Blowin' In The Wind

The best of 2007

This has been the year of Google. It has had far more impact than the other internet giants even though Microsoft launched Windows Vista and is adding lots of bells and whistles to Windows Live. Yahoo seems to have lost its way. Sad, for I love My Yahoo, the pioneer news aggregator. Here are my personal favourites for the year.

Favourite online newspaper

The New York Times. I still try to check the Guardian almost every day. But the New York Times has much more content and is more balanced. The Guardian is innovative, but some of the articles in the Comment Is Free section seem to be written to provoke controversy.That's fine if the writer can deliver one-liners like Maureen Dowd or is funny and inventive like John O'Farrell or passionate like Robert Fisk. But O'Farrell is no longer a Guardian columnist and Dowd and Fisk write for other papers. There are Guardian columnists I like, but more about the Guardian some other time. Meanwhile...

Favourite newsreader/ news aggregator

Google Reader. So clunky when it was launched two years ago, it's now absolutely indispensable. No better way to keep track of the news and the blogs.

Favourite start page

My Yahoo! I am old-fashioned. Netvibes is innovative and I like the My Universe feature. And for blogging perhaps there can be no better start page than iGoogle. It can be customised to deliver all the information one needs to blog on any subject. But My Yahoo! is simple and can be personalised to carry all the news and blog feeds one wants. It's easy to use and extremely useful.

Favourite techie/bloggy blogs

Digital Inspiration, Lorelle on WordPress, ReadWriteWeb, Blog Herald and Lifehacker (in no particular order). Not that I need or understand every hack suggested by Digital Inspiration or Lifehacker, but I check them almost every day. Indian Amit Agarwal who created Digital Inspiration is a blogger one must read to keep up with the technology and learn new things about blogging and social media. He is highly informative, full of useful advice, writes simply and is very reader-friendly. Lorelle; VanFossen shares all those qualities; Lorelle on WordPress is a must-read. I also enjoy reading Richard MacManus and his ReadWriteWeb. He is really passionate about social media and Web 2.0. Blog Herald is good reading once again thanks to contributors like Lorelle VanFossen.

Finally...

A word of thanks to Time Goes By and The Blue Sloth. And how could I forget Mausi? I have had little time to blog or read blogs most of this year, but I remember their kind comments when I started. It's so nice when someone has a good word for you. I am sorry I have seldom responded to any comments recently. Even though I get them so rarely, I have been too busy or too lazy. Of course, I should respond to anyone who takes the trouble to read me and post a comment. Sorry. Thanks go out also to three bloggers in Singapore who posted encouraging comments when I started. They would know who they are. I have never met any of the people I am thanking. That's the funny thing about blogs or any kind of writing. You get to like strangers and think of them as friends.

Benazir and the fire of religion

(AFP photo at the rally in Rawalpindi where she was killed.)

Why is South Asia such a hotbed of violence? Pakistan's former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's shocking assassination yesterday is being blamed on terrorists as well as President Musharraf at whom accusing fingers are being pointed by her Pakistan People's Party supporters. But it is not an isolated incident. I was reminded of:

• The assassination of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards in 1984.
• The assassination of her son, Rajiv Gandhi, by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber at an election rally near Chennai in 1991.
• The assassination of Bangladesh's first prime minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, by a group of army officers in 1975.
• The assassination of Sri Lankan prime minister Solomon Bandaranaike by a Buddhist monk in 1959.
• The assassination of King Birendra of Nepal by his son, Crown Prince Dipendra, who then committed suicide, in 2001.
• The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by a Hindu zealot in 1948.

Somehow South Asian leaders seem more vulnerable than their European counterparts. Spencer Perceval was the only British prime minister assassinated, far back in 1812.

Volatile Pakistan

Pakistani leaders perhaps face the greatest threat.

Benazir's father, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979 after a coup led by General Zia-ul-Haq. Bhutto was accused of killing a political opponent. Zia himself died in a mysterious plane crash in 1988.

Musharraf has escaped several attempts on his life. Maybe that's why he was unwilling to step down as army chief. In Pakistan, power does flow from the barrel of a gun. Like Zia, Musharraf captured power in a coup, ousting prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999. Coups have become routine in Pakistan, starting with Field Marshal Ayub Khan who seized power in 1958 and ruled till 1969.

