It’s a slippery slope when we start banning books and even worse, withdrawing or recalling books. Do books need to start passing through a censor soon, to determine what is acceptable and what is not? Not that even a censor would help – because apparently all it takes is a few people to take offense…
A lot of people are going to wonder at Meg Whitman losing her bid for California Governor, despite spending about $140 million of her own money. I believe it’s the other way round – she lost precisely because she spent $14o million of her money. Here is why: 1. Voters seem to be feeling quite…
Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue”, which I read recently, is a fascinating book in many ways. The book told me so many things about Sarah Palin that I had never suspected before. For instance: 1. Sarah Palin writes beautifully. She writes much better than how she speaks or twitters. Sample this (and all this in just…
The other day, Bill Maher was on Larry King’s show on CNN, and in his usual forthright manner, talked about terrorism and Afghanistan and how war is not the best way to fight terrorism. As I listened to Maher speak, I wondered if Greg Mortenson was also watching. I could picture him sitting in his…
It’s official then, finally – Al Franken gets to go to Washington D.C. The only part of this that interests anyone is that the Dems have got their filibuster-proof Senate majority at last. Most people lost interest in the Norm Coleman – Al Franken Senate recount long months ago. But I remember a time in…
I was watching MSNBC yesterday when I got a tutorial on how much hot air passes for analysis these days. The discussion was centered on the “reported” offer by Barack Obama of the Secretary of State position to Hillary Clinton. Here is how the “analysis” went. – Did he really offer the position to her…
There are some things about US Presidential elections I have never understood. Every four years, I find myself asking the same questions, as the same set of issues crops up. I have never found a good answer to these questions: 1. Why don’t they declare a holiday on Election Day? Why do they force people…
It’s all over but the coronation. Barack Hussein Obama has achieved a historic win. As the New Yorker notes, we can now call him by his full name now that he has won, and anyway BHO sounds much better than BO. On election night, I watched McCain give the best speech of his campaign –…
Vote today if you can.? Watch even if you cannot. For the results will not only tell us who will be, arguably, the most powerful person on earth, they will also tell us a lot about the US.? The demographics will tell us about how the US is thinking, and how it has changed over…
I am tired of being on the campaign trail. Ten more days to go. I cannot wait for the elections to be over. No, I am not running for President. Not even Vice President, though that is not saying much. But R, I suspect, is the secret political strategist for some leading party. For the…
All those people who claim to be experts on Iran and Iraq, but can’t even get the countries’ names right.? It’s not Eye-rack or Eye-ran, or even Eye-rain.? They are not the Eye-rainians or the Eye-rackies. They are not Mazlim. We have been in a war for five years, and even the so-called “experts” can’t…
Dilip D’Souza has a very thought-provoking article in the Washington Post about Mumbai’s slum dwellers. He has also posted the article on his blog. I found myself taking over his comments section, and even after writing a whole essay there, I still had not voiced all that I wanted to say. Obviously, the only thing…
Gloria Steinem had a beautiful op-ed in the NYT yesterday and I could not agree with her more. She talks about the polarization of gender roles, how we treat women fundamentally different from men and how we hold Hillary Clinton to different standards from Barack Obama. Unlike Gloria Steinem, I am not writing this because…
The Imagined Universe 