homeland security growing up

politics: an interesting study published in the NYT called Graduate School Applications from Foreigners Rise. Alan Finder writes:

The number of foreign students who applied to graduate programs in American universities during the current academic year increased by 11 percent from the year before, according to a survey to be released today. That growth reverses two years of decline that occurred in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The survey, by the Council of Graduate Schools, which represents more than 450 universities, found that despite the increase, the number of applications remained lower than in the years before 2003. The number of foreign students applying declined by 28 percent in 2003-4, a previous survey by the group showed, and by an additional 5 percent in the following academic year.

i'm encouraged by this. could the department of homeland security be getting a bit of a clue? after 9/11, some students found it difficult to return to the states after returning home from the holidays. i have friends who were so scared they wouldn't be allowed back in, that they forewent their annual holiday trips home. i know of others who chose to study in australia or europe due to the bad reputation the u.s. had developed.

foreign graduate students are a key part of the high tech backbone of the american economy. relatively few americans will get an MS or PhD in technical disciplines and hence, are a minority in advanced techology industries which ultimately form main stream tech industries. i tend to work in advanced r&d, and can testify that native born americans are a minority. in fact, i am one of 2 on a team of ten, and neither of us have native born parents. anyway, finder continues:

The council suggested that there were several reasons for the turnaround. After the attacks of 2001, foreign students, particularly those in scientific and technical fields, experienced trouble obtaining visas. But recent changes in government policy, though continuing to emphasize security, have made it considerably easier.

"There's no question that both Homeland Security and the Department of State do play a role in this turnaround," Debra W. Stewart, the council's president, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

desert reflection

here's a poem i wrote about four years ago recently after the birth of my first child. i remember i had just gotten an old manual typewriter and was working on a painting based on a photo from a trip i took a few years before to visit some friends in jordan. i was clanking away on the typewriter, something i do when i can't concentrate on painting.



painting in my studio,
rachid taha takes me
back, to
another day,
sunnier,
no rain, just a slow
dry heat.

earth tones fill my
pallette. yellow ochre
paints petra in june.

sitting at a table well
recessed from the black
tar street, bowls
of zatar and oil.

a town built by the
king -- waiting for the
tourists of tomorrow.

it's just some locals from
amman, and their
american friend posing
as a long lost cousin
from yemen to
save some dinars.

moving in

life: well we finally wrapped up the studio enough to move in. the last few days were stressful. our sheet rock/paint person butchered the job, and kept making it worse when he tried to fix it. we finally got fed up and did the work ourselves. i spent all day saturday moving in things. we set up the loft w/ a cozy futon and fuzzy wool rug, the kind that look like it was just lifted right off the sheep's back. i moved in all the easels and paint supplies, some furniture, etc. ameen and the baby were up in vancouver over the weekend, so nayan and i were "camping out." nayan has been obssessed with robin hood these days. he has a retro-ly done australian dvd that he loves to watch; he even, on occassion, speaks in his version of old english. nayan was adamant we camp for 5 days and 5 nights; he grabbed his "tents" and hauled them into the studio, along with a never ending supply of toys, and of course, swords. i fired up the woodstove, and we barely left all weekend. it was so magical to feel as if we'd spent a weekend up in the mountains when we were only in our familiar back yard. the loft is so cozy to sleep in. the lexan panels let in a lovely northern light, and at night, with the lights off, feel like you're staring at stars. i woke up to a seagull and crow snarling session. was a bit odd. i had no idea our back yard was frequented by sea gulls every morning. can't wait to start painting in there. this project has been going on so long and immersed in so much stress i almost forgot, that at the end, we'd get to enjoy it.

freedom

poetry: ananya, our 1 year old, is obssessed with yanking books from shelves. she is particularly fond of an old journal book of mine, which has a long thread wound around a button. i picked it up, and while putting it away, stumbled across some journal scribbling i had written a day after my first child was born. here it is:

"I've been watching you. First
the house, then a beautiful
wife, a chocolate pup,
some art on the walls."

