Kids are meant to play all the time, not to be taught

I'm watching a talk,
Conference on Alternatives to Compulsory Education - Peter Grey - April 27, 2013
Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7gZw0KJXVQ

Around the 15th minute he presents research by people studying hunter-gatherer groups from around the world. These would be analogous to adivasis in India.
Very interesting observations about the way these disparate groups treat their kids:

• Kids are not directed / told what to do / what not to do / scolded
• If they play with dangerous items like machetes, it's assumed they know what they're doing, and if they get hurt, they'll learn. Parents don't bother.
• There is no concept that kids need to be taught.
• Kids go off to play all the time, as soon as they're fit to leave the parents' side, and by the time they become adults their play naturally morphs into taking responsibilities for the community
• They have never seen kids whining about anything in these groups
• Kids grow up to be self-organizing and self-directed.

About the groups themselves,

• There is no chief of the tribe, no hierarchy. Decisions are made by consensus.
• There is no concept of telling a person what to do. It flows naturally. It is assumed everybody will individually arrive at the right thing to do when given the freedom to make choices. They don't need to explicitly make laws : there are natural laws and they act naturally.
• These are complex, rich cultures with their own music, dance, and they have huge store of knowledge of different species of plants and animals around them. There is an enormous amount that a person in these communities have to learn. And they learn it entirely on their own, without adult supervision.

Before this, observations on mammals:

• All mammals are found to play when young. Unlike other species, mammals have a lot to learn while growing up. Through their play, they learn the skills needed as an adult. So kittens play with their prey : they may catch a mouse, then let it escape, then catch it again... We see puppies and cubs brawl with each other : they're practising hunting.
• This play is essential to the mammals' growth and thriving.
• Humans have the most to learn : not just skills relevant to the human species, but in each social group, the skills and behaviours relevant to that group. So naturally, they need to play the most.

I know there are various rebuttals to this, most of them having to do with treating these cultures as backward and treating ourselves as advanced and better than them. So explain how those cultures managed to preserve the planet beautifully for thousands of years (since the last Ice Age ended), and we managed to absolutely mess it up in just a few generations.

No, you say? There are huge islands of plastic floating in the middle of the Pacific, farthest from any human settlement. There is black soot depositing over Antarctica and accelerating melting of ice caps. Undersea corals across the globe are in a mass die-off due to increasing acidity in oceans. The only spots still preserved are the inaccessible ones or those where we're not allowing civilized people to go. YES, we ARE messing the planet up royally.

Instead of shuffling between past and present and making a stupid brainless contest out of adivasi Vs modern, think how we can combine what we're learning from all quarters, so we can think about how we want the future to be.

The Perfect Teacher Syndrome

This post is my add-on to a wonderful post by my friend Dola, titled Why home educate?

It's an add-on to Dola's post, and a.. well, response to parts of some extensive comments under it.

A lot of talk in education sector today revolves around training and bolstering the "perfect" teachers, and I think they're partly chasing that elusive all-wise "guru" of the Gurukuls past. I've personally seen these efforts lead to some pretty messy consequences, like sending "highly qualified" people in to replace regular teachers in govt schools, thinking they're some silver bullet that'll fix all problems. However glorious our past was, the fact remains that as Indians we messed up royally and got owned. Accept it and analyse it. Could it have been because of our addiction to being dependent on external entities for guidance, our reluctance to follow our own instincts? For all their glory, I don't think there's any Gurukul that took a stand against the inhuman caste system that divided our society and enslaved a large part of it (apart from maybe Buddhist ashrams that were destroyed by the Hindu rulers); In fact I see plenty of evidence that they propagated it. The British deserve a pat on the back for at least exposing us to the idea that all humans should be treated equal, even if they didn't really practice it.

In all this obsession with teachers and gurus, the child's inborn ability to learn and humanity's inherent social nature (ie cross-pollination of ideas, people wanting to care for one another) gets ignored. Every human being, every bird and animal, every rock and river is a teacher. Why outsource something to a single person when it's available in abundance? Darwin, Galileo, Einstein OBSERVED life and the cosmos. Nature was their teacher. They didn't prat on "Yes Guruji, I will do as you say, Guruji" all day long.

IMHO (in my humble opinion), there is no such thing as the perfect husband or wife, the perfect son or daughter, the perfect government or prime minister, the perfect rickshaw driver or mechanic, the perfect reality show contestant or judge, or the perfect Student or Teacher. It's a myth, a mirage and we are fools to run behind it, to seek relentlessly in one person what is available in abundance all around. It's like expecting one heavenly body to have all the qualities of the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars and galaxies and black holes and quasars and supernovae all put together and then getting disappointed when it doesn't happen the way were expecting it to. We'll only end up missing out on the true beauty and wonder of the sky this way.

To me, liberating the child from following someone else's orders (no matter how wise) allows the next stage of humanity to flourish. Sorry, but unless the Gods themselves come over and offer themselves up, I would never go back to something like a Gurukul. (and maybe not even then) I believe in learning and free will. I do not believe in perfect teachers.

You should check out Australia's Stolen Generation history to understand where dreaming about Gurukuls and kids going off for all of childhood can take us. Heck, absence of children from various parts of society is already causing so many issues (would the bankers have been so damn reckless betting on futures if there were children sitting in the room? Would you give orders to massacre whole towns if there was a child tugging at your finger?), if all children were to vanish into Gurukuls till adulthood, I shudder to think of the consequences! If the current model of factory schooling is bad as it is, then please people, DO NOT take us into something even worse! Please cure yourself of the Perfect Teacher Syndrome, and embrace the abundance all around you.

