Ceteris Paribus

A Modest Proposal

2010-01-12T23:21:00.004-05:00

On Christmas Day 2009, aspiring Nigerian pantybomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab set his explosive-laden underwear on fire in an attempt to bring down the aeroplane on which he was traveling to Detroit. This was the first attempt to bring down an American airliner since shoebomber Richard Reid tried to light his explosive shoes on fire in late 2001. It was also a huge failure in airport security, since security protocols had been strengthened multiple times since the September 11 attacks, and this sort of thing was just not supposed to happen anymore.

To it's credit, the US administration immediately tried to rectify these security holes. Homeland Security Janet Napolitano tried in a time tested manner to stick her head in the metaphorical sand and pretend that security worked just fine. The Transportation Security Administration issued new guidelines that would ban blankets, toilet privileges for passengers and inflight movies on the theory that if flying was made tedious enough, terrorists would refuse to fly. Bill Clinton (who is not a member of the administration but might as well be) redoubled his efforts to reduce the number of virgins in the world and the next, thereby denying terrorists a valuable recruiting tool.

However, it is already apparent that these measures will not fly. The American public is in no mood to be denied its blankets, potty breaks and the chance to catch up on old reruns of Friends on boring long-haul intercontinental flights. They are even less inclined to put up with intrusive searches by hand or even by the proposed new millimeter scanners (that would report TSAs to see, save and share with 37 of their best friends images of your privates). The administration is thus caught between a chunk of vitrified minerals and a hard place: It must make sure that such attacks never come so close to success in the future, but it must also try and not inconvenience the great majority of the American flying public. The security apparat is this scrambling to find a new security protocol that will allow them to stay within these two strictures.

It is our opinion that there already exists a method that would allow the TSA to secure American planes while at the same time keeping most passengers from unnecessary discomfort. However the weak-kneed civil libertarians and bleeding heart liberals who currently populate power structures in Washington are too yellow to even consider it. That method, that solution, that silver bullet is a simple technique perfected by police departments in ghettos across America: Profiling. But how would this profiling work?

Consider this: What is common to Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Mohammad Atta and Umar Frouk Abdulmutallab other than they are all lowlife terrorist scum? That's right, they are all engineers. Engineers are overrpresented in the membership Jihadi terrorist groups. Al-Qaeda and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (the parent organisation of Hamas), the Lashkar e-Taiba, Jamiya Islamia and Hezbollah were chiefly founded by engineers. It is no exaggeration that most if not all the top leadership of jihadi groups are trained in engineering. This phenomenon is so striking that sociologists write lengthy papers (link pdf) trying to explain this trend.

But what does this have to do with airplane security and with profiling? Well, it's simple. While it is true that most engineers are not terrorists, it is evident that almost all terrorists are engineers. That being the case, it is the our opinion that if you are male, an engineer and between 18 and 28 years of age, you should be strip searched at the security gate of airports. This is a serious and harsh version of profiling, but if we do not do this, we are going to lose an airliner. It also has the effect of reducing the level of scrutiny that other passengers go through. Sadly, given the climate of appeasement and political correctness that permeates the holders of power in this country, that is unlikely to happen. And I think that is the problem.

Avatar as a Rorschach Test

2009-12-22T00:37:00.006-05:00

On the cab ride back from the theater where we saw Avatar, my friend Uthra remarked how it was odd that protagonist Jake Sully's avatar in the movie appeared with a U-shaped marking on his forehead which very closely resembled the naamam of the Indian Vaishnavite Brahmin subcaste. She also remarked that the blue colouring of Na'vi, the alien race to which Jake's avatar and many other characters belong was similar to Ram and Krishna, two of the avatars of Vishnu. Clearly, she said, the Na'vi were Vaishnavites.

Of course, we just had to stretch the metaphor further. The very concept of Avatars is Vaishnavite in origin. Also, the Na'vi are worshipers of Eywa, a force that maintains the balance of life on their world. This is also the prime motivation of Vishnu. The Na'vis' human antagonists, on the other hand, wish to destroy much of their world to extract resources for their own civilisation - a motivation that can broadly be described as Shaivite. The main human villain, Colonel Quaritch, ever has three horizontal slashes on his head that resemble the tilak that Indian Shaivite Brahmins wear on their foreheads. Clearly, by our reasoning, Avatar is Vaishnavite propaganda aimed at showing Shaivites in a negative light and positing a victory for the Vaishnavites in the future struggle between the two (this is obviously nonsense - Shaivites are the the Vaishnavites' superior in everything that matters).