The urban hipster, divorce
progeny, coffee drinkers
individualized. We, they --
don't see the simplicity of
family life -- the wonder
outside the club. Obsessed
with the freedom of wandering,
city to city, scene to scene, style
to style.

The roaming bores me, and
the union of family
liberates me.

I look at my new baby and see
eternity, simplicity, fragility,
and my bones.

Last night the sun came out,
blessed me with life, returned
my mother to me.

another breath

poetry: part of the same journal i mentioned in my last post. another little snippet that captured yesterday.

little poems,
for little pieces
of paper.

no anguish fills my
heart today, just
the bliss
of domesticity.

a wet day,
a visiting friend,
a trip to the dog park.

can a painter project?

art: spent a good part of saturday over at my masi's. was playing with my cousin's notepad pc, which has this great drawing interface. attached is one of the resulting sketches. this was originally a photograph i shot while in india a few months ago. from this pc software, i am able to import an image, and then draw on top of it. i thought the sketch came out well, but felt a little odd about the process. i ran across this article at clickwalla on souza. it mentioned his obsession w/ a camera obscura, which apparently allowed him to project images onto his canvases from where he could paint. i recall being a kid and getting this little light desk thing that let me put a picture in it, and a piece of paper, and i could trace over the image. i was fascinated. like most kids around 11 years of age, reproducing realism was my artist ideal. much later in my art years, i can safely say its not a big deal to sketch things, but often it is a pain blowing up an image from a photo onto canvas to form a starting point for a painting. i can see why souza wanted to skip the effort, and get on w/ the more exciting aspects of his paintings. ameen and i started chatting about this last night - bottom line, is it sleezy in some way to follow such a process? i would think this argument would be considered settled by marcelles du champ's toilet hanging show many years ago. certainly the art world claims it is, nonetheless, i think deep down, even the most ardent "art is what the artist says it is" mantra chanters, have a problem with it. it took ameen 20 minutes and some pondering to finally conclude, yeah, its fine, so long as the artist doesn't hide the process in any way. i, however, think its fine, but am still feeling unsettled. why am i unsettled? if someone can hang a urinal up and call it art -- if legions can shoot photos and call it art -- if legions can accept both as art, why is it such a big deal for me to shoot one's own photo, project it, and jump start the composition process? oddly, it doesn't even bother me to now know one of my favorite painters followed such a process.

A Day in the Life of Mateo

My friend, whos adopted name is now apparently 'mateo', is having a hoot down in mexico. Since my life is far less exciting these days, with his permission, I'm posting a recent email he sent me. this one is titled: Prepare yourself for verbal diarrhea!

Life continues in the land of the sun. At the moment I have a bit of a cold, I think I got a chill last night because it was suddenly cold and I had the fan right on me all night. Its wierd to have a cold in a super hot climate. However its very mild and the old digestive system is running like a champ.

