"Google charges feds $25 a head for user surveillance"

Image credit: jovike.

The implications of the below story boggle the mind. If you had any sense that your email was private, let this article dissuade you of that. Anything you write using any free email, such as Gmail or Microsoft's Hotmail, can or is being sold or given away for free to the federal government. The article highlights how, though Google and Yahoo may make more money from selling your information, Microsoft is doing you a further disservice by giving it away for free. By failing to even charge a penny, they remove any paper trail, which could hinder efforts to determine if your email has been sold to the government.

In 2010, the document shows, the DEA paid ISPs, telcos, and other communication providers $6.7 million for pen registers and $6.5 million for wiretaps. Pen register payments more than tripled over the past three years and nearly doubled over the past two. Wiretap payments stayed roughly the same.

The documents confirm that Microsoft does not charge for surveillance. "There are no current costs for information requested with subpoenas, search warrants, pen registers, or Title II collection [wiretaps] for Microsoft Corporation," they say. But they show that Google charges $25 and Yahoo! $29.

As Soghoain points out, Google and Yahoo! may make more money from surveillance than they get directly from their email users.

[Google charges feds $25 a head for user surveillance]

via @evgenymorozov

Jason Silva: "LOVELAND and the Imagination Age"

Jason Silva has a new article on the Huffington Post interviewing Rita J. King about her involvement in the LOVELAND project and her Imagination Age concept. It's one of the best interviews on this subject I've seen yet.

You have said that "technology is a prism for the imagination"... what exactly do you mean by that?

From the first cave painting until the present day, people have wanted to play a role in an ongoing, meaningful story. The capacity for collective storytelling (and thus the ability to pinpoint fears, challenges and solutions together) is a luminous ring around the planet and we can continue to increase the glow until the collective spotlight finally begins to illuminate new ways of moving forward.

[Jason Silva on the Huffington Post: LOVELAND and the Imagination Age.]

On the Premature Declaration of the Death of Books

Author Jonathan Safran Foer in collaboration with designer Sara de Bondt has created something that reminds us why hard copy books, the art form, cannot be replicated by transferring the text and images alone onto the web. I say this as someone (aka an Internet enthusiast) who has been working on the Internet (pre-web) since 1990.

Safran Foer's new book Tree of Codes, (images above and below) which he said was inspired by Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, takes us on a reading experience that is once immersive and unpredictable. Apparently it was rejected by numerous publishers as impossible to produce.



Here is the author describing the making of the book Tree of Codes.



Learn more at FastCoDesign and the book's publisher, Visual Editions where you can purchase Tree of Codes.

Brilliant Comic on Orwell vs. Huxley: Or the case of humanity's "infinite appetite for distractions"

From "Amusing Ourselves to Death," comic edition, by Stuart McMillen.

One of my favorite and arguably most influential books in grad school was Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" which explores the impact of the mass saturation of media on our society. It helped refine an internal narrative I took with me throughout the jobs I had thereafter.

Thanks to a serendipitous chain of events in which I tweeted that I would love to be able to sit down with George Orwell today to discuss the world that he so accurately predicted, John Lester (also known as Pathfinder from his years working at Second Life) replied to me in the Twitter stream that Huxley was the one who really nailed it.

On a lark I googled Orwell vs. Huxley and came up with Stuart McMillen's delightful 2009 comic strip, sort of a primer on the who-got-it-right debate between Huxley and Orwell.

Check it out.

["Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Stuart McMillen]

A Personal Message from Santa

I agree that it's way too soon for holiday muzak and decor, but I can't help pushing the season just a little with this post. My sister-in-law posted this totally Imagination Age customized message from Santa to my nephew, Joseph. Any Santa loving kid will love their own. The video shows Santa checking out a magical letter that contains a picture of the Santa-contacting parent and the kid, as well as a verbal acknowledgement from Santa that he knows exactly what you're hoping to see on Christmas morning.

200 Students Admit to Cheating After Professor's Lecture on Ethics

You don't often get to see this level of accountability, much less a video go viral for its ethics bent.

While You Were Worrying About Facebook ...

