What Happens If...

You are in even more deep shit if you have only one name. This is the predicament of another of my friends. Whenever he's on the phone and they ask for his last name, he has to say "no last name". It takes about 15 min of convincing the call center guy that it *is* possible for somebody not to have a last name. At other times he has said "none" and gotten letters addressed to "Joe None".

[/fun] permanent link

IITK Hungama Update...

As with any story, there are some interesting sidenotes that should get clarified as time goes on: the role of student representative- especially the President and the Sports secy; the fault of the actual eveteaser; the tendency of IITK administration to go to unfair extents to preserve IITK's holier-than-thou persona; the ability (or lack thereof) of IITK kids to stick together; and the mixing of personal rivalries in this whole thing.

This much I know for sure: nobody should be allowed to come into IITK, whack IITK people and then get away without being beaten up. DPs be damned- they fizzle out in 6 months anyway.

Again, if you've stuff to add to this, please feel free to email me.

[/news] permanent link

Interesting Sequence of Events at IIT Kanpur

In 80% of such incidents, this is when the kids run back to their rooms. Disciplinary proceedings are initiated against one and all- both the perpetrators and the victims. Great (but quiet!) discontent ensues. 6 months later, general sanity prevails and most of the unfair discplinary action is quietly dropped. This wasn't to happen this time.

With the help of security, the visiting morons were moved to Visitors Hostel before they were to be unceremoniously thrown out. This is when quite a few IITK kids showed up at VH gate, baying for blood. And not just the visitors' blood- also the DOSA's. There was an all-night dharna of sorts, which I am not sure who organized or, even, who thought of! These kids are certainly more gutsy than we were. But then again, even my brother's batch was more gutsy than mine, so apparently my batch's meekness was just a one-off thing.

In 20% of such incidents, this is when the Director shows up and, with some masterly use of saam-daam-dand-bhed, manages to frighten/cajole people into going back to their rooms. If he's really good- and SGD is!- the kids will go back feeling that the good and noble king (aka Director) will fix stuff and "take action". Apart from the disciplinary action, other promised remedial "action" is rarely taken. This incident was one-of-a-kind. Nothing the Diro said worked.

The kids used this opportunity to vent off their frustations over the DOSA's recent actions. The usual: sutta fine (imagine that! no ciggs!); limited motorcycle permits (what am I supposed to ride, bicycles and the tempo?!); room internet-access restrictions between midnight-8am (what is a young hot-blooded male supposed to do during then- sleep?!). There was nothing weird about these restrictions- most of them are not too big a deal. I support the sutta one- I suffered through too much second-hand smoke at IITK. And rickety old bicycles were a big part of the charm of IITK's campus. But such are college kids- if you say no to them you are being mean and unfair and illogical and what-not. Been there, done that (i.e. the bitching)

Anyways, the dharna-oing crowd didn't listen to the Director, nor the DOSA, nor the Gymkhana President, nor anybody else. The end result was that the visitors were unceremoniously thrown out. But more interestingly, the DOSA had to resign.

The first mail I got said that some Student Gymkhana officials (incl. President) resigned. It seems they didn't. The resignation of the President (and the Sports Secy) would've been good and proper- especially considering that the DOSA had to resign. The resignation of the DOSA was too much- SGD shouldn't have allowed it.

If anybody wants to update/correct me on what really happened (and the post-action action), please do email me!

[/news] permanent link

Talking of Chutzpah...

[/fun] permanent link

Paying for life in college...

One of the few things good about being the youngest sibling in a family has to do with financial support during college:

• Your older siblings have college-trained your parents. Mom doesn't groan too much when she asks on the phone if you need some cash and you say "hmm, yeah..a bit."
• Your parent(s) have gotten a promotion or two since your older siblings went to college. The resulting prosperity has a trickle-down effect on college allowances.
• Your older siblings(s), if they are working, can probably be conned into giving you more cash. Said cash is usually a whole lot more than you could even imagine asking your mom for.
• Your friends, many of whom are older siblings in their family, are stuck with paying off *their* younger siblings. Net result: even more relative prosperity for you.

Yes, being the youngest child has some benefits, partly alleviating the numerous problems.

[/fun] permanent link

I Swear, Mom!

I love his dramas (except when he's acting them out on me!).

[/fun] permanent link

Only in Japan...

Gadget fascination is prevalent in many sub-cultures but with the Japs the whole thing has become just too outlandish.

[/fun] permanent link

And the IgNobel Goes To....

Was at Harvard for this year's awards. They were really really fun. And they had a cool idea for handling speeches that go over the limit. A little girl in frocks and ponytails will walk up sweetly and in a sugar-sweet voice start parroting, "Please stop. You're boring me." Worked everytime.

I think they'll have the list of winners at the website pretty soon. Here's the ones I remember:

• Physics: the physics of the hoola hoop. An actual published article. For an encore, the authors plan to look at the "swallowing goldfish" phenomenon.
• Biology: the observation that herrings communicate by farting. Gives a whole new meaning to "you're talking out of your ass."
• Economics: the Vatican, for outsourcing prayers to India
• Peace: the Jap guy who invented Karaoke: for "teaching humans to tolerate others in new ways"
• Chemistry: to Coca Cola UK for purifying river water into Dasani mineral water. Unfortunately the purification rendered the water toxic in another chemical.

[/news] permanent link

When do you not tip?

But what about self-service and quasi-self-service places? For example, should you tip at buffets, especially the Indian lunch buffets? I know of quite a few people who think it is not needed at all. After all, all that the waiter does is bring you water and clear up the plates. Heck! that is what he's being paid for. However, I've almost always left a measly tip- essentially the credit-card equivalent of leaving the coins behind. More guilt-assuaging than anything else.

What about other self-service places? There's places like McDonalds that are trying to develop a tipping culture. That's just wrong- there's zero service involved. Sometimes such places will try to guilt you by writing "For the Childeren's Fund" or something like that. In other places, the penny jar is devolving into a tip jar. The penny jar was originally meant to be a take-a-penny/leave-a-penny jar. If I owe $5.27, and I only have a fiver and a quarter, I can't just take 2 pennies from the jar. No sirrrree.. I have to hand in a $20 and will drop the 3 pennies in the jar. Have never seen the take-a-penny thing working.

What about Starbucks? This one hits a raw nerve because the coffee (and cookies etc.) is obscenely overpriced as it is. The moral case is also weak because Starbucks is known to be a good employer. Still the employee point of view-- that the more hairy orders require special effort (and hence tips!)-- can't be ignored. Still, as this fiesty and rather vehment "no" on the customers parts indicates, I don't think you need to worry about tipping at Starbucks anytime soon. And don't tip at McDonalds or Burger King or Pizza Hut (unless it's delivery) either. You are just making it harder for the rest of us.

[/misc] permanent link

Hot Pics of Sonia Gandhi

The more interesting aspect of this is that Google thought my blog was a "hit", ableit only the 23rd or so out of 44 matching hits. Apparently, notwithstanding the minor point that I mentioned "hot" and "sonia gandhi" and "pics" in totally unrelated posts, Google thinks I am among the top 25 people in the world with a strong apolitical interest in the Congress president.

Ah well, why be relegated to the 3rd page of search results! Hence this post. Now this blog is bound to land up on the first page the next time somebody searches for comely portrayals of Mrs. Gandhi. Just to be sure, I'll repeat the magic words once more: "hot pics of Sonia Gandhi."

[/fun] permanent link

Kashmir

I think India isn't going to give any significant chunk of Kashmir away-- just because we don't need to, as BBC and DaDude pointed out. So the final solution won't be very different from current situation. But the current status-quo isn't a solution-- there's no face saving measure for Pakistan to justify backing-off from the whole sponsoring-terrorism business. And I think India wants (or, should want) the Kashmir situation to be solved soon enough so we Indians (and others) can focus on other stuff, i.e., the econonomy and other puny things. So that means India'll need to seen as giving something. What should it give? A small chunk of land as an outright give-away? Like has been rumored recently. Or a larger chunk that gets full autonomy under India or, better for Pakistan, under the joint patronage of India and Pakistan. This is the intriguing scenario mentioned in the BBC webpage: mark out a relatively small region in the Kashmir valley and make it indepenedent in all but name.

