Only 3 hours late flying back home and a pitstop in South Bend for refueling. Fun!
The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
I just finished plowing through The Forever War by Dexter Filkins. It is a first-hand, journalistic account of the wars in Afghanistand and Iraq. It is raw and "on the ground", unlike much of the coverage that is/was depicted in the news (especially TV). It is a real page turner and reads more like fiction. Filkins’ style is laid back, unpretentious and concise. For me, it was an especially interesting read, because it was a look back at a lot of the events and people that I had read about over the past five years (e.g., Chalabi, Sistani, Bremer, Abu Ghraib, Falluja, Sadr, etc.) This book is not a book of facts or history, but a single person’s memoir of what took place and how the "on the ground" experience stands in stark constrast to what we all saw on the daily evening news. Highly recommend this!
Mumbai Attacks and Muslim Burials
Interesting that local Muslim leaders in Mumbai are refusing to have the Islamic terrorists buried in the Muslim cemetaries. They are going so far as to say that they will protest if the government forces them to bury the terrorists in their cemetaries. Perhaps this is a bit of political grandstanding, but it does show that Indian muslims want to project themselves as distinct and different than the Islamic terrorists.
Link here.
Obama
Obama wins! Who would have ever thought that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama would be the President of the United States. The ripple effect of this is going to be so fundamental to the social and political fabric of this country. He, in the truest sense of the word, epitomizes hope and change. This is a strong signal that the US people have sent to the world. After 8 years of carnage by the Bush administration, the people of the US have signified that change is at hand. Some skeptics would argue that he is just a politician and that the system is too big for him to change. This view is one that underestimates his mere presence in the highest office of the land.
He will undoubtedly be held to a higher standard than his predecessor and there will be divisive racial politics to deal with. But Obama is above all of that and can handle it with dignity and aplomb as has been witnessed by his campaign over the past 2 years.
Last year when I was in Australia and after watching Michael Moore’s movie Sicko, I began to really wonder what was holding me back from emigrating to a country that placed the aspirations of the masses over the interests of a select few. While visiting India and talking politics with old friends, I could only share in their criticism of US foreign policy and the catastrophe of the Bush administration. Now, with this election, I feel redeemed and no longer think that fleeing the US is the answer. As I grow older, I also am developing a stronger sense of nationalism and Obama does indeed contribute to that. Lastly, yesterday evening when it looked like Obama would win, I told my 4 year old son, "You know what an Obama victory means? It means that even you, someone named Dhruv Mahendra Rao, could become President of this country." What a changed and better world we live in now.
Airport Security
Schneier hits it on the nose in this post about how there are 2 classes of infractions for things that should not be brought on to an airplane according to TSA. Basically, there are those items that will get you arrested if you try to bring them through security (e.g., gun, knife) and there are those items that will simply be thrown away (e.g., water bottle, lotion). If the rule is to have any teeth, then there should not be these 2 classes. Instead, irrespective of which class of item is brought through security, they should both be equally punishable or not at all.
Redacted – The Movie
I just got done watching Redacted while I was stuck at the airport in Minneapolis trying to get home. The movie was reasonably good and of course politically charged. While watching it I was wondering how some who view this movie would think that it is biased and "left wing". However, if this movie approximates the truth of what is taking place in Iraq, then how is politically biased? Some people will argue that this movie only depicts "one side of the story in Iraq" and portrays American troops in Iraq as barbarians. They then argue that there is a dearth of movies that show all the good that American troops are doing. But the norm should be that American troops do good. The kind of barbarism that is depicted in the movie should is not acceptable even if it is offset by a lot of "good". Those who think that a lot of "good" offsets a little "evil" have a warped sense of political calculus and is a nuance that I simply do not see.
Ben Stein’s Speech
Ben Stein delivered the closing keynote speech at CiscoLive2008 last week. When I first learned that he was delivering the speech at this technology user conference, I was rather surprised. Aside from his "15 seconds" of claim to fame from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I was unsure of why they would select him. Perhaps just for comedic relief.
Recently, Stein has been in the news because he is the narrator of the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I have not yet seen the movie, but from what I have read, it is about how Intelligent Design advocates are persecuted by the scientific community. It suggests that ID is on equal footing as science and that ID proponents are being singled out for their views. When I see the movie, I’ll have more to comment about it.
Now for some comments about his speech. First of all, he seemed like he was sick or down with the cold/flu. He drank 3 cups of hot tea during the presentation and made a Sr. VP of Cisco get him refills and insisted that he have tea with the teabags he had brought… mind you, this occurred while he was on stage in front of 5000+ people. He made several offensive comments in my opinion. He stated that the press/media is misleading the American public by playing on our fears. He stated that the economy is not as bad as it really is; that the Iraq war is not as horrible a failure as it really is; that the earth is not suffering from global warming, and so on. This is classic conservative view that the media is comprised of elitists who are out of touch with "reality". So according to Ben, everything is hunky dory and we should just continue with the status quo. He also made some offensive comments about Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Doesn’t he realize that this conference was a global event and that there may be some Iranians in the audience. This just showed his poor taste and hubris.
A very suprising and poor choice of a speaker for a user conference. Hopefully, next year will be better.