Feast for Thought

The dishonesty in counting the poor Excellent and hard-hitting... but targeted at people, already thick-skinned, who fortify themselves in air-conditioned boardrooms located on the top floors of glass edifices. These 'planners' look at figures on paper and at numbers crunched out by lifeless statistical codes, and then doubtless carry out extremely specialised normalisation and other adjustments.  Reminds me of the STORY about a group of scientists who tested a particular pattern of monkey behaviour ("monkey ladder banana experiment")

"This is the point that I brought back to Washington — that it would be to the U.S.’s advantage to actually work with the Indians because there are things the Indian nuclear complex can do in their facilities that we no longer can do. There are people that they have and programmes that they have that we have abandoned. As the U.S. looks seriously to get back into the nuclear energy business, it should look towards India as to how to do cooperative research for the benefit of the Americans." My take: The interviewer's ndtv affiliations are apparent. The interviewee's current interests are not quite evident though. Also, what was the purpose of the current visit?  "it would be to the U.S.’s advantage to actually work with the Indians" - more clarity needed here. US's ECONOMIC advantage perhaps? "As the U.S. looks seriously to get back into the nuclear energy business, it should look towards India as to how to do cooperative research for the ...

Our daily newspaper carries Nobel laureate Paul Krugman's column, and I used to wonder why the happenings in Wall Street and Washington DC should jostle with much more serious local issues in the op-ed page. For a change, today's piece (a part of it placed below), " Who cooked the planet? " is more globally relevant than the other pieces in that column thus far. (it appears that the online version of this newspaper no longer carries the same column, only the print edition does) "....it wasn’t the science, the scientists, or the economics that killed action on climate change. What was it? The answer is, the usual suspects: greed and cowardice. If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn’t be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries — above all, the coal and oil industries — would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom line...

Surendra's eloquence leaves me rather lump-throated. Methinks the entire nation has to find the right answers and respond to that kid satisfactorily. See the cartoon here