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Yet Another Self-Important Blog.
Rohit Singh
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[Wed, 24 Sep 2003]
Heh!
Maybe desi crooks can learn
something
from British crooks.
A tiny step forward
Its funny how just the hint of competition
- the possibility that Reliance might sell petrol cheaper in places near its refineries - made government monopolies move towards
rationalizing petrol prices. Not all economic fundae are worthless, apparently.
What makes a suicide bomber tick ?
Somebody at IHT wrote an
article
about it. His point? Its not just
religion why people commit suicide bombings- actually, it rarely is. LTTE, a master in this field,
has a rather atheistic ideology. Also, one reason why suicide bombings
are increasing is that they are extremely effective at achieving a strategic goal! Every single Israeli-Palestinian truce
in the past year has been broken by a suicide bombing, IIRC. Last year's Indo-Pak
stand-off was also precipitated by a suicide attack on the Parliament in
Delhi.
So what's the solution ? I guess this ties in with the essential problem in facing terrorism: quick relief is required (especially in democracies- which are usually the target) but short-term fixes might be detrimental in the long run. So what does the author of the article suggest? Strengthen your defences for the short-term (no pre-emptive action) and fix the root of the problem for the long-term. Easier said than done, of course :-(
Ode to Wireless
At 6:45pm, I was told Kurosawa's Seven Samurai will be playing in 4-237
(near the infinite corridor). I was tired of reading references to this
movie umpteen times and had nothing beter to do, even though, at 206 min,
its about as long as Sholay. And few movies can be better than Sholay. Anyways, I show up at 8:15, just missing the
refreshments (long artsy movies need to have free food :-). I saw a couple
of people playing around with their laptops- wow! I biked back to my dorm
room, grabbed my laptop and biked back. It took me a good 20 min to set up
connection to MITNet but now I am writing from the lecture/movie hall.
Wireless rocks!! I am missing parts of the movie, but I can simultaneously
look up stuff on IMDB.
On a related note, one of the "student-written" welcome guides had this to say about cool places to hang out at MIT campus: "one of the better places is W20-575 (equiv to Stanford's Sweet Hall / IITK's CC). Its close to wireless, food, and printers". Ahh, priorities...
Oh, the movie isn't too bad, either. Its cheesy in parts, though.