Friday, June 29, 2007

The nine types of graduate students.

The eight types of graduate students. Nice article.

and may I introduce the ninth type...

the...

PROCRASTINATOR!!!!!!

characterised by the amount of time and energy he spends in achieving... nothing, the fancy coursework grades he has piled up to no particular end... the one who runs on departmental coffee and free pizza, the guy who is full of unwanted advice for anyone at any career stage... but lashes out viciously when asked about the progress of his own research. Witness the elegant organisation of his filesystem, both paper and electronic, marvel at the shell scripts he writes so that he will not have to click and drag, sit back and listen to him talk about other people's publications in his field of work... and applaud the fluid and elegant prose on his blog.. shite, I need help....

Conspiracy?

John Perkin's book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" discusses how the Third World is being bled dry by 'philanthropic' organisations which act ostensibly for strengthening fledgling economies. He says that governments of the West are essentially controlled, not merely acting hand-in-glove with a few very rich people... a global cabal of the super rich, if you will, who will inevitably continue to grow wealthier at the cost of untold human suffering.

Some reviews are here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/business/yourmoney/19confess.html?ex=1298005200&en=59c686e6f96b0421&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2006/Feb/02-767147.html
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_john_per_070315_john_perkins_3a_new_co.htm

Thursday, June 28, 2007

About social networking.

Class divisions in American society? Mayspace and Facebook appear to cater to vastly different kinds of people... one being a hangout for regular folk who may not always go to college.. and the other catering to richer (and whiter) people who probably will end up in college. Here is the BBC report.

Meanwhile, some Orkut stats from Wikipedia (this is cool, combining my two most horrible sources of unproductivity and wastage of time).

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Neem Ka Ped.

Means a 'neem' tree.. this was a Doordarshan TV serial which aired sometime in the mid nineties. It told the story of Budhai Ram, a lower caste bonded labourer who lived in a village owned by a Muslim Zameendar (landlord). Budhai Ram was played by the great thespian Pankaj Kapoor (Maqbool) with wonderful sensitivity. Jagjit Singh sang the title theme song of the serial, based on a poem written by the Urdu poet Nida Fazil which went...

Munh Kii Baat Sune Har Koii, Dil Ke Dard Ko Jaane Kaun
Aavaazon Ke Baazaaron Mein, Khaamoshii Pehchaane Kaun.

Sadiyon Sadiyon Vahi Tamaashaa Rastaa Rastaa Lambii Khoj
Lekin Jab Hum Mil Jaate Hain, Kho Jaataa Hai Jaane Kaun.

Vo Meraa Aaiinaa Hai Ya Main Us Kii Parchhaaii Huun
Mere Hii Ghar Mein Rehtaa Hai, Mujh Jaisaa Hii Jaane Kaun.

Kiran Kiran Alsaataa Suuraj, Palak Palak Khultii Neendein
Dheeme Dheeme Bikhar Raha Hai, Zarra Zarra Jaane Kaun.

Munh kii baat sune har koi, dil ke dard ko jaane Kaun
Aavaazon Ke Baazaaron Mein Khaamoshii Pehchaane Kaun.

Makes me feel MUCH better about myself....

The 10 worst jobs in science...

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Small Success Stories in Kashmir.

The Indian State in Kashmir is frequently, and mistakenly seen as always using its iron fist. This is not so... this article, from today's Statesman talks about the efforts of the Army and the administration to make things better.

