Orson Scott Card's Ender Quartet

This is a magnificent science fiction saga, consisting of the refreshing, surprising and thrilling "Ender's Game", the masterful "Speaker for the Dead", the cerebral and somewhat contrived "Xenocide" and the inevitably underwhelming conclusion, "Children of the Mind".

Card deals with ethical issues constantly in this series, not as an after-thought or a side-thread, but as the main theme. The science is not the focus, and at times it's not even very credible, but that doesn't affect the soul of the story. There is a lot of spiritual under-current in this story as well (a bit too much for my taste).

This might quite possibly become the reference manual for humankind when we eventually run into extra-terrestrials, just like Clarke's works were for the Apollo mission.

Prop 23: nice try, Big Oil!

I am voting NO! on Prop 23, the proposition that wants to "suspend" AB32, the climate change legislation passed in 2006, until unemployment abates.

A slightly closer look at the proposition reveals it as a dishonest attempt by special interests (big oil companies) to effectively repeal AB32. The chances that unemployment will dip below and stay under 5.5% for four successive quarters any time soon is close to zero.

Moreover, it is also potentially shooting our own feet if we throttle the only growth industry in the state at the moment. California's green tech is getting a lot of investment flowing in because of the policy environment created by AB32 and other related laws. Going back on that now is a potential economic self goal.

I am not a tree-hugger. I have my doubts about the efficacy of cap-and-trade. But such sneaky propositions funded by mega corporations which stand to gain by them is not the way to address that.

No! on Prop 23.

Prop 25, 26: Majority Rules; Minority shouldn't have veto

I am going YES! on Prop 25 and NO! on Prop 26.

Prop 25 would change the legislative vote requirement to pass a budget from two-thirds to a simple majority. This should help resolve the habitual gridlock every year in passing a budget. Now, the minority party (i.e. Republican) hold the budget hostage. The majority party spends all the time figuring out how to buy a few votes from the other side. Deals are cut, horses are traded, taxes are cut, new spending written in to serve some special interest, and the people lose.

Prop 25 will not help balance the budget. It will not help create new revenues. It will not stop politicization of state budgeting. But it will probably help us take a step in the right direction.

There is legitimate concern that Prop 25 effectively hands control to the Democratic party in California's budget process. That may be true. But at least we'll know who is responsible for a bad budget.

The opponents also allege (and this is controversial) that Prop 25, despite what it claims in BOLD, will allow for new taxes to be passed with only a simple majority. Mm, so what?

Prop 26 on the other hand is clearly a special interest scheme. "It would raise the vote threshold to two-thirds in the Legislature for any fee that benefits the public but does not directly pay for a service the payer receives. (One example: the fees charged to companies that deal with hazardous waste, which help pay to clean up all toxic sites.) Local lawmakers would have to get two-thirds voter approval for such a fee, an unnecessary impingement."

So let's try making passing a budget bill easier, and see how things go. YES! on 25. And let's not make the gridlock worse: NO! on Prop 26.

Prop 20, Prop 27: who draws the lines?

In 2008 the voters of California passed Prop 11, which took away the job of (re) drawing electoral district lines from the legislators, and handed it to a "citizen's commission" consisting of 14 non-political, qualified Californians.

The commission is still the process of being formed. They would start work next year based on the 2010 Census data.

But even before Prop 11 took any meaningful effect, some people want to repeal it all (Prop 27) while others want to add to it (Prop 20). This is ridiculous.

Prop 11 only affected state level districting, leaving the line drawing for US Congress with the state legislature. Now Prop 20 wants to move that responsibility to the citizen's commission as well. Whereas Prop 27 basically wants to restore pre-2008 status quo (while conceding a bit and adding some constraints on the legislature on how they can slice and dice districts).

