Two videos I highly recommend watching, if you have the time…

The Aurora video on the future of web user experience is here.

Also check out this lecture debunking myths about statistics in developing countries, its long but brilliant.  You’ll need FLV Player to watch it on your computer - which is available for free here. Or just watch it online.

Incidentally I found this video on the YokWay social network, which is one of the better content geared social networks I’ve seen lately. Its in Beta currently, I have 10 invites to give out though, so comment and let me know if you want one.

Update : Part two of the Aurora video is online now here.

My friend pointed out here, that I haven’t been expressing too much of an opinion lately at Una Voce and he is right.

One plausible reason is that I have spent far too much time lately researching Indian agriculture for a presentation due sometime next week. The problems of Indian Agriculture are too numerous to summarize in a hour and so distilling and redefining the problems has lately become the centerpiece of my attention.

I spent my afternoon today working on Indigo plantations and their impacts colonial rule. I was surprised but not unduly so to re-discover how much nonsense I had unwittingly absorbed during high-school about ‘development’.

Let me step back and explain the context. One part of the project I am working on demands that we present a thorough history of Indian agriculture- at one of our group meetings I suggested a good place to begin might be to look at how widespread Indigo plantations had ‘hurt’ Indian agriculture in the past.

Little did I realize then that this was my brain-washed mind recalling an absurd little sentence I had been forced into reading and believing in high-school. The book was called the ‘Violence of The Green Revolution’ authored by a food fascist cum fake scientist cum feminazi who goes by name Vandana Shiva. Sitting at a ‘farm’ far away from the ‘evils’ of the developed world such as cellular phones, mp3 players, electricity, gas stoves and mattresses a small group of sixteen year olds were forced to read this violent, inaccurate and utterly despicable rendition of the state of Indian agriculture.

Somewhere hidden in those pages was the idea that ‘Indigo mono-culture(s)’ had destroyed Indian farm land and made them un-cultivatable. The stupider side of my mind for some reason accepted this suggestion and regurgitated it at the group meeting. My friend sent me a mail today asking me if I could find any sources online to check that claim because she couldn’t find any.

I consented to look and to dismay it turns out that Indigo is actually a legume- not only does it not rob soil of nutrients- it helps fix nitrogen and so by all conventional biology must have helped make soils more fertile and rich. The downside of Indigo planting was that it was out-competed by synthetic technology and Indian farmers launched a civil disobedience movement against the adoption of this newer technology- simply because it would take away work.

Being as this was, the one argument Vandana Shiva’s book got right was that Indigo was a mono culture, primarily because it was enormously profitable to grow Indigo. There was of course nothing remotely democratic about the way the British got Indians to grow Indigo on a wide scale- farmers were oppressed and cheated out of their profits, nevertheless the argument and the facts have nothing to do with the destruction of soil. The arguments are and were economic.  And so I had to eat my hat.

This is of course not the first set of incorrect facts (or lies - as I call them) that Vandana Shiva has resorted to. This is another example of how bogus her arguments are.

The second goof-up which has made me more than red in the face lately is a bizarre $1400 (and counting) telephone bill because my own inability to read and comprehend the fine print in contracts.

My sister sent me this link today.

Excerpts from the excellent post;

You suggested that the book could be “placed in an area designating the subject matter,” or “labeled for parental guidance” by stating that “some material may be inappropriate for young children.” I have two responses. First, we tried the “parenting collection” approach a couple of times in my history here. And here’s what we found: nobody uses them. They constitute a barrier to discovery and use. The books there – and some very fine ones — just got lost. In the second case, I believe that every book in the children’s area, particularly in the area where usually the parent is reading the book aloud, involves parental guidance. The labeling issue is tricky, too: is the topic just homosexuality? Where babies come from? Authority figures that can’t be trusted? Stepmothers who abandon their children to die?

…

Ultimately, such labels make up a governmental determination of the moral value of the story. It seems to me – as a father who has done a lot of reading to his kids over the years – that that kind of decision is up to the parents, not the library. Because here’s the truth of the matter: not every parent has the same value system.

Your third point, about the founders’ vision of America, is something that has been a matter of keen interest to me most of my adult life. In fact, I even wrote a book about it, where I went back and read the founders’ early writings about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. What a fascinating time to be alive! What astonishing minds! Here’s what I learned: our whole system of government was based on the idea that the purpose of the state was to preserve individual liberties, not to dictate them. The founders uniformly despised many practices in England that compromised matters of individual conscience by restricting freedom of speech. Freedom of speech – the right to talk, write, publish, discuss – was so important to the founders that it was the first amendment to the Constitution – and without it, the Constitution never would have been ratified.