Do you own a Blackberry? An IPhone? A cell phone at all, for that matter? While we were worrying about privacy violations and becoming the advertorial slop in Facebook's Soup du Jour, ReadWriteWeb posts an article that illustrates the stunning 8,000lb Gorilla in the data-that-is-being-collected-about-you world: the cellphone companies of the world collect 7,000 times as much information per minute as does Twitter.

What does that mean for you? Well, if a company is willing to pay $360,000 to access a portion of all the geo-locative data that Twitter generates, just imagine if they had access to 7,000 times that kind of information! (Cue: Mad Scientist cackle.)

[ReadWriteWeb: Meet the Firehose Seven Thousand Times Bigger Than Twitter's]

Headlines like this ... Bring Comics and Science Fiction to Life

Yesterday the BBC reported that antimatter can now be isolated.

"one of the great mysteries in physics is why our world is made up overwhelmingly of matter, rather than antimatter; the laws of physics make no distinction between the two and equal amounts should have been created at the Universe's birth."

Antimatter was the stuff of comic books. Superman, an alien himself, would often battle with anti-matter. Superman, for example, had a famous evil “antimatter alternate universe” version of himself known as Ultraman. But that's pretty much where it stayed: The stuff of comic books. Until today.

The article reminded me of a quote by Arthur C. Clarke, (who had an amazing accuracy in predicting the evolution of engineering and space science with a shocking degree of accuracy): "One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. Two-thirds of 2001 is realistic — hardware and technology — to establish background for the metaphysical, philosophical, and religious meanings later."

[BBC: Antimatter atom trapped for first time, say Scientists]

When Dogs Teach: The Story of 'Helper' Dog and 'Simple' Dog's Move to Oregon

The best part about learning from dogs is learning from people who learn from dogs.

The above comic is part of an elaborate blog comic novella about the differing responses two dogs had to a family move to Oregon. One dog, "helper dog" was devastated, while the other, "simple dog" had less problems.

Sometimes it all comes down to personalities.

[Hyperbole and a half: "Dogs Don't Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving"]

"Get Off My Lawn": A Site to Get Things Off Your Chest (or Lawn)

Has the world gotten a little too small for you? Do you feel like issues or people who you previously might have been able to escape or avoid, keep manifesting? Does it kind of feel like those issues are being dumped on your proverbial lawn and you just want to say something about it?

Enter "Get Off My Lawn," a new web site dedicated to helping you get things off your chest (and your lawn).

Get Off My Lawn is the creation of technical writer and author of six books, Tom Myer who describes the motivations for creating the site like this:

I don’t care for stupid people, or their stupid actions, or their stupid companies that do all kinds of newfangled things. Just get me started on Facebook or the current bumper crop of morons in Congress and you’ll see.

Anyway, I figured other people are like me: they look at the world and say, why don’t you just go away? I wanted to build a place where people like me could submit their stories of things that just piss them off. It can be about anything, really–rude people, stupid marketing pet tricks, dumb things that people say, et cetera. You get the idea.

The site launched this week. Previous gripes include, "Baby Boomers and Gen Y," "The Punditocracy" and, wait for it, "Sarah Palin."

As it says on the site: Go Ahead and Vent.

NASA's Chandra Observatory Discovers "Exceptional" Object in our "Cosmic Neighborhood"

Image source: NASA Chandra Observatory Flickr stream.

UPDATE: NASA has discovered a 30-Year-Old "nearby" Black Hole.

Read more here.

---

Earlier ...

At 12:30 Eastern today, Monday, November 15, 2010, NASA will be answering questions about the Chandra X-ray Observatory's "discovery of an exceptional object in our cosmic neighborhood." We'll update this post with details. But you can find out yourself here.

[NASA Announces Televised Chandra News Conference about "exceptional object"]

[NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory]

Creatively Capturing Kids

Jason Lee's photographs of his daughters are inventive, hilarious and fantastic.

Thanks, @paul_steele!

The Amazing Altruistic Acts of the Reddit Community

"A thank you from Soapier to Reddit… In two days, your purchases beat out our best month, ever."

Voltier Creative has an extensive blog post describing a lengthy list of the ways that the Reddit.com online community has demonstrated repeated acts of kindness and altruism to members and strangers. It's a fascinating overview of acts that range from buying a disabled man a new wheelchair, to starting a suicide prevention site, to paying for a member's mother's funeral costs, to aiding in a murder investigation.

