Nurturing Madness

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It is almost a month now since a college lecturer in Kerala had his hand chopped by Muslim fanatics, for framing an exam question about a literary character, whose name happened to be Mohammad.

Despite the outrage and anguish triggered by this incident, the fact remains that the police are still on the "look out" for the main suspects. Perhaps they will never be caught, or even if they are arrested, the court case is likely to drag on for a couple of decades.

Is there a pattern or method to this madness? Are these merely the actions of a handful of bigots? Or is there some truth in the allegation that the compulsions of coalition politics is allowing criminals to get away lightly? - especially if the criminals happen to be members of the Hindu rightwing or Muslim religious organisations? 

While we wait for the truth to emerge, it is useful to remember an acidic verse penned by Fehmida Riaz about how India is beginning to resemble like Pakistan:

‘Tum bilkul hum jaise nikle?
Ab tak kahaan chhupe thay bhai?
Wo ghaamadpan wo jaahilpan jisme humne sadi gawaee
Ab pahonchi hai dwaar tumharey?
Arey badhaee, bahot badhaee.’

(And so you too turned out like us brother? Similarly stupid, wallowing in the past - where were you hiding until now? The easy ignorance, the rabid delinquency we nurtured for decades [in Pakistan], is knocking at your doors now? Congratulations, many congratulations.)

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LINKS:

Wikipedia - 2010 Hand-chopping Incident in Kerala
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_hand_chopping_incident_in_Kerala

The Waning Romance of an Idea By Jawed Naqvi, DAWN Thursday, 29 Jul, 2010
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/jawed-naqvi-the-waning-romance-of-an-idea-970

Not in my Country by Tavleen Singh, Indian Express, Sun Aug 01 2010
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/not-in-my-country/654391/

The Verma Test

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A former Chief Justice of India J.S. Verma, made a very interesting observation recently. While explaining the challenge of institution-building, he said, "An institution can rise to its true strength, and truly play the role the founding fathers mandated for it, only if it is led by a person who has no past, and no expectation (of any reward) from anybody in the future.”.

Thankfully, my favourite newspaper editor, Shekhar Gupta, was close at hand, not only to mark the significance of this observation, but also to set it in perspective in an op-ed titled, "The Power of One".

SG's focus is on state institutions that have had a strong impact on the Indian polity - the Supreme Court and the Election Commission. But the "Verma Test" seems to be just as valid when it comes to  understanding why some IIT's have become exceptional (eg., P. K Kelkar's role in building IIT Kanpur) or why institutions like IRMA or NDDB have hit the doldrums.

Worth reading!    :)

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REFERENCE:

Gupta, Shekhar (2010). The Power of One, Indian Express, 31 July 2010
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-power-of-one/654144/

Trip to Kamakura & Yokohama

View Yokohama-Kamakura in a larger map

Trailing the Tigers

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I was a bit shocked when I realised yesterday that within the area occupied by one of the tiniest states in India - Goa - you can fit in two Singapore's, two Hong Kong's, and still have more than a 100 sq.km to spare.

Before trying to figure out why, in the whole of South Asia, there isn't a single world-class port or international trading hub, a more basic question: despite their late start, how did a some countries in South East Asia Asia become so prosperous?

In his book, "Innovation in East Asia", Michael Hobday gets down to brasstacks - the firm/company level - to try and explain explain how four "Tiger economies" - South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong - were able to upgrade their technology and their marketing to compete in increasingly sophisticated products and services.

He uses the term - latecomer firms - to describe manufacturing companies that face two sets of competitive disadvantages in attempting to compete for export markets - (1) they are technologically dislocated from main sources of tech and R&D (local labs & universities being poorly equipped), and are (2) dislocated from mainstream international markets & sophisticated users.

The book was written in the early 1990s, so it is a bit dated in the sense that such firms may no longer exist - local labs are stronger, and regional markets may now be more lucrative. But it does give you an idea of how the firms evolved in each of these four, newly industrialised economies (NIE's).

It was no doubt their good fortune to be sitting on the right side of the cold-war fence during the turbulent 60's and 70's. Sitting under the US umbrella not gave them a good dose of enforced political stability but also free access to Western technology, capital and markets during their formative years. The respective national governments also played no small role in getting their priorities right - basic education, healthcare, housing, and macro-economic stability.

Even then, fact is that not all American allies in East Asia prospered. Even within the four NIE's patterns of learning and development varied -

SOUTH KOREA

Under the military dictatorship of Gen.Park Chung-hee (1961-1979) took a leaf from the Japanese Zaibatsu strategy and promoted large corporations - the Chaebol's - especially in niche areas like heavy industries, chemical industries, steel, construction and ship-building. The national education budget shot up from 2.4% (1951) to 22% (1981), skilled craftsmen were treated on par with engineers and scientists, all of whom were exempt from the compulsory military service. As a result, companies like Samsung, which began as a trading company dealing in fruit and dried-fish,went on to become world leaders in the manufacture of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.

Home-grown Champs:  Samsung, Daewoo, LuckyGoldstar

TAIWAN

In 1949, this island, smaller than Kerala and the oldest Japanese colony in the region, found itself flooded with 2 million refugees from mainland China. Most of these newcomers were soldiers, and, fortuitously, a good number of intellectual & business elites fleeing Mao's communists with their moneybags in tow. Gen.Chaing Kai-shek's KMT preferred to encourage a multitude of small companies (SMEs) rather than large corporations.

In 1985, the average SME size was just 24 workers, aAnd they produced everything from bicycles and footwear to sewing machines and high-end electronics. To help these firms, the government set up a range of effective institutions - Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Institute of Information Technology (III), Electronic Research Services Orgn (ERSO, under ITRI).

