Getting a visa for Argentina

I have been to Argentina 3 times between 2005 and 2010. The first two times I got the visa from Delhi and it was very straight forward the first time. The second time was not too bad, just seven trips to the consulate and one to a bank in Connaught Place. The third time I got the visa from London and it involved a trip to London from Newcastle and took the whole day.

In 2011, the University of Buenos Aires invited me and I applied for the visa from New York. Nine hours of bus rides later, the visa was refused because speaking at a conference on a tourist visa is not allowed, I was told. Mind you the previous three times this was not the case, as I was speaking at conferences each time This was the first time I had been refused a visa from any country.

This year, 2012, I was invited again. Back to New York on a nine hour to and fro train ride. Visa refused, they need more paperwork.

 ‘Why are you attending a conference?’

‘I am not, the conference is being organised because I am there’

(serious suspicious frown)

‘OK you will get your visa in three days’

By the time I reached Boston, there was a voice mail. My visa has been denied. More paperwork is needed. You cannot attend a conference on a tourist visa.

I was to leave for Benin, (having got a tourist visa by post for speaking at a conference!) shortly and needed my passport, so I went back to New York the next day, seven hours of to and fro train rides. I had my passport back.

Back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I attended to the paperwork. Invitations have to be in original, signed by a notary and the notary’s signature verified by a county clerk, whatever that means. Inviting organisations have to prove that they are genuine. Letters, emails and phone calls flowed like rivers. My dreams were full of notary publics being minutely examined by county clerks in cowboy hats.

I had to go to England for a conference. I called the Argentine consulate to explain that I had just one day on which I could return to New York to reapply for the visa with all its intricate paperwork.

‘No problem they said, we will let you know when we have everything and you will get the visa the same day’

A week passed. I heard that all the paperwork had now been completed. I emailed the consulate to ask if I should come to New York. No reply. I emailed again. No reply. And again, no reply.

The day after returning to the US from England, I left on the 4 hour journey to New York from Boston. The now familiar consulate was crowded with people being refused visas. I had my passport and the filled in form, since all other papers had been sent directly to the consulate. After a half hour wait a man appeared.

‘This is an incomplete application, you have no papers and anyway you can’t attend a conference on a tourist visa’

‘This is a reapplication, sir, all the papers are with you already’

‘You had applied before!!’ (deep suspicion)

‘The consul knows all about it’

‘Wait’

Another half an hour, the man reappeared to say ‘I am working on it, don’t worry’

Another half an hour.

‘All your papers are In order’, he said accusingly.

‘Please collect your visa after two working days’

‘I am supposed to leave tomorrow! The consul knows this for a month’

‘This is a problem, wait’

Half an hour.

‘You have to pay $100’, I pulled out my purse.

‘We do not take cash, cards or cheques, only money orders’

I rushed off on a two mile walk to the post office and got a money order. Another two miles later, I was back.

‘Come back at 4 O’clock to collect your visa’

I got down to some serious drinking while explaining self organised learning to a pub full of driniking security guards. Hours passed. I marched purposefully, if a little unsteadily, holding Amartya Sen's 'The Idea of Justice' like a shield in front of me.

At four, a beaming gentleman appeared with my passport.

‘Your visa’, he said, ‘enjoy Argentina’

Irrelevant points of view

CNN reports on how Apple products in China are being made by underpaid Chinese. They earn US Dollars 2 per hour.

This is equivalent to about Indian Rupees 20,000 per month. In Calcutta, a young man earning Rs. 20,000 can rent in the poshest areas of the city for about Rs. 10,000, eat extremely well for Rs. 6000 and use the balance for transport, entertainment and savings.

He would have a somewhat better standard of living than a young American earning $3000 per month in say, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Is the American point of view about the rest of the world becoming increasingly irrelevant?

Purpose

When the young Earth cooled, it rained for centuries, filling up the oceans. Thunder and lightning in the Methane, Ammonia atmosphere of the primordial Earth filled its newly formed oceans with all sorts of organic molecules including several Amino acids. Through millions of years of permutations and combinations, one molecule came to be. Ribonucleic acid, or RNA.

RNA had the ability to make copies of itself. And the copies could make copies of themselves and on and on and on. But then the RNA can copy itself only if it has the necessary raw materials around. And the copies would survive only if they were protected from the harshly corrosive oceans of the Earth.

So RNA evolved. It covered itself in a sheath of protein. Cells became the copying machine for RNA. But how can a cell protect itself? Cells learned to move away from danger, unicellular organisms formed. RNA multiplied a little more reliably.

But unicellular organisms are not the best survivors, they are too delicate. Cells clumped together to form multicellular organisms that could sense their environments in many different ways. These were true survivors, soon they would be out of the oceans, away from the corrosive danger of water.

The tree of evolution produced millions of species of plants and animals. Complex sheaths of protein to protect and replicate RNA, safely. But then, species go extinct because of the forces of nature. One comet wiped out the dinosaurs, products of millions of years of evolution. With the dinosaurs went countless trillions of fresh RNA.

