Just when you thought

...politicians can sink no lower, they show that they can. I wouldn't have a problem with Advani's actions if he had been consistent all along. After pandering to the right-wing elements for so long, he now sheds crocodile tears about the Babri Masjid demolition and tries to make nice with the Pakistani leaders.

His actions make sense (in a venal sort of way) if you look at it from this angle: he doesn't want to be left out in the cold when the Congress government is making good progress mending fences with Pakistan. He can then claim when it matters (i.e. election time) that he too played a part in the whole thing.

By the way, if Jinnah's vision for Pakistan was that of

"...a secular state in which while every citizen would be free to pursue his own religion, the state should make no distinction between one citizen and another on grounds of faith"

what was the need for partitioning India into Hindu and Muslim nations?

Linux geeks to take over the world

This article likens Linux geeks to the Mafia. Excerpts:

In a coordinated combination of attacks which included a broad DOS attack on Sys-Con

Incorrect. It was not a DoS attack, but a slashdotting.

This is power that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and many governments could only dream of having. The power to control the press and the skills contained in this organization are likely capable of disrupting travel, power grids and other broad national infrastructure systems if their demands are not met.

Yeah, all Linux users are terrorists. Give me a break.

At long last...

xymphora has changed his blog template.

Haloscan

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

This post (the above sentence, that is) was created automatically by Haloscan. I wanted to delete it initially, but decided to let it remain. Let's give these folks some well-earned publicity.

I don't really like the trackback link. It sort of adds to the clutter, but there doesn't seem to be any way to remove it.

Smoking to be banned in movies, TV serials

What a half-assed idea. Going by this logic, why shouldn't the showing of murder and theft scenes be banned too?

Slashdotted for all the wrong reasons

My recent post about Yahoo being sued by a woman somehow found its way into the index of a blog search engine called metaeureka, as a result of which this blog was subjected to a mini-slashdotting (not a slashdotting really, since blogger.com is quite resilient). As usual, the search term was porn-related: 'nude photos'.

Sigh.

BHEL Disinvestment

The Hindu has an interesting article on the BHEL disinvestment. It throws light on an often-overlooked reason for the M&A folks to target these companies:

...BHEL, like several other "navratnas" has been showing profits continuously for some years, but has not been allowed to spend the money for its own expansion and development. Instead, it has simply added to its reserves, such that its reserves currently amount to well over Rs. 50,000 crore.

The corporate predators must be licking their chops at the thought of getting their hands on such a windfall. From the article:

The fear is that if they are privatised, the private purchaser will then have access to the use of these huge reserves that it can use to its own ends rather than in socially desirable ways.

Rightly so.

Tip for beating the computer at chess

Well, not all programs, but at least Knights:

1. Start a game. Make a couple of moves.
2. When it is your turn, save the game to disk.
3. Now reopen the game and make your move.
4. Watch with glee as the computer's clock runs down.

It's a bug; 100% reproducible if you follow the above steps.

Yahoo sued

From Slashdot:

After notifying Yahoo that two member profiles about her were not authorized, Cecilia Barnes of Oregon is suing Yahoo for $3 million for failing to take down the profiles in a timely manner. The profiles allegedly set up by her ex-boyfriend contained nude photos of her along with her email address and work phone number.

*ears prick up*

(Note: The member profiles have since been taken down by Yahoo)

Never mind.

Comeback of the century

Alright, maybe that's an exaggeration, but three goals in the space of six minutes is something. In a way, Milan paid the price for having sneaked into the final after such a poor performance against PSV.

One thing I noticed in the penalty shootout was Dudek's shameless gamesmanship; the unsolicited way he kept giving the ball to Milan's penalty takers made me want to clean out his clock. He was also doing some pretty weird things at the goal line to psych them out.

Wanted: Greasemonkey user script

...to suppress all hyperlinks in Justin Raimondo's essays. The links really spoil the flow.

The Fugitive

I watch only sitcoms usually on TV, but I came upon an episode of The Fugitive yesterday. I enjoyed both the movie and its sequel, so I decided to give it five minutes or so. I ended up watching it fully, and am even thinking of adding it to my regular list of programs to catch.

