the_unlettered_tellurian

Georgia just cropped up in my radar because of the extensive media reports about its ongoing skirmishes with Russia. Very interesting events happening out there, but I was in a bit of a quandary because of my lack of understanding of the history and politics (yes, there is a difference between the two) of the country.

I needed something that is not-too-recent yet not-too-old. Got a bunch of pages on BBC that were put up starting 2005, and seem to have been updated regularly (wherever necessary) after that.

1. A profile of the country.
2. A fairly comprehensive timeline describing key events in Georgia’s history.
3. Kind of an FAQ on Georgia-Russia tensions posted on 10th May 2005.
4. Another FAQ-style article on Georgia-Russia ties posted on 30th April 2008.
5. A very brief article on how the Rose revolution happened.
6. An article, Power games in the Caucasus, posted on the BBC news site on 7th May 2006.
7. A news article, dated 22nd Dec 2006, on Georgia agreeing to pay more money for Russian gas.

These were enough to give me a basic idea of the country and its historic relations with Russia…hope it helps other uninformed souls too.

Just finished watching Thank You For Smoking…again for the nth time…and again the predictability of the frames helped my mind waver off to something else…remotely connected to the movie…rather remotely connected to  the main character in the movie…sorry…remotely connected to the class of professionals symbolized by the main character in the movie.

I love the way Nick Naylor, the spokesperson for Big Tobacco in the movie, wards off any danger – no matter how remote – that could cause the slightest irritation to his benefactors. His arguments seem to bring down the sanest of reasons put forth by the smartest of people. He can complicate even the simplest of conversations, and make the most complicated of issues sound like they are the smallest of problems…”humanity should not even be worried about them!” is what you feel when dearest Nick replies using deceptively simple, yet carefully crafted, sentences to everybody’s “serious” questions.

His character suddenly reminded me of something written by Arundhati Roy in one of her essays (or was it a book?) titled Power Politics.

As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between language and thought. ‘Language is the skin on my thought,’ I remember saying to someone who once asked what language meant to me. At the Hague I stumbled on a denomination, a sub-world, whose life’s endeavour was to mask intent. They earn their abundant livings by converting bar graphs that plot their companies’ profits into consummately written, politically exemplary, socially just, policy documents that are impossible to implement and designed to remain forever on paper, secret even (especially) from the people they’re written for. They breed and prosper in the space that lies between what they say and what they sell.

This lady has some style…look how elegantly she describes these corporate creatures who make a killing by shoving us ordinary peoples as far away from reality as possible!

I just made a futile attempt at reading How a bubble stayed under the radar published on March 2, 2008 in the New York Times…very boring…

One great puzzle about the recent housing bubble is why even most experts didn’t recognize the bubble as it was forming.

This is not true. There were ample voices talking about the bubble. Just that enough people were not ready to examine the problem back then. Apparently a few hedge fund managers who understood it (Peter Thiel??) made a lot of money betting against the bubble too.

“I’d come to realize that we’d never be able to identify irrational exuberance with certainty, much less act on it, until after the fact.”

Excellent!!! If this is what the great Alan Greenspan has to say, we at least now know we don’t need “serious students of the markets” to hold such “responsible” positions. We just need someone who can communicate the problem “after” it has happened…err…sorry…make that “before”

If people do not see any risk, and see only the prospect of outsized investment returns, they will pursue those returns with disregard for the risks.

Now, that is something worth believing…we will continue investing in any future bubble (just like we did this time) until our dear business reporters decide to finally write a story on it. Unfortunately, all this writing happened way too late.

We have so many theories that explain the bubbles – information cascades, mimetic desire, bigger fool theory – we have enough of these. what seems to be clearly lacking is our ability to use these to control the bubble.

This is so boring…isn’t there anything better to write about “bubbles”, especially when the author’s credentials indicate he is a very enlightened being!

The Chinese government has always been known to be totalitarian in its approach to a whole bunch of things…but it surprises me how easily things can get hazy in our collective memory. A lot of people I talk to these days seem to have very vague memories of “how” totalitarian the Chinese authorities were (or should I say “can be”).

This 2006 video from PBS’s Frontline, called Tankman, should help you remember, recollect, or realize (depending on what state of neglect you are in) the past excesses of the Chinese Government… the one that is now in the news for its “Olympic” spirit.

Among other things, the program has some amazing footage of what actually happened in “Tiananmen Square” back in 1989.

In case you are too busy to go through all of the parts, at least spend some time on the last chapter of the video, which gives an idea of the extent of success the authorities have had in erasing such unpleasant incidences from their history, from the minds of their younger generations…hard to believe such levels of censorship can happen even in this “information” age!

Just finished watching The Bourne Ultimatum for the nth time…man do I need to get some better movies or what!

Anyways, coming back to the post… the more I watch the movie, the more I know what’s coming in the next frame, so the more I have started focusing on other things…and here’s what struck me suddenly.

Everything else about the CIA’s “firepower” seems ok, except for the amount of data that the agency is shown to have access to in the movie. I mean, look at it. the movie shows them as having not just good old physical access using ground support…they have been shown to have almost real-time access to almost any kind of electronic data… phone calls, emails, everything!

Is it really possible to have such high levels of electronic eavesdropping currently? Do agencies really have the computing power to compare all sorts of electronic transmission against a set of keyword-based alerts on a real-time basis? Also, do they currently have the authority to do such things? Across international boundaries?

Now that’s a whole bunch of nasty questions cropping up in my head…and i don’t think I can stop thinking about them till I find at least some answers…so…I guess I should start with some existing reference books.

It’s been a long time since I read that good old book lying on my bookshelf – Database Nation – think it should be a good starting point!