History project

Maybe one day kids in school will be able to learn history by experiencing it. I was reading about Kabir and Ramanuja. Apparently they were active in India around the 14th-15th centuries. Then I wondered what else was happening around that time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_century). But it would've been cool if there could be something like the "2nd life" where kids in school could go live a virtual life in these times. Maybe they could be given "Virtual Reality" gear so they can feel and smell stuff. I think this will be such an enriching experience. Technologically we are not too far from this.

Imagine doing this in school with your classmates. Wont you be waiting to get back to class. Will kids want to "drop-out" from such experiences. I mean can doing drugs or canoodling with the opposite gender beat such experiences. They would have a medium to express anything that they want. All their energy can be easily channeled. The schools will look more like montessori schools wont they?

Tagore on non-cooperation. - letter to Charles Freer Andrews

excerpt from Tagore's letter, drawing a parallel between vedic v/s buddhistic philosphoy and support for the non-cooperation movement in 1921 in India. I find this a new insight into the vedic thought process.

Brahma-vidya in India has for its Object mukti, emancipation, while Buddhism has nirvana, extinction. It may be argued that both have the same idea [under]  different names. But names represent attitudes of mind, emphasize particular aspects of truth. Mukti draws our attention to the positive, and nirvana to the negative side of triuth. Buddha kept silence all through his teachings about the turth of the Om. the everlasting yes, his implication being that by the negative path of destroying the self we naturally reach that truth. Therefore he emphasized the factof dukkha, misery, which had to be avoided and the Brahma-vidya emphasized the fact of anandam which has to be attained. The latter cult also needs for its fulfilment the discipline of self-abnegation, but it holds before its view the idea of Brahma , not only at the end but all throught he process of realization. Therefore the idea of life's training was different in the Vedic period from that of the Buddhistic. In the former it was the purification of life's joy, in the latter it was the eradicating of it. The abnormal type of ascetism to which Buddhism gave rise in India revelled in celibacy and mutliation of life in all different forms. But the forest life of the Brahmanas was not antagonistic to the social life of man, but harmonious with it. It was like our musical instrument tanpura whose duty is to supply the fundamental notes to the music to save it from going astray into discordance. It believed in anadam, the music of the soul, and its own simplicity was not kill it but to guide it. 

Artless Mercenaries

Rabindranath Tagore in one of his letters from Rangoon :
Once upon a time men used to say that Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and plenty, dwelt in trade. They visualized her not only as splendid but also as beautiful. For at that time man was not yet separated from trade,  there was a communion between the weaver and his loom, the smith's hand and the smith's hammer, the artisan and his work of art. The heart of man used then to express itself through trade in varied forms of richness and beauty. how else could Lakshmi have acquired her lotus throne?

It does seem as if we have all become mercenaries. However a more relevant question for me is: what of the man with mediocre abilities, who wants to express his heart in this complex heartless system?

Diary: Faith Benefits

Teaching kids to have faith in a God might be an essential survival skill. At this point even though I can rationally reject the popular concept of God, I can still be comfortable with the idea of being able to find refuge with someone larger than life. I think I am able to do this because I was at some point a strong believer. Maybe if someone raised their kid to pooh-pooh the idea of God in all its forms, the kid would be really "lonely" at times.



This "idea of God" is a good companion, because its an image from within our own brains. This image cannot do anything to betray our trust, because we just wouldn't allow it to. So suddenly now God sounds like an imaginary friend. I think they would serve the same purpose. However personally I am not able to find safety in the idea of an imaginary friend. I become very aware of the fact that I am the creator of this fictional friend. Whereas with the God character its been implanted in there without me being very aware of it. So now rationally even though if you think that God is the sum-total of everything thats beyond the understanding of human brains, then I have a face for it. I can leave stuff up to it, cos I know at times victory against the will of god will come slowly and with a lot of patience.

:)

less

Nothing to lean on.

Mind it

Its our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free
-Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

"War Between the Sexes:" The Co-evolution of Genitalia in Waterfowl

http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=2050 --- According to the study, in various independent lineages of ducks females developed more elaborate oviducts as males evolved longer phalluses. In other lineages females lost oviduct complexity as the phallus evolved toward smaller size. Why all this dynamic evolution? Brennan hypothesizes that the female waterfowl have evolved these unique anatomical features as physical counter-measures to evade male attempts to assert control over reproduction. "Despite the fact that most waterfowl form monogamous pairs, forced copulations by other males — the avian equivalent of rape — are common in many waterfowl," said Prum. "The length of the phallus of a species is strongly correlated with the frequency of forced copulations." "In response to male attempts to force their paternity on females, female waterfowl may be able to assert their own behavioral and anatomical means of controlling who fathers their offspring," Brennan said.



Evolution of convolutions in the Mallard oviduct (left) and phallus (right) may give the female duck an anatomical means of controlling who fathers their offspring. Bar measure cm. (Courtesy of Patricia Brennan)

Cat droppings a lucrative business in Philippines

One of the most expensive coffee's is extracted from the dung of an animal called the "Civet" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civet)

Exotic Dung Coffee

Kopi Luwak, also known as caphe cut chon (fox-dung coffee) in Vietnam and kape alamid in the Philippines, is coffee that is prepared using coffee cherries that have been eaten and partially digested by the Asian Palm Civet, then harvested from its feces.

[Videos]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvyc41gEIrA&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjeAckIlBAk&feature=related

The rampaging elephant- Vir Sanghvi

[Vir Sanghvi @ HT] --- The frustration is understandable. There are no quick fixes. But on both scores, there are long-term solutions available and we must work towards them. The problem with our political system is that parties have no mechanism to allow talent to rise through the ranks. So Indian politics is a squalid, corrupt family business. I found it strange that nobody in Bombay made this point. Instead, they listened to young dynasts who appeared on TV to lecture us. Such is our class bias that if politicians speak good English we think they are okay. And politics never changes. Similarly, the only way to fight terrorism is through covert operations and better intelligence, not through carpet-bombing. Our intelligence agencies are demoralised and faction-ridden. They need more money and better leadership.

Fox Searchlight - Slumdog Millionaire

http://www.foxsearchlight.com/slumdogmillionaire/ ---


What a mind blowing movie !!

thought

One of the ways, faith in god can help maintaining peace is by taking away the need to avenge oneself. People can leave it up to God.

quote

context: all the religious violence in the world.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate, and Hate leads to suffering.
http://www.quotiki.com/quote.aspx?id=7443

Indian Press

I am not vexed but genuinely confused. India has good writers who can write very good opinion pieces. India is considered to have lots of IT talent. India definitely has the wealth. But our newspapers are of such a low quality. Are the monied being purely greedy or lethargic ? Or is the volume of the english news Publication in India such a negligible fraction of the Hindi news. And Hindi has been neglected by our country as a "pride in being anglicized" policy. 

