Among the people of these ‘subaltern’ groups, the ones who haven’t been cleansed by the washcloth of high culture, there is a feeling of inadequacy if not disgust with oneself. They must acknowledge the impossibility of ever joining the erudite, English speaking, trim, Westernized, ever progressing and ever progressive, posh group. The chasm only seems to grow wider every day. Sometimes that impossibility takes the form of anger – who are these people feeling so uppity about their new found pretensions? Their beginnings were probably as vulgar than mine. (Caste and class – the last refuge of the bastards. ) It is as if caught in their pretensions – they have executed a double exile – alienating themselves from their roots, and sending us prematurely to our cultural exiles. But then ‘culture’ was largely lost – if not in migration then in constant contortions needed to feed the ‘family’ since then – so what is left now is an idea of culture, and this hunger - this vast orifice that wants to go on consuming. There is no escaping from it. Perhaps these kids are right, we have nothing to offer. So if they find pretensions of West and find home in it, then so be it. If only, they didn’t humiliate us. How dare they?

Among the manicured words crafted by high intellect, a philistine is ever so precisely caught in a pincer like grip, stripped, and exposed for who he is for who he is – a rat, a cheat, a miser, someone who is ugly, fat, debased, lustful, probably impotent, unblinking and stupid. There is nowhere to run.
We have all seen likes of him for the one thing about philistines is that they all look alike. In the oily paunchy sunburned carcass, there is no vestige of culture, no literacy in the “in” books, and no appreciation of the finer aspects of life. I can sympathize with the poor. They may be romanticized for their ‘simplicity’ and their poverty. They at least don’t invade. But how can one live with people with such overreach, such humdrum mediocrity, such precocious grabbing lust, such vulgarity, such hunger? Where does one go to soothe his cultivated sensibilities?

A philistine is like a ‘ghee’ stain on a Dostoevsky. It defines my connection to all that is vile and deformed, all that I want to escape for the safety of harmonic refinement. When did these people become so vile? How did I not notice before how they had encroached on culture and the air itself, and carved up their names on it like low class Romeos. (Accusations of caste and class fly back.) They are like cockroaches on the bathroom drain cover - too filthy to be squished, too filthy to be tolerated, forever to be despised.

Will they find me out? I torture over whether there exists the possibility of being good enough, whether one so completely learn all the parlor tricks that it iron outs the ugly wrinkles of low breeding, whether I can stand any scrutiny and be affirmed of higher birth, higher learning, one of them. There is always that wracking doubt that somehow the occasional word in the wrong accent, the inability to use chop sticks, will conspire and give away the years of low existence and expose you for the philistine you are. There is always that threat, if one grows up and takes up the pretensions. It is one thing if you grow up with it. Otherwise you grow up anxious and eager to stamp every little echo of your own vile history, eager to disassociate with all that is debased in your own bloodline. That is all you can do.

One day, they catch themselves staring at the mirror, and find a tired sunburned unhealthy face, the distorting paunch, their brow wrinkles when they think about the constant demands of family and friends caught in their own vicious cycles, and realize the absolute impossibility of doing better. To be branded a philistine is much like being accused of the original sin – however much you may try, you cannot rinse it off. You must acknowledge the impossibility of transcending it.

It is infinitely easy to be casually vicious, and generally feted if done with faux consideration. But writing hence pursued is a failed enterprise. It then becomes nothing more than carrying class pretensions. The mark of good writing may not be redeeming humans, whom the dominant cultural script has left warped, but bringing to light the lived emotional and social experience of people, and the historio-socio-cultural contexts remains the key to it. This ability - to write well- continues to rest upon both ones’ ability to look into oneself, and into others, and ability to look from other person’s perspective.

Words like “bubble” are often used to describe the shielded seclusion in which students live their lives on the Stanford campus. And the words seem appropriate. After all, Stanford has three quarters of a mile long boundary that separates it from civilization, and even that ends in the latte swilling yuppy favored downtown lined with preppy shops that further abuts multimillion dollar homes. For reaching the vast seething humanity, one has to go further – to the nether regions of Palo Alto and cross in to East Palo Alto – a task so mythically treacherous that none will volunteer, except of course to buy the chic necessities from IKEA.

