The Spoils of War

Wars can be addictive, and no film shows it better than The Hurt Locker. It places you straight into the bomb suit of Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), a bomb expert and squad team leader in Iraq in 2004. The temperature outside is 40 degrees and you are in a 40 kg steel-plated suit that makes you look like an astronaut. In front of you is a cache of powerful explosives that will flatten the entire city block if you fail to defuse it. Red wire, Green wire. Seconds tick by, strangers who are potentially the insurgents that planted the bomb, gather and point towards you, while a local takes a video of the entire ordeal, perhaps to upload on YouTube. That simple binary choice of two colours decides whether you are returning home or not.

A film that neither preaches pacifism, nor justifies military aggression, The Hurt Locker is about the men and women in the battle-zone who are neither “destroying the enemy”, nor protecting the values of liberty, fraternity and equality. They are there to save their buddies, so that all can go back alive, and not in the refrigerated locker, from where the film gets its name. The movie is less about war than the raw emotions of war that fascinate us.

James is recklessly addicted to defusing bombs, and is a genius at it. However, his recklessness puts Sergeant Sanborn and Specialist Elridge, his teammates, at unease. Sanborn is a responsible fellow who wants to go by the book, while Elridge just wants to go home alive. They are good, brave soldiers, but do not share James’ fascination and addiction to work.

The director Kathryn Bigelow, and the writer Mark Boal, have both been to the Middle East in recent times, and therefore have understood the issue very well. The camera angle, typical of the handheld type from the American TV series The Office, gives an air of documentary to the entire experience. The camerawork also successfully portrays mutual distrust between the Iraqis and American soldiers: the Iraqis viewing the soldiers as loathsome necessities, and the soldiers viewing every Iraqi as an assassin or a suicide bomber.

Without a proper storyline till the last half hour, the film follows the soldiers as they move around Baghdad doing their job. The tension that arises from one single wrong choice of wires can be unbearable at times. After all, people watch war films to see soldiers die in the hundreds, or thousands, not to see the hero save the day with his superpowers. The dialogues are what one would expect from a war film: quick and dirty, but cliché-ridden. There are only so many times you can kill the senior-ranking inexperienced desk officer and still expect the audience to be shocked.

Mid-west epidemic sees youth response

Paschim Paaila, a campaign launched by the Nepali youth in response to the diarrhoea epidemic in mid-western Nepal, organised an assessment and planning session in the Capital on Tuesday. The meeting analysed the experiences of the volunteers who had gone to the diarrhoea-affected districts.

Paschim Paaila was initiated immediately after the first outbreak of the epidemic in the first week of July, and has sent 63 volunteers to Jajarkot, Rukum, Surkhet, and Dailekh districts. The first team left for the districts on July 23 for a period of two weeks, and the second team left on July 29 for a week.

The volunteers shared their experiences in the districts and made their recommendations through five presentations. 

Dushala Adhikari of the team that went to Jajarkot said that poverty, chronic malnutrition, and lack of sanitation and awareness were the major problems in the area, and that the outbreak could not be controlled without checking those first. Ashok Kumar, a student who went to Dailekh, gave a lively presentation about the poverty and illiteracy in the region, and suggested that education would be the first step towards solving the problem. The absence of toilets in the region was also a major cause of concern.

Bhushan Tuladhar, director of Environmental and Public Health Organisation, said that it was the vigour and willingness in young people that had made a rapid response to the outbreak possible.

Paschim Paaila will send more volunteers to the epidemic-affected region. Apart from sending volunteers to the districts, the organisation has produced 20,000 bottles of water purifying solution.

How funny can WARS get

Take a heap of political satire of the British comedy Yes, Minister, add a pile of sobriety from the American television series The Office, and sprinkle all the expletives you have heard in an Eminem album. Let it simmer for a year in the presence of highly talented actors, and what you end up with is In the Loop, a comedy directed by Armando Iannucci that has won rave reviews from critics despite, and because of, its foul-mouthed language.

In The Loop is a satire about a possible confrontation of the U.K. and the U.S. with an unnamed middle-eastern nation, one which sounds like a typical oil-fuelled economy.

There are both pro-war and anti-war groups in the two countries, and the 106-minute long film is about how one side tries to manipulate and destroy the other, or the bystanders, to achieve its own end.

