Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

On the Road in India: Niraj Seth's WSJ blog

A great travel blog by WSJ journalist Niraj Seth about his travel through the south of India in an auto-rickshaw - On the Road in India
Excerpt about using a horn while driving :-)
"The horn is your friend. Use it often, use it well. Unlike in the US, where a honk usually signals an imminent emergency (or unpardonable rudeness) honking is a way of life in India. Anything can cross your path at any time — people walking down the middle of the highway in the dark, motorcycles traveling the wrong way, a tire rolling across a street — so it’s wise to keep one hand on or near the horn. Drivers here blow the horn when they’re passing pedestrians, presumably to alert them to an approaching vehicle. They honk to rouse the cars placidly drifting into the oncoming lane. Sometimes they even honk on completely empty streets — out of habit, perhaps."

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Zeitgeist: Why Experience Matters (David Brooks)

An insightful column by David Brooks: Why Experience Matters
Excerpt:
"What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events — the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.
How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.
Experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have rigidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald), but the records of leaders without long experience and prudence is not good. As George Will pointed out, the founders used the word “experience” 91 times in the Federalist Papers. Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared. "