But even in the famously elitist bubble, there are poor and opportunities to interact with different socio-economic strata – the employees. Stanford spends about $3.2 billion to educate its roughly 15,000 students. The figure amounts to roughly $213,000 per person. About half of this money is spent on salary and benefits of the numerous employees who work for this university. The employees range from $15/hr bus drivers or $10 hr/cafeteria workers with no benefits to administrators who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Either way you look at it, we have a substantial breadth of employees with whom students can interact and form partnerships to help some, and learn from others.

The shrinking conversational space

Most transactions involving cross-class interaction are economic interactions – when you buy something, or involving paid service – gardening, or somebody delivering a Pizza. Most of these interactions have been commercialized and bureaucratized – with greeting protocols and thank you protocols – leaving little space for real human to human interaction, exchange of stories etc. In places like India, middle class still knows about the lives of their maids, the neighborhood grocer, etc. and in knowing about their lives they form genuine bonds of empathy that help them look at policy imperatives, and their own lives much differently. I would argue, more trenchantly, that it is in fact through knowing lives of people in other classes that one can build genuine empathy (as opposed to an identity contingent one which wrist band wearing concert attending bobos – in David Brooke’s term – feel towards people in Darfur.) The damning fact of modern life is that even empathy has been implicated in superficial identity issues, and hence people’s empathy lies within the contingencies imposed upon the selling and buying, largely absent of information or care.

Proposal

So my proposal is to create a program on campus that heightens awareness of people towards people from other classes around them with whom they (don’t) interact every day. The idea is to connect students, faculty and professional staff with workers from lower economic strata, for example, cashiers, janitors, construction workers, or drivers, on whose services they rely upon every day. Another related idea would be to create an umbrella program that gives guidance to people toward helping them form hyper-local chapters (that extend to say one building) where they form programs to interact with people or help them in some way. For example computer science students may formulate a program to help teach computers to janitors while social scientist may work with them to improve their literacy skills. Obvious returns to them would include a better understanding of the world, a chance to practice or even learn a foreign language (in places where janitors are fluent in say Spanish or some other language) and myriad of other benefits that accrue from learning about the complexities of living as economic underclass.

Detailed Proposal:

There are three parts to the proposed program –

• Create a website that has the following capabilities -
  1. Matching students with Employees – The website will allow for students and employees to fill in detailed profiles and will allow them to search for possible “matches” based on their skill set, issues they want to work on, and availability (time).
  2. The website will allow for two kinds of matching – project by project matching – which will allow for students to sign for say helping an employee with his resume’ or a government form, longer term mentoring or symbiotic matching which will assign a student to an employee for a duration of an academic year.
  3. The website would feature a blog and wiki to advertise successful ventures and collaborative opportunities.
• Since creating excitement around the program is essential, the program launch will be followed by an advertisement blitz including posters, presentations, and get-to-know sessions.
• The other crucial part of this venture is ‘hardware’ – be it computers/supplies or other things that are needed to make some of this possible. So there would be two parts to the same – one would be a craigslist kind of central clearing house list that will post want and available ads, and the other would be a central fund which students or employees can draw on to make of this happen.

Budget and estimated costs

I deal with the cost attributed to each point of the program individually -

1. Building the website would indeed take the most effort and money given that we need a database and other social networking tools. The web design and development would cost initially about $5000 if we hire students within Stanford to help us with it.
2. Advertisement and information campaign would be broad and we expect to spend about $2000 on the campaign.
3. Hardware fund would consume the rest of the money ($3000).

Timeline

Web development around the site would take around 4-6 months as the website will go through iterative updates. I expect the advertisement campaign to last for a month to provide an adequate window for people to sign up including some viral marketing campaign via Facebook etc. In all, I should be able to launch the initial campaign within 6-7 months at most.

Vagueness is the oldest form of doublespeak. Vagueness in language is often used as a strategy to provide cues to people to interpret the message in a way that is the most ideologically (more broadly - psychologically) comfortable to them. Vagueness not only allows for you to be right without being right, it allows for people to justify virtually all stances and all actions. Think about the word ‘possibility’ which is defined as something that has a chance of occurring. It doesn’t give you cues as to how probable the scenario is or the scale of the ‘possible’ unfolding. It is fair to imagine a lot of times such information is not available but then without it what are we conveying to people, aside from the strategic wink – nothing and everything – all at the same time?