[Voltier Creative: "Reddit's Astonishing Altruism"]

A Diplomat's Take on Presidential Visits: "Doing Nothing While Waiting for Nothing to Do"

"Passport" Image Credit: Lilit.

Amidst the past week's food fight in the news media about perceived excesses in President Obama's trip to Asia, Dr. John Brown, one of a small group of US foreign service officers who resigned in protest of the Bush Administration's policy on Iraq, offers this essay describing both the perils and travails of planning and preparing for a Presidential Visit.

John Brown on the Huffington Post: POTUS Visits and Public Diplomacy: Doing Nothing While Waiting for Nothing to Do

For the Weekend: Think About Your Troubles

I'm a big fan of Harry Nilsson, especially his 1971 animated film/concept album, "The Point!" which seems prescient 40 years later.

This video is perhaps the best song on the album, "Think About Your Troubles."

Google's Foreign Policy

This video from Mashable of Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, former State Department technology innovator and now Director of Google Ideas, informs a bit about what Google sees as its role relative to geopolitical boundaries and, perhaps more provocatively, what an interesting choice it made in hiring Jared Cohen.

John Hagel on Passion and the Power of Pull

A few weeks ago I wrote an, ahem, impassioned post about a viscerally powerful speech that John Hagel delivered a the Business Innovation Factory.

The video archive of the speech is now online. Don't take my word for it, go watch it yourself. Hagel is riveting.

[Business Innovation Factory: John Hagel on the Passion and the Power of Pull.]

Rita J. King Guest Blogger at BoingBoing

Rita J. King is doing a stint as guest blogging at BoingBoing. Her first entry explore the efforts of the Loveland team in Detroit. Check it out!

BoingBoing: Investing in Detroit by the square inch

Virtual World Asteroid Sold for US$335,000

EntropiaPlanets a fansite for the virtual world Entropia, where users can create and sell virtual parcels of land has announced a new record-breaking sale for a piece of virtual property. A user has sold a series of asteroid domes for US$335,000.

EntropiaPlanets: And the Asteroid Goes To

Via MMORPG.com

Rio de Janeiro Seeks to Boost Favela Tourism

In anticipation of the 2014 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is trying to market its slums for tourism. Slums in Brazil are called "Favelas" and in the case of Rio, because of its geography and geology are generally located crammed in between the giant granite cliffs that make Rio's landscape so breathtaking. (The favelas in the less mountainous parts of Brazil like Brasilia are on the outskirts of the cities.) Rocinha, one of the most famous favelas in Rio has over 250,000 people sandwiched in a narrow incline between two well-off neighborhoods with spectacular views of the ocean.

The government of Brazil is saying they are marketing the views of Rio from the tops of the favelas. But why not market and encourage more art? We've blogged about two artists who have focused on reviving and/or transforming the favelas of Rio. Artist tours and government sponsored art would not only improve the appearance but also, possibly the psychology of favelas, which are typically governed by crime syndicates, not the local government.

Timely suggestion: Maybe they could involve the artists who are current in Rio for Rio Comicon.

[BBC: Rio Seeks to Boost Favela Tourism]

Also see:
TED Makes and Inspired Choice with JR
Favela Painting

"You Shall Not Bounce"

I attribute my delight and appreciation for the above video in which Sir Ian McKellen re-enacts one of the most famous scenes from the Lord of the Rings (the one in which Gandalf stands tall against the Balrog in the halls of Khazad-Dum) with having first read the Lord of the Rings in third grade. One could say it imprinted on me. Though this video makes me wonder if Balrog should be spelled with two Ls.

[CHUD.com: IAN MCKELLEN DODGES HOBBIT QUESTION, BUT REENACTS KHAZAD-DUM]

Via Arkham Asylum Doc.

"Rita King: Virtual world muse of the new digital reality"

The Business Innovation Factory has posted videos of some of the amazing speakers they had at BIF-6 this year. Rita J. King's presentation was pretty impressive (yes, we both blog here, but still. It's a fantastic speech.)