The entrepreneurs then went on to exploit FDI to their advantage,eventually making TNCs dependent on their manufacturing skills and their highly productive engineering. Local companies reversed the pattern of TNC exploitation, often complained of in Latin America and other developing areas, by supplying low-cost OEM/ODM services, components, systems and complete products.

Home-grown Champs: Acer, Tatung, Datatech (world's largest motherboard producer), EliteGroup, Mitac, Cal-Comp (calculator champ)

SINGAPORE

Even before it parted ways with Malaysia in 1965, Singapore's Economic Development Board (EDB) took a number of steps to woo TNC's. It allowed a level of foreign control inconceivable in either South Korea or Taiwan. While setting up its first industrial park at Jurong (1961) it established training institutes and implemented a series of measures for improving education and technical training. Once the training target was achieved it recommended a large increase in wages to attract technology-intensive manufacturers, moving the less lucrative firms into a "Growth Triangle" in neighboring countries.

By 1990, more than 3000 TNCs were thriving in the city-state, employing one of the most highly educated, ethnically diverse workers, living in the second-most densely populated places on Earth.

HONG KONG

Unlike the other three NIE's, this former British entrepot, started out with a laissez-faire approach. The leaders here knew the city born out of the earliest "unequal treaties" would return to China in 1997. So the government just let the traders and entrepreneurs do what they knew best. The big opportunities came after Deng Xiao-Ping initiated his reforms in 1978. Joint ventures (JVs) with mainland China shot-up from less than 100 in 1980 to nearly 40,000 in 1992. The neighboring Guandong province expanded at around 30% in the early 1990s fueld by investments from Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong too official support bodies did their bit - especially the Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC), Vocational Training Council (VTC), TDC and IDC.

Home-grown Champs: VTech, KongWah (flatscreen TVs), RJP (palmtops), Varitronics (touch-sensitive, portable hand-heldsystems)
 
 
After reading Hobday's book, one cannot help concluding that the biggest advantage these four NIE's had was that they all had pragmatic, competent leadership that shielded itself from the divisive pressures of populist electoral politics...

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REFERENCES

Hobday, Michael (1995), Innovation in East Asia: The Challenge to Japan, Edward Elgar Publishing Company, USA, 1995

Prof. Mike Hobday - CENTRIM, Brighton, UK - http://centrim.mis.brighton.ac.uk/people/a-z/mgh1

Exuberance of Verbosity

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This is one thing I've always, always wanted to figure out -- what the heck was Antony Gonzalves trying to say??

In "Amar Akbar Antony", a popular Hindi movie from the late 1970's, Amitabh Bachchan, playing the role of a maverick named Antony Gonzalves, pops out of an Easter egg and sings a song. Its a mixture of English and Hindi, and delightful, unadulterated nonsense.

The Hindi lyrics fits into the overall plot and makes some sense - Mr. Gonzalves, the 'party entertainer' is trying to woo a girl on the sly. But what is he trying to say in English??

Here it is - gibberish deciphered:

"Wait, wait...WAIT! You see the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin in the atmosphere because you are a sophisticated rhetoritian intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity!!"


"You see such extenuated circumstances coax me to preclude you from such extravagance!"


"You see the coefficient of the linear...is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin of the atmospheric pressure in the country!"

There is actually a wiki-page dedicated to this song! According to folks-who-know, while Kishore Kumar did the singing, the talking (in English) was by Bachchan himself. And the opening line - "sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity" is from a speech in the British Parliament by Benjamin Disraeli in 1878!

Where did the song-writer, Anand Bakshi, dig that from?? :)

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LINKS




Movie - Amar, Akbar, Antony - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amar_Akbar_Anthony

The Song - My Name is Antony Gonzalves - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_name_is_Anthony_Gonzalves

Creative Spirits

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In a video posted at TED.com, the American writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, talks of a "different" way to think about creative genius.

Talking about the pain and pressures of human creativity, Ms. Gilbert laments about the way in which it turns many artists into alcoholics, drug-addicts and other forms of social nuisance, as well as the western notion that creativity and suffering are, somehow, inherently linked. To escape from this "utter maddening capriciousness of the creative process", she digs the past for better and saner ideas on how creative minds could deal with inherent emotional risks of creativity, and finds a solution from the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Ancient Greeks and Romans did not believe that creativity came from human beings - it was considered a divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant unknowable source, for unknowable reasons. The Greeks called this attendant, unknowable spirit, the "Daemon", while the Greeks called the same spirit, the "Genius".

Ms. Gilbert also talks about a North African, Muslim tradition of chanting "Allah!Allah!" whenever a dancer elevated his performance to something truly exceptional, even transcendental. A tradition that was carried by the Moors into Europe and became the "Ole! Ole!" for dancers in modern Spain.

It is all very interesting...but at the end of Ms. Gilbert's talk, I wondered why her search for the creativity problem did not take her further East. She might have discovered the rationale behind the 'invention' of numerous deities in the Hindu pantheon; a tried-and-tested "protocol" to deal with the destructiveness of the ego or the "aham-karam" (Sanskrit for the "I" factor) in which all creativity was attributed to "Saraswati" - the goddess of knowledge, skill and learning. As well as the reason why some of the finest Indian classical musicians and dancers, wear the crown of fame & glory so lightly.

This also brought back memories of a performance by the flautist Hari Prasad Chaurasia at Nehru Park in Delhi, a few years ago. Following a flawless rendition of Raag Yaman Kalyaan, when some excited fans shouted their praise, he simply said that he was merely being used by Goddess Saraswati.

