A Journalist's Despicable Behavior

Muntadar al-Zeidi may have found his five minutes of fame but what he did was despicable. By hurling shoes at George Bush, visiting Iraq for the last time as president, he shamed a culture known for extending hospitality even toward the despised.

Bush will probably go down as the worst president in U.S. history, displacing perennial bottom-dweller James Buchanan (1857-1861). His manufactured war has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis in the 5 1/2-year war. His Manichean worldview has brought untold sufferings to a vast section of humanity. And his fiscal ignorance and irresponsibility has contributed to the economic meltdown now sweeping the world. He is a disgraced person that the world cannot wait to see retire.

Still, to throw shoes at a visitor is an insult that speaks volumes for the thrower rather than the thrown. There are those who feel gleeful but there are also those who are shamed and outraged by al-Zeidi’s behavior. Iraqis need authentic leaders who can summon their best instincts to rebuild their tattered nation. This will not be accomplished by people succumbing to their basest instincts for personal revenge. George Bush can salvage some goodwill and dignity for himself by asking the Iraqi giovernment to pardon the misguided and stupid journalist.

Indian Muslims Take a Stand

In an unprecedented move, Indian Muslims have refused to bury in their graveyards the nine terrorists who killed almost 200 people and injured many more in India's financial hub last week. The Muslim Jama Masjid Trust, which runs a 7.5-acre graveyard in the heart of Mumbai, said it would not bury the gunmen because they were not true followers of Islam. Declared a spokesman for the trust: “People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim. Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime.” Other Muslim organizations throughout India have voiced support for the decision by the Trust.

The president of the Indian Muslim Council, Ibrahim Tai, said that the terrorists had defamed Islam. "They are not Muslims as they have not followed our religion which teaches us to live in peace. If the government does not respect our demands we will take up extreme steps. We do not want the bodies of people who have committed an act of terrorism to be buried in our cemeteries." Many Muslim groups have vowed to take to the streets in protest if the authorities force the militants to be buried in Muslim graveyards.

Against the backdrop of the terrible tragedy that befell Mumbai last week, this stand by Indian Muslims offers some solace. The terrorists and their masterminds who claim Islam as their religion must know that they have been exposed for what they are: cold-blooded killers with no respect for life. They will find no place on earth because their abode is hell.

P.S. On December 8, thousands of Muslim men, women and children came out on the streets of Mumbai to denounce the terrorists. "We disown and denounce all those who kill in the name of jihad. Terrorists are fascists and enemies of Muslims as Islam doesn't preach killing of innocents," said poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar.

For the first time, liberal Muslims were joined by clerics from organizations such as the Jamiat-ul-Ulema in expressing anger at terrorists who have hijacked Islam. Actor Javed Jaffrey said Muslims had to speak out because "it was Islam that was being maligned. There is nothing called Islamic terrorism. Islam is being misinterpreted by some groups. They kill people in the name of jihad. A religion that asks its members to greet each other with `Assalamu Alaikum (peace be with you)' could never

Actor Farooq Sheikh said: "Terrorists are Muslims' number one enemy.” Activist Alyque Padamsee explained that there were two types of Muslims - real and fake. "Terrorists are fake Muslims while peace-loving tolerant Muslims are the real Muslims," he said. "... The killing of innocents is wrong. Those who don't believe it are fake Muslims. Committing suicide is a sin in Islam, so how can a suicide bomber believe he will go to paradise?”

From Here to Infinity

One Two Three . . . Infinity by George Gamow is a classic that has introduced generations of readers, laymen and professionals alike, to the pleasures of mathematics and science. The experience of Sheldon Glashow, who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics with Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, is typical: "One book, which I found in 1947 when I was 15 was the book by George Gamow called One, Two, Three - Infinity, which I still re-read from time to time. It's just a book describing the wonders of nature and, to the extent that a high school kid could understand, how we understand things about nature. That was one book I really appreciated."