Kashmiri children tread a new path

Far from the sweltering heat of the plains of Punjab, a few young Kashmiri boys waited anxiously for their matriculation exam results in the mountains of militancy-infested remote areas of Kashmir Valley. While those living in cities and suburbs had access to the Internet to see their results, the boys living in far-flung areas did not have this facility.
To their bad luck, the BSNL network too hadn’t been working smoothly for the past few days in Kashmir. There wasn’t any other way results could have been communicated to these students studying in the Army Public School, Beas in Punjab; they had come home for the summer holidays. Butterflies fluttered in their stomachs as they awaited a phone call from their school to inform them about their fate.
And the call did come, bringing with it a new dawn, a new hope and a new zest for life. The Kashmiri boys had surprised everyone in northern India. They had not only secured very good marks, one of them had even topped the school having a strength of 1,000 children from the entire northern India, securing 95.4 % marks in the matriculation exam.
For Ishfaq Zahoor of Astingoo Bandipore, this was a new dawn that kindled a hope and promise of a bright future. A shy student who had opened his eyes in Kashmir’s violent situation and had never witnessed anything but bloodshed, it was the best moment of his life so far. He had made the Kashmiris proud of him.
Three years ago, when Ishfaq’s father Zahoor Ahmed Lone, a head constable in Jammu and Kashmir Police, got to know about the Army’s initiative to send some Kashmiri students to different Army schools outside J&K for further education under Operation Sadhbhavana, a civic action programme launched by the Army in 1998, he did not lose the opportunity and encouraged his youngest son Ishfaq to avail of the opportunity. And he did.
The Army conducted an entrance examination all over Kashmir Valley in which hundreds of Kashmiri students appeared. Not everyone was successful. Ishfaq Zahoor and Aamir Nazir Khan of Sopore, Baramulla, were among those who cleared it. A total of 100 militancy-affected children from Jammu and Kashmir, mostly orphans, were given admission in this institution in 2003.
For the hapless Kashmiri children, it was a new beginning. Their identical sufferings arising out of similar unfortunate circumstances became a bonding between them. Most of them had suffered because of the militancy. Somebody’s father was gunned down, while another was deprived of his mother. There were many whose both parents had been killed by militants. They had been living in different areas of the state in a depressing atmosphere.
Besides, militants had disrupted and destroyed academic infrastructure. This was done primarily because an educated and liberal Kashmiri could not easily be converted into a jihadi, but would have questioned their authority. There are enough schools in Kashmir but their infrastructure is in poor shape. Once militancy was brought under control, to instill confidence in the minds of children and wean them away from jihadi organisations, education was on the army’s priority list. Unaware of the sufferings of the other children, they were selected by the Army for a healing touch and were admitted to the Army Public School, Beas, in classes 5 to 7.
Had the Army not given Ishfaq Zahoor the opportunity to go to APS Beas to pursue his studies, he would have probably passed out from the Al Mustafa Islamia Model Public school, Bandipore, north Kashmir, where he studied and would have taken admission to the Government Higher Secondary school in the same area. In the turbulent situation in Kashmir, he could at the most think of a graduation degree from the Sopore Degree College, which is some 20 km away. Boys and girls from Bandipore have to travel to Sopore everyday for pursuing higher education.
Ishfaq (16) is among that generation of Kashmiri children who have never seen normal lives. What normalcy is all about, what life could be away from guns, grenades and bloodshed, is unknown to the generation of Kashmiri youths born after 1990 when insurgency had already taken its roots in Kashmir.
Thanks to the Army, some 100 children from Kashmir got a chance to study outside the state. Today, they are different boys. Smartly dressed, they reside in one of the best campuses of Army schools in the country. Their confidence level has gone up. The transformation has to be seen to be believed.
If a beaming Ishfaq Zahoor responds to each and every question in fluent but slightly Kashmiri-accented English, Aamir Nazir Khan, however, has no such accent problem in his conversation and can well stand out as any north Indian boy.
Overcoming all the challenges that he and other Kashmiri children had to face in an alien land in Punjab at the Army Public School, Aamir too has made his father, Nazir Ahmed Khan, Principal in charge, Government Higher Secondary School, Younsho, proud.
For lack of facilities and infrastructure, Aamir, a resident of Khanoo Babagund village, situated some 20 km from Sopore town, studied in Government Middle School, Haripora, and then Government High School, Younsoo.
Though there were some apprehensions about his joining the Army Public School, his father ,who is much emancipated, told him that it wasn’t necessary that he should join the Army after studying in that school
Abba (father) told me that I could choose any career even after studying in an Army school. He knew that it would give me confidence and discipline,” says Aamir who would be leaving for Beas by the end of this month as the school is reopening in the first week of July and he has to gear up for his 11th class studies.
For all these Kashmiri boys and girls who could ultimately make it to APS Beas, life wasn’t so easy initially. Away from their homes, they had not only to adjust to the new surroundings and a new culture, but also learn about coexistence.
“What we did see in these 14 years in Kashmir was dead bodies, bloodshed, blasts and abductions. When we opened our eyes in this world, we were greeted with big explosions nearby and as we grew in the lap of our mother, we only heard gunshots. But in the past three years, we saw the strength of diverse culture of the country,” says Aamir Nazir, adding that all of them had never lived with people from other religions. Kashmiri Pandits had fled the Valley and it was only one community that they interacted with in Kashmir. This generation of Kashmiri youths was never exposed to Kashmiriyat or the concept of coexistence. Though it was difficult, it wasn’t impossible.
Today, at the end of three years, they have many Hindu and Sikh friends and they are very happy about it, thanks to the Army’s Sadhbhavna.
Besides, they had to overcome problems like weather (the weather difference between Kashmir and Punjab is all too stark), homesickness, shifting from Urdu medium to Hindi and English medium, from state board to Central board, and so on. But hard work, extra coaching, counselling to the students and parents, congenial hostel environment and remedial measures taken in time by the APS authorities produced outstanding results of all the class X boys of J&K studying at APS, Beas.
But did they expect that they would secure such good marks?
“Yes, there was a lot of expectation from me. When I was sent outside by my parents, obviously I was under pressure, I had to perform and I am happy I have come up to the expectations of my parents and teachers,” says Ishfaq, adding that he was confident he would fetch over 95 per cent marks.
However, the confident young Kashmiri boy is perturbed as to why one mark (he got 99 out of 100 in mathematics) was deducted. He claims he had attempted the full paper correctly.
Such an inspiration Ishfaq has become for the Kashmiri children, that his elder brother Nayeem Zahoor, who failed in 10+2 examination in Bandipore, now wants to appear in the examination again and continue with his studies.
“Never in their lives had these children expected that they would get to see the outside world, not to talk of seeking good education in a normal situation away from the gunfire and the smell of the cordite in which they had grown up,” says Zahoor Ahmed Lone, Ishfaq’s father, adding that his son is determined to become a police officer, which in fact is also his dream.
“I am a head constable in the state police. I wanted to become an officer in the force which I could not. I would think that I have performed Haj if my son can become an officer, thus fulfilling my own dream,” he adds as his eyes turn moist.
Now that Ishfaq, Aamir and other students are exposed to the outside world and have tasted the success, their quest for knowledge has increased further and they are all set to chase their dreams.
“Now we want to see the outside world. We would like to go to new destinations, explore new avenues - may be out of India where we can leave our mark as Indians,” says Ishfaq, adding that till they were given the opportunity by the Army to explore their potential, to find out more about their capabilities, they did not know they were capable of doing so. Now having known that, these kids think the sky is the limit.
“My father is a simple head constable but I am proud of him. He trusted me and now I want to become an IPS officer and come back to J&K to serve my people,” says Ishfaq.
His classmate, Aamir, who has secured 87.20 per cent marks, wants to become a software engineer. His adaptability to the new environment is clearly reflected by the fact that he has excelled both in academics and cultural events, especially singing, and has won accolades.
Today is the beginning of a new life for them.