My initial reaction was, don't tamper with the 2008 decision even before we see the results. So reject both 20 and 27. However, I learn that in the last decade, the geographical distribution of California's population has undergone a very significant change (Central Valley and the South have grown a lot, while the coastal areas have stayed put or slightly shrunk. Also, California's proportion of population to the total US population may have actually shrunk, and so California may lose a seat or two in the US Congress). This makes Prop 20 interesting. I'd like to reduce the chances of politicians redrawing these lines based purely on political and self-serving considerations. (For example, the democrats who are in control of Sacramento would surely get rid of any strong republican district).

So, I am going to go with a YES! on Prop 20 and a NO! on Prop 27.

Prop 19: What were they smoking?

I like the idea of legalizing marijuana. If it is legal, I might even try it sometime. But I have decided to vote NO! on Prop 19. Here is why.

But first a quick summary of of what the Proposition (from the voter guide)

• Allows people 21 years old or older to possess, cultivate, or transport marijuana for personal use.
• Permits local governments to regulate and tax commercial production, distribution, and sale of marijuana to people 21 years old or older.
• Prohibits people from possessing marijuana on school grounds, using in public, or smoking it while minors are present.
• Maintains prohibitions against driving while impaired.
• Limits employers’ ability to address marijuana use to situations where job performance is actually impaired.

Arguments in favor:

• people are doing it anyway. let's stop the hypocrisy
• prohibition has not only failed, but has given raise drug cartel violence (mainly in Mexico), corruption, wasted police resources which could be better used to combat other real crime
• there is allegedly a $16 billion dollar illegal marijuana economy in California, but the state doesn't make a dime from it. legalize, regulate and tax it. we need to money for our schools and our infrastructure
  
• if alcohol can be controlled, so can marijuana (now, minors can allegedly get their hands on pot more easily than alcohol)
  

Arguments against:

• it's a flawed proposition. even if you like legalizing marijuana, Prop 19 is not the way to do it
• prop 19 permits drivers to smoke pot until the moment they start driving
• it doesn't provide any objective standards for determining what constitutes "driving under the influence"
• it prevents employers from taking action against a stoned employee until after something bad happens
  
• employers may not be able to comply with federal drug-free workplace standards, and so California may lose billions of dollars worth of federal contracts
• school districts may lose billions in federal funds
• if such a flawed proposition becomes law, given California's strong law against legislative tampering with what voters enact through ballot initiatives, we may be stuck with a very bad law
  

From what I understand from reading the actual wording, the second against argument above seems disingenuous. Here is the actual wording:

11304. Effect of Act and Definitions.
(a) This act shall not be construed to affect, limit, or amend any statute that forbids impairment while engaging in dangerous activities such as driving, or that penalizes bringing cannabis to a school enrolling pupils in any grade from kindergarten through 12, inclusive.

I am no lawyer, but I think the above clearly allows for other existing or new statutes to stipulate standards for what constitutes "impairment". I can see a law being passed that specifies a legal limit for THC content in blood, for instance, similar to blood alcohol content.

That no such scientific recommendation exists now is a good argument. And that's one of the reasons I don't like this proposition. We shouldn't pass a law that allows millions of people to drive while stoned, and then try to figure out safety standards after the fact.

(BTW, why only K-12 schools? Is it ok to smoke pot in a childcare center?!)

The other argument that swayed me is the one about employers inability to preempt accidents caused by employees potentially impaired by pot. The relevant words in the proposition are these:

No person shall be punished, fined, discriminated against, or be denied any right or privilege for lawfully engaging in any conduct permitted by this act or authorized pursuant to Section 11301. Provided, however, that the existing right of an employer to address consumption that actually impairs job performance by an employee shall not be affected.

This is a stupid way to write a law. (What were the proposition writers smoking?)

Given these two serious flaws, and the last bullet in the against list above, I think it's not a good idea to make Prop 19 law. Perhaps, the better way to legalize pot is by legislation, where it is possible to continually refine the law and plug loopholes.

And then there is the question of what the feds would do. May be as long as the democrats control the white house, they will let this slide (even that is doubtful, given Eric Holder's stance). But once there is a republican president in the white house, we can be sure the feds will be all over the California "sinners".

So for now, legal pot will have to be but a pipe dream.

