Win it for Your Little Sister, Phil Kessel!

There is no other way to put it: This heart-breaker has to be avenged.

The American women’s hockey team was seconds away from its first Olympic gold medal at Sochi when the unthinkable happened. 

Behind 2-0 in the third period, the Canadians equalized with 55 seconds to go in regulation time and then went on to win 3-2 in overtime.

Did the Americans take their feet off the pedal when leading their perennial rivals by 2 goals in the third period?

Who can say?

The only thing now that can set the hockey world right is for the U.S. men to beat the Canadians when they meet on February 21 at Sochi.

It is only the semifinal match but for all practical purposes, it is also the only game in town. The Americans will undoubtedly want to erase the memory of their own heartbreaking loss to Canada in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but they owe it even more to the U.S. women’s hockey team whose valiant effort only netted it a silver medal when it should clearly have been gold.

The Americans can do it. In Vancouver four years ago, they let Canadian superstar Sidney Crosby skate freely to perform his wizardry. Crosby’s overtime goal beat the American’s 3-2. The irony is uncanny!

But as the Finns have shown in Sochi, Crosby can be stifled with tight checking. He can lose his rhythm and make erratic passes if deprived of room to maneuver. The Americans need to study the Finland-Canada game (won by Canada but could have gone Finland’s way too) to take the wind out of Crosby’s sail.

Patrick Kane, Phil Kessel and company can bring it home for America.

For Phil, there is the additional motivation: his sister, Amanda Kessel, is a star player for the U.S. team that lost to Canada.

Phil has been on a roll at Sochi, emerging as the most creative and productive member of Team USA. He scored a hat trick against Slovenia and created most of the chances that led to goals for his team.

Does anyone need to remind Phil Kessel that he has to win this one for his little sister?

I am going out on a limb, with a saw no less, and predicting that the score will again be 3-2 at the Sochi semifinal, but this time in America’s favor.

(February 23, 2014) There is no other way to put it indeed! As I saw off that limb and fall 50 feet from the tree, with not even a bronze for Team USA men at Sochi, the only thought that will go through my mind is: Why can't Ice Hockey Teams USA (men and women) be more like Women's Soccer Team USA? By the way, does it hurt when you land on hard ground from the top of  a tree after surrendering to gravity?

Of Love and Stars

“Winter’s Tale” is as real a fable and fairy tale as you can expect to see on screen. Based on the 1983 bestseller by Mark Helprin, the movie may disappoint fans of the book with its earnestness but in its own way conveys the miracle and mystery of life, veiled and unveiled.

“There is a world behind the world where we are all connected by light.” “Inside each of us is a miracle … time and distance can be conquered by love … the eternal conflict between good and evil is not fought with great armies but one life at a time.” If you are a connoisseur of aphorisms, “Winter’s Tale” (no connection to Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale) is a goldmine.

The real question is: Do the insights match the incidents? To a large extent they do, even if the serious sometimes descends into the sappy.

Peter Lake (Colin Farrell, whose flapping hairdo can be unnerving at times) literally floated ashore in New York harbor as a baby. He has been trained as a thief by the demonic Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe). Lake, however, has run afoul of Soames who is bent on terminating him. Just when he is about to meet his fate, an angelic white horse rescues Lake, leaving Pearly in foaming rage.

Lake is a slave to his habit and continues to steal. Just before dawn one day, he is nudged by the magical horse to check out a palatial home. Entering it, he hears a girl playing Brahms. He is spellbound by her beauty and her free spirit. Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay) is wasting away with tuberculosis and has only a few months to live. “Please don’t steal anything,” she implores Lake after being startled by him in the empty house. Her family had gone off to spend winter (it is, after all, a Winter's Tale) in a mansion by a fabled lake.

So begins a mystical romance. But Pearly and his minions (The Short Tails) are not far behind. As Pearly closes in on Lake and Penn, Horse rescues the pair and flies off (yes, it can fly) to the “Lake of the Coheeries” beyond the frozen Hudson. Beverly communes with the stars and names them to her enchanted lover: Castor, Pollux, Perseus, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Pleiades, Cassiopeia. She tells him she will become one of them after she dies. Lake will have none of it. Love can conquer all, even time and distance, he declares.

But there is no resisting death. Beverly succumbs to consumption, leaving a grief-stricken Lake to wonder about life’s meaning.

Soon thereafter, Pearly corners Lake and sends him into a watery grave.

Decades later, Lake emerges from the harbor with no memory of who he is and what he is supposed to do, other than to experience a gnawing feeling that “what we are meant for may yet be achieved.” He hadn't aged a bit (along with Pearly and his gang) while the rest of the world had moved on.

The horse reappears. Another battle between good and evil ensues. This time it is Pearly Soames who is dispatched by Peter Lake with help from his winged guardian. Beverly shines as the brightest star in the winter sky, or so Lake believes. His task on earth is done and he is ready to unite with his beloved. The horse flies off into its heavenly pasture and something like that happens also to Lake.

It is easy to mock “Winter’s Tale” for its easy sentimentality but if you want to enjoy the movie, you have to let the mysterious and the wondrous take over your logical mind. You will be rewarded if you do. Every time you look up at the night sky, you may see the stars with fresh eyes. You may even feel a stirring of ancient and timeless love that transcends space and time. Just like Peter Lake.

