Et tu UBS?

The Swiss are disgusted with the way the UBS has been involved in the US subprime crisis: something viewed as a very un-Swiss thing to do. Read this BBC article.

Zombies!

I saw the new version of the Dawn of the Dead last night... and I am going to stock up on canned food, batteries .. the works... maybe a shortwave radio...

Snyder has given us totally badarse zombies.. these mothers move FAST.. no dickin' around waiting for live meat to walk by.. they come and get what the want... and like Ben Johnson on steroids (oh, well, we all know what that is like... ).. but seriously, George Romero's social commentary was wasted.. but what we got in turn were awesome characters and some great action... this is much closer to 28 Days Later than the original Dawn of the Dead, but no complaints from me! Go Snyder!

This is why I louvv reddit soo much!!

A random open Thanksgiving invitation leading to a discussion about marinading people and gay Mormons...

PhD=Yes, Kids=No => Divorce!

A guest post from today's Statesman, this is material not written by me, it is put here just to disseminate the content wider, with all due credits to the Statesman and Mr. Sen.
Let me know what you think about the matter...

Special Article

Wedded to work

Indian Men Find Career Women Difficult To Handle

By Suhit Sen

The Supreme Court passed final orders in a divorce case early this month. The story behind the suit and the court’s judgment raise interesting questions about conjugal relations in a rapidly changing urban society.
The story, as reported in the media, is as follows. A man filed for divorce from his wife who was, at the time they got married, pursuing a doctoral degree in biochemistry at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The man alleged that his wife was refusing to bear a child because that would jeopardise her career and had had three abortions in 1984, the year they got married, 1985 and 1989 without his knowledge. He further alleged that his wife had deserted him and left for the US in pursuance of her career.
The woman refuted all the charges. In her defence, she said that the first two abortions had been necessitated by medical conditions ~ the first caused by exposure to radiation in her laboratory and the second by a kidney inflammation ~ and the third had been a natural miscarriage.
As for the trip to the US, she had been awarded a fellowship, which she had taken up. While the husband further alleged that his wife had told him several times that he could remarry or adopt if he was desperate for a child, the impugned woman said in her defence that she was highly educated and wanted to deploy that education in service of society.
The court ruled that the denial of a child, the husband’s legitimate conjugal right, constituted torture, and, while dismissing the charge of desertion, granted the divorce sought by the man.

Changing roles

Let us note at the outset that there are three actors in this drama and we shall look at their actions one by one ~ the husband, the wife and the judiciary, specifically the Supreme Court, though the case came up from a lower court through the high court.
Let’s begin with the petitioner ~ the husband. While, from within a certain frame of reference, one may be critical of a certain lack of sensitivity, of which more in a moment, one cannot fully fault the husband, especially since the bareness of the narrative available in the media makes it impossible to reconstruct the context, for wanting a child. Nor can one fault him for wanting a divorce after having been denied fatherhood. Let us assume, charitably, that he tried to prevail upon his wife and convince her of the depth of his desire to be a father and only after having failed did he take recourse to the divorce option.
Fine. But a digression is in order. In this particular case the wife alleged that her husband was “jealous” of her professional success ~ “progress” ~ when she got her fellowship and went to the US instead of being happy for her, which was the proximate cause for filing the divorce suit. Without going into the merits of this allegation, if for no other reason because we are in no position to, some general points can be made. In India’s rapidly changing urban society, the social and professional space for women is opening up virtually with every passing day. This enlargement of space and the consequent liberty and freedom that women are increasingly enjoying is also being diffused more widely across social classes and reaching women from more diverse, hitherto traditional, backgrounds. Men, especially those from more traditional and conservative backgrounds are finding it difficult to cope with the new social and professional roles and aspirations of women in general and their wives specifically.
There is another aspect to this. The new social and professional freedom in the public space that women are beginning to enjoy is mirrored in the private space ~ that of the family and the household ~ by an increasing rejection of traditional roles. Thus women not only have different expectations, say, about the division of household responsibilities, but also about the control of their bodies, their selves, their destinies which in traditional contexts they were denied, especially within the ambit of the concept of the joint family and the responsibilities that entailed (whether or not the actual household was nuclear or joint). These claims to freedom are even more problematic for men in traditional contexts. That is the lesson of the husband’s story, whether or not it applies in this case.
Now to the woman. Much of the foregoing applies to the wife. She wanted a career and was well within her rights not to have a child if she felt that would impede her career. Motherhood may not be the ultimate epiphany for all women, whether married or not ~ marriage, in other words, does not have to come with a promissory note inscribed with the promise of a child or children, even though a majority of men may think it does. The woman’s allegation of professional jealousy is plausible in the broader social context, whether or not it is true in this particular case ~ given, as we have argued, that men find both the new public and private roles of “their” women and women in general difficult to negotiate. If there is something both inexplicable and to an extent indefensible, in this particular case, however, is the wife’s desperate attempt to deny the husband a divorce. If their registers were so very divergent, from the outside and given the limitations of our knowledge of the full story, it would appear logical to agree to a parting of ways ~ she to pursue her career and he to find a wife more in tune with his expectations and, crucially, willing to bear his child.
The most interesting action was that of the third actor, however ~ the judgments passed seem to encapsulate the still hugely dominant social consensus about the public and private roles of women and the relations between men and women, specifically the relation of conjugality. In its order, while upholding the lower and high court judgments, the apex court dismissed desertion on account of the woman having taken up her fellowship in the US on purely technical grounds ~ the couple had not lived apart continuously for two years.

Rights and duties

The grounds on which the divorce was in fact granted in the lower court was that the wife’s refusal to bear a child ~ and in this the husband’s version of events was accepted ~ constituted cruelty, a view at least tacitly endorsed by the high court and Supreme Court. The Supreme Court threw out the desertion plea, but, as cryptically reported in the media, ruled that the continuous cessation of “marital intercourse” constituted “legal cruelty”.
In the absence of context the phrase “marital intercourse” is difficult to interpret, but at the very bottom there seems to be the notion that bearing a child is an inalienable conjugal duty a wife undertakes upon marriage and conversely it is the husband’s inalienable conjugal right to demand compliance. The woman argued that even if the charges ~ the three abortions ~ were true, the issues involved were part of the “normal wear and tear” of a marital relationship ~ in other words, having or not having a child should have been a matter of negotiation within the marriage.
By refusing to buy that, the Supreme Court gave the “marital” duty of bearing a child an absolute, non-negotiable, legal imprimatur, which, while being in line with the dominant social consensus, hardly accords with an equitable, enlightened and just construction of the relationship between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife.

