter by shedding excess pounds. I started with 162 and aimed for 150, a nice round number that seemed just right to me. Getting rid of 12 pounds or so wouldn’t be much of a problem.

So I thought. After more than a decade of aerobics, treadmill, cycling, pushups, stretching and other forms of punishment, I weigh … 161 pounds. What gives?

In a cover story, TIME magazine (August 17, 2009) tries to explain the mystery, although the knowledge doesn’t exactly cheer me up. Apparently, exercise, particularly strenuous exercise, can actually add to your weight rather than subtract because of the effect it has on you. The effect is commonly known as … hunger. After the sweat (and sometimes the tears), you want to “compensate.” And that often turns out to be variations on the theme of “lip-licking, perfectly salted, golden-brown French-fries!”

In other words, what the gym taketh, the self giveth … and giveth. Let’s say you manage to melt 200 calories in your typical workout. But that blueberry muffin that you crave, and succumb to, after a hard day’s calisthenics, packs 360 calories. You are already in the red by 160 calories!

On the other hand, the average person who finds the idea of formal exercise with expensive equipments preposterous but casually exerts himself (walk around the block, climb stairs and such) without having to consume muffins, fries or Happy Meals, actually comes out ahead of the gym guru.

One metabolism expert puts it bluntly: “In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless.”

So how do you become lighter? By choosing your food carefully, while maintaining a reasonable amount of physical activity that does not require a trip to a gym.

Exercise minimizes the risk of heart attacks, prevents diseases and improves cognitive ability. There is no doubt about this. But its effect on weight loss has apparently been greatly exaggerated. The key is moderation. Eat good, wholesome food in moderation. And strike a balance between a potato (couch) and a rat (gym).

Meanwhile, for old times’ sake, glazed chocolate donuts, anyone?

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Which States Will 'Race to the Top?'

The only constant in the calculus of K-12 public education, it turns out, is … money. Who would have thought of that? But since that’s what it is, I am relieved that the Obama administration is using money as a leverage to connect student performance to teacher effectiveness in the nation’s public schools.

There has been little, if any, progress in correcting America’s dysfunctional public schools in spite of the billions of dollars spent by the federal government and wealthy philanthropists over the last few decades. George Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was too malleable to be a meaningful criterion for progress. Teachers union has traditionally protected incompetent teachers despite their devastating effects on students. It also continues to put a limit on the number of district charter schools, a successful model in which student performances and teacher evaluations are treated as two sides of the same coin.

The Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” program changes the equation. And it comes not a moment too soon.


By dangling the carrot of money – federal grant of $4.35 billion for school reform and innovation throughout the country - Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has forced the issue. Either States abide by the Race to the Top guidelines to be eligible for grant, or they don’t, in which case there will be no money. Take it or leave it. In other words, no more business as usual.

As Secretary Duncan explained in a Washington Post opinion piece (7/24/09):


"Under Race to the Top guidelines, states seeking funds will be pressed to implement four core interconnected reforms.

- To reverse the pervasive dumbing-down of academic standards and assessments by states, Race to the Top winners need to work toward adopting common, internationally benchmarked K-12 standards that prepare students for success in college and careers.

- To close the data gap -- which now handcuffs districts from tracking growth in student learning and improving classroom instruction -- states will need to monitor advances in student achievement and identify effective instructional practices.

- To boost the quality of teachers and principals, especially in high-poverty schools and hard-to-staff subjects, states and districts should be able to identify effective teachers and principals -- and have strategies for rewarding and retaining more top-notch teachers and improving or replacing ones who aren't up to the job.

- Finally, to turn around the lowest-performing schools, states and districts must be ready to institute far-reaching reforms, from replacing staff and leadership to changing the school culture."

While several states have already signed on to the program, two notable holdouts are New York and California. The reason is the insistence of the teachers unions in these states to preserve the firewall between student performance and teacher effectiveness.

But the message from Washington is clear: This firewall must be taken down, or you can forget about asking for school reform money. Arne Duncan must ensure that states are not able to find loopholes in the program to undermine its effectiveness, as was the case with NCLB. His words instill hope: "For states, school districts, nonprofits, unions and businesses, Race to the Top is the equivalent of education reform's moon shot -- and the Obama administration is determined not to miss this opportunity. We will scrutinize state applications for a coordinated commitment to reform -- and award grants on a competitive basis in two rounds, allowing first-round losers to make necessary changes and reapply."

