Yantra , Tantra, Mantra

I don't know how Indians can afford to be super patriots and downright jingoistic and xenophobic when our country is in such shambles -physically, psychologically, intellectually or aesthetically. In pretty much any endeavor one can think of India lags far behind the first world and often even the second and third world. And I am not interested in listening to claims from unbalanced Ajit Vadakayil acolytes as to how wonderful India was. I am talking about what India IS today. And please no ridiculous statistics about NASA being 38% Indian , Silicon Valley 78% or American doctors are 108% or any other silly ,fraudulent claims one routinely finds dished out by unthinking and hyper ventilating sons of the soil on the internet. It would seem that our National Security(hahaha) Advisor thinks India should not be a superpower. So many points....Well firstly why should we take anything seriously from a person who holds the ridiculous post of NSA in a country as lax about its securit

In my previous fisking of Layla Anwar I promised to use The  Robert Kaplan travelogue on Iraq in his book The Arabists in order to further elucidate my point on how Iraq is doomed to brutality Turns out I am unable to locate my copy of The Arabists. Most likely I lent to a friend. I will retrieve it and post the evocative passages in question and my take on them ASAP But since we are the topic of Mr Kaplan,it would be apropos to discuss his work I was quite compelled by how RK views the world. I am intrigued as to how he includes a regions historical and cultural framework with its interlocking complexities of sect,tribalism and nationalism in highlighted its current woes or glad tidings as the case may be. The analyses are occasionally reductionist when it comes to really large and complex countries such as say India(which we will get to soon) and Russia but that is somewhat understandable when dealing such formidable cultural entities My main beef with Mr Kaplan is how his y

Having been in the sales field for a bit and dealt with their type extensively as a colleague and a sucker where I lost something in the neighborhood of 30k usd, I had mixed feelings about this uber alpha salesguy Jordan Belfort Sales guys are a peculiar sort. They are usually rather shallow,gauche and garish. They are usually average or below average intelligence. Indeed Ive seen many smart guys actually get stupider when they enter this field.Did I mention that they are a bunch of crass nouveau riche douche tools? Having been a sales guy in a company dealing with B2B events, the gold standard is Scott Ragsdale.,the Chairman of Naseba. An impressive person indeed -an Ironman champion whose awesome physical endurance matches his ambition. But reading his blog is a very tiresome process as he is a fan of Ayn Rand and her views dominate his world view. Her "philosophy" if you can call it that is responsible for much of the cruelty, coarseness and vulgarity in the modernity