The writer is Senior Editor, The Statesman

Indian Navy sinks Somali Pirate ship

For those of you who have not been paying attenshun, the Indian Ocean coast of Africa, specifically, the Gulf of Aden has recently been in the news a lot. Mostly on account of Somali pirates who have been hijacking shipping and holding crews and cargo to ransom. The biggie was a Saudi supertanker, the Sirius Star which was hijacked this last Saturday. Before this, fed up with having to route shipping to avoid these pirates and escalating insurance costs, the US, the EU and several other interested parties have sent warships to patrol these waters. This includes the Indian Navy. Now, it seems that the IN is in the forefront of the action. Just a week ago, the INS Tabar, a Talwar(Krivak III) class frigate joined the fray. (This little beastie carries BrahMos antiship cruise missiles, good for sniping biggies at longish range in a real shooting wuh.) Anyway, them pirates were hassling MV Jag Arnav, a bulk carrier, and the Tabar sent over Marcos. Now, IN Marcos, like marines anywhere are a nasty bunch of people, with a truly unhappy disposition, people you would want on your side if things got rough. Anyway, Jag Arnav sailed on unolested. Stage 2: INS Tabar got into a shooting match with a largish pirate ship and blew her out of the water. Read on here. What amuses me most is the fact that the BBC puts the 'sinks' in quotes. Implying that... the news is unconfirmed..? Or that they are just having trouble believing that anyone apart from the former rulers of the waves (Hail Brittania, join in the chorus please) can get anything done in a shooting match? Time to be somewhat less snotty BBC, remember the Falklands?

Animal cruelty and far too little punishment.

Read this article. Personally, I think these teenagers should be whipped. And then their parents for bringing up such fu-in brats. Let me make my stand on this and related matters somewhat clear: PEOPLE WHO CANNOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR BRINGING THEIR CHILDREN UP AS DECENT CITIZENS SHOULD NOT HAVE CHILDREN. USE CONDOMS. OR GET YOURSELF STERILIZED. OR JUST MASTURBATE.

Again, a few random book recos

1. Fail-Safe (also made into a very good film) - deals with the possibility of accidental nuclear war during the height of the Cold War. We have all seen Dr. Strangelove. This is a rather different take on the same issue.
http://shohorebrishti.blogspot.com/2007/08/end-of-everything.html
2. Foundation by Asimov, followed by the End of Eternity, then I, Robot (please do not walk in with any preconceived notions based on the awful movie starring Will Smith).. in fact, everything penned by Asimov.
http://shohorebrishti.blogspot.com/2007/12/reviews-of-science-fiction-stories.html
3. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold - by le Carre. A grandmaster at the beginning of a spectacular writing career. Needless to say, this is in the realm of Cold War espionage...
http://shohorebrishti.blogspot.com/2007/12/reviews-of-science-fiction-stories.html
4. The Calcutta Chromosome - fever delirium and many other things unexplained. Amitava Ghosh at his most whimsical, and also at his most lucid. Of course, there will be water wars! Of course the future will be at once terrifying and wonderful. Is he such a good fortune teller because he is also an anthropologist/historian? Or is it just because he is really, really smart?

Of stupid people and the decisions they make....

When a person adopts a child only to return him to foster care in two weeks because the adoptive mother could not form a bond with the child.....

Of datacentres and supercomputers

I came across this article about the snazziest datacentre in the world, built 30 metres below downtown Stockholm, designed to survive a Hydrogen bomb, and with artificial waterfalls and real plants, this place rocks. Take a look.

While we are on the topic of Europeans doing crazy shite, the MareNostrum supercomputer at Barcelona is actually located inside a chapel. Go figure.

(Image credits: Wikipedia)

Epic Balloon Fail

Man traps himself inside balloon. See and believe.

So what is wrong with the world?

This is not a question in jest. It is unthinkable that a world which has split the atom, tamed rivers and set rockets to the heavens cannot find the resources to provide food and clean drinking water to much of its population. The accumulation of obscene wealth in what is supposedly the age of 'equality' in the face of worldwide hunger is an outrage that cannot be tolerated. There is no equality in claiming that all men have the same chance when some are born with trust funds and some to parents who are already dying of AIDS. The reasons for this state of affairs are many and widespread, but certainly there is the colossal failure of the self styled intelligentsia to act as such. far from entering an age of enlightenment, humanity has chosen to sink into a comforting brain dead slumber fed by flickering images and reassuring soundbited from their new Gods, who speak in High Def images with DTS surround sound. This self inflicted lobotomisation of much of the world means that 'the people' sleep while their national coffers are being looted by a few rich and unscrupulous wealth. This article tries to answer the question of 'who owns America?'. What is to be done? Get up, move out of your comfort zone, get something done. This article talks about what is wrong in the way that we have allowed our minds and judgements to be taken over and think what we are told to. I have one simple piece of advice for everyone who does not lead a hand to mouth existance: read a book a week.

