RaviSez

Every time I take the train on CTA, I see this poster, that complains, in Illinois, a woman earns seventy one cents for every dollar a man earns. Pocket change for her; crisp dollar for him. I've always wondered why an employer would hire a man to do the same job and pay him a dollar instead of hiring a woman and pay her seventy one cents. Makes economic sense, doesn't it? Steven Pinker in his book, The Blank Slate, explores this issue and explains it is not entirely true. While discrimination cannot be entirely denied in every field( and nobody talks of the reverse discrimination in certain fields), women earning seventy one cents for every dollar a man earns is plain wrong. Here's another article on why.


Link [via Dr.Helen]

Too many times, legends are perpetuated to present a human face for movements of struggle.  Mangal Pandey of the  Sepoy Mutiny in the Indian freedom struggle or Mahatma Gandhi being thrown out of the train in South Africa are incidents that come to my mind.  They put the abstract notion of Indian resistance to the British rule on a level that people could identify. Instapundit points to this link about  the Rosa Parks myth. Read it. And Rest in peace Rosa Parks.

Another late find by me, is the Blogger Add-on to Microsoft Word. Try it . It’s fabulous.

Read about the closet capitalist Noam Chomsky here.




Link [Via YazadJal.]

I was reminded of Michael Higgins' post on Non-Credible Threat, when I read about how a politician in Andhra successfully black mailed the state governement into meeting his demands. And this is not some nobody, he was a member of parliament at some point and worked a state minister as well. I remember this guy mentioning Gandhi as his idol when he went on hunger strikes, but I don't know of any incident when Gandhi threatened to kill himself. I would have really liked to see what would have happened, had the state government in Andhra refused to be taken at gun point. My guess is, the guy would have backed out, and the opposition parties would have started rioting citing the callous nature of the goverment.

It's a pet peeve of mine, when people look at mythological characters and start complaining how women got a raw deal due to the patriarchal deal then. In this interview, Mallika Sarabhai, says that Draupadi, infact, was an epitome of the 21st century woman. It's a very different period( had Mahabharatha existed the way we read about it), and the society was set in a certain way. Being animated about it now, is, pointless. Had Draupadi been a 21st century woman, she would have refused to marry five brothers -- just because her mother-in-law had a slip of tongue. Had Draupadi been a 21st century woman, she would have refused to come to court -- just because one of her husband had gambled her away. If you look at it that way, she comes out like she has no personality and personality is what defines a 21st century woman.
However, when somebody points to Seetha and says that's the way a modern woman is supposed to behave, that shouldn't make sense either. That was then; this is now.

Here's a great idea for all the schools with access to computers and the internet. Have students edit the Wikipedia. No matter the subject, the students will learn a lot by looking for more information along with writing skills. This may start around the 6th grade level, usually when students start becoming comfortable with language. It will be the teacher's responsibility to oversee what the students are putting on the site and maybe even partially grade them for the quality of the content.

I see an end of road for Laxman. At least in the one day arena. If he cannot find place in a team without Kaif and Ganguly, after playing spectacularly in the challengers trophy, I don't think the selectors are willing to give him any more chances. I don't think there are any other avenues to show his one day prowess. I suspect he's fallen out of favour with Chappell or the selectors, when he commented about the negative vibes in the team during the "Ganguly imbroglio". The zonal machinery is in place and I think it's a choice between Venu Gopal Rao and Laxman, and Venu's in fine form. I see his test post going pretty soon, unless he makes another series saving effort. I hate to see such a fine batsman losing out to such petty politics.

I discovered Mozilla's Firefox. Well...I don't remember being excited about a software product like this in a while. It wasn't always like this. I used to be more open to using new products. But Microsoft lulled me into using IE without updating it for a really long time and I hadn't realized the rest of the world is moving on. Like the CNET review says, Microsoft just doesn't have any incentive to make their browser better anymore.

I haven't worked with any other browser except the Netscape Navigator and that was about eight years ago. But Firefox completely floored me. Tabbed browsing? Why didn't anybody else think of that? Built-in pop-blocker -- Welcome, and good-bye all those additional plug-ins I had to download from Yahoo and Google. And I definitely feel this is faster and less resource intensive than IE.

A Powerful exposlion rocked Hyderabad today, at one of the high security offices of the Andhra Pradesh State Police. A suicide bomber linked to Pakistan's ISI is suspected, reports Eenadu -- a regional news paper.

Here's what Prof.Arindham Chaudhari says in the dean's message on the IIPM site.

"We need to understand that sustainable growth can be achieved only by committing ourselves to macro level growth strategies that would encompass the bottom 80% of the population and not just the top 20%. This conscientious approach would make a growth rate of 12% per capita per annum possible."