Prop 21 : Car Tax for California State Parks

With less than a week to go for the election day, I have a lot of homework to cram! To get the feeling of accomplishment, I've made up my mind about the first vote I am going to cast, which is an easy one for me.

YES! on Prop 21.

Proposition 21 would establish an $18 annual vehicle license surcharge to help fund state parks and wildlife programs.

The key features of this prop are:

* flat $18 fee per vehicle per year (larger commercial vehicles exempted)
* no parking fee at State Parks for vehicles that pay this fee
* all monies dedicated to State Parks and wildlife conservation
* explicitly mandates stopping taking money from general fund for State Parks

Quoting from KQED's Prop guide:

"Supporters of the initiative say creating a specific fund for state parks is the only way to preserve them. They also argue that firmer funding for the parks is a good investment because the 80 million annual visits to California's parks boost jobs and increase tax revenues in local communities.

Opponents say that the state is playing a shell game, taking money already set aside for park maintenance and pushing it to the general fund while creating what they say is actually a new tax. The owners of about 6.8 million smaller commercial vehicles would have to pay the fee and some opponents say this creates a hardship on small business owners."

It is true that if the California legislature were working well and passing balanced budgets, this sort of "ballot box budgeting" will be unnecessary at best, and disruptive at worst. But I feel the State Parks are too important to be let to go to waste until the politics cleans up itself. There is no question that something like State Parks upkeep would be the last thing to get funded (even though the opponents of Prop 21 claim that it's fully funded now). The governarator threatened to close down 200 of the 270+ parks just last year! So I am all for this band-aid, which all but the really poor can easily afford.

I also like the idea of dis-incentivising driving by way of taxes, and using the money to do some environmental good. For those who argue that it is unfair to make everyone pay for the parks, when not everyone uses them, I have this to ask: I don't use California State Route 20; I don't want to pay for its maintenance; can I pay less taxes this year?

So stop complaining, and take a hike in a State Park. Soon, you don't even have to pay a parking fee!

Washington Rules

Washington Rules, America's Path To Permanent War by Andrew J. Bacevich

A scathing critique of America's self anointed role as the savior and policeman of the world, and the American military-political nexus that keeps this sham alive out of self interest.

Bacevich traces the development of the American "national security" institution since the beginning of the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs, through the Vietnam era, the first Gulf War and now the Bush and Obama wars. He spares no president since Eisenhower. He saves his most stinging criticism for JFK. By the time he gets to Bush, he settles for mockery. He ends with expressing his deep disappointment in Obama for just continuing to abide by the sixty year old Washington consensus.

He defines what he calls the "sacred trinity" of American foreign policy as : global military presence, global power projection and global interventionism. The trinity exists to implement the American credo, which "summons the United States - and the US alone - to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world. He illustrates with a quick review of America's wars in the last 60 years, how this credo is bunk. He shows how America's philosophy of interventionism has always made matters worse, and how the "semi warriors" in Washington never learn from mistakes. In fact, mistakes get erased from memory by revisionist history telling.

He makes an emotional appeal to turn away from the path of permanent war, which is leading the nation into financial ruin, while making it more and more insecure at the same time. He recommends a 'new trinity':

* the purpose of the U.S. military is not to combat evil or remake the world, but to defend the United States and its most vital interests
* the primary duty station of the American soldier is in America
* consistent with Just War tradition, the US should employ force only as a last resort and only in self-defense

Bacevich also argues that "all volunteer" nature of the military is one of the causes for the problem: by relinquishing their obligations and by not paying attention, the American people have let the powers to be to abuse the military toward furthering their imperialistic designs. He argues, if the people want to impose their will on foreign policy, they need to go back to viewing defending their nation as an obligation of every citizen.

If the impending "ship wreck of monumental proportions" is to avoided, the people must make the choice.

How Markets Fail

How Markets Fail : The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy

This is a lengthy book trying to generalize market failures. It is very informative : lots of 20th century history of economics is chronicled - Keynes, Minsky, Friedman and the Chicago school, Greenspan, what not. Of course, the goal is to explain the most recent financial market crisis. There is a brief description of the climax in fall 2008, but "The End of Wall Street" by Roger Lowenstein does a very thorough job of documenting that.

