ESPN Adds A Much Needed Nice Touch

ESPN has added a cool new navigation feature on its front page. Instead of clicking on the sports to go to that particular page, a mouseover event gives the user a neat little dropdown box, listing all the key links for that page, hence saving a step. Take a look:

I visit ESPN multiple times a day, so this is a welcome step. Cool thing is that the dropdown box also displays your favorite teams for quick access to their respective pages. Nice design touch, ESPN!

Why Lady Gaga Is A Superstar!

Lady Gaga is on the cover of the September issue of Vanity Fair.

I presume this is what she "really" looks like, without the excessive make-up, outrageous costumes and teased-up hair. I honestly never seen her in a "normal" way.

In spite of her overpowering flamboyance, I love her music. She's pure pop. Closest thing we have to a superstar since Madonna, who Lady Gaga shamelessly emulates, from style to sound. Like Madonna, Lady Gaga is a product of the dance club scene, where she absorbed countless hours of disco-inflected music. It is this glue that binds her music together into high-energy dance anthems.

Is Lady Gaga a genius? These days the word 'genius' is used to describe anyone with a modicum of talent. Geniuses are defined by their uniqueness, as much by their eccentricities. In my opinion, Lady Gaga has both. Her skills as a singer, musician, and producers are so unfathomably great, that it's not much of a stretch to call her, well, a genius.

This is only my opinion, of course. I don't have to justify them to anyone.

What Lady Gaga has done, like Madonna before her, is she made dance music cool again. I've been a dance music fan since I first heard my first disco song in the late 1970's (Most probably the Bee Gees, but I can't remember the specific moment or song). The arrival of Madonna and Michael Jackson made the 1980's cool. Can Lady Gaga do the same for the post-internet era?

I hope so

A Reminder Why Air Travel Sucks

Whether or not his actions were justified, Steven Slater has become the poster boy for our collective disgust with air travel. The problem with air travel is not just the airlines, which is a given, but passengers, who demand too much for too little.

For me, anyway, air travel should be a simple affair: get me from point A to B safely and on time; don’t lose my luggage (especially if I pay for the privilege); no need to feed me or slake my thirst (airline food sucks anyway, and I can bring my own bottle of water); and no need to entertain me as I can either read a book or listen to my iPod.

Other than that, I will gladly pay the stated fare plus fees and taxes to fly wherever I want.

Libertarians Are True Believers In Small Government

I don’t often listen to conservative talk radio: I find them to be mendacious, the hosts to be total jerks and repetitious, but I especially save my contempt for the people who call these shows, claiming to know what they’re talking about when they're not; most of whom are total idiots, mere mouth-breathers, in my humble opinion.

One so-called conservative caller made the spurious claim that libertarians believe in no government at all, whereas conservative believe in small government. Libertarians are not anarchists! We believe in the rule of law as much as conservatives (probably more), which require specific institutions to carry them out—which, of course, is enshrined in government.

And since we’re on the topic of small government, libertarians can claim, unequivocally, that they, not conservatives, are the true torchbearers of small government. As we have witnessed, from Reagan to both Bush presidents, conservatives (and liberals) have increased the size of government through a combination of profligate spending, burdensome regulations, and limiting of civil liberties.

For all intents and purposes, conservatives have abandoned small government altogether. Is it any wonder that libertarian ideas are gaining wider currency in the Republican party? It’s time for conservative to walk in the wilderness for awhile and think about what a small government-type is.

How Toy Story 3 Is About Freedom

The libertarian Adam Smith Institute opines that Toy Story 3 is an animated allegory on the pitfalls of socialism. I never thought about Toy Story 3 in stark political terms, but I’ll be damned if it’s not true!

However, there are more movies that harp on the evils of capitalism. One clear cut example is Chicken Run, an animated film about a group of chickens plotting to escape from the clutches of an evil farmer, who is bent on turning them into chicken pot pies in order to maximize profits. The chickens, acting collectively (like good Marxists), manage to thwart the farmer’s plans and fly the coop, so to speak. On the surface, it is a fun little movie, but the underlying theme is more insidious. On this score, Toy Story 3 is a welcome antidote.

Whatever the political themes, both films are a joy to watch.

The Art Of Reading: Take It Slow

A very interesting article in the Guardian about the benefits of “slow reading":

So are we getting stupider? Is that what this is about? Sort of. According to The Shallows, a new book by technology sage Nicholas Carr, our hyperactive online habits are damaging the mental faculties we need to process and understand lengthy textual information. Round-the-clock news feeds leave us hyperlinking from one article to the next – without necessarily engaging fully with any of the content; our reading is frequently interrupted by the ping of the latest email; and we are now absorbing short bursts of words on Twitter and Facebook more regularly than longer texts.

Which all means that although, because of the internet, we have become very good at collecting a wide range of factual titbits, we are also gradually forgetting how to sit back, contemplate, and relate all these facts to each other. And so, as Carr writes, "we're losing our ability to strike a balance between those two very different states of mind. Mentally, we're in perpetual locomotion".

People were reading less even before the boon (or curse) of the internet. All the internet has accomplished is to accelerate the process, turning most of us into a gaggle of professional skimmers. Defenders claim more can be read in the same amount of time. In essence, volume is king. Time, valuable as it is, is to be commoditized, its benefits maximized.