As an educator and a concerned citizen, I hope that recalcitrant teachers unions throughout the country will welcome Race to the Top as the best K-12 reform package to come from Washington in living memory. The holy grail of public education in America has been to measure whether kids are actually learning anything in our schools to help them become productive members of society. Race to the Top offers the best hope yet to make this measurement available for public scrutiny. Schools will then be forced to promote a culture of excellence, taking corrective actions where necessary, to make our K-12 public education system among the best in the world again.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Feynman Fans, Rejoice!

Richard Feynman, the late great Nobel Prize-winning physicist, remains an icon. One of his fans is Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman. “He was incredibly inspirational,” Gates remarked once. “He was an independent thinker and gifted teacher who pushed himself to understand new things. I have enjoyed everything I’ve read about him and by him. I admired him deeply…"

The Feynman Lectures on Physics, a set of lectures Feynman gave to undergraduates at Caltech in '62-63, is a classic. (For a description of how the lectures came about, see the definitive article by Feynman's colleague Matthew Sands in Physics Today, April 2005).

Feynman’s fame grew when he was appointed to the Rogers commission in 1986 to investigate the Challenger shuttle explosion. His dramatic demonstration on television of the loss of resiliency in O-ring at freezing temperature as a principal cause of the accident made him a celebrity. In applauding his performance, the physicist Freeman Dyson said: "The public saw with their own eyes how science is done, how a great scientist thinks with his hands, how nature gives a clear answer when a scientist asks a clear question."

Since he passed away in 1988, Feynman lore has continued to grow. Several books have been published, including Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (James Gleick, 1992), Most of the Good Stuff: Memories of Richard Feynman (American Institute of Physics, 1993), No Ordinary Genius (Christopher Sykes, 1994), The Beat of a Different Drum (Jagdish Mehra, 1994), Feynman’s Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun (W.W. Norton, 1996), The Meaning of It All (Helix Books, 1998), The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Perseus Books, 1999) Feynman's Rainbow (Leonard Mlodinow, 2003), and Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard Feynman (Edited by Michelle Feynman, Basic Books, 2005).


Reminiscences by colleagues also appear from time to time in Physics journals, such as "Capturing the Wisdom of Feynman" by Matthew Sands (Physics Today, April 2006) and "Memories of Feynman" by Theodore A. Welton (Physics Today, February 2007).

In 1964, Feynman gave a series of lectures at Cornell University, the Messenger Lectures, under the title "The Character of Physical Law." His topics ranged from symmetry, probability and uncertainty in physical laws to techniques by which physicists seek new laws. The lectures were recognized for their extraordinary quality. "I have videotapes of physics lectures Feynman gave at Cornell decades ago," said Gates. "They are the best lectures I’ve seen on any subject. He shared his enthusiasm and clarity energetically and persuasively."

And now the super-fan has paid his respect to the great physicist and teacher. Gates bought the rights to the seven videos that constitute the Messenger Lectures from BBC and has made them available to the public for free for the first time. On July 14, 2009, Microsoft Research, in collaboration with Gates, launched a Web site -
Project Tuva – with the Messenger Lectures that is expected to, among other goals, "help kids get excited about physics and science.”

“I think someone who can make science interesting is magical” said Gates. “And the person who did that better than anybody was Richard Feynman. He took the mystery of science, the importance of science, the strangeness of science,
and made it fun and interesting and approachable.”

One doesn’t have to be a physicist or even a student of physics to appreciate Feynman, a genius with the flair of a showman. At a time when science education is declining in our schools and colleges, partly as a result of uninspiring teachers, to be able to see a master in action is a rare treat indeed. For this, Bill Gates deserves our thanks.