I think giving Siachen off to Pakistan might be an interesting idea. Unless Siachen has security value for the rest of Kashmir Valley, it has little intrinsic value by itself. I doubt that the security value is too high-- controlling Siachen didn't do much for us in Kargil War. The benefit of giving off Siachen is that we're just losing a bunch of rock and ice which only excites crazy mountaineers. And Pakistan can feel happy that they actually got a chunk of land from India-- everybody knows that Siachen is dominated by the Indian army so it'll be a "real" giveaway (as opposed to giving away something that you don't really own, e.g., POK).

[/news] permanent link

YAICS

An interesting aspect of the Chinese lack-of-free-information deal is that the market is not very efficient. People go into ventures on a hear-say basis, leading to a somewhat lemmings-like behavior. Makes for spectacular booms and busts. This story is about the litchi glut in China. A very touching passage is near the end: the farmer is now rich enough (or the crop is cheap enough) that he doesn't save his best stuff for selling. He actually eats it himself. Kinda says good things about the economy, doesn't it?

[/news] permanent link

Let no pigeon fly...

India too has interesting laws. Until a few years ago, there was this law which stated that every district headquarter must have two earthen pots filled with clean water for drinking. Turns out that the law did make sense when it was written- in the 1800s. Am not sure if this one is still on the books.

[/misc] permanent link

The "But" word

Why is it hard for everybody to condemn Beslan in unambiguous terms without blaming, in the same breath, Russia's Chechenya policy for this!! This guy, a Chechen, makes the point that Russians have devastated the Chechen homeland and that even Chechen kids have died and are dying. Of course, he goes on to say that this argument "does not" detract from the horror of terrorists killing hundreds of children.

But the whole point of mentioning the Russian mishandling of Chechenya is *precisely* to detract from the enormity of the Beslan massacre. Saying that the perpetrators of this "crime" (oh, the euphemism!) deserve to be punished sounds as if the guys just stole a bunch of car radios. Tavleen Singh makes a similar point.

An interesting counter-argument to what I've said is discussed in this article. The author says that the act of labeling someone as a terrorist (as opposed to an "insurgent", or even "gunman") involves an unwanted/incorrect act of judgment on the part of the reporter/newspaper. In other words, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. There are two arguments that can be made against this.

The first argument is that moral relativism has its limits. Some terrorist acts are so heinous and target such a defenseless civilian population that there should not be any justification for them whatsoever. Beslan massacre is an example. So is 9/11. And so are the Mumbai bombings of 1993 and 2001. Indeed, my biggest grudge against lefties and the various human-rights organizations is that their condemnation of such acts is either non-existent, perfunctory, or peppered with a string of "but"s that make a mockery of the event and are just plain insulting to the victims. They immediately lose any credibility, in my opinion, to condemn anything else.

The second argument about labeling a terrorist as a terrorist is less theoretical. Despite their attempts to remain impartial, reporters/newspapers make moralistic labeling judgments all the time and such judgments are affected by the social milieu they are in. A child molester is called just that; not somebody who likes to explore child sexuality. Thus, the people who attacked WTC and the Pentagon are called terrorists simply because the world media is overwhelmingly influenced by the American people's preferences. And the Americans are very clear that the perpetrators of 9/11 were "terrorists" and nothing less. Nothing wrong with that, I'd say-- I too believe they were terrorists. However, is the pain suffered by Americans on 9/11 more than what the Indians have suffered because of Kashmir and the related acts of Islamic fundamentalism? How about the pain suffered by the Israelis? How about the pain suffered by the people of Moscow and Beslan? Clearly, everybody would like to label our respective opponents in these cases as terrorists while others may or mayn't agree. It then boils down to power play.

The side that has greater power over the media will get its labeling accepted. And here again the likes of Arundhati Roy bug me to no end. India's portrayal in the media (especially western media) is far less favorable than it could be. By the dint of a small vocal leftist intelligentsia, India's job of discrediting Kashmiri terrorism as just that - terrorism - has become harder than it needs to be. Pervez Musharraf doesn't need to repeat that Kashmiri terrorists are freedom fighters; there are enough Kuldip Nayars and Praful Bidwais and Arundhati Roys that will do the job for him. All of whom go conveniently silent whenever said "freedom fighters" selectively pick off Hindus. Sure, such attempts to get your labeling accepted is probably unfair. But the world is already an unfair place and somebody has to win. What would you rather read in the papers- "Kashimiri terrorists" or "Kashmiri freedom fighters"?

Sidenote: this whole anti-"but" tirade started after somebody said "yes, Godhra was wrong but what happened afterwards...". I am revolted by Gujarat riots-- I really hope they punish everybody involved, including Narendra Modi. The riots were inhuman acts about which no moral relativism should apply. However, why aren't others willing to similarly condemn the Godhra incident by itself, without a guilt-assuaging "but" involved ?

[/news] permanent link

Jerusalem, Kashi, and Yin-Yang

A related and interesting observation is about the similarities between the religions that share a common "holy" city. All the Jerusalem religions are monotheistic in a very unambiguous way; there really is no one else but *the* God and unless you accept him, you are damned to hell. These religions also have codified instructions for specific choices to be made in day-to-day living. "Don't work on Fridays" (Islam); "Don't work on Sundays" (Judaism) or; "Observe Lent" (Christianity).

On the other hand, the Kashi religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, are rather evasive about the whole monotheistic-vs-polytheistic issue. Hindu mythology is expressly polytheistic. But it does have a subtle monotheistic slant as reflected in the notion of the divine Trinity being one meta-entity with mutually complementary gods: Brahma (Creator), Vishnu (Provider??), and Shiva (Destroyer). Hindu *philosophy* (as opposed to the *mythology*) increases the ambivalence, by distinguishing the notion of a "Nir-gun" [ethereal] God as opposed to the "Sa-gun" [anthropomorphic] god(s). Buddhism evades the notion of an overarching God altogether by focusing on the individual and the notion of a personal "nirvana". Unlike the Jerusalem religions, both Hinduism and Buddhism are non-prescriptive religions that, in their essence, do not tell you how to live. The fact that priests in both the religions have developed a rigid set of rules for daily living is another matter. Hindu mythology, in particular, is replete with cases of revered rishis and sadhus who'd be considered distinctly unholy by today's rigid standards.

I think there are other differences as well. (Beware!! I am not a theologer!) Both the Kashi religions make it possible for the individual to reach the highest level of religious enlightenment simply by meditation and self-reflection, an option not available in any of the Jerusalem religions. In the latter, an expressed and repeated devotion to God is essential. The Kashi religions are very comfortable with the notion of reincarnations, while the Jerusalem religions are not.

In one very interesting way all these 5 religions differ from the Far Eastern spiritual sects. A fundamental belief in the latter was the humans are essentially meant to be happy and not suffer. As long as they behave well to others, they'll lead happy lives in harmony with nature, which is pretty much the most you are supposed to want. In contrast, both the Jerusalem and Kashi religions take a rather dim view of human life-- a person can't be "saved" unless he/she makes specific efforts to redeem himself. And even then, more often than not, the "saving" counts only when you are dead. A corollary of this seems to be that monks are common in these religions whereas original Confucianism/Taoism didn't have followers who gave up all worldly duties/tasks and just devoted themselves to the service of God or the search of enlightenment. Indeed, this was the basis of an argument, about 1400yrs ago, that the Taoists used to fight the spread of Buddhism: "Indians are basically evil and hence Buddhism is suited for their redemption. Chinese are basically good and hence it is not suited for us." Nice...

I am sure people have explored these parallels before. It'd be interesting to see what they came up with. To repeat, I am not a theologer/theologist/whatever!!

[/misc] permanent link

Kitne aadmi thei, kaliya...

"hum angrezon ke zamaane ke jailor hain..." or

"arre soorma bhopali..." or

"tumhara naam kya hai basanti..." or the best set of dialogs ever...

"kya kahein mausi.."

Yeah, I know that you got the picture (pun unintended!).

[/fun] permanent link

Aarrgh...

[/fun] permanent link

I told ya so...

[/news] permanent link

Globalized Gods

My wife and I enjoy window-shopping. We explore every new market and mall that comes to our attention.

We were more than happy when I took up a job in Bangalore; it gave us the opportunity to explore the malls in a new city.