Not much new to report. Today was an excellent day, I got up at around 9 and went over to my friend Jerry's house around the corner to see if he could help me fix my moto, which hasn't been running since I got here. Instead he had to install a window at another friends house, an odd job he was doing, so we went over there instead. There we bumped into my friend Alexis who had dropped by to pick up some tiles for his house that Tony had bought for him, so I offered to help load them into my truck and carry them up to his house. Then Tony shows up and we hang out a bit and talk about his indian neem tree in the back yard and he shows me a plot of land next to his with a great view of the beach for 8000 dollars. We discuss possibilities. I read the introduction to "Rebel Sell" which I find very interesting, the premise is that the dominant counter-culture paradigm today is the "Matrix" like concept that we are all being manipulated by "the establishment", and the accepted leftie way to fight it is, like Nemo in the Matrix film, to refuse to accept the established world as is and pursue personal pleasure, since the ultimate act of rebellion in a media orchestrated world is to identify and pursue goals that you yourself want rather than the goals society sells you, (the book suggests that this paradigm is flawed and efforts to subvert the establishment simple serve to strengthen it) I borrow the book, we go visit Alexis's observatory he is building out of cob with a homemade thatched rotating doom roof for the telescope, we take some grass cuttings to plant at Jerry's house, there is a nice variety of grass Alexis is growing that is very strong and requires little water, then I drop back by Jerrys house, he invites me in for some leftover minestrone (Jerry is an italian who is opening a restaurant here in 4 months), I have a chance to flirt a bit with Ciara the sexy italian who is camping on Jerry's land, we eat the minestrone, a little bread, buon apetito, saver the local plant life, have some coffee, plan to go camping in the desert with the witch doctors over Semana Santa which is Easter, plan also to go to the big waterfall by Huatulco to go swimming next week, I ask Jerry for the email of a mexican friend who went back to DF, he looks for a while in a big pile of little scraps of paper and finds lots of things he forgot about but not my friends number, I remember I was supposed to help Coenraad and James build a cob pizza oven down in Arroyo 3 for the community center but am glad I forgot becuase the work site is in full sun and its nicer to just sit at jerrys house, outside under the shade roof he built, and look at the beach stretching down below only 200 meters away. So much here is homemade, if you want something like furniture you make it yourself or you get a friend to make you something. It occurs to me that during the whole day I never had the slightest idea where I would be or what I would be doing 30 minutes ahead, and that this might just be the best definition of freedom that I could come up with. Then I went back to my house for a liittle nap, afterwards I talk to the mexicans staying in the room next door, they tell me they come from a town in the mountains where mineral water comes out of the tap. I tell them they should post a big Welcome to -- sign outside their village announcing that the place is so great they even shit in mineral water, they think that is so funny they about fall out of their chairs laughing. My spanish is really coming along, you can measure it in terms of comic timing. Then Christopher and I go play soccer with the local team, 5 on 5, lots of fun, after sunset I come home shower and get sucked into a stream of consciousness email that is interruped by Karrie and James who stop by before walking down the beach to try Guille's fruiti di mare pasta at the last palapa hut on the beach. I read out the first half of my email and Karrie gives me her email address and asks me to send it to her as well. We agree to meet at the local watering hole in an hour for a drink. That's convenient because Luigi is bound to be there after his two day trip to the mountains for a little fresh air, and we have to talk about the company we have decided to start together. Mexican law requires that a company have at least 2 founders. He wants to build small scall water collection and maintenance systems here to sell to locals to improve local water usage and quality, which fits in well with my ideas. However Coenraad has suggested an idea I might have to coopt, which is to open a cafe that rents guitars to travellers on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis, and provides 15 minute starter lessons for anyone who wants to learn a few chords while they are hanging out on the beach, and in the afternoons you host a bob marley jam session for anyone who wants to play extremely simple songs and feel like a rock star. I think its a pretty good idea.

Thats pretty much what my days are like around here, when I'm not building cob or looking for land. I thought I found something pretty good but my latest feeling is that I could probably hold off and wait for a really good deal and keep my money for future projects... There are lots of deals to be had and I am reallly not in a hurry...

Hope you are well! By the way, I met a really great artist here who runs a restaurant, quite gourmet, probably the best restaurant in town, from Mexico City DF, you'd like his place. Ameen, your pictures look great on my wall by the way.

Ciao! Hope you are riding some snow once in a while for me. I'm currently listening to Sowehto's Where its At by Charlie Hunter, you know the song? Its so good, my latest favorite, not counting Come up to my Room by Princess Superstar which my dad would dismiss as "lower chakra stuff". You should play it at work once in a while. By the way I'm being turned on to lots of good music here. When I come back for a visit I'll have another hard disk full of stuff I think.

Matt (currently Mateo)

europe vs. radical islam

politics: i stumbled across this interesting book review in slate called Europe vs. Radical Islam - Alarmist Americans have mostly bad advice for Europeans by Francis Fukuyama. here is a snippet:

... the deeper source of Europe's failure to integrate Muslim immigrants, as Bawer recognizes, is not trendy multiculturalist ideas embraced by the left, but precisely Buchanan's blood-and-soil understanding of identity—a mind-set that until five years ago prevented a German-speaking third-generation Turk from acquiring citizenship because he didn't have a German mother. According to Bawer, "Europeans … will allow immigrants into their country; they'll pay high taxes so that their government can dole out (forever, if necessary) rent support, child benefits. … But they won't really think of them as being Norwegian or Dutch. And they'll rebel mightily against the idea of immigrants living among them as respected, fully equal professionals." American identity, by contrast, has from the beginning been more creedal and political than based on religion or ethnicity. Newly naturalized Guatemalans or Koreans in America can proudly say they are Americans. Pat Buchanan may not like it, but that is precisely what rescues us from the trap the Europeans are in.