Further reading:

• If you want to know my most honest opinions about India's legendary honorary Gurus, please check out Eklavya 2.0
• You should really try reading Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, or John Holt's Learning All the Time, or A.S.Neils, Summerhill, or Daniel Greenberg's Free At Last or John T Gatto's Dumbing Us Down.
• Watch the Summerhill Drama
• Watch the lectures from Conference on Alternatives to Compulsory Education
• Watch The Forbidden Education

the Human aspect of Engineering

Sharing the last part of a newsletter from Round Table India (that writes on many Dalit / backward caste issues in India).
This, and the kind of stuff it concerns, is what was never taught to us through school and engineering college. We were told that we should go join the "core" engineering companies (like Tata Steel, Power, Jindal, Vedanta, Reliance refineries etc) and be part of India's "development".

All our schematic diagrams had these little boxes titled "waste" where all the byproducts of various engineering processes (typically far exceeding the actual products) would go. If anyone asked further, we were told that it is then "disposed". On further questioning, "it is properly disposed". While we had specializations in construction, fabrication, electricity, electronics, communications, logistics etc etc, they never made space for a degree in waste disposal. So they covered the Brahma and Vishnu parts very proudly, but the Mahesh part was left out.

None of our professors ever told us WHERE it is disposed, with what it is mingled, what consequences come off it.

In our efficiency / cost calculation formulas, we never included the costs incurred by the people who lived around the industry, or the cost of forever-lost livelihoods from the acquiring of fertile agricultural land or forests, or the wipeout of ecology at the place. None of these were ever factored into our calculations.

I look at TISS and at IIT in Mumbai. And I wonder why the hell was the human, social angle separated from engineering. Why was our education fragmented.

• Dalit and Adivasi Women Warriors Question Caste and Gender Oppression

  Sujatha Surepally

  (Impressions from the first National Dalit and Adivasi Women's Congress held on February 15-16, 2013, at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)

  We live in nature! We die in Nature! It's our life, if you occupy our land where should we go and how do we live? Whose land is this?

  The hall is echoing with the furious voice of Dayamani Barla, veteran Adivasi activist from Jharkhand. She is trying to unite people against mining in Jharkhand, around 108 mining companies are waiting to destroy Adivasi life in the name of mining, first they come for coal, next they say power houses, it continues, we are pushed out and out further. How do we live without our land?

  … Read More

• Dalit Information And Education Trust: New Waves in Dalit Discourse

  Sujatha Surepally

  (The Annual meet of D.I.E.T was held on 5th May, 2012, in Hyderabad. We thank Sujatha Surepally for sharing this report on the event)

  Dalit Information and Education Trust's (DIET) Annual meet was held on 5th May, 2012 at Hotel Grand plaza, Nampally, Hyderabad. It was a memorable event. Though it was titled as 'Book Reviews and Felicitations', there was much more to describe, feel proud about at the meet, and to celebrate our own people's contribution to dalit literature, criticism, rediscovering Ambedkar etc. A culmination of different views and perspectives, bundles of experiences, thoughts of different generations, the agonies and strategies of building movements for dignity. It presented a rare opportunity, and indeed was a marvelous day.

  … Read More

videos from Conference on Alternatives to Compulsory Education held on April 27, 2013 at Cambridge, US

A Conference on Alternatives to Compulsory Education was held on April 27, 2013 at Cambridge, US.
Video lectures from the conference have been put online.
https://www.youtube.com/user/infospectacle/videos

They include: Cevin Soling: Why We Need Alternatives , Peter Gray: The Importance of Play, Pat Farenga: Homeschooling and Unschooling, Peter A. Bergson: Open Connections: One Approach to Partnership Education

I've just finished watching Cevin Soling's speech and loved it. He brings out the hidden realities of compulsory schooling and the harm that even the best of teachers are doing to their students. I felt like he was really speaking my mind, reflecting back on my 1-yr experience with Teach For India. These ought to be taken and shown to teachers everywhere.

Why Obama was put in office

About Barack Obama: This is for all those who talk about people opposing
him because he's black:

How convenient : Put a black man in office, so that any criticism can be
handled and buried by the racism tag. Meanwhile, through him wage more
wars, practice more torture, drill more oil, make more money, use more
drones, assassinate more people without cause or trial, imprison more
people without due process, censor more websites under guise of
copyright protection, tap more phones and emails, ruin more lives, Push
more CO2 in the atmosphere, make no real commitments to solve any
problems but make more grandiose statements, accumulate more wealth and
power...

Doesn't matter who the person is.. black, white, yellow, pink, green...
The real bosses are the ones who funded the election campaign. Who
funded Obama's? Who made sure that the election was seen as an Obama Vs
Romney fight? Who paid the media to completely censor out all the other
candidates, including a WOMAN who was standing from a pro-environment,
anti-Wall St platform? Go find out.

The Poison is the Pot - by Bayo Akomolafe

Forwarding this... Poverty didn't exist before we became totally
dependent on money. There were no poor before the "rich" came about. Try
wrapping that around your head.


We invented the modern ethics of philanthropy and poverty eradication to
escape the need to change a money system that is fueled by the very
existence of poverty and scarcity; we created an industry of 'waste
management' that tempers our anger and numbs us to the fact that we
abide in a cradle-to-grave, use-and-dump global economy - a behemoth
that necessarily generates 'waste' by silently celebrating planned
obsolescence. We institutionalized illiteracy reduction programs and
no-one-left-behind-schemes through our schools - conveniently forgetting
that because of the politics of correctness, the dynamics of conformity
and standardized assessment, our schools effectively create large
populations of people 'left behind'. We legitimized 'environmental
protection' - all the while shielding our ears from the subversive
question echoing in the fringes, tugging at our collective imagination:
why do we inevitably have to live in a world in which the 'environment'
needs protection?