India Uncut - published by Amit Varma

http://www.indiauncut.com/ --- I am reminded of Barack Obama's words about the killers of 9/11: "My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with such serene satisfaction."

--
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious" - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Medvedev faces hard sell in Latin America - International Herald Tribune

a) why is Russia so keen on being super power ? Why cant they just focus on strengthening themselves domestically ? Is it that power is addictive or is it that the politicians are using this form of nationalistic pride to get into and retain power ?
b) Obama is raising so many hopes world-wide its amazing, isnt it ? if he is a successful leader which all signs seem to be indicating. It'll be an amazing ride for the people of this great country.
c) Just reading this article makes you see that so many people and power centers have a lot to gain with higher oil prices.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/21/america/russia.php?page=1 --- But when Medvedev reaches the region next week, he will find it drastically altered by events - and in some cases, less receptive to his overtures. Plunging oil prices and the global financial crisis, which have hammered Russia particularly hard, have raised questions about Russia's reliability as an economic partner, while Senator Barack Obama's victory in the presidential race has raised hopes throughout Latin America of a new era of improved relations with the United States.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Four philosophical questions to make your brain hurt

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7739493.stm ---
It's World Philosophy Day - an opportunity to contemplate one's very existence and whether computer monitors really exist, says David Bain.

man made ?

2711270118_c3425428d9_o
Originally uploaded by zimzimzimizmi

People have problems accepting this. This is so frigging beautiful. What kind of mental bias prevents you from seeing this ? When does education not open your mind ? When it is delivered through a system seen as a means for upward mobility ? The heading says "man-made ?" I wonder if other species have so much variation amongst them and do they have racial biases. They who think more instinctively and fear the unknown as a means for survival ?

Free LCD TVs (Santa Comes Early) | Popular Science

Imagine seeing this in Churchgate station. I think when I was in bombay I wouldnt think too much about it. But in this country a lot of people know what a luxurious life is and they can feel happy when they see this.


http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2008-11/free-lcd-tvs-santa-comes-early --- Commuters in Grand Central Station got a morning sugar shock of eye candy when Sharp unveiled a 26-foot tall Christmas tree made by stacking 43 of its Aquous LCD televisions. The panels, growing in size from 19 inches at the top to 52 inches at the bottom, are wired together to display coordinated video shows, such as a waterfall that spills from the top panels and splashes down on the bottom screens, or snowflakes that float down the length of the tree. It currently cycles through nine patterns created by Japanese video artist Tsuyoshi Takashiro. To keep things fresh, Sharp will replace the originals with about 10 new patterns in December.

Report finds that East European migrants don't harm economies - International Herald Tribune

http://iht.com/articles/2008/11/18/europe/migrate.php --- Since the big expansion in 2004, the number of citizens from the new 10 nations residing in the old 15 countries has increased by roughly 1.1 million. Totaling around 900,000 in 2003, it now stands at about 2 million - a fraction of the approximately 80 million inhabitants of those countries. Many of the more prosperous Western members of the 27-nation bloc imposed restrictions on their labor market. Four countries - Denmark, Belgium, Germany and Austria - still apply some restrictions to workers from the new 2004 members.

How to Run a Con | Psychology Today Blogs

http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-moral-molecule/200811/how-run-a-con --- Why did this con work? Let's do some neuroscience. While the primary motivator from my perspective was greed, the pigeon drop cleverly engages THOMAS (The Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System). If you've been reading The Moral Molecule, you will remember THOMAS from earlier posts on robot brides, couchsurfing, and why we touch each other. THOMAS is a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust we have been shown--even with strangers. The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of THOMAS, the human brain makes us feel good when we help others--this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. "I need your help" is a potent stimulus for action.

Hope

In the last 2-3 days I heard 2 different kinds of quotes about hope. In the movie Charlotte Gray before she is sent over to Paris they ask her "What is most important hope, faith .. ".  That struck me. If you are going into a combat zone, and very stressed by the war. Hope is what will keep you alive. It seems like an animal instinct (although I dont know if they are capable of hope).

I saw fight club last evening and
Narrator: And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.



They both seem to be right. But I think the second one has more truth to it. Hope brings in a lot of expectations along with it. De-coupling them is not an option. 

depressing pic

[via reddit]

YouTube - Awesome CNN Hologram Interview

I didnt know this was commercial. I didnt even know academics or Cisco invested in this. This is news to me.
CNN video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js6b31_p5cc ---

Cisco presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcfNC_x0VvE

[source : http://waxy.org/links/ through MeFi]

Why humans are so quick to take offense

[slate]

You could say our lives as social beings are ruled by the three R's: respect—the sense that proper deference has been paid to our status, reputation—the carefully maintained perception of our qualities, and reciprocity—the belief that our actions are responded to fairly. In other words, high school may be the most perfect recapitulation of the evolutionary pressures that shaped us as a species.

France. Sex. Problem? - NYTimes.com

I would've liked to be brought up in a society with this sense of "equality" (if I could use that word). This can change humanity as a whole can it not ? If we have a different (more equal) status of women in every day life, then maybe we all will be more tolerant of other identities. But somehow this seems to be not so close to reality. I wonder what brings about such revolutions ? It definitely cannot be something "silent" as the article seems to suggest. Or can it be ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/fashion/30cliente.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=all --- The posters were advertising "Cliente," a popular movie that revolves around clichés about prostitution and gigolos in France. Judith, the client, who is played by Nathalie Baye, one of France's highest-paid actresses, is not a pathetic, lifted rich woman of a certain age and nothing to do. Rather, she is a hard-charging, 51-year-old television shopping-channel anchor and director who, after her marriage falls apart, wants good sex without strings and is willing to pay handsomely for it.

If we could, would you - Remember-to-Forget ?

[erasing memories] New and old memories have been selectively and safely removed from mice by scientists."While memories are great teachers and obviously crucial for survival and adaptation, selectively removing incapacitating memories, such as traumatic war memories or an unwanted fear, could help many people live better lives," says Dr. Joe Z. Tsien, brain scientist and co-director of the Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine."Our work reveals a molecular mechanism of how that can be done quickly and without doing damage to brain cells," says the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Cognitive and Systems Neurobiology.

Audio on this topic @ radiolab : http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/08

[via mefi]

jyotirgamaya

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Beaked whales - into the abyss

Another in the series of awe inspiring acts of the evolutionary process.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7641537.stm ---Clicks are generated when a structure just below the blowhole known as "monkey's lips" smacks together.That generates a wave radiating spherically outwards, which is transformed into a directionally forward-focussed plane wave as it passes through a fat "melon" - an acoustic lens.So the sound - too high-pitched for a human to hear - shoots out in front of the whale, and if it hits food, such as a squid, a portion is reflected.The reflection was thought to travel to the whale's ears, via its lower jawbone. But the scan suggested a more important route is under the bone.Top of head for transmitting, bottom of head for receiving; a neat system.The sound reception part appears to be very complex, involving fat bodies that focus sound and air sacs that reflect it."Air sacs are perfect acoustic mirrors," says Ted Cranford."The whales need to be able to isolate their ears from each other in order to maintain their directional sense, and one of the best ways to do that is through air sacs."