Using vague words that carry a huge corroboratory burden, and whose latent concepts (variables) must unfold only a specific way to justify the argued course of action, allows policy makers to sound logically coherent without being so.

Language constrains our ability to meaningfully understand the world around us. Vagueness is merely one of the most convenient ways via which we can tune out of reality and argue whatever we want to – and that can be strategic or not. In every day usage, an important reason behind why we vague terms is because precise facts sometimes decompose quickly and people are left with nothing more than vague qualifiers that store impressionistic accounts of those facts. Additionally, vagueness allows people to shield themselves from their own ignorance. It is important to note that I am not arguing that people are not strategic actors in everyday conversation and in fact vagueness is often used as a ploy to argue what is ideologically convenient.

The lessons really are twin – if you are a strategic actor – vagueness works and if you are a citizen - be alert to vagueness as a cover for insidious reasoning.

One of the primary reasons the social sciences are divided so is because of the history of how social sciences developed – as major figures postulated important variables that constrain the social world, fields took shape around them. The other pertinent variables that explain some of new disciplines in social sciences are changes in technology, and more broadly changing social problems. For example, the discipline of Communication took shape around the time mass media became popular.

The way the social sciences are currently divided has left them with a host of inefficiencies which leave them largely inefficacious in a variety of scenarios where they can offer substantive help. Firstly, The containerized way of understanding the social world provide inadequate ways of understanding complex social systems that are imposed upon by a variety of variables that range from the individual to the institutional. And secondly, the largely discipline specific theoretical motivations lead academic to concoct elaborate theories that often misstate their applicability in complex ecosystems. We all know how economics never met common sense till of recently. It isn’t that disciplines haven’t tried to bridge the inter-disciplinary divide, they certainly have by creating sub-disciplines ranging from social-psychology (in psychology) to political psychology (in Political Science) and in fact that is exactly where some of the most exciting research is taking place right now, the problem is that we have been slow to question the larger restructuring of social sciences. The question then arises as to what should we put at the center of our focus of our disciplines? The answer is by no means clear to me though I think it would be useful to develop competencies around primary organizing social structures/institutions.

Role of Social Science

Let me assume away the fact that most social science knowledge will end up in the society either through Capitalism or selective uptake by policy makers. Next, we need to evaluate how social science can meaningfully contribute to society. One intuitive way would be to create social engineering departments that are focused on specific social problems. The advice is by no means radical – certainly Education as a discipline has been around for some time, and relatively recently departments (or schools) devoted to Public Health, Environmental Policy have opened up across college campuses. Secondly, social science should create social engineering departments that help offer solutions for real life problems, much the same way engineering departments affiliated with natural sciences do, and try experimenting with how for example different institutional structures would affect decision making. Lastly, social scientists have a lot more to offer to third world countries which have yet to be overrun by brute Capitalism. What social science departments need to do is lead more data collection efforts in third world countries and offer solutions.

“Unethical” (explained later) argumentation can leave people flustered as they realize – much too late – that the other party has changed the entire argument or distracted them with some contestable irrelevant data, or through an outright fabrication.

I use the word ‘unethical’ in reference to argumentation in the paragraph above and it is incumbent upon me to explain what I mean by that. An argument is generally understood as “discourse intended to persuade” and the idea is to stipulate ethics of persuasion. In other words, stipulating that one follow the rules of inference, logic, corroboration, and procedure ‘ethically’. Broadly construed ‘ethics’ in an argument can be seen to convey a person’s conviction in coming up with a better understanding of the issue at hand, and general introspection to all facets of argumentation. Of course ‘ethics’ alone won’t help construct a ‘better’ argument for there are objective criteria for what constitutes a better argument.

I here briefly go over some key tenets, as I see them, of conducting an ‘ethical’ argument.