"There are nights", he said, "when I'm practicing alone, she overwhelms me so completely with her music...that I am convinced that she's alive in my bansuri. On those nights, I end up carefully tucking my flute-set into my bed, while I sleep on the floor."



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LINKS



A different way to think about creative genius: Elizabeth Gilbert on TED.com - http://blog.ted.com/2009/02/elizabeth_gilbe.php

Singapore - Origins of the "Fine" City

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One of the most popular souvenirs from Singapore are the t-shirts that proclaim, "Singapore is a Fine City". It is, of course, meant to be punny, but the irrefutable fact is that swift and strict enforcement of penalties is a very effective detterent. For such a densely populated country,  with so many migrants and tourists, the streets are not only litter-free but also free from muggers, drug-peddlers and other assorted criminals.

How did such a "fine" system originate?

I always thought it was a legacy of the British colonial administration. Not so. It is, if fact, a legacy of  the Japanese occupation of Singapore, during WW2 (1942-1945).

In his book, "The Singapore Story", Lee Kuan Yew, says -

The three and a half years of Japanese occupation were the most important of my life. They gave me vivid insights into the behavior of human beings and human societies, their motivation s and impulses. My appreciation of governments, my understanding of power as the vehicle of revolutionary change, would not have been gained without this experience.


...The Japanese Military Administration governed by spreading fear. It put up no pretence of civilized behavior. Punishment was so severe that crime was very rare. In the midst of deprivation after the second half of 1944, when people were half starved, it was amazing to see how low th crime rate remained. People could leave their front doors open at night...people..patrolled their own localities. But it was a mere formality. They carried only sticks and there were no crimes to report - the penalties were too heavy. As a result I have never believed those who advocate a soft approach to crime and punishment, claiming that punishment does not reduce crime. It was not my experience in Singapore before the was, during Japanese occupation, or subsequently.

So the lesson learnt by LKY was that in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society, "fear is the key". The Japanese themseves, on the other hand, seem to rely on far more subtle - and proactive - methods to keep their own streets safe & clean...

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RELATED LINKS -

Lee Kuan Yew - Interview with Fareed Zakaria (CNN)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLyPpUsNkAE&feature=related

LKY - 3 Part series compiled by Daniel Tay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDE0KPMaeY&feature=related

Machiavelli's Tiger: Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore's Authoritarian Regime (Uri Gordon)
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan002548.pdf

NYT - Excerpts from Interview with LKY (29 Aug 2007)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/world/asia/29iht-lee-excerpts.html

Lee Kuan Yew Watch
http://leewatch.info/

Lee-Kuan-Yew.com - http://www.lee-kuan-yew.com/

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RELATED WORD -
Dirigiste (Fr. noun) - Economic planning and control by the state, "...euro zone needs a core of dirigiste powers to run Europe on a more political and less technocratic way..."

WikiLeaks - Collateral Murder

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`Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind`  - George Orwell

This is the quote that introduces you to WikiLeaks "Collateral Murder". The rest of the video shows you how a US Army Apache crew mistook a journalist's camera for an RPG launcher and then went on to kill more than a dozen civilians. It is, of course, an armed conflict out there and mistakes happen. But instead of admitting the mistake the generals and politicians tried to cover it up with "language designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable." -- until WikiLeaks called their bluff.

 I always thought WikiLeaks was some kind of short-lived gimmick; another in the Wiki series that anybody could edit and spin to their convenience. Turns out that I was seriously mistaken.

An article titled "No Secrets" in the New Yorker,  describes the life of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and of his mission to expose injustice; to enforce total transparency using the power of the internet. An Australian hacker now based in Iceland (for legal protection), Assange wants to ensure than once a video was posted online, it would be impossible to remove.

Using donations from well-wishers, WikiLeaks maintains its content on more than 20 computers  around  the world and on hundreds of domains. The site is "an uncensorable system for untracable mass document leaking and public analysis",  and a government or company that wanted to remove content from WikiLeaks would have to dismantle the Internet itself!

So far even though the site has received more than a hundred legal threats, it refuses to "comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than similar demands from Swiss Banks, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, former African kleptocrats or the Pentagon".

This sounds like such an amazing initiative! But one concern is whether WikiLeaks can grow beyond its dependence on one individual...

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FULL ARTICLE

No Secrets - Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency - Raffi Khatchadourian, New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian

WikiLeaks

Wrist-pain Relief

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Finally some answers to the puzzling, persistent wrist pain!

 Sometime back, when I visited the doctors at Tsukuba Medical Centre, they had gone through some elaborate x-rays and prescribed some external cold-wraps to deal with the pain. It was not much help.

 Yesterday, while looking for some information on the Web, I came across this useful video which explains graphically how pain develops when there is a pressure on the Radial, Median or Ulnar nerves.

 And the following two videos demonstrate some useful exercises, not only for easing the pain but also for strengthening the wrist and preventing injuries in the future -

• DavidKuckhermann - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUyMNyrOHJQ&feature=related
• Injury Rehab Advise - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6-7xtAvwVU&feature=related

 YouTube has turned out to be much more helpful than the doctors at TMC!   :P

BP vs. Bhopal

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"It is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease"

This familar adage is taking a new meaning for those who have been comparing the recent BP oil leakage with the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984.

The comparison presents interesting insights into the relationship between MNCs and governments in developed countries, and of the difference in the way MNCs respond to their blunders in developed vs. developing countries.

The possibility of a squeaky wheel getting greased does seem to depend more on the importance of the wheel than on the loudness of the squeaks...