From Sochi, with Daring, Durability and Love

The opening ceremony of the 22^nd Winter Olympics at Sochi contained the usual sparkle and technical wonders we have to come to expect from such quadrennial events. But there was also the sense that Russia was straining to impress the world with its culture and history. The operative word is “straining” because, by any criterion, Russia has given the world much in the Sciences and the Arts and every field in between.  Still, subtlety in suggesting greatness goes further and deeper than loudly advertising the facts.

No matter. For several hours on Friday, February 7, we forgot problems and found solace in the soaring pageantry of humans and the human spirit. Viewers in America (though not in Russia) saw the fifth snowflake refusing to form the Olympic Ring but that malfunction made the ceremony touching and strangely redeeming. Flawless can seem impersonal and intimidating. A small flaw only accentuates the nobility of the human enterprise.

One inclusion in the names of Russians who made lasting contributions to the Arts and the Sciences that viewers witnessed in the opening minutes of the opening ceremony was Nabokov. In some of the reactionary literary circles of Russia, Vladimir Nabokov was often depicted as a decadent writer. For the writer who asserted, “There is no science without fancy and no art without fact,” inclusion with Dostoevsky and Chekhov was a welcome sign of acceptance for the author of Lolita and Pale Fire.

In the first two days of the 18-day competition, there have already been stirring stories of daring and age-defying feats.

First came the breakthrough for the go-for-broke 20-year-old American Sage Kotsenburg. Snowboarding is certainly not for the faint of heart. Just watching those impossible doodles and twizzles in the air can make one dizzy. Kotsenburg was the underdog to Norway’s Staale Sandbech (silver) and Canada’s Mark McMorris (bronze). But one thing he had over his competitors was his creativity. Translation: Do something impossible or something you never tried before to differentiate yourself from the rest. After all, what have you to lose, other than a slot on the podium?

And that’s what the “sage” did. Kotsenburg executed what is called a “1620 Japan Air Mute Grab” while grabbing the back of his snowboard, a trick he never even tried in practice. What does “1620” mean? That’s 4 ½ complete spins. Each complete spin is 360⁰.  4 ½ times 360 is … that’s right, 1620. As for Japan and Air Mute and Grab … really, who cares, other than to know that maybe just 3 or 4 out of the world’s population of 7 billion can even attempt it!

But that wasn’t all. Three months ago, Kotsenburg invented a jump that he called “Holy Crail.” (Good grief, this guy also has a sense of humor!) “I had no idea I’d do it until three minutes before I jumped,” he said.

So it happened that the first gold medal of the Sochi Olympics was won by a free spirit (Kotsenburg was chewing gum during his breathtaking aerial wizardry) who believed in himself and who dared the impossible. Sure, he could have landed on his back and broken his ribs. His courage could have been his undoing. But he reached for the stars and became a star himself along the way.

The other who captured the imagination was Norway’s Einar Bjoerndalen who won the biathlon 10-kilometer sprint. This was his 7^th Olympic gold medal. He began competing in the Olympics in Lillehammer (1994) and kept at it at in Nagano (1998), Salt Lake City (2002), Turin (2006), Vancouver (2010) and now, Sochi. Together with his 4 Olympic silver medals and 1 bronze medal, his haul comes to 12, equaling his fellow countryman Bjoern Daehlie’s record. Einar can overtake Daehlie’s record as Norway is the favorite in both the men’s and the mixed relay competition.

As if that was not enough, Einar has also become the oldest Winter Olympic individual gold medalist at 40!

There will certainly be more stirring and stunning stories of will power and athletic brilliance coming out of the Sochi Olympics but we already have two athletes whose feats of daring and durability will continue to inspire us long after the Olympic flame is extinguished.

The Enduring Mystery of Bird Migration

The lakes of Jahangirnagar University in Bangladesh, about 20 miles from the capital city of Dhaka, are a haven for migratory birds during winter. Over 60 species of birds arrive from the cold Himalayan regions, and from even as far away as Siberia, to spend the winter in the temperate, food-rich lakes, canals and wetlands of Bangladesh, before flying off to Sri Lanka, Indonesia and China. They include several species of ducks, lesser and greater whistling teals, cotton geese, pochards, darters, pintail ducks and herons.

In recent years, however, the number and species of birds migrating to Bangladesh has sharply declined. Ornithologists blame global warming for the decline. The snowy Himalayan regions are not as inhospitably cold as before. Even Siberia is experiencing milder and shorter winters. Add to that local over-fishing, poaching and pesticide-laden runoffs, and it is clear why the lakes of Jahangirnagar University are not as alive with the chirping and the whoosh of the ‘guest birds’ as it was only a few years ago.

Still, the sight of migratory birds, fewer though they may be, is stunning. One minute they are resting gracefully on sandbars, surrounded by bright water lilies, and suddenly, inexplicably, they take to the wings, flying in a synchronized, parabolic arc until they spiral onto the sandbars, each bird returning (so it would seem) to the same spot. Striking in their dimpled reflections, the ducks and their cousins look purposefully to the right or left, waiting perhaps for that mysterious signal, flowing in from somewhere, to lift off into the misty, morning air again.

Across the lake, amid marsh grass, walk the great blue herons, looking for prey, as if also in prayer, patience personified.

Bird migration is one of the enduring mysteries of nature. We may keep adding to our knowledge of how birds steer themselves by starlight and how their internal magnets interact with the earth’s magnetic field but after their long-distance flights are exactly mapped and the science of migration is understood to the last detail, the intangible wonder of it will continue to fascinate us for as long as we share this planet with our avian friends. 

