Here's an idea

Abdul Kalam's supposed humiliation at the hands of the Continental Airlines security staff has kicked off a much needed debate on the privileges our so called VIPs enjoy. Here's an idea: instead of referring to these folks as VIPs, why not start calling them SLs (short for Security Liability)? This would a) take away the sheen associated with the original tag and b) lower the cost to the exchequer (the assumption being that the politicos would be shamed into requesting that they do not want to be provided security, owing to the negative connotation of the new tag).

The Rajapaksa interview

The Hindu is carrying an interview with the Sri Lankan president. Most of his answers are politically correct and are what we want to hear -- man, he's one smooth operator, alright -- but this one exposes his true colours:

Q: There has been international concern over the assaults and pressures on journalists in Sri Lanka. Some of these journalists were your personal friends, especially Lasantha Wickrematunge [Editor of The Sunday Leader] who was gunned down in January 2009. Then, in June, a Tamil woman journalist [Krishni Ifhan née Kandasamy of Internews] was abducted in Colombo by unidentified persons [who questioned her for several hours before releasing her in Kandy].

A: Most of these cases were created, I would say. If you fight someone in the street and that man comes and hits you, can the government take responsibility? But we have not done anything against journalists even when they attack us.

Nice dodge.

BTW, in case you haven't done so already, go and read 'And then they came for me', Lasantha Wickrematunge's voice from beyond the grave -- without doubt the most poignant thing I've read in a long while.

Eight queens problem in Lisp

(defun solve-n-queens (n)
  (let ((solutions nil))
    (defun solve-internal (board k)
      (if (eq k (- n 1))
        (dolist (x1 (solve board k))
          (push x1 solutions))
        (dolist (x2 (solve board k))
          (solve-internal x2 (+ k 1)))))
    (solve-internal (make-board n) 0)
    solutions))

(defun solve (board k)
  (let ((solutions nil))
    (dotimes (i (length board))
      (if (present? i k (get-safe-squares board))
          (push (place-queen (clone-board board) (list i k)) solutions)))
    solutions))

Helper procedures left as an exercise for the gentle reader.

Pop Quiz

Which of these two news items is from The Onion?

*This* is how you do it

Their names differ just by one letter, but their career paths can't be more divergent. While one is an over-hyped and pampered underachiever whose claim to fame owes more to her tight T-shirts and short skirts, the other has been quietly flying under the radar, establishing a name for herself on the world stage.

Judicial overreach

From The Hindu:

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Centre to file an affidavit by June 26 on the steps taken to ensure the safety and security of Indian students under racial attacks in Australia and Canada.

It's nice that there's somebody to pull the government up for its non-performance, but is this the job of the judiciary? Last time I checked, their role was to interpret the law and the constitution, nothing more.

Harish Khare appointed PM's media advisor

Looks like all the years of slanted op-eds supporting the Congress party have finally paid off.

Subramaniam Swamy on EVMs

There is an op-ed by Subramaniam Swamy on EVMs in today's Hindu . He raises a lot of pertinent points, one of which is quite damning (italics mine):

For example, the respected International Electrical & Electronics Engineering Journal (IEEE, May 2009, p.23) has published an article by two eminent professors of computer science, titled “Trustworthy Voting.” They conclude that although electronic voting machines do offer a myriad of benefits, these cannot be reaped unless nine suggested safeguards are put in place for protecting the integrity of the outcome. None of these nine safeguards, however, is in place in Indian EVMs.

I googled for this article, to confirm whether there was any merit to his allegation, but the article is behind a pay wall. Another interesting point he raises is the employment of convicted hackers by a political party just before the elections (no prizes for guessing which party):

On the eve of the 2009 elections in India, I raised the issue at a press conference in Chennai, pointing out that a political party just before the elections had recruited those who had been convicted in the U.S. for hacking bank accounts on the Internet and credit cards.

If these allegations are true, my already low level of confidence in these machines just went down another notch.

Update (May 6, 2010): Vindication from a University of Michigan study.

A fool and his money ...

Today I shelled out $5 to buy the PDF version of the Blue Book when I could have had it for free. And to think that the money could have been put to better use, like helping out Arthur Silber, for example, makes it all the more painful. Grrr.

Here's a business opportunity

From an article in the latest issue of the Communications of the ACM that analyses the reasons for the limited success of the OLPC:

... if the machine fails, it is up to the family to replace it or the child must do without.

Time for someone to step in with an insurance policy, methinks.

