Hi! This blog is testament to the fact that the voices in my head are truly out of my control! Rather than going crazy about it, i've decided to channel them constructively!
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Ivan Illich on education, and more..
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Back to the Land UnConference, Pune, 19-20 July 2014
9 am - 10 am : Doors open, people start arriving, informal interactions, putting up charts / posters / exhibits
10 am - 11 am : Morning gathering. Announcements, Short introduction, Explanation about the event, Co-creating sessions
11 am - 12.30 pm : Session 1
12.30 pm - 2 pm : Lunch break, see exhibits, informal interactions
2 - 3.30 pm : Session 2
3.30 - 4 pm : Tea break, informal interactions, music
4 pm - 5.30 pm : Session 3
5:30 pm - 6 pm : Evening gathering, people sharing their learnings, takeaways, feedback
Day 2 : Sunday, 20 July 2014
9 am - 10 am : Doors open, people start arriving, informal interactions, putting up charts / posters / exhibits
10 am - 11 am : Morning gathering. Announcements, Games, Co-creating sessions
11 am - 12.30 pm : Session 1
12.30 pm - 2 pm : Lunch break, see exhibits, informal interactions
2 pm - 3.30 pm : Session 2
3.30 pm - 4 pm : Tea break, informal interactions
4 pm - 5.30 pm : Session 3
5:30 pm - 6 pm : Evening gathering, people sharing their learnings, takeaways, feedback, plans ahead
Urmila Samson : 9422330377, umrilasamson [at] gmail.com
Please try to SMS/Whatsapp first before calling.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Swaraj University Admissions 2014
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Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Eco-school to Eco-university
From a mailer from http://www.oikos.in/ :
Dear Nature Lovers,
Greetings from oikos !
What should be the main goal of human race…
To live happy and healthy life and let future generations live the same ?
Obviously education should be focused to earn a livelihood in a cautious way.
We are totally dependent on Nature for survival.
But our education system seems to deny this fact.
Current education increases aspirations of people towards -
maximum generation of wealth and standard of living
with respect to highest consumption beyond needs.
Question is whether we really get happy and healthy life after that ?
Even if we accept that comforts and contentedness has increased,
number of diseases and hospitals are equally increasing.
We still feel that technology can provide solution for everything,
… even deteriorated life style and dwindling resources.
Also technology based solutions, being expensive, are enjoyed only by few rich.
And many poor are deprived of it, so crime increases.
There is no value for morals and self realization.
There are ways wherein we can earn a better future, based on natural wealth.
Nature is the best guide for us to make livelihood.
Education must consider any facet of life as subset of nature.
If we ignore this fact, effects are coming back to us in the form of climate change.
So education, be it primary, higher or graduation level, must have ecological perspective.
Prakash Gole had suggested a new education stream - 'Eco-school to Eco-university'.
Students coming from such education system may take care of nature as well as
sustainable, happy and healthy living options !
Education should not be a burden and formality for students.
It should facilitate enjoyment.
It should incorporate morals.
It should improve learning ability.
It should also improve ability for self realization.
And this is best possible through learning in company of nature…
Sunday, June 15, 2014
On IB accusing Greenpeace and other NGOs
Saturday, June 14, 2014
The Elephant in the Elevator
Imagine this situation: There's several different kinds of animals in an elevator, and the panel beeps and says it's too heavy: some occupants will have to get off to reduce the weight so that the elevator can proceed. There's several hundred ants in the elevator, dozens of butterflies, some squirrels, foxes, tigers, a couple of bears and one elephant. The elephant is assuming leadership of the elevator; and imploring all the ants to get off.. "there's too many of you! Please, you need to reduce your numbers to something like ours (elephant and bears), only then can this elevator move ahead."
That's what's happening with the overpopulation debate.. or should I say monologue (the other side is silenced), right now.
It's not about what the population is. It's about how much is the consumption.. the carbon footprint, the resource depletion, the burden being put on this planet etc.
All the so-called overpopulated regions of India, Asia, Africa : are on a per capital level consuming NOTHING compared to USA, the West. Even in absolute terms, when you trace out the consumers of the products of all the outsourced industries and credit those consumptions to their original masters, it's still the West (US mostly) cornering the top.
Now, let's put on the thinking hat of Efficiency and think in those terms. Supposing you were really proceeding with reducing the population as a means of cutting down the planet's resource depletion. Where would you begin?
Logically, the first step would be to list, in descending order, the populations of the world with their resource consumption statistics. Maybe an index that combines food, fuels, petrochemicals, expenditure, electricity, minerals etc. You would make a descending list of countries, with the countries having the highest per capita consumption at the top. If necessary, you would split the countries where there's a distinct difference between different regions. For example, India's metro cities stand in stark contrast with the rest of India. So list them separately.
Then, using the principles of maximum efficiency, where would you begin? Naturally, you'd begin at the top.
It makes obvious sense, doesn't it? Taking a white upper-class American off the planet is far more efficient and easier than taking out some 1000+ Africans or Indians who are consuming less than he is.