The crazy drama begins at Downing Street where Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), the British Prime Minister's press secretary, finds that a low-level Minister of International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) has done something he is not supposed to: he has taken a stand on a possible war in the Middle East by saying war is “unforeseeable”. The British government does not have a stand on the issue, as Malcolm explains to Simon rather oxymoronically, “War is neither unforeseeable nor unforeseeable”. Simon is given an opportunity to correct his gaffe, and ends up further in trouble by giving a pseudo-philosophical quote: “It is necessary to climb the mountain of conflict to achieve peace”.

On the other side of the Atlantic, however, both pro- and anti-war camps in Washington are in no mood to give in to the other, and both sides use the unknowing Simon shamelessly for their ends. The Americans are as confused about the war as the British, as an American General says in the film, “12,000 troops. But that's not enough. That's the amount that are going to die. And at the end of a war you need some soldiers left, really, or else it looks like you've lost.”

The story then becomes meandering, unpredictable, and at times, confusing. But the dialogues are so witty and eloquent that viewers won’t care what happens next, they’ll just be hoping for some more of the wit in the next scene. The actors convincingly get into the skin of the political hacks they are supposed to portray. Capaldi’s portrayal of Malcolm Tucker is eerily (or purposely) similar to the real-life gaffes of Alastair Campbell, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s press secretary

You will have to watch the movie more than once to understand the complicated interlinks. Plus, the fast-paced volley of witty remarks with wittier profanities will give you a tough time in keeping up with the intricacies of the plot. The film is not for those who revel in computer-generated special effects; rather, it is for those who pay attention to little details in the plot, and for whom, the dialogue is where the meat of the film is.

There is a lot to learn from this film. There is no grand scheme of things, just silly personal greed. No political act is a culmination of hard choices, but a result of adult-behaving-as-children trying to beat others in the race. And yes, all the politicians are blithering self-obsessed idiots. But then, that’s a cliché.

A good advice: If you are one to squirm at profanities, be ready to cover your ears for the entire film.

Haija in the Hinterlands

Ashok Kumar was impressed to hear that an international relief agency had been distributing aid in such a remote place. But the awe lasted only a few moments, as he soon learnt from locals they were selling medicines at double the price of pharmacists in district headquarters. He was not surprised. After all, he had already seen a health assistant drunk as a skunk at midday blabbering foolishly at the locals who came to seek advice for their children, children with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks and very loose bowels, who would probably die soon. 

Kumar had also seen people cut their nails with a sickle and children in the second grade who could not tell a Rs. 100 note from a Rs. 10 note. He hoped to see at least a toilet in the area during his eight-day stay. He did not. This was Dailekh.

“We had to wake up in the darkness of early morning to go toilet in the fields, and had to be careful not to step on places where others had already relieved themselves. When it rained, the human manure flowed around, and we could see how easy it was for the various water sources to get contaminated and why people fall sick so frequently. We only had to look at the thick gravy-yellow sludge in the low-lying puddles near the fields to realise how backward these places really are,” Kumar, one of the volunteers recently back from the diarrhoea-affected districts in the Mid-West, described the situation thus.

According to the World Health Organisation, 94 percent of all diarrhoea cases are caused by poor hygiene and sanitation. Despite this sound warning, the volunteers who went to the region felt that the state has focused entirely on the curative part of treatment, and not at all on the preventive aspects.

“There are mule-loads of medicines and Jeevanjal, but the government has still not realised that those wouldn’t be needed in the first place if people were made aware of simple things such as washing their hands and not drinking water directly from the Bheri River. They will be sick again, and more medicines and more mule-loads of Jeevan Jals will be needed,” Thurba Moktan, another volunteer, said.

Each one of the 63 volunteers who went to the diarrhoea-affected districts of Rukum, Surkhet, Jajarkot and Dailekh had a similar story to tell. The volunteers were part of Paschim Paaila, a campaign that began in the first week of July during the National Youth Assembly, where Roshan Raj Shrestha of UN-Habitat had told the participants about the Mid-West epidemic. Soon after, participants started discussing it at informal meetings. They wanted to do something more helpful than simply discussing the problem, and arranged for representatives from donor organizations to be present at the meetings.

