How? Well, through some random web surfing, I came across this map which renames US states based on the countries whose total GDP’s they most resemble. It’s a fascinating visualization of how wealth is distributed in this country & around the world –

Pakistan, for example, has a GDP that’s slightly higher than Israel’s – but Pakistan has a population of about 170 million, while Israel is only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2,7 million and 3,4 million.

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It’s fascinating how topsy-turvy this case is–

Barred by the color of her skin… And saddled with lofty expectations…

January 14, 2008 — A year after the city’s racial quotas kept their daughter out of an elite public school, an Indian couple from Brooklyn is filing a class-action lawsuit to make sure it doesn’t happen again to her or any child.

Did racial preferences prevent a high scoring Indian kid from getting into a school that other, lower scoring, kids did? Well yes, but this time around, the lower-scoring “others” were white –

For decades, the school has enforced racial double standards on its tests to maintain a 6-4 white-to-minority ratio to comply with a 1974 federal court desegregation order.

…Officials said Nikita, who is considered a member of a minority group, had to score at least 84.4 score to be accepted. But white students needed to score only 77.

And young Nikita? She only pulled down a 79 – much to the delight, I’m sure, of the uber-competitive desi moms down the street. Her dad channels MLK for us –

“Children should be judged on the content of their character, not on the color of their skin,” said Dr. Anjan Rau, the girl’s dad, about the quotas at Mark Twain School in Coney Island.

In a different report, I loved how dad keeps his eye on the prize –

“It could hurt her chances of going to Harvard, Yale or Princeton.”

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It’s rare that I single out a post from another blogger as an excellent news source. However, this particular one from Richard Fernandez (aka “Wretchard”) of Belmont Club presents one of the best end to end views of where the fractures in Pakistan came from, the shape they’ve taken now, and what might need to be done to clean things up.

I’ll put up a few excerpts here to give you a taste but, I recommend reading the whole thing –

The degree to which the Pakistan has been patched together is expressed in its very name. “The name was coined by Cambridge student and Muslim nationalist Choudhary Rahmat Ali … he saw it as an acronym formed from the names of the ‘homelands’ of Muslims in northwest India — P for Punjab, A for the Afghan areas of the region, K for Kashmir, S for Sindh and tan for Balochistan, thus forming “Pakstan”.

…Unable to compete in conventional war with India, even with the acquisition of nuclear weapons, Islamabad began to use proxies to advance its foreign policy objectives. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Pakistan engaged in two conflicts with nuclear armed powers largely using proxy terrorist organizations and infantry under the cover of plausible deniability. The first was its war against India in the Kargil district, fought at a time when both nations already had nukes. The second of course, was the ISI’s participation in ousting the Soviet bear from Afghanistan.

With 9/11, the Pakistani’s were forced to choose between the West and the Taliban. While heretofore Pakistan had a de facto “export the problem” approach like the Saudi’s, American involvement in Afghanistan brought the state of affairs to an end. And thus, Fernandez argues, the real dynamic is how blowback from the fall of the Taliban exposed the weak seams of Pakistan’s patchwork…

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One of my favorite scientist/writers, Steven Pinker, has an excellent feature article in the NYT on the evolution of Moral sense. He begins his piece with a series of examples that are highly relevant to India and which illustrate the classic divide between Intentions and Consequences –

Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?

Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.

The big difference between the 3 is that Mother Teresa clearly intended to save people through direct, personal sacrifice. Borlaug, a previous SM profilee, did it more indirectly through a systematic application of science. Gates did it either 100% indirectly by helping bring down the cost of computing OR somewhat more directly by taking his billions of wealth and funneling it through charity while living in a 50K sqft mansion on Lake Washington. Modern India is benefitting from all 3 although lately, I’d wager in particular from the cheap, mass market computing & telecommunications revolution that Gates helped produce… Continue reading →

Initial reports are coming in and SM will certainly pass on the message. First, CNN Reports –

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (CNN) — Pakistan former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was targeted in a deadly suicide bombing Thursday. Media reports quote her husband saying she suffered a bullet wound to the neck in the attack.

…The attacker is said to have detonated a bomb as he tried to enter the rally where thousands of people gathered to hear Bhutto speak, police said.

Some first guesses at implications..

While President Pervez Musharraf has promised free and fair parliamentary elections next month, continued instability in the tribal areas and the threat of attack on large crowds has kept people from attending political rallies and dampened the country’s political process.

Campaigners from various political groups say fewer people are coming out to show their support due to government crackdowns and the threat of violence.

Today’s violence come less than two weeks ahead of January parliamentary elections and as many days after President Pervez Musharraf lifted a six-week-old state of emergency he said was necessary to ensure the country’s stability.

Stay tuned.

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