March 2004

Plutarch felt wistful around A.D. 100, when he wrote his wonderful Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans' - shrewd side-by-side comparative biographies of dozens of bygone political characters: Demosthenes and Cicero, for example, Caesar and Alexander. In "Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship", Jon Meacham, the No.2 editor at Newsweek, has written a handsomely Plutarchan study that weaves together the lives, characters and fates of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in the years of their wartime partnership. Most of the anecdotes have been told a thousand times, but Meacham manages to align the two giants in a way that makes the stories seem fresh, the two men, seen so close together, casting interesting lights upon each other. Roosevelt and Churchill were born eight years apart (Churchill being the elder). As Meacham writes, "They loved tobacco, strong drink, history, the sea, battleships, hymns, pageantry, patriotic poetry, high office, and hearing themselves talk. Each was physically brave, profoundly ambitious, a consummate actor and a superb politician. Each was the son of a rich American mother. In some ways, Churchill emerges as a more attractive human being than Roosevelt, whose magnificently confident façade concealed a character capable of immense deceit, chilling detachment and cunning superficiality.

Time - February 9, 2004.

Five Sundays make this a rare February

Porayar: The month of February this year is unique as it has five Sundays, a rare occurrence in the shortest month of the calendar. The phenomenon occurs only once in every 28 years, Dr. Sathiyamoorthy, former head of the department of statistics, Annamalai University, told reporters here on Saturday.

The Asian Age - February 9, 2004.

Thoughts Worth Sharing With All: Death by Numbers

A study published by the Royal Society concluded there are 1,000 times too many of us on our planet to be sustainable for very much longer. The study used a statistical device called 'confidence limits' to measure what the sustainable norm should ideally be for species populations while simultaneously factoring in other variables such as carbon dioxide production, energy use, biomass consumption and geographical range. The human population which clocks in at about six billion right now can perhaps be maintained for some time longer, but not indefinitely without incurring inevitable risks like mass starvation, epidemics or even extinction.

Why has our very existence become perilous? "Fatally successful" is how William Reez, professor of community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia in Canada, describes our propensity for reproduction. Though disagreeing that humans are abnormal, Rees does believe we are unusual in that, unlike other species, we can eat almost anything, adapt to any environment and develop technologies based on knowledge shared through written and spoken language. By thinking of and making ourselves the only 'indispensable species' in an anthropocentric worldview of our creation, we could, in fact, make ourselves thoroughly dispensable. It also settles another contentious matter, namely, the myth that it's the underdeveloped and developing nations which are responsible for our unsustainable numbers. A wealthy nation like the United States, representing approximately five precent of the world's population, consumes 85 per cent of its resources. Such dysfunctional ecological behaviour obviously contributes to the doomsday premise and unless there is a profound paradigm shift in our collective myths of superiority, it's only going to be curtains for us in the future. And perhaps deservedly so.

The Times of India - December 18, 2003.

'Climate change can destroy Earth'

New York - February 22, 2004 - Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters. A secret report warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a "Siberian" climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life," concludes the Pentagaon analysis. "Once again, warfare will define human life." Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like.

Hindustan Times - February 23, 2004.

Why a PhD decided to be a plumber

London - February 25, 2004 - Dr. Karl Gensberg, A B.Sc and PhD in molecular biology, has decided to double his income by dropping his job as a Birmingham university scientist to become a plumber. He asked a plumber to fit a boiler, who was shocked to see the payslip (Pound 23000) of Dr. Karl Gensberg. He told Dr. Karl Gensberg that, though doing the job of a plumber, he was earning Pound 33000 per month, and his colleagues were earning up to Pound 60000 per month. Therefore, Gensberg has decided to become a gas fitter.

Hindustan Times - February 25, 2004

Hindi may overtake English

London - The analysis by David Graddol, head of the language consultancy English Company in Milton Keynes, suggests that the positions of the four languages behind Chinese English, Urdu/Hindi, Arabic and Spanish are rapidly converging, with English declining and Arabic in steep ascent. English is likely to be overtaken by Hindi as it will lose its second place in the league table of world languages over the next half century, according to research published on Friday. By 2050, the number of native speakers aged 15 to 24 would be 166 million for Chinese, 73.7 million for Hindi/Urdu, 72.2 million for Arabic, 65 million for English and 62.8 million for Spanish.

The Asian Age - February 28, 2004.

Food for Thoughts

To know and not to do is not yet to know.

Zen saying

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We are what we repeatedly do.

Aristotle

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Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

Samuel Johnson