A 2014 Resolution

The irony of our time is that we have tuned out the real world by surrendering our mind and  heart to the virtual world.

I see the signs everywhere: in parks overflowing with birdsong, visitors wearing ear buds and headphones to keep nature at bay; at street corners, in malls, movies, restaurants, board rooms and even at funerals, digital diehards creating selfies, talking to their smartphones, checking email, posting on social media and sending out the obligatory tweet.

The digital revolution is irreversible. Its benefits are innumerable. There is no returning to the pastoral gentility of yesteryear, which we gave up anyway during the Industrial revolution over three centuries ago.

No, the real issue is one of balance. Will we constantly be in the thrall of our always-on devices, or will we also set aside time for what makes us human - family, friends, community, memory, beauty, secrets, hope, love, longing?

Our gadgets are increasingly taking over our lives, shaping us more than our designers are able to shape them. They do everything for us, except those things we really need to do, such as visiting a sick relative in the hospital or looking at people when they are talking to us, instead of reading incoming texts. Immersed in our customized cocoons, we discard our manners and trample on the sensibilities of others as if they did not exist.

Given that the tablets, smartphones and iPods (coming soon to a store near you: wearable computers in watches and glasses) will only get smarter, how do we keep them from turning our lives into one giant mobile app?

It’s not going to be easy. It will require a certain discipline of the mind that many of us may already have given up on, what with the need to constantly check email or be lulled by the insidious charm of the Facebook “Like.”

But it can be done.

People who were addicted to the virtual world, with all its frivolities and inanities, gradually weaned themselves off their self-absorption and narcissism by not plugging in at certain times of day, as when they were with family and loved ones. They recognized their digital dependence as an addiction because that’s what it was, and so treated it as such. Some simply unplugged their devices during weekends, and although resisting the temptation to take “just a peek” proved painful, they were able to conquer their demons. It’s not as if they turned into Luddites. Far from it. They continue to use their devices but with moderation, knowing that a time-sink can swallow them (as it has so many) if they are not careful. These “recovering digital addicts” speak with reverence of the freedom that is now theirs and the urgency of time, and of the fleeting life, that animates their waking moments.

Another way to overcome the ceaseless siren song of the virtual world is to renew one’s acquaintance with nature.

“The world is too much with us,” lamented Wordsworth, and that was at the dawn of the 19^th Century when the poet felt people had lost their connection to the natural world because of their abnormal attachment to materialism! “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:/Little we see in nature that is ours/…/For this, for everything, we are out of tune.”

It’s time to tune in to what matters, what gives life its beauty and its mystery. Next time we go for a walk in the woods or a stroll by the shore, let’s make sure we have left behind our electronic devices and the flickering screens. Let’s open our eyes and ears to take in the sights and sounds of the singing sparrow or the sonorous surf, the graceful arc of a falling leaf or the hypnotic ebb and flow of tides.

George Mallory climbed Mount Everest because it was there. We browse the Internet because it is everywhere. But while the formidable challenge of the Himalayas remains undiminished, accessing the Internet gets easier by the minute. We will soon probably connect to the Cloud with a blink or a wink.

But that’s no reason why we should let technology strip us of our sense of wonder and all the emotions that make us human.

So here’s a New Year’s Resolution to consider: “I will use technology but I will not allow technology to use me. I will not let the digital deluge drown me. Instead, I will strive for a life of balance and purpose, seek renewal from nature, and be content with what I have and not covet what I don’t.”

Put PISA Tests in Perspective

The latest test results of Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), administered by The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), are out and for the alarmists of America, the sky continues its free fall. Indifferent parents, incompetent teachers and irresponsible students collude within a toxic culture that values entertainment over education by several orders of magnitude. Is it any wonder, they ask, that our teens fare so poorly compared to their international peers in math, science and reading? End of discussion.

It is time to put an end to the alarmist, some would say nihilistic, reactions to PISA tests, or for that matter, to any standardized tests.

But first, the facts.

Source: www.yahoo.com

PISA tests are given every 3 years. The latest results reflect the test given in 2012 to 65 countries - 34 OECD countries and 31 partner countries. A total of 510,000 students, mostly 15-year-olds, participated. American teens ranked 26^th in math, 21^st in science and 17^th in reading among 34 developed countries. Specifically, out of a possible 600 points, American student scored 481 in math, 497 in science and 498 in reading.

In all categories, students from the Chinese region of Shanghai topped the list, followed by Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, South Korea, Macau, Japan, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

There is no denying that American students have never done well compared to their top-performing peers in PISA tests. But how strongly does the PISA results correlate with a nation’s future, with its creativity and innovation?

Statistically it is possible to show some type of correlation between any two sets of numerical data. The correlation may be weak, medium or strong. It may also be bogus or genuine.

In the case of standardized tests, particularly at the international level, the correlation surely reveals something but not to the extent that our grim pseudo-analyst-pundits claim. PISA tests are not all multiple-choice, fact-driven exams. They include questions that require free-form answers and the ability to apply word problems to real-world situations. 

From that perspective, the poor showing of our teens is troubling. They have fallen short and will continue to fall short academically unless they take ownership of their learning. However, help is on the way in the form of student-centered Common Core Curriculum (CCC), which all the states, except Virginia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas and Alaska, have adopted. The curriculum focuses on critical thinking, reasoning and problem-solving skills and starts from the 2014-2015 academic year.

We will, of course, have to wait for several years before the results of CCC are in but there is no doubt that it represents a step in the right direction for America’s K-12, and by extension, community college, students.