(The author is a Special Representative of The Statesman based in Jammu)

Friday, June 22, 2007

The best myth we know.

The best myth of them all.

The economy is in great shape. This is the biggest lie that our leaders keep telling us. If we are to believe them, then India has a growth rate just about ready to enter double digits and that will lead to a better life for all of us, so stop complaining.

Western economists have propagated a theory for a while now: in a free market economy, if we let everyone become as rich as they can, everyone benefits. This is the exact kind of stupid thinking that comes from having no acquaintance with the physical sciences and no idea about human behaviour either.

Two things: 1. The absolute amount of available resources in this world is finite. For the truly stupid amongst us, that word translates to ‘limited’. Limited as in ‘ride in an SUV today, and your grandkids might have to walk to work’.
2. People are greedy. Asking people to curb their consumption of resources assumes that these people have something of a conscience. Now there are certain people, the Mother Tersea’s, the Nelson Mandela’s and the Mohandas Gandhi’s of this world who do, but it would appear that people like our dear Mr. Cheney wield more absolute power.

Right, to put this thesis into shape, we now have our basic assumptions. So the idea is simply the following: without external control, wealth will accumulate in the hands of a privileged few, and will do so at the expense of the masses. The gap between those who have and those who will never know otherwise will continue to widen until, inevitably, something will give. And the consequences of that will be terrible and far reaching. For let us not forget, the world is a veritable neighbourhood at the present time, we cannot sneeze, without jostling our Chinese neighbours. And we do possess the resources to inflict horrific damage on our planet.

This time, more than any other calls for leaders of vision and responsibility. Instead, all the world has to offer are people distinguished only by their appalling greed and callousness. The West which has championed the cause of the ‘fellow man’ has now found it expedient to revive economic slavery. The old days of running the colonies with an iron hand and a brilliant Civil Service are gone. It is more efficient for the leaders of the West to employ their private armies, and thus we have left the Iraqis to the tender mercies of the Blackwater Corporation. The people who coined the term ‘human rights’ have made a mockery of it. The world is clearly apportioned between the rich white man and the poor white man who serves the former. All others exist by sufferance: a problem of lebensraum, which will undoubtedly be solved one day.

Experimental drugs are sent initially to be tested in the more relaxed regimes of Africa and Asia. Brown and black lives are less valuable and safety and dosage margins can be easily estimated without the pesky FDA looking over a private firm’s shoulders. It is a very basic perversion of the whole concept of industry that the people who design and create a product are usually paid far less than the people who advertise it. Reminds me of the Doug Adam’s Golgafrinchian Ark B, where they packed all the useless people of their race and shot them into space. Except, of course that WE are those people who have been assumed to be useless, and are being nudged ever so gently into extinction.

