Well worth watching:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW_92tOcJfs
This video was shown to me by a graduate of Manipal University, a top-ranking private institution in India, and like most alumni (judging from the comments left on Youtube) he seems to think it captures the spirit of the place pretty well. Manipal he translates as "many pals".
The video has the charm of a Bollywood film, which to western eyes may seem naïve. I recommend viewing it two or three times to really "get it".
You will be enthralled by the Hindi remix of the Bryan Adams classic "Summer of '69".
What other university has its own theme song?
27 September 2009
24 September 2009
Film: The Man from Earth
Another film tip: "The Man from Earth" is the title of a 2007 film that is classified as "science fiction", but really has nothing to do with (future) science at all. Rather, it asks philosophical and theological questions about being, life and death, religion and knowledge.
The most futuristic aspect about this film is its mode of release. While France just outlawed online file sharing (and other European countries seem set to follow its example), the producers of this film publicly thanked their viewers for sharing the film through peer-to-peer networks, by which means, according to them, it gained wide recognition.
Like so many English-language films, "The Man from Earth" is available for streaming, for example, on Chinese video sharing websites, such as Tudou and Youku, that, unlike Youtube, do not enforce (western notions of) copyright or cut up films in ten-minute bits. On the downside, the display quality is often low:
www.tudou.com/programs/view/E_A04JCECSE/
The film's official website describes it thus: "An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious and intense interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he is an immortal who has walked the earth for 14,000 years.
"Acclaimed science fiction writer Jerome Bixby [of Star Trek and Twilight Zone fame] originally conceived this story back in the 1960's. It would come to be his last great work, finally completing the screenplay on his deathbed in April of 1998."
Leaving friends and occupations every ten years to hide the fact that he does not age and moving on to a new identity, the man presently known as John Oldman has lived through all epochs of recorded history and seen eras of human development come and go. He finds it impossible, though, to prove his story to an audience of scientists requiring hard evidence and religious faithful fearing the loss of their most deeply held beliefs. Has he gone mad, they wonder?
The film won numerous accolades, including "Best Feature" (first place) and "Best Screenplay" (grand prize) at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, "Best Film" and "Audience Choice Award" at the Montevideo Fantastic Film Festival, and "Best Director" at the International Fantastic Film Festival in Porto Alegre.
Those who like science fiction movies may also want to check out two more recent releases, the semi-serious "Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel" and the Johannesburg, South Africa-based "District 9" (both in cinemas 2009 – and, of course, on file sharing websites).
The most futuristic aspect about this film is its mode of release. While France just outlawed online file sharing (and other European countries seem set to follow its example), the producers of this film publicly thanked their viewers for sharing the film through peer-to-peer networks, by which means, according to them, it gained wide recognition.
Like so many English-language films, "The Man from Earth" is available for streaming, for example, on Chinese video sharing websites, such as Tudou and Youku, that, unlike Youtube, do not enforce (western notions of) copyright or cut up films in ten-minute bits. On the downside, the display quality is often low:
www.tudou.com/programs/view/E_A04JCECSE/
The film's official website describes it thus: "An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious and intense interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he is an immortal who has walked the earth for 14,000 years.
"Acclaimed science fiction writer Jerome Bixby [of Star Trek and Twilight Zone fame] originally conceived this story back in the 1960's. It would come to be his last great work, finally completing the screenplay on his deathbed in April of 1998."
Leaving friends and occupations every ten years to hide the fact that he does not age and moving on to a new identity, the man presently known as John Oldman has lived through all epochs of recorded history and seen eras of human development come and go. He finds it impossible, though, to prove his story to an audience of scientists requiring hard evidence and religious faithful fearing the loss of their most deeply held beliefs. Has he gone mad, they wonder?
The film won numerous accolades, including "Best Feature" (first place) and "Best Screenplay" (grand prize) at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, "Best Film" and "Audience Choice Award" at the Montevideo Fantastic Film Festival, and "Best Director" at the International Fantastic Film Festival in Porto Alegre.
Those who like science fiction movies may also want to check out two more recent releases, the semi-serious "Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel" and the Johannesburg, South Africa-based "District 9" (both in cinemas 2009 – and, of course, on file sharing websites).
17 September 2009
Arundhati Roy turns on democracy
Even renowned Indian novelist and anti-globalization activist Arundhati Roy has come to perceive "The Dark Side of Democracy" – so the title of a text in her most recent collection of previously published essays, "Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy" (Penguin, Hamish Hamilton, 2009):
www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241144626,00.html
The book is described by its publisher as looking "closely at how religious majoritarianism, cultural nationalism and neo-fascism simmer just under the surface of a country [India] that projects itself as the world's largest democracy", but is now being turned "into a police state", threatening its "precarious democracy" and sending "shockwaves through the region and beyond".
An adapted version of her introduction to the book was published under the title "Democracy's Failing Light" in Outlook India magazine:
www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?250418
She has since used this introductory essay as her opening speech at the ninth International Literature Festival in Berlin, Germany (September 2009), thus indicating that her critical thoughts on democracy address a global rather than merely an Indian audience.
Polemically, Roy asks: "Is there life after democracy?", once it "has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasised into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that resolves almost entirely around the idea of maximising profit? [...] Could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race?"
Democracy, according to Roy, "can perhaps no longer be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we once dreamed it would". Her collected essays, some new, some dating back to the turn of the millennium, are "not about unfortunate anomalies or aberrations in the democratic process. They're about the consequences of and the corollaries to democracy; they're about the fire in the ducts".