But when I came back home and read the multitude of reviews of Avatar, I realised that almost everyone else that saw the movie had been engaging in similar allegory. Some praised it as a metaphor for the displacement and genocide of the Native Americans. Others hailed it as a commentary on the unjust seizure of private property by corrupt local governments using eminent domain. Ross Douthat of the New York Times eviscerated it as an advertisement for taking up pantheism in preference to the Western world's more prevalent Abrahamic religions. Annalee Newitz of io9 decried it as an escapist fantasy seeking to assuage white guilt while maintaining white privilege. Other people looked through their 3D glasses and saw variously notions of the white man's burden, the noble savage, blame-America-first liberals, Iraq War criticism, the military-industrial complex, gorilla researchers in the Congo and many other things besides. And they either loved or hated the movie for these reasons.

Make no mistake, Avatar is a path breaking movie. It is perhaps even a historical movie - the first to utilise technologies such as performance capture, the first to depict CGI characters in primary roles without entering the uncanny valley, the first to use 3D in a non-gimmicky fashion in a mainstream film. It is visually appealing and an incredible experience to watch and listen to. But in spite of all this, Avatar serves as a kind of Rorschach test to project our hopes and fears into. We either love or hate Avatar based on not what it is, but on the deeper meaning we read into it. It becomes to us either a needed confirmation of cherished views, or an unwelcome statement of positions we despise and we develop strong feelings based on these readings of the movies.

So what I am basically saying is that Avatar is the cinematic equivalent of Barack Obama. Stay tuned for the inevitable Nobel Prize next year.

Reflections on Armistice Day

2009-11-11T18:18:00.007-05:00

As an Indian, the 11th of November never really had much significance for me. World War I is largely absent from the Indian consciousness. Sure, many English-speaking Indians are aware that it happened - we studied it in our history books and perhaps even read British and American books about it. Even so, it is largely a war that happened to other people. We wear no poppies on the 11th of November, and nor do we hold solemn marches on the 25th of April. The poem In Flanders Fields hold no significance for us, nor does the vast majority of the literature written by men who fought in that futile and pointlessly wasteful war.

Yet Indian soldiers served, fought and died in this war. A million men - forming the largest all-volunteer force to serve in the war - were sent overseas to fight for a country they would never see and a King-Emperor whose name they could not pronounce. They fought in the meat-grinder of the Western Front, where Khudadad Khan became the first non-white man to win the Victoria Cross. They fought in the East Africa Campaign where they died in the thousands of disease and privation while their incompetent commanders let a tiny German force run rings around them for four years. Some were even sent to Gallipoli to fight in the ill-considered and badly thought out Dardenelles Campaign. The greatest number by far fought in the original War for Oil - the Mesopotamia Campaign.

Perhaps the defining event of the Indian experience in World War I was the Siege of Kut, a part of that same Mesopotamia campaign. The Siege began in the December of 1915, when the Sixth (Poona) Division of the Indian Army established a position in the town of Kut after retreating from another battle. Their dithering commander, Charles Townshend, failed to break out of the town despite multiple opportunities to do so, and his equally incompetent counterparts in the relief force failed to dislodge the numerically inferior Turkish besiegers. Finally after four months, his soldiers starving and reduced to eating their pack animals, Townshend surrendered unconditionally to the Turks. While he lived out the rest of the War in comfort, Townshend's troops were treated brutally by the Turks. Of the 30,000 odd troops he started out with, about 13,000 lived to surrender along with Townshend. Barely four thousand survived the two and a half years of ill-treatment and privation at the hands of the Ottoman Army. After failing to do much to protect his men from their captors, Townshend returned home to a hero's acclaim and was elected to Parliament.