Here’s raising our goblets to those politicians who pay lip service to their duties and fill their coffers with oil money, gun money and blood money. Let us toast the leader of the free world, my friends, for he leads from the front! Join me in raising a cheer to his spokesman across the Atlantic, the man who sits on the chair, which was once the throne of Pax-Britannia. And finally, my dear fellow Indians, let us shout out a loud hurrah for our self-delusional friends in New Delhi. There is no wog like a wog who actually believes that he belongs! To make this point clearer, perhaps I should tell you what a wog is: a Westernized oriental gentleman, the oh-so-genteel sobriquet for a desi dhobi who doesn’t know his place. Our beloved politicians believe in the mantra of disinvestment… selling off the family heirlooms to pay for an expensive drug habit, as it turns out. After years of professionally running the best public sector undertakings to the ground by handing out favours to selected businessmen, and getting a job for everybody’s favourite nephew, our political masters point out that the nation cannot sustain these loss making enterprises. My dear reader, can one fail to note that it is principally the policies of these very politicians which have pushed profitable undertakings to the brink of bankruptcy.

Disinvestment is not a panacea. How is it that businessmen are capable of turning a profit when government employees are not? Reliance petrochemicals, one of the best known faces of corporate India recruits heavily from the Gas Authority of India, Limited (GAIL), and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). Why does it do so?.... obviously because these government undertakings are staffed by competent people. Then why is it that our political masters find it expedient to turn our coalfields, our oilfields, to private companies? Why cannot they be exploited with maximal efficiency by state corporations, and the economic benefit translate to rural electrification and safe drinking water facilities for all instead of another Mercedes Maybach for someone like Mukesh Ambani? The answer, my dear friends is simple- those paybacks, those election fund contributions, all those hidden perks of which there are so many to be had, especially now, that the Indian markets have opened up and the luxuries of the world are there for those who can pay.

Contrary to all popular images, the Indian economy is not flourishing. Our national assets, no, call them treasures are being bled dry by opportunistic politicians and their partners in crime: the businessmen of negotiable conscience. The 9% economic growth means nothing as long as the vast majority of rural India has no access to clean drinking water and intermittent supplies of electricity (if indeed, cables have been laid down). Laying high speed data cables in Bangalore is meaningless unless food shortages in Orissa’s Kalahandi district are solved.

The India of today is like an overstressed athlete who is forced to run on steroids, but on an empty stomach and on weakened, atrophied legs. Something will give, and when it does, the results will be calamitous. The signs are there to see: the Naxal movement has huge tracts of land in its grasp. These people are not anti-national; they just don’t see the point of a government, of successive governments which have shown them nothing but callousness and prison cells when they became too restive. There is a way out of the impending darkness: but it will require vision, courage and resolve. These are not qualities, which our current crop of leaders has shown. But things have to change, and soon, else I fear, our country will enter a long and terrible night.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Combinatorics

Disclaimer: came across this on orkut. thought i should put it here for kicks.
Commentary: There are 12 X 31 X 12 or 4464 choices... sooner or later, someone will end up humping a goat because the voices told them to!!

Pick the month (number) you were born in:

1----i shot a
2----i ate a
3----i smacked
4----i sang to
5----i fell in love with
6----i murdered
7----i gave my number to
8----i gave a lap dance to
9----i chocked on
10---i bitched out
11---i had sex with
12---I humped



Pick the day (number) you were born on:


1-------A homeless guy
2-------your mom
3-------a banana
4-------a fork
5-------a mexican
6-------a gangster
7-------a ninja
8-------an ipod
9-------my best friends boyfriend
10-------a goat
11-------my dog
12-------my dad
13-------the computer
14-------my science teacher
15-------my neighbor
16-------myself
17-------a jones soda
18-------a llama
19-------a pickle
20-------a stuffed animal
21-------a permenant marker
22-------a policeman
23-------a condom
24-------a baseball bat
25-------my psychiatrist
26-------my brother
27-------my sister
28-------a football player
29-------a dvd player
30-------a paperclip
31-------my cell phone

Pick the color of shirt you are wearing:

White------Because i was high.
Black-------Because I was drunk.
Pink--------Because im a homosexual.
Red---------Because the voices told me to.
Blue--------Because i cant control myself.
Green------Because I hate myself.
Purple------Because Im naked.
Gray--------Because thats how i roll.
Yellow------Because someone offered me 1,000,000 dollars
Orange----Because i hate my family.
Other-------Because that's how I roll.
none------because im sexy and i do what i want

And then combine what u have made an' post it here as a comment
u'll get really creepy an disturbing things from it

Update on post below...