you can read the full review HERE.

nostalgia realized

life: for much of my childhood summers, i'd toss wood in and out of pickup trucks, haul it around in a wheel barrow, chop it up w/ an axe, and stack it till my arms were sore. in the winter i'd come home from a long day skiing at the mountain, stoke up the fire, and hang my wet gear up to dry before the next day of mountain fun. i'd laze hours away half asleep by the fire, occassionally waking to finish some homework, or just poke the fire around. of course none of this mattered to me at the time - mostly the chopping and hauling were simply a pain. well i've spent the majority of the past 15 years since i left home woodstove-less, with the exception of some time spent at camp cody in bellingham, and for some odd reason, have longed to get my own stove. so, today was just a thrill. we installed a classic norwegian jøtul stove into the studio. after futsing the past couple months in repeated failed attempts to get our fancy pants radiant floor heat system to work, it was lovely harnessing simple medieval technology -- throw wood in, light match, enjoy heat. well now winters in the northwest can once again feel fine - douglas firs swaying under heavy wind, endless dark, rainy nights, and now, the cozy fire to make it all right.

closer

movie review: just saw mike nichol's film "closer." well, it was moderately entertaining. i really have a hard time liking films where i fundamentally don't like any of the characters. all of these people were quite annoying. julia roberts plays this depressive photographer that only shoots "sad" people; she casually almost-leaves her men repeatedly. then there are these 2 brit guys that are significantly annoying in there own way. one is a sort of whining literary adulterer type - the other a raunch obssessed dermatologist adulterer type. the only mildly redeeming character is played by natalie portman - who is this needy stripper girl, who eventually finds her own way, i guess. also, there were some bizarre chronology jumping going on. despite all this, it was shot well, the characters were reasonably well developed, fairly artsy and while julia roberts is in it, it has nothing to do w/ typical hollywood, which for me, is good. i give it 2 1/2 stars.

civil war in iraq

since the day bush decided to invade iraq, i have been saying this will in all likelyhood result in 25 years of civil war, a war i believe will make lebanon's 25 years of strife seem relatively pastoral. i believe yesterdays bombing of Askariya, shiite islam's holiest shrine, is the turning point. i think the past year's activities have already proven iraq was in a civil war, but now it is undeniable to even the most ardent optimist. to the secular, it's difficult to illustrate just how terrible a crime this is. for believer's it is simple, and the emotional response can be sadly uncontrollable. with each passing hour, iraq is spinning toward a state from which it cannot return. already the revenge attacks have begun. many sunni mosques have been destroyed in retaliation. sunni imams have been killed assassination style. soon the sunni's will begin their revenge attacks for these revenge attacks. despite the near unanimous pleas of all leaders: secular, religious, iraqi, and non-iraqi, the cycle of revenge has begun. i think of the utter devastation caused in india driven by sectarian violence during partition, and my heart saddens. i can no longer see a reasonable outcome in iraq for many years to come.

rumbles in rumble valley

life: i had a truly epic day at the mountain sunday. went up to camp cody on saturday night. spent the evening cozzying up to the woodstove with some good friends, wine, and laughter. then timothy, daniel and i went up to mt baker for a just stunning day. waist high powder all over the mountain. first tracks most of the day. its tough to pick the best run. dropping gun tower back into rumble valley was just delicious -- uncut, 27-degree-utterly-abnormal-for-the-cascades-light powder. first run out on the elbow was a hoot as well. for lunch we did a little relaxing out in the sun w/ a nice large sapporo and some tasty sweet potato fries. here are some nice pictures from the day on baker's site. all in all, a once in a few years day like this makes me, for atleast a few moments, want to return to the days where snowboarding was all i thought about.

