The Sotomayor Hearings

There was a point when watching the GOP self-destruct brought a bit of joy. The GOP felt like such an alien party - anti-intellectual, anti-everything except God - a party from another planet. Then came the 2008 elections, the Dems won and things were great.

Given their resounding defeat, one would have thought that they would have regrouped and introspected a bit and tried to figure out what went wrong, how they alienated their base and led the most colossal eff-up in the history of the U.S.

But one would be wrong.

Instead they decided to continue on this path of bigotry, racial hatred, and just common thick-headedness. What better proof than the way Jeff Sessions, Ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, manhandled Judge Sotomayor. Quoting the transcript:

"So first, I'd like to know, do you think there's any circumstance in which a judge should allow their prejudices to impact their decision-making?"


"But the statement was, "I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage, but continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate." That's exactly opposite of what you're saying, is it not?"

"...but isn't it true this statement suggests that you accept that there may be sympathies, prejudices and opinions that legitimately can influence a judge's decision?..."

"...I just am very concerned that what you're saying today is quite inconsistent with your statement that you willingly accept that your sympathies, opinions and prejudices may influence your decision-making."

Is Sessions possibly trying to make a point that a person can be completely unbiased? That his or her background cannot affect a judgement? Is it humanly possible? The answer, of course, is no - it is not possible to be unbiased and even if we think we are unbiased, we are not. This is not a statement that I make loosely - the race iat and other literature in psychology would be able to show this easily.

Sotomayor's point was so rational.
"I think the system is strengthened when judges don't assume they're impartial, but when judges test themselves to identify when their emotions are driving a result, or their experience are driving a result and the law is not."

Brilliant.

What is really sad about all this is that the GOP comes out as really bigoted and prejudiced and trying to browbeat a Judge into submission. Not to mention hysterical when a bunch of white guys accuse a latina of being rascist.

This self-destruction of the GOP is very bad for several reasons. For one, I actually agree with a bunch of their ideals - fiscal conservatism, smaller government (never mind that they oversaw some of the biggest increases in government and spending in the past century). But the other, more important reason is that in order for a democracy to function, and to be strong and vibrant, it needs a strong opposition. Having the Dems in absolute power is very, very bad, just as bad is it was when the Repubs were in absolute power: balance is irrevocably lost.

So Dear GOP: Please get a grip on yourselves. Obama checkmated you with Sotomayor - you cannot possibly block her nomination and every minute you pull stupid stunts like the one Sen. Sessions did, you hemorrhage latino votes. Its not a battle you want to fight. And when you do fight, please fight with dignity. Healthy debate is what we want, not mindless Limbaugh-esque repetition of false facts, hearsay and opinion.

[books] Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Picture this:

The Bennet girls are at a ball. They are upset because Mr. Darcy made some disparaging remark about one of them or their mum. Blah blah blah.

Suddenly, the windows are shattered and the person nearest the window falls victim to the unmentionables, who quickly devour their brains. Because, as everyone knows, there is nothing a zombie likes more than brains.



This book has it all - Jane Austen with her proper romances, haughty bachelors and haughtier spinsters all looking to find the right husband or wife - and Grahame-Smith with his unmentionables (zombies), chinese kung-fu, japanese katanas, ninjas (yes, that's right, ninjas) and other formidable weaponry.



The book is so absurd that it makes you laugh at loud - the section at the end where the author puts in a list of things for classrooms of students to explore is some of the funniest writing I have read.



I want to give this book a higher rating - simply because I admire the author for the courage to write something so patently absurd and the publisher for going along with this. However, at the end of the day, the work is still Jane Austen and no army of ninjas is going to help save the utterly boring romances that Ms. Austen wrote.



This is definitely a library pick.


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Google Wave

I'm excited.

[books] Forever Peace

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not as good as Forever War, but not bad at all. A vision of utopia where there are means to connect everyone to a global hivemind that basically causes them to lose the will to kill each other. Interesting, some new concepts and some exploration of this idea. A bit heavy on wierd sexual stuff, a bit unnecessarily so, and a bit light on exploring the other side of what pacification of an entire species would do.


