My brother Karuna says I am a moron but I told him I am actually a progressive thinker. I too am a PhD but don’t hold a doctorate. It is a just Person Having Dick. I read Calvin Sankaran’s letter entitled Political Punditry: A carnival of Charlatans and must say I learned many things.
By P. Jayendran
Switzerland has over 1,000 types of cheese and I think that one he mentioned is Elemental or something spelt like that. That one we always see in Tom & Jerry with holes and dents and rich yellow in color. Thank you for teaching us about the world’s most smelly cheese. French words are hard to pronounce but artistic and learned people tell me it is a beautiful and stylish language. Personally, my favorite cheese is any smelly blue. Smells like hell but tastes like heaven!
RPK is not a frustrated old man. He is a political activist and through him many dirty secrets of the powers that be have been exposed. Otherwise we would all be in the dark and exist like educated fools. I like his simple and practical expressions because it’s easy to understand. All these bombastic words are difficult for me and take time to decipher.
Leading astrophysicists tell us many things that can make our minds implode. They tell us about a parallel universe and shortcuts in the universe where you don’t have to take billions of years to travel thousands of light years. Just find one of these holes and you can travel the distance in a fraction of the time otherwise taken. It’s like a time-tunnel. To me it’s mumbo jumbo and utterly incomprehensible. Who is there to argue with these “experts” since it’s virtually impossible to prove them right or wrong? They have been studying for 30 years or more and the universities have branded them as experts. To me, it’s all a matter of hunches, educated guesses and theories.
Einstein taught us about light being bent by gravity and it took us a long time before scientists finally accepted it. When Einstein was a boy, they thought he was a retard. This was because he did not speak until he was past 2 years old. In school they also thought he was incompetent and when he started working life, he was employed as a mere clerk in the patent office. All the genius minds could not fathom that they had a super-genius in their midst and dismissed him as a person of marginal wit. During his lifetime, Van Gogh’s paintings were never appreciated. They also thought Dali was on some kind of magic mushroom. Today their works are accepted as those of geniuses and auctioned-off at tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
Politics is like the wind. Sometimes it blows the rains your way and sometimes it blows the rain clouds away. It’s anybody’s guess. Likewise, it’s easy to take potshots at analyses after the results have been revealed – no matter how educated and logical it appeared at first. That’s easy to do. To berate and downplay others is also easy. But didn’t you know that these were all calculated guesses in the first place? Of course being academicians, they have a long way to express these predictions. Who could blame them as after all they were trained that way? I guess it’s the same thing with Calvin Sankaran’s training.
Voters are smart people. They know how to collect at a time such as by-elections. They are quick to grasp that it’s not the same case with general elections. They know who holds the purse and how to get what they want. Often during campaigning, the real Santa Claus appears. Money speaks louder than words, doctrines and beliefs. Politicians have secret weapons and more often than not these always surface at the most appropriate time.
Prior to the elections of 2008, those political minds, experts, advisors, analysts and so on serving BN never saw the importance of the Internet. They may have dismissed it as the plaything of youngsters who basically don’t have backbones and are reliant on their parents for pocket money for the cyber cafes. And that they were not decision makers – much less a potential tide for political change. Today, these same politicians take the Internet seriously and are an active part of it. They are actually responding to it in conventional media. What a change!
Politics is like the wind. It can blow any direction and change directions. You know, even with billion dollar satellites, meteorologists still can’t predict which way the hurricane would change course. Seismologists cannot predict when and where earthquakes would strike. And those hotshot economists and financial gurus don’t quite know when and how the markets will crash. It could just be some fat finger accidentally punching a couple more zeros to send NYSE plummeting.
I had thought pundits were gamblers and charlatans were followers of Charlemagne. In the same way, I hope Mr. Calvin Sankaran has also learnt a thing or two from Karuna’s moron and not put down these learned minds and institutions just because of erratic winds.
By P. Jayendran
Switzerland has over 1,000 types of cheese and I think that one he mentioned is Elemental or something spelt like that. That one we always see in Tom & Jerry with holes and dents and rich yellow in color. Thank you for teaching us about the world’s most smelly cheese. French words are hard to pronounce but artistic and learned people tell me it is a beautiful and stylish language. Personally, my favorite cheese is any smelly blue. Smells like hell but tastes like heaven!
RPK is not a frustrated old man. He is a political activist and through him many dirty secrets of the powers that be have been exposed. Otherwise we would all be in the dark and exist like educated fools. I like his simple and practical expressions because it’s easy to understand. All these bombastic words are difficult for me and take time to decipher.
Leading astrophysicists tell us many things that can make our minds implode. They tell us about a parallel universe and shortcuts in the universe where you don’t have to take billions of years to travel thousands of light years. Just find one of these holes and you can travel the distance in a fraction of the time otherwise taken. It’s like a time-tunnel. To me it’s mumbo jumbo and utterly incomprehensible. Who is there to argue with these “experts” since it’s virtually impossible to prove them right or wrong? They have been studying for 30 years or more and the universities have branded them as experts. To me, it’s all a matter of hunches, educated guesses and theories.
Einstein taught us about light being bent by gravity and it took us a long time before scientists finally accepted it. When Einstein was a boy, they thought he was a retard. This was because he did not speak until he was past 2 years old. In school they also thought he was incompetent and when he started working life, he was employed as a mere clerk in the patent office. All the genius minds could not fathom that they had a super-genius in their midst and dismissed him as a person of marginal wit. During his lifetime, Van Gogh’s paintings were never appreciated. They also thought Dali was on some kind of magic mushroom. Today their works are accepted as those of geniuses and auctioned-off at tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
Politics is like the wind. Sometimes it blows the rains your way and sometimes it blows the rain clouds away. It’s anybody’s guess. Likewise, it’s easy to take potshots at analyses after the results have been revealed – no matter how educated and logical it appeared at first. That’s easy to do. To berate and downplay others is also easy. But didn’t you know that these were all calculated guesses in the first place? Of course being academicians, they have a long way to express these predictions. Who could blame them as after all they were trained that way? I guess it’s the same thing with Calvin Sankaran’s training.
Voters are smart people. They know how to collect at a time such as by-elections. They are quick to grasp that it’s not the same case with general elections. They know who holds the purse and how to get what they want. Often during campaigning, the real Santa Claus appears. Money speaks louder than words, doctrines and beliefs. Politicians have secret weapons and more often than not these always surface at the most appropriate time.
Prior to the elections of 2008, those political minds, experts, advisors, analysts and so on serving BN never saw the importance of the Internet. They may have dismissed it as the plaything of youngsters who basically don’t have backbones and are reliant on their parents for pocket money for the cyber cafes. And that they were not decision makers – much less a potential tide for political change. Today, these same politicians take the Internet seriously and are an active part of it. They are actually responding to it in conventional media. What a change!
Politics is like the wind. It can blow any direction and change directions. You know, even with billion dollar satellites, meteorologists still can’t predict which way the hurricane would change course. Seismologists cannot predict when and where earthquakes would strike. And those hotshot economists and financial gurus don’t quite know when and how the markets will crash. It could just be some fat finger accidentally punching a couple more zeros to send NYSE plummeting.
I had thought pundits were gamblers and charlatans were followers of Charlemagne. In the same way, I hope Mr. Calvin Sankaran has also learnt a thing or two from Karuna’s moron and not put down these learned minds and institutions just because of erratic winds.
No comments:
Post a Comment