Indeed, Pakistan seems a throwback to the Muslim era in Indian history when military power decided who should be king. The country is now racked by terrorism. But Pakistani governments have earlier been accused of abetting terrorists. Musharaff seized power from Nawaz Sharif after Pakistani forces were forced to retreat in a border conflict with India. And the conflict was over Kashmir, which Pakistan wanted to "liberate" from India because Kashmir has a Muslim majority.

Religious and ethnic divisions are to blame for the violence in India and Sri Lanka as well. Indira Gandhi was killed by her Sikh bodyguards because she ordered an attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar to flush out Sikh separatists. Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a Tamil separatist from Sri Lanka.  Gandhi was killed by a Hindu fanatic for protecting Muslims in India while Hindus and Sikhs were being killed in Pakistan after the partition of the two countries in 1947.

Benazir's death is a tragedy. But if Islamic extremists are to blame, Pakistan did little to discourage them in the past.

Singapore on a roll

This has been a great year for Singapore. This little city-state of 4.5 million people is making its economic presence felt across continents.

In India,Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government’s investment arm, has emerged as the largest private equity investor in terms of investments announced this year with about $2 billion worth of deals, reported the Economic Times.

More sexy, of course, are the conquests on Wall Street, in London and Switzerland. Temasek Holdings has just invested $4.4 billion stake in Merrill Lynch, not to be outdone by  its sibling Government of  Singapore Investment Corp, which invested $9.75 billion in the Swiss banking giant UBS earlier this month.

On Christmas Eve, Temasek also raised its stake in the British bank, Standard Chartered -- of which it is already the biggest shareholder -- to 18 per cent.

The deals have not attracted the kind of controversy Temasek has faced in Thailand and Indonesia. But the Chinese and the Arabs are also buying Western assets. And some are already expressing misgivings.

Western misgivings

The Economist worried aloud in July when Temasek and China Development Bank took a stake in Barclays. Nobody knows how politically motivated the sovereign funds might become, it said, adding they should be more transparent.

The sovereign funds raise special questions because the investment decisions are controlled by governments rather than individuals or corporations, reported the News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware. 

Top US government officials say the deals should not spark undue alarm, but do merit scrutiny, reported AFP. "The most obvious consideration is national security," Robert Kimmitt, the deputy US Treasury secretary, wrote in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs.

But the West has nothing to fear, says Anders Aslund in Foreign Policy, expressing a contrarian view so remarkable it bears quoting.

In truth, such funds are nothing for Americans or Europeans to fear. If anyone should worry about them, it’s the people whose governments are amassing them. That’s because governments tend to be terrible at managing money...

That's not true of the Singapore government which has been an excellent economic manager, as evident from the booming economy, but let's hear what Aslund has to say:

The motives of the funds vary, and they don’t always make sense. Consider Abu Dhabi and Kuwait, which wanted to save their oil endowment for future generations, an admirable goal. But today these two bureaucratised emirates look like poor cousins in comparison with freewheeling Dubai, which has much less oil. Because the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Kuwait centralized their nations’ wealth in the hands of the state, their state sectors stifled their economies. Abu Dhabi’s fund may be impressive, but the entrepreneurial emir of Dubai has done a far better job of putting sustainable wealth in the hands of his citizens.

Aslund has a few things to say about Singapore too. I won't go into that because I don't think he is right. Overall, this is what he has to say:

The only democratic country with a large sovereign wealth fund is Norway. Since the Norwegian fund was established in 1990, every incumbent government has lost elections because the opposition has promised all kinds of popular expenditures from the abundant fund. Democratically, it is difficult to defend an excessive public reserve fund.

Highest paid leader in the free world

" Singapore's politicians, already among the best paid in the world, will get a salary hike next year with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong enjoying a 21 percent rise to 3.76 million Singapore dollars ($2.6 million)," reported Reuters.

Eat your hearts out, George Bush, Gordon Brown and all ye other leaders of the free world. Go green (with envy).

"Singapore's GDP per capita of $29,000 is only second to Japan in Asia, but its income inequality is more in line with third-world countries," said Reuters.

