Unnecessary deaths....

Unbelievably eloquent words from a soldier. 

It is a shame to see young lives go to waste for no real reason except corporate profit. We (myself included), as a country, never seem to care, except for the meaningless mouthing of a few words of support or patriotism every now and then, or whenever convenient. We never try to understand the trauma we put our soldiers through with our silent support of criminal wars; through our silence when the government, in the name of efficiency and political finagling over budget issues closes VA (Veterans' Affairs) hospitals in the more rural reaches of the country making it even more difficult for an unemployed veteran to seek medical help; through our silence at documented instances of denial of treatment to some of these soldiers; through our silence at the daily suicides of veterans who come back with demons running around in their minds...... 

Oh, this list can go on and on, but none of it means anything and none of it is as eloquent as this dead soldiers last words....

http://gawker.com/i-am-sorry-that-it-has-come-to-this-a-soldiers-last-534538357

Walmart!!!

While lauding the success of Walmart (at keeping prices low and raking in profits year after year), no one really looks at how those low prices are achieved and the price paid for those low prices by the citizens of the country.

Sure, management professionals and laymen (well perhaps not all laymen) alike wax eloquent about the super-efficient supply chain Walmart has set up and, I must admit, it is no mean feat, at that.  But does an efficient supply chain alone explain the lower cost of goods and the success of the company, or is there something deeper at work?  Are we to believe that no one else can create as efficient or better a supply chain?

There are many in this country who make a career out of vilifying those on government welfare (fondly called low-lives who won't or refuse to work and live off the hardworking tax-paying public) on public media; and there are many citizens who unquestioningly lap up and wholeheartedly believe this rhetoric, and a whole political party dedicated to a similar effort!

At one end (the supply end) of the supply chain are strong armed bullies who use all kinds of tactics (intimidation, bullying, guile, stick and carrot, etc.) to force suppliers (who are looking for a break with the world's largest retailers) to cough up goods at low prices.  At the other end there are the low-paid and often temporary workers that man the stores and warehouses, working without benefits or any kind of job security.

While most people who shop at Walmart think they are getting a good deal, they rarely see the drain on the nation's coffers in the form of corporate welfare (tax breaks given to corporations under various guises as well as the cost of social welfare that has to be extended these low-paid workers, which is indirectly corporate welfare because the government now steps in to fix what the likes of Walmart broke in the first place).

In this vein, this study released by the Democratic Committee on Education and the Workforce is quite poignant.

http://tinyurl.com/kpu5gam

The Scientific Method

Many folks attend universities, get degrees and assume that is the end of knowledge acquisition. Rarely do they think of how that body of knowledge they acquired came to be. Even more rarely do they apply the principles used to consolidate that knowledge to their own thought processes. 

This is equally true of those that study the sciences or the arts. This is equally true of folks who secure admissions to the much vaunted Ivy League universities or the less-hyped local universities.

That said, the scientific method has been the cornerstone of education for centuries now. It's application has produced most of the scholarly knowledge we have today. It is based on open, rational, logical thought that analyses a subject from all currently possible angles, postulates hypotheses and tests those hypotheses through experimentation and other methods. The whole process fosters objectivity (a willingness to view a subject without preconceived notions about it) over ideology (where a "researcher" comes to a conclusion and then gathers "evidence" to prove his or her point) And above all, the process requires research to be repeatable (ie. able to be performed by others and come to similar conclusions or refute the findings - the ability to refute the original researcher's findings being central to the theme of objectivity). And the beauty of the whole process is that scholarly publications of this nature are peer-reviewed for logical fallacies and errors.

The scientific method, however, does not preclude ideologues from finding their way into reputable institutions of learning as the following post demonstrates. Neither does it prevent shoddy work from emanating from such institutions. The post refers to a dissection of a Harvard PhD thesis. The following sentence, which I feel is one of its most poignant lines, encapsulates the scientific method:

"Remember that in good science, we work to prove our hypothesis WRONG, not to substantiate a pre-formed idea."

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/05/30/race-iq-immigration-harvard-thesis-richwine/

Violence against women and other minorities - how complicit are we, as a society?

In the wake of all the violence against women that has come to light in India in the past few weeks and months, there has been an uproar about not bringing the perpetrators to justice, a lot of hand-wringing about what can be done about theissue and what can be done to prevent such incidents from happening in the future, etc. However, most of the talk revolved around having harsher laws enacted, stiffer punishments being handed out and the like, ie. letting government handle the issue.

It is as if nobody feels they are to blame for these problems simply because they were not the perpetrators of the crime. No one has talked about (and it seems like nobody wants to talk about) what can be done at a personal level (so much for all that personal responsibility spiel!!!). After all, when we as a society think it is fine to demean, ridicule and make fun of the weak, and don't think twice about such things as they happen around us (or worse think it is all part of machismo), then we are as much a part of the problem as the perpetrators of the actual crime. It isn't just enough to display public outrage when graphic details of the crime appear on the news, in print or images or video streams.

We (especially men, and I've seen it among women in many communities too - you know, comments like, "Oh! that's fine he's a boy!! Boys do such things all the time", when a boy annoys or hurts his sister) think it is somehow okay to make fun of women, gay people, or other people who are perceived as somehow being inferior. We (at least most of us) don't speak up when such minor but crass incidents happen; we even join in the fun and laugh along, when we should be stopping such behaviour right there, nipping it in the bud.

While I can understand that these behaviours are ingrained in us and in society over the course of centuries, we can all make a conscious effort to change, and to accept that we have done something incredibly stupid or wrong when we unconsciously do it and it is pointed out to us. And over a course of time, our perceptions and that of society will all change for the better.

In that vein the following video, shared by a friend, highlights some of these issues I just talked of and more; and more importantly, it points out that such behaviour by dominant groups within society, more often than not, transcends geographical boundaries. It also prescribes a simple solution to such problems, part of which includes changing the perspective of the narrative and rightfully assigning responsibility to perpetrators and also small but important things we (everyone of us) can do on a daily basis that can change the outlook of society towards the problem and lead to the betterment of mankind in the long run. (That's assuming we as a race still exist on this planet. Haha!! That's me being cynical in the wake of the wildly varying climate changes we've been observing in recent months and the resultant climatic violence around the world including here in the US)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvSfeCRxe8

www.upworthy.com

Violence and Silence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvSfeCRxe8