Alternate Vision

The next Zizou?

2009-07-03T10:45:00.001-07:00

Global Beats

2009-06-03T23:09:00.000-07:00

This blog is rocking my world right now. Some of the best music from around the world, from Highlife to Pagode and everything in between.

Shell on trial for role in Saro-Wiva's Death

2009-05-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Science News Cycle

2009-05-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

From PhD Comics

My nephew...Ishaan

2009-05-15T00:54:00.000-07:00

Why coconut oil can change your life...forever

2009-04-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

"Even using the so called "healthiest" organic vegetable oils, which includes olive oil, in baking and frying creates free radicals. This is because all vegetable oils oxidize; especially when used in cooking. They not only produce TFA’s but form free radicals - lethal combination for our bodies. The only oil that does not oxidize, even at 170 degree Celsius, is Organic Virgin Coconut oil which is a saturated fat." - Natural News

From aircraft fuel to hair oil to lubricant it can change your life......forever.

The sun will rise tomorrow

2009-04-05T22:30:00.000-07:00

Pirsig was right. The only Zen you will find on top of mountains or in thick redwood forests is the Zen you bring there. And in that spirit I brought my Zen with me this afternoon to the shores of the San Lorenzo river, along with some divine company, sandwiches, fruit and drink. We hiked into the redwoods and spent the afternoon by the river. TR chose to hop, skip and jump across the river in search of offbeat trails while I rediscovered the joy of reading and meditating outdoors again.

"You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. " Rober Pirsig.

If a belief or idea is considered a universal truth then there is no reason why one should become fanatical about it. But the moment that belief or idea produces self-doubt or non-believers, then our dedication takes on fanatical proportions not because the non-believers are necessarily irrational but that our idea or cause is not a universal truth or something we have full confidence in. And from this lack of confidence stems the need to remain steadfastly dedicated to the idea or cause. This suggests that there is an inverse relationship between dedication and confidence.

Single Ladies - African Remix

2009-03-28T19:58:00.000-07:00

suffering and smiling..

2009-03-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

“Life may be, in the end, a grand teetering act. Perhaps everything in the cosmos has a balance of sorts. And in the human context we all have a sort of gross sum of events with an inherent balance of ‘pleasure’ and ‘suffering’. If this stands then if in early-life one’s experiences are characterized by a series of suffering events, their later life may find balance with a series of pleasurable events. Success can be built from this model when one understands the pleasure and pain as objective and then goes about constructing suitable experiences and relationships: having already experienced a gamut of events within the nature of suffering it can be understood that the individual will go about constructing opposing or alternate or pleasurable outcomes to life’s happenings.” Ten Years Later by Samir Bitar

Redwoods are awesome

2009-03-08T21:47:00.000-07:00

I never knew they are fractal in nature..

Beyond awesome

2009-02-14T10:22:00.000-08:00

This five-part documentary series on Planet Earth is one of the best nature documentaries I have ever seen. Stunning...

Latin Jazz and West African Music

2009-02-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

"The principal thing that we inherited from West Africa," Sanabria says, "is this concept of many rhythms happening simultaneously [by] many musicians — polyrhythms. That initiates also what we call polymeters: many meters at the same time. We inherited that from West Africa, and it's been transferred to all of the music that we listen to today, from rock 'n' roll, funk, hip-hop, jazz." NPR

the value of knowing how little you know

2009-02-06T13:06:00.000-08:00

"If there is a silver lining to the economic downturn, which may stay with us for years, it is that the American government and its people will realize at last that a much higher level of education for all is an indispensable national goal. Everything from national security to the abolition of poverty is now contingent on education."

"Automation will continue its ferocious pace. So will international connectivity and competition. Texans will soon be using radiologists in Malaysia to read their X-rays and flying to Panama for heart surgery. But the billions of foreign workers breathing down our necks also represent a fantastic marketing opportunity. When they find us, we find them. Whether it’s English lessons, business advice, marriage counseling, medical diagnoses, plumbing tips or highly technical expertise, we can deliver our knowledge abroad over the Internet."

"We may still have the best university system, but it benefits only a minority. "

These are a few excerpts from a very interesting online discussion in the NYT on the role of education in economic reform. There is some commonality between the various opinions. The youth are hit hard. They are in debt, and figuring out how to pay off those loans without a secure job is a nightmare. Hell, I'll tell you its a nightmare even with a job. Tuition hikes can only keep going up. Open education will be a word we hear about more often as people figure out 'smart' ways to gain skills. Throwing more money at such a problem fixes nothing in the long term. Paradigm shifts require a blueprint, a contingency plan to go with that (probabilities direct the conduct of a wise man, a wise man once said),a torchbearer, patience, ability to swim against the tide without drowning, and a healthy dose of good luck. The vision for change is gaining some level of clarity. But the road ahead is long and hard. And we have reached a point of no-return. So we can only keep going.

'To know one's ignorance, is the best part of knowledge' Lao Tzu, The Tao, no. 71

Deeper in Zen

2009-02-02T14:41:00.000-08:00

Miserere

2009-01-20T23:26:00.000-08:00

Do you ever look around
turn your ear to the ground
show your face to the sky
on a night when the skies echoe sounds
from inside of your mind
on the stage that you shone
where the sun did become you
and move with your thoughts
through the sighs and the scenes
of the worlds you have seen
and the sights that have been
your reflection in shadows and dreams
Do you ever look around
and find what is yet to be found?

Long live living
if living can be this

How to get the ladies

2009-01-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

"To go beyond the boundaries of breathing, you must dissolve yourself in your breath." - Kofi(my new Ghanaian British, mustache sporting, Sanksrit speaking, Iyengar Yoga teacher)

The fall of green travel

2009-01-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

"No one is saying that being environmentally responsible is irrelevant when you travel. On the contrary, it’s that being green is so important that it shouldn’t become another marketing gimmick. It should be a part of what you do every day — part of every travel company’s DNA.

When a travel company claims to be environmentally responsible, it’s important to look at its whole record — not just its recent record of greenness. The best companies are consistently, and quietly, green.

Personally, I’ll be happy to travel in a greenlightened world. Hotels won’t be able to monetize my environmental sensibilities. Airlines will strive for a long-term positive environmental record instead of scoring a few fleeting points with treehuggers. Same for cruise lines and car rental companies." - MSNBC

Chris Elliott shares some interesting thoughts on traveling in a post-green world.

Garota de Ipanema

2009-01-05T23:34:00.000-08:00

All thanks to Saki the saudade has descended on me, all of a sudden. For now, the only remedy is some bossa nova. and maybe some scotch.

White Christmas - the other one

2008-12-19T14:14:00.000-08:00

You know you're in for a surprise when the hiking guide reads 'don't wait until you're thirsty to drink -- you're already dehydrated by then' or 'it is easy to become disoriented and lost in the dune field, especially when strong winds erase footprints and obscure landmarks. And remember to avoid, whenever possible, walking across the fragile cryptobiotic crusts in the interdune areas.' Why? Because their fragility makes them extremely susceptible to destruction or trampling, and they take many years to grow back. Well well...

Who needs snow when you got white sands, oryxs and tamarisks? Not me..

And the winner is - he who loses the least

2008-10-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

No one in Asia, it appears, knows how to make money when American import demand shrinks, and when Asian growth falls, raw materials prices collapse. No one in Latin America, for that matter, seems to know how to make money when raw materials prices collapse. For all the preening and posing of the emerging world's nouveau riche, it turns out that the American consumer was the center of the world economy, and without the American consumer, all that is left are busted stock markets and bad credit.
Most embarrassing for the flat-worlders is the observation that the emerging markets crashed when the world concluded that Washington would not be able to reverse the financial crisis. The economic bomb that detonated in America caused more collateral damage in the emerging markets than casualties at home. - Spengler

Break the mould

2008-10-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

"No one has a monopoly on innovation." said Khosla, in an interview with ABC 7 who recently put out a series of videos on 'Energy Innovation' which is highly recommended. The focus is primarily on the potential for clean-tech R&D in the silicon valley to ignite the next big 'clean-tech' revolution, credit crisis and flailing mortgage markets aside. Though, Tom Friedman might argue the need for a 'green bail out' - "Our No. 1 resource is our people. Let’s put people back to work — retrofitting and repowering America. ... You can’t base a national economy on credit cards. But you can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart biofuels and a massive program to weatherize every building and home in America.”

Are we ready for such a revolution? I think so. But we do have a ways to go, and part of that journey involves 'rethinking' - rethinking our priorities, our lifestyles, our infrastructure, our interaction with the world at large, all of which stems from a dire need, in the words of Brad Allenby, "to rethink cognition."

"To accept our responsibilities -- indeed, to even recognize them -- we need far more sophisticated ways of perceiving, understanding, and interacting with emergent properties of complex regional and global systems in real time. The radical contingency and complexity of our world undercuts our existing cognitive mechanisms, such as ideology, because the rigidity inherent in such mechanisms becomes increasingly dysfunctional when flexibility in institutional and personal cognition is required. Facing the anthropogenic Earth, we realize we need, among other things, to rethink cognition."

This, I believe is a fundamental tenet of change, one that Obama gets but McCain doesn't - the need to rethink.

Pepe must have the last laugh

2008-09-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

"And while the new multipolar world was being sketched out in midtown Manhattan, and McCain was busy trying to run away from his own presidential campaign, the US took a few more steps to quickly become the new Brazil - appalling social inequality, tremendous concentration of wealth, in sum, the law of the jungle. Call it the revenge of the developing world." - Roving Eye

momos, candlelight protests and more

2008-08-29T00:02:00.000-07:00

Lagos to Ogere-Remo and beyond

2008-08-05T21:57:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite photographers, Pieter Hugo, recently covered Nollywood (3rd largest film industry after Hollywood and Bollywood).

"Nollywood produces movies on its own terms, telling stories that appeal to and reflect the lives of its public: it is a rare instance of self-representation in Africa. The continent has a rich tradition of story-telling that has been expressed abundantly through oral and written fiction, but has never been conveyed through the mass media before. Stars are local actors; plots confront the public with familiar situations of romance, comedy, witchcraft, bribery, prostitution. The narrative is overdramatic, deprived of happy endings, tragic. The aesthetic is loud, violent, excessive; nothing is said, everything is shouted."

Reminds me of the 'NTA2' days. Check out some of Pieter's work, especially The Hyena Men series. Intense.

what makes your soul sing

2008-07-25T23:46:00.000-07:00

In pouring rain, we made it to Haji Ali, past the Masjid and the florists, through the dark, grimy lanes of Tardeo, to seek out the little establishment hidden behind the scaffolding. Hilsa fish steamed to perfection in mustard paste, wrapped in banana leaves, along side some chingri malai curry, mangshor jhol, fresh luchis, and washed down with some single malt. And, of course, there was mishti doi and paan to finish things off.