I don't know about that. But I do know now that PM Lee will be paid:

• More than six times as much as US President George W Bush
• Seven times as much as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown
• Seven and a half times as much as French President Nicolas Sarkozy
• Eight times as much as German Chancellor Angela Merkel
• 32 times as much as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

I realised that after reading this report in Forbes. It says:

• Bush is paid $400,000 a year, while his No. 2, Dick Cheney, pulls down $208,575.
• Gordon Brown gets $375,000.
• Nicolas Sarkozy draws $346,000.
• Angela Merkel is paid $318,000.
• Putin's official salary is $81,000.

"Top of the tree by some degree is Singapore Premier Lee Hsien Loong," said Forbes.

Singapore's other leaders are getting a pay rise too. Reuters reported:

President SR Nathan will receive 3.87 million Singapore dollars next year, while members of parliament, most of whom hold full-time jobs outside politics, will get an allowance of 225,000 Singapore dollars a year.

Singapore politicians peg their salaries to those of the country's highest-paid doctors, lawyers, bankers and other professionals and executives.

"In this tight labour market, where private sector salaries have moved up significantly, the civil service needs to follow promptly in order to attract and retain good people," the report quoted Teo Chee Hean, minister in charge of the civil service, as saying.

Who needs a free press?

I wonder what editors will make of this in Singapore and India. Apparently their readers are not so keen on a free press.

The majority of Singaporeans feel they don't have a free press and don't have a high opinion of the local media but are not pressing for a change.

Most Indians, on the other hand, think they have a free press which reports the news fairly accurately but that's not so important to them.

Russia is the only other country where freedom of the press is not so important to the majority, according to a BBC survey.

What matters more in all three countries is peace and stability. They don't want the truth and nothing but the truth if it disrupts peace and stability.

The BBC surveyed more than 11,000 people in 14 countries In Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.  It reported:

Of those interviewed, 56 percent thought freedom of the press was very important to ensure a free society. But 40 percent said it was more important to maintain social harmony and peace, even if it meant curbing the press' freedom to report news truthfully.

Country statistics

Though the majority wanted a free press, it's significant how narrow the majority was in several countries. Only 52 percent in Brazil and 51 percent in Mexico and the United Emirates considered a free press important.

Only 43 percent in Singapore and 41 percent in India thought a free press important, which mattered least in Russia (39 percent).

A free press matters far more in the US (70 percent), Britain (67 percent), Germany (67 percent), Venezuela (64 percent), South Africa (63 percent), Kenya (62 percent), Nigeria (56 percent) and Egypt (55 percent).

Freedom of the press has always mattered in the West, no surprise there. And Venezuelans perhaps feel the same need because they are still new to socialism. Hugo Chavez has not yet completed a decade in power and so hasn't been able to stamp out all opposition, which won the recent referendum.

Singapore and India

Singapore leaders, on the other hand, will feel vindicated by the survey. Those who complain about lack of press freedom will now have to accept that it's not high on the wish list of the majority who agree with the government that it's more important to have peace and harmony.

Russia, of course, has no tradition of press freedom.

The real surprise is India. Peace and harmony matters more than a free press to the majority, and yet when Indira Gandhi clamped down on the press and the opposition during the Emergency in 1975, she lost the subsequent election in 1977 by a landslide. No subsequent leader has been able to dominate the political landscape, a clear indication of the diversity of Indian voters. They are unlikely to give any party the kind of support Indira Gandhi enjoyed before she imposed the Emergency. So the press is likely to remain free.

What makes the Indian attitude all the more surprising is the high marks Indians give to the media. The privately owned news organisations are doing a good job, according to 64 percent of the respondents, and so is the official media, according to 57 percent. That's a big leap for All India Radio, which used to be called All Indira Radio, and the national TV network, Doordarshan, which used to be pretty much Indira Darshan when she was in power.

In Singapore, the official media is trusted more than private counterparts. The official media is doing a good job, according to 42 percent, but the private media gets the thumbs up from only 32 per cent.

One question: Is there any mainstream private media in Singapore? Isn't Singapore Press Holdings enmeshed in various crossholdings with the government-linked MediaCorp?

 

Picasso: French or Spanish?

It's common to point out mistakes in Wikipedia, but is Encyclopaedia Britannica hundred percent accurate?

Pablo Picasso is described as a "Spanish-born French painter, sculptor" in Britannica Concise Encylopedia -- but not by any of the other encyclopedias cited in Answers.com. They all say he was Spanish.

I found that he was in fact denied French citizenship when he applied for it in 1940 only weeks before Germany invaded France during World War II. He was suspected to be an anarchist.