Tin foil hat time

Considering that Tech Mahindra is facing difficulties in dealing with the spurt in the share price of Satyam, this statement by the Satyam chairman seems suspiciously like an attempt to drive down the price to levels comparable to the open offer price. I dare say anybody in his right mind would deliberately talk down a company this way otherwise:

"It is hugely overstaffed, costs are very high, and the revenue picture in the immediate future is not that great."

General Motors or Chevrolet?

General Motors have taken a full page ad in the newspapers to convince the world that their Indian operations are going strong, no reason to doubt their solvency, yada yada. If you look at the ad, you will find exactly one mention of 'General Motors': the line below the CEO's name and designation (well, two if you count the GM logo in a picture of one of their factories). It's 'Chevrolet' everywhere else: it's almost like they want to dissociate themselves from the G-word -- which is sort of schizophrenic, considering the intent of the ad.

EVMs

Both Jayalalitha and Subramaniam Swamy have questioned the authenticity of the recently concluded general elections. While they have not substantiated their allegations, consider these facts:

1. Media organizations were prohibited from conducting exit polls.


2. Navin Chawla was accused by ex-CEC Gopalaswami to be partisan, going so far as taking bathroom breaks during crucial election planning meetings, and passing on information about the happenings to the Congress netas.


3. There is no verifiable paper audit trail that independently proves that my vote was registered for the candidate of my choice.


4. The candidate's name is linked to the voting button via a strip of paper stuck to the top of the voting machine (rough analogy: numbers stuck to a phone keypad). How do we know that the paper is really in sync with the candidate details fed into the machine? For that matter, how do we even know for sure that two buttons are not connected to the same candidate?


5. There is a huge disconnect between then opinion polls and the actual results.

Got work?

From ABC News via Mish's blog:

Casey Savage graduated from Trinity College in Hartford with a 3.8 grade-point average and honors. What he doesn't have is a job.

"I've talked to 24 different firms so far. Hedge funds, investment banks, private equity shops," Savage said. "And I just feel that there's limited opportunities at this point."

It's a bad situation, alright, but I can't feel too much sympathy for someone whose goal -- right out of college, no less -- is to take up a career where one's job: a) doesn't add anything to the real economy b) involves either a Ponzi scheme or blowing up the next bubble and c) screwing over old widows and pensioners.

You can't make this stuff up

First IPL2 semi-final: Delhi Daredevils' Dilshan, a Sri Lankan, hits a boundary and is applauded by somebody holding a sign that reads (in Tamil) Tamizhanda!!.

MotoGP

I haven't been paying attention to MotoGP for a while, so I don't know how long the unedifying practice of changing bikes during the race has been in place. Doesn't really matter: it sucks big time, and takes away an important aspect where MotoGP scored over Formula One.

Maybe it's my belief in the KISS principle, but the idea of starting and finishing the race non-stop and relying only on your driving skills -- as opposed to the scheming and tactics associated with pit stops, fueling, tyre change, etc. -- appeals immensely to me. While we are at it, why not dispense with having two drivers and cars per team as well? It leads to charges of favoritism and ill feelings between the drivers, and results in violations of the spirit of racing when one driver is instructed to let his partner win in the interests of the team.

There is also a financial benefit to the no pit stops strategy -- think of all the money saved because you don't need such a large crew in every race.

Nation.pk

There's this web site called nation.pk that keeps passing off lies as news. The latest one is a news item that Seymour Hersh claimed in an interview to an Arab TV channel that Dick Cheney ordered the assassination of Benazir Bhutto -- a claim that has been debunked quite thoroughly. I would have let this go if it had been a one-off thing, but these guys did it earlier too, trying to pass off a controversial but unattributed quote to Robin Cook (I tried searcing for this in their web site, but it looks like they pulled that story).

Prabakaran

The Hindu is carrying a 1986 interview with Prabakaran as part of the news coverage of his death. While one must take his answers with a pinch of salt -- he was living in India at the time, and this was before the IPKF operations -- I can't help but think that republishing the interview is going to have the unintentional effect of building sympathy for him, and gloss over the transmogrification that has happened over the 23 years since then.

Party's over, folks

Time to say goodbye to the easy money.

Huh?

According to this story, retail sales fell in April by 0.4%, while according to this one, they were up by 1.2% in the same month. Both stories are carried by Yahoo Finance (sourced from Bloomberg and NYTimes via Indian Express), and both were posted within minutes of each other, probably by the same journalist -- as indicated by the URL. Mind you, it could be that one of these numbers is year-on-year while the other is month over month, but it's still sloppy journalism if I have to figure this out on my own.