So, here's where the ridiculousness if this whole overpopulation topic manifests : Anyone who was honestly, sincerely believing that controlling the earth's population of human beings is an acceptable way to prevent runaway resource depletion.. would have to be talking about starting with depopulating USA first, followed by whichever countries, regions you have on that list. The poorest parts of Africa, Asia would have to be the very last on the list. Only after you've seriously, satisfactorily brought down the populations of the "West".. or at the least, after you've shut down most of the industries they've outsourced and which are heavily subsidized by the corrupt governments of the developing nations : only then should you even begin to look at the rest.
Instead, what do we get to see? Like the elephant in the elevator, we see mostly white-skinned, upper class people, belonging to the demoraphics that consume the most, talking in alarmed tones about overpopulation, and pointing fingers at the guys who are at the bottom of the consumption charts.
Complete hypocrisy.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
HOW TO send audio to the HDMI-connected TV
Note: You'll probably have to use the same technique to change it back when you want to hear sound on the laptop again. Don't panic if you're playing a movie later on and there's no sound coming!
Rethinking Property, Housing
Q. Another area of your work which is becoming increasingly popular in anticapitalist circles is the idea of the commons. Could you briefly explain what it means and why it is important to the struggle against capitalism?
DH. Let's examine the question of housing for the moment. It is almost standard thinking that in order to get housing you have to be a homeowner. Therefore the private property system dominates housing provision. I think that's really problematic. For a lot of people being a homeowner is not good economics – they don't have the incomes. But being a tenant is a vulnerable situation. So, you might want to have a completely different kind of property regime for the delivery of use values to a significant section of the population.
I think there are ways to try to reorganise what goes on in housing provision through common property regimes. Not state-owned, I want to be clear. This would be social housing which would be co-operatively developed, managed and structured. There are interesting schemes in the United States, for example, called 'limited equity co-operatives'. If you participate you can't sell out at a market price. You can only get close to the value you started with. If you got into the housing co-op for €100,000 and twenty years later you want to get out – you get €100,000 plus the inflation or something similar. You can't go and sell it for a million. So this means there is a permanent pool of housing which is available for a population that can't afford a million but could afford €100,000 on a reasonable mortgage.
On housing provision, we have to get out of that frame of mind that says 'the only way you can really do this is through home ownership'. That idea of home ownership has been pedaled for political and economic reasons. Most people have absorbed the idea that this is the only way in which housing can be provided. Arguing for a different property rights regime seems to me to be critical. Many areas that have been commodified need to be returned to a common property idea. I think education and health care are common property rights. To the degree that our world is not delivering good use values for those things it is because it is privatised and turned into a private property right. I'm concerned to support wherever I can initiatives which start to generate common property rights regimes in place of private ones.
That common property regime is not state ownership. We've got a dichotomy right now between state and market which is misleading. Neither state nor market but a collective form of provision.
New political party in US emerges from the Occupy Movement
Article: Why JP Singh is every Indian farmer's best friend
Excerpts:
How did an unassuming Varanasi farmer and school dropout come to be sought after by farmers, praised by experts and awarded by the government for his famous seeds?
His claim to fame? He develops indigenous, high-yielding and disease resistant varieties of plants. So far, he's perfected more than 460 types of paddy, 120 of wheat, 40 kinds of arhar dal and three of mustard. He's also grown a special type of wood apple or bel, one that yields 8-10 fruits in a single bunch, multiplying harvests for poor farmers.
One million farmers in about seven Indian states swear by the seeds he provides. He sells them for Rs 30-40 per kilo, compared to the Rs 200-300 that agents charge for genetically modified (GM) crops. Still, his crops outperform the GM ones on yield. And from their grain, farmers plant for the next harvest - something they can't do with a GM crop.
Break out of the box and the fake dream chase
Article about accident in May 2014 at Koodankulam nuclear power plant
Friday, June 6, 2014
Video: How Television and Sports are used to control the masses
Pune riots : triggered by FB posts? Really??
A young professional murdered.
Stone pelting at several cities in state.
Number of buses were burnt.
Shops forcefully shut down for over 2 days.
Lot of private vehicles were also damaged.
Just for the sake of protesting against a FB post.
And we still have people who say "someone triggered it".
If the people of Maharashtra were really so trigger-happy and violent and easy to provoke, then some cyber criminals would have simply hacked into a few fb accounts and wiped out the population by now. No, sir, let's not insult the people of Maharashtra.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
An email from a parallel universe
<Sfx: mysterious space music>
Could this email have come through an inter-dimensional space-time warp from a parallel universe where an alter-ego of mine might be living a life path that i might have been on had i not diverged from the de facto script in 2010?
what might your alternate-universe life look like?
:P
(read below to understand)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: To: Nikhil D. Sheth / Purdue University
Dear Nikhil D. Sheth,
As stated by the Purdue University's electronic repository, you authored the work entitled "A Micromechanical Spectrum Analyzer" in the framework of your postgraduate degree.
Due to the fact that we are currently planning publications in this subject field, we would be pleased to know whether you would be interested in publishing the above mentioned work with us.
[..] Academic Publishing is a member of an international publishing group, which has almost 10 years of experience in the publication of high-quality research works from well-known institutions across the globe.
Besides producing printed scientific books, we also market them actively through more than 80,000 booksellers.
Kindly confirm your interest in receiving more detailed information in this respect.
I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Article: Two divergent poles of Indian democracy
Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal: Two divergent poles of Indian democracy
Gift Economy
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