I am now Debian Linux... difficult to know, but damn good. I had to fudge a lot of the responses for this.

People like OS.

There is this online quiz which tells you what you would be, if you were an operating system. To my intense disgust, the system tells me that I am like Windows XP. Bright, cheerfull and dependable. Yuck!! Go check out the quiz yourself.

Personally, I believe I am more like an ancient version of BSD-UNIX... it does everything it is asked to, but you have to ask politely, or else beware... it has teeth!

Your Search Bar is not what it seems!

Use Firefox? The lovely search bar at the top right, my best friend inside work hours is not all it seems. Firefox makes good money out of placed ads... and then again, the default search engine is Google. Read away...

Lovely old fashioned computer stuff!!

1. Great old computer ads...

80 Mbytes of storage for under $12k!' and other ad favorites through the years

2. Dead and dying computer skills.
as listed by comp mag editors.
as listed by readers.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Back from Chicago.

Me back from Chicago. This time around, I was there for my cousin's graduation from business school. The weekend was quite enjoyable. The graduation ceremony was very impressive. There were close to 800 graduates in the 2007 class. Quite a large number of desi's, too. The school has a very beautiful campus right on the shores of Lake Michigan. It is a lovely, very green place. The arrangements were quite well thought out, all the way down to the little paper fans handed out to every visitor with the school's logo written on it. Functionality mixed with advertising. Very neat! The food was quite scrumptious.. and the crowd was pretty much like Ashtami at Gariahat. The one jarring note was the invited commencement speaker, some bigwig.. I believe he is the CEO of Wrigley. This bloke was not just singularly uninspiring, he just stood there mouthing platitudes and expecting people to applaud. One of his more ridiculous exhortations was to tell the graduating class that they were a force for promoting good in the world, because 'the only true path to fighting poverty is by transferring technology to the Third World.' I wonder if he really believes that? I wonder if people listening to him really believed that. I would be very surprised. However, this was a day to celebrate and celebrate we did. More later.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Surf in privacy.

This was the catchphrase of a certain Internet Cafe back in the dear old hometown, back in those happy days when very house did not have a computer and the only place to watch, ahem, unmentionable websites was with friends at the neighbourhood cyber-cafe. Very much in that spirit is the now-defunct 'Invisible Browser' Ghostzilla, which blends into the open window of any other MS-Windows application, like, say Outlook and only appears when you run the mouse over it. Leaving any Peeping Tom with the impression that you are busy checking email, while you could be actually visiting, ahem,.. any website. Oh, that cafe I talked about... it had each surfing booth screened of by curtains...

Panoramas.

The human eye is far greater an optical instrument than anything ever manufactured by Carl Zeiss, or anyone else. The Gods, and dear old Mother Nature are still far, far better engineers and physicists than we will ever be. There are few instruments which have the dynamic range, the sensitivity, the colour resolution of the human eye. And although, I particularly hate the word 'zoom', the human eye is an instrument with an amazing optical zoom. One of the beautiful things about the placement of the eyes on either side of the nose, is that they actually capture differing images on either side of the face, which are then stitched together by the brain to provide a seamless integrated image which compasses a huge incident solid angle at the centre of the brain. This is also why we can perceive depth, that is, have stereoscopic vision. Animals like crocodiles whose individual eye images do not overlap have had to develop other evolutionary tools to provide them with the sensation of depth. If one wishes to marvel at what miracles Nature has wrought, then think for a moment about the compound eyes of insects like flies. The image processing engine given to us at birth is something of astounding, perhaps incomprehensible elegance and efficiency. And yet, we stand beggared in what we can see as compared to, say, a household cat.

One of those things that cameras have some difficulty doing is capturing panoramic photographs. Panoramas are images which capture a large angle of view. They are the exact opposite of telephoto pictures. Panoramas come into their own when we stand before, say, a mountain range, when vision is not limited to a few tens of metres, and there is great detail before us.

Camera manufacturers and lensmen have experimented for decades to bring such visual treats to a postcard print. Techniques include multiple exposures of a single film, rotating the camera and many other innovations. Read this wikipedia entry.

Anyways, I have been interested in taking panoramic shots. Not that I really have the gear for landscape photography, but its always worth a try. Anyway, I ended up with these shots of the Chicago shoreline from a small launch in Lake Michigan which were not intended for a panorama stitch. Now what is a panorama stitch? These days, with digital cameras, one takes different shots of the same landscape, changing the azimuthal angle of the lens mount in each successive shot, while keeping some overlap between successive shots. In plain language, this means that you mount the camera on a tripod, keep speed and aperture constant and take a picture. Rotate the camera slightly and take another picture, etc. There are funky softwares like Canon Photostitch which will then process successive images, find overlaps digitally and integrate, or stitch them.