Issue, Topic, Question

Most ‘arguments’ in everyday life start with an anecdote or an example and not as formally constructed questions. The conversation then slowly slides into an ‘argument’ as somebody identifies the anecdote as a hypothesis and engages with it.
It is important to be alert to this juncture and to take time at this point to think through the ‘hypothesis’, and where possible turn into a broader question devoted to understanding the ‘topic’ underlying the hypothesis. More importantly, it is necessary to pin down the question or hypothesis with more precision. Additionally, one should think through the breadth of the question and see to what degree is the question tractable.

During the course of the conversation one can renegotiate the wording of the question as more information comes along the way and conversants develop their understanding of the topic or as interests shift.

The pattern of argumentation will differ depending on the topic and question at hand. If one is to say argue about a causal claim then one must iterate through possible causes and see which ones apply to what degree and why. On the other hand if one wants to understand historical context around say origins of democracy, the task then becomes listing possible historical aspects including socio-economic and elite key actors.

Hypothesis and Data

One can use deductive or empirical reasoning (or both) to support one’s claims. Both obviously lend themselves to different types of problems. For making empirical arguments, one needs to rely on data and there it becomes necessary to think through how applicable the data is, how generalizable the instance is if you use an instance to say corroborate a claim, and any major data or instances that exist that will rebut the hypothesis or sometimes provide insight into contextual variables. Aside from applicability there is also the issue of how probable each of the datum is and how large the effect sizes are. Of course part of argumentation also involves judging other people’s data. You can judge data using the criteria I describe above.

One may run into problems of insufficient data or unreliable data and there you can choose to continue the conversation at a later stage after getting the data or pursue the argument by making conditional arguments. For example, if X were true, then the following event is likely to occur.

The caveat that accompanies all empirical reasoning is that it is easy to think that you know more than you do, especially about topics that seem familiar but go largely un-inspected. Systematic analysis of an issue will often uncover troubling gaps in one’s own knowledge and one must allay the instinct to fabricate and instead be conscientious in acknowledge the gaps.

Psychology of argumentation

The most pernicious and bankrupt argumentation occurs when the ego gets involved. To avoid it, focus your critiques on the data or argument and offer them in a manner that is broad minded and acknowledges opposing contribution. The unsaid point here is that your commitment should be towards reaching a better understanding of the issue at hand rather than ‘winning’ or whatever that means.

An important part of conducting an ethical argument is to acknowledge gracefully where you are wrong. This habit goes a long way in ameliorating any tensions that may emerge during the course of argumentation.

Another thing to keep in mind is that almost always people don’t start from polar opposites of an argument (that I believe is a function of conversational norm and selection bias as in whom you choose to ‘argue’ with), though there might be sub-arguments where they may have opposing stances. Hence there would be a large number of cases where both arguments can survive.

Avoid Common Logical Fallacies

Straw Man – “A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “set up a straw man” or “set up a straw-man argument” is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent.” (Wikipedia)

You can find other common logical fallacies at the bottom of Wikipedia’s page.

As identity and consumption have become conflated, corporations have aggressively spent money on a variety of ‘charitable causes’ to reposition their brands.

Apple

“Apple has agreed to host music for an organization that uses African music to help people caught in the escalating ethnic violence in Darfur, Sudan.” MacWorld. Apple really understands its upper middle-class pretend-liberal bourgeoisie customers, whose participation in liberal causes starts with Gay rights and ends with attending music concerts about Darfur, and never ever extends to any substantive political action. By the way, where is Darfur again?

McDonald’s

The mission of Ronald McDonald House Charities is to “provide a “home away from home” for families of seriously ill children receiving treatment at nearby hospitals.” The other, better known, mission of McDonald’s is of course to get those children to be sick.

Coca-Cola

The company which has been accused of depleting ground water resources in rural India and which earned a profit of nearly $5 billion in 2005 announced that it would invest “$20 million over five years to improve global water conservation. The plan is part of the company’s effort to adapt to global warming and to address a crucial constraint to growth in emerging markets.”

Shell

“Shell Foundation’s mission is to develop, scale-up and promote enterprise-based solutions to the challenges arising from the impact of energy and globalisation on poverty.”