Within three days, an assessment team was sent to check the ground reality. Soon, the 63 were already working in the remote Mid-Western districts, at least Rs. 650,000 in cash had been collected, and 20,000 bottles of chlorine solution to disinfect drinking water had been produced by the volunteers.

Of course, there were problems, but none too great. A government director in Surkhet helped coordinate with the government. Sheer determination on part of the volunteers allowed them to cover large distances on foot. They also had to watch out themselves, as Dushala Adhikari, one of the volunteers, fell sick after sipping water from a stream. She contracted diarrhoea, but recovered within a day.

Adhikari, in retrospective, feels her illness reflects the entire issue. “I contracted diarrhoea on the way and recovered within a day, while people around me were dying of the same disease. People ask how can anyone die of diarrhoea in the 21st century. They do not realise that those who are dying are not living in the 21st century. They are 300 years behind us in terms of resource and awareness.”

The movement is still not over. There are more teams who have been readied to go, and the campaign has received help from other organisations. But what matters most, even now, is that this is not the first, nor will this be the last, diarrhoea epidemic to hit Nepal’s remote districts. The problem needs to be tackled at the very root of the issue, beginning from awareness about the disease to tackling illiteracy and poverty. Until then, an organism that only irritates people in urban areas will keep killing thousands in villages.

Little Green Electric Machine

London has 900, producer Bangalore has 650, Kathmandu has 26. It comes in 2,000 customizable colours, and yet is always green. It can scurry around the narrowest of streets and save money while doing it. Fun, safe, comfortable, and cheap. That is how Reva, the only electric car in Nepal, describes itself in its brochure, not bothering to mention that it is also sexy, compact and trendy.

But among the 26 Revas on the streets of Kathmandu, only two are privately owned: by Kunda Dixit, the editor of Nepali Times, and entrepreneur Bal Krishna Joshi, founder of thamel.com. The reason: until the recent budget, a hefty 121 percent tax was levied on the relatively expensive car, making it grossly uncompetitive. At one point, the two-seater, which can accommodate two minors and two adults, cost an astronomical Rs. 2.2 million. Thanks to lowered taxes it can be had for Rs 1.29 million today, but the Reva still hasn’t been able to win over the hearts of the populace the way that the Maruti 800 has. “It is the taxes that make these cars seem prohibitively expensive. Right now, it’s mostly the foreign agencies that buy them, because they don’t have to pay taxes,” says Puran Rai, director of EcoVision, the sole dealer of Reva in Nepal.

It shouldn’t have to be that way, says Joshi, who is one happy Reva-customer. For him the Reva story was one of love at first sight. And it was not just about the looks either. The way that he waxes on about his baby, he’s talking long-term companionship, based on practicalities. “I wanted to be energy independent,” he says, adding that for him to wait in the long queues for fuel during frequent fuel shortages was just not practical. Despite the price tag of Reva—Rs. 2.2 million when he bought it four months ago—he is more than glad he made the purchase: “I travel a lot, probably more than 1,500 km a month, and it bumps up my electricity bill by only Rs. 2,000. Furthermore, it hasn’t broken down on me, and it is comfortable. I am very, very satisfied.” If Shrestha had instead opted for a Maruti800 with a respectable mileage of 15 km/litre, he’d today be shelling out Rs. 7,000 a month on petrol. Revving up his Reva to its full battery charge, on the other hand, consumes only 8 units of electricity. At Rs. 11 per unit, and 85 km per charge, the running cost is about a rupee a km. That’s less than half the costs a motorbike would run up. The overall running cost is probably what Reva had in mind when they made the claim that it’s a ‘cheap’ car. The savings add up. 

Extrapolate such savings to a larger scale, say a thousand cars, and the whole Reva pitch becomes more than mere hype. Bijay Man Sherchan, the chairman of the Electrical Vehicle Association of Nepal (EVAN), estimates that replacing 1,000 conventional engines with electrical ones would create a combined annual saving of Rs. 23 million, on maintenance, fuel, and tax. Extrapolate even further, and you’re talking green revolution.