Bangla Bands

There is a lot that I would like to say about this, but I will restrict myself to just pointing you, gentle reader in the direction of this very well written article which really says everything that I would have, and is much better researched to boot. And then, I will set up links for some of my favourite songs, which I hope you will like. I am not making a top 10 or any other kind of list. These are just some songs that I really happen to like and would like to share with you. They all come under the umbrella of Bangla Band, although which ones should be classified as rock/blues is somewhat open...

to start off,

1. Aaro ekbaar cholo fire jaayi - Fossils, their eponymous first album, possibly 1998. Rupam Islam went overnight to being an icon. They did much more, and better, but this was how they started off.
2. Shei tumi kyano - by LRB. Ayub Bachhu, wanted to create a group called the Little River Band, but had to change their name to Love Runs Blind after he found out that there was an Aussie band by that name. This is an "Opar Bangla" group, ie. Bangladeshi.
3. Prithibi ta Naki Chhoto Hote Hote - by Mohiner Ghora Guli. Once upon a time, there was a genius called Gautam Chattopadhyay. Inspired in part by Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and other musicians of the age he created awesome music which unfortunately fell be the roadside. This was in part due to the fact that the 70's were the pinnacle of Bangla Adhunik music, as exemplified by the glorious traditions of Hemanta Mukhopadhyay. Noone had any time for 'newfangled' creations like Gautam's. But some people listened, and remembered. Gautam can be legitimately credited with kickstarting the great Jibonmukhi (facing life) tradition in Bangla music. And of course, these days, high profile Bollywood directors like Pritam Chakraborty end up being 'inspired' by the song listed here and have given us this.
4. Mon - by Chandrabindoo. No mention of Bangla Bands can ever be complete without talking about Chandrabindoo, who will probably make it here more than once. These people have been remarkably prolific, alternating wonderfully romantic lyrics with some outrageously sarcastic and evil ones. What they lack is a good vocalist, but they more than make up for it by the sheer 'fundastic' nature of their songs.
5. Sujan - there are many other songs by Parashpathor, but this is one which brings out their affinity for folksy, earthy tunes like no other. Enjoy.
6. Dustu Hawa - since we were talking about folksy earthy music, there is Bhoomi. They started out doing small gigs, but gradually gained a large fan following. They really made it big with Barandaye roddur, but unfortunately I couldn't find a halfway decent track on youtube, so I decided to put this up instead.
7. Tomaye chhute chawar muhurto - by Shahor. This group was formed out of the breakup of Parashpathor, and it brings a lot of Parashpathor's simple elegance in lyrics and mixes it with a more mature, mellow musical style to create something that is unmistakably blues.
8. Barud - by Prithibi. It is time to come back to the more distilled form of rock, and Prithibi, a new group certainly lives up to it.
9. Aadorer Nauko - Also by Chandrabindoo, sung by Shona. Beautiful.
10. Nouar Nouka - by Cactus. This is a band which has been silent for a while: a pity, because they are a talented bunch of people who write as beautifully as they compose their music. It is also worth mentioning here that Nauko/Nouka means a small boat in Bangla.
11. Nishwo Korechho Amaye (Firiye Dao) - by Miles. Just because there has been far too little of Opar Bangla on this list, because Miles is a great band and just massively underrated by most Desi Bongs, also because one stage performance is a must see and finally because this was not a top ten list.

What if the matrix ran on XP?

Yeah, oh gawd, this is sooo hilarious, you HAVE to see this viddy!

Italy: first, Ukraine: second, US: third

This is what I am talking about..
1. Italy, and this is why.
2. Ukraine, and this is why.
3. The US, and this is why.

Chandrayaan: Update

So, it got to the moon.. Awesome!

Ultima Thule

Read here, stuff beyond the Universe!

The Shepherd

These were what bomber crews called Mossie pilots in WW2 who flew the dangerous skies over the Channel and waited for Lancasters flying home with their radios shot to pieces, often with heavy casualties on board, often with shrapnel having shredded the airframe, the flight crew coaxing the engines on for just another half hour. They would come in through the East Anglia fog trying to make it home before being jumped by a predatory German Bf109. Sometimes they made it. Sometimes they went into the drink. Forsyth wrote a lovely novella about a RAF pilot whose instruments went dead halfway across the Channel.. and how he was rescued from certain death by one such Shepherd. And then today, I read about an RAF pilot who talked-down a civilian solo flier who suffered a stroke in middair and lost eyesight. It seems that shepherds still fly.

Yeah, I knew this for so long..

Apparently fiction is as important as news in understanding the world's problems. And it took a study to come to this conclusion. Maybe that is part of the problem....

Abandoned towns..

Why are cities abandoned? Natural disasters, sometimes, like Mt. Vesuvius blowing its top and destroying Pompeii. Or sometimes war, as in the rape and sack of Vijaynagar. Or sometimes nuclear fallout, as in Chernobyl. This link contains images of cities which have fallen by the wayside for myriad reasons, including some as quotidian as jobs simply having moved away. But whatever be those reasons, human efforts being falling into abandonment is always painful to see.

Obama Cake

This turned up in the department coffee room yesterday.

Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.

This is from Friedrich von Schiller, and yes, you guessed it right, I am, of course referring to Sarah Palin. This rather old interview with Kate Couric underscores what America has escaped.

Of elekshuns, programming and kittens.. wait, WTF?

This reddit thread has much to say...

Are we there yet?

Yes, it would seem that we are.. last night, Obama won the Presidency. Awesome. McCain/Palin lost. Equally awesome. But it is not over for Palin yet.. after displaying the most colossally incompetent brain ever to ask for the White House, she might be asking for it yet again, in 2012. Read on here. Well, are we surprised? Maybe not.. after all there are plenty of people who would find her awesome. Like the person who owns this car. And Cracked thinks that this is what her 2012 campaign ads will be like. But this conservative blog should also provide food for thought. And before we call it a day, take a look at the Telegraph's look at the current Prez, his years in a few memorable pictures.

And this post is for Pratul Mukhopdahyay

Pratul-babu is a one-off. His song "Aami Banglaye gaan gaayi", which translates as "I sing in Bangla" has been consistently revered and thought of as one of the most influential songs in Bangla in recent times. However, with very few outstanding works (Babor-er Prarthona comes to mind), he is not really a popular artist, like, say Srikanto Acharya is. But does he need to be? Perhaps one song is all it ever takes. Take a look at the website here.

Football, wait, WTF?

Watch this viddy! Effing awesome!

CERN's magnets also quench!