The problem of poverty did not 'exist' until we introduced a monetary
framework that reified scarcity, valorized ownership and celebrated
property accumulation; the problem of waste was invented by the system
that pretends to address it; ignorance wasn't certified until schools
were invented; and, the health of our ecological systems will always be
an issue - so long as we continue to perpetuate a civilization whose
very foundation is the idea that 'nature' is a resource to be exploited
for our fanciful whims.

The poison is not in the pot, ladies and gentlemen - the poison is the
pot. We will not 'solve' the 'problems' we have with the tools that
created them in the first place; we will not change the world by adding
another syllable to a sentence that makes no sense. More schools will
not get rid of ignorance - they created it in the first place, and
actually need more of it to thrive (which is the reason why the most
prestigious universities are known by how many applicants they reject!).
More money will not get rid of poverty - because the dynamics of finance
and the politics of upward mobility demand that money remains scarce -
and therefore accessible only to a select few. Until we change the
holding assumptions and hidden narratives that power our systems and
ways of being, we will always tinker with the broth, experiment with new
ingredients, and stir with contrived spoons in a frantic rush for
culinary apotheosis. Meanwhile the toxic juices in the sooty crevices
and shadows of the pot will secrete into our soupy contraptions our
poison, our illusion, our unending servitude, and a stealthy charm that
will keep us wondering why the chef is broken.

Bayo Akomolafe - 'The Poison is the Pot'

Hygiene? Modernity is dirtier than ever

For years I was told how we should not spit and litter on out roads and public spaces.

APJ Kalam wrote profusely on how we as citizens are responsible for so much dirtiness, and I believed him.

Even the private sector, companies, industrialists, waxed eloquent on the need for better cleanliness, sanitation, hygiene.
Poor people were portrayed as being uncivilized, unhygienic, spitting and pissing anywhere and dirtying the city.

While all this while, all these years while our media has been hammering in how we spit and litter on our roads and how bad it is,
While we were being poked every moment for spitting a few organic compounds onto tarred roads,

Our most hyped, respected, reputed companies, have been spitting and shitting TOXIC CHEMICALS into our countryside : Into the land, into the water, into the air, into the plants and birds and animals, into our food, into all our lives. They make the plastic so they can push their goods to us, and then they just can't be bothered about the return trip. All that plastic trash littering my planet and forming floating islands in the oceans wouldn't be around if it wasn't for these few industrialists, well-educated as they are, who knew fully what the consequences will be, who took a decision so they can increase the length and time their goods can travel and get some percentage more profits.

And in all the rush to tell the people that look, how dirty they are, we were deliberately made to miss out on the fact that the industrialists of this country are, by sheer volume, spitting 1000s of times more toxics onto our motherland than all the citizens put together.

We were told to piss in toilets that take fresh, drinkable water, mix it in with shit, and transport it into the rivers and seas that we once worshiped as our Goddesses. We were told to do our bit, while the authorities that took charge of disposing of our crap, just dumped it wherever convenient while promising to solve the problem one day, with regular monetary boosts from us. We ended up doing our bit, and paying on top, to pollute our environment.
Instead if we were to dispense of our waste in our own backyard (as we have been for thousands of years), merely through digging holes, our crap would have completed the cycle of life and become food for the organisms that produce our food. And we'd be getting "rid" of the "waste" without spending any penny.

With the pretense of getting cleaner, civilization as it stands today, is actually making us dirtier than ever. The motive was never to make us cleaner. It was only to make us outsource our tasks so that a heavy bureaucracy can leech off it. Those sparkling clean streets and places : they're just the screensaver, and we fell for it.

And as for all those who proclaim India as a filthy, dirty country, here's a bouncer for you : We're not dirtier than the richer nations. We're only not as passionate about getting rid of our waste as they are. Their trash is piling up all over Africa, Asia, South America, and even Antarctica! We don't go to such great lengths to hide our ugliness as you do, we don't think it a good idea to destroy other people's lands and lives just to maintain cleanliness in ours. If you make any trash, there is nothing bad in keeping it to yourself. So f**k off.

A clean country isn't one whose streets are clean, but one that doesn't produce anything that pollutes, devastates eco-systems anywhere. Spitting paan on the road doesn't really harm this planet as much as the rivers of toxic effluent thrown out by the company that proclaims 10 lakh children educated under its CSR initiative, whose consumer goods are packaged and delivered to us in nice, shiny, clean containers. That's not being clean; that's just throwing your trash in your neighbor's backyard and then chiding the neighbor for being unhygienic. We'd make much better use of our resources if we focused on restructuring our worlds so that we don't make waste in the first place, rather than cleaning up and then throwing it all elsewhere. If it's dirty, let it be. All the more incentive to move on to a more cyclical way of life.

nobody left

I've heard more generic versions of this, but this seems to be the original:

"When Hitler attacked the Jews, I was not a Jew, therefore I was not
concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic,
and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the union
and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not
concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church -- and
there was nobody left to be concerned."

- Martin Niemoller, 1968, from the US Congressional Record

How I'll rewrite it:
First, they came after the Jews. I was not a Jew, so it didn't bother
me. Then they came after the Sikhs and the Muslims. I wasn't either of
them, so why should I help? Then, they grabbed the homes of the
indigenous, the Adivasi. Now I'm no Adivasi, so why should I care? Then
they attacked the Dalits. I wasn't one so it didn't matter. They cleared
the forests but I don't live there. They attacked the gays, and of
course I didn't care. They made the city really unsafe for women, but
since I'm not a woman, I wasn't concerned. They evicted the roadside
sellers, and I just changed my markets. They hunted down all the
activists, thank God I wasn't one of them. They deported the artists,
and my life just went on normally. And then they came after me. Now I
asked for help, but there was no one left to care about me.

Fascism in India

Got this from a mailer invite to a seminar on Fascism (more info). Good points, can help connect the dots for those who are new to these ideas.