But how do you sway the naysayers, who for example, pick on the Reva’s limited range of 80 to 90 km on a charge? Sherchan believes that 85 km is a very good range for an urban vehicle. A 2.5 hour-worth of battery charge is enough to have the Reva chugging along for 60 km at least. Considering that there are at least 6 hours of daily electric supply even in the worst of times, charging is not as big a deal as it’s been made out to be.

And even during the winter months, when the power outage problem is at its worst, says Rai, charging a Reva is as easy as charging a mobile phone or a digital camera. With a 220V high-frequency charger, the car can be charged from practically any 3-pin outlet. On top of that, if the government could only find a way to emulate some of the organisations that have taken the initiative to develop solar charging stations, the way that ICIMOD and GTZ have done, energy trouble for vehicles would be over. In fact, some donor countries are actually willing to help Nepal with such setups. The Japanese government had offered to help the government build several public solar charging stations in the country, but as with most ventures in the country, the ever-sticky problem of Nepal’s bureaucracy put paid to that.

Going green is not just a mantra used by treehuggers anymore, and indeed Nepal’s greening efforts outside Kathmandu Valley—the highly praised community forest programmes in the districts for example—are laudable. But the Capital itself has become a soot-stained, choking coop of pollution. Reva has already made its entry into the Valley, the owners are head-over-heels in love with it, and there are more than a few who are already ogling the babies. The government only needs to lower the tax on the car and find ways to get donors to fund the building of recharging stations, and many Kathmanduites will surely make the switch to green. If something like that were to happen, says Sherchan, that would help make the city cleaner and better, not just for us but also for our progeny. Reva, anyone?

Don't Laugh At Regina Spector

Regina Spektor is very, as the Rolling Stone magazine calls her, weird. Her latest album Far, a Billboard chart topper, is yet another reminder of how really weird the songwriter-singer can get. From her skepticism towards those cynical towards God in Laughing With to her ideas on what men and women want in Dance Anthem of The 80's, one never knows what she'll say next, or, for that matter, what she herself believes.

The singer, a Soviet born, is known for her anti-folk and anti-pop tunes. And does she go anti when she wants to! Far is a psychedelic, for lack of a better word, collection of 15 out-of-the-way songs-all written, composed, and sung by Spektor herself. Of course, a singer of Spektor's fame wouldn't want to stay inside the boundaries of limited understanding, so be prepared to hear catchy tunes with hip lyrics that don't, umm, really mean anything.

Spektor takes incoherence into new heights with this album. Folding Chairs devolves into dolphin noises, voiced by her, towards the end. Nothing of this is new for Spektor, of course, who has taken to beating chairs with drumsticks while playing the piano onstage during concerts. And that's another part of Spektor: the classical piano. Being a Russian-born Jew in New York, with a photographer father who was also an amateur violinist and a mother who taught music in school, classical music came as a heritage to her.

All reviews of Far can interestingly be divided into two categories: those written by men that call Spektor 'quirky' and 'weird', and the ones that call her 'cute', mostly written by women. Spektor is all of these, although her cuteness and quirks do not but compliment her artistic sense. The adaptive voice that she employs in most of her tracks obviously wants to overcome language through different accents and animal-impressions, and she has said she will probably learn a few languages for her next album. Wallet brings a unique twist to honesty, where Spektor sings about the simple act of returning a wallet to its rightful owner.

The album has been produced by four different individuals, each bringing their unique style to Spektor's vocals. Working with many producers gave her a chance to try untested compositions and experiment with non-sequential tracks. The tracks in the album have no cohesion, and there isn't a need for one as well. She wanted contrast in her album and she gets it done very well. Despite being a jumble of different sub-genres and styles, the album is not unkind to the ears.

All the tracks in the album are catchy, and the lyrics are thoughtful; though, at times, the lines end up being so philosophical that they don't make much sense. The entire experience is something new, though. Spektor has conceded that people sometimes think of her as 'kooky and crazy' and laugh at her, because she has a 'different voice'.

With this album, Spektor has moved from the popularity of the fringes to mainstream success without losing her special touch, thanks chiefly to one of her producers Jeff Lynne (who also produced Elton John and three of the Beatles). This major starlet will truly become a star when she finds a way to be more acceptable without letting go of what made her likeably different.

