I do not think it is hard for a country like the USA to provide insurance for the education of its citizens. It is the least you should demand from your government (if not something like a reasonable job security). In fact, you should be able to obtain some form of compensation from your employers too, if they can fire people like the way they do.
Don't think India is not doing anything for its poor. We have a huge welfare state and a very vibrate left-wing section in politics. Moreover, the media is extremely free. And guess what, we are a democracy. People do vote for the policies that they want. All the political parties know well that they cannot alienate the majority of the people.
India is not like China. For one thing, we speak English. That's why we are getting call centres right:) You would not find any prejudice here, especially in cosmopolitan cities like Bangalore. The culture of India is historically very tolerant. We have 25 official languages in India, so we guys end up speaking with each other in English. In fact, I hardly know any Hindi (it is not my mother tongue)
We don't yet have any jobs that can interest American intelligentia. It is mostly mundane work that gets outsourced to India. But there are a few good positions, even research positions.
In India, the government actively encourages IT industry with free land grants, less taxes etc. I think the US government should offer similar incentives to the US industry - especially to offset for the high prices of real estate etc. You people should fight for the right kind of policies. USA has always had a competitive edge with respect to a high profile industry such as software. It is difficult to lose it. But we cannot be sure !!
I am not right-wing !! I consider myself centrist, but have been accused several times of being left-wing. You are seriously pulling my leg:)
What point of USA not having to deal with population pressures of industrial revolution did you not understand ?
Take a land mass the size of a continent, with mighty rivers and mineral resources.
Kill all the native inhabitants
Start populating the country slowly from east to west
If anybody loses a job due to industrialization in New York, award him wheat fields in Kansas or diamond fields in California
If you give me this alternative, I don't need any colonies to make industrialization happen. Good strategy huh ? You are kidding yourself. Most people immigrated to the USA because they lost their jobs in Europe. They could not face the population pressures that were developing there. Hmm.. Do I have the same option in India now ? Don't think so.
Globalization is indeed creating a lot of opportunities in India. The middle class is rapidly growing in purchasing power. It is already one of the biggest markets in Asia. In comparison to the USA, Indian people are less hungry for energy per capita, more tolerant of other races and more respectful of family-values. Very soon, we will be welcoming European/American brains to work in India by offering decent paychecks. And you will not be facing any shouting crowds of angry rednecks, but only warm welcome and sincere friends. Will be something of a change. Huh ?
International trade is still heavily biased against India. Our farmers cannot sell their produce and our artisans cannot sell their handicrafts. If you say we educated people can't sell our services, what are we left with ? I think the world owes something to India in return. For five thousand years, we have been the cradle of civilization and culture. Not to mention the number of Indians serving USA now in medicine, science and research.
If a guy who received a 80000 USD education cannot find a job for himself, of what good is he ? Do you have any clue how difficult it is in India to receive that kind of education ? Only the top 100 out of 150,000 applicants can get admitted to a college with such facilities.
You people are too unwilling to adapt and too unwilling to relocate. Even today, the best of all jobs computer science are in the USA. I guess what you people should fight for is reasonable unemployment insurance and learning opportunities. Or try looking for an option with better job security. Don't cry like old wags that Indians are stealing your jobs. Try being a sensible democracy for a change and elect a government which can create better work opportunities, instead of one which spends billions $$$ on fighting useless wars.
Hi buddy
I feel your anguish about outsourcing. But you need to set your facts straight. Without colonization, neither Europe nor US would have been industrialized. It is basic mathematics - automation/industrialization makes several workers redundant and they would lose their jobs.The question would be whether the economy continues to grow so as to permit them to find new jobs. If you don't have colonies, the surplus produce cannot be sold and thus the economy *cannot* grow. India was the secret of Europe's industrialization. Lots of Indian farmers/artisans have died out of starvation to make this happen.
USA is nothing but an *usurped* country which was needed to settle down Europe's unemployed population. It did not have to face the population pressures and economic stagnation - because a *huge* country and its natural resources were just stolen to begin with. The Americans also had the advantage of an European upbringing which introduced them to industrial-level education.
USA cannot wash itself away off the European sins of colonization. USA had been an obvious necessity to thwart off the pains of unemployment that industrialization created in Europe. It is seriously childish to believe that a country can somehow industrialize by itself. Who would buy the products, my friend ???
Now, the current process out globalization is very much necessary to the economic upliftment of the rest of the world. Atleast, it is a relatively humane process unlike colonization. The important fact that should be noted is that US economy *continues to grow* thereby potentially creating more avenues of employment. We guys in India did not have that option during those 300 years when we were pillaged off our natural resources.