Defining Characteristics of Fascism

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and sexual choices are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by investors , corporates. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often is the one who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

recent updates on Indian Railways site

Revision of tatkal charges w.e.f. 01 Apr-2013.

Revision of Clerkage charges and cancellation charges w.e.f. 01 Apr-2013.

Levying of service tax on service charges for e-tickets booked through IRCTC w.e.f.01 Apr-2013.

IRCTC opens World class Executive Lounge at New Delhi Railway Station.

Revision in Passenger Fares w.e.f 22.01.2013.

------------------
I can't help but think these are some way inter-related.
(Read: Revision=hike )

Some news on global financial scams

Some financial matters news:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425

And a discussion about it on:
http://www.thrivemovement.com/biggest-price-fixing-scandal-ever.blog?utm_source=People+Waking+Up+to+Biggest+Price-Fixing+Scandal+Ever&utm_campaign=Eblast-+Price+Fixing+Scandal&utm_medium=email

Quote from the article:
"Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the
Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an
apology. You were right."

Exploring Raspberry Pi

I'm currently exploring possible applications of the Raspberry Pi, a
low-cost, small, portable computer that's being heralded as something
that can open gateways to a new generation of automation, programming,
bridging the digital divide, etc. Already some interesting applications
are being shared. I'm still very new to this so can't give much detail
here, but would like to invite anyone along.

A friend who wants to use this at a learning center in his village but
needs people on programming side to research it, bought it for me online
and had it delivered to me. You can get it too here:

http://fabtolab.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=34_82&product_id=188
(Raspberry Pi, Rs.2875)
http://fabtolab.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=34_82&product_id=106
(Pre-installed R.Pi memory card, Rs.365)

I'm presently looking for a USB Keyboard to be able to run this thing.
If anyone has one lying around and can lend one, please!

Here are websites where you can find interesting leads:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/
http://www.rpiblog.com/
http://www.element14.com/community/groups/raspberry-pi#

How to access your Ubuntu files from Windows

Useful for people like me who use Ubuntu and Windows operating systems on their computer:

3 Ways to Access Your Linux Partitions From Windows

Also a useful quick-fix for folks who are now using windows and want to access their files saved in Ubuntu/Linux desktop/documents folder. With this you don't have to interrupt whatever you were doing and reboot into Ubuntu, etc. For many, even the boot menu options are gone and they don't have the skills or patience to reinstall it. So this ought to give you all your files in 5 mins.

How to use hindi transliteration in Ubuntu

I'm using Ubuntu 10.04
Follow the guide here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=646207

till the "Transliteration" heading. Don't know why he's gone further,
just following the steps till there does the trick.

तो मै हिन्दी लिख सकता हू. But can't get how to put maatra's though.

Blaming the politicians? They're the decoy!

If you're going to blame the country's politicians for the problems
afflicting it, then you've fallen for a very elaborate trap.

The politicians aren't the ones causing the problems. They're the
decoys. As the establishment stands today, they're designed to divert
the nation's anger to themselves while the real culprits get away.

Let's conduct a simple experiment:
"These corrupt Congress and BJP, good for nothing leaders draining the
nation's wealth..."

Was this statement acceptable? Totally. You won't find it problematic to
express this anywhere. Now,
"These corrupt Tatas, Birlas, Jindals, Ambanis, Vedantas... corrupt WTO,
FIIs, good for nothing business leaders draining the nation's wealth..."
+
--not so acceptable now, is it?

See, it's the richest people and the ones with the largest turnovers
that are calling the shots in a top-down, money-dependent structure. To
maintain their rule, it's necessary to direct the people's anger to
players other than themselves that are under their control. This way
they can conduct a nation-wide anger management program and make sure it
doesn't result in any action hostile towards themselves.

Just sample this: if a case comes up of a reputed Industries occupying
vast tracts of land at throwaway prices (after getting the native
farmers thrown out by underhanded use of the Land Acquisition Act), we
tend to blame the local corrupt politicians, the state govt, the land
mafia...
But what about the guys who actually did the occupying, the people who
stand to gain the maximum from this grab? Our news media carefully words
their reports so as to avoid pointing fingers at the top execs of these
companies.

You will typically never see any calls being made for the resignation of
the execs who presided over the scandal. Any hint towards this would be
seen as unacceptable. Yet we will bend over ourselves in demonizing the
politicos involved, and call for their ouster and arrests. It's like
going after the assassin but not bothering to investigate who hired the
assassin and why.

The social environment we are in is very carefully constructed: you have
to really step outside and look at things differently to even realize
that something's odd here.

On the one hand, Ratan Tata's, Mukesh Ambani etc etc's involvements in
shady practices get exposed with the various scams. But all calls for
punishment are applied to the ministers, the bureaucrats etc involved.
Ratan and Mukesh remain untouchable.. somehow "above" these politics and
above the law as well. To counter this we'll have endless reruns of the
greatness, the enterprising spirit, the patriotism, the legacy, the
hospitals and schools set up, the generous donations of the Tatas... how
Ratan individually cared for the families of the Tata employees killed
in the Mumbai attacks... everything possible to put them up there on
that pedestal, so anyone who doubts them is branded an idiot or an
attention grabber or whatever.

What about all their generosity? You see, when you're stealing Rs.100
worth of a country's natural resources, it's a good idea to return Rs.1
in cash to the people whose resources you stole and make a big deal out
of it. Keeps the attention turned away from the remaining Rs.99 that
you've pocketed.

Sharad Pawar gets the flak for huge irrigation project scams, but you
don't see anybody calling for the arrest of the heads of the companies
that directly benefited from these scams. A Raja goes to jail, but the
people he worked for, are holy angels sent down by God to rescue us all
from poverty, we dare not lay a finger on them.

