In the Dying Light

Re: # 180

raman mian,

.......... inferiority complex is good because it makes you strive to better yourself .......... denial is a horrible thing because it makes you hang on to silly customs and cultural ``values`` that keep you clad in a loin cloth, with red paint on your forehead and squatting on the railroad tracks ........... it seems that a people`s degree of ``backwardness`` is directly proportional to their ``pride`` in the local culture - that is why the people of baluchistan are still living in caves, the african american is stuck in the ghetto and the american indian is stuck on a reservation ........... in any case, there is nothing more disgusting than watching a madrasi eat rice with his hands even though he might call his mama mummy and his pa daddy and knows a panini from a reuben .........

Re: #178 by myself

[....We call our parents Mummy and Daddy instead of Mataji and Pitaji and call our regional movie Industry Bollywood. What more can you expect? .....]

By ``We``, of course, I mean most educated folks in our subcontinent. I, of course, or anyone else in my family, would never dream of calling our parents ``Mummy`` or ``Daddy``.

Re: # 176
[ however, i am against teaching history of any kind because it doesn`t serve any purpose - it is better to stay focused on the present and future rather than getting all worked up about what happened thousands of years ago]

I had to do this it was too good to resist.

`` Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. ``
-- Georges Santayana

I believe the correct statement was more akin to ``If a man forgets his past , he is condemned to relive it.

Re: 175
Jang, I don`t like Bose speakers. I think they are priced too high for their performance. I can get speakers that are as good for less money. I think they spend more money on their advertising than on their commercial speaker research. But you should see the research they do on car stabilisation systems etc. It`s amazing what they have in their labs.

#170 by hamidm2

[......... but i do find that people from the less developed world are rather insecure and feel it is necessary to run around in leopard skins and dhotis extolling the value of their culture and the contributions their gandpas made to mankind ......... kids in india will jump up excitedly and tell you that gopinath krishmurty invented the zero and that gandhi jee invented the spinning wheel ...........on the other hand kids in the us, for example, wrongly blame benjamin franklin for inventing school and couldn`t care less if calvin klein invented blue jeans ...........]


My dear hamidm,

If you have to take a dig at me, I`d appreciate it if you did it directly.

The reason you do not find Americans trying to prove the contributions their grandpas made to mankind is because they are talking to you, a Paki. It is the same reason why Indians would not be trying to prove the contributions their grandpas made to someone from Ghana or Congo. Also, we tend to compare ourselves with the common American because they are white, while the reality is that the common American should be compared to the common Indian. The common man in India who is driving an autorickshaw is just as unconcerned about their grandparents` contributions to humanity. If you had this conversation with someone from Yale, Harvard or MIT, you will find that they are more aware of their grandparents` contributions. And then there is the issue that since we are less developed, and ``squatting on railroad tracks``, we tend to be more defensive when people like you suggest that the Hindu achievements are just like the claims made about the Quran - WHICH IS WHAT STARTED THIS CONVERSATION ANYWAY.

In any case, your assertion is yet another example of the inferiority complex that has beset some of us ``less developed(?)`` folks. We call our parents Mummy and Daddy instead of Mataji and Pitaji and call our regional movie Industry Bollywood. What more can you expect?

Re: # 170

Hamidm Sahib:

I think you will enjoy this 12 minute movie on Call Center:

http://www.callcentermovie.com/movie/movie.html

Anil

Re: # 174

dost,

..... it is always good to hear from you and i do agree that pakis have a rather warped sense of history ............ however, i am against teaching history of any kind because it doesn`t serve any purpose - it is better to stay focused on the present and future rather than getting all worked up about what happened thousands of years ago ......... there is absolutely no value in reliving the past - all it does is cause all kinds of problems ....... history has always been a tool in the hands of ambitious and murderous men like hitler, milosovic and osama .......

#173 chanakyaniti is prolly taught in PMA as a course in baniya mentality..he is afterall machiavelli of india.

anyhoo, indians absolutely OWN rock, no rock music or concert is possible without bose speakeres. while marconi corporation (out of uk) is near backrupcy and being purchased by Huawei for a few yuans, Bose Corp is proudly still a privately held company, at no risk of being bought by the chinese or dubaiians.

hamidm2, nasah:

You mind if I put in my 2-cents here?

I view societies somewhat like trees. For a tree to be strong and healthy, it needs to be nurtured by fresh air and sunshine, but it also need to have strong roots. It can develop different branches which can all bear fruit. A really strong tree, such as the Indian Banyan tree, is even capable of developing roots wherever the branches go. The Jewish Diaspora survived and prospered because it had strong roots as does the European, Chinese and Japanese societies. The Indian society has similar strong roots.