Picasso sought French citizenship because he apparently feared he might otherwise be extradited to Spain. He could expect no favours from General Franco and the Nationalists who had won the Spanish Civil War whose horrors he had famously depicted in Guernica.

The Nationalists were fascists, in his view, and he did not want to be a citizen of a fascist state, so he applied for French nationality, according to others.

The latter story appeared in the New York Times, the former in the Independent.

Other newspapers and agencies also carried similar reports between 2003 and 2004, when 30 years after his death, police files unearthed in Paris revealed his rejected application for French citizenship.

I came across those reports when I searched Google using the key words, Pablo Picasso, Spanish, French citizenship.

I searched Google to check if Encylopaedia Britannica was right. If Picasso was indeed a "Spanish-born French painter, sculptor", then why shouldn't it be mentioned in Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia? Still, the Britannica is known for its accuracy. So is it correct on Picasso? Have other records appeared since 2003 showing Picasso did indeed become French?    

WordPress, TypePad, Vox

Anyone using WordPress.com will know how easy it is to set up a WordPress blog. Could that be a reason for the spectacular growth of WordPress?

Say you are looking for a blog hosted on WordPress.com. You type in  the URL in your browser's address or location bar. But you are wrong, there is no website at that address. WordPress will then ask you if you want to create a blog using that  "blog domain" or internet address. You just have to click on a button for WordPress to set up the blog automatically.

WordPress.com also hosts blogs for free, like Blogger, and unlike TypePad or Movable Type. So it's no surprise WordPress has become the third most popular blogging platform, after Blogger and Windows Live Spaces, with more than 60 million unique users.Blogger has nearly 160 million and Windows Live Spaces almost 120 million. Six Apart ranks fourth with 40 million users. The figures appeared in the Guardian after Six Apart announced it was selling off LiveJournal three days ago.

Of course, plenty of bloggers pay to use WordPress on various web hosts as well to have more storage space, more choice and their own domain names. It's amazing how rapid has been its growth since it appeared in 2003 though it must have spread even more rapidly after WordPress.com appeared in 2005 and started hosting blogs for free. Another reason for its popularity must be the ease with which one can transfer a blog from Blogger, for example, to WordPress.com. But unlike Blogger, WordPress doesn't offer unlimited storage. So it must have other great features to have attracted plenty of serious bloggers.

TypePad is great too. What surprises me is so little is written about Vox, Six Apart's other blogging platform. Vox has beautiful templates, plenty of storage space, privacy controls and best of all it's free. Blogs can be moved from Blogger to Vox, too, though I am not sure if WordPress blogs can be transferred there as well. WordPress blogs can be moved to TypePad.

 

Idols and teddy bears

Jesus. That's the name that comes to mind now that the Sudanese president has pardoned the unfortunate British teacher who let her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad. I mean no offence, I am plain curious. Plenty of Muslims bear the Prophet's name. But why is the name Jesus so uncommon outside the Hispanic community?

I searched Google under "Jesus, Christian names" and found very few pages even addressing that question.There are nearly 60,000 people named Jesus in the US, according to White Pages.com, but their surnames are most likely to be Garcia, Rodriguez, Martinez, Hernandez and Gonzalez-- Hispanic every one of them.

Perhaps, I wouldn't have asked the question if I were a Christian. That's my point. We are so conditioned by religion and culture that there are certain things we take for granted -- and woe betide anyone who even unknowingly offends our sense of right and wrong. That was certainly the case with Gillian Gibbons, the 54-year-old teacher from Liverpool who outraged the Sudanese by letting her young pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad. The poor woman had been in Sudan for only four months. How was she to know it was simply not done?

What surprised me most was a Muslim cleric's views on the teddy bear.

“This woman gave an idol the name of Muhammad, which is not acceptable,” said Ahmed Muhammad, the imam at a mosque in Khartoum, reported the New York Times.

A teddy bear an idol? I thought it was just a cute little plaything for a child.But I am not a Muslim.

There's so little we know about one another.

I am a Hindu, and Hindus are likely to name their children after gods and saints. And not just children. I have even heard of cows named Radha (Krishna's lover) and Parvati (wife of Siva). One could, of course, argue cows are worshipped by Hindus, so that's nothing unusual.

Indeed there's one animal I can think of which I would have loved to keep as a pet but wouldn't name after a god. I can't explain why, but it just doesn't seem proper.