NASA - NASA Mars Lander Sees Falling Snow, Soil Data Suggest Liquid Past

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080929.html --- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. Spacecraft soil experiments also have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes that occur on Earth. A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft's landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground.

Dan Quayle was too smart for his time huh?

[via /.]

Field poll: Prop. 4 parental notification on teen abortions - San Jose Mercury News

How would you vote ? Would it not be better to counsel them into getting their parents involved instead of mandating it. Somehow I tend to think that mandating it might push them to termination through unsafe methods which is something we MOST definitely want to avoid.
Also interesting the effect that the largest minority group is having on the law of the land.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10562363?nclick_check=1 --- Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo sees a significant factor at play this year. "If there's a shift going on, it's coming from the Latino voters," DiCamillo said. "Because this is a presidential election, Latino voters will constitute a larger proportion of the turnout than was true two years ago." Latino voters, who are overwhelmingly Catholic, are expected to be 17 percent of the electorate in November. They appear to be favoring the measure 62 percent to 31 percent — a 31-point margin. In 2006, the margin among Latinos was 22 percentage points, DiCamillo said. The initiative would require parental notification, not consent. When a girl younger than 18 asks a doctor for an abortion, the doctor

Questions for Doris Lessing - A Literary Light - Interview - NYTimes.com

Nice short interview with Doris Lessing :)

[NYT]--- At the age of 88, you're newly bedecked with a Nobel Prize and have a new book, "Alfred & Emily," whose title refers to your parents, British colonists who raised you in Rhodesia. Here, you tell their story twice — first as a novella in which you dream up happy lives for them and then as a memoir based on the sad facts. It strikes me as a tender book. It's not a question of tenderness. It's a question of justice. I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.

timepass: fairy tale

The Programmer and the Elves: a Fairy Tale

Quiz : Does this remind you of another fairy tale (try to guess before you click) 

The tragedy of commons

Its a long and laborious read. But the basic idea of the "commons" and "mutual coercion"  are interesting. It gives a handle to some of these concepts that all of us are aware of at some level.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243

about the author [wiki]:

Garrett James Hardin (April 21, 1915 – September 14, 2003) was a leading and controversial ecologist from Dallas, Texas, who was most known for his 1968 paper, The Tragedy of the Commons. He is also known for Hardin's First Law of Ecology, which states "You cannot do only one thing", and used the ubiquitous phrase "Nice guys finish last" to sum up the "selfish gene" concept of life and evolution.^[1]

<snip> The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.

1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.

2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of 1.

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another. . . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit--in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all. </snip>

The Glories of Change - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Institute

Hmmm I dont know how many would agree with this POV. I guess you would read through to the end of the article only if you don't have too much money in the market :)

http://mises.org/story/3109 --- The events on Wall Street, the collapse of Lehman and the selling off of Merrill, are magnificent and inspiring events. What we see here are examples of sweeping and fundamental change taking place, a huge upheaval that affects the whole of society, and toward the better, since what we have going on here is a massive reallocation of resources away from failing uses toward more productive uses.

[about the author]

timepass: illustrated short story - "all but one"

It will take you max 5 mins to read this short story. And I think its very likely most people will relate to the emotion in this story.
Even though its a common emotion, its a special feeling.

http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/5408800.html

[source: reddit]

Drug violence alters the flow of life in Mexico -

IHT and LA times report on the increasing crimes due to drug trafficking in Mexico. Its a really disturbing trend.
The LAT report has a map and some graphics that help.


Mexican President : Felipe Calderon.

http://iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=15754843 --- Anything, in fact, can be dangerous. The father of another kidnapping victim said courting had substantially changed these days. One of the man's two sons had broken up with his girlfriend. Another boy, with ties to traffickers, started dating her. One day last year, men dressed in black arrived at the man's house and took one of his sons away, grabbing the wrong son by mistake. He has not been heard from ever since. All this is not to say that Mexicans are paralyzed with fear. Thousands were scheduled to march through the streets of Mexico City and numerous other cities on Saturday night to light candles and reclaim the streets. Still, many have become inured to things that once would have alarmed them. They are doing things, like having chips inserted in their forearms so they can be tracked if they are kidnapped, that they never could have imagined during more sedate times. The police have complained of onlookers gathering at crime scenes with cameras to snap photos of the corpses. "The worst thing that can happen is for us to become accustomed to the dramatic daily count of deaths and kidnappings caused by narcotics assassins," El Universal said in a recent editorial.

Intel Shifts Future Core™ Processors Into Turbo Mode

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080821comp.htm ---
1. Intel researchers are also investigating how millions of tiny micro-robots, called catoms, could build shape-shifting materials.
2. Rattner demonstrated two working personal robot prototypes developed at Intel's research labs. One of the demonstrations showed electric field pre-touch that has been built into a robot hand. The technique is a novel sensing modality used by fish but not humans, so they can "feel" objects before they even touch them. The other demonstration was a complete autonomous mobile manipulation robot that can recognize faces and interpret and execute commands as generic as "please clean this mess" using state-of-the-art motion planning, manipulation, perception and artificial intelligence.

If these guys are real. I am going love living in the future. isn't this inflection a nightmare for the SciFi writers ?

[thanks http://www.technologyreview.com/]

Khushwant Singh @ Hindustan Times

[ Article ]

What a wonderful job we have done:
Made J and K two states from one.
Experts in rescuing life from being dull,
We have made the police and people fight pitched battle
And turned Hindus and Muslims into warring people.
And why not?
For, at stake is a forest plot
So valuable and so great
That for it, we can burn the whole state,
Burn the whole country, if need be.
For, if it is given to the shrine, the Valley will die
And if it is not given, the holy Shiv ling to heaven fly.
(Contributed by Kuldip Salil, Delhi)

Game On Emily is Not Real: The End of "Real" Actors?

I didn't know this is how far animation has improved. Also I didn't know what the term "uncanny valley" meant (The perception that computer-generated faces look less real as they approach human likeness)

[2min video]
http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/007483.html --- I have seen the future of computer-generated video game animation, her name is Emily, and Emily is not real -- or is she? See for yourself in the following clip just released from 3D facial animation company Image Metrics, and which I read about in The Times Online this morning.

[Source : slashdot]

How do whales and dolphins sleep without drowning? : Scientific American

I didn't know such mechanisms exist. Turning of half the brain and one eye. How crazy can nature be ?