While the Siege of Kut is a particularly egregious example of the suffering of Indian troops in the War, other theaters and battles were quite bad as well. Three thousand Indians died in East Africa of disease alone. The Indian contingent in Gallipoli suffered close to 60 per cent losses, along with most of the other Allied forces. Why did so many sign up to fight this faraway foreign war in such terrible conditions? Undoubtedly many joined up for the money, for the steady pay and the wartime bonuses. Some joined to continue the martial traditions of their families and communities. A large part of the Indian contingent in World War I were actually soldiers in the armies of the Indian Princes, sent to fight for the Emperor of India, who also conveniently happened to be King of England. Given the paucity of written accounts by these soldiers though, in most cases we will never know why they joined up.

My great-grandfather was one of those men. We do not know why he joined, but he served as a Regimental Medical Officer in the 1/1 Gurkha Rifles for duration of the War. He spoke of serving in Iraq and Palestine, so perhaps he took part in the Mesopotamia Campaign (where, among other actions, his unit participated in one of the failed attempts to relieve the Siege of Kut) and Allenby's march to Jerusalem. He left the Army at the War's end, settled down in Bombay and began a successful practice. He was a pillar of the community who raised five children, including my grandmother. He was lucky. Lucky not to have been with his unit in the year it spent on the Western front (where they were gassed by the Germans in the second battle of Ypres, the first use of chemical warfare in modern warfare). Lucky not to have been in the Siege of Kut, where only one out of six who joined survived to the end of the war. Lucky not to have otherwise fallen to enemy bullets, disease or hunger, as fully one in every ten Indian soldier in that war did.

Many were not as lucky. Between 90,000 and 100,000 Indian soldiers died in World War I. A similar number were wounded, and perhaps some of them died of their wounds in peacetime. Many surely returned physically whole, but mentally and emotionally scarred by shell shock and post-traumatic stress to communities that did not understand their conditions and could not treat them. Their courage, sacrifice and honourable service in this futile foreign war won them few favours from the British, who continued to think them inferior. And we, their descendants, have largely forgotten them, made their names mere footnotes in the histories of our newly independent nations, and ignored their memorials.

They were, as the saying goes, the unknowing, led by the unworthy, doing the impossible for the ungrateful. So this Armistice Day, I say, let us just think of these men. Let us remember them, and the courage they displayed in the face of great hardship for little reward. That is the least they deserve.

The Gustavus Adolphus theory of Viking Conquest

2009-11-06T20:31:00.005-05:00

Today is, as we all know Gustavus Adolphus Day. It is a day of solemn celebration of this great man, of marzipan medallions eaten on no other day (thanks for the factoid Betsy!) and of general Gustavus Adolphusness all around. But it is also an occasion to consider Gustavus Adolphus's greatest achievement: his awesome name. As a keen student of Renaissance European history I feel I can say with no fear of exaggeration than Gustavus Adolphus' is the awesomest royal name of the entire era.

But a closer look at the history of the Swedish monarchy will reveal that Gustavus Adolphus is by no means the awesomest of Swedish regnal names. Amongst Gustavus's royal forbears of the Houses of Munsö and Stenkil you will find such awesome names as Eric the Victorious, Emund the Evil, Magnus the Strong and my favorite, Blood Sweyn (this last king was so awesome, his less awesome nickname was Sweyn the Sacrificer). All these are good, manly names. They are names to strike terror into the hearts of recalcitrant subjects and people who are tardy with their taxes. These are, then, names that inspire hardened warriors to get into boats, sail to distant lands, rape, pillage and carve blood eagles into their enemies.

That last point is an important one. For many years, historians have puzzled over the ferocity, bloodlust and sheer military prowess of the Vikings that terrorised the known world (and parts of the unknown) from the 8th century to the 11th. These bloodthirsty beserkers made their presence felt from Newfoundland in the west to Azerbaijan in the east, from Iceland in the north to Morocco in the south. They toppled long established kingdoms, harried others, and founded nations that bear their mark to this day. This is all historical fact. What is not so well understood is how they did it. The Vikings were not superior in any outward way to their adversaries. They shared a common descent and language family with their victims in England, France and Italy (all ruled at the time by Germanic kingdoms that had not long ago conquered the Latin civilisations there). They were at a similar level of technology and culture. Their strategy and tactics were not vastly different from the way the Saxons, Franks and Lombards they faced would have used at the time. Why then did were the Vikings able to carve a swath of war and destruction across all lands within their reach?

