6 quotes found
"In the winter of 2008, Jenifer and I visited Chennai Mathematical Institute. This remarkable Institute is the creation of Seshadri. It is a unique blend of an American style liberal arts college with traditional Indian guru one-on-one teaching, adding physics, computer science, history and music to its maths curriculum. Only in India could an intellectual with no business or management experience, who spends all his spare time singing classical south Indian music, have been the catalyst for such a unique educational experiment."
"In the 60s, India still retained many of the trappings of a medieval country. We used to wait for cows as safe escorts in order to cross the traffic-filled British boulevards of Mumbai and naked sadhus were still seen walking in the city with their begging bowls. Repairs to the exterior of our apartment building were made from bamboo scaffolding, rising twenty stories and held together only with string! A village of fishermen, their fires, animals and tents, subsisted in the very middle of the downtown area. Gold smuggling supported the “District of Song”, the neighboring slum. In the midst of all of this, Homi Bhabha, like Kublai Khan, had built his Xanadu: the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), an ultra-modern paradise for scientists. Clean, air conditioned, efficiently run, this was where all this wonderful math was being done."
"The COVID-19 crisis has made clearer than ever the flaws in our system, one that prioritizes military spending and global instability over the well-being of our people... Indeed, global priorities are wrong; it is time for a new era of peace, a global ceasefire as called for by the U.N. and people around the globe. Let us demilitarize the world and invest in global peace and diplomacy."
"A new analysis on Monday showing that the world’s military spending surpassed $1.9 trillion last year, once again led by the United States under President Donald Trump, provoked demands that governments across the globe prioritize peace and the health of people as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the planet. The latest annual report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) found that the top military spenders after the U.S. were China, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Total spending in 2019 was 3.6 percent higher than in the previous year and accounted for 2.2 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). “Global military expenditure was 7.2 percent higher in 2019 than it was in 2010, showing a trend that military spending growth has accelerated in recent years,” SIPRI researcher Nan Tian said in a statement. “This is the highest level of spending since the 2008 global financial crisis and probably represents a peak in expenditure.” Although, as the SIPRI statement pointed out, “the increase in U.S. spending in 2019 alone was equivalent to the entirety of Germany’s military expenditure for that year,” the European country’s spending still rose by 10% last year to $49.3 billion, which was the largest increase among the top 15 ranked countries."
"Media watchdog MEMRI translates one caller as saying – quote – 'We will annihilate the Jews'," said Shubert. "But, according to several Arabic speakers used by CNN, the caller actually says 'The Jews are killing us.'"
"Wading or clicking through MEMRI's materials can be a depressing act, but it is also illusion-dispelling, and therefore constructive. This one institute is worth a hundred reality-twisting Middle Eastern Studies departments in the U.S. Furthermore, listening to Arabs—reading what they say in their newspapers, hearing what they say on television—is a way of taking them seriously: a way of not condescending to them, of admitting that they have useful things to tell us, one way or the other. Years ago, Solzhenitsyn exhorted, "Live not by lies." We might say, in these new circumstances, "Live not by ignorance about lies, either." Anyone still has the right to avert his eyes, of course. But no one can say that that is not a choice.[18]"