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-whales-and-dolphin&print=true --- While sleeping, the bottlenose dolphin shuts down only half of its brain, along with the opposite eye. The other half of the brain stays awake at a low level of alertness. This attentive side is used to watch for predators, obstacles and other animals. It also signals when to rise to the surface for a fresh breath of air. After approximately two hours, the animal will reverse this process, resting the active side of the brain and awaking the rested half. This pattern is often called cat-napping.

Attaching an audio which was the original source of this search : A moment of science

Secretary Bird

Have you ever seen this bird before. I hadnt. Its very interesting. Its popular in Africa to the point of being in some countries' coat of arms.
Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_Bird
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w3Co-U526c&feature=related

No higher resolution available.

Source: I was looking at pictures on the website of an interesting photographer called Vandit Kalia. His site was pointed to me by Sharadha (thanks).
http://www.vanditkalia.com/VanditKalia/Galleries/Pages/Birds.html#20

PS: If you get interested in Vandit's page, note the reason for his calling himself a "restless photographer". I would think it applies to me too, although I am more restless than an engineer.
Quote "For me, travel - be it to the mountains, the national park or a far-off location - is all about exploring the region and uncovering its secrets (and no, reading the Lonely Planet doesn't count): in other words, breadth.  On the other hand, photography is all about spending time in a given location, waiting for the light and "the moment": in other words, depth. These two impulses pull in different directions.  Hence the Restless Photographer." 

Vandit's profile picture :

Most amazing lyre bird

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y
The lyre bird can reproduce a lot of sounds. Its found in Souther Australia.The first time I am seeing it, if you already know about this, I am sure you'll enjoy seeing it again.
Towards the end of this 2.5 min video we see the bird immitating the sound of a camera, a car alarm and a chainsaw. This is a wild bird. What the hell !!!!!

Alicia Sacramone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4Dx9PgGcfI
Wow this young girl has so much pressure on her. Its unfair !!

Humans on earth

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/louise_leakey_digs_for_humanity_s_origins.html

If short on time, watch min 12 to min 15 of this video. So apparently we average life of a hominid species is about a million years and we have existed for about 200,000 years. If we can survive long enough its mind boggling to even think of how different we will be.
Kind of humbling to see and hear people talk like this, isn't it ?

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Spotlight on Egypt's marriage crisis

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7554892.stm --- She says her target is not Egyptian men but a tradition known as "gawwaz el-salonat" (living room marriage), where a stranger is brought to the family home and the daughter must decide whether to marry him on the basis of this brief encounter. "People who go for a picnic need to know each other a little longer than that - let alone make a lifelong commitment."

India Together: As inequalities rise, the moral commons is vanishing

If you think we Indians have a cultural heritage of apathy towards poor, Rajesh Kasturirangan tries to formalize it and explain it.

http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/jun/rkr-moralcom.htm --- Unlike disaster situations, where media images can compel our sympathy, daily life does not evoke strong reactions so our sympathy has to be constructed out of other inputs. Whatever these inputs might be, they should make it possible for us to see the world in terms of the 'other'. We need a natural catalyst for grouping human beings of different backgrounds into one moral space. And one of the best resources for this is 'proximity'. We need a natural catalyst for grouping human beings of different backgrounds into one moral space. For it to be natural, the 'moral grouping principle' should be one that has a foundation in human psychology. And one of the best resources for this is 'proximity'. From the Gestalt psychologists onwards, we know that human beings group objects and events that are close to each other in space and time. Our ethical capacities are partly based on perceptual capacities. My claim is simple: common physical spaces and common actions in our daily lives will lead to common moral spaces and the construction of a moral commons. In other words, we need common activities of work and play and common spaces for recreation and worship.

Woman's work - Kalpana Sharma - India together

I didnt know this impressive stat. Otherwise the article just talks about the fact the women are trying to find work in areas thought to be man's work. And that steady incomes from both partners is becoming important to provide for a family.

http://indiatogether.com/2008/jul/ksh-work.htm

With the increasing costs of living, more women will have to find paid employment to ensure the survival of poor as well as middle class households. Such paid employment will also contribute to the economy in general. According to The Economist, (April 12, 2006) the increase in female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth in the past couple of decades. Those women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology, or the new giants, India and China. Add the value of housework and child rearing and women probably account for just over half of world output.

Women's contribution to the economy has always been undervalued. Now economists are putting a value to their work, paid and unpaid. Of course, there are still many people in this country who believe that women should do only women's work and that they should step out of their homes for paid work only if it is absolutely necessary. But the changing nature of our economies and the pressures of survival amongst all classes, except the very rich, are already denting such perceptions.

Mini-Microscope Could Lead to Cell-Sorting Implants | Wired Science from Wired.com

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/mini-microscope.html --- Imagine a microscope implanted into your body that could automatically sort out cancerous cells based on how they looked.

In this direct comparison, Yang's image (bottom) clearly provides similar resolution as the optical microscope image (top). Pictured is C. elegans, a common worm often used in genetic studies. The quality of the output combined with the system's low cost has drawn raves from other researchers.


Yang's tiny, cheap microscope could have nearly immediate applications. In the very short-term, Yang envisions a system for identifying diseases in the Third World that could cost a mere $100 and come embedded inside a cellphone or custom device for field work.

"Because we can build [the microscope] very compactly, we can imagine building an entire system that is the size of an iPod," he said.

All of these applications could come into being very soon. Yang's lab is currently negotiating with semiconductor companies to mass produce his devices. Right now, it takes two days for one of his grad students to assemble one.

Once they enter manufacturing, however, they'll be able to make hundreds of the devices, and that's when high-throughput optical microscopy could become a reality. Working with image processing software designers, they're hoping to come up with autonomous systems for finding ad imaging cells.

"We're working on using software to automatically identify cells of interest," said Yang. "All you'd have to do is drop blood in."

Slashdot | Ohio Researchers Advance Heat Reclamation Technologies

Its a neat link between the 2 articles  [arstechnica and csmonitor]

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/27/2111248&from=rss --- "Researchers at Ohio State University claim to have synthesized a new material capable of delivering electricity directly from heat, at an efficiency far better than existing thermoelectric materials. Scott at ArsTechnica has an interesting take: 'Merge this with the new MIT solar dish and you're in business!'"

Slashdot | Thirst For Coltan Fueling African Conflict

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/25/199234&from=rss --- "According to an article put forth by the Toward Freedom website, the metallic ore known as columbite-tantalite or coltan for short is fueling conflict in central Africa. The relevance to us who read news for geeks: Coltan is in quite a few consumer electronics; the article references the Sony Playstation series."

More detailed article here :
http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Africa/Articles/TheStandardColtan.asp

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Against the Odds: Vijender Kumar

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7482661.stm --- Although he is a boxing champion, Vijender Kumar is an oddity in India, a virtual one-sport country where cricket is religion. The son of a bus driver who worked overtime to pay for his coaching, Vijender is India's unsung champion boxer.  "My blood boils when everybody goes gaga over cricket," says the 22-year-old, one of five boxers in India's modest Olympics contingent to Beijing this summer.