Well, I was not carrying a tripod, I was shooting from a fast moving launch in rather choppy waters, and I was shooting in the evening, with very uncertain light, in fact, after sundown. So please forgive, and kindly adjust. I used Double-Take which looks and handles like a native Mac app. The problem is that the freeware version leaves a huge watermark. Anyway, I will try harder next time.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Scientists on Stage.

Mukhosh is here!! Their new website is up and running. Mukhosh is a group of people who love theatre, mostly affiliated with IISc, Bangalore. They are ready to go on stage with '..ebong Indrajit', Badal Sircar's classic work of urban disenchantment. In fact, I would have used the words 'existential crisis' had they not been bandied about by every other git.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

What every lensman should know.

Mr. Rockwell has an amazing website where he talks about everything in photography. This website is here. I am pulling out an excerpt from his 'how to take good pictures' page. Here goes:

5.) EDITING

Only show your very strongest images.

Throw away most of what you shoot. I do. Most of my photos are awful!

Go through the few photos you save out of a roll, and then throw away all but the one strongest image.

Next time, go through the few you've saved from a few rolls, and throw more away.

This isn't painting. In photography it is a requirement to throw away most of what you do.

You'll see that if you only save or show your strongest images that your body of work will seem to improve. Guess what: as you show only the better images, your body of work as seen by others has improved!

Do you think I shoot a roll of film and get a roll loaded with the images you see in my galleries? Of course not. Most of what I shoot is crap. I'm just good enough to throw most of it away and only show the good stuff.

Ansel Adams said that if you can produce one strong image in a year that you are doing very well. Don't expect to turn out miracles every roll, or even every month. Ansel didn't, I don't, and I don't think anyone does.


Monday, June 11, 2007

The new India.

This is an article that appeared in today's Statesman. Worth a read.