It is the recording companies that need copyright. Throughout history, making money has never been difficult for artists. They were always patronized by friends and fans. How did Homer survive ? How did Leanardo da Vinci survive ? How did Wagner survive ? How did all these people make money ? Did anybody buy their music or literature ? No Even today, every great artist has been carefully patronized by his immediate circle of friends before he/she finds his fame. Hollywood/recording industry has nevery done a decent job of discovering and patronizing artists. They are indeed responsible for the suicides and desperation of many talented people.
Patronizing artists is a basic trait of human nature. We have been doing it ever since we existed. Sometimes, it is individuals who do it. And sometimes, it is associations (feudal lords, church, kings) who do it. In the age of the internet, the power to patronize artists is within the reach of every single person - not only the rich and the famous.
The recording/publishing industry has outsurvived its time. It needs to die. The battle between Google and Viacom is only a part of the bigger war.
Can patronizing of an art earn enough money to undertake large projects ? Can anybody make "the lord of the rings" out of donations ? If you are not convinced, please visit my blog The answer is YES . The very symbol of freedom is a sign of the promise in the democracy of art. I am talking about the statue of liberty. If it could have been built out of donations of people, nothing else is impossible.
What you said is interesting. But why would anybody want to know about God if that has nothing to do with oneself or with the nature ? The concept of God as an abstraction for every unknown problem in the universe. When people didn't know what makes thunder, they attributed it to God. When people didn't know what makes life, they attributed it to God. When we don't know what makes compassion, love or beauty, we now attribute it to God.
When somebody claims that one can know nothing about God (such as Ahmed-Sirhindi), he essentially means that one can know nothing about every unanswered thing in the world.
In India, the notion of God is very holistic which encompasses not only nature but also one's own soul. The question "what is God" is equivalent to "who am I".
Al-Khwarizmi (780 AD) who compiled the first major texts of algebra (and from whose name the world algorithm comes from) had a lookup of the work of the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta of 590 AD. The later guy wrote the text which explains how to solve quadratic equations, apart from several other things.
The word "algebra" was created during renaissance time to refer to the work of Al-khwarizmi which got translated into Latin etc.
Buddha did nothing to prevent the intellectual curiosity of India. In fact, his religion is a continuous path of questioning about oneself. Indian science was continuing to flourish till as late as 900 AD. Several major scientific texts in sanskrit were compiled around this era - for example that of Bhaskara the 2nd.
Trumpeting about vedas is a job taken by the right-wing religious nuts of India. Looks like you are dancing to some weed that's churned out by them.
Readers please pardon my laxity. I am guilty of confusing you. Ahmed-Sirhindi lived around 1550 AD. This is treated as year 1000 in the Islamic calender. Now everything that I said starts making sense.
Hi. I do know what I am talking about. I am from Hyderabad in India which has a lot of monuments showcasing Islamic architecture. My Masters project is in computer vision to rectify images automatically when they exhibit planar symmetry. I have found these architectural patterns to be the ideal dataset for my thesis. It is a fact that the art of producing these patterns attained a stagnation at around 1000 AD. That is not to say that great monuments were not constructed after that. In fact, the Taj Mahal (the finest specimen of these patterns, from what I heard) has not been built until 1650 AD. But, what I want to clarify is that the developement of these patterns didn't extend beyond craftsmanship. Had the Indo-Arabic science not been hampered by the lack of funding (which is exactly how Ahmed-Sirhindi's philosophy got manifested as), this would have enabled the people to have discovered several new areas of mathematics and engineering.
You can view my blogpost celebrating the finish of my master's project:)
Al Ghazali was indeed a very influential philosopher who brought in umpteen damage to the scientific inquiry of the Islamic world. But the real damage was done by another person called Ahmed Sirhindi.
In simple words, what he has said was that human brain is futile. Any effort to understand nature/God through reasoning and thought is a waste of time. The only way salvation could be obtained is through studying the Kuran (the unmorphed message from God) and the Hadith (stories about the life of Mohammed). Without the use of Mohammed, man is inherently powerless to understand Nature or God ! In his philosophy, the biggest evil were the Greek & Hindu philosophers.
His philosophy sounded the death to the movement of Sufism (mysticism and philosophy) in Islam. At the same time, it put an end to the systematic enquiry of science.
Ahmed Sirhindi became the Mujaddid (the equivalent of the pope in Islam) and he convinced the Ottoman empire to use his methods. He convinced the Mughal empire in India to use his methods. Consequently, India and Arabia were mired in dark ages ever since 1000 AD.His influence is strongly felt in the later and the final Mujaddid - Wahhab of Saudi Arabia. The major school of Islam in Pakistan and India is the Deoband school, which is drawn from the ideas of Wahhab & Sirhindi. These are the seeds of Islamic fundamentalism.