But we must be wary of seeing too much in the results of standardized tests even after students have had several years of experience with CCC. We must be cautious in drawing sweeping lessons from any test. Creativity and innovation occur at the confluence of myriad factors that include culture, freedom, ability to challenge authority, and dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Besides, top-performing Asian countries are known for teaching to the test and for their extensive programs of after-school tutoring. Very high scores in a test like PISA may simply mean that the students have mastered the art (or science) of acing the test, nothing more and nothing less. Their goal is not to become independent thinkers but to become excellent test takers. A Hong Kong educator puts it bluntly: “This after-school education is my world. I am one of the thousands of tutors helping Hong Kong students achieve high test scores. To me, the recent test results were no surprise: Of course East Asian kids test well. They are tested every day, even when they are sick. Our children sit for lengthy, rigorous and confusing examinations, starting at age 6. Weekends, summers and holiday breaks are golden opportunities to catch up on some R&R — review and revision, that is. But the thing about testing is that it creates excellent followers, not leaders. Doing well on tests requires constant test prep. Granted, when it comes to buckling down and cramming for hours on end, Asians kids will beat their U.S. counterparts to a pulp. But give them a task that is not testable or not directly related to school, ask them to do something not for their college application but for themselves, and they’ll draw a blank.”

Americana kids reading this cannot afford to feel smug. (We must also not ignore the fact that many of them are taught to the test as well.) They need to recognize that a creative and fulfilling life demands the kind of rigor and aptitude they have generally failed to show so far.


At the same time, Americans must also realize that teachers are at the heart of our K-12 system. Unless teachers are accorded the respect they deserve in our society (as they are in Finland, Singapore and other top-performing nations), with salaries consistent with their calling (meaning that their salaries be on a par with what lawyers, doctors, engineers and entertainers earn), we will only be paying lip service to improving the dismal showings of our teens while the alarmists continue their perennial lament of threatening clouds darkening our nation's future.

Nelson Mandela and the Power of Forgiveness

On 12 June 1964, Nelson Mandela, age 46, was sentenced to life for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow South Africa’s apartheid government. On February 11, 1990, prisoner number 46664, who would not let despair dictate his soul, walked out from the Victor Verster Prison into the bright sunshine of freedom.

Mandela was first imprisoned in Pretoria and later taken to Robben Island, an infamous penitentiary near Cape Town that had previously been a leper colony. He stayed there for a few weeks, then taken back to Pretoria where he was charged in the Rivonia trial, from which he was sent to Robben Island for life. He spent a total of 27 years behind bars.

The world has paused to remember this iconic figure who breathed his last at age 95 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Mandela’s timeline is etched in the memory of multitudes but even those not aware of the milestones of his life saw in him a revolutionary and a visionary the likes of whom we are unlikely to see again.

His ‘I am Prepared to Die’ speech, delivered from the dock during the Rivonia Trial, Pretoria Supreme Court, on 20 April, 1964, will always serve as an inspiration to freedom fighters everywhere.

Of all the traits that defined Mandela, perhaps the two most remarkable were his humility and his willingness to forgive.

“I am not a saint,” Mandela often told his admirers, “unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”

Here was a man who had attained the moral high ground through superhuman courage and patience in the face of evil, yet who could resist the seductive pull of arrogance. He was aware of his flaws and frailties, some of which his countrymen were to witness during the five years (1994-1999) he was the President of South Africa, such as charges of cronyism and selling out the liberation struggle to white interests.

But Mandela’s rare gift was that he never lost sight of his goal: democracy, equality and the rule of law for blacks, whites, Afrikaners and every other race in his tormented country. He could do it because he had the humility to know that it was not about him but about South Africa and its people. The source of his humility sprang from a combination of high purpose, generosity of spirit, strength of character, grace and daring, a combination tragically absent in any of today’s leaders anywhere.

Mandela’s inclination for reconciliation over revenge marked him even more as the definitive moral leader of our time. Half-a-century of inhuman apartheid had stoked the flames of revenge among his dispossessed, nameless, faceless, vote-less people. A blood-bath between blacks and whites in South Africa seemed inevitable. But Mandela would have none of it. "Great anger and violence can never build a nation,” he declared. “We are striving to proceed in a manner and towards a result, which will ensure that all our people, both black and white, emerge as victors.”  And, "Reconciliation means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice.” And again, (from his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, 1995), "If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner."

This, from a man who was forced to toil day after day in a limestone quarry without sunglasses under a merciless sun that destroyed his tear ducts and, for years, robbed him even of his ability to cry!

Freed after 27 years, only a Mandela could say with conviction that he bore no ill will toward his white Afrikaner jailers.

Ever the humble man, Mandela pointed out during an interview that “I am not the only one who did not want revenge. Almost all my colleagues in prison did not want revenge, because there is no time to do anything else except to try and save your people.”

For many, Nelson Mandela became a revered and iconic figure only after his story of sacrifice and magnanimity became widely known. For decades during the cold war, however, American presidents backed apartheid as a vital front in the war against communism. In 1981, President Reagan went so far as to call South Africa’s diabolical regime “essential to the free world.” Both Reagan and Margaret Thatcher labeled Mandela’s African National Congress Party a terrorist group. In 1985, then-Congressman Dick Cheney voted against a resolution urging that Mandela be released from jail. When, in 2004, Mandela criticized George Bush for launching the Iraq War, (just as Martin Luther King had criticized Lyndon Johnson for the Vietnam War in 1965), he was denounced by some in the mainstream media for his “vicious anti-Americanism” and for his “longstanding support for terrorists.”