Something about the plot line -- the good guy being pursued relentlessly across the continent, living by his wits, avoiding capture by a whisker and living to fight another day -- really appeals to me. There is also some wanderlust involved, going to new places and meeting new people. I am not sure whether the analogy is correct, but I am also reminded of The Dark Tower, for some reason.

Conundrum

The last page in today's Hindu has two ads: one for a top-of-the-line mobile phone that costs about Rs 21,000, and another that hawks a motor bike for Rs 33,000.

I am sure this says something profound about the country's economic priorities and the way its finances are being run, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.

Meditation and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

Any book on meditation worth its salt will advice the novice to start off by counting his breath to quieten the mind. Some of the more high-falutin ones will even advice you to follow the breath in your mind; never mind the fact that you have no fricken idea how to do so.

I have always had a problem with the counting-the-breaths approach. For some reason, whenever I start counting my breath, it would seem like my breath becomes aware that it is being counted, and starts playing to the gallery: "Oooh... I am being watched; let's do something fancy..." and bingo, it would get faster, it would get shallower, it would start dancing the Macarena... in short, do everything except assist me in achieving a quiet mind.

A way out of this problem is to inhale from the stomach (more precisely, from the diaphragm area), and exhale through the nostrils. This is quite effective, except that I need to place my palm over the diaphragm for this to work. Which doesn't work when you are sitting in the lotus position, with your palms touching your heels...

Speaking of The Hindu

...they have recently started publishing Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman's columns from The New York Times. Though we have access to their writing via the Internet, it's nice to read them in print along with the morning coffee.

I have always enjoyed reading content from The Guardian in The Hindu. Guardian's refreshing neutrality has neatly balanced the scales that would otherwise have tipped the content towards a right-wing, pro-war viewpoint. NYT's liberal leanings will complement this quite nicely.

Deccan Chronicle in Chennai

Deccan Chronicle is now available in Chennai. It is priced at one rupee so as to wean away readers from the more expensive (Rs 4.50) The Hindu.

Going by DC's contents, I don't think the Hindu folks need to worry too much, although it is nice to see a fire being lit under their complacent asses. Deccan Chronicle has the irritating habit of never finishing a page one story on page one itself; it's always "Turn to page 2" for the rest of the story. They are also counting on sensationalist stories to increase their readership (case in point: "New drug makes sex last longer").

But to give credit where it's due, their coverage of international news is much broader. They seem to have a London correspondent who is working feverishly to fill up column space (he/she is the author of the wonder sex drug story, incidentally).

Arsenal wins FA Cup

The electric power started misbehaving during extra time -- one of those typical midsummer voltage fluctuations. Luckily, TVs seem to function well even with a fraction of the required voltage, and I was able to continue watching the match. Until the moment Lungberg's penalty just made it past the goal line, when the power went off completely, leaving me grinding my teeth in frustration. By the time the electricity was restored (in all its 220-volt glory), a jubilant Viera was already sharing his joy with a reporter.

<sour grapes>Never mind, I never really liked English football that much, anyway.</sour grapes>

Two words to add to my vocabulary...

thanks to George Galloway:

lick·spit·tle n. A fawning underling; a toady.
pop·in·jay n. A vain, talkative person.

:-))

Telling it like it is

Juan Cole lets the anti-abortionists have it between their eyes:

The problem is that no religious scriptures teach any such thing [that life begins at conception]. No one even knew about conception (i.e. the fertilization of eggs by spermatazoa) until recently. If you think about it, the discovery had to come after the invention of the microscope. When the Bible and the New Testament were written, and for centuries after among church fathers and authorities, life was thought to begin with the "quickening" (i.e. when the mother could feel the baby move). A blastocyte is not a human being and it is not a person. It is a blastocyte. It may or may not develop into a human being. Large numbers of fertilized eggs never get attached to the uterine wall and just get flushed down the toilet. Shall we hold a funeral for each of them? The poor deluded fundamentalists who know about this even think they will meet brothers and sisters in heaven that they never knew about. And on such irrational and frankly stupid bases (who told them they were going to heaven?), they want to forbid us to cure Alzheimers, and want to force raped women to give birth to the babies of their rapists. It makes a person want to tear hair out, thinking about it.

Quote of the day

"Another book to read is Scott Meyers "Effective C++". It should've really been called "Defective C++" because a large part of the book is telling you what features of the language to avoid or be extra careful with."
-- Usenet post