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Photos from the India trip.

Let me know if you cannot follow the links to Kristin's picasa album.

Flaky internet test

Trying to see if blogger deals with a flaky internet. The internet at home (in Mumbai) where I am right now is rather flaky - pings to google.com range from 300ms to 2s depending on unknown factors. I think its because of the interesting wiring that the "electrician" and the "phone wallah" conspired to put in and convinced my dad that it was fine (because, you know, if you split a phone cable in 2, both lines are just fine, no extra noise from crappy connectors or anything). It also randomly goes OFF. Annoying as hell.

stech and I have a common blog on wordpress (because she likes that more than blogger) at http://bloggingindia.wordpress.com and we have lost two posts already because the stupid wordpress background save *does* *not* *work*. So, so, annoying.

So far, blogger seems to be better - its saving just fine and we'll see with the publish if thats better as well.

Edit: Success! Score +1 for blogger.

New blog for the india trip

stech made a new blog where we can both post our india experiences.

http://bloggingindia.wordpress.com

[books] Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace by William Lobdell

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
An excellent book by a journalist about his journey embracing Christ, investigating the Catholic Church and eventual parting of ways with religion in general.



It really is a book in 3 distinct Acts:

Act 1 - From arreligious to an evangelical to (almost) a Catholic:

Its unclear whether Lobdell was an atheist to begin with (I think not), but he clearly was not a practicing Christian. A rough patch in his life led him to turn to God and seek support and solace in the Church. He has nothing but good words for the church that he joined and the people he met. All of them come across as very rational, yet very devout. They support him and help him get on the road to becoming a devout Christian.



Act 2 - Investigating the Catholic Church:

Lobdell was the religion reporter for the LA Times when the Catholic child molestation scandal broke. He investigated various such allegations and returned disgusted as what he saw as a fundamental breach of trust - the priests were supposed to be spiritual shepherds for their congregation and they abused this trust to permanently mess up the very children that they were trying to teach. What made him even angrier was systemic failures in the Catholic Church to expose known child molesters; instead the Church treated it as an internal matter, merely dismissing priests or even worse, moving them to other parishes where the pattern of abuse continued. The Church used its might, money and lawyers to squelch any complaints or protests whatsoever from the children that had been thus abused.



Act 3 - Embracing Atheism:

Investigating the church really seemed to cast a shadow upon Lobdell's faith. This led him to dig deeper and investigate the underbelly of the Christian faith - televangelists, preachers who claim to faith heal, the Trinity Broadcasting Network (largest Christian TV station in the world) and look at the economics of what was going on. Again, what seemed to make him really angry was not the millions that the preachers (or their churches) were making but the straightforward duping of the congregations and complete abuse of their trust. He notes stories of quadriplegics and terminal cancer patients given false hopes that they would walk out of church, healed (they weren't). What's even more heartbreaking is that people would put their faith in God and the faith healers and stop taking drugs thereby making things worse (and in some cases dying).

Lobdell talks about how it was hard for him to let go. He had a difficult time dealing with death - what happens after and if he was going to hell for abandoning God. He talked to friends and preachers about his loss of faith and certain qustions about God that had been bothering him - and didn't get any answers that he considered good enough. Its unclear if this was so because he had already made up his mind and was talking to these preachers almost as "due diligence" or out of a genuine need to resolve things.



On a personal note, the third act of the book really resonated with me. I went through something similar when I left the Jain fold around 2000. Its hard to deal with the fact that there is this life and then that's that - ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But if you come to terms with that, it makes life really nice. The worst that can happen to you is death. Every moment past is never coming back, so enjoy it to the fullest. Doing something you don't like to do is a monumental waste of time. Its also "simple". I don't have internal conflicts about being an engineer doing science by day and talking in an unknown language to beings whose existence is unprovable at night. I don't have to come to terms with reconciling faith and evolution or having to deal with things that I cannot measure (or view someone's measurement of the same).