But when President Clinton visited South Africa in March of 1998, he told Mandela in a joint session of parliament in Cape Town that "For millions of Americans, South Africa's story is embodied by your heroic sacrifice and breathtaking walk out of the darkness and into the glorious light."

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Madiba) went for the stars. Not for him petty fights and small dreams. “There is no passion to be found playing small,” he said, “in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” His definition of a life of purpose: “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” As viewers saw in the 2009 movie “Invictus,” he had the courage to surprise his adversaries with restraint and generosity.

This fierce yet gentle freedom fighter has now made his final walk to eternal freedom. And we are the poorer for it.

A Tale of Two Contrasting Indian Heroes

If you are a cricket fan, there is no need to repeat the incomparable (some would say, unbelievable) statistics that India’s Sachin Tendulkar has compiled in a 24-year career that began when the little master was a mere 18. If you are NOT a cricket fan, that is, an American (not naturalized!), well, there is no point in repeating Tendulkar’s record either. It will make no sense to you.

However, most of the world has taken note of the retirement of the great one. It was - surprise, surprise - front page news in my local San Jose Mercury News.

What has been the hallmark of this unassuming man in all the years he has been under the relentless spotlight was his humility, a quality that will undoubtedly continue to characterize him as he settles down into a normal life. 

It was on full display in the emotional speech he gave after batting for the last time against West Indies in his hometown of Mumbai.

(Ask yourself, in which other country would fans fast - that’s right, give up food for a day when their hero was batting, so he could score another century? Only unconditional love and respect can compel fans to do that.)

Class. Grace. Courage. Persistence. Plowing on when adversity strikes. These qualities sum up Sachin Tendulkar. For the Indian government to honor him with the highest civilian award of Bharat Ratna (Jewel of India) was perhaps the most obvious coda to a life lived so well both on and off the field.

There is another momentous match going on India now as well: the world chess championship between defending champion Vishwanath Anand and the 22-year old Norwegian “Mozart of Chess,” Magnus Carlsen.

The match is taking place in Chennai (formerly Madras). Anand is also an Indian, so a billion Indians are gripped by the progress of this hero of theirs as well.

But other than their Indian origin, one will be hard-pressed to find any similarity between Tendulkar and Anand. 

 

This became glaringly obvious during the press conference following the Carlsen victory in the 6^th match (Carlsen leads Anand 4-2 in the 6 games played so far).

Obviously Anand was in a sour mood. After all, he was playing white and his blunders were obvious to chess players around the world. 

Yet his responses to reporters’ questions showed the wide gap between him and Tendulkar in the grace department. 

“I will do my best in the remaining games,” he said response to a query about his chances of defending his crown. When another reporter asked him to elaborate on what he meant by “I will do my best,” Anand snapped at the reporter: “Do my best means do my best. Don’t you understand English?”

In a previous question, Anand was asked about Tendulkar and the adulation that Indians were showering on him. He was vague about it but then added, “I have other things on my mind.”

 

Vishwanath Anand makes his home in Spain. He is undoubtedly up there with the best chess minds the world has ever produced. Anyone who has won the world chess championship five times and who has been the undisputed champion since 2007 surely ranks among the best. He may yet regain his poise and beat Magnus Carlsen to retain his title.

 

But when it comes to grace and humility, Tendulkar, who would never dream of living abroad, is ahead of Anand by miles.

Two Indian geniuses in their respective fields but only one is also a towering human being.

Bachelor's Degrees in Community Colleges

The 1960 master plan for higher education in California identified the following distinct roles for its three-tier system:
- University of California (UC) is to be the state’s primary public research university, with authority to grant bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and other professional degrees.
- California State University (CSU) is to focus on liberal arts and sciences and grant bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
- California Community College (CCC) is to offer lower-division instruction transferable to 4-year colleges, provide remedial and vocational training, and grant two-year associate’s degree.

According to the plan, the top 12.5 percent of all graduating public high school students are eligible for admission to UC, the top 33.3 percent for admission to CSU, and all persons 18 years or older who can “benefit from instruction” are eligible to attend CCC.

Fifty plus years later, it is clear that dramatic shifts in California’s demography, mode of education, jobs and “facts on ground” require a thorough review of the master plan and quick enactment of core recommendations from educators, legislators, teachers, unions and students.

Although the plan had gone through several official reviews in 50 years, resulting in hundreds of recommendations, only a few, and that too at the most superficial level, had seen the light of day.

It is clear to anyone but the most jaded and reactive segment of the population that the master plan, designed when baby boomers were reaching college age, fails to serve the needs of Californians in the 21^st Century. A high school diploma that back then would have sufficed for a managerial position is more likely to elicit scorn for even a door-to-door sales position now. 

Nowhere has the master plan’s inadequacy become more apparent than in the objectives it set for California’s community colleges half-a-century ago.  

It is imperative that the role and scope of the CCC system be expanded as soon as possible not only to increase graduation rates but also to meet the Golden State’s growing workforce needs.

There are two areas in which immediate intervention is required.

First, the increasing complexity in transferring credits to CSUs and UCs force many community college students to repeat courses, which not only delay their progress but sometimes force them to drop out. Students who take prescribed courses and do well are, in theory, guaranteed admission to CSU or UC systems. That’s the problem: the plan works mostly in theory and not often enough in practice. This has to change immediately if the CSU and UC systems are serious about educating all eligible Californians for purposeful employment and self-fulfillment.