The best defence is obscurity... the names of our politicos we know, but
the heads of the companies they serve? Nada. At best we'll find out
about them when they're invited as speakers and lecturers and chief
guests in seminars, IIMs, international conventions, award ceremonies etc.

My dear friends, Politics, as it stands sullied today, is not the root
of our evils. It is not causing the problems, rather it is designed to
take the blame for them. It's the carefully planned construct of a
top-down monetary system where dominance is seen as the ultimate goal.
The real roots of your problems are the ones you are being trained to
respect the most, the ones that, you're being told, your country cannot
afford to offend, let alone punish.

You cannot hope to reverse the immense pollution damage being caused in
our countryside by arresting a politician. You can do it only by
shutting down the factories causing the damage. There is much more long
term wealth to be made from clean practices, but see, the catch is that
it's decentralized wealth.

Rs.1 lakh of decentralized business cannot get the reigning
industrialists any profit, it doesn't give them control over the
country's affairs.
Rs. 10,000 of centralized business is way more profitable for them, and
places them in control of things, ensures their hegemony. So for all
those of you who keep wondering "if green practices could really create
more wealth, why don't we see the private sector gunning for them?"...
This is why. More wealth overall doesn't necessarily lead to more
private profit for the wealthy few.

And when the taxpayer is milked to pay some costs, even more honey!
Nuclear power, despite being much more expensive, is the go-to industry
because private players can make much higher profit margins here than in
renewable sector, plus costs and damages are borne by the people. Double
incentive!

Their central goal is expanding their personal coffers, not everyone
else's. And the politicians you love to blame, are placed there like the
whistle of a pressure cooker to blow off your steam on every now and
then. This ensures the cooker never explodes, that you remain trapped
and exploited, and the invisible reign continues. They know this. It's
time you did too.

Simple event creator for live calendar

Check this out! Want something like this for your org ?
putting in a screenshot of the page since I can't share the link with you...

..and it gets posted instantly to a live Google Calendar on your website.
So we just put in a line, submit, and go. No tedious logging in, creating post, filling in different boxes, etc

--

Cheers,
Nikhil Sheth
+91-966-583-1250
Udaipur/Pune, India
Self-designed learner at Swaraj University
http://www.nikhilsheth.tk
http://www.facebook.com/nikjs

Nuclear power: they profit, you pay

http://www.greenpeace.org/india/en/What-We-Do/Nuclear-Unsafe/They-profit-you-pay/

Sign the petition!

Hundreds of thousands of people in Japan lost their homes, jobs and communities. None of them have received enough compensation to rebuild their lives. The costs of Fukushima are being paid by the Japanese people themselves, as taxpayers they are footing the bill for this nuclear disaster.

General Electric, Hitachi and Toshiba designed, built and serviced the reactors which directly contributed to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, yet these companies have not paid one cent of the cost for the reactor failures.

The cost of the Fukushima nuclear disaster is estimated at $250 billion US dollars.
That much money, if put into renewables could have given Japan 292TWh/yr of energy: more than 54 nuclear reactors and 4 large coal plants put together.

So which option, after seeing the risks as well as the costs comparison, do you think is better?

You are still very choosy

I was visiting at a long-time family-friends' place after a.. long time.

Uncle and aunty knew me since I was a baby, and with their kids we all
grew up together. We'd parted after high school. Aunty was recollecting
how incredibly choosy I was with my food in my childhood... there were
very few things I'd allow into my mouth, and I would be intensely
skeptical of anything new I was confronted with : I wouldn't take other
people's word for it.

So we were catching up, and I told him about the recent turns in my life
and my decisions that went contrary to the status quo, my deeper
analysis of the way the world was working.

When we sat at lunch, Aunty cautiously asked me if I was ok with the
food she'd cooked. I protested that I'm not choosy anymore, don't worry.
Uncle promptly exclaimed, "No, you are still very choosy!"

I couldn't understand, so went on to explain how I eat anything now, I
have no issues with...

And then he cut in, "you are still choosy, only what you're choosy in
has shifted from food to something else!"

Right. My life choices. Not accepting the status quo. Not joining the
bandwagon. Questioning what is generally assumed. Peeking behind the
scenes. Choosy is as choosy does.
Thanks, Uncle, for pointing it out!

on importance of Gurus in a learner's life

My two cents on teachers/gurus:

In the real world, there is no such thing as 0% or 100% or infinity. Everything is in between. The guru is important - yes. But to say that the guru is God and decides the student's fate... is a little on the extreme side. What is the logical conclusion of this? Children who pass through 18-odd years of obeying all orders from one human being will only grow to yet again obey all orders of another. In a system of unquestioning adulation and respect, there is no opportunity for the follower to cross-check on the abilities of his/her leader.

I know nothing about the Gurukul system, but I have been a teacher myself for an year and in an organisation where the importance of the Guru was constantly drilled into our heads, and where my students were the typical helpless slum children that have no one but me to look up to. I've seen that it's all too tempting to assume the powers of a God, to believe that I alone hold the keys to 34 destinies. I've been through that and came out despising myself for the monster I had become in the process. There are some roles and structures that had best be left to the Gods.

After that experience, I have interacted and lived for a considerable time with unschooling children and their parents. What I found was that rather than the absence the all-so-critical guru, these kids had innumerable gurus all around them, and had developed an ability to pick and choose the ones most suited for the circumstances - to follow what was meaningful and discard what wasn't. They learned flash programming from me for an hour and then went on to create some amazing films, without even once having to elevate me or lower themselves. We exchanged skills like equals. And then again, in many aspects they became my Gurus and I learned immeasurably from them.

I would say that we should live in a multiplayer world, filled with multiple paths, players, options and directions.