ananya's first birthday

life: we had a great first birthday party for ananya on saturday. our friend jas put together THIS flash show.

news spin

politics: well i must say, things in the middle east have taken a rather odd turn. what are we supposed to make of the palestinian/israeli situation now that hamas will be in the center of the political process? one of the things i find interesting about this situation, is how the press is not really sure what to make of it either. a few days ago, most stories seemed to run something like: the establishment verse the terrorists, with little real attention paid to why palestinians are actually voting for hamas. one exception was the christian science monitor, which ran this story a few days ago, Why Hamas is gaining in Palestinian polls. last night, i was particularly surprised to read THIS analysis on CNN - this was the most popular article on google news last night - it basically compares the israeli reaction to hamas winning, to that of the palestinians when sharon won - some sort of embrace of an unpredictable peace move... now today, the spin seems to be something like:

1. this is a protest vote against the corrupt PA
2. hamas will moderate itself now that its in the political mainstream.
3. hamas is terrible, and the peace process has nowhere to go.

the problem is the media is eternally optimistic, so they need to spin a path, however hypothetical, to peace, so 3. is not such a great take. 1. is a mere stating of the obvious. and 2. is well, editorial.

in any event, it kind of looks like the bush administration is in a bit of a jam. they need to spin how happy they are with the introduction of democracy in the middle east, but at the same time, its tough to spin hamas winning as a desired outcome. the CSM leads with, in my opinion, a no brainer article that should have been written the day the bush administration professed the desire to "let freedom ring" around the world. CSM writes:


Palestinian voters availed themselves of the time- honored democratic right to "throw the bums out" in their first legislative elections in a decade Wednesday - exactly the kind of action implicit in President Bush's push for democracy in the Middle East.

But by snubbing the Fatah Party of US-supported Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in favor of the radical Islamist group Hamas, Palestinians also put the Bush administration in a difficult spot.

The US might now seem hypocritical to many Arabs - encouraging democracy in the Middle East, while rejecting the choices that result from its exercise. At the same time, questions mount over whether Mr. Bush's campaign for democracy is encouraging the empowerment of Islamist militants across the region.


go HERE for the full text.

why is this a shock? one of the things that really bugs me about an exclusively-profit-driven-media is that there's so little analysis of positions occuring early on. i mean, its not like these are new issues, think of the franco-algerian war. why the heck can't the media use a little common sense and dare i say it, historical perspective, and analyze things a bit more. anyway, i should hardly pick on the CSM, they're one of the stars.

so back to the hamas thing, well, my take is that the bushies and israelies give this government a few days and a red line to decouple the militant wing of hamas from the service arm, else risk a complete cut off of funds. how that plays out, i have no idea.

bike swarms and acid etching

life: nayan had a birthday party to go to this morning. was down at the nordic heritage museum - a great time for the mini people. all the boys were racing around the play area on their bikes. most of the boys at the party had a second younger sibling. in all cases, the young ones seem to hobble and roam, solo, while being swarmed by speedy, though not quite stable, cycles. this, in normally quite uptight seattle is quite an aberration. typically seattle parents can be found micro managing the tiniest minutia of their kids' lives. what a pleasure to see parents just cruising about, young boys in unconstrained play, and toddlers meandering happily exploring their environment - all in all, a low key low stress birthday affair.

after b-day fun, i've spent the last couple hours applying vast quantities of acid to the floors of our studio. this lithochrome stain is seriously toxic stuff. basically, i spray it on, brush it into the concrete (while wearing thick rubber boots, gloves, respirator, goggles, etc.) it bubbles and gurgles and makes all kinds of noise. i have absolutely no idea whether it is going to end up looking good. the sample i did months ago looked great, unfortunately the floor seems to be behaving quite differently now. my gosh the sun is out. first time since i can remember. must go now.

doorway trouble

life: so there's this 30 something wiggy new yorker guy who i'll refer to as NYX. for the past 4 years, every work morning, i park my car, i walk along the water front to work, and i see NYX smoking a cigarette. about 4 months ago, it was a nice sunny late august morning, and NYX was highly animated, upset and very agitated. as i got closer, i heard the following conversation:

NYX: "dddon't tell me i can't smoke here, ok!"