First published in 1947 and revised in 1961, Gamow uses far-ranging knowledge, humor, imagination and his delightful and idiosyncratic pen-and-ink illustrations to explain the challenges and discoveries of science. His conversational writing style draws the reader in, and even thought parts of it have become dated, his book succeeds in achieving that most elusive of goals: kindle our sense of wonder at nature's mysteries.

Gamow begins with the strange yet familiar number infinity. How does one count it? Are there different types of infinities? Can two infinities be compared? Gamow calls Georg Cantor (1845-1918) the founder of the "arithmetics of infinity" and explains how his idea of Sets gave us a new way of grasping infinity's significance.

(Random associations appear unbidden. Gamow calculates that the number of sand grains necessary to fill up the visible universe would be over 10100, that is, 1 followed by 100 zeros. The mathematical term for 10100 is Googol. That is what Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted to call their start-up but through a misspelling, the company they co-founded became known as Google.)

Gamow devotes several chapters exploring the properties of space and time using nothing more than middle/high school arithmetic, and gives a good overview of the ideas that led to Einstein's Special and General Theory of Relativity. He "uncovers" atomic and nuclear physics by tracing their historical roots from the Greeks, progressing all the way to the "modern alchemy" of radioactivity, fission, fusion and elementary particles. The discovery and implications of nuclear chain reactions are particularly well-told.

The value of Gamow's narrative on the foundation of modern physics lies not in its completeness (it is obviously not) but in its capacity to inspire readers to explore the subject in greater detail on their own.

Perhaps the most masterful chapter is "The Law of Disorder." This physical law is also known as "The Law of Statistical Behavior" and Gamow goes through various examples, including the "Drunkard's Walk," to show how scientists can draw profound conclusions about nature by looking at seemingly ordinary problems "a little more attentively" than the average person. Two examples he cites are Brownian motion and diffusion. There is also a discussion of probability and the Law of Entropy that is instructive and entertaining.

"The Riddle of Life" chapter reflects Gamow's interest in biology, a field that he took on as a physicist and to which he ended up making fundamental contributions. The last chapters deal with the study of planets, stars, galaxies and beyond.

One would not know by reading One Two Three . . . Infinity that Gamow made seminal contributions to nuclear and quantum physics, and that he was one of the chief architects of the Big Bang Theory, the idea that the universe began in a terrifyingly hot explosion that flung the stars and galaxies in all directions in an expanding universe. As far back as 1948, Gamow predicted that the radiation from the Big Bang must be filling the universe. Many physicists believe that he deserved a Nobel Prize for his daring theory and prediction. However, it was not to be. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson won the physics Nobel Prize in 1978 "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation." In 2006, John Mather and George Smoot won the physics Nobel Prize for "increased support for the Big Bang scenario for the origin of the universe."

Be that as it may, Gamow's reputation as a scientist is secure, not only because of his original contributions in many areas (an anomaly in our era of narrow specializations), but also because of the way he popularized science and inspired generations of readers to tune in to the wonders of the "microcosmos" and the "macrocosmos." One, Two, Three - Infinity reflects the spirit of this brilliant scientist and master storyteller.

Madness in Mumbai

I saw a movie called “Slumdog Millionaire” that opened yesterday. Set in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), this Bollywood production is about the stirring story of Jamal Malik, an orphan who has witnessed and experienced unspeakable horrors but who goes on to win 2 crores of rupees in the wildly popular Indian TV show called “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

Jamal was born in the teeming slums of Mumbai. When he was about 5, his mother was killed by a Hindu mob in a burst of communal violence. He and his older sibling Salim are “rescued” by criminals whose “business” consists of turning helpless slum orphans into lifelong beggars and prostitutes, and a constant source of income, by disfiguring and brutalizing them.

The two brothers manage to escape and a harrowing sequence of events and escapades follow, with Jamal finally, and improbably, facing the arrogant game-show host. Each question is the source of flashbacks about how he came to acquire its answer through the hard knocks of life that he had to endure. While the older Salim becomes the goon of a godfather and loses his soul (eventually he redeems himself), Jamal retains his integrity in adversity while nurturing a keen aptitude for factoids. Not only does he win a gigantic pile of cash, in the end he even gets the girl. Bollywood melodrama notwithstanding, all of us came out of the theatre smiling.