(If you are up to it, here is an
imaginary encounter between Richard Feynman and Bill Gates)

Monday, July 20, 2009

Rekindling the Romance of Space Travel

Forty years ago today, as a student at Dhaka University in Bangladesh (then Pakistan), I remember staying up all night with friends in our hostel, glued to the radio for news of the moon-walking voyagers. Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin had fired our collective imagination as they took tentative steps on the moon while Michael Collins kept vigil in the orbit above. That first small step had opened the door to infinite possibilities. We were exhilarated, our sense of wonder kindled as it has rarely been since.

The daring Apollo 11 astronauts, soaring on the ingenuity of thousands of engineers, made us see the earth as she was: a fragile, small, lonely planet in the vastness of space, in need of the nurturing care of every one of its inhabitants. For a brief, shining moment, we even thought that’s how it was going to be.

On Monday, October 27, 1969, we thronged main street in front of Hotel Intercontinental (now Sheraton) in Dhaka for a glimpse of our heroes. The Apollo 11 astronauts were visiting the city as part of their world-wide goodwill tour. And suddenly there they were, riding in a motorcade, all eyes focused on … Neil Armstrong. Being the first certainly had its privileges, even if the toast of the world had missed an “a” in his unforgettable sentence.

There is talk now of reviving that ’69 spirit of adventure by shooting for Mars, a more hospitable target than the moon. But even if the money is there, is there the national will? “Man must understand his universe,” said Neil Armstrong, “in order to understand his destiny.” The question for us to resolve now as a nations is: What must be our destiny?

Friday, July 17, 2009

Ride Out and Meet Them

Militants have struck in two luxury hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia, after a lull of four years, killing eight and injuring many more. The country has been a model of progressive thinking and religious coexistence among its diverse population. Even though the most populous Muslim nation in the world, Indonesia’s recent election demonstrated that creed played hardly any part in it. In electing Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as president, Indonesians were united by what was good for the country. The transition to democracy, after years of secessionist sentiments and bloody clashes between different groups, has been remarkable.

This was too much for radical Islamist organizations, and so they did what they do best: kill innocents and try to destabilize a stable nation. Of course they will not succeed but Indonesia must step up its vigilance against them before they can do further damage. I join other Muslims in condemning this act of barbarism by fanatics who claim to be Muslims but who are nothing but cold-blooded murderers. I recall this scene from Lord of the Rings, Twin Towers, and affirm its sentiment:

King: What can man do against such reckless hate?
Aragorn: Ride out with me. Ride out & meet them.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Web Entrepreneurship in Bangladesh

Spent two weeks in Bangladesh, country of my birth, this summer. Held a seminar on “Web Entrepreneurship in Bangladesh: Lessons from Silicon Valley” on 4th of July. I was surprised by the turnout. Over 100 tech-savvy executives,managers, entrepreneurs and media representatives gathered in an auditorium in Dhaka on a Saturday to listen to what I had to say. (See coverage) More than Web technology, they were intrigued by the soft skills I listed as being critical to success in any Web venture.

After my hour-and-a-half presentation, animated discussions ensued. What impressed me most was how eager and excited my listeners were in starting their own Web businesses. Right at the beginning I was able to capture their attention by declaring that anyone with an intelligent cell phone could become a Web entrepreneur. 92% of Bangladesh is covered by mobile networks. You see advertisements for Grameen, Cell City and other mobile networks everywhere. With the head-start Bangladeshis have with mobile phones, eCommerce should see explosive growth. I am convinced of it.

What I am planning to offer as a starter is hands-on training on Web 2.0 technologies. An obstacle is difficulty with the English language. When I told the attendees that my training will help them improve their command of English as well, the response was heart-felt.

Rousing seminars are dime a dozen. “Ideas are easier to hatch than execute” was a point I made in one of my slides. Yearly week-long seminars by Non-Resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) in Dhaka have become a common occurrence, yet hardly anything has changed. What's needed is action. I am currently preparing a comprehensive hands-on Web 2.0 training manual and hope to travel to Dhaka and Chittagong in a few months to launch my Training of Trainers (TOT) program.
Bangladeshis are hungry for knowledge. If I can be a catalyst for at least some for them to harness the power of the Web to better their lot and help the country’s economy, it will be an exceptionally satisfying experience. Full steam ahead!