Op-Ed Columnist - So Popular and So Spineless - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

Seems to be making a valid point. But isn't it in a very narrow fashion? To me it seems to a problem of power corrupting. Any country trying to aim for economic might, will tend to bend rules to achieve certain goals. Friedman makes it seem as if the US is in the best position to handle economic might and power since they have been in this seat for so long.

[NYT - Friedman] --- So, yes, we're not so popular in Europe and Asia anymore. I guess they would prefer a world in which America was weaker, where leaders with the values of Vladimir Putin and Thabo Mbeki had a greater say, and where the desperate voices for change in Zimbabwe would, well, just shut up.

Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership -- Printout -- TIME

Interesting lessons. I don't know much about Mandela, but now I am more curious.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1821467,00.html --- I've always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba's Rules (Madiba, his clan name, is what everyone close to him calls him), and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar. They are mostly practical. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.

Google using market prediction for management decisions

Can they really be so efficient ? Or is this one team who just exploring these methods. In any case I think its a sign of the efficiency within.

[Bloomberg] --- The day after a company's stock rises, employees are more optimistic about the projects they're working on. You can bet on it. And at Google Inc., they do. That's what researchers found in the behavior of employees on an internal trading system the company designed. Using a faux currency called the Gooble, 2,000 workers have wagered on about 370 subjects, from the success of the company's Gmail service to the quality of a new ``Star Wars'' movie. Academic studies show these so-called prediction markets work as financial modeling tools. Google managers use the results as a reference in strategy meetings and crunch the data to see how employees behave. After finding traders got bullish about meeting goals following a climb in the stock, Google started examining how productivity and optimism are connected.

BBC NEWS | From clearing excrement to New York modelling

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7489296.stm --- In all, 36 scavengers from India have been invited by the UN to attend a conference to mark the UN's International Year of Sanitation. The women were brought up from early childhood for the demeaning work. Scavengers are invariably from the lower-caste, "untouchable" (Dalit) community. They carry the human excrement in pots on their heads. They can also be found clearing rubbish from the streets and open drains outside homes.

Part of my infinite ignorance package was that I wasnt aware of the sanitation problem in India. I saw it every day while I lived there but it never struck me. Anyways I had also never heard of dry toilets and the dalits having to manually clean it. The lethal combination of caste-ism and sex-ism leaves this job for lower caste women.

India together has this article on manual scavenging.
A 2002 report prepared by the International Dalit Solidarity Network - which includes the Human Rights Watch (United States), Navsarjan, (Ahmedabad, Gujarat), and the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights - says that the government estimates that there are one million Dalit manual scavengers in India. Manual scavengers are exposed to the most virulent forms of viral and bacterial infections that affect their skin, eyes, limbs, respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. Tuberculosis is rife among the community, according to the report.

I have seen septic tanks being used in rural India but never found out how they worked. Wiki explains.

Side note: I wonder why leaders like Gandhi became popular in India. Was it blind faith in someone produced some results? How come his principles never become part of our decision process as a community. The US (since this is the only other country I have seen) inspite of achieving independence about 200 years ago still speak of the "founding fathers" in the political and social debates.  How come we cant remember the revolution we concluded 50 years ago ? Is it because of millennia of history before 1947? There are other western countries with history books just as thick, they dont have this issue. Is it western philosophy v/s eastern philosophy, one focussing on logic and human life, and the other on after-life.

Leaving Uganda - Sepia Mutiny

Book review for "Child of Dandelions"
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/005267.html --- We've talked about it here before: In 1972, Idi Amin gave all 80,000 Asian Indians living in the Uganda 90 days to pack up and leave. As the BBC reported on August 7, 1972, "Asians, who are the backbone of the Ugandan economy, have been living in the country for more than a century. But resentment against them has been building up within Uganda's black majority. General Amin has called the Asians "bloodsuckers" and accused them of milking the economy of its wealth."

State of the Art - Grocery Shopping Made Easy - NYTimes.com

The company itself says that it will replace the laser scanning mechanism with a  camera. What stops iPhone from building this app into it ? What stops the next line of microwaves which will come with displays and wiFi/Zigbee connections from having this app. What is the company going to make out of this I wonder ? The idea is pretty cool though.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/technology/personaltech/19pogue.html?8cir=&_r=1&emc=cirb1&pagewanted=all --- The mission of this $400 device is to eliminate trips to the grocery store. The hardware component is a bulbous bar code scanner, dressed up in Any-Décor White and mounted on a countertop stand, an undercabinet bracket or a wall mount. It offers a color screen on the front, a laser scanner underneath and a Wi-Fi antenna inside that connects to your home wireless network. Each time you're about to throw away an empty container — for ketchup, cereal, pickles, milk, macaroni, paper towels, dog food or whatever — you just pass its bar code under the scanner. With amazing speed and accuracy, the Ikan beeps, consults its online database of one million products, and displays the full name and description.

Meet Mukesh Ambani - India’s Richest Man - Biography - NYTimes.com

Anand Girharadas writes about Mukesh Ambani in the NYT this weekend.
I totally dont see the point of this article though. Whats wrong with this guy, why is he comparing Ambani to Gandhi.
"In the last century, Mohandas K. Gandhi was India's most famous and powerful private citizen. Today, Mr. Ambani is widely regarded as playing that role, though in a very different way."
In no imaginable way do the Ambanis seem to be doing anything that will help India unless it happens as a unintended byproduct of their "pursuit of wealthiness".
Anand seems to be a fairly good with some other articles (you can see on his blog). Is he reflecting whats in the minds of the young "India Shining"? We, the young India, are moving too fast to even know what Gandhi did for us.

Freedom of choice: Harnessing the benefits of an open approach to system design - 6/13/2008 - EDN

I was reading this article  " EDN : --- Freedom of choice: Harnessing the benefits of an open approach to system design "
Looks like what the author is trying to say is that in an ideal world we would have the ability to use a single set of tools which would allow us to graphically describe our system using boxes to identify the major components and interconnects. Also these tools will let us describe any glue logic in plain English. Then with the push of a button map the design to any FPGA device. Also there is a point about need a platform that will help us do this.
But then this is a need in the ASIC industry too. IF we had all the IP blocks you would just connect them up with GUI or scripts. I wonder if he is trying to say that for the set of applications that typically map to FPGAs this is more the case. I can see a lot of value in building a generic design on the system designers desk. But this is hardly a new thought.

However what if for small blocks which are prone to more bugs because of late changing specs, what if I could get my synthesizer to map them to FPGA like blocks, which could be loaded through the scan chain.

NatGeo : Smart Chimp

There is a whole series of videos on natGeo on smart apes.