At one particular mall, we liked the showpieces and decorative items that were on sale -- they were inexpensive and very good. When we came to the section where beautiful idols of Indian gods were displayed, my wife fell in love with an idol of Lord Shiva. I liked it too. We put it in the shopping bag.

Later, when I was examining the idol again, I happened to turn it upside-down and burst out laughing. It was made in China!

Sumit Bhatia, Bangalore

[/fun] permanent link

Poor Accelrys...

[/fun] permanent link

The curse of cynicism...

I think it is safe to rule out the career-move option. This guy was United's president (remember, that's not CEO!) and United has 500-odd planes and is the world's largest carrier. He is now the head of a 20-plane outfit. Even if there's a bad job-scene for airline uber-executives and even if the Indian air-travel market is set to explode this guy could've done much better for himself.

So that leaves options (b) and (c). In India, there are 3 big(!) airline companies: Jet, Indian Airlines, Air Sahara. A professional manager would probably have big issues with the owners of each of them (Naresh Goyal, the Indian sarkaar and Subroto Ray 'Sahara', respectively). Since Jet is what keeps Naresh Goyal busy, he isn't going to hire a real CEO. Both the Indian sarkaar and Mr. Sahara sometimes dabble in other things so they might want a manager-type. Still, IA is the bigger of these two and would be, by far, the meatier job for anyone of Ronojoy Dutta's calibre. So, if it really were option (b), i.e. contributing to India's growth, IA's job would've suited him better. Assuming, of course, the babus at IA would've the sense to hire him.

So that leaves option (c) (pre-retirement chhota job). Or does it ? The problem is, this guy isn't that old. I did some digging around and found out that he graduated from HBS in 1980 (he is an IIT Kgp alum). Even if he were 30 then, he'd be 54 now-- not a retireable age.

Since it's probably better to be charitable, I'll assume that it's option (b)-- the guy really wants to do some good. Funny, I'd have thought that the Air Deccan model of ultra-cheap air travel would suit India better. So maybe Air Sahara will go into ultra-cheap mode and we'll see a price war? That then would be the thing to look for: if there is a price war, initiated by Air Sahara, Mr. Dutta has gone back to really work. If things just keep happening like normal, he's probably just preparing for retirement.

[/news] permanent link

Naked, Life Dunk, Toyopet, Bongo et al.

The article also talks about the mechanics of car naming and how hard it has become to find something that's cool and has not been taken. It also talks about how (and why) luxury car makers avoid giving names to their cars and just use alphanumeric strings.

They don't have Indian cars on the list but here's my list.

Good: Premier Padmini (nice name for a really pretty car), the Indica/Indigo offering from Tata (good word-play on the whole made-in-India theme)

Bad: Cielo (and the whole madness of car names ending in "o": Santro, Alto, Scorpio, Bolero, Baleno)

Just-Plain-Weird: the Wagon-R

Retro-cool: Ambassador and its lovely nickname, Amby.

[/fun] permanent link

On James Lyngdoh

[/misc] permanent link

James Bond, desi-ishtyle...

[/misc] permanent link

New Item on My ToDo list...

The milk powder reminds me-- I haven't seen the equivalent of MilkMaid here.

Carrot Halwa

Ingredients

500 gms. carrot peeled, grated
200 ml. milk
1/2 cup sugar ground
1/2 cup khoya or milk powder
1 tbsp. ghee
1 tbsp. almonds, pistachios, chopped
1/2 tsp. cardamom powder
1/4 tsp. saffron crushed

Method

Mix carrot and milk in a deep microwaveproof bowl.
Allow for ample boiling space in the bowl.
Microwave on high for 8 minutes. Stand for 5 minutes.
Stir well, add khoya or milk powder and sugar and stir again.
Microwave on high for 8 minutes. Stand for 3 minutes.
Add ghee, cardamom powder and mix well.
Microwave on high for 2 minutes.
Garnish with chopped nuts.
Serve hot or cooled.
Reheat in in microwave for 1 minute before serving.

Making time: 30 minutes
Makes: 5 servings

[/misc] permanent link

The Video Game Face

Ditto for driving- lanes that seem so wide when you are standing on ground seem impossibly narrow when you are driving.

So it turns that this is not just a figment of my imagination. There is this notion of the peripersonal space (NYT) that extends to about an arm's length from our body, or if we have a tool, till the tool's reach. Our brains seem to be especially attentive to things happening in this space.

[/misc] permanent link

Will This Guy Win'em All ?

Still, seven gold medals...If he were Indian, he'd increase India's medals tally by a gazillion percent. Seriously, of all the major-sized nations, we must be the ones with the most pathetic olympic record. Blame Tendulkar :-)

[/misc] permanent link

Live Off the Road, Literally,

Atleast somebody's getting something good out of the floods in Assam. This guy's fishing on the water-logged NH-21. So, an interesting question is, how did the fish end up in this road-pool in the first place. This pic's taken from Indian Express' website.

[/fun] permanent link

See, I told ya..

[/misc] permanent link

Plain Philter Coffee

Seriously, even getting coffee in my office is now an elaborate exercise in decision making. Stata has numerous coffee sources. Many of these I have access to, especially when no one's watching. The old, "put-on-a-pot" coffee-maker is about antediluvian as my family's first TV which had a knob for selecting one of 8 channels. You can use the funky mini-espresso maker in the W3C wing on my floor. That coffee is good only with milk and sugar. If you want good black coffee, the place to go is the 8-th floor where they have another funky coffee maker. This one takes small prepackaged boxes with just enough ground coffee for one serving. Pick the flavor you want, pop the box in and, presto!, the machine will brea fresh coffee for you. This one's coffee is quite aromatic. The cheaper cousins of this are the flasks on the 6th floor which the gnomes fill with really nice coffee. The coffee they use is nice, but isn't always fresh. Finally, on the topmost floor sits the grand-daddy of all coffee-makers. It's a full-blown espresso maker, complete with a shiny insert-and-twist-thingie and a shot glass. Took me about 30 min to get it to work the first time around. Even its froth-maker works.

And of course, there's StarBucks. Since the closest one is too far (about 400 yards), they are opening a new one in Stata's ground floor in Fall.

I forgot to mention the gazillion varieties of tea (regular and herbal) available for your drinking pleasure in the pantry.

[/misc] permanent link

Bare Branches...

Anyway, the book then goes into doomsday-mode saying that govts will pick wars just to keep these men busy or there would widespread social unrest. Kinda flimsy. But the point that such a skewed sex-ratio is unsustainable needs to be made. Which is where my rant comes in.

I acknowledge that female infanticide and abortion of female foetuses are heinous crimes. Actually, I find the whole notion so outlandish that I can only think about the problem in abstract terms. And that is when I feel that the doomsday prophecies are overblown. There have been some recent stories about how hard it has become for guys in Haryana and (parts of Gujarat) to find brides. Women are being bought; polyandry is happening and what not. Well, if women were to become scarce, dowry will go away. Indeed, reverse-dowry is becoming common in parts of Gujarat. With this, the main motivation for preferring boys goes away. And the sex-ratio will gradually tilt back towards normal. So I think worries about lots of unmarried men making nuisances of themselves are somewhat overblown. The situation will fix itself over the long term. Short term is another issue.

[/rants-and-raves] permanent link

The Great Language Debate

I always liked Python more than Perl. The conversion is now complete. The only Perl code I now write are one-liners. Python can't be used to write one-liners but its verbosity and forced indentation and intuitive function names make it easy to read. And the final time to write the program isn't that much anyway. Now that I've gotten used to its modules, its gotten easier for me to write scripts that do lots of pipes and program-running business. These days, during the course of work, a hairy command line will typically pull in many different languages:

cat test3_${j}_${i%.policy}.ct | perl -ne '{chomp; print "echo ",$_," | addZero | chainbuild --param '${j}.prm' --fixomega --pdb > test3_decoy_'${j}_${i%.policy}'_",$.,".gly \n ./nbEasy test3_decoy_'${j}_${i%.policy}'_",$.,".gly | grep neighbouring \n"; }' > test3_${j}_${i%.policy}.1

ls ${j}/test3_runs/$i| GetStructParamsAll.py | tail -1 | perl -pe 's/\s+/\n/g;' | sed '1 d'| perl -ne '{chomp; if ($.%3==2) {print;} if ($.%3==0) {print " ", $_, "\n";}}'| perl -ne '{ if (/\S+\s+\S+/) {print;}}' > ${j}/test4_runs/${i%.gly}.tors

chainbuild is a C++ program, with 3rd-party Fortran libraries. I use awk/sed usually, and call in Perl's regexes if awk would get too unwieldy. Perl's -pe/-ne flags are really handy. Shell scripting is useful for running simulations and any script that is permanent enough to go into a file is almost always Python.