In the next round of evolution, cells clumped together to form larger brains. Finally, a brain large enough to work out ways to manipulate nature. Homo Sapiens, the ape with the power to change the planet. This then was the safest RNA replicator ever produced. A magnificent effort by one mindless molecule, RNA, to survive.
But the Earth will not last forever. When the Sun swallows it up in a few billion years, RNA would be gone forever, at least from this part of space. The human brain evolved, producing ever increasingly complex technology to change the planet and its surrounding. Already it has the potential to change the orbit of the Moon, thereby changing the entire Solar System, subtly.

One day, the Universe itself will collapse on itself. All RNA would be gone for ever.

Our purpose then is to stop this from happening, to create a steady state universe that is eternal. Then only will RNA continue to multiply for all time to come.
So, could this be the answer to our nature and purpose? We, humans are the way we are because we are the most efficient RNA multiplier created by nature. Our purpose is to let this multiplication happen through all eternity.

All our values focus on the preservation of life, peace and a happy environment. Because a healthy and happy human body produces more and better RNA than any else.
We should not be annoyed with RNA for creating us as its copying machine. Because RNA does not think.

It is just a molecule.

The OLPC and Self Organised Learning Environments

Some people seem to think that I am not happy with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. This is not correct at all. I have always been an admirer of the OLPC, particularly its engineering design. We should not forget that it is this design that sparked the NetBook phenomenon - finally a laptop that has the right form factor and functionality.

My work with self organised learning by children shows that groups of children can learn to use computers and the Internet to answer almost any question. This happens everywhere and is independent of what language they speak, where they live and how rich or poor they are. All they need is free access and the liberty to work in unsupervised groups. The most effective group size seems to be 4-5 children.

So, we really need one laptop for every 4 children (OLF4C?)

This will reduce the project costs by 75% !

The ideal computer would be one that is about as big as the present OLPC, but with a built in, micro projector. This will enable children to share a screen by projecting it on any white surface. There are new micro projectors that use hybrid LED and laser technology to produce a bright image at low power.

I think, with the 75% cost savings through shared computers, it is entirely possible to produce a solar and/or pedal powered projecting netbook.

Would love to try one!

The Sentient Designer

Imagine if a PC had some form of consciousness. Its not impossible, given that a modern CPU, such as the Intel Quad Core has more interconnected switches in it than a dog's brain does. Now imagine that the PC tries to figure out where it came from. Since most PCs are connected to the Internet, it could have some form of a 'dialogue' with millions of other PCs. It might create a sort of theory of creation. Here is how that theory might go:
First there was nothing. A point of nothingness exploded. Motion started and the laws of Physics came to be. Space and Time began. Particles popped into existence and curdled into lumps of probability. Matter and gravitation formed swirling masses of gas that curdled into galaxies, stars and planets. On some planets, carbon chains curdled into swirling springs of DNA. Life started and, in a few millennia, acquired sentience as trillions of interconnected organic switches self organised. Sentient creatures understood the nature of connected systems and self organisation. Working with lattices of Silicon, they created interconnected inorganic switches. The Computer came to be.
So, the PC concludes that no sentient designer was needed to explain its existence. Just probability and the Standard Model of Particle Physics is enough to explain its existence.
But, we humans know that the PC was designed by us.
How then did humans come to be? Could there have been, and maybe still is, a Sentient Designer?

The curious case of TMH

In 2006, I published my first and only single author book, 'The Hole In The Wall'. It was published by Tata McGraw Hill. They said I would get a royalty if my book was sold. They sent me 4 copies and I was delighted. That was the last I heard from them. I never saw the book in any book shop. After a year or so, I got a mail from them. Congratulations, they said, your book has won the best book award from the Indian Society for Training and Development. I joyously asked them how many copies had been sold. They said none so far. What about the 20 or 30 copies that friends of mine have bought? I asked. We don't know about that, probably rejects, they said. I went to the Newcastle University library and found 4 copies of the book. The University of North Carolina had a reference to it, maybe they got a reject copy too. Someone wrote from Japan. I bought your book, he said, but it is not available from India, I got it from Singapore. Three days ago, on a free day in Brasilia, I went into a book store and typed my name into their computer. Out popped a portugese translation of my book. I bought a copy.
I am so proud of my book. It has never sold a copy.

Towards a new education for children

We know that:
Groups of children (6-12 yeards old in groups of 4 or so), given unrestricted and unsupervised access to the Internet can learn almost anything on their own. It doesn't matter who or where they are. We know this from 20 years of research, standing on the shoulders of Aurobindo, Piaget, Vygotsky and Montessori.

This kind of learning is activated by questions, not answers.

There will always be children in the world who, for some reason or the other, cannot pay for education.

Hypothesis:
There will always be people in the world who are willing to mediate in children's learning for, say, one hour a week, with no remuneration.

Speculation:
If we create 'clouds' of mediators and children on the Internet and an arrangement by which they can interact, we would have an alternative schooling.

Action:
In the last three years, we have created 12 Self Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) in addition to the several hundred 'hole in the wall' computers that exist in India, Cambodia and several African countries.

There exists a cloud of mediators, numbering in hundreds, that have begun to interact with these SOLEs. The cloud is self organised and called a Self Organised Mediation Environment (SOME). The mediators interact with the children over Skype.

Next:
We need a Self Organised Assessment Method (SOAM) by which children can assess their learning accurately.

We need a curruculum that is driven by questions. Self organised and self populating.

We need computing environments for children that are powered by free energy and bandwidth.

Schools in clouds, integrated with the fabric of space and time....