From the BIF site:

Fervent advocate of online virtual world Second Life, Rita King shares a story about a recent project called “Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds.” In this video, King shows the true potential of virtual worlds – which is to enable an honest exploration of humanity without the hindrance of restrictive norms.

[BIF-6: Rita J. King: Virtual worlds muse of the new digital reality]

Two Important Essays about Digital Culture and Online Journalism

Image credit: Katerha.

If you find your way to this blogpost by random search for articles about The Social Network (aka The Facebook Movie), Zadie Smith or The New York Times paywall, welcome!

I have two blogposts that I recommend you read, written by two of the most important writers of their respective generations.

The Altantic Monthly did something truly inspired when it hired Alexis Madrigal away from Wired a few months ago. Not only is Alexis on a major career ascent, with a forthcoming book on the history of green technology, but The Atlantic's Powers-That-Be also apparently realized the breadth of Alexis's writing was being far-underutilized at Wired.

To wit, Madrigral's essay today responding to award-winning novelist Zadie Smith's takedown of Facebook, leveraging the words of Jaron Lanier and Malcolm Gladwell to shore up her point. (Nota Bene: Rita J. King wrote a very compelling dissection of the errors of Gladwell's essay on this blog).

Madrigral's response to Zadie Smith is at once lucid in its literacy and informed in his use of history to remind Ms. Smith of the empty trope she is using to decry this current iteration of technology:

For Smith, it is the gravest of sins that Facebook allows us to share our likes with each other because it leads us down a path of homogenization. And the next thing you know, "500 million connected people all decide to watch the reality-TV show Bride Wars because their friends are." And yeah, if you're judging all of Facebook based on a tiny slice of the world, it can seem like everyone starts to do something all at once. For instance, last night, everyone was talking about Walking Dead, the new AMC show. But I know that I am part of a very small niche that was interested in Walking Dead. Of the 350 million people in the United States, 5.3 million people watched the premiere last week. Now, take the other things that I pay attention to: algorithms, open government, solar panels. Sometimes mini-trends sweep through my Twitter feeds specific to those topics, but then they are replaced. At best, only a few dozen of the people I interact with online are interested in any one story or event.

...

Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, laments and critiques the thinking behind The New York Times decision to put its content behind a paywall.

Shirky examines yet another example of how old paradigms for business profits are manifesting in culturally regressive decisions by the newspaper industry as it deals with its not-actually-a-doppelganger, online journalism.

As of July, non-subscribers can no longer read Times stories forwarded by colleagues or friends, nor can they read stories linked to from Facebook or Twitter. As a result, links to Times stories now rarely circulate in those media. If you are going to produce news that can’t be shared outside a particular community, you will want to recruit and retain a community that doesn’t care whether any given piece of news spreads, which means tightly interconnected readerships become the ideal ones, but tight interconnectedness correlates inversely with audience size, making for a stark choice, rather than offering a way of preserving the status quo.

[Alexis Madrigal: Literary Writers and Social Media: A Response to Zadie Smith]

[Clay Shirky: The Times' Paywall and Newsletter Economics]

Schrödinger's Avatar

I was recently a guest on Dousa Dragonash's show GRIDwrap along with Joshua S. Fouts to discuss our project, Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds (video posted above). Usually I would have made the appearance in the form of my avatar Eureka Dejavu, and Josh would have appeared as Schmilsson Nilsson, but we're not sure if our avatars are alive or dead, so we used alternate avatars, which feels like showing up at a baptism dressed for Halloween. It isn't necessary wrong, per se, but it's not exactly right.

My avatar, Eureka Dejavu, is now both alive and dead. I can’t access her at the moment, and maybe I never will be able to again.

A few months ago someone tried to buy 3,000 WoW accounts with my business card, and when the bank caught the fraud they must have raised a flag on my account when the renewal payment for Eureka Dejavu was due. Eureka Dejavu no longer exists in the directory, despite four years of high-profile work in the strange and amazing world of Second Life. We're waiting for Linden Lab to get back to us on our status.

I never understood Schrödinger's cat fully until my avatar may or may not have ceased to exist. And frankly, the incident raises more questions than it answers.