RandomMan: "sir, why are you getting upset? i simply asked if you could move down the sidewalk a ways instead of smoking right in front of the door lobby."

NYX: "look man, there's no &*&@# law against smoking in a door way okay! its not like i'm smoking in the &*@#&@ hallway. you people have pushed us out of everywhere!"

RandomMan: "i think you're a little too angry. i don't think its much to ask ..."

NYX, cutting off RandomMan: "look man! don't bring this @#@# up ok? i know the law, man, i'm a @#^@#^'ing lawyer. don't mess with me, or i'll sue the @^#%@^%# out of you."

RandomMan calmly walks away.

NYX starts shaking, and slowly moves out of the door way, cigarette in hand.

now, fast forward to yesterday. for those unaware, seattle has recently placed a smoking ban in all public establishments. not only can people not smoke inside any public building (bars, restaurants included), but people can no longer smoke within 25 feet of a doorway.

so, i'm walking to work, its pouring rain and pretty dark. i look up, and i see NYX standing in the middle of the street, about 25 feet away from the doorway. no jacket on, just jeans and a green sweater, and a cigarette.

maya speaks

yesterday i went up to the mountain to do some snowboarding. its been dumping snow all week, but alas, it wasn't the fresh day i was hoping for. a few inches of new on top of some very wet heavy sloppy stuff. my sister and i did have a good time though. we managed a nice little hike at the top of stevens to get in a few decent uncut turns.

its amazing how utterly unmotivated i am to snowboard these days. it used to be such a huge part of my winter. after working all week, i really look forward to having unfettered time to just laze around the house w/ the kids. its dumping rain these days. i have atleast 4 points where water is seeping in to the studio. its a bit frightening, given that its the building's first winter, but fortunately, most of the leaks are relatively easy to resolve. my memories of winter as a child are so much brighter; i think it was all the days i spent at the mountain - snow brightens up your view. these dark gray days just seem to go on and on. i can't really complain, given that we missed most of winter this year.

i had a fun dream last night. i dreamt maya, our dog, could suddenly speak. unfortunately it was polish, so i couldn't understand her. i ran out the door trying to find someone who understood polish. by the time i got to the car, i forgot what language she was speaking, so i ran back inside to double check. and, of course, it was too late - she was back to dooberese.

macro-views

its over a week since we returned, and i'm still rising at 5AM. nayan wakes up at 4, and then eats his first breakfast. after feeding him, he roams the house playing with his toys. here's a post from a few days ago while back in india:

when i read things in the US, about the war in iraq, and political instability, i tend to put the information and my mental image of the place into a little box that i can open and close -- typically when starting and stopping a news article, or conversation on the topic. punjab, as most of you know, experienced quite a sustained period of insurgency and political instability. from the early 80s until the mid 90s, punjab was in essentially a state of war. sikh separatists were fighting for an independent nation to be called khalistan. it was a 'terrorist' style war that affected nearly everyone in punjab, my family included. one thing that strikes me while here, is that while society has returned to "peace and stability," the wounds of this period are still very fresh. another thing that strikes me, is that there are bizarre conspiracy theories for just about everything, including the khalistan question.

let me start by explaining my macro-view on the period of conflict. i should first say, i have a read a small amount and spoken with a number of people over the years, but i by no means have a thorough academic understanding of the subject. anyway, to distill a large complex topic into a couple lines, basically, here's my take:

1. sikhs, are a relatively prosperous people, and fierce warriors both respected and feared in pakistan and india.
2. we also have a violent history of battles to control greater punjab. (read kushwant singh's history of the punjab for more info).
3. in addition, india in general is composed of ethnically, religiously, linguistically, and culturally diverse people which have historically been segregated into independent "nations." the indian national identity is a relatively new phenomenon in the thousands of years of indian history.
4. in addition, india is a poor country with deeply entrenched corruption and an utterly innept and extensive beauracracy.
5. india and pakistan have been essentially at war since their foundings; india has never truly accepted that pakistan has a right to exist, and pakistan, feeling threatened, has struggled to break up the nation of india in an attempt to address its perceived threat by leveraging an understanding of point 3.
6. the US funded the mujahedeen in afghanistan to fight the soviet union back in the 80s. since the muj (1 of which is now the infamous osama bin laden) despised the american christian "infidels", the US had to route funding through the pakistani ISI (pak's CIA). well this was no small sum of cash, the ISI, routed a good chunk to the muj, but an even larger chunk went to itself, to essentially build a war chest, and fund what virtually amounts to an independent pak government.