Second, and more importantly, community colleges should have the right to grant bachelor’s degrees in selected vocational fields, such as nursing, automotive and biotechnology, to meet workforce demand and boost employment.

Demand for nursing, for instance, is consistently strong. But CSUs cannot graduate nearly enough nurses for the healthcare system. Many community colleges, on the other hand, have been training nurses for decades. (Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, to name only one, has had a top flight nursing program for several years).

What can be more logical than the right to confer bachelor’s degree in a field that community colleges are eminently qualified to do?

Nothing, except that officials from universities and private colleges, fearing competition, are vigorously lobbying against the idea, claiming that granting four-year degrees would undermine the original mission of the two-year system.

This is, of course, a red herring. Universities and private colleges are trying to protect their turf at the expense of justice and economic well-being of Californians, particularly those from poor families and rural areas.

Despite their resistance, Brice Harris, Chancellor of California’s 112 community colleges with its 2.4 million students, has appointed a 16-member panel to consider the plan. The group includes faculty, administrators, a student, a college trustee and representatives of UC and CSU systems. (In all fairness, the panel should include more student representatives since it is their future that is at stake.)

Californians must throw their support behind the plan to allow community colleges the right to grant four-year degrees, at least in selected vocational fields. While cost and accreditation issues will certainly pose challenges, they are expected to be more than compensated by employment and economic benefits.

Besides, California would merely be following a growing trend: As many as 21 states have already approved baccalaureate programs at community colleges, most recently Michigan, which last year granted junior colleges authority to offer four-year degrees in a limited number of fields such as maritime technology and culinary arts.

Proposed in 1960, California’s master plan for higher education no longer fits the bill. The time has come for its significant overhaul, one of which would be to enlarge the scope and power of community colleges in granting four-year degrees in selected fields. After all, if public colleges cannot meet the aspirational and professional needs of their communities in the 21^st century, how can they continue to be called “community” colleges?

"The Trials of Muhammad Ali"

If you have the courage of your conviction and act on it, people will love and respect you, even if they hate and scorn you at first.

More than anyone else in recent memory, Muhammad Ali epitomizes this truth. Ali spoke truth to power long before politicians turned the phrase into a cliché. In the Jim Crow South of the ‘60s, when lynching of Blacks were daily occurrences, Ali stood out for justice and dignity for his people, unafraid of losing his life, challenging White America to look into its soul and acknowledge its bigotry and racism. From “I am free to be what I want to be” to “I have seen the light and I am crowing,” Ali opened raw wounds in the American psyche, provoking anger and fury that in the end proved cathartic.

That he was also a three-time world heavyweight boxing champion seems, in retrospect, almost incidental to the enormous religious, social and political role he played outside the ring.

“The Trials of Muhammad Ali,” a new documentary (Director: Bill Siegel, Running Time: 1 hour, 34 minutes), examines Ali’s life in the context of a turbulent America in which segregation was the norm and Blacks were convinced that “The White Man’s Heaven is a Black Man’s Hell.”

The combination of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War protests in the mid sixties shook America to its core. Drawn by the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, Ali had become a Muslim in 1964. Earlier, he had shocked the boxing world by defeating the “unbeatable” Sonny Liston.

Most Americans regarded Black Muslims as a cult, sinister and treacherous, bent on destroying their country. When Cassius Marcellus Clay publicly and proudly shed his “slave name” and became Muhammad Ali almost fifty years ago, Blacks had found their hero and racially-driven Whites, politicians and pundits their enemy. Even the TV talk-show host David Susskind, considered a liberal, labeled Ali in 1968 “a disgrace, a simplistic fool and a pawn.”

The documentary pulls no punches. Stokey Carmichael of the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam (who later split from Elijah Muhammad and was assassinated in 1965) gave Ali the framework he needed to articulate his bitterness against racist America. He defended Islam as the “slave-breaking” religion. When the draft board reclassified him as eligible for military service in 1967 and ordered him to join the Army, Ali declared himself a conscientious objector because of his Muslim beliefs. Overnight, he became a traitor for refusing any role in America’s war machine. He was convicted but Ali never wavered. His logic was as powerful as it was simple: Why should I travel thousands of miles to kill brown and black people who never harmed me or my people for a government that continues to oppress and kill my people, he demanded to know. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” he famously declared. When an army brass kept calling him Cassius Clay during a hearing, he politely but firmly kept telling him, “It’s Muhammad Ali, sir,” until his interlocutor obliged.

In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Ali’s conviction on technical grounds.

“I am no slave,” Ali is quoted in the documentary more than once. “Don’t call me by my slave name.” When boxers Floyd Patterson and Ernie Terrell insisted on calling him Clay, Ali punished them so viciously in the ring that the New York Times writer Robert Lipsyte called the Terrell fight “a truly terrible moment in boxing history.”

In this young 21st-century, history seems to be repeating itself. America now finds itself as polarized as it was during the ‘60s. The sacrifices that African-Americans made has no doubt led to much racial progress, but the toxic social forces that Ali and others fought against seem to have reappeared, although in subtler forms. Wealth inequality is the new Jim Crow, the rise of Tea Party ideologues the new racial reality. We need brash and bold “loudmouths” like Ali, be they white, black, brown or any shade in between, to demand just and legitimate distribution of wealth and opportunities, in the absence of which American society is bound to fatally fracture.