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RELATED ARTICLES

After 26 Years, Shekhar Gupta (IE), 8 June 2010
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/after-26-years/630789/

How British (Really) Is BP?, KARL E. MEYER and SHAREEN BLAIR BRYSAC, NYT, 16 June 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/opinion/17iht-edmeyer.html

Remember Bhopal, PHILIP BOWRING, IHT, June 16, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/opinion/17iht-edbowring.html

A Black-Belt in Judo

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Last Sunday, I was pleasantly surprised to know that I had qualified for Judo black-belt (sho-dan / first level).

Why the surprise? Firstly because getting any qualification - let alone a black-belt - was never even an objective when I started my training. Secondly, in my own mind, I was merely 'partnering' a friend and more worried about making some mistake and letting him down than anything else.

The test-event itself was quite a learning experience though. So this post is an attempt to recap the whole process  for foreigners who may be interested in getting a Judo certification in the Japan.

I've been in Japan for a little more than a year now. I had approached the Judo Club at University of Tsukuba with the objective of staying fit -- something of a healthy diversion from the long sedentary hours of research-work -- and out of curiosity. The university was famous for its sports faculty and I just wanted to get an idea of the sort of training and effort it had taken to produce so many Olympic medalists in Judo.

We trained twice a week (Mondays and Fridays) with a "bonus" option of training with full-time judokas (The "Tsukuba Blues") on Wednesdays. Each two-hour session was divided into seven parts - (1) Rei (group salutations) (2) Warm-up exercises (3) practice-sparring - 30 mts. (4) Randori - random practice fights with other club members - about 10 rounds of 4 minutes each (5) Cooling down exercises (6) Salutations (7) Cleaning up the hall.

Each session was physically demanding. Sprains, aches, cramps and bloodied uniforms were fairly common but the seniors keep a sharp lookout for fights that could be getting out of hand. And the atmosphere was helpful and friendly with the more experienced folks ever-ready to help the newbies with the ropes for each kata (form) and technique.

About a month ago the club-captain suddenly asked me if I wanted to appear in the black-belt qualifying exam at Tsuchiura. At first I thought he was joking but then I understood that one of the members, Yamada-san was keen to apply and he could not appear in the test without a partner.

The captain demonstrated the nine throwing forms (Nage no Kata) that had to be presented by each pair for the sho-dan level (1st level black-belt). He also told us that each applicant would have to fight a couple of random bouts and that the test would cost a few thousand yen.

As can be seen in this video, Nage no Kata looks like some kind of stylized dance. It may look easy but it does take a good deal of practice to get the correct sequence of moves. In each pair there is a "Tori" (取り - the attacker) and the "Uke" (受け - the defender). There are nine sets of three throws each(te-waza, uchi-waza and ashi-waza or techniques using the hands, waist and legs) and each throw had to be done on the right-hand and the left-hand side ( I found the change-over particularly confusing). After the Tori throws the Uke 18 times, the whole process is reversed with the "attacker" now becoming the "defender" for another 18 throws.

We practiced hard but even until the last day of practice, I was not sure if I could remember the all moves - especially the part where there is a switching of roles from being the attacker (easier) who gets thrown around and to that of the defender (difficult).

On D-day (13 June) we reached Tsuchiura Dojo by 8:45AM. It was a large building - and quite crowded. About 150 candidates - mostly boys in their late teens thronged the corridors. The whole event was being organized by a set of sharp, supremely fit, elderly gentlemen dressed in white shirts and grey trousers. They manned the counters dispensing the application forms, clarified doubts, helped fill-in the forms, and directed each group in booming voices to the right halls - the archers stayed downstairs while the judokas went to the first floor hall.

It was apparent that foreigners were a rare sight here- I must have been the only gaijin in the building that day. But thanks to Yamada-san, we submitted the application forms quickly, paid the fees (Yen 6000), went to the locker-room upstairs and changed into the Judo-Gi. When we were about the enter the hall, one of the elders reminded us that our names had to be there on the back of our uniforms. So we went back downstairs, got our names written on white-tape and had it pasted on. Back again upstairs, everybody was now practicing until the tests started. We too found a vacant corner and went through all the moves once again.

In about 20 minutes everybody was told to line up in groups. White-belts and black-belts stood in separate rows and listened to four brief speeches about the ethics and philosophy of judo. Then the tests began with the girls and the black-belters. As we settled on the periphery, they lined up in two rows facing each other and went through the motions of their Nage no Kata. The black-belters were a pleasure to watch - especially the advanced ones facing opponents armed with 'long-swords' (katana) and daggers.

The white-belters were called to line-up next. I got up with a lot of trepidation but once the first step was taken the throws seem to flow on their own. But even though I was a passable Uke, I faltered as a Tori and my last move for Uchi-Mata was a disaster. The mistake was quickly noticed by the judges and one of them walked past asking his colleague loudly, "What do you think of this pair?" The quick reply was, "Well, just barely..." (ギリギリ).

I was disheartened and thought that both of us would be disqualified from the rest of the test. But apparently there were others who were much worse and we stayed on for the next round - the random bouts.

The group of 60 candidates was divided into two sets. The fights took place one at a time and the the members of one groups had wear red ribbon markers on their waist. When the fights started, I was struck by the ferocity with which the teenagers attacked - it was so very different from the sparring at the club! Fouls were aplenty - there was so much of kicking, jabbing, and poking that the referee was busy calling the fights to order.