I will start blogging, from Email

I saw Zenee posting ALL her Original reports on her blog yesterday, so that the world may see her unedited. She will remain free from the interference in her writing, at least in her blog. So I will do this too, from today.

World of unrestrained reporting Here I come!!!

And BTW, if anyone's looking, BarCampKTM (bcktm09) was Wonderful! I wanted to do a feature story on it but due to some reason(editor) couldn't. If I had reported the event, it would have been AT LEAST 600. I understood everything. Poor Zenee is not really into the FOSS and OPen Source movement thing, so she probably didn't see the importance of the event.

Glib Glob

What happened when the farmer crossed the Pigeon with the Pig? The Swine Flew(Flu)! Get it?

Three dozen in India have died of Swine Flu, but the real intolerant swines who would have been the first ones to catch some horrible disease were the universe fair and just, are resistant than ever. It would have been fine if they were just resistant to diseases, but they are also resistant to positive changes, and other people's ideas.

The BJP, let me not keep you in Suspense. BJP stands for Indian People's Party in its translated form, but it believes that only hindu 'touchables' can be considered as '
People'.

Dont get me wrong, I dislike congressi populism just as much as I dislike BJP fanatism. And let me add that I am not an Indian. No I am not a Pakistani.

I dont know why I still have not gotten to the point. My point is Ma.Ku.Ne... You know him, our PM.

When last time I heard the presence of malarial bacterium in moon, I though the Xobloings of Yaraana had attacked. Xanadu has been relatively peaceful for millenia, and Zembla has not seen too many violent clashes either the Xobloings were to blame or Narnaians.

Dude, where did you get the car from, asked the very fat person with thin moustache and grisly hair.

As the title says, Glib, Glob, Glib Glob.

Why People Swim--Mystery Resolved

There is a reason earthworms come out of earth when it rains—water is a dangerous substance to be in. Sure, it’s good to drink it and bath in it, but go deep inside water, and no one knows your fate for sure. The earthworms, after hundreds of thousands of evolutionary wisdom that has taught them to keep the heck away from lots of water know this lesson well. Human beings, in their haughtiness and all of their so-called wisdom, don’t.

The swimming pool is the stupidest idea human beings have ever come up with. You get into a large puddle of water and flap your arms and legs around. You then try getting from one end to other, several times slower than walking, and come out feeling proud and strong. The swimming’s no match for the fishes, the panting no match for the dogs, and the struggling in water no match for a man drowning in the sea.

Perhaps people want to practice swimming in the sea in their own homes.  Since they cannot have their own sea, maybe they try to have something similar. But if that is the case, the idea is even more stupid, because swimming in a poor is nothing like swimming in the sea. A sea is salty, it has fish, it has wave, it has beach, it has ship, and it has motorboats that look like motorbikes. A swimming pool has a neither of those, so swimming in a pool to practice swimming in the sea is like reciting the Greek alphabet as a practice for uninterrupted recitations of Homer’s Iliad in original form. Nothing alike.

Maybe it is a form of entertainment. That I cannot believe because if it were so, no man would go swimming. Men know of much better forms of entertainment than stupid swimming, as anyone from a place with television and something to play on it will agree.

That leaves us with only one possibility—men swim to show women their bodies and their swimming prowess. Women swim because they think doing it will decrease their weight. They keep on doing it, only to realize that it’s not decreasing their weight even a bit. However, they are too proud to give up, so they keep on swimming and pretend they really enjoy it. Meanwhile, mean think it is stupid too, but they too pretend to enjoy it, since they want to prove that they don’t do everything for the women. AT one point the pretending becomes so innate that people actually forget that they are pretending to enjoy and think that they are actually enjoying swimming.

And that is how the swimwear companies make so much money.

Who becomes the philospher

I have been writing a lot of pointless fluff pieces for this blog recently, and my writings for the Post absolutely suck. I hereby make this promise: after leaving the post, I shall write lots of fun pieces, the kind I want to, for the papers, and submit it to them, whether the articles are considered worth publishing or not. I do not want to lose real content with this self-conscious stream, so here’s the actual stuff.

If philosophers are clever people, how come they are/were not filthy rich?

Or alternately, why is Donald Trump not a philosopher? He is rich, he is clever, and he makes decisions for himself. He also gives advice on how to live to other people, and does not believe in superficial appearance (see: Trump’s hair).