That's the thing about religion; it's a matter of belief. So if someone believes a teddy bear is an idol, there's no arguing with him: belief beats reason any day.

I know as Hindus we are said to worship idols. But that's not how I see my gods. I worship their images for the same reason Christians pray before images of Jesus and Buddhists in front of Buddha, because I believe in them. Idols are something else. 

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

(Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, picture from Answers.com)

Anyone who has dreams, and seen some dreams die, should read Breakfast at Tiffany's. He or she will empathise with Holly Golightly like her real friends, who -- to a man -- are her silent lovers. Like the author himself. This is a love story told by the silent lover, a prose version of Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn. Think of the lover and the maiden in the poem, and you know the ending of Breakfast at Tiffany's. It's just as tender and romantic.

Holly is fascinating from the moment she steps into the author's apartment, slipping out through a window of her own apartment to escape from a drunken lover. She is so mixed up you want to straighten her out, and so irresistible you want to be the man in her life. But that's like playing with fire. Smart, manipulative, entertaining men to marry someone rich and successful, Holly is no respecter of the law. But she shoplifts and helps the Mafia so blithely it's hard to think of her as a criminal. She is warm and and lively and fiercely independent. "I want to still be me when I wake up one morning and have breakfast at Tiffany's," she tells the author, sharing her dream.

But Breakfast at Tiffany's is no fairy tale. Holly Golightly gets more than her just desserts. But that doesn't kill her spirit. A "lop-sided romantic" in the author's words, she is willing to pursue her dream to the ends of the earth.

This is a story of dreams and spirits undiminished even in defeat and adversity.

Truman Capote tells a heartwarming story in just over a hundred pages. The writing is simple and vivid.

What makes Holly unforgettable is scenes like the one where she introduces herself to the author and, later, when they have their quarrel. While giving her an oil massage in her apartment, he accuses her of being a mercenary, hooking up with a rich man for his money. Holly is furious. Capote writes:

She sat up on the army cot, her face, her naked breasts coldly blue in the sun-lamp light. "It should take about four seconds for you to walk from here to the door. I'll give you two."

Holly is tempestuous, vulnerable, beautiful and unforgettable. Her image is all the more indelible because beautiful Audrey Hepburn played her role in the film.

Google Reader recommends ... BT

Surprise, surprise, Singapore Press Holdings is pushing its content, giving away its stories for free! And one doesn't even have to ask for the stories, they poured in like unsolicited mail!

I couldn't believe my eyes when I opened my Google Reader last night. On the home page was a new section called Top Recommendations listing feeds I hadn't subscribed to but which Google Reader thought, based on my reading habits, I might be interested in. And there with a couple of popular Singapore blogs, an Indian business newspaper, the literary blog Elegant Variation, the opinion section of  London's Daily Telegraph and Forbes magazine was Singapore's very own Business Times (BT).

I only had to click on the titles to subscribe to them or preview their latest articles first before clicking on the Subscribe button or the hyperlink, "No, thank you". Adding or deleting feeds from Google Reader is as simple as that. Subscription is just as simple on Bloglines, which has offered similar recommendations for years, but Google Reader is much faster. Rather than visit various websites to find out what they have to offer, one can simply scroll through Google Reader and call up the more interesting stories. It simply collects all the stories from the various websites one has subscribed to.

But I didn't expect stories from the Business Times to pop up on my Google Reader. I hadn't asked for them. Not that I am complaining. But it's so unusual for Singapore Press Holdings to distribute its  content free of charge. Yes, the Business Times can be read online for free after 2pm every day. But its sister paper, the much more widely circulated Straits Times, gives very little away for free; one has to pay to read most of the stories.

I don't think the Business Times (circulation 30,400,according to the SPH website) is so desperate to increase readership that it's deliberately pushing stories like unsolicited mail. But like any other newspaper, it has an RSS feed which can be picked up by Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo or any other news reader. But why send those stories to me? The Google Reader Help Centre has the answer:

"Your recommendations list is automatically generated. It takes into account the feeds you're already subscribed to, as well as information from your Web History, including your location."

And so Google Reader decided to "recommend" the Business Times stories to me.

The Business Times could restrict access to its RSS feed, like the Wall Street Journal does. But it isn't, letting Google Reader distribute it for free. That's pushing. Thank you!