The mansions of the blest

Manmohan Singh’s exhortations to the rich of India not to flaunt “a vulgar display of wealth” are puzzling, since as an economist, no one should be more acutely aware than he that the relationship between the free market and social justice is scarcely one of intimate friendship. If he had listened a little more attentively to his mentors on the US and UK, he would know that the model of development, of which he is so enthusiastic an exponent, insists that no limits should be placed on the creation of wealth, the dynamic energy of entrepreneurs, the go-getters and adventurers of capitalism. George Bush has famously advantaged the very rich in tax breaks: between 2001 and 2010 the richest one percent of the population will have benefited by half a trillion dollars; while Tony Blair said he has no desire to cap the earnings of David Beckham or other of the megarich in Britain. As a consequence, London has now become a playground for the international jet-set, the first on-shore tax haven, where people can live with every ostentatious amenity that human imagination can devise, while choosing to have their money taxed elsewhere.
Adjustment to the inescapable reality, that free markets and social justice are mortal enemies, has been difficult enough even in the West, where a majority of the people are beneficiaries of globalisation. To sell this idea in a country like India, with its unnumbered poor and excluded, is a quite different story. It requires powers of salesmanship which exceed even the considerable accomplishments of Manmohan Singh and talents of his government.
For no matter what compensatory efforts governments make to redress the imbalance between rich and poor, the free market continues to distribute its rewards with intemperate and arbitrary promiscuity. The pace and scale of wealth-creation in the private sector leaps, nimble and agile, out-distancing even the most worthy efforts at redistribution by governments, whose cumbersome activities come limping far behind them. This is why policies designed to raise up the poorest – Minimum Employment Guarantee Scheme, aid to stricken farmers, increases in expenditure on education and health care, efforts to create greater equality of opportunity for those disadvantaged by age-old disabilities of caste or faith – can never keep pace with the market.
This means that, in effect, there is a two-tier economy at work. While the government anxiously seeks to limit the suffering of those deprived even of the basic necessities of existence, the very rich are cutting global deals, which enhance their wealth with far greater speed than the woes of the poor can be addressed. In reality, the spectacular opulence in India is supposed to be the instrument whereby the poorest will benefit. This used to be called “trickle-down”, a theory described by JK Galbraith in 1992 as “the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for sparrows.” The ineffectiveness of this has not, however, been allowed to interfere with its majestic workings, since it is the only theory which permits the more or less peaceful co-existence of rich with poor. The reasoning goes that if the rich are allowed to become much richer, the poor may become a little less poor. The high growth-rate is the expression of this: the figures are to have a magical effect upon the poor, and uplift them by association with the major player that India has become in the global economy. They are supposed to bathe in the refulgence of the wealth of others. Their patriotic hearts should beat faster, as they see India admitted to the councils of the world, gaining a seat at the top table, even though their own fare may remain the miserable scraps that fall from it. This was the error of the NDA government. It has necessarily been repeated by the UPA, despite the rhetoric to the contrary.
As a social model in the rich countries it works, because the poor are not in the state of absolute want that millions are in India; but even there, inequality continues to grow. In 2006 in Britain the thousand richest individuals saw their wealth grow by more than 20% to some 700 billion dollars. The murmurings against it remain faint, because the general level of prosperity is high.
In India, the discrepancy between poor and rich requires more drastic action than the generation of wealth by the rich and the small palliatives offered by government to the poor. Rich and poor live with a growing apartheid, which replicates the divisions which produced older inequalities of an untranscended Indian past.
Manmohan Singh’s response is to place faith in the power of moral suasion. “India has made us. We must make Bharat... vulgar display insults the poverty of the less privileged.” Less privileged? The child labourers (recently yet again legislated out of existence), landless share-croppers, debt-bondage, the dead of Nandigram and Kalinganagar, the disappeared girl-children of the most prosperous states, indebted farmers, unemployed youth in urban slums? These people are not
less-privileged, they have no privileges at all, not, in many cases, even that of survival. It is vain work to moralise the amoral process of wealth-creation.
Perhaps the most telling riposte to the high-minded calls of Manmohan Singh was the announcement that India’s richest man is building a tower-block in Mumbai for his family – six people and the six hundred staff required to service them. Mukesh Ambani’s construction of his private fortress is already worth one billion dollars. It will no doubt provide amenities which his present far from humble 14-storey dwelling is unable to furnish. This grandiose folly has all the makings of the delusions of megalomaniac monarchs and absolute rulers of pre-revolutionary Europe; and is an example of the kind of thing which appalls Dr Manmohan Singh. It is like the place my grandmother thought she might go to after death, where she confidently expected to be accommodated in the mansions of the blest.
Dr Manmohan Singh casts his project in terms of India Inc; that is to say, he now sees the culture and civilisation of India in terms of a single business enterprise. “In a country with extreme poverty”, he said sternly, “industry needs to be moderate in the emolument levels it adopts. Rising income and wealth inequalities, if not matched by a corresponding rise of incomes across the nation, can led to social unrest... Such vulgarity... is socially wasteful and it plants seeds of resentment in the minds of the have-nots.”
There we have it. It has nothing to do with justice, equality or the redressing of ancient wrongs: it is because resentment might breed disaffection, and disaffection might give rise to violence. As indeed it does. Just a year ago, Manmohan Singh stated that the greatest internal threat to India came from Naxalism. Naxalism is not a war declared by evil people on the Indian State: it is a direct result of the same social injustice which Manmohan Singh half defends, half attacks, in his efforts to reconcile the irreconcilable. No doubt, he will have his reward; it is fervently to be hoped that this will be confined to the electoral nemesis that awaits him in less than two years time.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Million dollar watch.

Being sold for half a million on Amazon. And here are the customer reviews:

Street Photography.





Question: What is street photography?
Ans: Simply put, it is taking pictures of people going about their daily business "in the street", sometimes without letting them know.
Question: Is it ethical?
Expanded question: Is it proper to take pictures of people without asking for their permission in the first place?
Ans: Ok, people, this is a personal opinion. Here goes: I believe that as long as your intentions are good, it is fine. Let me explain: by good intentions I mean that you are not trying to violate someone's privacy for profit, you are not stalking someone, you do not plan to take embarrassing or revealing pictures.
Why? Simply because an 'aware' subject is no longer a natural subject.
Discussion: of course, it is very difficult to draw a line between art and something of a more salacious nature, but I am putting some value on the personal morals of the photography.
Profit: something that I leave open to discussion. I am not a professional, so this is not an issue that I have had to deal with, but it is pretty much an open question... do you share profit, if any with the (unknowing) subjects. A rather knotty problem.
I leave this post with a couple of street pictures. Comments welcome. Also check the wikepedia entry here.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Olympus E500 Review

The Olympus EVOLT 500 is the best representative of a line of amazing DSLRs which have the potential to unseat Nikon and Canon as the premier market leaders. The E500 is simply loaded with features, but let me point out why you need to buy this right now.

