I just finished reading "The reluctant fundamentalist" a novel by Mohsin Hamid over the break. (I had mentioned this novel in another context here). It is a tight, powerful novel, structured as a monologue, (reminiscent of Camus' The Fall, a fact that few reviewers...
Posts related to: Politics
11/26/2008
Mumbai, 11/26/08 Nov. 27: School children hold candles as they pay tribute to the victims of terrorist attacks in Mumbai at a school in Ahmadabad, India, on Thursday. (Photo credit: washingtonpost.com) The last few days have been very strange... dream and nightmare in...
A sad day…
... for Mumbai, for India, and for the world!
Analyzing political debate
Political debates are heavily analyzed - by pundits and laypeople alike. I had my own minor visual contribution to this discourse through this WordMap/Cloud of the third and final debate between McCain and Obama . Such wordmaps are fun to create and see but are not...
APA & Torture
I had written previously (here and here) about the American Psychological Association's long connection with torture and other coercive information gathering techniques. I am still bothered by it. Today's NYTimes has a op-ed by Stanley Fish (titled Psychology and...
A defining moment!
I started blogging at the beginning of this year - January 1, 2008 4 days later, when Obama won the Iowa caucuses, I a posted a video of his speech, and asked a simple question, "Is this a defining moment of our time?" See it here Almost exactly six months later, on...
WordMapping the debate
I created two WordMaps (using wordle.net) using all the words used by Obama and McCain during their third and final debate. Kind of interesting. Check them out (Click on the image for larger versions, hosted on Flickr). Wordle created using all the words used by...
Ads in Video Games
A couple of people have emailed me about the Obama campaign inserting advertisements into video games. Check out this Flickr set with screenshots of these advertisements. Most of the press is reporting that these ads show up in just racing games but as these...
The greatness of teachers
I discovered Hulu TV a few weeks ago and have been using it to catch up on previous episodes of The Daily Show. I decided today, as I was working on a presentation to watch Crawford. It is a documentary about "a small town thrust into big politics when George W. Bush...
Who is god rooting for?
I have often wondered, while watching sports movies, particularly the ritual prayer scene before the big game, as to who is god rooting for? I mean, surely the other team is invoking god as well? So how does god decide? And if one team wins does that mean their god is...
Obama at MSU
Soham and Shreya make it to the Lansing State Journal's website photo gallery... Smita and I pulled the kids out of school today to go see Obama at Michigan State. Leigh Wolf joined us... and frankly it was a long and tiring day: reaching campus at 9:30, standing in...
Political poetry
What do Donald Rumsfeld and Sarah Palin have in common? Turns out that they both deliver speeches that can, at be, without much effort, converted into poetry. Check out this and this. Some of them are quite briliant.
Deck chairs on the Titanic
I just got back from a faculty meeting where we discussed what would be some possible new hires in the area of Educational Technology & Educational Psychology. At the same time (as we were discussing this) the House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion plan to...
Wordle, McCain v.s. Obama
As I was playing with Wordle (see previous postings here and here) I realized that it could be used for political analysis. So here are John McCain and Barack Obama's acceptance speeches as a word-map. Can you without, my telling you so, figure out which is which? A...
Dreams of our futures
I started this blog on the 1st of January 2008. Barely 4 days later I a posted a video and asked the question, Is this a defining moment of our time? See it here Almost exactly six months later my question was partially answered, and I blogged about it here. Today,...
Design for democracy
Very nice piece in today's NYTimes about ballot design (How Design Can Save Democracy). The article offers a list of problems with the traditional ballot and suggests a solution. A good example of the value of information design. Check it out here
The end of practical obscurity
There is a somewhat troubling story in NYTimes a couple of days ago: (If You Run a Red Light, Will Everyone Know?) about CriminalSearches.com, a free service that lets people search by name through criminal archives of all 50 states and 3,500 counties in the United...
Flipping the Tech & Ed equation
My research and scholarship has mostly been in the area of educational technology - i.e. how to improve / facilitate learning through the use of technologies. David Brooks in his latest op-ed (The biggest issue) in the NYTimes flips this around somewhat. Citing...
It’s only a game…
... but what if real people die? Excellent article by William Saletan on Slate about a new breed of war-toys that blur the line between video games and real war. As the article says, "if looks and feels like a video game. But it kills real people." As it turns out,...
The story of stuff
Check out Story of Stuff or watch the movie... [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucMJ32-xp64] For the new version of CEP817 or maybe even CEP917
Psychology and Coercive Interrogation, the history
In the context of my previous posting, here is an article that provides "a brief historical summary of the research into forms of coercive persuasion, primarily sensory deprivation, conducted 35 to 50 years ago, in which psychologists, psychoanalysts, and...
Psychology & torture: A sad mix
Martin Seligman is one of the most eminent psychologists alive today. As his wikipedia page says, "He is well known for his work on the idea of "learned helplessness", and more recently, for his contributions to leadership in the field of Positive Psychology." He has...
The political psychology of images
Browsing through Nikita Prokhorov's website (see this posting about Nikita's new blog about the process of creating ambigrams) led me to a fascinating article about how symbols and the historical weight they can carry. I think a similar issue comes up regarding the...
A defining moment!
Barack Obama is the democratic nominee for the president of the United States!!! Five months ago, after he had won the Iowa caucuses I had blogged his acceptance speech video (see it here) and had asked a question, "Is this a defining moment of our time?" Today I am...
Buttoning on to a trend
There is an barely interesting article on today's NYTimes.com site by Steven Heller on campaign souvenirs being sold by the three presidential candidates through their websites (read: From Mousepads to Piggy Banks). I thought his earlier columns on the graphic design...
France Sings for USA
In a previous post I talked about Pangea Day and the Imagine anthem series, where people from one country sing the national anthem of another. Here's another one, France sings for the USA. Enjoy. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T60NaNPiMg[/youtube]
Kenya sings India for Pangea Day
NYTimes technology columnist, David Pogue, has a recent blog entry about Pangea Day, a global film festival coming up in a few days. As he says in his note: Pangea Day endeavors to bring the world together and promote understanding and tolerance through film. Over...
Introducing India…
I had been invited to the Second Annual Internationalizing Michigan Education Conference: Building Bridges from Michigan to the World to speak about India. The title of my presentation was Learning about India, the world’s largest democracy. I was assisted in this by...
The (type)face of Obama
As a follow-up to a previous posting about the many (type)faces of politics, here is an article in the NYTimes titled To the letter born, discussing the manner in which the Obama campaign has leveraged the use of typography in their campaign.
Changing rules for tenure
I discovered a blog on academia called Lumpenprofessoriat. It links to some cool videos made by supporters of Barack Obama, but more importantly it has some thought-provoking postings and links to other blogs around the issue of academic tenure. One of the most...