A magnet quench, I mean a superconducting magnet quench (we do not give a shite about that silly room temp. stuff) is an avalanche process which starts with the superconducting coil jumping its critical temperature. At which it becomes resistive. Hence dissipating heat. Hence heating its liquid helium sheath. Hence becoming more resistive. Hence heating further. This is an avalanche process which culminates in the coil reaching room temperature and the helium boiling off. NMR rooms usually have helium vent lines in case of such quenches. Otherwise any occupants in the room would probably asphyxiate. This is a cool viddy of such a quench under controlled conditions. Magnets can be recovered after a quench, but it is a time consuming and expensive process (especially in the liquid helium it takes to cool the coils down again). Apparently this has happened at CERN. And they have hundreds of such magnets!

The wildlife photographer of the year!

read and watch here.

Oh this is funny! Hedge funds being dosed with their own medicine.

Let me summarize the matter: short selling is when you sell shares of a company that you don't own AT THIS POINT. Wait, what? Yeah, that can be done. As long as you buy the shares you sold later. Its complicated. Read here. So why do it? Because if you have some information about the company that indicates that the share prices are going to tumble tomorrow, then short sell today at high prices, and buy back tomorrow after the prices have dropped. That gives one a big profit. Hedge funds like to do this. That is why insider information is important. Also shady. Well, hedge funds and pirates frequently like to get together to drive prices down on a company. In that case, short selling will also garner massive profits. Also in the process devaluing the company and perhaps putting it through the wringer, but what do brokers care?

This week, hedge funds in NY and London tried pulling this on VW. Making it, for a short while, the largest capitalized company in the world. Except that it did not work. Thanks to VW, and also thanks to Porsche, a major shareholder. Read on here.

Vote!

Watch this viddy.. quite nicely made, exhorting you to get out and vote.. and even after all these years, Julia still rings the bells.

The purpose of television really comes down to whether the person is likable or not

The title is a direct quote from this NY Times article about a conservative school for grooming "experts" who will then share their opinions with you on prime time TV. Aah, the glories of the information age... aah, statesmanship!, aah journalistic ethics and integrity! aah, expertise!

Dynamic Image Resizing

Is now here! Watch this awesome viddy.

Webcomic

Nandi sent me this.. check out.. a good take on physicists..

Urban Planning, Money and some totally insane shite going on in Dubai.

Read this article, which is really mostly pictures, and tells how Dubai is transforming itself from a quite Emirate into a fookin' crazy place where (presumably) urban planner and bankers smoke random shite together and decide to build nutty things and actually finance them!

The last line of the article is quoted herein:

• "There are more construction workers in Dubai than there are actual citizens."

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON OVER THERE?

Yeah, my question exactly! The people involved in the actual construction of these magnificent monuments to Mammon ( I love alliteration) are an unfortunate lot. They work under harsh conditions. This article and this Human Rights Watch essay details what these migrant workers go through.

Music, cinema and emo's.

This song is beautiful. Listen to it here. This is Here is a sampling: Waqt ne Kiya, and the lyrics are posted below:

Movie Name: Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959)
Singer: Geeta Dutt
Music Director: Burman S D
Lyrics: Kaifi Azmi
Year: 1959
Producer: Guru Dutt Films
Director: Guru Dutt
Actors: Baby Naaz, Guru Dutt, Johny Walker, Mehmood, Pratima Devi, Waheeda Rehman
Theme: Art/Offbeat

Tum rahe na tum ham rahe na ham
Waqt ne kiya…

Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam

Beqaraar dil is tarha mile
jis tarha kabhi ham juda na the
Tum bhi kho gaye, ham bhi kho gaye
Ek raah par chalke do qadam
Waqt ne kiya…

Jaayenge kaha sujhta nahi
chal pade magar raasta nahi
Kya talaash hai kuchh pata nahi
Bun rahe hain dil khaab dam-ba-dam
Waqt ne kiya…

This song is fascinating as much for its poetry/music as for Geeta Dutt's voice and also for Guru Dutt's direction. But what really bugs me is the comments people leave on Youtube. Why does a lovely song have to bring out the emo in everyone?

A deeply haunting/cathartic experience. Geeta Dutt has brought the searing pain/longing/helplessness of kaifi's words to such melancholic intensity....that crying is a some sorta relief! Remarkably the song stunningly foretells the doomed real-life relationship of Gurudutt-peerless Waheeda! Tragedy of tragedy is Geeta Dutt has to undergo the trauma for no fault of hers.....isn't it a travesty that she sings for Waheeda. Great talents, human beings tragically lost early! All we can do is remember

Guru Dutt really lived cinema. It was tragic that this movie was a hit after his death. Great song. Lyrics, Music and the singer at their best.

I love geeta dutt's voice. Such intense
wish she had sung more songs :(

I never thought I will every cry watching this video.......May be a kid I never understood this song or this video....every emotion , every expression and every word is so true .....hatts off to Indian cinema....now days we are really deprived of good cinema. poor us...

Aaah too much! This song never used to bother me that much when I was a teenager, but now I'm much older and so have really loved it makes me cry :.(..

Makes me cry every time! Time has inflicted on us such a cruelty, you are no longer yourself , I am no longer myself.

The most important feature in any browser.

Happens to be the ability to symmetrically enlarge the font size without blowing up the web page asymmetrically and making all the links difficult to find. This is also true in another sense of any text editor. Why use a smaller font and strain your eyes, when you can have a nice large comfortably font size. 12 sucks. Use 16. Or larger.

Firefox 3 does this beautifully. Download it here. I don't have IE, so I don't know if it does.

Also, a note to webpage designers. Blogs/articles which have less than 10 words per line suck bitter lemons. Lemons shaped like dills. Do you know why I am using such a complex metaphor? because in the first draft, I tried to be explicitly rude and the fookin' blogger interface wouldn't fookin' let me!

Anyway, here I am.. so webmasters, .. dudes... design webpages in two formats. Letterbox/Normal and widescreen. We will all thank you.

Peeling tape emits X-rays!

Read about it here.

Young Sethu's research experience in haiku

I am a champ at PCR
My vision in science ranges far, really far.
RNA spectroscopy lies in the depths of my soul
While working late nights, I listen to rock and roll.