It is no wonder that all glories of Islamic mathematics, medicine and astronomy were reached before 1000 AD.
Slashdot Mirror
I do not think it is hard for a country like the USA to provide insurance for the education of its citizens. It is the least you should demand from your government (if not something like a reasonable job security). In fact, you should be able to obtain some form of compensation from your employers too, if they can fire people like the way they do.
:) You would not find any prejudice here, especially in cosmopolitan cities like Bangalore. The culture of India is historically very tolerant. We have 25 official languages in India, so we guys end up speaking with each other in English. In fact, I hardly know any Hindi (it is not my mother tongue)
Don't think India is not doing anything for its poor. We have a huge welfare state and a very vibrate left-wing section in politics. Moreover, the media is extremely free. And guess what, we are a democracy. People do vote for the policies that they want. All the political parties know well that they cannot alienate the majority of the people.
India is not like China. For one thing, we speak English. That's why we are getting call centres right
We don't yet have any jobs that can interest American intelligentia. It is mostly mundane work that gets outsourced to India. But there are a few good positions, even research positions.
In India, the government actively encourages IT industry with free land grants, less taxes etc. I think the US government should offer similar incentives to the US industry - especially to offset for the high prices of real estate etc. You people should fight for the right kind of policies. USA has always had a competitive edge with respect to a high profile industry such as software. It is difficult to lose it. But we cannot be sure !!
What point of USA not having to deal with population pressures of industrial revolution did you not understand ?
If you give me this alternative, I don't need any colonies to make industrialization happen. Good strategy huh ? You are kidding yourself. Most people immigrated to the USA because they lost their jobs in Europe. They could not face the population pressures that were developing there. Hmm.. Do I have the same option in India now ? Don't think so.
Globalization is indeed creating a lot of opportunities in India. The middle class is rapidly growing in purchasing power. It is already one of the biggest markets in Asia. In comparison to the USA, Indian people are less hungry for energy per capita, more tolerant of other races and more respectful of family-values. Very soon, we will be welcoming European/American brains to work in India by offering decent paychecks. And you will not be facing any shouting crowds of angry rednecks, but only warm welcome and sincere friends. Will be something of a change. Huh ?
International trade is still heavily biased against India. Our farmers cannot sell their produce and our artisans cannot sell their handicrafts. If you say we educated people can't sell our services, what are we left with ? I think the world owes something to India in return. For five thousand years, we have been the cradle of civilization and culture. Not to mention the number of Indians serving USA now in medicine, science and research.
If a guy who received a 80000 USD education cannot find a job for himself, of what good is he ? Do you have any clue how difficult it is in India to receive that kind of education ? Only the top 100 out of 150,000 applicants can get admitted to a college with such facilities.
You people are too unwilling to adapt and too unwilling to relocate. Even today, the best of all jobs computer science are in the USA. I guess what you people should fight for is reasonable unemployment insurance and learning opportunities. Or try looking for an option with better job security. Don't cry like old wags that Indians are stealing your jobs. Try being a sensible democracy for a change and elect a government which can create better work opportunities, instead of one which spends billions $$$ on fighting useless wars.
Hi buddy I feel your anguish about outsourcing. But you need to set your facts straight. Without colonization, neither Europe nor US would have been industrialized. It is basic mathematics - automation/industrialization makes several workers redundant and they would lose their jobs.The question would be whether the economy continues to grow so as to permit them to find new jobs. If you don't have colonies, the surplus produce cannot be sold and thus the economy *cannot* grow. India was the secret of Europe's industrialization. Lots of Indian farmers/artisans have died out of starvation to make this happen. USA is nothing but an *usurped* country which was needed to settle down Europe's unemployed population. It did not have to face the population pressures and economic stagnation - because a *huge* country and its natural resources were just stolen to begin with. The Americans also had the advantage of an European upbringing which introduced them to industrial-level education. USA cannot wash itself away off the European sins of colonization. USA had been an obvious necessity to thwart off the pains of unemployment that industrialization created in Europe. It is seriously childish to believe that a country can somehow industrialize by itself. Who would buy the products, my friend ??? Now, the current process out globalization is very much necessary to the economic upliftment of the rest of the world. Atleast, it is a relatively humane process unlike colonization. The important fact that should be noted is that US economy *continues to grow* thereby potentially creating more avenues of employment. We guys in India did not have that option during those 300 years when we were pillaged off our natural resources.
It is the recording companies that need copyright. Throughout history, making money has never been difficult for artists. They were always patronized by friends and fans. How did Homer survive ? How did Leanardo da Vinci survive ? How did Wagner survive ? How did all these people make money ? Did anybody buy their music or literature ? No Even today, every great artist has been carefully patronized by his immediate circle of friends before he/she finds his fame. Hollywood/recording industry has nevery done a decent job of discovering and patronizing artists. They are indeed responsible for the suicides and desperation of many talented people.