Ali has been silenced and immobilized by Parkinson’s disease. People who see him now cannot bear to look at him a second time. Yet his legacy endures and inspires. There have been several excellent documentaries on his life and boxing career, including (1996) “When We Were King” and “Muhammad Ali: The Whole Story.” But in “The Trials of Muhammad Ali,” Bill Siegel has woven a complex and fascinating story that is at once bracing and disturbing, a story that is worthy of the subject whose elusive essence it tries to capture and largely succeeds.

  

Hana Ali, the third-youngest of Ali’s nine children and by all accounts closest to him of her siblings, calls her father in the documentary “the eighth wonder of the world.”

How true, how so very true!

Archer Kent Blood's Lasting Legacy

The recent publication of “The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide” by Gary J. Bass, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, has reopened raw wounds in the collective psyche of Bangladeshis.

Drawing on recently declassified White House tapes and documents, Bass has summoned a searing story of hubris and genocide that will shock readers four decades after the violent birth of Bangladesh.

That Prof. Bass was able to find an American publisher for his book is rich in irony. Archer Kent Blood, Bass’s protagonist, wrote an even more searing first-person account of the blood-bath in Bangladesh but not a single American publisher would touch it. It was eventually published by The University Press Limited of Dhaka in 2002.

Author of “The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh: Memoirs of an American Diplomat,” Blood was the United States Consul General in the-then East Pakistan during the turbulent ‘70s. When the Pakistani army mounted a war against unarmed Bangladeshis to reverse the results of the 1970 national election in which Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won a clear majority, Blood was stunned by the silence of his government.

The diabolical Nixon-Kissinger duo was obsessed with appeasing Yahya Khan for the general’s role in facilitating the “grand opening to China.” They supplied him with all the arms, ammunition and spare parts he asked for. 10,000 Bangladeshis were massacred in the first three days alone. Over a period of nine months, as many as 3 million were killed (other conservative estimates put the figure much lower) and 10 million had to flee to India for safety.

Responding to the call of his conscience, Blood sent a telegram to the State Department that read in part, “… Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pak government and to lessen likely and deservedly negative international public relations impact against them. Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy …”

The late Christopher Hitchens, in his 2001 book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," described the cable as "the most public and the most strongly worded demarche, from State Department servants to the State Department, that has ever been recorded."

Kissinger was furious and recalled Blood to Washington where he was assigned to the State Department’s personnel office, a public demotion. It was the same Kissinger who, at the height of the genocide in late April of 1971, sent a message to General Yahya Khan to thank him for his “delicacy and tact.” Nixon was equally invested in the asinine dictator when he told him, “I understand the anguish you must have felt in making the difficult decisions you have faced.”

In 1973, when Blood’s name was proposed for a possible ambassadorial position, Kissinger responded with: “Get that guy out of Washington!”

Blood’s book is filled with glimpses of men steeped in arrogance and their attempts to trash the truth. In June, 1971, for example, a World Bank Mission visited East Pakistan and filed a devastating report on Pakistani brutality. World Bank President Robert McNamara desperately tried to suppress the report but the New York Times obtained the document and splashed it on the front page. McNamara sent a letter to the Pakistani government apologizing for the leak! During a briefing in 1971 in Islamabad, a sneering Brigadier General Chuck Yeager, the first test pilot to break the sound barrier, challenged Blood’s contention that Bengali resistance would win out in the end. “Do the Bengalis have any aircraft? Any tanks?” Yeager asked. “Then, how can they stand up to the well-equipped, disciplined Pakistani army?”

Blood’s testimony is proof that people armed with hope and a will to be free can defeat armies equipped with weapons of war. The diplomat saw a parallel between his own country’s war of independence against the British in 1776 and Bangladesh’s war of independence almost two centuries later.

Blood received the Herter award in 1972 for “extraordinary accomplishment involving initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and creative dissent.” The award was named after the former Secretary of State Christian A. Herter and established by the American Foreign Services Association in 1969. In 2005, he was posthumously given an Outstanding Service by the Bangladeshi-American Foundation, Inc. (BAFI) in Arlington, Virginia.

Archer Kent Blood passed away peacefully at Ft. Collins, Colorado, on Sept. 3, 2004, at the age of 81, survived by his wife Margaret Millward Blood, two daughters, Shireen Updegraff and Barbara Rankin, and two sons, Peter Blood and Archer Lloyd Blood.

Reflecting on the fateful “Blood Telegram” years later, Blood said, “I paid for my dissent. But I had no choice. The line between right and wrong was just too clear-cut.”

If this is not human spirit at its finest, what is?

Prof. Bass’s “The Blood Telegram” will undoubtedly contribute to a renewed appraisal of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy and the lasting damage these two “statesmen” inflicted on the world, reverberations from which continue to be felt to this day.

At the same time, it should serve as a reminder to the leaders of Bangladesh that they too are under the spotlight of history, that they too will be judged by whether or not they have squandered the sacrifices of millions. It is easy to point fingers and wallow in the past. It is far more challenging to develop policies and institutions that can move the nation forward. Bangladesh is now politically polarized to the point of paralysis. Integrity, magnanimity and farsightedness are missing from the national discourse. Perhaps our politicians should read and re-read “The Blood Telegram” and “The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh” to gain perspective on what constitutes hubris and what constitutes enlightened leadership. Forty-two years later, surely it is time. 

Oracle Team USA's Amazing Victory

The come-from-behind victory by Oracle Team USA over Emirates Team New Zealand in the picturesque San Francisco Bay is being rightly hailed as one of the greatest in sailing history.