I was called for three bouts - the first was with a bigger and heavier opponent; the next two with teenagers of similar or lesser weight. I lost the first one very quickly and held on for a while longer for the other two before the opponents were declared "ippon!" (winners). My partner, thankfully, did much better - he was a clear winner for one of his three fights. After the fighting rounds a few of us "runners-up" were called in to demonstrate a set of three throws each.

By now it was 12:30PM and we were told to wait for the results. After a while everybody was called in and one of the elders read out some names - about a dozen candidates who were told that they had not cleared the test and that they could collect a reimbursement of Yen 2000 downstairs. The rest - and that included our pair - had passed!!   :)

Each of the successful candidates now received a calligraphic quotation, the certified test booklet and a set of forms. The forms were mainly for depositing the certification fees which turned out to be much, much bigger than I had anticipated for the first level (sho-dan) -- Yen 19,000!!   :O

So from my experience, the black-belt qualification is more about technique, team-work and etiquette than aggressive fighting capabilities. Your attitude and conduct during the entire test-session is, no doubt, more important than the triumph of winning or the anguish of losing a couple of bouts.

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Summary of Costs:

• Annual club membership at Tsukuba-U - Yen 3000
• Test fees at Tsuchiura Dojo - Yen 6000  (Yen 2000 is reimbursed if you fail the test)
• Certification Fees - 1st Level (Sho-dan) - Yen 19,000; 2nd Level - Yen 14,500; 3rd Level - Yen 18,000; 4th Level - Yen 24,000; 5th Level - Yen 37,000

Paper-work:

• Before the test - One application form and one dojo-tournament-record  booklet (in Japanese) to be filled-in and submitted before the test
• After the test - 3 documents - one application form (blue, in duplicate); One 'reccomendation' form and one postal-remmitance form. After making the payment, the first two forms have to be mailed to the certification centre within three weeks. 

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REFERENCES / LINKS

What Does a Black Belt Really Mean? (Neil Ohlenkamp in JudoIndo.com)
http://judoinfo.com/bb.htm

Nage-no-Kata on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGsFfVtos_c

Nage-no-Kata at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nage-no-kata

Nage-no-Kata - neat illustrations (page is in French)
http://www.leguidedujudo-jujitsu.com/KATA.htm#Le%20Nage-no%20kata

RELATED NEWS:

108 school judo class deaths but no charges, only silence - Fatalities since '83 highest rate in any sport; brain injuries abound (Japan Times 26 Aug. 2010) - http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100826f1.html

"Over the 27-year period between 1983 and 2009, 108 students aged 12 to 17 died as a result of judo accidents in Japanese schools, an average of four a year. This is more than five times higher than in any other sport. About 65 percent of these fatalities came from brain injuries. This is clear evidence of a dangerous trend in Japanese schools."

TNT Redux

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What a coincidence:  the Two-Nation Theory shares its acronym with an all-time-favorite explosive compound...Both are the fruits of human ingenuity but the damage caused by the former, political TNT surpasses anything that can be produced in the labs.

Take the tragedy unfolding right now in Kyrgyztan. Over 200,000 Uzbek minorities are being hounded out of the Ferghana valley in southern Kyrgyztan. Seeds of yet another long-drawn conflict are being sown and a relatively peaceful region will soon be exchanging notes with Tito`s Yugoslavia, Paul Kagame`s Rwanda, Saddam`s Iraq, Suharto`s Indonesia and, of course, British India.

How is it that TNT gets so easily replicated? Some folks like to blame the former imperial powers for creating `artificial` boundaries that disregard cultural and ethnic differences. The origins of the ongoing Indo-Pak conflict are traced to the `divide and rule` policy instituted during the British Raj; the problems of Africa are linked to the European imperialism and the problems in central Asia are called Stalin`s Harvest.

Perhaps it is easier to seek the simplistic comfort of blaming others - especially when the bitter truth lies somewhere within.

Take the case of the festering Indo-Pak conflict, where the K-issue is merely an excuse for a battle of ideologies - one that stands on TNT and another that denounces it. 

I have often wondered how the Pakistanis explain to themselves the obvious contradictions of TNT while trying to explain the vicious sectarian and ethnic conflicts within their own country. Ali Sethi has recently come up with an interesting article in the New York Times, titled `One Myth, Many Pakistans`.

Sethi starts off with a school-essay he once wrote on TNT, and of learning a completely different account of TNT in `a secluded college library in Massachusetts` -

Here I learned that it was devised in the 1930s by a group of desperate Muslim politicians who wanted to extract some constitutional concessions from the British before they left India.


The Muslims of India, these politicians were saying in their political way, were a “distinct group” with their own “history and culture.” But really, the book told me, all they wanted was special protection for the poor Muslim minorities in soon-to-be-independent, mostly Hindu India.


But the politicians’ gamble failed; they were taken up on their bluff and were given a separate country, abruptly and violently cut-up, two far-apart chunks of Muslim-majority areas (but what about the poor Muslim minorities that were still stuck in Hindu-majority areas!) that its founders (but it was a mistake!) now had to justify with the subtleties of their theory.


It was like a punishment.


...But the idea was kept alive and made useful: first by a set of unelected bureaucrats, then by generals, then by landowners, and then by generals again.


...The Two-Nation Theory, confined so far to political slogans and clauses in the Constitution, now went everywhere: it was injected into textbook passages (the ones I would reproduce, with new words and emotions, in my exam) and radio shows and programs on the one state-run TV channel. And it branched out, becoming anti-Communist (to attract American money), anti-Shiite (to attract Arab money, given for cutting Iran’s influence in the continent), anti-woman (to please the mullahs) and still more anti-Ahmadi (to enhance the pleasure and power of the mullahs).

The Two-Nation Theory was dynamic, useful, lucrative.

