August 13, 2012

The Hindu on the trial of Gu Kailai:

However, a detailed account of the prosecutor’s case that emerged late last week has provided rare insights into the dealings of one of China’s most popular politicians, who was a key figure in the 25-member Politburo before his suspension in April. Part of the account was released by the official Xinhua news agency, while other details came from an Anhui student who sat in on the court’s proceedings. His account was independently verified by a lawyer who was present in the courtroom.

Read that again carefully. They're not talking about the lack of transparency regarding the government in China -- contracts, policies, and so on; they're talking about the lengths one has to go to to even know how the trial is being conducted. It's not like state secrets would be laid bare if the proceedings were not held in camera (so to speak); this is just a plain old murder case. But again, this is China we're talking about. There is a good chance that a body double would serve Ms Gu's sentence out.

On a related note, we're once again reminded of the questionable non-merit-based admission policies of Ivy League universities.

August 10,2012

Nicholas Kristof (emphasis mine):

US President Barack Obama's finest moments in foreign policy, like the Osama bin Laden raid or the Libya intervention

Stopped reading right there. Mr Kristof, welcome to the kill file. We have some delightful companions for you there.

August 9, 2012

A mobile phone for everybody + UIDAI + mobile number portability = Panopticon

July 30, 2012

The Hindu's policy regarding online comments:

1. Comments will be moderated
2. Comments that are abusive, personal, incendiary or irrelevant cannot be published.
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I can see where they're coming from with respect to #3 -- they don't want their pages to be polluted by the Neanderthals hanging out at rediff.com -- and find their grammar nazi behaviour naive and endearing, but I still think their backsides need a strong and liberal application of the cluestick.

July 10, 2012

Quote of the day: "Next, we'll probably hear that Lloyd Blankfein over at Goldman Sachs has been tinkering with the rotation of the earth in order to gain a few micro-milliseconds of advantage in his firm's high frequency trading rackets."
-- James Howard Kunstler

There has been a lot of commentary about the confusion regarding the name of the Indian prisoner released from Pakistan. In particular, somebody mentioned that the returning (pardoned) prisoner should keep his trap shut and not blab about being a spy for India, as this makes the task of negotiating the release of other such people all the more difficult. Can't really fault this logic, but I have more fundamental issues: why are we sending folks into enemy territory to engage in such acts (not to mention bombings, if the allegations against Sarabjit Singh have any merit)? This may be a naive view of how foreign policy is conducted, but ahem, we are different, aren't we? Ours is the land of Gandhi and the Buddha -- we would never do these things, things that only other countries do, would we? In my rule book, if a fair and impartial trial (best conducted by a disinterested third country like, say, Iceland (I wanted to say Norway, but some folks may remonstrate against this since Norway is -- was? -- involved in mediation efforts in Sri Lanka and may not fully qualify as a disinterested party)) shows that Sarabjit did commit these things he's accused of, he should hang. Period. No 'My country, right or wrong', 'But he was only doing his patriotic bit for the country' business. Patriotism is taking a gun and defending your border against an enemy, not terrorism or other nefarious activities that would get you peremptorily -- and legally, I think -- executed in wartime. One positive fallout of such an action would be that we can mete out the deserved justice to Kasab as well, instead of waiting on him hand and foot in prison. This will also open the eyes of gullible folks who get railroaded into doing James Bond duty for the country.

Quote of the day

"... at times, it was like watching a practice game involving ten green traffic cones as Spain cut Ireland apart.
-- On Ireland's exit from Euro 2012

Ouch.

The JEE Controversy

Some thoughts on the JEE controversy (disclosure: I received my bachelor's degree from IIT Madras):

1. There is merit to the argument that IITs have not fulfilled their mission of making India a science and technology powerhouse. There is a big disconnect between the quality of the undergraduate students (leaving aside the dilution of the standards in recent years) and the quality of the engineering and R&D output produced. Also, a very small fraction of the undergrads take up careers related to their majors (I too am guilty of this). However, this argument is orthogonal to the problem of determining the best way to admit students to engineering colleges in India.


2. Having each IIT conduct its own entrance examination is not the answer. Subjecting a high school student to, say, 15 entrance examinations borders on child abuse.