ok, so what of the punjabi separatist movement? basically, a group of who i'll call separatists had legitimate grievances, harnessed a general spirit of economic malaise and tribalism to gain a modest voice, then morphed toward violent resistence. ISI saw an opportunity and started routing funds and started some training camps. the indian government mistepped a few times very signficantly (operation blue star), and popular support for the separatists rose, along with communal tension. then the government granted too much power to the police, in a society where virtually no checks and balances on the police exist. the police, not unexpectedly, ran amuck, killing lots of terrorists, but also many many innocents in their path. eventually, the police were able to drain popular support for the insurgency (mostly by making the situation so violent, that the populace just wanted it all to end), and stop it.

well i thought i would get further than that, but it turns out my couple lines grew into more. anyway, i'll come back to this topic sometime soon. my basic point was supposed to be, that a sort of intellectual analysis ending in a macro-view of a situation, is so utterly irrelevant. when you actually live through something like this, what you see means so much more.

a good friend of mine, who fit the visual profile of a terrorist (which i should mention included about 50% of all punjabi's), was brutally tortured on multiple occassions. only afer his family sold off ancestral land, raised a very large ransom, and paid off the police was he liberated. he figured out later that he was picked up, because a guy he had a conflict with in his juvenile college days was picked up, and under heavy torture, stated his name. this was a common occurrence, people took advantage of the situation to deal with their enemies. this friend went on to tell me many first hand accounts of utter brutality that were previously neatly wrapped up in my macro-view of these days as "instability." i often hear this here in punjab, that what one reads from afar, is so completely different from what those here who lived through these dark days experienced. hearing these first hand accounts from my friend really brought this point home for me.

trip photos

i just uploaded the pictures from our trip. you can view them by clicking HERE.

philoso-fi-zation

was at a dinner party w/ some interesting friends of friends. i've always known i know very little about philosophy, but now i'm convinced i know absolutely nothing.

back when i was in college, i loved the idea of hanging out in a cafe and being immersed in a nietzche book. i even went out and bought some despite being utterly clueless and drool dazed during my 15 minutes of browsing. i assumed some nugget of enlightenment would leap out and into my brain after a half day of staring at the pages. my highschool english teacher always warned us, "read that crap while sittin' on your kitchen counter. that way, when your face smacks onto the floor, you'll be nice and awake to start that paragraph over again."

after repeated attempts at "thus spoke zarathustra", no nuggets were jumping, and the kitchen counter trick didn't help much either. while i gave up trying to read this stuff, i never gave up having the books around. i liked them on my book shelf, and on the cafe table. after all, the image of the philospher was still so exciting to me. well after the fall of communism, 6 years of happy marriage (me-thinks some of this nonsense was typical teen impress-the-girl angst) and a conversation with my friend haitham (who's 7+ years into a PhD program at the university of chicago), i can safely say, the image isn't quite what it once was.

what bugs me about this field, and similar fields, is the intentional obfuscation of delivery. this group of friends is able to explain simply just about anything i ask about. so... why the heck can't the authors? i shouldn't just pick on philosophers, i find this phenomenon all over the place. the engineering equivalent of this is writing a technical paper while unnecessarily using inanely complex mathematics to describe a relatively trivial idea with moderately interesting results.

perhaps what i should be railing on, is the intellectual inferiority complex that drives one to obfuscate ideas. i mean, if you have a good idea, wouldn't you just want to clearly explain it so people know what it is? this whole diatribe reminds me -- i read this great geek analysis of post modernism. its called how to desconstruct almost anything - my postmodern adventure by chip morningstar and you can read it HERE.