How then, can we claim that the founders would support the restriction of access to a book that really is just about an idea, to be accepted or rejected as you choose? What harm has this book done to anyone? Your seven year old told you, “Boys are not supposed to marry.” In other words, you have taught her your values, and those values have taken hold. That’s what parents are supposed to do, and clearly, exposure to this book, or several, doesn’t just overthrow that parental influence. It does, of course, provide evidence that not everybody agrees with each other; but that’s true, isn’t it?

Bravo, is all I have to say!

…acrimonious exchanges with the US accusing India and China of blocking progress.

The US says they are being overly protective towards their own farmers and are failing to do enough to open their markets.

India’s Commerce Minister Kamal Nath rejected the charge, saying: “The US is looking at enhancing its commercial interests whereas I am looking at protecting the livelihood of farmers.”

Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming echoed Mr Nath, saying the US was “asking a price as high as heaven”.

The main stumbling block was farm import rules, which allow countries to protect poor farmers by imposing a tariff on certain goods in the event of a drop in prices or a surge in imports.

India, China and the US could not agree on the tariff threshold for such an event.

Full story here.

The World Trade Report 2008 is out. Its available for download here.

The theme of this year’s Report is “Trade in a Globalizing World”. The Report provides a reminder of what we know about the gains from international trade and highlights the challenges arising from higher levels of integration. It addresses a range of interlinking questions, starting with a consideration of what constitutes globalization, what drives it, what benefits does it bring, what challenges does it pose and what role does trade play in this world of ever-growing inter-dependency.

The Report asks why some countries have managed to take advantage of falling trade costs and greater policy-driven trading opportunities while others have remained largely outside international commercial relations. It also considers who the winners and losers are from trade and what complementary action is needed from policy-makers to secure the benefits of trade for society at large. In examining these complex and multi-faceted questions, the Report reviews both the theoretical gains from trade and empirical evidence that can help to answer these questions.

For those of us interested in trade patterns, this as good a resource as any. The UNCTAD report on Least Developed Countries too is a great resource.

Last week I became a part of the Snowball Effect group on Face book. The group is trying a social experiment to illustrate the snowball effect which is the long-standing phenomenon that people follow what others do.

The ‘Mojave Experiment‘ put together by a Microsoft research team illustrates this idea nicely. The “Mojave Experiment” is an attempt to find out -

What do people think of Windows Vista® when they don’t know it’s Windows Vista? We disguised Windows Vista as codename ‘Mojave,’ the ‘next Microsoft OS,’ so regular people who’ve never used Windows Vista could see what it can do - and decide for themselves. …

Results from the experiment indicate that over 90% of users rated Vista much better than they did based on preconceived notions.

For most part, Vista works very well for me- sure it has annoying parts like every Windows system has had in the past, the real question is; Are we all sheep?

Hypocrisy is the mother of all credibility problems, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has it in spades. While loudly complaining about the “unethical” treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, the group has its own dirty little secret.

PETA kills animals. By the thousands.

From July 1998 through December 2007, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed over 19,200 dogs, cats, and other “companion animals.” That’s more than five defenseless creatures every day. PETA has a walk-in freezer to store the dead bodies, and contracts with a Virginia Beach company to cremate them.

Not counting the pets PETA spayed and neutered, the group put to death over 90 percent of the animals it took in during the last five years. And its angel-of-death pattern shows no sign of changing.

Click here for the full story, and then go figure!

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This is a first recipe and therefore a free one! Happy cooking!

V

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A concoction, like a potpourri, is a mixture of herbs, dried flowers, fragrance and spices kept in a jar, tied in muslin and kept under the pillow,conjured up in your dreams or in your makeshift kitchen.

Depends on how you look at it and when you want to make it.

The four-meals-a-day has idea is now an ancient practice, no longer suited to the 22nd century workday. One must be able to think out of the box, break the 4-meal-a-day regime, just for the pleasure and convenience.This is something I have never been in doubt about.

Some people’s days begin at 4 a.m. , other’s end at 4 a.m. Breakfast is a good idea if the work day begins around 8 a.m. otherwise, it is not.