There seems to be a method to this madness -- first the power-brokers nurture `distinct groups with their own history & culture`, and then watch helplessly as the Frankenstein`s shove their creators aside and stomp out of control.

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LINKS / REFERENCES -
 
One Myth, Many Pakistans - Ali Sethi, New York Times, June 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13sethi.html?pagewanted=1

Stalin's harvest - What lies behind the violence in Kyrgyzstan, The Economist Jun 14th 2010
http://www.economist.com/node/16364484?story_id=16364484&source=features_box_main

Weed Troopers

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At the University of Tsukuba, most of support services are contracted to specialized firms - security, maintenance of scientific & office equipment, elevators, plumbing, laundry, vending machines, eateries, etc., Nothing unusual or extraordinary...

But there is one set of unique specialists who make their appearance once or twice a year -- the "Weed Troopers. Dressed in overalls, helmets and bandannas these guys wield special equipment, not only for moving the tall grass and weeds but also blowers and  rakes for cleaning up.

How much do they get paid? What do they do for the rest of the year?...I'm yet to find somebody who can give me the answers.

Nasty looking blades...

Blowers and hand-held trimmers

Moving equipment of assorted sizes...

Work in progress...

Done in 30mts.

Seichel

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An interesting new word - Seichel.

It is Yiddish for wisdom, but it means more than that: It connotes ingenuity, creativity, subtlety, nuance.

According to Jeffery Goldberg,“Jews have always needed seichel to survive in this world; a person in possession of a yiddishe kop, a ‘Jewish head`, is someone who has seichel, someone who looks for a clever way out of problems, someone who understands that the most direct way — blunt force, for instance — often represents the least elegant solution, a person who can foresee consequences of his actions.”

After the recent botched raid on Mavi Marmara, the very notion of seichel lies in shambles.

However, the good news is that amidst the throng of jingoistic Israeli`s celebrating the widely denounced military action in international waters, there are sensible folks out there who foresee the wider repercussions of this blunder...

It is such a relief to see contrarian views coming from Israel itself, as well as the Jewish diaspora worldwide -


`GAZA FLOTILLA DRIVES ISRAEL INTO A SEA OF STUPIDITY`, Gideon Levy, Haaretz

On the Disappearance of Jewish Wisdom, Far Out at Sea, Jeffery Goldberg, The Atlantic, 31 May 2010

`CHOSEN, BUT NOT SPECIAL`, Michael Chabon, New York Times, 4 June 2010

LOST TRIBE - Are Israel`s Battles Costing the Country its Soul? , Ehud Eiran, Newsweek, 5 June 2010

Takemitsu's Music

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I just came across the works of Toru Takemitsu...and the 'power of silence'.

Sounds so profoundly soothing, and at times, so deeply disturbing that it is hard to believe it was created by somebody who was never formally trained in any form of music!

Links:

Six-Part Documentary on Takemitsu's Soundtrack (YouTube)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EgfDya9CGc&feature=related

BBC Documentary: Greatest Composers of the World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdGyACQTe6k&feature=related

Wikipedia - Toru Takemitsu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tōru_Takemitsu


The Got-to-hear list:

Forest String Orchestra

Kwaidan (1964) - Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
Samurai Rebellion ( ) - Masaki Kobayashi

Youth of Japan (1968) - Masaki Kobayashi

Tokyo Trails (1982) - 1 hr documentary by Masaki Kobayashi...just 9 minutes of musical score!

Black Rain (1989) - Shohei Imamura

Under the Cherry Blossoms (1975) - Masahiro Shinoda

Himatsuri (1984) - Mitsuo Yanagimachi

Grasshopper & the Ant

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The FT columnist, Martin Wolf has come up with the all-time-favourite Aesops fable to explain the ongoing "global financial crisis".

In this version, ants are Germans, Chinese and Japanese, while the grasshoppers are American, British, Greek, Irish and Spanish.

Ants produce enticing goods grasshoppers want to buy. The latter ask whether the former want something in return. “No,” reply the ants. “You do not have anything we want, except, maybe, a spot by the sea...”

In the end...

...the leader of China’s nest tells America: “We, your creditors, insist you stop borrowing, just as European grasshoppers are now doing.” The leader of the American colony laughs: “We did not ask you to lend us this money. In fact, we told you it was a folly. We are going to make sure American grasshoppers have jobs. If you do not want to lend us money, raise the price of your currency. Then we will make what we used to buy and you will no longer have to lend to us.” So America teaches creditors a lesson from a dead sage: “If you owe your bank $100, you have a problem; but if you owe $100m, it does.”


The Chinese leader does not want to admit that his nest’s huge pile of American debt is not going to be worth what it cost. Chinese people also want to go on making cheap goods for foreigners. So China decides to buy yet more American debt, after all. But, decades later, the Chinese finally say to the Americans: “Now we would like you to provide us with goods in return for your debt to us. Thereupon, the American grasshoppers laugh and promptly reduce the debt’s value. The ants lose the value off their savings and some of them then starve to death.


What is the moral of this fable? If you want to accumulate enduring wealth, do not lend to grasshoppers.

The story is obviously an over-simplification. But it has provoked comments that are even more interesting.

...................................................................................................