The smile did not last. With life imitating art but in reverse, on the very same day, Muslim terrorists attacked luxury hotels, train stations, a synagogue and even hospitals in Mumbai, killing over a hundred people and injuring many more. These nihilists fired at random, apparently with “serene smiles” on their faces, as bodies fell around them.

No definitive details have emerged about them yet, but it is difficult to even imagine how human beings can become so brainwashed and turn into such cold-blooded murderers.

The murderous rampage by a few Muslim terrorists have made Muslims everywhere, particularly Indian Muslims, angry, frustrated and vulnerable. The last thing India, and the world, needs is Hindu-Muslim violence. Terrorism threatens us all. It is against all the values that we hold dear. It is against everything that gives life its meaning, irrespective of religion and culture. Terrorists have their own "religion," no matter what they may call themselves, and the essence of that "religion" is to hate and kill. We must unite against it. That is the only way we can defeat it. There is no other way.

Sink the Somali Pirates!

In the gloom of market collapse and foreclosures and layoffs, there was a rare burst of sunshine last week. An Indian frigate destroyed a Somali “mother” pirate ship in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Africa. Three speedboats packed with pirates unfortunately escaped.

These ruthless Somali brigands are causing havoc on maritime trade and costing the global economy millions. There have been 90 attacks this year alone, leading to the hijacking of 14 ships and 250 crew members, the latest being a tanker with $100 million worth of Saudi crude. The pirates’ goal: astronomical ransom in exchange for release of ship and crew.

Is the international community so helpless that these high-sea assaults cannot be stopped? The Indian Navy has proven otherwise by confronting the Somali warlords-turned pirates with decisive force.

I have some Somali friends in San Jose who are so outraged by the shame and horror these pirates have inflicted on the reputation of their country that they struggle for words. As they see it, there are only two rules of engagement with the pirates:

• Shoot first, ask questions later
• Capture as many as possible and put them on trial for a world-wide audience

Who will take the responsibility? Actually, any country’s navy can send the rogue ship and speedboats to the bottom of the ocean. Just ask the Indians. What is required is resolve and action. In spite of its disastrous involvement in 1993, my Somali friends feel that the United States should still play a leading role in putting an end to these attacks. Ordinary Somalis are trapped between the lawless and violent ways of rival warlords and are forced to suffer in silence in their failed state. Pirates have always been, and will always be, enemies of the human race. Their fervent wish is for the scourge of the pirates to end before the year is over.

Rabindranath Tagore: Poet, Activist and Educator

When he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was virtually unknown in the West.

His Gitanjali (“Song Offerings”), a collection of poems championed by William Butler Yeats, secured for him the highest prize in literature over contenders like Thomas Hardy and Anatole France. Tagore went on to create a body of work greater in scope and power than Gitanjali. His true genius bloomed after the Nobel Prize, a fact unique in the history of literature.

A significant amount of Tagore’s work is infused with a vision of the greatness he saw possible in his native land, a confluence of civilizations due to Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Christians, Moguls, Dravidians, and Aryans. India, as he saw it, was greater than the sum of its parts. Through poems and plays, speeches and songs, he strove for this possibility to the end of his day.

Britain in Tagore’s time ruled India with an iron hand. But the rulers were becoming nervous. A young activist named Mohandas Gandhi had returned from South Africa in 1915 to lead the nationalist movement, becoming a proponent of Satyagraha (literally, “eagerness for truth” but more commonly interpreted as passive or non-violent resistance) to British rule. Although Tagore and Gandhi differed on ways to achieve independence, both believed in regenerating their people through the curbing of communal instincts. The challenge of this possibility continues to this day.

Politics did not interest Tagore but that did not keep him from boldly opposing British tyranny. When government troops led by English officers opened fire on a political gathering in Amritsar in 1919, killing 379 Indians and wounding scores of others, Tagore renounced the knighthood that England had bestowed on him four years earlier. As a poet, he felt it was the strongest statement he could make to draw world attention to the crime.