3. The UPA government seems hell-bent on wreaking havoc with the IITs. First it was the increase in the number of IITs, now this. There is a strong lobby of bureaucrats and other elites who want their wards to go to prestigious institutions like the IITs, but are stymied by pesky things like the JEE. The more enterprising of them wangle admissions from top American universities using their connections -- don't even get me started on the backdoor alumni recommendation route that gets somebody like Bush Junior into Yale; god forbid the day such a thing becomes reality in India. The reservation for other backward classes is also an attempt by the elites in this direction. If you can't beat 'em, dilute 'em.


4. One of the charter goals of the alumni associations should be to protect the IIT brand. I have not been recently involved in the goings-on of the IITM alumni association, so I don't know if this is being taken up. If things continue to progress at this rate, there may come a time when degrees from the IITs are accorded the same respect as those from some of the more infamous colleges in Chennai (one would be surprised to know of the esteem those degrees were held in two or three generations ago).
   

June 1, 2012

Well, it took three years for my prediction to come true. "We cannot wait forever" -- indeed, how magnanimous of you.

May 29, 2012

IPL 5 is over. While the matches provided a lot of excitement, I would be more convinced about the genuineness of the whole thing if someone did an analysis of the numbers and proved that there were no match/spot fixing shenanigans. One thing that comes to mind is no balls: some statistical significance studies on the number of no balls bowled versus the bowlers and at what stage in the match they were bowled, was it a touch-and-go decision or was it blatant overstepping, and so on.

Having recently witnessed the scenes of celebration at the Etihad Stadium, the contrast with the IPL final could not have been starker. The inordinate focus on the owner -- who might as well have worn a clown costume, by the way -- instead of the players who made it happen, the lack of genuine grassroots support (Usha "Look at me, I have a whistle in my mouth" Uthup, Juhi Chawla and other assorted celebrities trying to warm themselves in the spotlights do not count), the contrived joy and enthusiasm of the players who did not figure in the playing eleven -- there is a difference between waiting 44 years for a trophy as compared to five.

May 14, 2012

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that"
-- Bill Shankly

You don't care about the quality of the passing, the skills on display, or the individual brilliance. The only thing that matters is that the ball crosses the line between the goalposts, and twice at that. The tears that slowly begin to roll when it looks like it's all over, the look of despair that turns into joy (and vice versa for the United fans -- a bonus if you're a staunch anybody-but-United guy like me), Aguero's shirtless run towards the corner flag, Joey Hart terminating the interview on account of becoming overwhelmed by the situation, the commentator's schadenfreude ("How will the fans face somebody in a red shirt this evening? How will they have the moral fiber to get up tomorrow morning and go to work...?" Fuck you.) turning into astonishment.

The Beautiful Game? No, but this is football.

On a personal note, I'm not even a City fan, but the euphoria I felt when they scored the winner was comparable to what I felt when Del Piero scored in the 2006 World Cup semi-final.

Oh, and by the way, I stubbed my toe quite hard when I jumped up from the couch to celebrate. Still hurts, but totally worth it.

May 10, 2012

The Times of India might as well rechristen themselves as The Pimps of India.

There is a reason they sell the paper for less than 25 bucks a month: it isn't their readers they make their money from.

May 9, 2012

Yesteryear's heartthrob
Is it trademark shake of head?
Is it Parkinson's?

The Havells ad featuring Rajesh Khanna has to be the most depressing thing I've seen on TV for some time.

April 30, 2012

This is probably a hoax, but intriguing all the same.

Staying on the subject of pop culture and hip hop, have you ever watched a movie that was so bad that it went around the world and became good when it came back? Something along the lines of music that gets voted the worst and climbs the chart because of this? Well, I watched such a move yesterday (Torque, in case anyone's interested). Bad (or non-existent, since we're talking about Ice-Cube here) acting, cliched dialogue (case in point: "Don't pick on girls", says the resident bimbo after boinking a bad guy -- my brain cells are still tingling at this repartee), you name it, this movie had it. My only regret is that I couldn't watch it till the end. Just kidding. Maybe not.

Happened to me recently

Link

Near death, explained

I have been skeptical of NDEs in the past, but this article pretty much nails it in terms of evidence.