I’ve suffered from this malady for a long time. I use to believe that I needed to cram my head with all the knowledge that I could get my hands on in the shortest possible time. I realize now how much time I wasted with such nonsensical thinking. I learned that acquiring knowledge for the sake of acquiring knowledge is pointless.

Knowledge needs purpose. What that purpose is depends on the individual: it could be internal, external, or both. For me it is a bit of both: internally, for self-improvement; and externally, so I can better understand the world. And the only way to do that is to process the knowledge. And this takes time. Skimming bypasses this process all together.

We need people to think, not just consume.

[via arts & letters daily]

Reading Update Cuz I Have Nothing Else

I haven't written anything in awhile so I thought I post a reading update. As is my habit, I'm reading several books at once. This time, however, the volume is much higher and the selection a bit more eclectic:

• The Best American Crime Writing: 2004 Edition
• The Best Technology Writing 2009
• The Death of Achilles
• The Secret World of American Communism
• The Red Flag: A History of Communism
• Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
• The Best American Science Writing 2009
• e Squared: A Novel
  
• The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classical Guide to World Literature, Revised and Expanded
• The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World
• Spies of the Balkans
• Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

This should cover me till the end of August; but at the clip I’m currently reading, I might finish much earlier than expected.

It's All AQ Khan's Fault!

In this angry editorial, the Nation accuses the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) of discrimination against Muslim countries, specifically Iran and Pakistan. The focus of the editorial's ire is the recently concluded civil nuclear agreement between Canada and India.

Pakistan's anger is misplaced. Pakistan's treatment can be attributed to the actions of one man: Abdul Qadeer Khan. Google for details. Suffice it to say, Pakistan, through Khan, sold nuclear technology to anybody who wanted it, as long as the price was right: North Korea, Libya, and Iran. No wonder the NSG is so suspicious of Pakistan!

In addition, why does Pakistan seek these nuclear deals when its patron -- China -- will give Pakistan whatever nuclear technology it wants? Sour grapes would be my guess.

It's all about status. Pakistan delusionally believes that it is an equal to India in all respects: hence what India gets, Pakistan should automatically get. This is all nonsense, of course; and the reasons are obvious.

No Justice For Bhopal Victims

Naturally, the Indian media has come down hard on the recent verdict of eight former Union Carbide executives for their involvement in a chemical leak in Bhopal that resulted in the deaths of thousands and injury of countless more.

I’m not going to quibble about the light sentences the former executives received, this is not the point of this post. What I would like to talk about, however, is how the Indian government betrayed the victims through its inactions.

First of all, that it took 25-years to reach this verdict is mind-boggling. I know justice in India is a very slow, creaky wheel, but even by its own standards, India’s judiciary system has outdone itself! This is a classic example of justice delayed is justice denied. And on top that, such weak sentences! One wonders why the courts even bothered.

Second, the Indian government did not have the victim’s interests at heart when they settled for a paltry $470 million from Union Carbide. This was the 1980s, after all, Nehruvian socialism was still in vogue yet after hectoring both the United States and Union Carbide, it settled for mere peanuts. I have no doubt, in my mind, corruption played a part. Key players were paid off in exchange for indemnity.

The shame of Bhopal and its outcome should be put in proportion, and the Indian government should get the lion’s share of it.

ADDENDUM: Perhaps the victims should sue the Indian government since it failed -- through shear criminal negligence -- to protect its citizens. The multi-billion dollar settlement should come from its coffers and not from Union Carbide, or the United States, who, in my opinion, acted in good faith.

Faisal Shahzad is Pakistani Taliban

The Pakistan Observer claims the Times Square bomb scare was a hoax - and Faisal Shahzad is a dupe - and the whole thing is a conspiracy (which includes India) to malign Pakistan. The thing is, Pakistan's wounds are mostly self-inflicted; there's no need for the United States and India to rub salt in them.

I would consider the Pakistan Observer to be a dangerous newspaper, but the writing is so bad, and the analysis so superficial, I strongly believe people who buy it use it for reasons other than self-edification.

Cute Baby Picture #2

Looks like there is another Linus in the house!

Trailer: Salt

Salt, starring Angelina Jolie, looks really, really good:

Cute Baby Picture #1

Here is my niece Sarika in a device of some kind:

Another Chechyan War in the Offing?

It's really nice when terrorists owe up to their acts of terrorism, like this Chechen fellow:

Chechen rebel leader Dokku Umarov claimed that he personally gave orders to attack the Moscow subway this week, according to a Chechen rebel Web site. [CNN]

Usually terrorists remain faceless and speechless, letting the imagination take hold on what they look like and meditate on why they did it. The attacks on the Moscow subway system, it seems, was a simple act of revenge, with a challenge to Moscow to "bring it on", a phrase made famous by President Bush.

Will Moscow "bring it", so to speak? Given that they wrecked Chechnya twice already, another drubbing is in the cards. Russians are well-known for their cruelty and their lust to blow everything in front of them -- men, women and children -- to smithereens.

Google: A Simple Choice

This whole China-Google troubles is rather irritating in that choices, for Google, are rather simple: comply with the law and make money in the world's biggest online market or leave the country and keep a clean conscience.

China is not a democracy. We know this. China does not respect, which we in the free world, call human rights. We know this. Yet the expectations for China are the same as a democracy. It's an incongruity that seem to be overlooked by some critics. China is a sovereign country, whose laws we may not like but nevertheless must comply. We would expect the same of any Chinese company operating in the United States.

That Google is wringing its hands over the matter is just drama to me.