Patronizing artists is a basic trait of human nature. We have been doing it ever since we existed. Sometimes, it is individuals who do it. And sometimes, it is associations (feudal lords, church, kings) who do it. In the age of the internet, the power to patronize artists is within the reach of every single person - not only the rich and the famous.
The recording/publishing industry has outsurvived its time. It needs to die. The battle between Google and Viacom is only a part of the bigger war.
Can patronizing of an art earn enough money to undertake large projects ? Can anybody make "the lord of the rings" out of donations ? If you are not convinced, please visit my blog The answer is YES . The very symbol of freedom is a sign of the promise in the democracy of art. I am talking about the statue of liberty . If it could have been built out of donations of people, nothing else is impossible.
What you said is interesting. But why would anybody want to know about God if that has nothing to do with oneself or with the nature ? The concept of God as an abstraction for every unknown problem in the universe. When people didn't know what makes thunder, they attributed it to God. When people didn't know what makes life, they attributed it to God. When we don't know what makes compassion, love or beauty, we now attribute it to God. When somebody claims that one can know nothing about God (such as Ahmed-Sirhindi), he essentially means that one can know nothing about every unanswered thing in the world. In India, the notion of God is very holistic which encompasses not only nature but also one's own soul. The question "what is God" is equivalent to "who am I".
Al-Khwarizmi (780 AD) who compiled the first major texts of algebra (and from whose name the world algorithm comes from) had a lookup of the work of the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta of 590 AD. The later guy wrote the text which explains how to solve quadratic equations, apart from several other things. The word "algebra" was created during renaissance time to refer to the work of Al-khwarizmi which got translated into Latin etc.
Buddha did nothing to prevent the intellectual curiosity of India. In fact, his religion is a continuous path of questioning about oneself. Indian science was continuing to flourish till as late as 900 AD. Several major scientific texts in sanskrit were compiled around this era - for example that of Bhaskara the 2nd. Trumpeting about vedas is a job taken by the right-wing religious nuts of India. Looks like you are dancing to some weed that's churned out by them.
Dude.. please study the history of ancient mathematics and the list of contributions from India.
Readers please pardon my laxity. I am guilty of confusing you. Ahmed-Sirhindi lived around 1550 AD. This is treated as year 1000 in the Islamic calender. Now everything that I said starts making sense.
Hi. I do know what I am talking about. I am from Hyderabad in India which has a lot of monuments showcasing Islamic architecture. My Masters project is in computer vision to rectify images automatically when they exhibit planar symmetry. I have found these architectural patterns to be the ideal dataset for my thesis. It is a fact that the art of producing these patterns attained a stagnation at around 1000 AD. That is not to say that great monuments were not constructed after that. In fact, the Taj Mahal (the finest specimen of these patterns, from what I heard) has not been built until 1650 AD. But, what I want to clarify is that the developement of these patterns didn't extend beyond craftsmanship. Had the Indo-Arabic science not been hampered by the lack of funding (which is exactly how Ahmed-Sirhindi's philosophy got manifested as), this would have enabled the people to have discovered several new areas of mathematics and engineering.
:)
You can view my blogpost celebrating the finish of my master's project
Al Ghazali was indeed a very influential philosopher who brought in umpteen damage to the scientific inquiry of the Islamic world. But the real damage was done by another person called Ahmed Sirhindi. In simple words, what he has said was that human brain is futile. Any effort to understand nature/God through reasoning and thought is a waste of time. The only way salvation could be obtained is through studying the Kuran (the unmorphed message from God) and the Hadith (stories about the life of Mohammed). Without the use of Mohammed, man is inherently powerless to understand Nature or God ! In his philosophy, the biggest evil were the Greek & Hindu philosophers. His philosophy sounded the death to the movement of Sufism (mysticism and philosophy) in Islam. At the same time, it put an end to the systematic enquiry of science. Ahmed Sirhindi became the Mujaddid (the equivalent of the pope in Islam) and he convinced the Ottoman empire to use his methods. He convinced the Mughal empire in India to use his methods. Consequently, India and Arabia were mired in dark ages ever since 1000 AD.His influence is strongly felt in the later and the final Mujaddid - Wahhab of Saudi Arabia. The major school of Islam in Pakistan and India is the Deoband school, which is drawn from the ideas of Wahhab & Sirhindi. These are the seeds of Islamic fundamentalism. It is no wonder that all glories of Islamic mathematics, medicine and astronomy were reached before 1000 AD.