Sometimes I wonder if I go overboard with this scripting business. But, then again, its pretty useful.

[/misc] permanent link

Broadway Boogie-Woogie

Anyways, all visitors to her (my sis-in-law's) home speculate on the motivation behind that painting. One theory that my brother likes to offer, tongue firmly in cheek, is that its much harder to paint exactly straight lines than to paint landscapes and hence the painting offered more of a challenge than the landscapes that my sis-in-law usually paints.

Now I've figured out the origins of that painting. The origins of that *style* of painting, that is. So it turns out there was this Dutch guy, Piet Mondrian, whose theory about painting went something like this: all of painting is basically about drawing and coloring. As per his style/philosophy ("Neoplasticism"), the basic drawing element is the straight line and the basic "primordial" colors are red, yellow and blue. Combine the two. Of course, if you make pretty pictures and people like them enough to ask you why you made them, you have all the leeway in the world to propound on the "philosophy" behind Neoplasticism. See this page for a voluminous discussion and some links. There is a lot of bullshit about mysticism and spirituality and the infinite nature of vertical/horizontal line. Also, Harvard's Art Museum is having a retrospective of some sort and they too have some pretty pictures.

Mondrian went further actually. His weirdest stuff, IMHO, was a painting made by crisscrossed colored adhesive tape. Line + Color = Colored Lines = Essence of Painting. One such painting is titled the Broadway Boogie Woogie.

This is "normal" Neoplasticism:

This is "experimental" Neoplasticism:

This is Synthesis aka adhesive tape selling for a BIG money:

This is the tangent I shot off from

Who said you can't get your education from comics!

[/misc] permanent link

LA Times Editor on Journalistic Ethics

"I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity."

...

"All across America, there are offices that resemble newsrooms, and in those offices there are people who resemble journalists, but they are not engaged in journalism. What they do is not journalism because it does not regard the reader or, in the case of broadcasting, the listener or the viewer as a master to be served."

"In this realm of pseudo-journalism, the audience is regarded as something to be manipulated. And when the audience is misled, no one in the pseudo-newsroom ever offers a peep of protest."

....

"We live in changed times. Never has falsehood in America had such a large megaphone."

He was talking about Fox News- who else! On a related note, here is an anguished article bemoaning The Times of India's fall in standards. TOI, atleast the web edition, really really sucks these days.

[/misc] permanent link

ToI spoof about stock market crash and the Lefties

[/rants-and-raves] permanent link

Sensex Drops By 786 pts (at last count!)

Bloodbath at BSE, Sensex down 786 pts

• Market authorities first halted trading for one hour at 1015 hours as the market fell by over 550 points but the freeze was imposed again within minutes of recommencement as the downhill march continued. After recommencing trading at 1115 hours, it was closed within three minutes as the BSE fell further by 272 points to reach 4247.59.
• Biggest intra-day crash ever
• Market cap of Rs 2,00,000 cr lost since Friday

Rs 2000000000000 is about 44 billion in real dollars. It is also over 200 billion in PPP dollars. Just in case you though its just a "little drop". It is also over 15% of market capitalization. Its also over 10% of India's GDP.

Just for comparison, this is the combined State Domestic Product (SDP) of Mr. Sitaram Yechuri's shining beacons: Rs 8000 crores (West Bengal) + Rs 4000 crores(Kerala) = Rs 12000 crores. Those are probably old numbers. Lets round it up to, say, Rs 25000 crore. The market lost value worth 8 West Bengals and 8 Keralas. Hail our new leaders.

As per TOI's one-line flash, Manmohan Singh think's this is manipulated. Probably true. That also means, probably, the market will bounce back well too.

Links: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/in/Economy

http://www.macroscan.org/fet/aug03/fet100803SDP_1.htm

[/news] permanent link

Arundhati Roy Rejoices

After all, Roy wrote just one decent book. Having earned her fame as a writer, she has parlayed it into doing what she really wanted to- be an activist in the garb of a writer. Well, then why should she be treated as a Booker Prize winning author at all! This is from the Guardian.

Let us hope the darkness has passed

India's real and virtual worlds have collided in a humiliation of power

Arundhati Roy

Friday May 14, 2004

The Guardian

For many of us who feel estranged from mainstream politics, there are rare, ephemeral moments of celebration. Today is one of them. When India went to the polls, we were negotiating the dangerous cross-currents of neo-liberalism and neo-fascism - an assault on the poor and minority communities.

Somebody please explain to me what neo-liberalism and neo-fascism mean? Is good economics now neo-xxx now ? Is being anti-communist neo-fascist now ? Do these neo-xxxs belong in the same category as neo-conservatism?

None of the pundits and psephologists predicted the results. The rightwing BJP-led coalition has not just been voted out of power, it has been humiliated. It cannot but be seen as a decisive vote against communalism, and neo-liberalism's economic "reforms". The Congress has become the largest party. The left parties, the only parties to be overtly (but ineffectively) critical of the reforms, have been given an unprecedented mandate. But even as we celebrate, we know that on every major issue besides overt Hindu nationalism (nuclear bombs, big dams and privatisation), the Congress and the BJP have no major ideological differences. We know the legacy of the Congress led us to the horror of the BJP. Still, we celebrate because surely a darkness has passed. Or has it?

Does it ever strike her that Congress and BJP agree on economics because that is the sensible thing to do! Does she realize that the Left is soliciting private investment in West Bengal while asking that the rest of India not do so. Given her penchant for the Left, shouldn't West Bengal be an economic miracle- a happy house. Why, then, is West Bengal such a basket-case. And are the thugs who are the CPM leaders in rural West Bengal examples of what Ms. Roy would mean by the "dictatorship of the proletariat" ?

Recently, a young friend was talking to me about Kashmir. About the morass of political venality, the brutality of the security forces, the inchoate edges of a society saturated in violence, where militants, police, intelligence officers, government servants, businessmen and even journalists encounter each other, and gradually, over time, become each other. About having to live with the endless killing, the mounting "disappearances", the whispering, the fear, the rumours, the insane disconnection between what Kashmiris know is happening and what the rest of us are told is happening in Kashmir. He said: "Kashmir used to be a business. Now it's a mental asylum."

What crappy argumentation, hidden by flowery language! Can Ms. Roy make up her mind if she's writing fiction or non-fiction? And Kashmir, in case she needs to be reminded, started with Nehru. The recent blow-up started in 1989, during Rajeev Gandhi's watch. I don't even want to get into the human rights argument- people who attack sneakily and kill barbarically have no right to crib when the chickens come home to roost. But I just want to point out, the NDA govt actually did enable elections in Kashmir even though it led to a *Congress* govt. Please give credit where it is due, Ms. Roy.

....

Each time there is a so-called terrorist strike, the BJP government has rushed in, eager to assign culpability with little or no investigation. The attack on the parliament building, on December 13 2001, and the burning of the Sabarmati Express, in Godhra, the following year are fine examples. In both cases, the evidence that surfaced raised disturbing questions and so was put into cold storage. Everybody believed what they wanted to, but the incidents were used to whip up communal bigotry in a haze of heightened Hindu nationalism.

In claiming that everbody has overlooked evidence that, as per Ms. Roy, is staring us in the face isn't she rendering herself open to the same argument: why is *she* overlooking the *other* , overwhelming, pieces of evidence that are also staring us in the face. Everybody else seems to see them clearly enough.

.....[more bullshit about atrocities. Her point about POTA misuse does have some validity though]

Meanwhile, economists cheering from the pages of corporate newspapers inform us that the GDP growth rate is phenomenal, unprecedented. Shops are overflowing with consumer goods. Government storehouses are overflowing with grain. Outside this circle of light, the past five years have seen the most violent increase in rural-urban income inequalities since independence. Farmers steeped in debt are committing suicide in hundreds; 40% of the rural population in India has the same foodgrain absorption level as sub-Saharan Africa, and 47% of Indian children under three suffer from malnutrition.