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment created in 1935 by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. It involves a cat that might be alive or dead after being stuck in a box with a flask of poison. The cat is placed in a box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence, just like my avatar. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which Schrödinger was responding to, implies that after some time the cat is both alive and dead. Yet when we look in the box, we see that the cat is either alive or dead, not both.

My avatar, Eureka Dejavu, may be simultaneously dead and alive. Her life is a set of data stored on a server somewhere. Perhaps she can be resurrected. Perhaps the data has drifted into the cloud, where her memory is already being mythologized. Maybe a button can be pushed somewhere and she will spring to life again, animated in the box.

I create data, therefore I am. or I am, therefore I create data. It's hard to keep track of which way it goes these days.

Either way, my cyborg alt started growing on me midway through the presentation and made me wonder why we don't take more risks with identity creation in the Imagination Age.

[Also See:

[MetaverseTV's GRIDwrap: Peace Making in Virtual Worlds]

[Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds]

Interesting Speech on History of Innovation, Space and a Mission to Mars

Jim Brazell, who we've blogged about before, has just released an interesting speech on the intersection and history of innovation as it relates to the Space Race, the United States' Mission to Mars Program, its origins as a counterpoint to Sputnik and the new motivations. He ties it in to his work in and the role that San Antonio, Texas has played in this.

Jim is a compelling speaker who is very interesting to listen to.

[Jim Brazell: The Heart of Innovation]

Grandmothers and The Mars Mission

I came home last night to find a package from Dana Tonnies, mother of my late friend Mac Tonnies, including two books that had once belonged to Mac's grandmother.

November 5, the day the books arrived, is also my grandmother's birthday. She and Mac passed away back to back last year. The juxtaposition of these two events, one expected but filled with suffering and the other a complete shock, so sudden, made me look at life in a completely new way.

I also love that the books are about the Mars mission. I was coming home from TEDxNASA, where the focus was, well, the Mars mission.

The juxtaposition of these two events will also make me look at life differently.

What a mystery it all is, and a privilege to be a part of the adventure.

JR's "Wrinkles of the City" in Carthagena and Shanghai

JR Mural in Shanghai, China.
Massive-scale muralist JR, who Rita blogged about earlier winning the TED prize, has two amazing massive-scale installations called "Wrinkles of the City" in which images of elderly people are painted on buildings in Carthagena, Spain and Shanghai, China.

JR mural in Carthagena, Spain.
I live in a neighborhood primarily composed of octogenarians whose memories of the city are complex and nuanced. I regularly hear stories that sound like time capsules of moments in time long before I was born. The juxtaposition of these powerful pictures by JR of very old humans on buildings that are possibly even older make the images poignant and moving. And, more importantly, perhaps, they tell a story.

Carthagena, Spain
[See all the murals at JR-Art.net]

Thanks John Hagel!

Map My Followers

MapMyFollowers is a data visualization app that lets you see where your Twitter followers are from up to 1000 at a time. I can't help but wonder about the stories represented by the dots on the map above--snapshots of people who follow me on Twitter.

"Taqwacore": A New Film about Punk Islam

Lorber Films, the distributor who brought us "Who is Harry Nilsson" (Nilsson is one of my all-time favorite artists) has announced the forthcoming release of a new Canadian documentary called "Taqwacore," which chronicles the birth of Islamic Punk Rock. The video clip above hits some of the finer points such as mohawks and some interesting and provocative audio clips including, "There is a cool Islam, you just have to find it.".

@Taqwacore just started following me on Twitter. I was intrigued by their webzine but was unaware of the documentary until I saw them tweet about it. I'll look forward to seeing the full length version when it is released.

[Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam]

"Virtual Justice" an Important New Book by Greg Lastowka

Greg Lastowka, a virtual law expert and Professor of Law at Rutgers University has just released a new book, "Virtual Justice," exploring the evolution of law and the impact that virtual worlds, massively multiplayer games (MMOs) and virtual goods have on worldwide legal systems.

The book begins with an exploration of the history of property law dating back to medieval times and the legal impact of the construction of castles, which, not coincidentally, factors into the legal issues surrounding virtual goods and virtual property. Why? Not because so many virtual worlds are places where castles can be found, but because virtual experiences are real and the goods created are real.