Beyond Petroleum
British Petroleum, the company that was once part of the Global Climate Coalition, an organization set up to promote global warming skepticism, and a company that is facing criminal charges for “allowing 270,000 gallons of crude oil to seep across the Alaskan tundra” (Wikipedia) is now ‘Beyond Petroleum’.

Crystal Geyser

The bottled water company is a ‘proud sponsor’ of “American Forests”.

Walmart

Walmart, which has been widely decried for its low wages, inadequate healthcare benefits, and for ‘burying’ local mom and pop stores (pdf), and a corporation which had a net profit of close to $11.2 billion in 2005, had the following statement on its website, “Walmart charity begins with giving the local community financial support through community giving. Our community giving programs provide direct contributions to the local communities from the Walmart charity fund. Last year, Walmart charity initiatives were to exceed $170 million in support of local communities and non-profit organizations.”

Halliburton

The company sponsors a Charity Golf event. “The 2006 event raised more than $625,000, and over the past 13 years, I’m happy to report that this event has now provided more than $2.1 million to more than 48 local nonprofit charities.”

Bechtel Corp.

The corporation accused of trafficking women in the Balkans, and myriad other charges of fraud in handling its contracts in Iraq generously helped fund an International Center at Stanford University.

The mission: confounded by the missionary

The modern “aid” industry can trace its antecedents back to Christian missionaries, whose mission was to “civilize the savages” in the colonies and beyond. Hence, it is not particularly surprising that the fundamentalist supremacist mentality of bible thumping colonial front men pervades the NGO aid industry. If one looks closer, one will find that in fact the modern “aid workers” have much in common with the foot soldiers of prior era in their conviction that they are there to help by offering their supreme knowledge to these poor naked subhuman creatures. NGO aid workers, a majority of whom are social misfits, careerists, uneducated ideologues, and bible thumpers, are particularly unsuited in the job of providing “aid”. Their ‘work’, mostly directed towards helping prove their self worth to themselves, translates into being the people who unload the aid trucks. The fact that most have nothing better to offer than physical labor, of course plays a part in their decision to unload trucks and erect tents.

Planners versus “the Searchers”

Dr. William Easterly, an NYU economics professor and a former research economist at the World Bank, in his book “The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good”, argues that the aid efforts led by west have failed primarily because their utopian aid plans are based on the assumption that they know what is best for everyone. While implementing these gargantuan plans, they have sometimes ignored even the basics conditions on the ground. For example, he observes that “The West spent $2.3 trillion in foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get 12 cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $4 bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $3 to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths.” He argues that the west needs to get away from the model of “Planners”, imposing top-down solutions, and rather adopt the “Searchers” model, that tries to adapt innovations that come from native cultures.

Careerism and Bureaucratization

Rise of careerism and increased bureaucratization in the NGO industry are partly responsibly for the failure of development assistance to the third world, according to Dr. Thomas Dichter, an anthropologist at University of Chicago and author of “Despite Good Intentions: Why Development Assistance to the Third World Has Failed”

Increased bureaucratization has led to demand for “trained professionals” to fill the teeming ranks. Paying heed to the rising demand, “entire college programs have sprung up, such as Wayne State University’s Nonprofit Sector Studies Program (NPSS). The NPSS mission sates, “The nation’s fastest growing sector needs administrators, policy makers, program managers, and advocates who will guide them into the future”" writes Michael Donnely for Peace Corps Online. One may expect that the rising compensation packages at non-profit organizations would attract better talent, instead it has largely meant that the organizations are paying more for the same work or/and are led by ever more ambitious dimwits who want to push for ever larger projects at the expense of some little ones that do work.

The NGO-Ivy league Nexus

In the past two decades, an internship at an NGO has become a right of passage for countless Ivy League undergraduates, primarily in social sciences and humanities but increasingly in fields like biology, interested in pursuing further graduate school education. Experience with a foreign NGO has become the best way for the ambitious ivy educated dolts to pad up résumé’s and impress law or medical admissions committee of their sociotropic ideals. There is little that these self-absorbed individuals bring to third world countries in terms of talent or ability to help but every year thousands of such students are farmed out to NGOs across the world and there they leech money and time from NGOs to get training to hang their mosquito nets and make their calls to mom and dad and make safari trips and learn the language.