Precisely for that reason, Ms. Roy, are the reforms necessary. India is horribly poor, especially our rural population. We need to fix this, on a war footing. Lets see what hasn't worked until now: Your dear old communism hasn't done much for Russia, Cuba, West Bengal and Kerala (China is no longer communist, in any economic sense). So I don't think communism is solution for the ills it helped create. The generation of your mother might've liked Indira Gandhi's socialism but it really didn't get us much anywhere either except for "Garibi Hatao" and "import substitution". Look where "garibi hatao" got us. It is 200 years of British rule and 40+ years of pre-liberalization economics that is responsible for the wretched state that India is in. And raising the living standard of a billion people takes time. Even the fastest growing economies haven't really grown faster than 12-14% per annum (Japan, a few decades ago). India was already starting to hit that rate. Without reforms, there will be no growth. Without growth, where will the money to help the poor come from ?

Also, note the term "corporate newspapers". Ms. Roy is excellent at using words to muddy waters- mention "corporates" and "newspapers" in the same breath and let free association do its magic.

But in urban India, shops, restaurants, railway stations, airports, gymnasiums, hospitals have TV monitors in which India's Shining, Feeling Good. You only have to close your ears to the sickening crunch of the policeman's boot on someone's ribs, you only have to raise your eyes from the squalor, the slums, the ragged broken people on the streets and seek a friendly TV monitor, and you will be in that other beautiful world. The singing, dancing world of Bollywood's permanent pelvic thrusts, of permanently privileged, happy Indians waving the tricolour and Feeling Good. Laws like Pota are like buttons on a TV. You can use it to switch off the poor, the troublesome, the unwanted.

Once again, is Ms. Roy writing fiction or non-fiction ? And the question isn't that things are bad. They are bad. With a per capita income of $470 (U.S. has about $30000) things are bad. But what Ms Roy ignores is that 4 years ago that $470 was $380. Things are bad because they've always been bad. Very Bad. If Ms. Roy has her way, things will remain Very Bad. For a Long Time.

They said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I can't even say if Ms. Roy has good intentions.

we'll have to wait and see. Fortunately the Congress will be hobbled by the fact that it needs the support of left parties to form a government. Hopefully, things will change. A little.

Here's hoping, too. Hoping that the reforms don't change.

[/rants-and-raves] permanent link

Aarghh...

[/news] permanent link

The Glorious Uncertainties...

WaPo's editorial put it well:

"Although the reasons for this upset will grow clearer as voting data are analyzed, the dominant theory is not encouraging. Mr. Vajpayee is said to have been punished for the pro-market reforms that fostered India's high-tech boom; voters in the villages felt left out and took their revenge at the ballot box. This suggests that even the world's most successful economic reformers run big political risks. India conducted poverty surveys in 1993 and '94 and again in 1999 and 2000; over that period, the rural poverty rate fell from 37 percent to 30 percent, so the idea that the villagers have not benefited from India's growth is spurious. Given India's continued boom since 2000, poverty in the villages has almost certainly fallen further. Mr. Vajpayee apparently got no thanks for this.

India will now be governed by a coalition dominated by the Congress Party, the political vehicle of the Gandhi family. The current Gandhi is Sonia, the Italian-born widow of the assassinated former prime minister Rajiv, who was himself the son of the assassinated former prime minister Indira, who was the daughter of the former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru."

Four generations of prime ministers- when will it stop! I guess one has to accept what a democracy comes up with, even if you think it is stupid. And being a non-resident Indian, the right to crib is even less, I think. After all, I didn't even vote.

Still, I get to rant since this is my blog. Since I get to rant, let me enumerate some of the things I want to rant about. The one thing I am worried about is the the Communists' greater strength. Their opposition to reforms, even if rhetorical, will be painful. And when it comes to privatization or labor reforms- it won't remain rhetorical. And those are one of the bigger issues remaining now. Congress has this horrible tendency of drinking its own kool-aid: rhetoric about bleeding hearts for liberalization-sufferers is fine. But you can trust the Congress to start believing its own rhetoric. And, of course, the communists still think Stalin lives and Cuba is showing it to the Big Bad Daddy. Hopefully, Sonia Gandhi will have the sense to have Manmohan Singh as F.M. and P. Chidambaram as Commerce Minister. Can they get Arun Shourie to change sides and keep managing Divestment Ministry ? That would be too much to ask for...

The other thing I am worried about is that Congress will have a different foreign policy just for the sake of being different- especially a turn towards the past. One of the finest performances of BJP government was its foreign policy. They got almost everything right. Right from the decision to perform the nuclear tests to the new oil diplomacy, Indian foreign policy is more sensible, more interests-oriented, less ideological and more pragmatic-- and even a little strategic. Does anyone even remember that Australia was the first country to call back their ambassador after the Pokaharan tests! Well, now they want to play cricket and hitch a ride on to the Indian economic gravy train. The only thing that they could've done better was to handle the Indian obssession of what the West, in general, and U.S., in particular, thinks of India.

"The Congress Party-led coalition is expected to swing back to traditional anti-Americanism, sounding off against the United States at the United Nations and perhaps challenging U.S. influence in the Middle East by launching its own peace initiative. All of which would test the Bush administration's reserves of forbearance and tact" (WaPo editorial again).

I thought that the issue of Sonia Gandhi being a foreigner wouldn't matter to me. But reading the news of celebrations in Italy hurt. After all, we do have a billion other candidates. And on top of that, Sonia is totally inexperienced- will she make a strong PM? Will the coterie return ? What about the famed "high-command" ?

There *are* some things that weren't so bad. BJP's loss in Gujarat, while lamentable in the general scheme of things, should be instructive to them. And as an IIT alum, I am glad the IIMs (and, potentially, the IITs) won't have the sword hanging over their head anymore.

On a related note, here's a crazy idea: India should cut loose its two most influential states - Bihar and U.P. OK, atleast Bihar. Let them fend for themselves- do not allow immigration in/out of them. No central govt money to/from them. These places are economic basket-cases anyway. Let them fix their own taxes and do their own services and build their own roads and what not. Let them declare independence if they want. Disclaimer: my home is in U.P. and I love the people there. I think it says something about the character of those two states that the bulk of Indian struggle for independence happened in these two states. But precisely because I am a native of one of these states can I say this without (and not take offense).

I just think that the general population of these states needs a big jolt and some education. They are stupid voters. How can an entire state re-elect Laloo Yadav so many times- especially given what he has done to that state. How can an erstwhile school-teacher (Mayawati ) amass Rs 10 crores (100 million) in a few years and still be referred to as the leader of dalits! A newspaper story suggested that the dalits vote for her because they think she can make them this rich too. Aaargh...its not even funny. These are states where if you try to fix the education system by cracking down on cheating, your opposition makes it a poll plank. And wins.

Once left to themselves, things will get worse for the people there. But they'll see other states having better governments and ultimately see the light. Once the voters of these states have sorted out their governments, they can come back and join in. Hopefully, the rest of India will have built enough wealth by then to share some with them. Didn't something like this happen with East Germany and West Germany ?

OK, I wasn't serious about this whole UP-Bihar thing. But I still think the stupid voters in these two states are one of Indian democracy's bigger problems.

[/news] permanent link

Iraq...

Given an enemy whose understanding of human rights is non-existent, the American administration only has to blame their moral absolutism for the fact that the world would rather focus on their human rights record, instead of their enemy's. The problem with moral absolutism is that it sets too high a standard: no American do any wrong, ever! And with any large population (the US army in Iraq, for example) you just can't sustain that. David Brook's article in NYT/IHT makes similar points. Praising Truman and Roosevelt's "rugged idealism", he says:

"They took a tragically ironic view of their situation. They understood that America can't defeat ruthless enemies without wielding power. But America can't wield power without sometimes being power without sometimes being corrupted by it. Therefore, America can't do good without losing its innocence."

In the case of Iraq, if America had gotten more people on their side (assuming the others agreed), they wouldn't have to fall in this trap where the moralistic arguments that justify the war, domestically and internationally, limit its ability to *fight* that war. If America had more allies, the need for an overarching moral justification would've been lessened. Moreover, in the interest of a final victory, the numerous allies would've looked away from such sporadic Abu Ghraibs. It does sound cynical, but thats the way it is. Moral relativism is what we all indulge in, ultimately.