Update on Chandrayaan

So my father called me up late last night (while I was dividing my attention between my dinner and Donnie Brasco on the telly) to say that Baba Ramdev had been telling people about the awesomeness coming out of Sriharikota. So he managed to switch his telly on in time to see the launch live. Something to remember for generations with pride. Chandrayaan has made it successfully to parking orbit, with an apapsis/perapsis of 23000/250 km. That is a highly elliptical orbit. Successive engine burns will extend the orbit to lunar transfer and then the fun really begins. This project is a collaboration between many countries with a mixed science payload. The report on the launch is here. The ISRO rocks.

Aah, the trouble with Facebook...

is outlined here.

Just to put some things in perspective

Source: http://www.phdcomics.com/
All credits to Dr. Jorge Cham. The man rules.

Chandrayaan: Desi hardware going to the effing moon!!

Yeah, its here and its official. After decades of launching INSAT communication satellites and the occasional Israeli spysat, ISRO has finally decided to pop the big one. In a few short hours, Chandrayaan (literally means 'vehicle to the moon') will lift off from Sriharikota. The Chandrayaan rides atop a specially outfitted PSLV with mixed solid/liquid fuel stages, delivering a final payload of 1.3 tonnes into lunar orbit. The project carries a mix of remote sensing gadgetry with significant contributions from the ESA, and has a projected lifetime of 2 years. This is the most significant effort by the ISRO ever. Chandrayaan will ride to the heavens on a towering pillar of flame. I cannot help thinking that this is a fitting tribute to the genius of Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan.

And the other major elekshun issue is...

Cow abductions! Again, I have not heard anything from either of the two presidenshial candidates about their commitment to dealing with this issue. I mean, I understand that there is some governmental attenshun being focussed on this matter, but the people involved have their own issues to deal with...

And then again, cows are sacred to some people and lunch for others. Cows are important. As this video shows.

The elekshun and possibilities of a zombie apocalypse

The most important issue in this elekshun is being totally ignored. And that is making me angry. So, no beating about the bush...

SENATORS MCCAIN AND OBAMA, DO YOU HAVE A STRATEGY FOR DEALING WITH A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE?

Why don't people realize that this should be on everyone's mind? We need political leaders who can step up and keep a cool head in case of crises and I am not talking about something like a wimpy thermonuclear faceoff. What if, and no sniggers here, the dead come back to life and do a walkie? Are we prepared to deal with shite like that? Methinks, given our current state of preparedness, or lack thereof.. no. I mean, it could happen. Like, tonight. And if it did, then somethings would look different. Such as these.

But, the main thing is stay cool and elect leaders who will take us through without too much damage. Leaders like Shaun. Perhaps limited to a few melted Cornettos.

PS- thanks to people unknown for borrowed images.

Funny presidential candidates

Obama

McCain

Thanks to CNN

Explaining the wurlde, one Venn diagram at a time

Totally awesome shite!

The New Yorker faces off against XKCD in this epic, titanic, magnificent comic off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fear.

Let us being by saying that I have not sat through reading any Stephen King. This is in spite of the fact that I consider myself a patient reader, and I am willing to give most things a chance.There is just something about King's writing that does not appeal to me. But some of his works have been translated into brilliant films. One of them is 'The Green Mile'. This was directed by Frank Darabont, and simply had to be awesome, with that cast.

Darabont came back to King with the 2007 film 'The Mist'. This is about people in a small (New England?) town trapped by a mist coming in from the mountains. They find themselves barricaded in a small supermarket.

Now as one person had long ago derisively captioned King's works as "IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY... AND THEN THE EVIL CAME!!!!!!!!"

True, sort of. But I don't know whether it was King, or the genius of the director who made this something else. Every good "scare" moment is better for the reflections seen in the faces and minds of people themselves. Every good SF work is ultimately an exploration of the human soul. The Mist went straight to that level. The way the group splintered into a small, rational group, struggling to convince a larger hysterical group was frightening. Even more so was the hold one deranged preacher had: who saw Armageddon in what lay outside. This was an illustration of the siege mentality at its very best. The Mist is mislabeled as a SciFi/Horror film.. it is an illustration in experimental psychology. The fundamental question it comes down to is "what will fear make you do?" In that scale it excels.

Liff, work and other things...

So, being guilty of drunk dialing people on (rare) occasion, I was at the receiving end of things for once. My friends at Chicago were all getting hilariously wasted and letting me know. While, of course, I was at lab working (Friday night, sigh).

Getting back home on Friday night can be a pain. The buses are full of partying (read drunk) undergrads. And if your luck truly runs out, you will be sitting or standing right next to a drunk who will then proceed to puke his/her guts out all over you.

The driver was a sport. The bus was kinda crowded. (When I say crowded, I mean US crowded, not Gariahat Jn on a weekday rush hour crowded.. that would simply kill people here.) He pulled over in front of the undergrad dorm and we hear his disembodied voice on the PA "Here we are. Home of fine living and elegant dining". That provoked a derisive roar from everyone.

Meanwhile, I was being eyeballed by this trio of kids, one desi, one Chinese and one American. And they wanted to know if I was drunk. And if not, what was I doing so late on campus. I told them that I was a grad student. They rolled their eyes and expressed deep sympathies. Then made some smart aleck comments about Maxwell's equations (they turned out to be engineers). I watched for a while as their conversation veered towards greater and greater inaccuracy and then gently stepped in, entirely in the interests of electrodynamics and straightened things out.

Finally, on the leg home, the bus mostly empty, the driver opined that 9 out of 10 times, it was some girl who hurled in his bus. He shook his head philosophically and said that in 35 years of his driving, that was the way it was. Words of wisdom.

Random conversations

Overheard on a bus returning from campus

A: What do you think about deer meat?
B: Deer meat is great. But I love beef jerky.
A: Yeah, I had this piece of deer meat that my friend gave me this summer. It's been sitting in the back of my freezer, wrapped in a newspaper or something.
B: You should marinate it. Or maybe cook a steak. But you know what tastes really great? Beef jerky.
A: What would you marinate it with?
B: Aaaah, barBQ sauce, I guess, maybe some herbs. But beef jerky tastes so much better. I have my own recipe for making beef jerky.