And just like how the importance of a guru in a child's life is so often touted as critical, it is said with equal gusto by often the same parties that competition is essential to create a good and successful human being. Today there is mounting evidence that this isn't true either. What else in our age-old wisdoms may be debatable?

Further reading: Children Educate Themselves IV: Lessons from Sudbury Valley

Download and distribute Khan Academy hindi/urdu videos

http://www.youtube.com/user/KhanAcademyHindiUrdu

Follow the instructions below, to download these Hindi-language educational videos from youtube (the whole lot!), and then distribute them to learners who are more comfortable in Hindi / Urdu :

1. You should be using Firefox web browser : http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

2. Install this extension: http://msram.github.io/bytubed/dev-versions/1.1.2a2.xpi (save to your computer, then drag and drop it on top of the open Firefox browser.)

3. Install this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/ (download manager)

4. Restart the browser (or close and open again)

5. Go to the Chemistry Humari Boli page: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB45AB2F6BC5D1813

6. Right-click in a blank (non-clicking) space and select "ByTubeD"




7. A selection window pops up. There are 112 videos on this playlist. So select All, then scroll to the bottom of the list and de-select the last few videos by pressing and holding Ctrl key. Set the settings to how you see here: MP4 360p quality, Generate Links. Keep any destination folder for now. And then press Start.



8. Wait for some time. It will process all the videos one by one. In a minute or so a new page will be opened in Firefox with all the videos listed. Here, again in an empty space, right-click and select DownThemAll > DownThemAll




9. Another window pops up. Choose your folder, type ".mp4" under Fast Filtering (this should select all our files), and Start.



10. Now your downloads should start. All the best! Please repeat the same for all such collections...




call me up on +91-966-583-1250 if you have any questions!
Cheers!
Nikhil

Passive consumers Vs Active participants

I have some problems with "Atithi Devo Bhava" >> Guests are God,
or the commonly accepted rules of engagement when guests have come over.

I would like to propose an alternative philosophy : Insaan Hain Hum >> We are People.

Imagine having 10 people coming over to your home for 2 days.
Compare 2 different scenarios:

They are your guests. Atithi Devo Bhava. You are the host. You have to make proper arrangements to cater to their needs. You have to cook food for all of them. You have to go and get the ingredients for the food. You have to pay for all the food consumed by them. You have to make provisions for the sleepover. You have to maintain the toilet and supply the hot water. You have to make sure each guest is properly entertained. You have to ensure nothing in your house gets damaged. You cannot do the chores you had planned and have to attend to your guests. Your normal way of life is disrupted. Work increases and leisure is zapped.

They are people. Insaan Hain Hum. You are a person like they are. We'll refer to the combine as "we". We will make all arrangements needed. Some of us will opt to cook the food for everyone; you may or may not join. Some of us will opt to fetch the ingredients for the food. We will split all the costs amongst ourselves. We will manage the sleepover and make any adjustments necessary. We will maintain the toilet and take care of the water. We take full responsibility for entertaining ourselves. We take full responsibility for making sure your house suffers no damage due to us. We will take over and complete your chores as much as we can in gratitude for this hospitality. Your normal way of life gets comradeship and extra assistance. Work is reduced and made more fun in company; leisure gets addons.

After they leave, you have to clean everything up.  You might hear complaints later on on what all went wrong when they were over. You will never want to have this many people over at your place for as long as you live.

We will clean everything up before we leave. You will hear talk later on on what a great time everybody had, and fond recollections of all the accidents. You will look forward to having them come over again.

So. Which line of action do you think is the better one?

This is the difference between passive consumers and active participants. Which group do you want coming over?

Online action CAN bring real change

This is in reply to the statement I hear now and then about internet activism, clicking on online petitions, forwarding emails, sharing links, taking pledges etc not making any real, practical change in the world.

I'd like to say here that the statement above is false. Not that I'm saying the opposite is true, but that the statement above is false in the sense that it is incomplete and by lack of being complete, it gives a false message to a reader who may think that it is complete.


By personal experience I have seen that merely an email campaign that includes writing stuff, putting stuff together, and emailing large numbers of people, inviting people to participate simply online, while at the time simply living my normal life and doing my normal things, has had real, practical effects.

And I mean a complete reversal of a bad action, I mean actual money getting deposited in a bank account (ka-chink!), I mean people holding positions of authority having to admit a wrongdoing. Real change has happened. And not in the distant past or in another country: it happened around this time last year, in Pune, India. Just by sending emails to a limited group of people. If you want to dig into the details of this, contact me sometime, or see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2fy7pY3iqc (it's 44min long! and sorry but you'll have to see all of it to understand the matter)

What the complete picture entails, is that the online action can do a job of thawing the ice, heating the pot, of paving the way to on-the-ground action. It can act as a converger of hearts and minds. It can unite people behind a cause. And it DOES make a difference. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not in that particular case. But it does. If not in body then in mind. Because such is the irreversible nature of awareness: once you are aware of something, even if you don't do anything about it, you're very likely to stay aware and not get fooled in that department again. If you've ever done chemistry seriously, you'll know that there is no such thing as 0% or 100% concentration in the real world.

I'd like to invoke an old phrase once more :

Knowledge is power.

And add a line to it :

Awareness makes change possible.

If you're feeling curious, you can go to Avaaz.org or change.org and see examples on their website of petitions that made a difference, that brought about real change on the ground or that set the ball rolling. In scientific circles, it takes only one practically observed event that doesn't follow a theory, to disprove that theory. Let's use that here as well. While all online actions can't be guaranteed to bring real change, it is equally untrue to say that every online action is absolutely hopeless. That is a lie. There is always hope, and it is convergent instead of divergent, meaning at some tipping point, hope WILL convert to action.