1. Simple controls. The E500 has a great design philosophy: the standard metaphor for doing anything on this camera is ‘press a button and rotate the control wheel’. Controls such as ISO, WB, AF and metering are mounted on the 4-way key located on the right of the large 2.5’’ screen. I prefer to maintain Single AF, unless, of course, I am photographing something moving really fast, like birds. I keep the screen switched off to conserve battery; every time I activate one of the 4-way keys, like ISO, the screen lights up with only the ISO displayed. Very efficient.
2. Fast and efficient AF. People are known to crib about just 3 AF points, but I don’t see why. If I am ever photographing under really tricky light conditions, I tend to use spot metering with the central AF point. Sure, the EOS30D has 9 AF points, but it weighs a tonne and costs as much as a Ferrari. The continuous AF is quite nice, but beware: don’t use it when you don’t need to. I was once photographing turtles in a marsh, and my AF kept throwing me off, it was only later that I realized that at maximum focal length, continuous AF can be easily fooled by surrounding reeds which are practically invisible to you (at 140 mm).
3. Easy metering. You can under/over expose to within 0.3 stops (or EVs). This is easily accomplished by holding down the exposure compensation button and rotating the wheel. You can also change the step size in metering to 0.7 stops or 1 stop.
4. The screen is nice and bright, and can spew out much more data than you need. Fortunately, it also has a basic mode, with only essential mode data displayed. My favourite mode for the screen is to keep it off. Saves battery power.
5. The menu is much more readable than on, say the Rebel Tx. I sometimes need to switch to monochrome, and this is easily done. I would have liked a hotkey for this, but well..
6. Small viewfinder. Apparently Olympus sells an eyecup magnifier. Why can’t they include it in the kit? Oh, profits..
7. Reasonably fast operations. This is not a professional camera. Don’t expect EOS30D or D200 level work, but there is no shutter lag, and as I found out during a dolphin show, the speed factor is going to be your reflexes and not that of the camera.
8. Excellent battery. Takes forever to charge, though. Good for 500 pictures, which is about what you can fit into a 2GB CF card. Remember to switch off the screen.
9. The onboard flash is awful. But all onboard flashes are awful, so nothing new there. I always shoot in ambient light anyway.
10. Kit lenses. The Zuiko lens lineup is truly impressive, and very costly too. I would like the 18-180 mm lens to be a little cheaper. I really hate it when I am shooting people pictures with the 40-150 mm outside in the street, and then I want to take pictures of buildings and then I have to go to a Starbucks and switch to the 14-45 lens. The 18-180 mm would be the perfect walkabout lens, except that it is rather costly. Oh, it would be soooo nice if the Sigma 70-300 mm lens was available on a 4/3rd mount. Hey, people at Sigma, Tamron, Tokina.. listen up… we need some decent third party 4/3rd mount lenses… please?
11. Ok, bad points. There should be a DC power connection and adapter for transferring pictures, or displaying them on a TV.
12. Really bad point. USB 1.1!!!!! What the bleep???? Pictures take FOREVER AND AN HOUR to transfer. I could finish my PhD by the time the contents of a 2 GB card make their way to my computer. Well, not really, otherwise I would have graduated….

Summary: this is a great camera with an good pedigree and an ever expanding range of lenses and upgrades available. I recommend it without hesitation. It delivers the best value for money.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

G8 watching.

I have not actually been watching developments at the G8 summit, but a couple of things seem to be pretty obvious.. firstly, the development of an anti-missile screen which might potentially trigger off another arms race worldwide... or atleast, President Putin thinks so... and then the US has refused any climate control goal.. no surprises here.
read on:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6725801.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6717927.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6721639.stm

An exercise in homology.

See if you can spot any similarities between this Beatles song 'I want to hold your hand', and this Shammi Kapoor starrer song.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Acting.

Not something that Mr. Cruise is particularly familiar with... but his ex, the ravishing Nicole Kidman starred in a very offbeat movie called Dogville. This is a work by Lars von Trier... and amongst other things has the screen presence of Paul Bettany, who is a consummate theatre artist. This movie is many things at the same time, but mostly it is an exploration of what people will do if they can. In that, it is a successful play, and indeed it is shown is such.. but I am revealing too much.

Then, I saw 28 Days Later.. which is the kind of post apocalyptic scenario that is so precious to filmmakers all over the globe. Thankfully, it is not a Hollywood movie, but comes from an Englishman, Danny Boyle. It also stars the rising star, Cillian Murphy (I first noted his performance in Wes Craven's 'Red Eye', and he was.. creepy!). This movie owes something to the genre of British post apocalyptic science fiction writing, principally John Wyndham's 'The Day of the Triffids'. Both the book and the movie begin with our protagonist waking up in a hospital with complete silence around.. the silence which is the sign than man has failed... that civilisation itself has failed. But , just go see it.

Casino Royale.... Daniel Craig. I like this Bond, and I think people who do not are harbouring unnecessary prejudices and they shouldn't.