[/news] permanent link

Are you laughing with me or at me ?

So the Fandango ad had a desi couple talking in an Indian accent, complete with the Bollywood song, dance, and subtitled-lyrics routine. Da dude talks about the tinge of embarrassment (and, often, indignation) that happens when you see something like this. This is true not just for Indians- I guess most communities/groups have thin skins. Even in America, only black comics are allowed to make jokes about blacks, only jewish comics can make fun of jews and only ads with an all-female cast can show stupid/bumbling females. It is probably an effect of the PC times we live in. This is not necessarily wrong- if you have to choose between being boring or being offensive, being boring is definitely the way to go.

Having said that, I think that Indians are often too insecure and sensitive about others (read: Westerners) commenting on India's culture/society. Bollywood is a particularly sore issue, followed closely by the rat-eaters-and-elephants perception.

I have become less sensitive to TV programs parodying Bollywood routines- I think more and more people are starting to appreciate it as just another style of movie-making, just like those innumerable westerns with their in'juns and gun-fights. I still do cringe, though, when I see a desi movie with a dance sequence shot in an European city with all the passerby gawking at this garishly dressed couple doing weird gyrations.

The second perception- of rat-eaters and elephants- is far more vexing. That has changed somewhat in the past few years but a lot of the perception remains. My room-mate at Stanford told me about this video about India that they were shown in their junior high-school's world history class (or something like that). The video really did have snake-charmers and rat-eaters! And this wasn't too far back- probably the early 90s. Such stereotypical depictions of India should be vigorously fought. For example, had this piece not come from the Onion, it'd have been outrageous. But then again, thats why its The Onion.

[/rants-and-raves] permanent link

IIT Kanpur tops survey of Indian Engineering colleges

Personally, I think IIT Kanpur and IIT Bombay produce the most well-rounded people- haven't had the chance to hang out with too many IIT Delhi guys. Academically, I've found amazingly smart people from each IIT (not counting some new "IITs") so that one is hard to judge.

I wish India Today (and others) would recognize that IITs really are the best colleges in India- not just the best *engineering/professional* colleges. After all, few colleges require everbody to take 3 courses in pure sciences, 3 courses in math, 1 course in programming and atleast 4 courses in humanities (many people take more). And the rest of curriculum has enough electives for you to explore what you want. Thus I got a chance to fiddle with a few physics courses before I was convinced that string-theory really did make my head hurt.

On a related note, IITK's director Prof Dhande is visiting Boston- general alumni relations and faculty hiring trip, it seems. He taught us two courses- engineering drawing (TA101- the scourge of half the student-body) and computer graphics. In TA101, there was this moment when a particularly painful student, in a lecture-room filled with 150-odd students, was belaboring a minor point. Prof Dhande's reply was classic: "yeah, you are right but that doesn't mean I am going to marry off my daughter to you"

[/misc] permanent link

Some dating options

[/fun] permanent link

Ben Bitdiddle and company

So the main character in most stories is Ben Bitdiddle. Its probably stupid to ascribe specific levels of intelligence to various characters but I think I have seen a pattern. Have blog, will speculate. As for Ben- well, he has lots of initiative. He's always willing to try new things viz. designing new chips and writing weird programs. He oftens starts companies to market these ideas. Ben, however, is rather unimaginative. His attempts are invariably bogged down in some techinal problems and his attempts at solving them are rather naive and can almost always be improved. Enter Alyssa P Hacker. Alyssa, the uber-hacker, is the one who'll tell Ben that there is a better way of doing things. At this point, the problem set usually turns towards you and asks you to help Ben do what Alyssa says can be done. Alyssa is kinda zen-like in that sense.

There are some other characters that show up often. Louis Reasoner is typically a partner in crime with Ben, helping him design new chips and write weird programs and start companies. I can't make up my mind about how smart Louis is meant to be. But the feeling I get is that she's Ben's lackey and a rather dim one at that. (hint: "Alyssa says this can be done in .... Show Ben and Louis how this can be done. Louis is not too bright, so remember to comment your code"). Another major character is Cy D Fect. As the name suggests, Cy is typically involved when his design/program has unintended consequences. Then there's Lem E Tweakit who's forever making half-baked optimizations to Ben's stuff. There are a couple of other PHB types: Oliver Warbucks and DeWitt Aull etc. but I have only heard of them.

So what prompted this long speculation? I sighted "our genomic hero: Ben Basepair" in the final test of my Comp Functional Genomics class. Not a bad name, waise.

[/misc] permanent link

My New Office

Lots of funny stories about the building are already becoming part of the lore. Will write about them later. Here's one: Richard Stallman (of GNU and Free Software Foundation fame) has an office in Gates Tower. He prefers if we called it Minas Morgul.

Forgot to link in this article from the Boston Globe.

[/misc] permanent link

Looking for verrrrrrrrry smart kids

Reminds me of a conversation I overheard at Stanford once. Remember, this a university setting and people here are supposed to be comfortable with unnaturally smart individuals.

Voice 1: You heard ? There's a new world record for the youngest doctor in the world. Some [Indian-American] kid in NY is 14 or something and already a doc.

Voice 2: Geez! I couldn't even do arithmetic well when I was 14

Voice 1: Yeah, but do you *want* to be treated by a 14-year old ?

Voice 2: Well....

Child prodigies annoy me- they make me feel stupid. And, anyway, exactly how many patients will a 14-year-old doctor get?

[/fun] permanent link

Warning Signals ?

[/misc] permanent link

Kaha thaa na, don't go there...

So that dose of pseudo-profound armchair psychology was in reaction to this news item that the Japanese are angry at their fellow countrymen who were hijacked (and later released) in Iraq. Most tellingly, the only kind word to those poor souls came from a non-Jap, Colin Powell. The public anger in Japan goes deep enough that the govt is asking for $6K in the return fare for flying the people back to Japan. The public anger mostly stems from the individuals' disregard of the Foreign Ministry's travel advisory. Doesn't this statement by the P.M. Junichiro Koizumi sounded so familiar ?

When two freed hostages mentioned wanting to stay or return to Iraq to continue their work, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi angrily urged them "to have some sense." "Many government officials made efforts to rescue them, without even eating and sleeping, and they are still saying that sort of thing?" he said. .

On a related note, read the part about "sneak-attack nation".

On yet another note, I wonder how Indians would've reacted in a similar situation. I'd like to think we'd be more like Americans than the Japanese. Or could we just be apathetic ?

[/news] permanent link

Jaw-jaw better than war-war

[/misc] permanent link

How to tell between an automobile and a programmer

"Our man in the street could try asking an auto mechanic to tell him ab out automobiles, then asking a programmer to tell him ab out programs, and comparing the results. The mechanic might reply as follows. "An automobile is constructed by people. After they have finished constructing it, it runs. However, it may have some bugs. [Most mechanics would use the term "problems", but everyone understands this one when he sp eaks of `bugs'.] These are usually minor [such as non-functioning windshield wip ers], but occasionally they are serious enough to make the automobile stop running. The bugs are found by testing, and are fixed. The automobile then runs prop erly, and is sold to the user. The user then op erates the automobile. However, as he uses it, new bugs may app ear. Therefore, the automobile must b e maintained. Maintenance is also required if the user wants to modify the automobile--for example, to improve its performance [perhaps by `souping up' the engine]. When the automobile becomes to difficult to maintain, the user has to buy a new one."

Unfortunately, the programmer might say almost exactly the same things ab out programs! Our poor man in the street would be no further towards his goal. The reader has undoubtedly guessed by now that I am not interested in explaining the difference between a program and an automobile to the man in the street. He was just a pedagogical device, and will now be returned to his street. My purpose is to explain the difference between a program and an automobile to programmers.

An automobile runs, a program does not. (Computers run, but I'm not discussing them.) An automobile requires maintenance, a program does not. A program does not need to have its stack cleaned every 10,000 miles. Its if statements do not wear out through use. (Previously undetected errors may need to be corrected, or it might be necessary to write a new but similar program, but those are different matters.) An automobile is a piece of machinery, a program is some kind of mathematical expression.