EETimes.com - Intel CTO rethinks analog as computational problem

I like the Camera example he uses. But this is an idea being pursued by a TI as well, why is it continuously being packaged as a new idea. I can understand  trumpeting new milestones along achieving this goal.

EE Times --- Rattner used the evolution of photography as an example. "Except for the light from the complex lens creating a digital image, nothing much has changed in the camera since film has gone away. Now if you replace the lens apparatus with a computational 'light field', then you can use software to choose which image among many possible light field images you want to capture. "The problem moves to the computational domain and the focus and depth of field can be adjusted at will at the time of image capture," added Rattner. The camera and lens can then be simplified, a good thing since today's mechanical lenses are at the limit of their optical performance. If radio design is considered as a "computational problem," this would allow one radio to act as many. Rattner said this would dramatically simplify radio architectures by utilizing fewer transistors to implement many radio modulation schemes.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Boy, 9, rides US subway alone

Wow I never realized that parents in the west live in such constant fear. At 10 most kids in India go to school by themselves.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7449795.stm --- A US woman who let her 9-year-old son travel on the New York City underground system by himself has been dubbed 'America's worst mom'. Lenore Skenazy's actions have sparked a huge debate about parenting. Heather Alexander reports from New York. Story Tools

Omizutori - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omizutori --- Omizutori (お水取り), or Water-Drawing festival, is a Japanese Buddhist festival that takes place in the Nigatsu-dō of Tōdai-ji, Nara, Japan. The festival is the final rite in observance of the two week-long Shuni-e ceremony. The rite occurs on the last night, when monks bearing torches come to the Wakasa Well, underneath the Nigatsu-dō Hall, which according to legend only springs forth water once a year. The monks draw water from the well and offer it first to the Bodhisattva Kannon, and then offer it to the public. It is believed that the water, being blessed, can cure ailments. The water is actually drawn into two pots, one pot containing water from the previous year, and another that contains the water from all previous ceremonies.

theAtlantic | Free will

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/primarysources --- What would happen if no one believed in free will, but instead assumed that all their actions were predetermined? For one thing, according to a recent study, we'd end up with a lot of greedy cheaters. A psychologist and a marketing professor asked two groups of undergraduates to read passages from a book by the biophysicist Francis Crick. Students in one group read a passage that argued against the possibility of free will, while students in the other group read a neutral passage on consciousness. The subjects then took a basic arithmetic test on a computer but were told that, because of a glitch in the program, the computer would automatically feed them the right answer to each question unless they pressed a key to stop it. The computer secretly recorded what they did. The researchers found that those students who had read Crick's argument against individual agency were substantially more likely to cheat, and that they showed less faith in free will than their counterparts in a follow-up survey. The authors conclude that even if free will is an illusion, it is "an illusion that nevertheless offers some functionality" when it comes to encouraging moral behavior.

India Together: Diary of the displaced at Bawana Resettlement Camp - 07 June 2008

Interesting question that Kalpana Sharma poses. We do see richer people moving to the suburbs in the US. Also an important note about

http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/jun/ksh-sweptoff.htm --- In industrialised countries, suburbanisation has meant the rich move out of cities and commute to work. They can absorb the additional expenditure. In our country, the poor are being forced to do this. Why should the poor be compelled to pay the price for the creation of the 'global' city? Can we not envisage an 'inclusive' city that caters to the needs of all its citizens? At the moment, it would seem that the planners of cities like Delhi see these as mutually exclusive

Feminist research!!
Explaining this, they write: "Methodologically, feminist research differs from traditional research because it actively seeks to address and account for the power imbalances between women and men, and between researcher and subject. It is also a strategy for challenging the social inequality built into mainstream research methods. Most significantly, it recognises and builds on the standpoints and experiences of women in particular and other marginalised groups in general."

In other words, you don't study women as subjects but study everything from the perspective of women. The results of applying such a lens to research are very different as is evident from this particular study.

New Zealand seeks to curb livestock's gas emissions - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-burp8-2008jun08,0,6244547.story --- Livestock produce an estimated 20% of the world's methane output, which also comes from landfill sites, coal mining, rice paddies and other sources. Methane and the even more potent nitrous oxide make up about half the greenhouse gases that New Zealand adds to Earth's air. Most of it rises from bucolic pastures where the country's iconic sheep and cattle graze, chewing, regurgitating and chewing again, and pumping out methane -- the bulk of it in their belches.

Would it be better to stop drinking milk ?

Cud-chewing farm animals produce a lot of methane because their food passes through a first stomach, called the rumen, where it ferments in a soup of saliva, bacteria and other microbes. Those bugs break down the food for digestion.New Zealand researchers are looking for ways to inhibit or eliminate a group of microbes called methanogens, which transform rumen gases into methane. They're also studying the animals' diet to see whether low-fiber, high-sugar substitutes will help the climate.

BBC NEWS | The capital of Palestinian escapism

This is interesting. Survival of the human spirit once again ? Its not totally unbelievable having lived in Bombay during the riots and bombings. But then its not too difficult to engineer the spirit of this city by controlling the frequency and intensity of violent attacks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7433063.stm --- Arab TV channels had spent the day broadcasting the final footage of a cameraman killed by a tank shell, and pictures the bodies of five children blown apart in the shelling. Ramallah streets witness activities seldom encountered elsewhere That same night, Ramallah, was having a street party. A stage was set up, with dancers, music and fireworks. It was an event to mark the centenary of Ramallah being accorded city status - death wasn't going to get in the way. Some Palestinians suggest this city is a product of an Israeli plot, to create a place for the foreign diplomats and journalists to visit, and wonder what all the occupation fuss is about.

Op-Ed Contributor - Put a Little Science in Your Life - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01greene.html?ei=5087&em=&en=b8d2f5a9a25f1d82&ex=1212552000&pagewanted=all --- most of these studies (and their suggestions) avoid an overarching systemic issue: in teaching our students, we continually fail to activate rich opportunities for revealing the breathtaking vistas opened up by science, and instead focus on the need to gain competency with science's underlying technical details. In fact, many students I've spoken to have little sense of the big questions those technical details collectively try to answer: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How does the brain give rise to consciousness? Like a music curriculum that requires its students to practice scales while rarely if ever inspiring them by playing the great masterpieces, this way of teaching science squanders the chance to make students sit up in their chairs and say, "Wow, that's science?"

Invasion by sound.

The pleasure of reading, I find, is in the fact that you can travel to places and times using just the visual sense. The fact that the sense of hearing and touch are not involved in the experience is something I am beginning to enjoy more. I don't know if there can be utilitarian value to this disposition. This reason, why I like to read is something I never articulated (like a gazillion other things I never articulate or am not capable of articulating).
At this point I am a bit averse to my inside being invaded by sound. The thought of sound is bringing on a sense of violation.