Which means that even a failed campaign of today only sets the stage for a successful one tomorrow. In a sense, if you support a cause that you know is right, you can never, ever really fail : that is a practical impossibility.

The change that you want to see in the world does not come from any one ninja master stroke. There will never be one person or one superhero who does all the work for you. There may be one initiator, but it will spread. It's more like drops of water coming together, that form great rivers. The drops will come from many different places. Similarly, actions that bring about change can come from many different places: including your facebook activity.

So, in the case where you CAN and WANT to take part in a physical effort to bring change on-the-ground, DO IT. And in the case where you can't or don't want to do it for whatever reason, don't. Similarly, if you can and want to sign an online petition or share something on your social profile, or forward something to spread awareness about an issue that you care for, then instead of listening to all that "be realistic, yaar" advice,

GO AHEAD AND DO IT

and be the drop that converges into a mighty river.

Stop watching TV

Stop watching TV.

It is a well-established and proven tool for social control, which gives you completely wrong notions about the world around you, and which makes you behave in ways a normal human being wouldn't. You don't need me to prove it to you... just google it and you'll come across innumerable research, campaigns, etc.

By watching News on TV, many of you (especially the men) may think that you're beating the game, you're not getting trapped into those stupid soaps and reality shows. But you're wrong there. It's even more dangerous than watching entertainment.

Why? Well, with watching entertainment on TV, you know from advance that this is entertainment only and for awareness about what's going on in your world, you'll need to look around.. newspapers, internet, talking with friends and colleagues. But after watching news on TV, you feel like your awareness needs have been met! 

Compare the two scenarios and just say out loud which one actually gives you news aka information, and which one simply feeds one sensational thing after another, repetitively? In which case are you left to decide on your own what is good or bad, and where are you told that this is good, this is bad? In which case are your emotions exploited?

Who owns the TV Stations? Who funds them? Would they stand to benefit more by giving you the hard facts, or by keeping you glued more and more to them?

Keep your wits about you. Stop watching TV.

And this comes from personal experience. Take a look at the articles on this blog. See my recent Facebook posts. Over the past 10 years, if there was one thing that contributed to my thinking and helped me question and understand the world better, it was this. I gradually stopped watching TV, it stopped being part and parcel of my life.

If you're interested, watch these episodes, "How TV ruined your life" : http://www.youtube.com/user/conspirates/videos?query=how+tv+ruined+your+life

Incredibly funny, incredibly correct.

A personal catalog / database to manage movies etc

The last few days I was looking for ways to organize my several documentaries, ted talks, ebooks etc in a convenient, local way using tagging so i can find and manage them better. The problem with putting these guys into folders is that there are videos which may pertain to more than just one category. So there might be one video relevant to unschooling and globalisation and off-grid living; and there would be other videos which are relevant to only unschooling and globalisation. And then there are some nice animations in every segment so I'd want a way to find them too.

I'm sure anyone's who's ever collected something must have had this problem. On the internet, websites solve that issue by putting tags or categories on their articles and one article can have more than one tag or category. I've done that with Jugaadibility and it's been wonderful.

I wanted to bring that convenience, as well as ability to search instantly, as well as the possibility of adding whatever info I want to about the videos, to a personal computer, to a personal collection that I can even take along on a pen drive or hard disk to other computers, without having to install anything, and independent of the OS. And it had to be organic: I should be able to add tags, remove them, add more files etc as I go along.

I couldn't find anything on the net that could help me with this, so this week I went DIY and made it, using a technology called "tiddlywiki" that I've previously used for work, to wreak havoc somewhere, and which I use as a personal journal now. The whole database/catalog is in one single .html file, and has a creation wizard with neat instructions inside itself, so anyone can make their own catalog using this!

As always, I'm sharing it with the world, under Creative Commons, so everyone is free to take it, use it, modify it and share it.

You can get it from here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7z787xi8aqy7u1/tiddlywiki%20database.zip?m

Do share with friends you know who want help with managing their movies/collections!

The true purpose of schooling organizations

Had a great conversation with a former colleague in Teach for India (TFI) and a friend yesterday, and I'd like to share a thought experiment we did.

Given a kid from the slums who goes through all the compulsory factory schooling that TFI wants her to Vs. a kid from the slums who drops out early and learns life living on the streets,

Which one of those kids, following Zinn's train of thoughts, is going to be more obedient to authority when the shit hits the fan?

So if you wanted to make a world that is free of the oppressive structures that are poisoning the world of today, would you rather compulsorily educate (referring to TFI's model) the children of the poor, or leave them be?

Moreover, if you were a big MNC that had everything to lose if the masses ever figured out how you were plundering them and became disobedient, which organizations would you fund as your CSR, to safeguard your continued profits?

The missing child abuse

There's a very helpful graphic being shared these days on what sort of actions are child abuse.

However, I felt that it misses out one of the most widespread forms of child abuse taking place today:

The act of holding human beings in physical confinement against their natural wishes, of ordering them to do what you judge to be best for their future (the judgement being sorely under-researched and prejudiced), and creating elaborate structures to justify that confinement as being good for them while neglecting the consequences that are resulting from it.

Right to free and compulsory education? Bullshit.

No one should be made to do anything compulsorily, no matter what the justification. This is one of the most basic human rights accorded to every human being, including children who are humans first. If this provision is to be bent even a little for realism, it should only happen at the hands of the people who are closest to that child. Outsourcing it to people who have nothing to lose and much to gain from violating this basic human right, is what we today known as schooling.

Sure, it may be everywhere and generally accepted as necessary today. But so was slavery, so was colonialism, so was women's repression, so is reckless consumption of fossil fuels, so are wars, so is bailing out large irresponsible corporations with taxpayers' money. In case you forgot, all those practices were also being done in the name of the greater good. Just because the status quo tells you something, doesn't make it automatically right. It must be held and inspected in its own light, and the devil in the details brought out instead of grandiose rhetoric.

