VINDICA

New Yorker's rivetting story of the Iraqi elections told from the endearingly personal viewpoint of the election's various players.

Andrew Sullivan worries that technology has given us the power to totally customize the world around us. Bye bye Serendipity.

Another day, and another book by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, the author dwells deeply into our subconsious decision making power. That intuition that makes us look at somebody and instantly decide that he or she is a "good guy". As with the Tipping Point, I got the feeling while reading this book that the author is trying to present an idea that we all intuitively accept as something revolutionary. I did not find the ideas in this book revolutionary. The basic message of the book is that our mind is capable of extra-ordinary insights based on very little information. At first glance, an art expert can tell that a painting is fake, although he cannot say why he thinks that. Sometimes, deliberate scientific analysis have been proved wrong where an expert's gut feeling turned out to be right. We all know this. We also know that these insights are often wildly wrong. Once the basic premise is presented, the author goes into the details of how we can nurture our i...

Woody Allen took a speed reading course and subsequently finished reading "War and Peace" in 1 hour. "It is about Russia", he said, when asked to describe the book later. I find myself in a similar situation. I took a speed reading course and read "The Tipping Point" really fast (I finished the book in about 3 hours, when normally it would have taken my twice that). I am doubly skeptical about my comprehension because I had heard and expected so much of this book, and was disappointed. The author, Malcolm Gladwell theorizes that many phenominan in our society, from the abatement of a crime wave in New York, to the sudden fashionableness of hush puppies, are caused by a phenominan similar to that of an epidemic. He devids the important players in the spread of this 'contagion' into three catagories. The connectors are the people who are networked with a large section of the society. They are the ones with the connections to spread a contagion...

Tavleen Singh hits the Kashmir nail on the head with this piece. She says that in India, no one living south of Delhi cares two hoots about Kashmir, while in Pakistan, it is a national obsession. This assymetry leads to the differences between India and Pakistan towards solving the problem. I however, do not agree with Singh's analysis that "we cannot end extreme poverty or provide our people with 21st-century living standards as long as the wound of Kashmir continues to fester." I believe that the bus is leaving and that we are on it. Whether or not Pakistan wants to get on board is their decision.