Aaahhhh.. Friday night

And here we are, still stuck in lab, looking at an evening and a weekend of work ahead. Not complaining, mind it. But surely there is an alternate reality where I would be going home at this time to nice food, pakodas' perhaps, maybe a hot cuppa Daarjeeling and a GoldFlake? Oh yeah, THAT reality. Never was going to work out, was it? I spent most of today at a protein sciences seminar, and then coding my way through some AA sequences. Someone must have done this, its just that I don't know where to find it. Did I mention that I dislike coding? There is sooo much more to life. Like reading HG Wells, for example. I finished his 'Imperialism and the Open Conspiracy' a few days ago. Amazing how he anticipated much of the EU today. Also Amitava Ghosh. 'Countdown' is well written.. but it is mostly a knee jerk Indian lefty intellectual turning a Nelsons' eye to larger realities. What was that shite about India and China never having any disputes? Has the man heard of Arunachal Pradesh?

Anyways, so me back again to work (and play), and this line cam to my attenshun which I decided to share with you...

Sometimes, though, late at night, I would think again of vim.

And since you obviously must read the article it came from, here it is.

And then for my "achiever" friends, the proponents of Dudeism, this discussion of how the Big Lebowski has transcended space and time to become something beyond mere cinema is worth checking out.

Email clients.. any suggestions?

I use pine. I am not afraid to admit it. It is not the snazziest interface around, in fact if it were less snazzy, it would be in direct competition with sending homing pigeons. But it never asks me to use a mouse and it never crashes. If my browser is slowed down by some junk piece of HTML on one tab, everything else might freeze. But pine, secure on its own desktop, never complains.

But there are problems:
1. attachments: they download on the IMAP server. that sucks.
2. address book implementations. not cross compatible with anything else.

So, I would like to ask the world for suggestions
I would like to email clients, for a Mac and for a RHEL desktop. Both should be free, interfaceable with Kerberos authenticated webmail, and lastly, both should have one click 'download all as a zip file'. Maybe two clicks .

Monuments are built on the backs of slaves...

Empire building usually happens when there is a large surplus of humanity willing to work for horribly low wages. As this article tells you, the wave of prosperity in Dubai, culminating in the most beautiful hotels in the world, is built on the backs of Indian/Pakistani/Afghan migrant workers who are made to work obscene hours for a pittance. Why do they keep coming in such large numbers? Simply because it is even more difficult to get any kind of job back home. In some cases, like those of Afghans, their homes, indeed their whole nation has been ravaged by war. What do people go back to?

One has to think about this: it has long been understood that all economic systems thrive on inequality: there is no way that the rich of the world, or even the not so rich, who shop at Saks cannot possibly maintain their own extravagant lifestyles if we were to provide free immunization against MMR to every child in the world. Or clean drinking water.

One of the fringe benefits of maintaining low intensity conflicts around the world is the constant availability of displaced people (refugees, we called them in a distant past) who will serve as willing (or coerced) warm bodies for labour when we erect our monuments to our own undisputed glory. There is the slight problem of some of tehse displaced people whose lives have been ravaged by conflicts set up and sustained by the great powers that they will turn so angry that some of them will insist on passing on their grief to as many people as possible. But hey, thats what the police state is for!

Weekend

I got back yesterday from Chicago. Where I had an absolutely uber time with S at the UIC Durga Pujo. Amongst other things to keep in mind, the UIC Pujo was a student affair, hence no evil ABCD influences. Quite surprisingly, my friend Ani was compering the show.. and he looked like he was at a White House briefing. We were quiz teammates while at Presi. A, old college batchmate turned up. A great time was had by all. Random people popped out of the woodwork and proceeded to become bosom buddies over a couple of smokes. There were some nice performances including a great ensemble of modern music which included Anjan, Suman, Mahiner Ghora Guli and to my delight, Chandrabindoo. Also a wunnerful play with some really

nice light work and fluent performances by all the participants. More will follow.

Linus Torvalds' Blog?!?!?!?!

Dear me, is this just an elaborate hoax, or does Linus actually have a blog? If he does, then this is where it resides. My, oh my oh my.. this is wisdom straight from the curator of the kernel, the Gawd of all linux developers, the man who can, by uttering a single phrase unleash an army of unshaven hairy knuckled programmers who will happily storm the bastions of Seattle/Cupertino/Mountain View. The last time I was this excited about anyone blogging was when JKR started hers'. But then she became unutterably boring and old Dumbly suddenly became gay and that was the end of that.

Prezidunks, wuhs, economies, elekshuns and bailouts.

There it is again. Elekshun time! When all will be forgiven, and we can start anew, clean slate and all. Or not. Take your pick, the US Prez is the de facto leader of much of the world, sits on top of a good 20% of the world's 64 trillion $ economy and wields control over almost 6000 strategic and tactical thermonuclear weapons. The war in Iraq has killed over 4000 Americans. It is interesting the way we say it.. "the war has killed". As if the responsibility for all those lost lives can be placed on the shoulders of some malign, but ot manifest entity. Oh, and speaking of war deaths, that would be about a hundred thousand Iraqis. Indeed, we live in interesting times. There is, of course the subprime lending crisis, which has blown up in our faces. So what is the crisis about anyway? This comic illustrates. No math, no complicated five syllable words. So I happened to see 'Slacker Uprising', Mike Moore's film about the 2004 election. Watch it free here, on the official site. And then go and read the open letter from Moore to all citizens. There is a lot at stake here. Much of these are catchphrases to be used at dinner table conversations: freedom, equality, health, blah-di-blah. But let us not forget that they do mean something real.

Pradeep Babu's Happy Birthday

Pradeep Babu turned something this year. Just this last week in fact. So, I decided to call the C, the Nandi, the children over to celebrate the birthday, with the Padalas' (Rachna and Pradeep) being the guests of honour. A good time was had by all (methinks) with some nice cooking from the C, the Nandi and the kid. We toasted Pradeep Babu with wine poured thoughtfully by our evening's sommelier, Nandi into.. teacups! That, and Pradeep trying to blow out a lighter (no candles, sorry) were the mildly hilarious points of the evening. Many thanks to the C for das photo.