There should be a Who Will Become a Philosopher reality series to research how philosophers are born. The participants would come from a wide variety of vocations—bankers and poets, scientists and firefighters, clerks and dictators, all would share parts of their lives with the audience for once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win a billion dollars. They would be filmed all the time throughout the years, until the final challenge—to find the answer to the life, the universe and everything. That, or the right question to the answer ‘42’. If any participant committed suicide during the series, he or she would be disqualified. Because ghosts cannot be captured by conventional movie cameras.

The challenges would be real-life scenarios where the participants would have to make choices. For example, a participant’s mother and wife would both be drowning, and he can save only one. His challenge would be to answer the question—which one of them would probably make better food for him, and nag him less? Why? If his answer satisfies the judges, he would move to another round. Otherwise he would have to go on with his life without eating sandwiches before going to work. It’s sad, but that’s life.

Stale Mate

It was only last week that our leaders made a decision that is going to change the course of our history forever: they agreed to disagree about agreeing at the moment. Now they plan to have another meeting where they will decide whether they can agree to agree about agreeing, and that will be a great step toward getting out of the current political stalemate.

Which begs the question: Who on earth invented a word like stalemate? And why would anyone ever need the word? Are words like ‘deadlock’ and ‘impasse’ too bourgeois for our communist leaders and the English reporters, so that they need a word like ‘stalemate’?

Perhaps, stalemate goes along with our leaders because it has all the qualities needed for a communist revolution. First of all, it has the word stale, that says the person using the word is a supporter of a ‘People’s Revolution’. He/she would be willing to eat stale bread, hear stale news, wear stale clothes, chant stale slogans, and have only stale rights for the benefit of the party. Stale is a powerful word when used by a proletariat, and is favored by our communists.

The other part of the word, mate, tells you everything you need to know about communism, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism you ever need to know. Mate is friend. It is figuratively the opposite of ‘me’ or ‘I’. When a powerful leader or paper uses the word, it means the institution is denouncing individual selfishness in favour of all the mates, and wants a People’s revolution.

This makes sense. Who would not want a people’s revolution? To entice people with the mate (people’s) revolution and the slogan of Stalism, our leaders are trying to have a stalemate as long as possible. Long live stalemate!

Book Review: The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore

The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore is a great book, if you like melodrama and cheesy romance. As a historical biographical novel, it is perhaps one of the worst I have laid my hands on.

I shall begin by explaining that I am not completely convinced that everything Dubledore’s supporters have said is true. The circumstances surrounding his death are still suspicious, and there are several unexplained facts about The Battle of Hogwarts, which those involved have simply refused to clear up. I suspect there are some secrets that are being hidden, and that everything is not as it seems.

Having said that, I believe almost all of the facts presented to the public by the Hogwarts establishment are true. Therefore Reeta Skeeter is a hokum, who wrote the book immediately after the death of Dumbledore for cheap publicity and to perhaps stir controversy against him in favour of the Ministry.

Skeeter’s so-called research is laughable, since it has been contradicted by first-hand memories of several respected wizards. First and foremost, Elphis Doge, has made it clear that all the facts of the book are either hyperboles or outright lies. To quote him, “[the book] contains fewer facts than a Chocolate Frog Card”. Secondly, several of those interviewed for the book died mysteriously a few days after talking to Skeeter, raising questions not only about Skeeter’s veracity but also her motives. Thirdly, the lies have not been properly fabricated, and the true story according to Skeeter has several obvious holes that even her supporters have been unable. You always have to be suspicious of biographies that are completed in less than four weeks, no matter how accomplished the author may be.

The size of the book is bothersome too. Though 900 pages are not exceptional for biographies, these particular 900 pages are difficult to plough through because rather than telling what did happen, the book mostly hypothesizes what could have happened, and then extrapolates the results to prove the author’s points. Almost all of Dumbledore biographies are more informational and true than this one. The author obviously wanted to make a quick buck following the death of the celebrated wizard, so she spends more time in spinning outrageous tales than moving on with the story.