All in all, a great book. Highly recommended.


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Flip sold for $500M+

See this post on allthingsd.

I'm happy for the flip guys - I have bought one and the gf has been gifted two (including the one I bought). I think the camera was very innovative and they did a good job making and marketing them.

I also think that Cisco bought the wrong thing at the wrong time. My prediction is that the Flip brand (or whatever Cisco rebrands this as) gets wiped out over the next 3 years. The reasoning here is the following:
Flip at one point was the disruptor in the market - they marketed a device that did not do stills at all, or poorly and was not a competitor to entrenched still camera models like those made by canon or kodak.
Flip was not a very good camcorder either because it did not come with optical zoom, lots and lots of buttons that nobody but the real pros can figure out, and generally looked like it had poorer construction.
It had two things going for it: it did HD and it was cheap.

Classic innovator's dilemma here - a cheap disruptor that is unappealing to any but the lowest segment of the market. Moreover, this is a section of the market that the incumbents are more than happy to get rid of - they most likely are making tons of money selling medium to high end HD cameras and there really isn't a developed market for the Flip.

This is all good stuff for the Flip people. They survived, they did a good job and completely changed the landscape.

However, now we get to a point where the sustaining innovators are catching up - the still cameras which used to take mediocre (at best) video are now starting to do HD. And they're getting cheaper. The Flip may be the cheapest HD camera around, but not by much. This means that its market share will dwindle unless they can continue to disrupt the market - and its hard to see where. Moreover, Nikon and Canon and Kodak are the experts when it comes to making lenses and other things that people start to care about when the price point is the same. The Flip cannot compete with this and Cisco does not employ optics people.

The Flip guys did the right thing by flipping the company over. My prediction is that Cisco writes this off their books in 3 years.

** Of course, I have no data to back up any of the assertions I'm making, but you knew this already :)

[books] Empire

Empire by Niall Ferguson

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
A history of the British Empire from an unabashed imperialist. A very different perspective on things from what I learned as child from my Indian history books - a complete reversal of good guys and bad guys for one.



Fergusons explores the economic basis of the empire - its start in the Carribean and the West Indies and the rise to power of the Royal Navy. He makes an important note that the Empire did not start out through political means - it was not wars of annexation by a power hungry monarch that drove the British Empire; rather it was the hunger for trade that drove the merchants to various parts of the world. The merchants needed two things -

1. Security of their selves, their markets and their trade routes.

2. Creation of new markets, by force if necessary (and usually).

And thus the creation of the strongest naval force in the world - the Royal Navy had 44 captital ships and the rest of the world combined had 42!

Also tied into this mix is Christian Evangelical zeal, but for the most part, according to Ferguson, this did not form a basis for expansion as much as trade did.



He makes no attempt to euphamise the bloodiness of the formation and maintainence of the Empire - from the Carribean to Africa, to India and the East Asia, the Empire was marked by periods of bloody, violent struggle with the better equiped British typically mowing down scores of ill-equiped natives.



His most interesting theories concern the fall of the empire. He believes it was not so much that the empire crumbled from within, as other big empires (German, Russian, Japanese and later American) came in to conflict with the British and forced it to disintegrate. In the aftermath of the two Great Wars, Britain was completely bankrupt and dependent upon its colonies and the Americans forced them to disintegrate as part of bailing them out. He does make an interesting point that while the rise of Empire spanned many centuries, the fall was surprisingly short - less than Churchill's lifespan. Churchill was a reporter at the Boer War (still an Empire in rising) and presided over the loss of India and much of Africa.



A prescient quote for the Americans (who may not find this book as interesting as those living in the Commonwealth) - "Once Britain had been the world's banker. Now she owed foreign creditors more than $40 billion. The foundations of the Empire had been economic, and those foundations had simply been eaten up by the costs of war."



Highly recommended for peoples (or who's grand peoples) were the subjects of the crown.


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