Intellectual frustration Vs Unconditional sharing

A familiar complaint from the "intellectual" facebookers (Yes, I'm one of them!):

You post an article that's in all likelihood more informative than anything you've got to say and most people just ignore it. You post a rant or express an opinion of your own and suddenly everyone's interested. That's actually rather sad....Has anyone else found themselves noticing this pattern regarding their posts on FB? :/

My comment on that:
Common mistake we make: blame people instead of analyzing the surrounding structure. Your reasons for being on FB may differ from those of others. And no one has any authority to judge which are the right reasons and which are the wrong.

Anyways, if you're keen on public sharing then make your post settings to public, that way they're "out there" for someone unknown to catch. (A parent in Nagpur recently contacted me and thanked me for gathering Khan Academy subtitles which I'd done and put out there last year, it helped his daughter in preparing for her 11th exams. I'm high on random gratitude right now!) Also blog in parallel. Be like a tree : give out your ideas and let them be spread wherever, without bothering or monitoring any "success rate"

Here is one who...

An invite to anyone and everyone:

If there was one sentence you'd like to be said about you after you have
passed on from this world (aka died as in dead), what would it be? Fill
in the blanks:

Here is one who ______________________________________________________

So, put yours in the comments below! No need to sum everything up in one
sentence; you can always come back to put in more! And don't try too
hard to be accurate.. nobody's judging or anything. Let's think out of
the box, we'll have more fun that way.

Let me start off:

Here is one who always spoke his mind.

Feedback to wikipedia

Feedback I gave to wikipedia in a survey form that came after its donation page:

Go a little easy on people who are starting to contribute; love,
encourage and forgive them instead of being so critical and punishing.
Create page-tags/templates that can illustrate the fact that it's a
work-in-progress, assign this status by default on new articles so a
newbie isn't expected to already have advanced skills (which is a
stupid, stupid thing wikipedia is doing right now. Adding references and
templates is difficult, period. Don't expect a person with less than 50
edit counts to know or even want to learn about it). When a visitor
comes at a page, maybe an age or number of edits can be displayed at the
top to convey an idea of how mature or immature the article is.

Having permanent-tenure editors is as bad an idea as having permanent
bureaucrats or government leaders: There should be limited terms and
off-periods between them and retirement times; that will be good for the
editing community and will encourage editors to pass the baton on rather
than be in a permanent status contest of entrenchment, edit-counts,
deletions etc that I see at present. I got totally turned off at the
last wikipedia meetup I attended in my city when people started showing
off their edit-counts and were treating them like army medals. Many of
the veteran editors today would never have participated in Wikipedia if
they'd faced the kind of treatment given to newbies today. Obviously,
this is an unsustainable model and headed for collapse when the present
generation of editors dies out. Remove any element of competition; there
is no such thing as healthy competition. There is no need for
wikipedia's editors to have an obsessive compulsive quality control
behaviour : we are NOT competing with peer-reviewed journals or
mainstream publications; we are NOT supposed to be 100% accurate
"no-matter-what". That much is obvious in the disclaimers; we need to
remind the editors lobby about it. Quality is achieved through time,
love, room for experimentation and prolonged attention; not through
rushed editing and deletions. Beware of throwing out the baby with the
bathwater.

And then there's the mainstream bias flaw. If wikipedia were around in
the decade before WW2, then going by its guidelines its content would
have been more and more encouraging of the Nazis, as its references are
mostly mainstream and well-entrenched institutions. And owing to the
influence it exerts, it would have helped the powers-that-be. That
situation hasn't changed today either: wikipedia is not being neutral
but rather helping the predominant world powers by according more
credibility to richer, bigger and well-entrenched media institutions who
reflect the wishes of the status quo. If by now we know that New York
Times, Fox News, Time, Wall Street Journal etc were so encouraging of
the Iraq invasion and by now it's obvious, with detailed factual
evidence to prove it, that they did shoddy reporting and acted as
mouthpieces of the then US administration, then why the hell are ANY
articles published by these organisations being quoted as references in
wikipedia articles? Instead of credibility, we are giving more weightage
to clout. And there's no way for anyone to really judge which
organisations are credible and which aren't. A personal blog entry might
have more truth than a front-page news article -- as it was before the
Iraqi invasion. If wikipedia is truly neutral then ALL viewpoints ought
to be given the chance to present themselves, instead of deleting some
references and keeping others. Heck, for the goal of neutrality it would
be advisable to make it mandatory to mention to readers that so-and-so
paragraph is based on what mainstream media is saying, so please tread
with caution. I like wikipedia, but 20 years from now, people may look
back at it as a liar and a mouthpiece of the status quo. We need
policies to fix the mainstream bias and be more tolerant of citizen
reporting, in references.

I don't want to get used to stupidity

A snippet from a post that addresses the ongoing conflict between functionality and smoooothness of user interfaces

"there's the sentence, you can get used to it. Yes, I can. People can get used to all sorts of things, like labor in Siberia or prison camps in Laos, that does not mean you should be doing that if you don't have to. I don't want to get used to stupidity."

from http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gnome-3-6.html

I echo with this. Just how in communications we've (actually, you've) been losing honest communication in the name of more and more courtesy and manners, so too in this matter, of computing, we're losing useful.. usefullness (!) in the blind pursuit of making everything super-smooth and minimal.

To deal with this, one thing we need to do is take off the unidirectional assumption of time in software. It is possible for an earlier version to be better than the latest version. There should be an acceptance for refusing to stay up-to-date all the damn time.

Especially regarding the new main interface that has come in Ubuntu, after ubuntu 10 :
   _   _
  (^!^)
 ~\O/~