Full Article:

Wolf, Martin (2010), The Grasshoppers and The Ants - A Modern Fable, Financial Times, 25 May 2010 - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/202ed286-6832-11df-a52f-00144feab49a.html

Japan's Population Dilemma

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Finally an article that brings out the dilemmas and Hobson`s choices linked to Japan's plunging population growth:

Japan’s Phony Solution - The half-truths about immigration, Paul J. Scalise, NEWSWEEK, Apr 30, 2010

Exerpts -

Japan’s population has peaked. A downward turn is expected to follow, reaching close to 100 million in 2050 and 45 million in 2105. That means fewer workers paying fewer taxes to support an already expanding army of senior citizens. With social security, pensions, and interest payments on the national debt occupying more than 50 percent of Japan’s national budget in 2009 (up from 19 percent in 1960), the government, sooner or later, will face a decision of crisis proportions. Does it raise taxes sharply? Cut benefits drastically? Go deeper into debt? Or throw open the doors to young foreigners to restore balance between workers and retirees?

...Highly skilled, high-wage immigrants present their own problems. Feldman’s Japan model assumes that the average immigrant would be less productive than local hires because of different languages, work habits, traditions, and educational needs. And what’s never explained is how to attract the “right” immigrants and assimilate them in the first place. Right now, Japan’s average compensation per employee (adjusted for purchasing-power parity) is 36 percent lower than in the U.S. and 15 percent lower than in the euro area, according to the OECD. Worse, monthly cash earnings have been falling slowly for the past decade. If Japan wants to attract doctors, nurses, and engineers, and keep them, it needs to pay them more. And therein lies the rub. Is it really worth it in the long run?

Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare estimates the fiscal cost and benefits of an influx at three different stages of an immigrant’s life. In stage one, when only single youths are admitted, the government gains more in tax payments than it pays in benefits. In stage two (with spouse) and stage three (with spouse and two children), the benefits paid by the local and central governments far exceed the tax revenues. If 500,000 migrants were to enter Japan in stage three, the ministry estimates, the net loss would become a whopping ¥1.1 trillion, or about $12 billion.

..............................................................................................................................

REFERENCE - 

Japan’s Phony Solution - The half-truths about immigration, Paul J. Scalise, NEWSWEEK, Apr 30, 2010 http://www.newsweek.com/id/237213

Summer Fauna

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An attempt to identify folks that creep, crawl and fly about in Tsukuba University...

Snake-in-the-grass with a bite (or peck) that went right through the skull. Most likely to be a rat-snake (scientific name - Elaphe carinata yonaguniensis; common name - Yonaguni-Syuda).

Links:

• Jap-Rep: Encyclopedia is Japanese Snakes -  http://homepage3.nifty.com/japrep/snake/namihebi/elphe/text/eyonasyu.htm
•  Snakes of Japan - http://homepage3.nifty.com/japrep/snake/ejaphebi.htm
• Wiki - Japanese Rat Snake -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Rat_Snake

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 One on the fist and about a dozen inside. "Dango Mushi" is apparently the current favourite with kindergarten kids - at least until the bigger beetles make their appearance.

• English common name - Woodlouse or Pillbug (because it can roll itself into a perfectly round "pill" when disturbed)
• Scientific name - Amadillium vulgare

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 Strikingly colorful bird, eyeing the photographer with cautious disdain...

This one turns out to be Japan's "national bird" - the Green Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus versicolor)

...and the dour looking female.

.................................................................................................... 

yet-to-be-identified

 

??

 

??

 

??

Understanding Tech Progress

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I spent almost the entire day today trying to understand one chapter of one book. Covering just 40 pages in a day may sound like a lazy way to spend a Sunday but then the book in my hand was Joel Mokyr's classic, "The Lever of Riches" and the chapter  - Understanding Technological Progress.

The question being discussed was something that intrigues me to no end - How and why did the West come to dominate technological progress for the past two centuries?

 Mokyr starts by rubbishing the old adage - "necessity is the mother of invention" by pointing out that historically, innovation has never been something that could be be turned on or off in a demand-supply scenario. The demand for faster, labor & capital efficient ways of doing things has always been there but that did not lead to a supply or speedy adoption of a technical superior alternative.

 According to Mokyr, invention & innovation is born from a complicated mix of factors that 'on the aggregate level determines the propensity of a member of a society to invent and that makes others want to adopt his inventions'. These are -

