Time for a kill

The world is topsy-turvey these days and it often feels that our lives are out of our control governed by unknown forces beyond our reach. A "Joseph K" feeling if you will. Then you hear of the latest hullabaloo over bonus payments from A.I.G. to the very group within the company that basically destroyed it and cost shareholders about $200 billion. At times like this I really miss some feral, third-world justice. People in the streets, being violant, being human, angry and expressing it. They say it is illegal to NOT give them the bonuses now because it was in the contract. Oh, the stifling respect for law and even more so to order. We don't need no order. We have too much of it. We need good, old  street-style beatings to discourage the execs from claiming bonuses. The answer to 'your money or your life' is such a welcome certainty in these times.

Oh well, we will all just watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and feel superior and move on with our stolid, inert lives.

Mumbai massacre

There isn't anything that I have to say that probably hasn't been said before. I just want to make a note of an op-ed by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times today. While I am not a great fan of Friedman's often superficial hysteria, I think he gets it this time. He indicates what I think (It is hard to say for sure on these subjects) that fundamentalism is inherently a problem that will have to be solved from inside. No amount of surveillance, counter-violance or wars by outsiders are going to resolve it. People in whose midst terrorists grow -- whether they be the people from Karachi or Columbine -- will have to deal with their own devils.

Ban Google Save India??

If this is what it would take to 'Save' India then it certainly must be done.

Hollywood Heist

So apparently Hollywood just had a great year in 2007. I remember less than two years ago there was this hue-and-cry about how the Internet, file-swapping, Video games, TV, TiVo and everything they could possibly think of (someone even mentioned, gasp, books) that was destroying Hollywood movie industry. No one would watch films in theaters anymore. Articles were written in the papers (yes, those things that no one reads anymore, or so we say now) about how the industry is doing and how there was no hope. They had been left behind. There was no tomorrow (though Bond seemed to disagree) and it was all over.

So what explains the great 2007? The same thing that explains most of the economic and business discussion these days. It is all fickle and reactionary. Things are not things anymore -- they are precursors to chains of things. They are not complete within themselves -- they foretell stories. They predict doom. They tell us that an event is a trend or at least it predicts a trend.

To me it defies all logic but then emotions aren't about logic and unfortunately most of our public discussion has been taken over by emotion from reason. Hence the rise of the blog culture, the talk show culture, the youth culture and other such cultures that think from various organs all below the neck.