It cost him friendship and popularity in the literary circles of Europe and even in America, but he considered this act one of the high points of his life. It was also during this time that he composed some of his most powerful poems against oppression and injustice. When Gandhi was imprisoned without trial in 1932, he condemned it. In a letter to England’s Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, he warned that the British were closing the door on peaceful negotiations with Indian leaders.

Tagore was self-taught. Attempts by his parents to educate him in schools had failed. Young Rabindranath found conventional classrooms suffocating. In 1901, he founded an experimental school at Shantiniketan (“Abode of Peace”) near Calcutta, free from traditional restrictions. Classes were held in open air and joy in learning was given the highest importance.

By 1921, the school had evolved into Vishwa-Bharati University (World University) where students from all over India came to study. It is a testimony to Tagore’s ideal that funding for the University came from both Hindus and Muslims.

Tagore did not live long enough to see the end of the British Raj and the partition of the sub-continent along religious lines in 1947. He died six years earlier, still nurturing a harmonious vision of India, as riots were flaring.

In “The Religion of Men,” a set of lectures delivered at Oxford in 1930, Tagore said: “Freedom in the mere sense of independence has no content, and therefore no meaning. Perfect freedom lies in a harmony of relationship.” In an earlier poem, he had written of the perfect union of knowledge and freedom that he came to embody in his own supremely creative and protean life:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arm toward perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening
thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

Sense in the Time of Hardship

As economic misery mounts for the average American, pundits are busy pointing fingers. You can almost hear them coo: “I told you so!” Yet the same pundits told us before the bubble broke that we were in the era of limitless prosperity, that only the sky was the limit for hedge funds and stocks. The laissez faire market stretched to its extreme has gone bust. Bankers don’t regulate banks any more than inmates regulate asylums. (Coming to think of it, that’s what has been going on in these institutions of higher capitalism!) Ascribing altruism to Wall Street executives makes as much sense as asking a tyrant to punish himself for his crimes.

With the onset of the credit crunch and the scaling down of various forms of want, I have noticed a rather funny reaction among my fellow Muslims. It is a variation of “I told you so,” only more arrogant. If only people were not as greedy or selfish or unjust, this would not have happened, they say, conveniently forgetting that on average, Muslims are as guilty of unchecked materialism as anyone else. All scriptures advise believers not to live beyond their means, not to consume recklessly, not to engage in usurious transactions. But, of course, belief is easy and action difficult.

We need to change our habits and attitudes. Looking back, I see how much “stuff” I bought over the years that I had no use for. My overfilled garage bears testimony to my expensive foolishness. I had to have these things because … well, it was cool to have them. It satisfied a primal hunger for possessions that I felt helpless to resist until economic reality set in. Now the latest in digital cameras and smart phones and smarter toasters leave me looking the other way, in disgust or indifference.

I doubt that we will ever return to the “less is more” trend of the ‘60s and ‘70s but at least we are beginning to reflect on what is important and what is not, what is "need" and what is "want." We knew all along that as the newness of a gadget or a tool or a car or a house wears off, it loses its grip on our psyche and on our sense of happiness. But it made no difference to our desire to acquire, relentlessly and indiscriminately. Tough adjustment, however, has revealed the stark emptiness of toys, gilded or plain, and we are the better for it. If only this sense lasts even if the “good times” were to return!

Crossing the Race Rubicon

The improbable candidate achieved the unimaginable and overnight, the world became a better place.

Four years ago, the president-elect said at the Democratic National Convention, “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.”

Last night, it all came together for Barack ("blessing" in Swahili) Hussein Obama in a way that even he could not have dreamed in 2004.

Obama stirred hope in the hearts of people, not just in America but around the globe, but let us not forget that he matched his hope with hard work, undaunted by setbacks and by those who said, “No you can’t.”

“Yes we can” is now a part of the American vocabulary.

By electing an African-American as the 44th president of the United States, America has finally crossed the race Rubicon.