School grading systems.

I am a product of a fairly unforgiving Indian system where failure was certainly an option, but not a good one. In recent times I have heard of some Indian systems calling for the abolition of marks based ranking in primary and middle school. This would not prepare the kids for the intense competition that lies waiting just at Class X and beyond. And now read this article about how Pittsburgh schools now are mandating that the minimum a student can score is 50%. Which means that if you do one problem right in a question paper of 10, you still get 50%. Does that make any sense?

The Matador

I have to say this about the moviegoing public. They are absolute phookin' gits. Why, you ask? because The Matador, a 2005 film about an assassin suffering from a terrible midlife crisis bombed. It raked in a paltry 10 mil at the box office. While, our own Michael Bay's videogame turned retard-central movie made more than the GDP of several small European nations. You know which one you watched and which one you didn't give a shite about. What a cryin' shame... this was our man Pierce Brosnan's very finest moment.. with awesome support by Greg Kinnear.

And now for your amusement, I will include a small selection of the best lines from The Matador. Courtesy IMDB, of course!
Julian Noble: I'm as serious as an erection problem.
Julian Noble: [after flirting with some Mexican schoolgirls] I hate these Catholic countries. It's all blushy-blushy and no sucky-fucky.
Julian Noble: I look like a Bangkok hooker on a Sunday morning, after the navy's left town.
Julian Noble: An assassin without confidence is a horrible thing to behold. It's like a relief pitcher who fumbles the ball.
Danny Wright: Please tell me you know you mixed two sports in a metaphor.
Julian Noble: Huh? Yeah, I can't do that.

Financial Intervention and the Government of the day

Warning... I am not trained in finance.. these are merely the opinions of a layman. Let us begin with India. Back in the early 60's, the Government of India (GOI) decided to start a mutual fund company. This was called the Unit Trust of India (UTI), and their major vehicle was a fund called US64. Our economy has always been a troublesome one. By constitutionally describing it as a 'mixed' economy, we have brought upon us the corruption and inefficiency of the worst socialist models, while on the other end we have the unlimited wealth (greed?) of a few lucky individuals and companies who have toadied up to the Sarkar. Anyway, so the sublime ridiculousness of starting a mutual fund in an economy where almost everything was PSU owned was actually subsumed by the fact that 'national wealth', as one might term it was being drawn from the coffers of savings accounts and pumped into industry. Well, it did make sense. From a traditional Indian standpoint(still very much extant): the only true wealth one might have is property and gold. Shares and stocks come later to the aam aadmi. So, the best way to kick start a nascent economy would be to divert money from property/gold and put it into stocks. Or so we thought. Except that in the late 1990s', UTI was in deep shite. They needed a GOI bailout to the tune of perhaps 3,300 crores of Rupees. That would be almost a billion $ at today's exchange rate. UTI staggered along for a while longer and then had to fold US64. This required a much bigger restructuring package from the GOI.

Today we are seeing the same things happen on Wall Street. Bear Stearns, one of the largest finance corporations was taken over by JPM Chase for a song. On the 8th of Sept, two of the largest Mortgage financers, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and Freddie Mac were taken over by the US government. Hardly a week passed before Merrill Lynch was bought up by Bank of America. Then Lehman Brothers went under. And now, AIG which underwrites some of the biggest and potentially most hazardous investments has been given an 88 billion $ bailout by the Fed.

The question is always the same: most of these huge companies are going under because of their incompetence/greed. Remember Enron? The company whose watchword was 'innovation'? They traded in dreams too: and for a while they made it big. But then people started calling their bluffs and they went under. Except of course, when giant corporations go under; the CEO's rarely, if ever suffer. They have awesome golden parachute deals written into their contracts.. so even if they f**k up, they come out of it smelling like roses. Or a couple of hundred million bucks. Take your pick.

Why should the people of India pay through their taxes for the mismanagement of UTI? And why should US citizens pay.. what was it 29 billion $ for the Merrill Lynch deal and a colossal 88 billion $ for the AIG bailout? The point has been reached at which these companies know that they are now TBTF. That stands for Too Big To Fail. These people cannot be allowed to play fast and loose with other people's money and then yell for Fed help when they get their noses bloodied. If Government intervention is asked for, then the whole industry should submit to Government oversight, if not actual regulation. That is the bottom line.

When parking a car is too difficult...

This is what happens....

Reality bites: can one afford to be ill anymore?

This links to an excellent article on illness and financial troubles which come along with it.

LHC particle physics rap...

Yeah, this is an awesome rap song which apparently walked out of CERN and has been wandering around the Net.. shite it gave me a review of my particle physics class in 4ish minutes!!

Links to mp3, lyrics and more awesome shite is here.

Electronic Voting Machines: India vs US

Link available here to an article discussing Electronic Voting Machines used in India and the Diebold machines used in the US. Anyone feel like outsourcing this as well?

More webcomics and crazy shite!

Link here to yet another webcomic called Apathy Adventures!
Meanterwhilste, the Awesome Planet link is right here.. and anytime you want to see 15 funny signs, enter here.

Lets get this straight about the LHC.

Ok, bloody HUGE particle collider. But it will not, repeat, NOT change the way we view our Universe the moment it is switched on. That gentle process will take some time. Why? Because, dear reader, there will be reams and reams of data to analyze. There will be many, many confounded PIs and their equally mystified graduate students who will run thousands and thousands of lines of code to interpret the volcanic size burst of data on their hands. And a few years, several hundred PRLs and equally many theory theses later, something MIGHT go ping, and some graduate student very, very late at night MIGHT say 'behenchod! Did I just see the Higgs' boson?'. But, no the world will not change fundamentally this weekend.

Aaaand a brand new webcomic!

About amazing superpowers!!

It is never too late to learn some tricks on UNIX

Here are some.

And then, here are some more!