Cassidy's main argument is that free markets left to themselves (Adam Smith's "invisible hand") don't always work. What is perfectly rational from an individual’s point of view can result in a calamity for the market as a whole. The kicker is, the players (CEOs of financial firms, for instance) are forced to make such choices even if they recognize this peril. Prisonner’s Dilemma, basically. He calls this rational irrationality. That, and other issues like hidden information and bad incentives will always lead free markets to booms and busts, as Minsky pointed out.

Cassidy places a lot of the blame for the financial crisis of 2008-09 squarely on Alan Greenspan and his laissez faire (Ayn Rand) ideology. He dubs such faith in free markets as professed by the Chicago school (Friedman, et al) as “utopian economics”. Keynes, Minsky, et al, on the other hand are in the “reality based economics” gang.

As a history lesson on the economics of 20th century, this is a great read. The author being a journalist with background in economics helps. As a source for solutions to these issues, this book is a bit dubious - too much faith is put on governments to do the right thing.

whom to trust

the dilemma: there are some people (friends) whose intentions you know to be good, but can't be sure about their intellect or information. then there are those (public figures) whose intellect you know to be great, but whose intentions you aren't sure of.

The Value of Nothing

"The Value of Nothing - How to reshape market society and redefine democracy", by Raj Patel.

This book is about Socialistic Economics. Even if you think "socialism" is a bad word, you'll still do well to pay attention.

The popular explanation for the global economic crisis of 2008-2010 is that a few key regulations were missing to keep the markets from getting out of control. But Patel argues, the problem is more fundamental. It's a political problem. It's that our democracies aren't really democratic. We resort to the markets to make every economic decision for us. But are we sure the markets give the right answer? Patel says 'absolutely not'. Markets work only for the powerful. They get to make the rules (and the models and the policies), and they game the system to boot. Markets price goods and services based on the limited data they are fed in, and that's often very incomplete. That new cell phone is "free" for you, but it's far from free for the people in the coltan mining region of Congo. These people, especially the women, suffer great brutality: rape, torture, slavery and murder, in the hands of the military units that patrol these mines. Our markets do not price in such externalities. The markets don't give the right answer for these Congolese people, for sure.

What we have is an unfair and unsustainable economic system based on the Ayn Randish theory that markets know best. Patel argues for a "commons" based system of collective ownership (rights + responsibilities) of the basic resources of life (land, water, air,..). He believes that in this approach lie the solutions to our food, climate and economic crises.

Patel does seem to have a lot of affection for Marxism, and is greatly influenced by Karl Polanyi's ideas of the "double movement". He seems to be well traveled, and cites a number of examples from around the globe of grass-roots movements, mostly of the under-privileged, that have fought market forces and succeeded in establishing some sort of a "commons".

He also argues for a more participative model of democracy, and cites various examples from around the globe, where participation of the masses has made a great positive change in the quality of governance. He acknowledges the impracticality of this model for large populations, but it is still something too intriguing to ignore.

There are several examples of groups of repressed people organizing themselves democratically, and fighting for their rights. One such, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers made a particular impression on me, especially as someone who loves tomatoes.

The book is fairly coherent, with intermingled flashes of wry humor and passion, bordering on anger. It is well researched, well written and not longer than necessary. I learnt a few new things and most importantly, got to see the world from a slightly newer angle.

Dreams from My Father

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance - Barack Obama

No need to mention Obama's writing skills. His story telling is very engaging. I listened to the audio book, and he reads it fantastically: uses different accents (not always consistently, but enough to add a dimension); a must read to understand the man.

