Black, White and Gray

Today I went to Duke Library to check out John Rawls' "Justice as Fairness". Amusingly, there was a book by Ann Coulter right next to Rawls' masterpiece. I have never seen such a fine example of profundity and ignorance peacefully coexisting side by side.

I came to realize that US is a strange country: She has nurtured an extraordinary number of great scientists, philosophers, thinkers and political activists - Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Richard Feynman, Martin Luther King Jr., Noam Chomsky - the list is endless. On the other hand, there are crackpots like Ann Coulter, Dinesh D'Souza and Rush Limbaugh. How astonishing it is that a significant proportion of US citizens still dispute Evolution by natural selection and believe that the earth is only ten thousand years old!

NDTV

I have deep respect for Pranoy Roy. He founded NDTV and was one of the figures who played a pivotal role in changing the landscape of Indian journalism.

As far as political ideology is concerned, the star anchors of NDTV purport to be secular liberals. This information, coupled with the fact that it is a channel founded and run by Pranoy Roy, should have been sufficient to convert me into a regular viewer. However, I stopped watching NDTV long time back, even before the Radia tapes broke out, for a simple reason.

Today I visited their website after at least a few months and this is what I found.

Top Videos:

1) Vikram Pandit on Citigroup turnaround.

2) Irish giant killers live up to reputation.

3) Vidya's SRK dream come true?

Top Photos:

1) Is Twinkle Khanna pregnant?

2) Spotted: Amir, SRK, Urmila

3) Oscar 2011: Red Carpet

4) Anushka, Ranveer at Shahid's birthday bash

And here comes the editor's video picks:

1) Desparately seeking attention.

2) Item numbers: kiss of life.

3) Oscar 2011: The hope and the glory.

Finally, the list of top stories include gems like "Dandi March in US against corruption in India".

Is this some kind of joke?

On a serious note, I will suggest anyone with a tiny little bit of interest in politics and society to subscribe to Economic and Political Weekly.