Um...What approach? Just employ macro level growth stratagies that encompasses bottom 80% and voila you get a growth rate of 12% per capita?

"In the light of globalization of the Indian economy and capitulation of Indian brands, it is imperative for tomorrow's leaders to be aware of the above mentioned facts, so that they can face the emerging global challenges of international markets with confidence, while remaining committed to remove massive poverty of Indian masses within a generation."

Above mentioned facts? What facts?

"While some wealthy nations enjoy the luxury of material of plenty, the fact remains that more than twice the number of people killed in the 2nd world war die every year of hunger and curable diseases. And yet we fail to realize that unrestricted satisfaction of all desires is not conducive to human well being! Nor is it the way to happiness, or for that matter, even maximum pleasure!! When the wealthy nations today talk of 'being one' with the rest of the world, and of concepts of global village, their talks simply border on hypocrisy."

Twice the number of people killed in the 2nd world war die every year of hunger and curable diseases! So, employ macro level growth stratagies to bottom 80%? Achieve 12% growth rate and then realize unrestricted satisfaction of all desires is not conducive to human well being? I am scratching my head here.

"The time has come for India to lead the way in showing that this carnage can be stopped with the help of determined leadership and long term committed vision."

Carnage! By who? Could it be by the wealthy nations enjoying the luxury of material of plenty?

"The Indian managers need to develop a strong vision for their companies, and most importantly, for the people who work for them, apart from having a terrific sense of commitment for the country, great motivational skills and leadership qualities."

The rest of the Dean's message is more packaged bull shit. Look's like he's farting and is amused by his own smell.

"A growth rate of 12% per capita per annum would imply that India can beat U.S.A. in terms of purchasing power parity within the next 25 to 30 years and become economically the strongest country in the world. For this, the Government of India needs to support the Indian organizations with suitable pro-people & pro-India policies, which would help Indian organizations in becoming stronger to compete in the world market successfully. Future leaders must be aware of this and not remain intellectually handicapped. IIPM strives for these commitments and continuously endeavours to educate its students and clients on these issues with the belief that sooner than later, structured economic independence can be achieved through a coordinated effort..."

Can anyboy decode this bull shit for me? It just wreaks like a pack of eggs left in a hot room - for a year! I can't believe people are paying close to Rs.800k for joining in the program he's offering.

These are the things that seemingly are in conflict for Gaurav today. By now, most in the Blogosphere must be aware of the aggressive tactics that IIPM - a bizarre management institute, is bent on using. I, have a few questions.

1. What sort of institute is bent on behaving like Shiv Sainiks trying to force their views on what movies or books the general public is supposed to watch and read?
2. Why isnt' mainstream media(MSM) picking up the story?
3. What is IBM doing without taking a stand in favor of their employee?

Growing up in India, I am used to seeing organizations like IIPM, who spring up overnight, offering false promises to thousands and then couldn't deliver it later. It's pretty much like all the other institutes that you know about only via e-mail Spam. I am not surprised by it's tactics and I am pretty sure it will go down as soon as it has risen up.

But what bothers me is the way MSM chooses not maintain it's distance from this story. If they are worried about the advertising revenue, Michael Higgins has an excellent post about it here.
He says,

This raises an interesting economic question: how much does it cost a newspaper to lose its biggest advertiser? To answer this question, they should ask Mr. Chaudhuri, dean of IIPM, to place his head into a basin of water, (any bowl will do, even a toilet bowl), and then quickly remove it from the water. If the image of his face remains in the bowl of water, the newspaper will sorely miss this ad revenue. If the water quickly rushes in to fill the void, then one would assume that likewise many other advertisers would rush in to fill the void caused by the absence of IIPM’s advertising.

This is an important point: there really is no conflict of interest here. No newspaper needs IIPM’s advertising. In the long run, there is no better way to guarantee advertising revenue than to produce a consistently credible newspaper that covers all of the news. Any credible newspaper knows this and purposefully keeps the advertising portion of their newspaper physically separate from the reporters so that there is no interaction between them and so there is no potential for a conflict of interest. In the long run, reputation sells papers, and selling papers brings in advertisers. And the only time the reporters should consider their advertisers is when they read them and wonder: “Who are these people and why are they spending so much on advertising – what is the story here?”

I totally agree. The next point is, why the managers at IBM are giving in to IIPM much the same way as the MSM. Do they honestly believe that IIPM students burning their laptops will tarnish IBM's image and not the other way round? They should have dealt with their clout and used their lawyers to protect their employee and not giving in, to a petty client, however big their business might be worth.