March 15, 2012

I have said this before, but my comment bears repetition in light of today's cartoons. Why do the folks at The Hindu give pride of place (i.e., the op-ed page) to insipid crap like this:


when they have a much better talent on their payrolls, producing stuff like this, stuff which has to languish in the inner pages:

Quote of the day

"I am getting out in funny way, like flicking to point"
-- Virender Sehwag on his recent form

Don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

The Goonda Regiment

The men in uniform are at it again, demonstrating that pesky little things like respect for the rule of law don't apply to them. A couple of questions for them: didn't you swear to protect the country -- which, last time I checked, includes its citizens -- when you signed up in the army? Does beating up innocent civilians who had nothing to do with your tiff with the police jibe with the oath you took? The excuse that the police behaved in an abusive manner does not cut it: two wrongs do not make a right. The particularly galling thing is that the violence was perpetrated not by jawans, but by fricking captains, who are supposed to set an example for the men they command (Update: it looks it was jawans). But then again, I guess this is in keeping with the state of things when you have a Chief of Staff hell-bent on clinging on to his position at any cost.

Where are we going?

(Warning: I don't know where I'm going with this post; I guess it ends when it ends)

I used to read Clusterfuck Nation and Club Orlov on and off in the past, whenever somebody in one of my regular haunts made a mention of one of their more noteworthy posts. I subscribed to their RSS feeds a while back (RSS is just like Twitter, except there is no 140 character restriction, and the content is slightly more meaningful than updates about celebrities' breakfasts *snark mode off*). A regular dose of doom and gloom stuff (maybe I should include Mish Shedlock's blog here as well), while fulfilling its disaster porn role, doesn't result in any constructive or positive outcome; for someone in India, being exposed everyday to the 'things have never been better, buy your dream car, your dream house, take your dream vacation, and while you're doing all this, tweet about it to your 1579 Facebook friends in real time using your ultra slim shiny smartphone' hard sell, this seems a world away, but is it really so? What would happen to us if the eurozone crisis finally comes to a head and countries start defaulting? If the price of oil goes through the roof because the USS Enterprise is torpedoed in the Straits of Hormuz? If there is a global ban on travel because of the next outbreak of bird/swine/monkey/rhino flu that came about because some scientist in a lab somewhere was wondering 'Gee, what would happen if I take this test tube of monkey piss and slightly shake it above the head of this disgruntled pigeon who has been looking askance at me since yesterday morning?'? What if the Indian real estate bubble finally bursts? What if the Sensex tanks? What if our exports took a nosedive, taking along with them the aspirations of the newly rich middle class? What if we run out of drinking water? Electricity?

The answer to these questions is pretty simple, really: a lot of people will be screwed, some more so than others. But how many of these scenarios will actually play out within the next year or so (ignoring the bits about electricity and water; I think we're safe on both fronts for another decade)?

One can go about analyzing these issues in a rational manner and doing our research, but this is not really needed; we can figure things out if we keep in mind certain things:

1. If bad things are coming down the pike, they will invariably be dumped on the people at the bottom of the food chain, those who cannot complain too much.

2. People in positions of power and wealth will game the system and get away with it every time.

3. No one can be proven right or wrong when it comes to principles of economics and ideology. The world is too complicated, there are too many variables, you cannot do double blind experiments with control groups, etc. In practical terms, this means that no philosophy or approach can ever be definitively disproved and jettisoned; any pundit worth his salt can rationalize away the failures and non-conformances to the 'model'.

4. People keep expecting the next messiah to solve all their problems. Not going to happen.

5. The kind of hyperinflation or currency crash similar to the experiences of the Zimbabweans or the Wiemar Republic will not happen with either the dollar or the euro.

6. When people in power are in trouble, watch out for distractions, both catastrophic (Iran vs USrael) and merely irritating (retail FDI controversy, Salman Rushdie). Also be prepared for dirty tricks. These people have too much vested in the status quo to go without a fight. They're are also very smart (which is a given considering where they are and how long they have remained there). Cf. Women's reservation bill, Lokpal bill.

7. Everybody has their price.

Applying these, for want of a better term, principles, to all the questions raised above is left as an exercise for the reader.

The Retail FDI Controversy

With all the noise and disruption of parliament over the allowing of FDI in the retail sector, who's now talking about the Lokpal bill? Mission accomplished.