For a legal book, this is an extremely interesting and important read for our times (and surprisingly accessible to the lay person who is neither a legal scholar nor a gamer) as our culture continues to reconcile whether digital or virtual experiences and goods are other or are real. Much of our work and writings on this blog have been an effort to illustrate the realness of these experiences in tangible ways that have applications for real world benefit. Whether your experience be relationships formed in Facebook or the virtual world of Second Life, the experience, while mitigated by a computer screen makes them no less significant and in many ways no less real than an encounter in physical space.

Lastowka takes us through some provocative case studies, including an exploration of whether stealing should be illegal or legal in a game or virtual world. Since many people view games as fantasy, one person in Lastowka's story, argues that stealing should be allowable and legal in a virtual world or multiplayer game because the mechanics of the game allow it, even if the ethics or rules of society reject it. Lastowka also examines the legal issues of property ownership in the virtual world of Second Life, an issue that continues to evolve.

In my work with Rita J. King exploring the implications of diplomatic work and cultural relations in virtual worlds, we've come across numerous issues that could encumber legal and ethical issues. Many of these come down to whether or not the Internet is a place, an issue that Lastowka also explores in great depth, since much of law, including international law, factors in the regional jurisdictional rights of whether or not a case can be tried.

Much of these issues are still in a period of transition as governments and institutions worldwide reconcile the significance of digital space. Lastowka's book is a fun, easy, interesting and informative read on this moment in history. A must read for anyone interested in the impact of virtual worlds on society.

["Virtual Justice" by Greg Lastowka, Yale University Press 2010]

The author has also made the book available free for digital download.

Miwa Matreyek's glorious visions

This is one of the most beautiful and creative performances I've ever seen. Peaceful, elegant, wildly imaginative. Thanks for posting, Helen Walters!

Paul Miller AKA DJ SPOOKY THAT SUBLIMINAL KID just did a great piece at the Guggenheim, COUP DE FOUDRE, rethinking surrealist Cocteau's work with Coco Chanel (shortly after he was released from rehab for an opium habit) also with live shadows and animation, two of my favorite mediums.

Video Tour of "Salvaged Landscape" at Imagination Station

Catie Newell: Salvaged Landscape from Imagination Station on Vimeo.

Rita blogged earlier some still images of artist Catie Newell's installation at the Imagination Station in Detroit, where Newell used as raw materials the wood burned by arson from building next to the Imagination Station. She used the burned materials to construct a moving art installation, "Salvaged Landscape." Detroit cinematographer Stephen McGee has posted a rough cut video tour of the installation. It's pretty amazing. We've added this to the top of the original post

[Catie Newell: Salvaged]

An Indian Perspective on the World's Hopes from the US and President Barack Obama.

Image credit: Suricattus.

Santosh Desai of The Times of India offers an interesting perspective on the significance, expectations and hopes the world has of the United States and US President Barack Obama. His essay, "Just Another Country?" looks sober but not without hope at the role of the United States in the world. Part of that role is what the US embodies for people who desire to live here, which, ironically, no matter whether people hate the US or love it, is broadly considered to be a universal goal (i.e. almost everyone aspires to live in the US):

The importance of America is not just that it is the most powerful country in the world but that it represents the most seductive idea in the world. That a nation could be founded on the basis of a shared vision of the future rather than the legacy of the past. America is a country that is forever located in tomorrow, and it exhorts its citizens to shed the many pasts from where they come and focus on what they can make of their lives. But it seems now that America too needs a past, it too needs a stable sense of 'Americanness', which it derives either from clinging to the artefacts of its tiny past or from defining new enemies, this time cast not in terms of ideology but in terms of religious belief. It was one thing when America fought those who stood against its ideas, whether rightly or wrongly, but now it seems to be at war with its own founding ideas.

Nothing is sadder than an idea that was once inspiring. But when that idea is as powerful as the idea of America, well then that is a real tragedy. In the final analysis, whether or not Barack Obama turns out to be just another politician, it does seem that America might turn out to be just another country. A country full of frightened people, like most others.

On the heels of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear," this weekend on the mall in Washington, DC, Mr. Desai's essay is well-times.

[The Times of India: "Just Another Country?]

Thanks Madanmohan Rao!