India's parties spent two billion dollars on the 2009 general elections. "That's a lot more than the budget of the US elections. According to some media reports the actual amount spent is closer to ten billion dollars. Where, might one ask, does that kind of money come from? [...] Clearly, without sponsorship it's hard to win an election. And independent candidates cannot promise subsidised rice, free TVs and cash-for-votes, those demeaning acts of vulgar charity that elections have been reduced to".
German media reported Roy's Berlin speech (the German translation of her essay) as depicting democracy-that-is, in India and elsewhere, as a milder form of civil war.
www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241144626,00.html
The book is described by its publisher as looking "closely at how religious majoritarianism, cultural nationalism and neo-fascism simmer just under the surface of a country [India] that projects itself as the world's largest democracy", but is now being turned "into a police state", threatening its "precarious democracy" and sending "shockwaves through the region and beyond".
An adapted version of her introduction to the book was published under the title "Democracy's Failing Light" in Outlook India magazine:
www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?250418
She has since used this introductory essay as her opening speech at the ninth International Literature Festival in Berlin, Germany (September 2009), thus indicating that her critical thoughts on democracy address a global rather than merely an Indian audience.
Polemically, Roy asks: "Is there life after democracy?", once it "has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasised into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that resolves almost entirely around the idea of maximising profit? [...] Could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race?"
Democracy, according to Roy, "can perhaps no longer be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we once dreamed it would". Her collected essays, some new, some dating back to the turn of the millennium, are "not about unfortunate anomalies or aberrations in the democratic process. They're about the consequences of and the corollaries to democracy; they're about the fire in the ducts".
India's parties spent two billion dollars on the 2009 general elections. "That's a lot more than the budget of the US elections. According to some media reports the actual amount spent is closer to ten billion dollars. Where, might one ask, does that kind of money come from? [...] Clearly, without sponsorship it's hard to win an election. And independent candidates cannot promise subsidised rice, free TVs and cash-for-votes, those demeaning acts of vulgar charity that elections have been reduced to".
German media reported Roy's Berlin speech (the German translation of her essay) as depicting democracy-that-is, in India and elsewhere, as a milder form of civil war.
12 September 2009
Book: Democracy Kills
A welcome contribution to the commencing debate on anti-democratic thought: On 4 September 2009, Pan Macmillan published the new book by veteran BBC foreign correspondent, Humphrey Hawksley, bearing the suggestive title "Democracy Kills: What's So Good About Having the Vote?".Pan Macmillan promotes the book as "[a] compelling and thought-provoking examination of the dangers of democracy":
www.panmacmillan.com/titles/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Individual%20Title&BookID=419097
Their description: For many years western governments have insisted that the only way to achieve long-term prosperity and political stability is through a combination of free-market economics and democratic government. Yet, all evidence now indicates that this argument is both flawed and can also be the direct cause of war, disease, and poverty. From Pakistan to Zimbabwe, from the Palestinian territories to the former Yugoslavia, from Georgia to Haiti attempts to install democracy through elections have produced high levels of corruption and violence. Parliaments represent not broad constituencies but vested interests and, amid much fanfare, constitutions are written, but rarely upheld. Humphrey Hawksley has reported economic and political trends throughout the world for more than twenty years. In "Democracy Kills", he offers a vivid – and frequently devastating – analysis of our devotion to democracy.
There is of course a simple reason why Hawksley, as he writes on his blog, experienced "overwhelming support" when launching the book at the Edinburgh Literary Festival last month – and this from "a highly-intelligent, thoughtful, liberal audience". The cases he discusses in the book are far away. It is easy to agree that democratization had devastating consequences in places like Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Unlike myself, Hawksley appears still to favour democracy when it comes to the West. The argument he says "no-one disagreed with" remains thus theoretical to most people. They are not asked to take a stance.
In an early review of the book, Gerard DeGroot (Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews) concedes in this vein that
"[w]hile democracy seems in theory admirable, too often its hasty implementation brings bloodshed, poverty, disease and death". In the Ivory Coast, for example, "[a] succession of weak governments [left] the country open to free-market exploitation by rapacious chocolate producers. Adults now have the vote, but their children are often slaves", harvesting cocoa.
Only in developing countries, according to that line of thought, "the people often lack the experience to behave like full-fledged democrats. The result is either chronic political instability or, worse, elected autocracies. [...] The argument brings to mind the colonial era when self-determination was perpetually denied on grounds that the natives were not ready. Today, the politically correct attitude is to assume that all people are capable of being good democrats, or at least should be allowed to make their own mistakes. Yet democracy is much more than an ideology worthy of adoption simply because it is noble. It is, in truth, a culture – one that took centuries to take root in Europe. The idea that it can be quickly transplanted in places where the soil is rocky and the climate harsh is simply naïve".
Concluding his discussion, DeGroot relates "the experience of Usama Rehda, an Iraqi citizen for whom democratic change has meant poverty, corruption and the constant threat of car bombs. 'You know what they say [... .] Be nice to the Americans or they'll punish you with democracy.'"
Only in developing countries, according to that line of thought, "the people often lack the experience to behave like full-fledged democrats. The result is either chronic political instability or, worse, elected autocracies. [...] The argument brings to mind the colonial era when self-determination was perpetually denied on grounds that the natives were not ready. Today, the politically correct attitude is to assume that all people are capable of being good democrats, or at least should be allowed to make their own mistakes. Yet democracy is much more than an ideology worthy of adoption simply because it is noble. It is, in truth, a culture – one that took centuries to take root in Europe. The idea that it can be quickly transplanted in places where the soil is rocky and the climate harsh is simply naïve".
Concluding his discussion, DeGroot relates "the experience of Usama Rehda, an Iraqi citizen for whom democratic change has meant poverty, corruption and the constant threat of car bombs. 'You know what they say [... .] Be nice to the Americans or they'll punish you with democracy.'"
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