Programmers may be disheartened to learn that their programs are not like automobiles, but are mathematical expressions. Automobiles can be loveable--one can relate to them almost as if they were alive. Mathematical expressions are not loveable--they are hard to relate to. Many programmers may feel like clinging to their b elief that programs are like automobiles. However, further thought reveals that mathematical expressions do have certain advantages over automobiles.

Unlike an automobile, a mathematical expression can have a meaning. We can therefore ask whether it has the correct meaning. One cannot talk about the correctness of an automobile--it may run properly, but it makes no sense to say that it is correct. Since a program is a mathematical expression, one can (at least in principle) decide if it is correct."

Of course, all the usual disclaimers about copyright still apply.

[/misc] permanent link

Wealthier Students, Poorer Society

"At the most selective private universities across the country, more fathers of freshmen are doctors than are hourly workers, teachers, clergy members, farmers or members of the military combined."

Wow!

Having lived in Stanford and MIT campuses (and near UCSD campus) I can personally vouch for how rich the general undergrad population seems to be. BMWs were far too common in the undergrad parking lots at Stanford. Uber-cool (and pricey!) gizmos are far too common at MIT (less space for cars here ;-).

The reason for this development seems to be that *everybody* is much more desperate to get their kids into good colleges. Richer parents can, however, spend a lot\ more on college-prep, building up an impressive app packet for their kids. And it shows- almost all colleges say that applications have been getting better and better. Some of the undergrad application resumes are just mindblowing. Of course, they are also padded- there just can't be so many multi-tasking socially-conscious polymath prodigies around. And the whole early-decision stuff favours people who don't need fin aid i.e. the rich kids.

There was one more reason why this article struck a chord. Charles Vest, one of MIT's longest serving presidents, is retiring. His eloquent farewell letter mentions a DOJ-initiated lawsuit regarding financial aid in the early 90s. At that time, top univs used to compare notes to best disburse financial aid in the most beneficial fashion (esp to poorer students). DOJ slammed, of all things, an anti-trust motion against them! Apparently, MIT was the only univ that didn't back down. They took it to court, and finally won. Sorta. The trends in fin aid still changed and merit-based financial aid systems started replacing need-based financial aid systems. Admissions, of course, have remained need-blind and merit-based. This change in financial aid means that less aid now goes to poorer, and often less qualified, students. Here's Vest's comment about this:

"...All these factors have combined to cause a massive shift of financial support away from the poor- est students and families to those with somewhat higher incomes. Despite the very real pressures on middle-class families during the last dozen years [i.e. they might need the extra aid], I consider that the world of financial aid is less noble and fair than it once was."

This also ties into the brouhaha going on in India over the IIMs' fees (and soon, I'm afraid, IITs' fees). To be fair, the median family income in India would be about Rs 50K, assuming families with atleast one regular job-holder. As such an IIT fee of about Rs 20-40K is fair considering that my estimated expenses at MIT are $52K (they pay :-) and the median American income is $53K. The IIMs' current fees are about 2 times the median income, but I think thats fair- people who go for MBAs often have savings or loans they can take. Hell! even IIT kids are getting richer. Most of them can now afford computers in their dorms. Even 5-6 years ago, there were lots who hadn't used computers until they came to IIT and could never imagine getting one for home use. The reason why more rich kids are getting into IITs is probably the same as in America- their rich parents can better help them prep.

Of course, I neglected to mention that its pretty much impossible for any really poor kid (whose parents earn less than Rs20K/pa) in India to make it to the IITs/IIMs. His schooling just won't prepare him for the entrance exams. But that discussion will involve India's non-existent primary/secondary education set-up...

[/misc] permanent link

Ewww...

'The females, loaded with eggs, are more of a bite than the males, whose abdomens are largely hollow, in part because of the anatomical structures that allow them to make noise. Zyla likens the dry-roasted males to an "air-puffed Cheeto."'.

I'll now add cicadas to my list of things I hope to never eat. Snakes and frogs compete for the top rank in the list.

[/rants-and-raves] permanent link

Durbar Mahila Samannoy Samiti

Seriously, a union of prostitutes- only West Bengal can have that!

[/fun] permanent link

Civic Institutions In India...

Reminds me of an exchange that took place last week at HBS. Indian students at HBS had organized a day-long India Business Conference, complete with big names and all. During a panel discussion, somebody asked Montek Singh Ahluwalia if the civic structures in India are degrading and isn't this degradation disastrous for the Indian democracy. His reply was "well, that's not really true. Some institutional change is normal as a democracy matures. And many elements of the civic life have become stronger [- the election commission, the supreme court, and the various NGOs etc..]"

[/misc] permanent link

Overheard...

[/misc] permanent link

(Two) Theaters of the Absurd

Surprise Surprise, Laloo doesn't like being taken pot-shots at. Houses of glass and stones and so on...

And one would've thought that he'd stop explaining his middle name once he turned 70.

For once TOI gets out of its usual tabloid-y mode to point out something of interest- our politicians get real good deals on real estate.

If you count a Kennedy as a friend and you are in politics and you're American then you must be golden, right ? Umm...not exactly...

This poor fellow says "com'on, lets stop fighting and lets play fair.". Pat comes the reply, "not until we beat you, buster."

[/misc] permanent link

On Malaria and DDT in Africa

Anyway, DDT got a bad name in the West- partly because the very first environmental book demonized it. That criticism was valid- the Americans used DDT as a pesticide and in those concentrations it really was bad for the ecosystem. Currently, however, it is recommended that DDT only be used in minute quantities and only for in-house spraying. The NYT Magazine article makes the point that if DDT is used in this way it is a very cheap and effective way of fighting malaria. Not to mention that it is probably harmless in those quantities.

But nobody in Africa and poorer parts of Latin America seems to be using DDT. The biggest problem is that the aid agencies, which get funding from western nations where DDT is demonized, don't fund DDT-based work. They prefer mosquito nets (which are costlier and not as effective). Needless to say, the respective govts also like nets because individuals pay for them, instead of the govt funding required for DDT spraying. Finally, the chemical industry would rather that you didn't use DDT. DDT's off-patent, you see.

But things are changing. People are taking second look at DDT. The interesting thing is that India and China are the only places that make DDT. Now that the Africans are getting more and more interested in using DDT maybe we can give it to them for free/cheap. Would be good for humanity and all. Not to mention that we can score some brownie points- might come in useful later.

On a tangential note, AIDS has sucked up a lot of funding money- money which could've gone to malaria, among other things. Personally, I don't mind this- I think AIDS really should get all the funding and exposure we can throw at it. Once it seeps into the general population, it is amazingly hard to get rid of and many cultures (read India and China) have a head-in-the-sand mentality towards all sex-related diseases and especially AIDS. Thus, we might end up ignoring it until its far too late.

[/news] permanent link

When you are angry, beat your chest...

[/fun] permanent link

The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri

Anyways, on to the book. Ashoke and Ashima are first generation immigrants to U.S. After getting his PhD from MIT, Ashoke moves (family in tow, of course) to a Boston suburb, to a nameless college and an eventless career. Ashima, ever the dutiful wife, gets over her acute boredom and discomfort once kids arrive. Socially, their lives revolve around the Weekend Bengali Friends Network. The book is mostly about their son, Gogol and how he hates his name for much of the book, changing it to Nikhil at the first chance he get. The latter parts of the story are spun around episodes in Gogol/Nikhil's life-- his various ill-fated relationships and Ashoke's death.

I like the book-- it is written beautifully. Jhumpa Lahiri has a way with words, unpretentious yet very beautiful. I hope to re-read the book again, more slowly. Here's a passage:

"They were brown shoes with black heels and off-white laces and stitching. There was a band of lentil-sized holes embossed on either side of each shoe, and at the tips was a pretty pattern pricked into the leather as if with a needle. Looking more closely, she saw the shoemaker's name on the inside, in gold lettering that had all but faded....Ashima, unable to resist a sudden and overwhelming urge, stepped into the shoes at her feet. Lingering sweat from the owner's feet mingled with hers, causing her heart to race; it was the closest thing she had ever experienced to the touch of a man. "

Just for comparison, see the following passage. It is from a review about this book!:

"Spanning three decades and two continents, The Namesake's story line is episodic, nearly picaresque, a literary form whose expansiveness and fluidity assert a sense of individual autonomy and mobility. The story limns the unforgiving and often repressive claims of memory and family tradition in unresolved discord with the equally insistent immigrant claims of establishing a new and meaningful identity in the New World."