Martin Luther King’s dream that we should be judged not by the color of our skins but by the content of our character is now a reality, even if tempered by memories of hidden wounds too painful for some to forget.

African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for Obama but he could not have been elected president if whites did not vote for him in such unprecedented numbers also, from idealistic students and blue collar workers to liberal intellectuals and Hollywood moguls. Consider this stark fact: North Dakota, Utah, Montana, Vermont, Nebraska and New Mexico went for Obama although there isn't much of an African-American presence in those six states. The biggest shocker of all: Obama won North Carolina and Indiana, two of the reddest states in America. Until now.

America has become colorblind.

While this holds profound lessons for all, it is particularly meaningful for European nations where immigrants are often treated as second-class citizens even after decades of invaluable contributions to their respective societies. Perhaps Obama’s victory will convince France, England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Spain and other countries to also become colorblind and inclusive. There really is no other way.

Until now, when the world looked up to America, it was because of its science and technology and medicine. But now the world will also look at America with awe and wonder because of its socially enlightened citizenry. Who could have ever imagined that?

Reversing the “either you are with us or against us” threat that defined George Bush’s belligerent foreign policy is a priority for Barack Obama. He has promised to meet unconditionally with any world leader to discuss and negotiate peace. The international temperature seems to have already cooled by a few degrees, and even though securing agreements with nations alienated by American arrogance may take time, the prospects are promising, given the spontanaeous outpouring of global goodwill for the president-elect.

The danger posed by global warming is another priority. Throughout his campaign, Obama spoke passionately about the earth’s dwindling resources, its relentless exploitation by all but Western countries in particular, the urgency of clean energy sources, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint, and legislating sane policies based on scientific evidences to protect us and our children from rising seas and diminishing landmass.

But the sheer wonder of an African-American making the White House his home for at least the next four years is so astonishing that it blocks out other thoughts.

It was on New Year’s Day in 1863 that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. A hundred years later, in 1963, Martin Luther King informed Americans and the world that he had a dream. A year later, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, outlawing racial segregation in schools, public places, and employment. Johnson followed it up with the National Voting Rights Act in 1965 to empower African-Americans to cast ballots without fear.

But the laws were only theories and it took many more years before they became reality for those they were meant to protect. A movie currently playing in theatres –The Secret Life of Bees – based on the best-selling novel of the same title by Sue Monk Kidd – gives viewers an idea of how many lives were lost and shattered before African-Americans could actually vote.

While many commentators have reflected on these historic milestones in the wake of Obama’s victory, one name has gone unmentioned. It is that of Muhammad Ali. Obama inspired us with the audacity of hope but in the ‘60s, Ali lifted our spirits with his raw audacity alone. From “I have seen the light and I am crowing” to “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” Ali spoke truth to power, opening raw wounds in the psyche of America that provoked anger and revulsion but in the end proved cathartic for the nation. The change that he brought about through his audacity and moral courage surely played a role in the election that transfixed us on November 4th and transformed the world.

P.S. Toni Morrison, the last American to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993, gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal on 11/7/2008. The relevant excerpt follows:

Q. What do you think Mr. Obama's win says about American conception of race?

A. We're still a very active, volcanic country which is part of its excitement - the reinvention of ourselves and the constant search for what democracy means. I'm keenly aware of this peculiarity for this country. You couldn't imagine a win like this in Europe, because they're more static in how they run things. I can't imagine a Senegalese man in Paris running France - but now maybe.

Q. It's interesting that very little of the public discourse about Mr. Obama deals with his mixed-race status.

A. The other part of his race and his cultural experience was swept under the rug. That was deliberate so he could be the quintessential American even though the country was built on diversity. They had to tiptoe around that, but I think that nuanced discussion will happen. I kept saying that this is not an African-America but it's this specific man. This man. I can think of a lot of African-American that I would not vote for.

“A Rendezvous with Destiny”

In Abraham Lincoln’s time in the 1860s, it was the question of Union and Disunion, of slavery and freedom. In Franklin Roosevelt’s time in the 1930s, it was the Great Depression with its unending bread lines, and recovery through the New Deal.