Team USA was down 8-1 on 11^th September. But in the following two weeks, culminating in the spectacular and decisive victory on 25^th September, Team USA had run off 8 straight wins to claim victory in the first-to-nine regatta.

How improbable was 8 straight victories?

A student taking an elementary course on statistics may calculate the probability this way: Probability that either Team USA or Team New Zealand will win in any given race is 1/2, or fifty-fifty, similar to when you toss a coin and ask for the probability of getting a head or a tail.

The probability of getting 8 heads (or tails) in a row, using the law of multiplication for independent events, is (1/2)⁸ = 0.0039, or 0.39%, less than one-half of one percent.

That’s highly improbable. In other words, the likelihood of getting 8 heads in a row, or running off 8 straight victories in a regatta is extremely low.

The student can shrug off the victory by saying, “well, the improbable happens all the time in life, even if statistics says otherwise.”

That’s true, but the logic of (1/2)⁸ is faulty in this case.

The probability of winning was higher than ½ for Team USA. As the Team began to win and gained psychological momentum, meshing technology and sailing skills in ways that eluded members of Team New Zealand, its probability of winning increased dramatically from 0.5.

In addition, the races were not independent events. Each win increased the probability of subsequent wins, so that the probability of running off straight wins was much higher than what one would expect from a series of independent, binary events.

Statistics comes to life not only when its basic laws are proven true in real-life events but also when simplistic applications of these laws reach their limits and one has to consider other factors, some of which are within the reach of statistics and some not.

In the case of the 34^th America’s Cup and the amazing win by Team USA, conditional probability, along with all its associated quirkiness, had to be considered before estimating a probability of running off 8 consecutive victories. That would be an amazing feat by itself!

Voyage Across Infinity

Voyager 1, the little plutonium-powered spacecraft launched thirty-six years ago by NASA and equipped with primitive technology by today’s standards, has left the solar system. It is now traveling in the vast empyrean space between dazzling stars, still radioing back data that can help scientists increase our knowledge of the universe.

A debate has ensued as to whether Voyager 1 has actually gone beyond the heliosphere or is still traveling in its backyard. Details are important in any scientific endeavor but in this case, this particular detail is insignificant (although given the sudden vanishing of sun’s charged particles and the spike in galactic cosmic rays that Voyager 1 started recording a year ago, it appears that the starship has indeed broken through the solar bubble.)

What is significant is the immensity of Voyager 1’s accomplishment, both literally and figuratively.

Consider first the facts. The lonely probe that took off from the earth in 1977, the same year that saw the release of the movie “Star Wars,” is now 11.7 billion miles away from the earth (that’s 122 times the distance between sun and earth, or 122 Astronomical Units) and hurtling away at 38,000 miles per hour. It takes 17 hours and 22 minutes for Voyager’s signals, traveling at the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second, to reach NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. (Its twin, Voyager 2, is now 9.5 billion miles away from the earth and is expected to take 3 more years before slipping the bounds of the solar system.)

But if these facts are impressive, consider that at its current velocity, it will take Voyager 1 another 40,000 years to reach the Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our sun. Long before that, of course, the spacecraft will run out of its nuclear fuel and power down its instruments in about a dozen years from now.

Beyond the data loom the larger questions: What does this mean? In what ways can the Voyagers alter our perspective about, or at least compel us to reconsider, our place in the universe? Is there an associated element of transcendence as this 1,592-pound starship continues its journey across infinity?

On the day NASA announced Voyager 1’s leaving the solar system, another piece of news set California’s Silicon Valley all atwitter: the impending initial public offering (IPO) of Twitter, the “140-character” micro-blogging social media company. It grabbed headlines in all the major online and print publications in the U.S. The financial world, in particular, was abuzz with Twitter’s estimated value, set to about $10 billion.

Voyager 1, in contrast, made no comparable splash. In the days that followed, Twitter’s every step toward IPO was tracked and turned into breathless headlines while Voyager 1 practically vanished from the media.

Our priorities are askew. Companies may soar and fall and forgotten but the first man-made object to enter interstellar space is, by any definition, a historic milestone that time cannot erase. “The Little Nuclear-Powered Engine That Could” is now voyaging across an unimaginable immensity, affirming our transient place on earth under the heavens. We are here for a reason and even if we cannot bathe in the cosmic afterglow of the Big Bang or witness celestial fireworks in regions where time and space are probably more intricately knitted together, what we build with our ingenuity and launch toward the stars, can.

Voyager 1 reminds us that science is not a catalog of facts but an unending quest for the unknown. Every time we unveil one of nature’s mysteries, we find more mysteries nested within, infinity within infinity. Physicist Richard Feynman defined science as an “expanding frontier of ignorance.” There’s lot more we don’t know than we do. Science is more about the former than the latter. We forget this sometimes, absorbed in our mastery of the known and the commercial success of our products, and lose sight of the profound truth that we are surrounded by mysteries, only a few of which we have been able to solve.

Will the Voyagers, or their descendants, register ripples radiating from dark energy, thought to be the source of an expanding universe? Will the next generation of Voyagers navigate the sea of distant quasars and supernovas and galaxies, enriching future generations with wondrous truths about the universe we cannot even begin to imagine today? Will human beings one day travel between stars and galaxies? No one knows. What we do know is that our quest to know the unknown will continue for as long as the fire of curiosity burns within us, the one quality alone that makes us human above all else.