BREAKFAST: If you have a filling meal at the beginning of the day, it might help to get you down to work right away. All my school and college days though, I have just rushed out with a glass of milk, or a toast dipped in tea. So, who am I to say whether you should or should not have breakfast. If u have a fridge, Breakfast becomes that much easier. Try stocking up on breakfast foods.

Oats, Cornflakes, Milk, Bread, Jam, Cheese or Butter and Orange juice…all the routine stuff.

Making breakfast more interesting:

Cornflakes and milk can be boring. Use milk cold or boiling hot milk, whichever way you like it. In a bowl cut up a banana, add some resin, crumble a cookie, add sugar or honey. Consider adding scoops of grapefruit (butter-fruit), add some nuts–almonds, cashew nuts, pea nuts even–add corn flakes, add milk. This will definitely taste better than plain cornflakes and milk. You can conjure up as you go along. Invent.

Varna’s Tip [My favorite addition to cornflakes has been a pinch of instant coffee powder and fresh strawberries!]

Oats: For one tea cup of oats — boil 1 and a 1/2 cup of water, add a pinch of salt. When the water begins to boil, pour the oats, stir quickly for 2 minutes. Its done. Add milk and sugar to eat.Yes, its that easy. you can add honey. Nuts, resins, chopped bananas if you want.

Puffed or pounded rice: In most Asian countries you get puffed rice or pounded rice (muri or murmura/podi and aval or chira/chura). Puffed rice with milk is a good breakfast too, consider it a rice-variant.

Bread: Comes in a variety of shapes sizes. Flat bread, unleavened bread, Roti and Chapatis these days often come in packets, available in supermarkets. They can also be obtained from the local markets. This - warmed over a brazier, is good to eat dipped in tea or milk. Can be warmed on a hot pan.

A Chapati is not too difficult to make. Get wheat flour. To make half a dozen chapatis you would need about half a kilo of flour. Put the flour in a flat surface. Mix a pinch of salt and a tea spoon of oil with the flour. Make a hole in the middle, pour water slowly from a cup. Keep a tight control over the water. Kneed it at the same time…moving from the center of the flour outwardly, making the dough. Let the dough be of medium softness, not too watery and slimy, not to tough. Batter the dough for five minutes nicely.

Make fist sized balls. Roll it out on a wooden board, or flat surface. If you don’t have a rolling pin, you can use a longish tin. You can also use your hands to roll out the Chapati. It is not rocket science, just a matter of practice. Don’t get intimidated if the first few look like the map of Africa! It only has to be eaten.

In some countries, you get to buy metal presses to press out the Chapati. You can place it on a flat ceramic dish in a micro-oven for a few seconds and it will get cooked. If you have a wire-mesh, you can cook a Chapati on a open gas flame. You can place it on a frying pan without oil and let it cook in a medium flame, cooking both sides well, then take it out and flip it over a open flame a few seconds. It will rise nicely.

If you are not sure of doing this, turn it into a Paratha. Put the Chapati  on the pan, roast it for a few minutes. Add a spoon of  oil (olive oil, groundnut oil or any cooking oil, Ghee or even butter) any cooking medium, let it get a little hot and brown. Its done.

A bread and butter toast can be boring. A slice of toast with marmalade, a pickle, a slice of ham, a scrambled egg and such will taste better. Even left over vegetables will do. It makes all the difference to the toast. Pineapple on toast is good. Caviar is okay, though not everyone likes it. Mashed potato on toast is great.

Finally, remember Oranges are as good as orange juice!

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Concoctix

The feedback I got first was …it rambles on and on…so where is the recipe? Feed-back, remember, is the word..eating your word is another. We have just begun, so I sat us down and put on the thinking cap.

While a kitchen is not absolutely necessary to begin cooking, thinking through is necessary.  In the 1980s, money was always a rare commodity…between two people there was just about $20 a week. Naturally, the rum and whiskey was divided between two people, without buying more…and the incentive to cook was to get more time to write, cooking can be inspirational, to say the least. Like while rolling over an intro in your mind, one might like to rustles up a pudding.

But yes, pots and pans definitely are necessary. However, if you think one can’t cook without an well ordained array of utensils, wrong again. Just a few will do. Always go for medium sized cooking utensils. The small ones are a waste of hard earned money. Generally I am cooking for myself or two people. Occasionally, there are friends to cook for, generally two/three…a medium size utensil can be used for both occasions.