Is this a sense of aging and growing ? or is it just a temporal glitch in the state of mind ?
I think this has a longer life than a glitch. I can relate to the impulse of the young mind to be constantly accompanied by some background sounds. Has that been placated by a sense of self assurance or rather resignation to "Other Influential Variables" ? It could also be the same mechanism that ignores the "cry of wolf", that works to make the crutch of "reassuring sounds" superfluous to the mind.

Segue question : Is it more likely that immigrant communities have a  higher tendency to have "reassuring sounds" play constantly in the background ? This being a over-riding need than the appreciation of the musicality of the sound.

Right now, I am trying to read Norman Mailer's "Prisoner of Sex". Maybe because I don't have a good grip on the English language. But I think all his fancy prose is taking up so much real estate that it is taking away from any point that he is trying to make. Is literature evaluated on the trickery of words and metaphors or on its ability to evoke the ideas, concepts, thoughts and actions in as many people as possible ? I for now am able to use only the latter metric.

Beyond the Male "Pill" | Popular Science

This is sooo weird. Imagine some guy doing this. Idea of using a key-fob as a contraceptive sounds contraceptive by itself :)
Hahaha imagine designing circuits for this application. How the hell are wireless companies going to test it in their labs.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/gallery/2008-05/beyond-male-pill --- How it works A doctor inserts a thin piece of silicon embedded with circuits into the vas deferens. The circuits convert radio signals from the fob to acoustic waves, which cause the material to expand and block sperm. Advantages A second click of the fob contracts the material to unblock the sperm. Removing the device would require just a quick visit to the doctor's office. Status Australian scientists have recently completed the design of the circuits. Tests in animals could begin in two years. Uh-oh factor Could listening to the radio wreck your fertility? Not quite. Using ultrahigh radio frequencies and signal coding eliminates the chance of accidental activation.

Incredible pictures of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes firing bows and arrows | Mail Online

Wow I didnt know there even existed uncontacted tribes.

[via reddit]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1022822/Incredible-pictures-Earths-uncontacted-tribes-firing-bows-arrows.html --- Skin painted bright red, heads partially shaved, arrows drawn back in the longbows and aimed square at the aircraft buzzing overhead. The gesture is unmistakable: Stay Away. Behind the two men stands another figure, possibly a woman, her stance also seemingly defiant. Her skin painted dark, nearly black. The apparent aggression shown by these people is quite understandable. For they are members of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes, who live in the Envira region in the thick rainforest along the Brazilian-Peruvian frontier.

   

Making Cell Phone Games a Public Spectacle

I am really thrilled by this idea. Its like modern kite flying :)

wired --- Next time you're in Times Square, put on your game face. You may be able to challenge the weirdos around you to a videogame on MTV's big-screen billboard. The controller? Your cell phone.

China’s Class Divide - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/opinion/21bell.html --- I've been teaching political theory at Tsinghua University here since 2004 and I've found that almost all of my students are driven to do good for society. So I wasn't surprised when, as word of the disaster came out, hundreds of Tsinghua students lined up overnight at a Red Cross station to donate blood and supplies. Others went to the earthquake zone, more than 1,000 miles away, to distribute aid. Now I'm hoping events can dispel another false impression: that young Chinese are xenophobic nationalists who cheer for their country, good or bad.

We Should Celebrate Rising Divorce Rates - The India Uncut Blog - India Uncut

Amit has written an interesting article here. But somehow I don't want to completely agree with his thesis. Increasing divorce rates maybe a  good indicator of the empowerment of women, but it could also be an indicator of the fall in value that we associate with "familly".  Are we as a society becoming less tolerant of lapses in character? to the point of not giving one's partner a second chance. I know its very difficult to identify where tolerance stops and where abuse begins. I am just trying to say that this trend should be looked at with measured positiveness. 
Amit says "In America, divorce rates climbed back down after the surge of the 1970s, mainly because young people took greater care in getting married, and premarital relationships were not considered sinful". Why cant Indian society evolve to have  more  premarital relationships  instead of going through  steep rise in divorce numbers. This would be a far better indicator of the maturity of people in our societies.

http://indiauncut.com/iublog/article/we-should-celebrate-rising-divorce-rates/ --- Divorce rates are going up across India. The figures that exist for our cities and towns show a sharp increase in the last decade or so. Many commentators bemoan this trend, speaking of the breakdown of families, the loss of family values and the influence of the West. But to me, the rising rate of divorces is a trend to celebrate. It is the single best statistical indicator we have of the empowerment of women.

Thakre and Thackeray- Hindustan Times

We need more of the intelligent maharashtrians to come out and speak against this nonsense.

[article by Vir Sanghvi @ HT]--- It would be a tragedy if the people or the politicians of the city of Bombay allowed this rivalry between uncle and nephew to change the traditions and heritage of this great metropolis. The only way to handle the Thackeray campaign is to hold firm and to tell the old boy to sort out his family disputes in the privacy of his own home. We are certainly not changing any more names only because he can't handle his nephew.

The Rise of the Rest | Newsweek.com

Interesting article by Fareed Zakaria.
However I am not very sure if the world is making as much progress as he seems to be claiming it is. In India I perceive a very rapidly expanding divide between the rich and the poor. So even though the GDP is growing at fast clip, the 7.5% inflation is something that can cause poor parents (about 50% of the population) to pull kids out of schools. In an information economy countries like India cannot milk the "we speak english" advantage for multiple generations. When this growing young population will see a ceiling to the progress it could morph into an explosive situation. What about the riots in France and recently in South Africa. Also when new powers rise, wouldn't there be more friction? Mr.Zakaria seems to be making a lot of simplistic assumptions.

In his video he makes an interesting point, that the biggest strength of US is its immigration policy and the strength of its educational institutions. I couldn't agree more. Here I think both India and China are at a big disadvantage. China can build top notch schools but its roadblock will be free thinking people. Can they encourage this in schools and still have a censored media. In India its amazing how, the media, the politicians and the citizen journalists aren't even talking about our decrepit higher educational system.

PS: I like the term the "Rise of the Rest".

[article] --- Americans—particularly the American government—have not really understood the rise of the rest. This is one of the most thrilling stories in history. Billions of people are escaping from abject poverty. The world will be enriched and ennobled as they become consumers, producers, inventors, thinkers, dreamers, and doers. This is all happening because of American ideas and actions. For 60 years, the United States has pushed countries to open their markets, free up their politics, and embrace trade and technology. American diplomats, businessmen, and intellectuals have urged people in distant lands to be unafraid of change, to join the advanced world, to learn the secrets of our success. Yet just as they are beginning to do so, we are losing faith in such ideas. We have become suspicious of trade, openness, immigration, and investment because now it's not Americans going abroad but foreigners coming to America. Just as the world is opening up, we are closing down.