I do have a couple of grouses about the book, though. The book pretends to care deeply about the Gogol/Nikhil dichotomy, especially in the initial parts; it tries to weave it in with his teenage angst, his relationships, and his eventual self-discovery. I can see the motivation for doing this but I wish she had found a better peg to hang the initial parts on. Parts of the plot are somewhat predictable but that doesn't take much away from the book. Another interesting thing about the book is how it rarely describes how Ashoke and Ashima feel. Their lives are described more by how Nikhil remembers them rather than by describing what goes on in their heads, though Lahiri *does* do the latter as well. I couldn't make up my mind as to whether Lahiri wanted me not to care much about Ashoke and Ashima or if she was portraying them as "reserved" people, the emotions hidden behind a facade of dull and mundane life.

On the whole, a great book. Although, I do wish Jhumpa Lahiri would stop writing about self-discovery and related emotional issues among first and second generation Indian-Americans. She's too good to beat this dead horse.

[/misc] permanent link

Chrysler's new marketing slogan: Inspiration Comes Standard

[/rants-and-raves] permanent link

Unicode coding

This bug had come from a Japanese sales guy who was in total panic over some big deal that depended on fixing this bug. Now, almost all of the file seemed to be in ASCII text-- it was mostly DNA sequence data only. But the file name wasn't! It was a Japanese file name, written in Unicode. Each unicode letter is 2 bytes. ASCII, with 128 chars, is only 1 byte and one bit is still left empty. The short story is that the program was confusing the higher order unicode byte for the null character and terminating the string-read.

The right way would have been to fix all our code to use Unicode libraries so as to read these things even if they were written in Egyptian Hierloglyphs. In addition to this being damn tedious, we'd have lost the sale and it wouldn't be fun listening to a Jap swearing in English. I did what my boss recommended- skip reading the file-name from inside the file. The damn thing is already known.

[/misc] permanent link

(Re)Heating Tortillas

The biggest problem with tortillas is heating them. Any self-respecting roti is warm, soft, and a bit fluffed up. With tortillas, however, getting both the "warm" and the "soft" part is tricky. Forget about the "fluffed-up" part. Microwaves, unfortunately, make hot papad out of tortilla. As it is, frozen tortilla already has some papad like tendencies. Even heating it on a tawa doesn't usually get rid of the frozen chip-like parts. The worst part is, a heated tortilla has to be eaten immediately. As it cools, it hardens. So the 2nd tortilla on your plate is already a papad by the time you get to it. Another option is to use more oil and make parathas out of tortillas, since hardened parathas are not as bad as hardened rotis. However, its just not the same thing.

Today, I tried something. I let the frozen tortilla, from the fridge, sit in water for about 15 secs. The resulting thing seems like it is barely hanging on to itself and will decompose into dough any minute. I then transferred it to the hot tawa/pan. Here's the important part: You have to use tongs or something to flip the thing very frequently (every few seconds) otherwise the wet stuff sticks to the pan. But if you manage to do the flipping well and wait until some brown spots appear, you have a warm and soft tortilla (with a nice paratha-like sheen) that stays soft for quite a while.

[/misc] permanent link

"The Crush", anyone ?

I was wrong about the movie reference. This is Poison Ivy, this is The Crush

[/misc] permanent link

Maaro Isko

[/misc] permanent link

Sad Sad Nation

[/misc] permanent link

Rich South, Poor North...

[/news] permanent link

Yay!

On a related note, I hate this marketing practice of closely positioned "price-points". I always overspend :-((

On yet another related note, the basic MIT cable package doesn't have Food Network :-((

[/misc] permanent link

Poor Kid

[/fun] permanent link

Teaching Physics to High-Schoolers

So the current plan is to orient the class around problem solving sessions, e.g, "is it better to push a box or pull it?" or "why do ice-skaters pull in their arms while spinning?" etc. Hopefully, I can sneak in some of the underlying principles when solving these problems. Its going to be hard to keep math usage to a minimum, though. Even though I am aiming at juniors/seniors, I have been asked to avoid differential calculus-- very few high-schoolers are expected to know it. Still, I plan to cover to vectors, S.I. units, 1D/2D motion, Newton's Laws, force-body diagrams, conservation of linear momentum, and hopefully some rotational dynamics (billiards shots!). Lets see what I get to. Any interesting physics problems I can steal from you ?

[/misc] permanent link

Ahh, to have Calvin's insight about life and stuff

[/fun] permanent link

:-))

[/fun] permanent link

More Iraq WMD Postmortem

[/news] permanent link

Seek Inner Peace

[/misc] permanent link

Fettucini and Rotini not listed

[/fun] permanent link

Trip Diary

Despite, or maybe because, how short this trip was I pigged out big time this time. Here's a sample of the dishes: gaajar ka halwa, keema, chicken, lamb, matar ki poori, normal poori, aloo ke paranthe, laal peda, nimona, chane aur lauki ki daal, poha, chhole bhature, shahi paneer, mirch ki sabzi, makke ki roti and many others. Missed out on mushroom matar, though.

I also ended up visiting quite a few places and met quite a few people, both old and new. The first 2-3 days in Delhi were lots of fun. A wealthy MBA even treated me to lunch, coffee, and a movie. Barista has lowered their prices for coffee. It is now Rs35 for the regulation mocha/latte-- only about twice of what I would gladly pay for it. This also means, probably, that the coffee at not-that-hep chains like Cafe Coffee Day is now sensibly priced. In the last trip, I'd seen some school kids studying in a Barista. This time I saw eunuchs and a wannabe rock band. We're getting there, America. Only if the shopkeepers at South-Ex improved their English and somebody did a Jerry Springer-like desi show, we'll be all set.

I even drove around Delhi, for three days, without my Indian driving license. Here's a thumb-rule for which side of road you should be driving on: the median of the road should be on the driver's side. Driving in Delhi wasn't too bad. Delhi-ites are slightly flexible in their interpretation of traffic rules but, still, its more than you can say for Banarasis. Driving in Banaras is essentially video-game driving, the only difference being that the max speed is 30kmph and you are not allowed to mow down humans. Good practice for GTA3: Vice City.

Also attended a friend's wedding in Jaipur. It was lots of fun-- we even managed to get the bride and groom to perform Govinda-ishtyle thumkes on the stage. We had encircled them so Parents & Co. couldn't see what was happening. We then managed to get the groom, Amit, to come down to the main pavilion and dance to the tune of "main zoru ka gulaam ban ke rahoonga". But before we could entice our not-yet-bhabhiji to come down, Amit's mom shooed us all back to the stage. Damn!

Compared to Boston, the weather was positively warm. But since floors are cold and indoor heating is absent, thick socks and infrequent baths are recommended. The roads are improving. Delhi-Jaipur road is quite good, though eastern UP is probably 5-10 years behind the rest of the country in getting decent roads. As a city, Banaras keeps baffling me. Nothing seems to change- the way people spend their time, the lack of any real industry (apart from silk sarees and carpets), the abysmal infrastructure, lots of horribly poor people, no real middle class, and a few outrageously rich people (not all of them honourably rich) and a predominantly feudal mindset. Ah well, things can only improve.

In the end, the trip became really hectic. India trips shouldn't be much shorter than this. So many things happened that even my memories are a bit mixed up.

Now I am back on my way, waiting at CDG for my connection to Boston. Strolling through the airport mall is an experience in itself. Amazement gives way to an inferiority complex ($250 for a Hugo Boss t-shirt) which soon gives way to irritation ($250 for a cotton t-shirt!). All I can see at CDG are Armani, Gucci, YSL, Hugo Boss, Chanel and what not. I just can't find a $1.50 chapstick. A mocha and muffin cost me about $10, obscene even by Starbucks standards. Sure, airport malls are costly but still... Ah well, there are enough beautiful people for all the beautiful shops in Paree. Just like enough people in Delhi will pay Rs 1000 for a dinner. Then again, maybe I really am a cheapskate.

Funnily enough, American coffee shops advertise their French Roast and their Italian espresso. The cafe at CDG, in turn, sells the San Francisco Steamer Coffee. The love-hate relationship across the Atlantic will continue, it seems.

[/misc] permanent link