NGO workers – what’s so special? Why do they get paid more?

“Government employees have complained their co-workers employed by some non-governmental organizations are getting high salaries that cause socio-economic imbalance in the society. The high-paid workers of NGOs have clouded the status and standard of life of the low-paid government employees. Prestigious social status and high income of the NGOs workers have created envies in the poverty-stricken government employees.” South Asian Media Net “Venting her spleen, Torpikai, a government employee, told Pajhwok Afghan News on Sunday despite 18 years experience she was paid 2,000 afghanis (40$) but her younger and inexperienced neighbour with same qualification was getting double than her salary.” And wages are only part of the issue, real bills pour in from conferences at five star hotels, and extravagant perks enjoyed by foreign aid employees like use of SUVs, PDAs, and stays in five-star hotels. The sad fact is that majority of the “aid” is actually funneled back to pay for the perks and salary of the western aid workers.

Lack of accountability

The logic that underpins all NGO wastefulness is lack of accountability, both in tallying funds and actual accomplishments. Washington Post a couple of years reported that employees in non-profits often times take loans from the NGO funds at no or ridiculously low interest rates. Other egregious ethical violations are also rampant within NGOs. For example, Oxfam, an NGO and a 25% stakeholder of Cafedirect, campaigned vigorously against CafeDirect’s competitors, accusing them of exploiting coffee growers by paying them a small fraction of their earnings.

I would like to end with an excerpt from a New York Times article that passingly compares aid strategies between the west and china.
“The industrial nations conducted a sort of moral crusade, with advocacy organizations exposing Africa’s dreadful sores and crying shame on the leaders of wealthy nations and those leaders then heroically pledging, at the G8 meeting in July, to raise their development assistance by billions and to open their markets to Africa. Once everyone had gone home, the aid increase turned out to be largely ephemeral and trade reform merely wishful. China, by contrast, offers a pragmatic relationship between equals: the “strategic partnership” promised in China’s African policy is premised on “mutual benefit, reciprocity and common prosperity.” And the benefits are very tangible.”

Her article can be accessed here -
http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/whitherpsychoanalysis.html

Chaste’s response -

My main issue is that it is a sloppily done article. A thorough piece generally bases itself on a careful theoretical apparatus or produces such solid evidence that most of its claims are very difficult to argue against. This author simply strings together a bunch of speculations, at least 70+% of which have at least equally convincing arguments against them. I simply do not see the point of such pieces, for they are little better than chat-like aggregation of ideas. And her efforts at an MIT-based incestuous self-aggrandizement do little for the credibility of her analysis.

Here are just a few examples to show how very thorough she is in her sloppiness. She talks about the possibility of exploring alternative personas in cyberspace, and how this represents a very different possibility of self-exploration than anything that went before. But isn’t she led to such conclusions by assuming as given that the “virtual reality” of cyberspace is more analogous to “reality” than to fantasy as “virtual” would suggest? Thus, couldn’t a man in his fantasy life in decades and centuries past explore alternative personas based on the films he watched from day to day or the gossip stories he read in newspapers or heard from neighbors? Or take her example of the effect of HCI affection in the shaping of emotions. None of her examples go beyond children aged 10: a time at which they have barely outgrown belief in the tooth-fairy. Unless she can give substantial evidence of emotions in adult lives, why should we distinguish HCI from the countless other things that children set store by? And when she does venture into adult HCI, her ineptness is only laughable. She talks of a man who chooses a female persona as a convenient outlet for his assertiveness. First, the man’s responses are reactive rather than exploration-oriented; second, his choice of a female persona appears to be dictated by little more than convenience. Only in an age of post-modernist sloppiness can the choice of a convenient medium be confused with meaningful self-exploration. And I do not need to tell you that avatars are not aspects or sub-personalities of Hindu gods, but are their incarnations: the latter is a discrete entity at a point in time throughout all space.