The Tipping Point

"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell

the author has hit upon one idea, that social phenomena may spread like viruses, small infections at first and a sudden epidemic when a certain "tipping point" is reached. well, it is just a theory. without bothering to do any original studies, he quotes various other studies and material (which is all quite interesting information, btw), he goes on to build a pusedo-scientific theory. it's pop sociology, good for entertainment, and not much more. as a book, it gets repetitive and disjointed after a while. i guess, he just wrote several New Yorker articles and bunched them together into a book

National Highway 45

If you wanted to take the road from Chennai to Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, you would take NH45. Until a few years ago, though, if you had wanted to do that, I would have thought you were nuts.

But upon being suggested this very thing by my brother, and seconded by couple of others, I braved it. The new highway lived up to the hype. Our taxi guy was able to consistently clock the Toyota Innova 90-100 kmph in bursts along the divided, well paved, toll road. The ride was smooth and the early morning weather was nice, though a bit too foggy to be scenic.

Well, scenery is not something you should be concerning yourself with, if you desire reaching the destination as well. For, you see, these lorry drivers like to fly a tight formation - they are flying fighter jets in their minds anyway. It's quite a trick getting ahead of one of these formations, not unlike getting through a Sicilian Defense in chess, I'd imagine.

And oh, did I mention that now we have lanes clearly marked, with reflectors and what not?! Advisories are posted all along, in English, to "Follow Lane Discipline". They seem to be mostly heeded, but you'd be doing your life expectancy a favor if you didn't assume that any vehicle ahead of you in your lane if moving along in the same direction as you! Because, some special drivers, though observant of the lane discipline, sometimes seem to ignore small details like the direction of the lane. During our 4 hour ride, we encountered a police car, a fully loaded lorry, a bus and a couple of motor bikes, all headed straight at us in our lane (on our side of the divider). The cop car and the lorry I can understand: they are the kings of the road. I don't understand what the bikers were thinking.

One thing that struck me was the amount of heavy machinery on the roads. Seeing even a single bulldozer in these places in the deep south is startling. But I saw dozens of them, not just near the big city, but all over. I saw huge cranes at work at construction sites. This is all like seeing an elephant when go on a drive on California Hwy 1.

Speaking of elephants, the customary sighting happened within 24 hours of landing here. It was my 3yr old's turn to be astonished: beyond the "huuuuuuuuuuugeeeee....!!!", he was lost for words upon seeing the local temple mammoth taking a stroll in front of our house. Surprises huge and small are around the corner all the time. Imagine the delight when a bunch of goats showed up at our door step at the appointed hour to devour the vegetable waste my mom saves for them. Not all surprises are pleasant though; especially not those huge "flying spiders" - i.e. mosquitoes!

Apart from mosquitoes, the other thing in abundance is human resources. You kind of notice this at the numerous toll stations along the NH45. Not only are the booths manned by humans at any hour, there are additional persons doing stuff like waving the incoming vehicle to a particular lane (even though there are functioning red/green lights to do that job), writing down the license place numbers, acting as a go-between between the booth guy and the driver, etc.

All said and done, we made it safe and sound out of NH45 and got home. Looking forward to 4 more weeks of India, especially as seen though the eyes of our 3 year old.

Fingerprints of God - but look suspiciously like the author's own

Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Full disclosure first: I am big Dawkins fan. But unlike Dawkins, I don't dismiss God, so my review of this book is not unfair.

It was good read: I learned about a few interesting science experiments and advances, that blur the lines between traditional science and faith. I appreciate the authors effort in doing all the research, and her openness in terms of sharing points of view she doesn't subscribe to. However I found her coming to conclusions (often slight variations of the same thing) that she wants to believe in, rather than what one would arrive at if one were to think critically. I also found her tone a bit arrogant, especially when she presumes she knows better than the scientists on how to interpret their results. It's also a very self-centered book, but she does admit it up front.

In summary: a good review of the state of the subject, but could be better presented if not for the authors bias.

The Last Theorem

The Last Theorem - Arthur C. Clarke

Sad that the grand master's last novel should be so disappointing. With almost no new ideas, the novel is a bit too long and a bit shallow. Except for a couple of instances, the main character's life is an idle romance: the authors sound out of touch with real people and real life. It's not to say the book doesn't have it's fine passages, but they are rare than you'd expect from Clarke.