• Life Expectancy: If your life is short (and hard) you are less likely to defer gratification
• Nutrition: What is often described as "laziness" is really the result and not the cause of poverty and malnutrition. For instance, IPDS (infant protein deficiency syndrome) permanently cripples mental development, especially among the lower ranks of society - slaves, peasants and labourers.
• Willingness to Bear Risks: If individuals consistently overrate their chances of success (optimistic bias) it offsets the inherent bias to under-produce technological change (because social benefits typically exceed private benefits).
• Geographical Environment: Abundance or scarcity of natural resources (coal, iron-ore) does not automatically lead to tech creativity.
• Path Dependency: The view that tech change primarily depends on its own path (David, 1988) works nicely in some case but not in others. In England mining triggered innovations (mining > struggle with water > better pumps > more accurate boring machines & tools > steam/water power ) or the effect of the shipping industry on Holland (ship-building > rope & sail making > wind-driven sawmills > provisioning industry). But, on the other hand, even though the wheel was invented long ago (500BC-100BC) the camel came to replace wheeled transport in Middle East and North Africa.
• Labor Costs: Availability of cheap labor delays adoption of labor-saving technology but there are numerous examples to the contrary.
• Science & Technology: science aims at comprehension but tech aims at utilization.Until 1850 technology came first followed by the scientific explanations. Even for the past 150 years the majority of important inventions, from steel converters to cancer chemotherapy, from food-canning to aspartame have been used long before people understood why they worked.
• Religion: Religion as a socio-political force did seem to have an impact on the incentive to innovate. The Hindu brahminical doctrine "held that promotion to a higher caste was possible through reincarnation if an appropriately resigned and obedient life was led" was a fiendishly clever and almost failure proof incentive to protect status quo. (Here the pathetic story of Ekalavya also comes to mind)
• Values: In most ancient societies (Greeks, Romans, Jews), it was better to be brave or wise than to be rich. The more wealth is measured in terms of positional goods relative to material goods, the less attractive tech change will look.
• Institutions and Property Rights: Institutional change is usually at the centre of events. For tech change to be effective and sustainable, the authorities must relinquish their direct control over the innovative process and decentralize it...it creates the opportunity for the innovator to enrich himself through property rights and public recognition.
• Politics and the State: The dilemma is that `if you want to realize the potential of modern technology you cannot do with the state, but you cannot do without it either`(North, 1884). Only when strong governments realise that technological backwardness itself constituted a threat to the regime, as in the case of Peter the Great`s Russia, post-1867 Japan, and, to a lesser extent, Napoleon`s France, did they decide to intervene directly to encourage tech change. Another reason why politics matters is that tech change is notoriously subject to market failure...free-market system left on its own is unlikely to produce a desirable level of innovation. Tech progress requires above all a tolerance towards the unfamiliar and the eccentric (Goldstone, 1987)....the qualities that make people tolerant also makes them more receptive to new ideas (Cipolla, 1952). The archenemy of tolerance and pluralism is conformism...widely observed phenomena such as tradition and social inertia become understandable if conformism is assumed to be part of human behavior.
• War: Societies that were creative in making clocks, guns, ploughs and spectacles were also good at making tribuchets, guns and mane-of-war.
• Openness to New Information: Human history is full of examples of societies holding others in utter contempt and despising people who look different, spoke a different language or believed in a different God....Europeans learnt from the Arabs who did not return the favour...Europeans appreciated knowledge irrespective of source; Asian cultures, with the exception of Japan did not. Typical of the European approach was the great Leibniz, who implored Jesuit traveling to China "not to worry so much about getting things European to the Chinese, but rather about getting remarkable Chinese inventions to us; otherwise little profit will be derived from the China mission". Chinese missions, on the other hand, (which started before the Europeans ventured out) was to demonstrate the wealth & glory of China to the barbarians by means of lavish gifts...
• Demographic Factors: There is apparently a link here (larger population > larger markets > better division of labour), but then, again, it worked the other way too.

 In India there is still a strong undercurrent of that decadent mindset (some kind post-colonial complex?) which pulls in the opposite direction by chauvinistically insisting that everything worthwhile (literally from "zero") originated in India. However "Openness to New Information" is a factor that seems to be slowly correcting itself in India.

The bigger worry is in the area of  "Values". In most places India continues to be a society in which those who are educated do not work (physical labor) and those who work are not educated. The "inarticulateness of the productive masses will thwart the diffusion and adoption of new technology in the unlikely event that it emerges"...    :(

Banking & Finance: The Tide Turns...

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For a long now it had been assumed in the English-language media that the word "world" was a synonym for the so-called Western-democracies. As mentioned in a previous note, it had become so commonplace to refer to all the other regions in the world with reference to this self-proclaimed "center" that it seems difficult to imagine that the Middle East, East and Far East could also have an opposite, Asia-centric reference.

When the bully-pair of Uncle Sam and his poodle needed an excuse for taking over the oil-fields of Iraq, they declared that "the world would not tolerate WMDs in the hands of a tyrant like Saddam Hussain".

For decades now it was assumed that this "world" had all the right answers to problems being faced by the rest of humanity. Institutions created under the Bretton Woods Agreement - IMF, World Bank and the UN - would coax, nudge and bully countries into making Structural Reforms which would speedily 'privatize and liberalize' their basic institutions - banking &　finance, health-care, education, public utilities. It was, of course, an unmitigated disaster for many poor countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. A group of countries that acted contrary to the IMF & WB  "reforms" were to be feted later as Asian Tigers who emerged from the East Asian Miracle!

More recently, When the sub-prime mortgage crisis in USA unraveled the banking and financial system in USA and Europe, financial papers kept referring to it as the "Global Economic Meltdown" until a little bird pointed out that absolutely no crisis - let alone a meltdown - in the Emerging Markets.

The latest Economist now points out that the banking and finance sector from these markets have moved from the bantam-weight to the heavyweight category. China's two largest banks are also the largest in the world; Companies from Russia, Brazil and India are fast closing in on the largest Western financial firms; demand for credit is growing much faster than GDP; domestic savings is driving investments..."these counties were all on a journey where the ultimate goal was a fully privatized system that looked like banking in America or Europe. The crisis has changed everything dramatically...now governments are playing a proactive role to ensure that money keeps flowing into the economy"...

The tide is slowly turning...and I'm lovin' it!


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REFERENCES:

* The Economist, May 2010: Special Report - Banking in Emerging Markets
http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_story=7c085acd0bd7831f642ee311d3d5c1bb9d737abd&rf=bm

* Democracy Now, April 1, 2009: Noam Chomsky on the Global Economic Crisis 

Chomsky explains the double-standards quite nicely - 

It is striking to see the difference between the advise that the Westerners are following and compare it with the instructions being given to the third world -

1. First pay off your debts (to us)
2. Privatize (so that we can pick up your assets on the cheap)
3. Raise interest rates (to slow down the economy)
4. Let the population suffer (to pay us back)

The USA does just the opposite...we lectured the third-world on free-trade and we choose to nationalize (the too-big-to-fail principle). It nothing but protectionism. Here is the instructions for you, the poor people, and here are the policies for us - the rich people.