And now to the couple of things in this essay that actually sparked my interest. First of course is the definition of what it is to be human, and why I find it rather absurd that humans would ever accord machines a similar status. At one time, I had toyed with the idea that what gives human beings their uniqueness is an arbitrariness induced by biochemical arbitrariness in their responses to various stimuli. But frankly all that is pointless palaver. No one has ever seriously taken any definition of humanity based on objective ideas like intelligence. All those crappy definitions of race were largely based in politics and economics, and what support they got from neutral academics was largely based on those academics being at their wits end to produce a logical rebuttal. What people perceive as most worthy about themselves is inevitably what has always driven their definition of what is human. Thus, there were very few serious Christians who ever subscribed to the racial hierarchies of 19th century race science, precisely because they saw in non-white people the same capacity for Christian redemption that they most valued in themselves. What people regard as valuable can of course change. But let me glance at some of the odds stacked against machine creations. I will stat by assuming a sophisticated persona that is not programmed with a limited set of instructions but is constantly changing itself based on selective crawling of web data. As such it would be a store-house of information and insights on any topic including the manners of various subgroups of our times that a human could only dream of. Given current IP laws, digitally generated personas cannot be owned by the owner of the persona generator. Besides, such persona generators are unlikely to be monopolies. Hence the personas will lack that most important value in human eyes, namely, market value. They will be infinitely reproducible. It is also impossible to conceive of personas as serious stake holders which could accrue value for themselves through participation in the market and in social spaces. Who would allow a persona a serious stake in anything when that demand for a stake could simply be disposed of with a mouse-click? It is difficult to see why personas should be much more effective than the characters in Shakespeare or in Emily Bronte. Claiming this would be succumbing to the seduction by the latest medium: no different from claims by conservatives about the effect of media violence based on an assumed confusion between reality and screen by the audience.

The other point that interested me pertains to the possible psycho-pharmacological uses of such personas. I think she is trying to make the point seem more important than it is by using some trendy term like “psycho-pharmacological.” The fact that she talks about them primarily in relation to children and the elderly points out the less glamorous spin on it, namely, that they are more effective toys at killing time and keeping unproductive people occupied at low cost. She could have pointed out (which she does not) that intelligent personas could be used as effective and cheap socializing tools both for children and for entrants into a new culture. But doubtless that sounds less sexy.

Why not?

Finances: Undergraduate education in US is extremely expensive, especially at top-tier private schools, and given the income disparity (in dollar terms) between India and US. In addition, the chances that an international student will get hired right away after graduation with a top-notch salary are slim given visa issues. A prospective undergraduate applicant may also want to factor in the pressure that s/he is likely to come under (or feel) if his/her parents are taking a large loan to finance their education. There is also a good chance that the undergraduate will probably have to work 20 hours per week (or more illegally) to supplement his or her income, which in turn will cut into the study time.

Age and associated factors: Add to the above the fact the relative immaturity and youth that make it harder to adjust to a completely new culture. It is not merely adjusting to a new culture but adapting to it to such a degree, and with enough rapidity, so as not distract you from studies for a significant time.

Why?

Going to a liberal arts college in US allows one a lot of choice in sampling different courses. This kind of choice is relatively absent in colleges in Asia or even Europe. Then there are top-tier facilities, labs, faculty etc. which may make the expense seem worth while. In addition, doing an undergraduate degree will almost certainly improve your chances of doing graduate school here.

If you have considered the above arguments and still want to apply for getting an undergraduate degree in US, then here is the drill –

Decided? Then Prepare

The preparation should ideally start at least about a year and a half before you want to join the school. An international student needs to give TOEFL (Test for English as a foreign language), SAT and generally SAT 2s in at least one or more subjects - especially if you are applying to top universities. English of course would be the main challenge. Given that SAT now has a writing section; it is of paramount important that students develop good writing skills. You may want to engage a tutor to understand “expository” writing techniques. A preparation program can be really helpful especially because you will get to meet people who are in the same boat. Preparation center staff can also provide you helpful pointers on admission essays etc.

Schools: It is foolhardy to limit your choices to Harvard or MIT or two other top universities that you may have heard of in India. There are a lot of top-tier universities in US including Princeton, Stanford, Darmouth, Yale, UC Berkeley, Cornell, Georgetown etc. It is imperative that you apply to at least 8 -10 universities. There may also be an argument for applying to mid ranked private schools like Boston University or NYU for typically they have the dollars to fund top international students. One type of university you don’t want to apply to is - large state universities that never fund international students at undergraduate level and typically won’t do much for your career prospects.