During George Bush’s eight years of presidency, described by the late author David Foster Wallace as “an unmitigated horror show of rapacity, hubris, incompetence, mendacity, corruption, cynicism and contempt for the electorate,” history repeated itself. An unspoken civil war now exists between the haves and the have-nots, subtler but no less lethal for the Union. In Northern California where I live, I see more and more people – white and black - standing by the roadside and in front of grocery stores, holding up signs that read: “Hungry. Please help.”

In their time, Americans chose Lincoln and Roosevelt to save the country. Who will they choose on November 4th this year? Lincoln speaks to us across the century and a half that separate his time from ours: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds …” Roosevelt’s words also resonate across the years: “Only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

One candidate has articulated these ideals in his campaign, convincing a vast number of voters that he can bind the nation’s wounds, reverse the economic meltdown and bring the old America back, the America that the world used to look up to, a strong and prosperous nation that put its power in the service of justice and peace at home and abroad.

That candidate is Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, land of Lincoln.

Born in Hawaii of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, this cosmopolitan, contemplative man has gained the confidence of Americans across party lines. He has called us to a higher purpose, in which liberty and equality are not enemies but symbiotically related, and we have responded. His steady resolve, inclusive worldview, common sense and sound judgment, combined with his grace and eloquence, has so energized Americans that this election may see the highest voter turnout in U.S. history.

If one were to summarize the reasons for Obama’s astonishing rise, it would be that he engaged in the politics of hope while McCain engaged in the politics of fear.

Particularly for young Americans, this hope over fear has fired their imagination even more than what John Kennedy, the architect of the New Frontier, was able to accomplish in 1960. Obama defined his message of hope in his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004: “Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope … that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead.”
An upset can still occur on November 4th. That is why Obama has appealed to his supporters not to become complacent even for a minute and to make sure that they all vote on Election Day.

McCain and Palin launched unethical, unfounded attacks against Obama by questioning his patriotism, dropping innuendos about his middle name, calling him a “socialist redistributionist” (whatever that means) and accusing him of consorting with terrorists. Americans are fed up with these negative and fear-mongering tactics. They see McCain as an extension of Bush's failed policies, and recognize that an intelligent, intellectually curious and visionary African-American, “a transformational candidate” in the words of Colin Powell, can guide the nation toward a new and humane direction as Lincoln and Roosevelt did during their times.

What about the rest of the world? Gallup Polls recently conducted in 70 countries representing nearly half the world’s population reveal that 3 out of 4 favor Obama over McCain in the U.S. presidential election.

Can Barack Hussein Obama rise to the post-election challenges if elected? Can he meet the post-election expectations? Talking heads are already raising these questions, and certainly the challenges and expectations will be exceptionally difficult to face and fulfill, but in these final hours, Americans are animated by only one hope, that after almost eight years of unrelenting national darkness, they will awake to a fresh and promising dawn on November 5th.

In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt said: “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.” Seventy-two years later, so do we, so do we.

Nobel Scientists for Obama

Science took a severe beating from George Bush and his administration. Funding for cutting-edge research dried up in physics, chemistry, biology and medicine. Where once the U.S. dominated, from high-energy physics to medical research, the scientific frontier has slowly moved to Europe. That’s where most of the exciting work in science is done these days. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at the Swiss-France border, is only one example.

In an open letter to the American people, 76 American Nobel Prize-winning scientists (including the three chemisty and physics laureates this year) endorsed Barack Obama for president. (Martin Chalfie, the chemistry winner, has even recorded a video of his endorsement). They are the Who’s Who of American science. Their passionate support for Obama and disdain for Bush, and by extension of McCain and Palin, should be a wake-up call for Americans struggling to understand why we as a nation have fallen behind other countries in basic scientific research. Only the other day, the clueless Sarah Palin mocked fruit fly research as a waste of taxpayers’ money. Christopher Hitchens’ devastating deconstruction of Palin’s ignorance and the importance of fruit fly research that led to a Nobel Prize for Thomas Hunt Morgan in 1933 makes for fascinating reading.

P.S. 11/1/08 - Here is another response to Palin's "scientific" observations on the fruit fly by a scientist.

Beyond Hypocrisy

Just when you think you have seen, read and heard it all, comes disclosure that Sarah Palin’s stylist was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone by the Republican National Committee, while her traveling hair stylist was paid $10,000 for “communications consulting” in the same period. This is after revelation that the RNC spent $150,000 for Palin’s wardrobe, dressing her up with the latest in fashion from such upscale stores as Saks and Neiman Marcus. Is there anything wrong in making the VP candidate look her best? One may cry sexism here but the real issue is not whether Palin should be transformed into a knockout to improve GOP’s chance to win the election; no, it is more the case of whether the Wasilla mom can claim with a straight face that she represents Joe six-pack and wall-mart shoppers struggling to make ends meet. She cannot but the Republican Party has decided that Palin, not McCain, is their last, best hope to win the election and so why not let the mendacity and the crocodile tears flow from one made easy on the eye with the best makeup and clothes money can buy? Alas, it will not work, for while Republican operatives believe that you can judge a book by its cover, American voters know better.

An intriguing opinion piece in the Washington Post today by Kathleen Parker may explain the attention lavished on Sarah Palin by the Republican National Committee. John McCain may have something to do with it.

More on mendacity: Ashley Todd, the young white McCain staffer in Pittsburgh who claimed she was assaulted by a 6-foot-4-inch black Obama supporter and who carved the letter "B" (backwards) on her face ... well, it was a pathetic hoax involving self-mutilation. Todd was reading from a script that predates the civil war. She was also unknowingly invoking literature. Remember Atticus Finch defending a black man falsely accused of rape in "To Kill a Mockingbird?" As soon as the story broke, McCain and Palin called Todd to express their sympathies. Drudge Report carried a screaming banner on its home page. Right-wing outlets like the New York Post could hardly contain their glee at the obvious symbolism of the story: "How dare a black man, given his race's violent past and present, aspire to the highest office in the land?" To their credit, Pittsburgh police didn't fall for this ancient race-baiting and Todd's story soon fell apart under scrutiny. My guess is that quite a few undecided white voters across the nation will now vote for Obama because of this incident.

The Irresistible Lure of the Blog

The desire to express one's uninhibited, passionate opinion to a world-wide audience through writing may have been enabled by the Internet but the instinct is ancient. The power of now, which may serve as a definition of blog, is impossible to deny once you have taken the bait. In a perceptive essay in the Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan traces his discovery of the medium and explains how its intoxicating immediacy made an enormous impact on him. I read the essay for a personal reason. I wanted to find out what a blogger has to do to attract readers. Whatever Sullivan blogs, it instantly draws comments from four corners of the country, if not the globe. The same is true of other established media personalities. But for the vast majority of bloggers, we toil in obscurity. We seem to make waves on a part of the blog ocean where no ship, no boat, not even a dinghy ventures forth. Sullivan received invaluable advice from Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report when he was starting out. The master informed him in 2001 that "the key to understanding a blog is to realize that it's a broadcast, not a publication. If it stops moving, it dies. If it stops paddling, it sinks."

Excellent advice but how to capture those initial eyeballs with a zillion blogs vying for attention? A growing network of friends in Facebook and Myspace will not hurt. Maybe languishing bloggers can form their own network and take on the big guns and suddenly we become equal, relishing brutal comments from outraged readers. We do not blog for money, although that would be nice, but only ask that you read our stuff and let us have it. Keep moving and paddling and suddenly one day ... well, a core group of discerning readers will do, at least for starters.

My Name as an Albatross

In the more than two decades that I have been working at various high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, I have never encountered any prejudice at the workplace because of my race or religion. But lately a thought has been steadily creeping into my mind: If I were to run for public office even, say, at the local school board level, would my name become an albatross around my neck?