More on photography

Well, the Nikon D90 has arrived. Movie mode on SLRs! Then developments in semiconductors are pushing ISO limits up to where they have never been before. Antivibration lenses may not be necessary, under the right conditions. And then there are brilliant photographers with awesome pictures that leap off the paper or screen and grab your attention. Here are some samples of photography in the rain. Enjoy!

Safecracker in shorts

So we legged it up the crooked steps into the hotel lobby. Or what looked like a lobby. We, I may point out is the esteemed big sis, henceforth referred to as S and yours truly. We carried between us, a backpack, a camera bag and a fookin' huge Samsonite suitcase with a combination lock. I lugged the suitcase through the confusion of Frankfurt's Hahn airport, through the greater confusion of Rome's Ciampiano airport and down a shady side alley where the cobblestones were pockmarked with small treacherous craters. Fookin' cobblestones!! Now I should really explain my resentment at them cobblestones.... back in India, which is home for me, one never drags one's suitcase along the road. You get a rickshaw or something which helps.. and is never super expensive. In the US, on the other hand due to the pervasive strength of the ADA, you can drag anything with wheels. Anywhere!

Add to that the minor complication that one day before flying out from Detroit, I had taken a tumble down the stairs at home and had a badly sprained ankle. More fun!! Anyway, we found ourselves in the hotel lobby and face to face with .. a pheun. Very surreal. One might even suspect that the Wachowski brothers had something to do with this. I pick up the pheun and after some time am directed by this disembodied voice to get my arse up to the fourth floor. Well, as S and me are hauling our gear into the tiny contraption that passes for a lift, this bloke with long graying hair squeezes his arse into the lift. I glare. He smiles back.

We finally make it, via much creaking and clanking of fairly ancient machinery to the fourth floor, where as it happens, said long hair is our night manager. Having signed in and collected our keys, we get to the dorm and prepare to doss down. The loo (unisex) is, thankfully clean; and also thankfully populated by a couple of fairly good-looking birds, who, less thankfully are of the giggling persuasion. Sod.

I lock up my passport, money and stuff in the suitcase and crash for the night, my camera bag snug against my feet. In the morning I am woken up by the big sis and grab a quick cuppa from a conveniently located vending machine. And then promptly discover that somehow the combination lock refuses to budge. Sod. 999 combinations to run through… but the lock has the proverbial steely glint where it would have eyes, had it been human. This was not planning to open up. After ranting and WTFing around in my shorts for a while, I realize the desperation of the situation. All my money, my passport, my fookin’ toothbrush, for crying out loud, kept from me by a couple of centimeters of thermopolymer and steel! And my clothes. Bereft clothes, a man has no dignity. I mentally see myself explaining myself to a cop or a Samsonite repairman in what is basically my undies’ and I shudder. Big sis, quite sensibly has kept a change of clothing handy and is not in the quagmire I find myself in.

Finally, I decide to leg it up to the fourth floor where the somewhat bleary eyed night manager is negotiating with some random blonde. And I ask, very politely for a crowbar. The night manager gives me the once over. Bleary eyed, unshaven, bloke in his undies. Asking for a crowbar. With commendable restraint; he enquires as to the purpose. With equal restraint, aplomb even, I explain. Brief silence. Finally something falls into place and he recognizes me as the bloke from last night. And recognizes further, the desperation not quite hidden away behind the aplomb. In undies, I might add. And offers me the biggest fookin’ screwdriver and what looks like a Grenadier’s entrenching tool. I thank him from the bottom of my heart and return.

Now begins the process of safecracking. I imagine Richard (Feynman) would have a lot to say about my lack of expertise. But I got it, finally.. I managed to jimmy the damn lock open. This event was recorded for posterity by the sis. The lock, of course refused to work any further. So we decided to grab all the valuables and keep them on our persons. Anyone interested in sniffing old socks was welcome to. And then, we went to see the Colosseum.

Medicine in India.

It is unfortunate that medical care in India is mostly beyond the reach of the poor. Even in urban settings, medical care is really only available to people who can pay. Big surprise, you say? But this was not the way things were originally planned. Given that many medical students study at the taxpayer's cost, the few months of service they are supposed to put in at a government health centre is hardly compensation enough. In the midst of this dismal outlook there are, however, stories of hope. Here is one: where doctors in UP have managed to perform bronchial surgery on a child.

yes, me back

From a five week break from science, blogging, youtubing, all of those things which make up a busy graduate student's life. I went to Germany, Italy and India. India.. finally, after two long years. it was wonderful. But now that I am here again, there "are experiments to run, there is research to be done". So, let me start off with this awesome link which tells us the secret behind Arnold's cinema career. View and laugh.

Going on vacation for a month.

But I will be back, with much to write about. Have a nice summer everybody.

More entertainment from antiscience bigots...

Read here and be amused.

There is a food crisis here and people are ignoring it.

I don't know why. But that it the way it seems to be going. There are various reasons why this is so: firstly, the world population is growing with no signs of stopping. Secondly, it costs a lot in terms of foodgrains to nurture a cow or sheep or goat and then kill it for meat. Cheaper to eat those foodgrains in their natural form. Thirdly, the corn diverted for use in ethanol as a substitute for petrol is a horrible drain on food supplies. Fourth.. every bit of agricultural land taken away by misguided governments and converted to industrial land reduces our overall production of food. In this context, the colossal stupidity that the Indian government (both at the Centre and the State level) has displayed in bending over for venal businessmen and setting up SEZs with land taken away from farmers and tax holidays is remarkable. These practices have drained the national food reserves, contributed little to the local economy in terms of well paying jobs and have robbed the exchequer of tax revenue. The only people who benefit are the shareholders and the politicians. A nexus of criminal minds indeed.


The world's food supplies are dwindling rapidly. We need to curtail our use of energy, reduce our love for processed food (read chocolate bars/chips), source things locally and do a lot more. This crisis is real and it is upon us. Read on here. This is a moment when politicians, world leaders and businessmen can get together and act decisively. If not we will be remembered as the generation which inherited a beautiful, thriving planet and did our very best to destroy ourselves and our home.

The human mirror.

All it takes are a few groups of identical twins. Read on about the prank pulled on the subway here. Also check out pictures here and here.