Chronicles of the Black Company

The Omnibus Edition

So I bit the bullet one fine evening last month, and on impulse purchased the first volume of Glen Cook's "Black Company" series. This is the omnibus edition of the first three books in the (thus far) ten book sequence from Cook, comprising the books "The Black Company", "Shadows Linger", and "The White Rose". I read the Kindle edition.

My interest in Glen Cook is explained in large part by my being an unabashed fan-boy for the works of Steven Erikson (SE) and Ian Cameron Esselmont (ICE), who are the co-creators of my favorite fantasy series - or universe, really. SE's Malazan Book of the Fallen is a true magnum opus, and ICE's Novels of Malaz are great additions to the vast universe they've gamed out. Time and again, I had heard that SE and ICE owe a great debt of inspiration to Glen Cook (they even admit themselves that there are elements in their books that they ripped off of Cook wholesale!)... I thought it was about time I started tracing the antecedents for SE and ICE's work. Who knows? Doing so might even inspire me to complete my abortive "Malazan Mediation"...

This then is a reflection (not quite a review) on my first run-in with SE and ICE's genre daddy! At the risk of giving away the gut punch of this article early, let me say this: as soon as I finished "The White Rose", I ordered the remaining seven published books in paperback from Flipkart, because they don't seem to be in the Kindle store!

Our Peacock Apes The Eagle

The New India?

This is a response, rambling per usual, to a thought provoking article by Akash Kapur, whose identity in a sense straddles America and India. Every day, anyone living in India is witness to any number of 'Americanisms' introduced in our day to day lives. Not all of them are bad, and not all are good.

Supermarkets and fast food such because they are killing traditional Indian (sustainable) farming and health. Shopping malls bring with them consumerism of a at times revolting magnitude. Builders of gated communities, whose projects are at times unsupported and in the long term unsupportable by existing infrastructure are building their own little fiefdoms complete with power and water grids. Any one living near a major city is witness to large roadworks and an explosion in the number of cars on the road, and all the attendant evils of pollution.


One fondly remembers greenery with nostalgia, as concrete rushes to fill the void... and as you look at this concrete jungle, you wonder how long it will be before it breaks down for lack of water, of power, of fuel, and there is blood in the streets...

"The Man" and Curiosity

The Trial of Galileo
From Lightandmatter.com

Something about this Op-Ed article by David Brooks in the NY Times rankles me.

Forget the specific story of Jefferson Bethke who (in a viral video) said he doesn't like "the Church" but loves Jesus, and then went on to backtrack when a blogger, Kevin DeYoung, made what seemed to him a persuasive and perhaps better informed counter-argument. Ignore for the moment the question of whether or not the teachings of Jesus or the various Christian church systems are worth living by - that isn't what concerns me.

Here's what got my goat. David Brooks takes this example and then generalizes to say rebellion against established ideas is not a good idea in itself, for most people. (No, this rant is not about the 1% v 99%)

Apple and Utopia

Apple Devices Image credit: TechGenie

Call me slow, but until today I hadn't read the two New York Times pieces that have been in the news lately. The first was about Apple's manufacturing getting off-shored and whether medium skill manufacturing jobs (the ones that created the American middle class) will ever return to the US (short answer: No). The second was about Apple's supply chain and worker conditions in factories in China, that are, to put it mildly, inhuman. Workers work 70 hour weeks routinely, make hardly any money, have workplaces and working conditions that would make any Westerner scream and any Indian grimace (is true!), and have alarming suicide rates.


I must ask you, gentle reader, to first read these pieces in full before proceeding. Yeah, I'm a long-form kind of guy. Seriously, off with you... shoo!


So how did the world react to these 'exposes', that to the informed person merely brought a light to bear on what was well known - or at least very well suspected? The first article was met with the usual election year responses over in the US. Some chitchat about manufacturing having left American shores, noises about 'new economy' jobs not filling up the resulting vacuum quick enough, and so on. The second was met with outrage (as well it should), even as the cognoscenti acknowledged that Apple was an industry leader in policing and bringing to light such abuses, and really... unless we want an iPad to cost several hundred dollars more, nothing can be done about it...


What was my reaction? Multi-faceted...

Farmer Suicides Highlighted

KBC logo (c) Sony Entertainment

A story in the Hyderabad edition of The Hindu caught my eye today. The widow of a farmer who had committed suicide because of debts incurred, from the village of Vara Kawtha in Yawatmal district in Maharashtra, was given a chance to appear on "Kaun Banega Crorepati" (KBC - the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire). She was identified to the producers of the show by Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, an NGO, and once selected she and some friends were flown to Mumbai for the taping by the producers of the show.

She ended up winning 6.4 lakh Rupees or about 13.5 thousand USD.

Now here is an issue no one else is really talking about, and KBC just gave it a nationwide audience of millions. 6.4 Lakh Rupees is not too much money, but for Aparna Malikar, who survives her husband and has two young girls to take care of, it could be a game changer. Amitabh Bachchan, the star and host of the show, also blogged about the issue and about Aparna herself, and was moved enough to hand over another 50 thousand Rupees (about 1000 dollars) of his own money to her.

Sustainable farming needs to be a bigger focus in India and the coming of big retail and factory farming will be a death knell to traditional, small-plot farming - a practice that remains the backbone of India's large agrarian economy.

Now I'm not a regular viewer, let alone a fan of KBC. I haven't seen a single episode for the latest season, and maybe all of one or two episodes from the last three seasons. Also, when I first read the story my instinct was to be cynical about it and dismiss it as sensationalism.

But here's the thing: KBC and Amitabh Bachchan just gave the issue an enormous amount of visibility, and they put their money where their mouths were.

All I can say is: Bravo! Well done!

If popular platforms like KBC can be used to raise awareness about serious issues, perhaps they will pierce the fog and be featured front and center in political and economic debates!

Social Networking Introspection

Perhaps I should title this post: "Why I post on social networks"... Or: "A note on what led me away from Facebook and Twitter, and on to Google+"... It will serve both titles equally.

Ever since Google+ launched I've been thinking about sharing things online - about why it is the thing to do these days, and whether this is simply the automation or "cloud-ization" of existing social behavior for most people.

The "why" is more perplexing to me than whether there is a real world analogue that we mimic every time we post something online...

The Grey Side of Business

Evidence suggests that technology companies enabled brutal repression in Libya and Bahrain, two of the countries currently undergoing impressive change as part of the Arab Spring. This is not a surprise.

Technology is morally neutral - you can use it for good and for evil. This is been discussed enough and often enough. The real question of the hour is are businesses morally responsible, should they be held to the same standard as we hold individuals and governments? When is it OK for a business stop following a profit motive and hold to a sociopolitical position? Should every business deal be scrutinized to ensure it is not aiding and abetting something "immoral"?

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, given the "evil bankers and financiers" it is easy to pass judgment and say "Of course businesses need to be moral!" Nokia and Siemens have no business enabling dictators to better spy on their people! Lenders had no business lending to people they knew wouldn't repay!

I submit that this represents a less nuanced opinion than the real world would support.