Funding: A lot of top universities engage in what is called “need blind admission”. Chances are that once you are admitted into Harvard or Yale and don’t have the money to pay for their tuition, they will pony up the rest. On the other hand, chances are that your family will still need to contribute a good 10-15 grand an year. It is also a mistake to imagine that all the “aid” from universities will be in the form of grants, a majority of the aid is in the form of subsidized loans.

Application: The art of getting into a US university is self-aggradizement and careful positioning. It is expected that your application will include records of volunteer activity, membership to various clubs and other “leadership” experience. The other important thing in application is how you place yourself academically - here’s what I mean - say, if you are great in Chemistry - give a SAT II exam for Chemistry and get a 750 plus score on it and then write how much you want to get a Chemistry degree in your “Statement of Purpose”. Given the way universities in US work, one can change fields on the first day of the school so you can still do engineering or English literature.

Long lines at security check in, delayed flights, to unprofessional staff, and unclean planes have turned air travel into a virtual nightmare over the past five years. Unfortunately, my job requires me to travel by air nearly every week. As one would expect, I have had my share of exasperating experiences but my recent experience with Northwest easily counts as the worst. The incident left me close to tears, and really angry and I feel strongly enough about the incident to come forth and share it in public.

I was scheduled to take a flight back to Stewart International Airport from Champaign, IL on 13th October, 2006. After a long day at work, I reached the check in desk 27 minutes before the flight departure time. Given that I didn’t have any luggage to check in and given that it was a very small airport, I didn’t have any problems checking in. I was at the gate in next 5 minutes and I boarded the flight. While boarding, a lady at the gate was making an announcement asking for volunteers to give up their seats. When the boarding had ended, a flight stewardess announced again that they were looking for volunteers. In response to this, a person got up and volunteered. A little while later stewardess announced that they were looking for one more volunteer. No one else got up.

After about 10 minutes or so, a male staff member came up to my seat and without preamble shouted, “Miss you need to gather all your things and get out of the plane right now.” Caught by surprise and chagrined by the fact that everyone on the plane was looking at me, I fumbled and asked what had happened and why did I have to get down? He behaved as if he never heard me and merely repeated his exhortation, this time more loudly, “MISS YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF THE PLANE RIGHT NOW.” I felt close to tears, feeling deeply humiliated, unable to think what had happened. Afraid, I quietly follow this guy out. Once outside, I asked him the same question. He again pretended that he never heard my question and rudely asked: Which color is your luggage?’ He started to make his way back to the plane and I started following him when he turned back and spat, “Why are you coming after me. Get out of here right now.”

When he came back with my luggage, I asked him again about what had happened. He responded, “Miss you better start marching up the stairs to the gate right now.” I asked him why and he said that this flight has to leave and you are delaying it. “You better go up the stairs right now,” he added.

I went back to the gate and the lady at the gate said, “I am sorry for the trouble but you were thrown off because you checked in 27 minutes prior to departure time. The official check in time is 30minutes.”

When I asked her if I was eligible for any compensation, she said that I wasn’t eligible for I checked in late. (I talked to the North West customer care representative today and they hinted that I did qualify.) Anyways she finally gave me a $300 travel voucher without asking me if I wanted that or a free ticket.

Shaken, I left the gate and went to the ticketing area. I waited there for a NW agent to register a complaint against the guy. As luck would have it, he was the person manning the ticket counter. More incredulously, he came up to me with my boarding pass and asked me to go back to the gate. I asked him what had changed and he responded “You better run up if you do not want to miss the flight”. He repeated this when I questioned him again.

I went back up through security and all and the lady at the gate tells me, “You know, I did not realize that one person had already volunteered. We are going to put you back on the plane.” I was really infuriated by then for they had “deplaned” me in a manner that suggested that it was a security issue and when instead they had merely overbooked the flight. Then the lady at the gate had the temerity to ask me to return the $300 voucher. I refused citing the hassle I had to go through. She then acquiesced and said “Ma’am you can keep the voucher for your troubles.”

Guess what - she had cancelled that voucher.