However, Skeeter must be given credit for telling a fine tale, albeit a false and defamatory one. Were this book a novel, and were the real characters, places, and events replaced by imaginary ones, this would probably be one of the greatest works of fiction of the decade. Perhaps, like several other books by celebrated wizards, her books could even be sent out to the Muggle world as fantasy. She could even seen as a competitor to Mirandaw Shawbeck, whose series of seven books based loosely the first seven years of Harry Potter’s life at Hogwarts became the bestselling muggle series ever, making her one of the richest British witch of our time.

For the storytelling, I give this book 9 out of 10.

For historical accuracy, and authenticity as a ‘biography’, it gets 2 out of 10.

If it were a fiction, it would be considerably higher, but this book gets an overall of 3 out of 10. Buy it if you are looking for a thriller, forget it if you are interested in history or Albus Dumbledore’s actual life. If you are interested in actual biography, Minerva McGonagall’s The Greatest Headmaster is a great read.

A problem with Liberal Arts

Everyone does not have same expectations. Some people want to become multimillionaires, some people want to be presidents and prime ministers, some people want to do social service, while most people want to do whatever the heck jobs their degrees will get them.

It is very confusing with liberal arts grads. They take a wide variety of courses—a semester in Greek poetry, another in the workings of a nuclear fission reactor, and yet another in the labor relations in post-perestroika soviet republics that have embrace democratic forms of governance. This makes them think they could be poets, nuclear scientists, sociologists, or whatever they want to be—they would only have to fill the form, and impress the interviewers with their wide world-view and their diverse knowledge in almost every topic that could popup during a conversation. Unfortunately, things do not work out like that.

Don’t get me wrong—I am really very interested in getting a liberal arts degree. But I understand a liberal arts degree cannot really compete with pre-professional degrees in technical lines, non-technical lines, and other lines. The only places libarts degree works are social organizations, government agencies, and dictatorial regimes that want trained foreign manpower working for them, but cannot find anyone from pre-professional schools willing to work.

People think liberal arts colleges are so great because they see a few people hitting it big, and attribute it to their liberal arts education. A friend has a brother who did his post-grad in Harvard, interned for a year at CERN, and is now researching in theoretical physics at Cornell. And he was a LibArts major. This sounds great, but not at much, when you also find out that a lot of his classmates at the same liberal arts college did not go to a field they wanted to, but instead took whatever jobs they were offered first, and inertially followed up in the same field.

The problem with liberal arts education is that there are so many possibilities and opportunities that it is too easy to take the first good offer you are given, and then become stuck with the job, or the field because you don’t want to, or you feel you cannot anymore.

Go LibArts!

Media in Nepal: The right, the wrong, and the messed-up--II

This is a continuation of the series of posts regarding the situation of Media in Nepal.
The Poor Papers - 2

Next came The Himalayan Times. The Very Rich Indian Bussinessmen in Nepal ( The Wadhwas, header by Mr Rakesh Wadwa) decided that it was time they invested into Print media. I understand there is a lot of intricacies behind the founding of this paper, but to simplify, they arranged the Press, got the license, and started churning out the paper. They later realised that having only English paper put them at a considerable disadvantage, since not many can read English in Nepal, and so started a Nepali newspaper, Annapurna Post

The problem with THT was, and has always been, the concept behind it. It is THE post selling english paper in Nepal, but its readers comprise mainly of Indian expats in Nepal and tourists here. It does not have a footing amongst Nepali readers it was expected to gain, but the influence it already has is enough for the Wadhwas. The paper is very out-of-touch with what is happening inside Nepal, and even casual first-time readers usually detect the very India-inspired design, and news content. The paper rarely publishes news items that are against interests of India, and has been known to have acted as the mouthpiece of the Indian embassy on several occasions. The spelling, grammar, and the tone of this paper are acceptable, but its very tone makes it an uncomfortable read.

Here I must mention the now-defunct Spacetime Today. Brought out by Space-Time Corporation, the cable company(not the space agency conducting hyper-galaxy travels), it came out almost immediately before THT was  out. It gained traction among the subscribers of the cable company, and soon started gaining popularity, along with its sister paper Spacetime Dainik. However, because of the lack of widespread popularity and internal(AND external) problems, the paper stopped publishing in about a year. Most staff working for the paper went to THT and Annapurna Post.