It is a good idea to get a Wok or a  ‘Kadai’ as we in South Asia call it. That’s an universal pan. In the West, a flat frying pan is used but it is a good idea to buy one with a rim, that is a pan that has a depth of your thumb, about  5 cms deep. Either of the three will do. They all work in a similar manner!

Teflon and other non-stick pans are generally not recommended. Iron skillets are Grandma’s tried and tested stuff. A Stainless steel or aluminium (Hindalium, an offshoot of the aircraft industry, I presume) one will do. In certain countries, the heavy Russian skillet made of very thick steel is available. They too do just as well.

For a cooking pan one should not go in for a thin surface, because the chances of the utensil burning along with the food is greater. Buy a pan that is easily available in the local market and what the local people use…no matter which part of the world you are in.

The second item is a ladle. It can be wooden, or a large steel spoon with a long handle, or a spatula/spathe. Any one kind will do…you don’t need a dozen different kinds really. All it does is turns things over in the pan.  If you don’t have this, you can very well use a knife and a fork , holding the knife in the left hand and the fork in the right to turn things over. You can use a chopstick too, but don’t ever use a green branch. All the juices ooooozzzz out of the branch into your concoction, and the taste can be quite disgusting. I did that once, learning the easy way!

A medium size pot to boil things in. Preferably with a lid and a handle. If not, a steel plate can be used to cover. It can be used for eating from too. A pressure cooker is one thing you will never find being used in television cookery programme. It is more handy than the boiling pot. If you are traveling to a foreign country and expected to cook, carry a medium sized pressure cooker about 3 liters. Don’t imagine that if you are going from China or India to the USA, you will be able to easily lay hands on a vessel called the pressure cooker. You won’t.

Think of it like an autoclave of Lilliputian size! It is one of the most universal and useful gadgets you can lay your hands on if you intend to cook. Two/three bowls to keep food in. Not too large, assorted sizes. The Chinese, Japanese and many south Asians use bowls to drink tea. The same can be used to drink soup, and eat noodles and rice from,and as a measuring cup. So one does not need separate cups/plates etc. To begin with:just buy utensils that you absolutely need. Plates, glasses,cups, if you must, not really necessary.

One good general knife and a few tea spoons and forks are enough. A fork, I soon learned, is an useful weapon. A multifaceted thing. I could beat an omelette with it, I could use it to stir, to turn over, to pin down, and to eat with, saving my fingers while I am typing!

Get utensils and crockery gradually, as you need, as your expertise grows. It is good to get an electric kettle, if you are in a place where there is electricity/and if you are in a cold country.

We raided our meager savings to buy a medium sized fridge.Not only for some ice and cold water and beer, also to save money and time. The idea was if I cooked one day, I could feed myself for two days at least. Again a medium size is recommended. A fridge is not necessary if you are in a cold or very cold country. But if you are in Asia and Africa, it is a good idea to get a refrigerator, saves a lot of food.

Especially if you are finicky about wasting food. My parents never allowed me to, as they saw starvation, hunger drought…the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. And I am never allowed to forget that there are places in the world still where people are eating leaves and worms to stay alive.

You also need Fire, this could be a kerosene stove/a gas burner/a electric heater/a hotplate. Spend ten minutes finding out how the fire stone works. Especially if it is a micro-oven, you have to deal with. A electric oven can be set. A micro-oven has to be tested. The simplest way of doing this is by toasting a bread. Just note how many seconds it takes the bread to turn deep brown. Put a half full bowl (non breaking glass) of water in the oven and see when it starts to bubble. Either of these experiments, will give you an idea of how long it takes to warm/heat/boil/cook/toast etc.

You must check out the fire before you start cooking. At one point in time, I had to cook on wood fire, at another, on a bukhari, so getting hang of the fire is essential. A gas burner or an electric heater are the easiest to control.

Check out the closest local market. Just window shop for an hour or two to  find out what is easily available and what is cheapest. While this could seem like a waste of time, it can be fun. Begin keeping a notebook where the grocer’s telephone number is a must.

I began cooking by taking it on like a Gradschool project. Do some background checking, get some basic material/data etc.

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Concoctix

A man on a wheelchair, no half a man really- he had no legs. His wife stood beside him at the Domestic Airport in Washington.

The woman wore a tee that read thus “Army-Wife”, the man wore a shirt that said ” We were winning when I left”.

Photo Credit: Luciana  Braga.

The chap must have been younger than I am, and I am only twenty three. I am speechless.