I have been thinking about this since John McCain and Sarah Palin began encouraging the use of Barack Obama’s middle name – Hussein – in their rallies to suggest that he was the Other, and therefore is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” I find attempts by them to associate Obama with terrorists and America-haters a smokescreen for the real accusation: Obama carries a Muslim middle name and that is reason enough to bar him from contesting for the highest office in the land.

This is the mindset that says: American Muslims can rise in their profession and shine in their fields, but if they to aspire to high public offices, they must be prevented by any means necessary since they pose a threat of one kind or another to America.

You can count on your fingers the number of Muslims holding high public offices in America. One of the most notable is Keith Ellison, a converted Muslim Congressman from Minnesota, who is known not for the legislation that he helps frame and pass but that he is a Muslim who took the oath of office holding a Quran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson.

I find the desperate tactics of John McCain in the last days of the 2008 presidential election particularly disappointing. In his book “Character is Destiny,” McCain wrote that “It is your character, and your character alone, that will make your life happy or unhappy. That is all that really passes for destiny.” He gives us glimpses into the lives of Gandhi, Lincoln, Mandela, Joan of Arc, Leonardo da Vinci and many others from the past and the present to teach us what constitutes character: qualities like honor, purpose, understanding, forgiveness and love.

As the harsh and ugly rhetoric of McCain and Palin show, however, occupying the Oval Office trumps the “Character is Destiny” stuff. When the presidency of the United States is at stake, winning at any cost, including encouraging your supporters to call your opponent a “traitor,” a “terrorist,” a “liar,” even approving with silence the threat by some in the crowd to “kill him,” is fair game. This is hypocrisy.

Barack Obama is a more practicing Christian than John McCain is but that does not prevent millions of Americans into believing that he is a Muslim, not just because of the fake stories circulating on the Web but because that's what they want to believe. The implication is that being a Muslim is somehow un-American, a real show-stopper to running for the presidency. It's a reincarnation of McCarthyism in the 21st century. Does it say anywhere in the U.S. Constitution that even if you are born in America, you cannot run for the presidency if you happen to be a Muslim?

Still, I am thankful that Obama’s candidacy has forced this issue on the conscience of Americans. I am optimistic that we will come to grips with it in a way consistent with the vision of the founding fathers. Many Americans forget that the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965), giving full citizenship powers to African-Americans, passed less than fifty years ago. (It is also worth noting that the hero of the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, opposed both these Acts). While racism still persists in subtler forms in America today, African-Americans are not fighting for a seat at the table but are focused on reducing the achievement gap with whites. The goal is loftier because the majority of Americans made the difficult sacrifices in the past to banish our baser social and political institutions.

So I am hopeful that whether it is Ashoka or Ahmed or Aparna or Almaraz or Ming or Nguyen who may be contesting the presidential election, a time will soon come when race, religion or name will matter as much to the voters as the brand of toothpaste that the candidate uses. I may be reluctant to contest in any election now but my children may not think twice about running for public offices if they choose to when that time comes. When that happens, we Americans will learn to appreciate the wisdom of one of our greatest poets, Walt Whitman, who said in his “Poem of Salutation” in the timeless “Leaves of Grass” (1856): "I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque, . . . / I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, / I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms, . . . / I hear the Hindu teaching his favorite pupil."

P.S. (10/19/08) - This morning Gen. Colin Powell, a Republican, forcefully endorsed Barack Obama as president of the United States. His endorsement included these words: "I'm also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said such things as: "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is: he is not a Muslim. He's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is: No, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion: he's (Obama) a Muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America."

Gen. Powell also cited the death of a 20-year-old Muslim soldier named Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan of Manahawkin, N.J., who was killed in Iraq on Aug. 6, 2007, who was awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, and who was buried in Arlington National cemetery. “He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could go serve his country, and he gave his life,” Gen. Powell said. “Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way.” He was moved to comment on Sultan Khan after seeing a picture of the young soldier's mother pressing her head against her fallen son's gravestone at Arlington.

The larger implications of Powell's endorsement can also be read in this excellent review.