I think that one of the reasons why Pakistan has so much problem finding a true identity is not that it is not open to new inventions, almost every modern invention finds place in Pakistan, even in Madrassas, but because it insists upon ignoring its roots. Even moderate Pakistanis would rather trace their roots to the African bushman than to the land to which they belong. Nobody seems to have any serious problem with the fact that their history is presumed to start with the arrival of foreigners in their land. It is like the American natives saying that their history started with the Pioneers landing in Massachusets. Even white Canada has now starting teaching its children that Canadian history started with the natives and not with teh arrivals of the White Man. In Pakistan, even the native has fully accepted the history of the colonialist and every Pakistani knows a lot more about the history of his conquerors than of his own ancestors - even those who do not claim that they are descended from those conquerors.

Re: # 171
Why is it that you did not know this? I would have thought it would be necessary to know these things. After all Punjabi is descended from Sanskrit roots and is spoken in Pakistan. I`m sure knowledge of Panini`s grammar should exist in the Universities.
My Uncle who was in the Indian Army, once told me long ago that Kautilya`s Arthashastra was read in Pakistani Army Officer`s courses. I don`t know if this is true. Would anybody be in a position to verify this?

Re: # 170
Hamid
I`m not so sure that it`s just true of people in the less developed world. It could be a simple issue of people with something to prove. I know quite a few Americans and their children who are aware and proud of their countries development to literature, science etc. I say countries because there are aware of where their fore-fathers came from. Now I see this more with Jewish people over here than other races perhaps because they, like ourselves still see themselves as a little different and, secondly in the 20th century in the US, they have been the largest contributors to the sciences and music, despite the fact that in the early years Universities were actively against their admittance.
I don`t think that is bad. It does provide something to strive for. It`s better to strive for excellence than make peace with mediocrity.
After all conversations between Al-lah and Gabby or the Sage and Urstruly are much better to read than some of the drivel that goes on here.-))

and here I was the ignorant one who thought that phonetically Panini sounded more like an Italian opera singer.....than a Hindu phonetic gramarian of yore -- who was born in Pakistan but died in India or born in India died in Pakistan -- around 450 BC..

....without him Backus could not have concieved the computer language......!

Re: # 168

anil mian,

..... actually you aroused my curiosity and i googled panini to find out that he was from attock which is sixty or so miles from my hometown .......... but of all the interactors from the wrong side of the border i do read yours and alephnull`s stuff with some seriousness (even though he appears to be an unrepentant shiv sanik) - more often than not you two have something to say .............

......... but i do find that people from the less developed world are rather insecure and feel it is necessary to run around in leopard skins and dhotis extolling the value of their culture and the contributions their gandpas made to mankind ......... kids in india will jump up excitedly and tell you that gopinath krishmurty invented the zero and that gandhi jee invented the spinning wheel ...........on the other hand kids in the us, for example, wrongly blame benjamin franklin for inventing school and couldn`t care less if calvin klein invented blue jeans ...........

#167 by kaalchakra

[Ramanujan

The web is infested with people selling snake oil. Among them, drowning others in ``information`` is a common and time-honored tactic.

That`s why, it is better to say a little and be believed, than to say a lot, and be dismissed. ]

Those who argue not to find out the truth, but only to win (Mantolives, Tahmed32, masadi etc.), will dismiss it anyway.

And those who are actually curious, will read and find out the truth.

Re: # 146

Hamidm Sahib:

I am a big fan of your sense of humor.

Von-Nauman`s model of computing machinery created in 1940s, I believe is the basis of computer architectures. Students (you can these classes too) take a theoretical computer science class at Stanford, or MIT, find out about Panini`s formal grammar for the grammar. I have the research book titled ``Panini : the first formal grammarian`` (or something like it). This was published by MIT about 25 years ago. It is a very interesting reading, if are interested computing technologies.

Kaalchakra is correct that Panini was born somewhere in Pakistan (the name of the place slips my mind right now) near Afganistan border. Pakistanis can certainly claim him as their own.

Anil
We all wish MIT and Stanford were in the third world, would you not agree?

Ramanujan

The web is infested with people selling snake oil. Among them, drowning others in ``information`` is a common and time-honored tactic.

That`s why, it is better to say a little and be believed, than to say a lot, and be dismissed.

#163 by hamidm2

We in India have a problem that is very different than faced by westerners. People in India are so used to the languid weather and fertile lands, that they never felt the need to develop the sciences for material necessity (unlike in Europe, all scientific discoveries in India had been mainly for religious purposes). until it was too late, and the population had exploded. Add to that a spiritual bent of mind, and you have a distinctly non-materialistic tradition. Also, because India is such a mix of diverse culture, different segments of the population developed in the sciences and education in general differently.

But all that is changing now. If you watched the Daily Show videos I posted recently, India has turned confident at the grassroots level. Because of that, it will be very difficult to stop India`s progress. Because the impetus is bottom-up, not top-down. Indians have also turned materialistic (regrettable to some extent), and I think that an economic juggernaut is building. I predict that in the coming years the majority of fundamental research will be by the Indians and Chinese. Just like today Americans feel low-tech and a step behind when they meet the Japanese and the South Koreans, the day is not far off when that will apply to the Indians as well.

Keep watching. You will see.