Monday, June 22, 2009

The Second Iranian Revolution

Revolutions occur infrequently, which is why the second Iranian revolution that followed the first by a mere thirty years has stirred so much emotions around the world. In 1979 the Shah was toppled and the fiery Ayatollah Khomeini gained power. But his legacy has been a rigid theocracy that has gradually choked off the aspirations of Iranians. Why is it that people in power never learn from history? Why must they always oscillate between two extremes, between "anything goes" and "nothing goes" views, particularly in Muslim countries?

The current revolution is being waged by the children of the first. A flawed election may have started it but now it has turned into an existential battle between those who seek freedom and those determined to deny it. Iranians are sick of the status quo, of theocrats and their lackeys with no experience in statecraft, abusing religion to keep the masses under control. Young Iranians and old have concluded that with the current regime, there’s not to reason why, there’s but to do and die. The Revolutionary Guard may seize power and install a military government but that will not last. The people have risen and they will be satisfied with nothing less than a complete transformation of government. Their twitters are being heard round the world. They have learned from Barack Obama that change is not only possible but inevitable. The grim reality, however, is that this change will come only after a river of blood has flown through the streets of Tehran.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

What Hate Begets

Who can predict when and where a racist will strike? James von Brunn, 88, a bona fide supremacist, opened fire in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington today, killing the 39 years old security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns. Most racists nurse their hate in silence or meet with fellow-haters to vent but are careful to keep a lid on their prejudice in public. But that isn't the case with people like Brunn. The scary thing is that the number of Brunns is on the rise in the world. More and more racists are coming out of the closet, it seems.

Equally disturbing is the increasing number of people who are desensitized toward violence, racist or otherwise. For them, such incidents are mere blips on the 24-hour news cycle, no more cause for alarm than, say, the drop in the stock market or the rise in unemployment.

It is also clear that right-wing radicals have gone off the deep end since Barack Obama became the first African-American president of the United States. Rush Limbaugh claims that Obama is more dangerous to the security of the United States than al-Qaida. Frank Gaffney compares the president to Hitler: “The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.”

Such talk resonates with extremists burning with hatred for Jews, Blacks, Muslims and other minority groups. It is not far-fetched to draw a causal relationship between demonization and destruction.

For the record, though, only last week Barack Obama condemned anti-Semitism in the strongest terms to the entire Arab world from Cairo University.

When tragedies such as the one in the Holocaust Museum occur, we try to come to grips with what really goes on inside the minds of terrorists. For me, the most frightening insight comes from a short story by Eudora Welty called "Where Is the Voice Coming From?"

Written in response to the June 12, 1963, assassination of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers by white supremacist Byron De la Beckwith only a few miles from where Welty lived, the author explored the mindset of a bigot who would commit such a murder. The clipped sentences send a chill down my spine every time I read it:

“As soon as I heard wheels, I knowed who was coming. That was him and bound to be him. It was the right nigger heading in a new white car up his driveway towards his garage with the light shining, but stopping before he got there, maybe not to wake 'em. That was him. I knowed it when he cut off the car lights and put his foot out and I knowed him standing dark against the light. I knowed him then like I know me now. I knowed him even by his still, listening back.

Never seen him before, never seen him since, never seen anything of his black face but his picture, never seen his face alive, any time at all, or anywheres, and didn't want to, need to, never hope to see that face and never will. As long as there was no question in my mind.

He had to be the one. He stood right still and waited against the light, his back was fixed, fixed on me like a preacher's eyeballs when he's yelling "Are you saved?" He's the one.I'd already brought up my rifle, I'd already taken my sights. And I'd already got him, because it was too late then for him or me to turn by one hair.

Something darker than him, like the wings of a bird, spread on his back and pulled him down. He climbed up once, like a man under bad claws, and like just blood could weigh a ton he walked with it on his back to better light. Didn't get no further than his door. And fell to stay.”

We are morally complicit in the evil of racism if we are insensitive to its manifestations. Consumed by a blind hatred for Jews and Blacks, an octogenarian fascist attacked the symbol of Jewish suffering and killed a black man in the nation's capital today. The Brunns of the world always find someone to blame and take the easy way out by cutting down as many lives as they can to avenge their irrational anger, hate and frustration. But they will have achieved nothing if, at the very least, we repudiate their acts in our hearts.