Food crisis meets chaos in Horn of Africa - International Herald Tribune

Bad rains, internal wars, US wrath, Corrupt politicians. At times we think "Is the situation in India hopeless ?". I wonder if history shows us that such societies can get back to normalcy.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/17/africa/17somalia.php?page=2 --- Beyond the warlord and clan fighting, there is now a budding conflict with Western aid workers. The Bush administration has said that Al Qaeda terrorists are hiding in Somalia, sheltered by local Islamists, and gone after them with American air strikes. But a recent American attack on an Islamist leader in Dhusamareb, a town in the center of the drought zone, has spawned a wave of revenge threats against Western aid workers. The United Nations and private aid organizations say it's now too dangerous to expand their life-saving work in Dhusamareb.

World Science Festival 2008

Five Day Science Festival In New York City Featuring Nobel Laureates Co-Founded by Brian Greene
If you are lucky to be around NYC :)

chennai superstars

The Atlantic Cosby Crusade

India and Food

NYT --- Mr. Mehta said that if Americans slimmed down to the weight of middle-class Indians, "many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates." He added, archly, that the money spent in the United States on liposuction to get rid of fat from excess consumption could be funneled to feed famine victims.

Contrast the above NYT article with the BBC front-page news about under-nourished kids in India.

A malnourished child in Delhi

[BBC] More than 1.5m children in India are at risk of becoming malnourished because of rising global food prices, the UN children's charity, Unicef, says. It warns that food inflation could be devastating for vulnerable women and children right across South Asia.The region already has the largest number of malnourished children in the world and levels could get even worse.

Also very sad statement by P Sainath on where India is today. [article]
No minister came forward to calm the nation when India hit 94th rank in the Global Hunger Index. That's out of 118 countries. The daily, DNA, though, did capture the essence of the story with its report: Ethiopians manage hunger better than us. For indeed, they do these days. At least in their score on the GHI Progress Indicator of the International Food Policy Research Institute. Ethiopia worked better at reducing hunger than we did even though worse off in overall ranking. Zimbabwe, facing hyperinflation and worse, still ranks ahead of us at slot 93 in the GHI itself. Gabon, Honduras and Bolivia are also all ahead of us in that list. Pakistan too, is ahead of us in the GHI, at 88. China logs in at 47. All our south asian neighbours do better than us on this index, except Bangladesh. And who knows when they'll overtake us? Even Nepal, one of the poorest countries in Asia, outranks us. None of them boasts an economy growing at 9 per cent a year.

V. Raghunathan: 'Indians Are Privately Smart and Publicly Dumb' - India Knowledge@Wharton

Knowledge at Wharton --- In Shanghai, in four years they built out the magnetic levitation train that connects the airport to the city. Or consider a simpler example. When I was in Shanghai, I saw a newspaper ad that addressed the citizens and said, "If you want to be residents of a world-class city, you must behave accordingly and not hang your laundry out to dry on your balcony." When I drove around the city, I did not see a single Chinese home with washed clothes hanging on the balcony. In India, it is unthinkable that you could even make such an appeal. So it is true that nowhere in the world are people immune to the prisoner's dilemma. But the incidence of defection in almost every walk of life seems to be unique to India. This may seem to be a caricature, but if I am exaggerating certain features, it is because I want to draw attention to them.

[via youth curry]

The Hindu : Front Page : Amid drama, Women’s Bill tabled in the Rajya Sabha

This is the kind of democracy the India Shining Inc. is capable of even today. Dont you think this is representative of us as Indians. I dont think this is just a bunch of politicians. Its our culture. Will we ever be a more mature people. Can we expect to be a prosperous country with this kind of behavior from our leaders and elected representatives? If we have to provide voice and opportunity to the underprivileged then can such behavior ever allow that.

From the Hindu --- As soon as Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj rose to introduce the Bill, SP member Abu Azim Azmi, who was protesting with his party colleagues in the well of the House, moved towards the Minister in what appeared a bid to snatch the Bill — a possible repeat of the 1998 incident in which the Bill was torn up in the Lok Sabha after its introduction. Anticipating such a situation, Congress members had formed a cordon around Mr. Bhardwaj. When Mr. Azmi continued with his attempts, Ministers Renuka Choudhury and Panabaka Lakshmi physically held him back, even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other senior leaders watched.

More from rediff.

India Together: Oh! What a lovely waiver - 11 March 2008

1. Its only bank loans and not money lender loans
2. 2 hectare limit not in line with the land acreage held in Vidarbha
3. one-time settlement" of their bank loans. In this case, if they repay 75 per cent of the loan, they will be given a rebate of 25 per cent.
4. The cut-off date of March 31, 2007 works against even the small group of Vidarbha farmers who do benefit. Loans in the cotton regions are taken between April and June. In the cane growing regions, they are taken between January and March. This means the Vidarbha farmer has one less year of loans waived than the others.

http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/mar/psa-waiver.htm --- While gasping at the size of the "write-off" it's worth asking why the loan waiver comes up now. Why not in 2005, when the demand was already being made? Or in 2006 when the Prime Minister visited Vidarbha and was shaken by the widespread distress. Mr. Pawar has outsmarted his rivals. Had the step been taken then, the credit would have gone entirely to the Congress. No prizes for guessing who opposed it then (when it would have cost much less). For three years, while the misery and suicides mounted in Vidarbha, there was not even the admission that a loan waiver was possible. Indeed, it was shot down by those now taking out full page ads claiming credit for it. As they complain in Vidarbha, this is not about karza maafi. It is about seeking voter maafi (voters' forgiveness) in election year.

Also see Sainath's article on the bear stearns bailout.

Helen Hunt: The Spotlight Isn't Enough This Time : NPR

Its interesting listening to Helen Hunt's interview.
Fresh Air from WHYY, April 24, 2008 · Actress Helen Hunt directed the new film Then She Found Me. She helped adapt the screenplay, as well, from the novel by Elinor Lipman. And in addition to directing, co-writing and producing, Hunt stars in the movie — alongside Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick and Bette Midler.

Growing importance of Statistical analysis

I very recently read Asimov's foundation and he describes the "science" of  psychohistory. Today morning I read these articles(1 and 2). The series of arcticle TR is carrying on emerging technologies is interesting. Anyways the point I was trying to make is that there are 2 things happening. One is our increased ability to mine data and the second is our ability to analyze data on machines with smaller and smaller sizes. While psychohistory may be a long shot, it seems to me that the emergence of statistical analysis tools, be it for prediction or even analyzing the human genome will become more and more relevant and accurate.
(asimov : what is intelligence )
While reading "foundation" it seems to make sense that psychohistory would be our initial attempt to understand our world. Too many variables in real life to fit nice engineering equations to it. The "theory of everything" if a plausible goal, might need us to move ahead in evolutionary landscape.  Or  maybe its my unprepared brain thats not able to understand our abilities as a species  :)