To answer that question, I now ask you to consider the names of their Kings. The Kings of the Swedes we have already seen. The names of their counterparts across the Oresund are no less dripping in cojonidad*. The Danish Kings rejoiced in such names as Sweyn Forkbeard, Halfdan the Cruel and Ragnar the Hairy. Across the Scandinavian mountains, the hardy Norwegians knelt to Kings such as Eric Bloodaxe, Harald Hard-Reign and Haakon the Broad-Shouldered.

Clearly these are names to inspire awe and strike fear into the heart of the disobedient. When Eric Bloodaxe tells you to get into a boat, cross the Atlantic and scalp some Skreylings, well, by Odin, you do it. Hafdan the Cruel probably never had his subject question his orders. Blood Sweyn's nobles surely quaked in their boots, tormented in their dreams by fear of the consequences of not obeying his foolhardiest command.

This theory seems doubly strong when you consider the names of these Vikings' adversaries. The King of England at the time of Sweyn Forkbeard was widely known as Aethelred the Unready. His forbears included such kings as Edgar the Peaceable and his successors included Edward the Confessor. The French were ruled by kings such as Louis the Pious (and as if that were not bad enough, his alternative name was Louis the Debonair) who was succeeded by such men as Louis the Stammerer, Charles the Fat, Charles the Simple and Louis the Lazy. The Lombard Kingdom of Italy from about that time was ruled by such men as Rodoald the Lecherous and Hildeprand the Useless. Clearly, no sensible man would fight for kings such as these. When in the army of one of these kings, facing an army led by say Harald Hard-Reign or Emund the Evil, abandoning one's colours and fleeing for one's life certainly seem like good, prudent choices.

Thus, we have a working hypothesis for the success of the Viking bands against the armies of the Germanic Kings of Western Europe. The question remains, then, of what we can gain from out newfound knowledge of this piece of history. The answer to that, I think is simple. Too often we have found our leaders, the leaders, indeed of the entire free world lacking in the authority to deal with their adversaries and contemporaries in the rest of the world. The simple solution to this issue is to give them manly, bloodthirsty regnal names along with their Presidential and Prime Ministerial dignities. Would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad feel free to defy Barack the Disemboweller with as much impunity as he does now? Would plucky MEPs dare to question Gordon the Blood-Drinker on the floor for the European Parliament? Would upstart Pakistani generals dare to upstage Manmohan Iron-Fist? The answer, I hope you will agree, is no. They would not. And the world would be a better place for it.

The way then is clear. Let us do what we can to bring this about. Write your representative, sign petitions and make phone calls to bring about the necessary constitutional amendments and laws in your country to do this. Let us make this so, and together we shall create a better world.

(* I just made this word up)

My Nominee for next Year's Peace Prize: The Norwegian Nobel Committee

2009-10-10T18:41:00.006-04:00

Ever since the announcement yesterday morning that US President Barack Obama has been awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize, some (or at least me) have begun to wonder who might be in line for next year. Since the Norwegian Nobel Committee that awards the Prize famously only accepts nominations until the first day of February in the year of the Prize, I figure its not too early to nominate a winner. And my nominee is the Norwegian Nobel Committee itself. Or more specifically, the current Norwegian Nobel Committee. Thorbjørn Jagland, Kaci Kullmann Five, Sissel Rønbeck, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and Ågot Valle, I nominate you yourselves to be next year's Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Why do I want to nominate these worthies for the Prize? Well, they have managed, through their surprising and likely poorly-thought-out Peace Prize pick, to unite people from all over the world in shock, disbelief and disdain at their decision. Not often do you hear the Taliban, the Republican National Committee, pretty much the entirety of the US media and arguably Barack Obama himself agree on something like this. People all across the world, whether in the US, Norway or India, whether leftists, rightists or typists all agree that Barack Obama did not deserve the Peace Prize this year. They may have different reasons for this belief: that his awesome work is still to come, that he is the AntiChrist and will plunge the world into cataclysmic war, or even that this Prize will hurt Obama's Presidency. But they all agree that the decision to give him the Prize right now was stupid.

Now sure, there are some among the President's supporters who think the Prize was rightly awarded, or that he totally deserved it, or that they knew this was going to happen this year. But then, the fringes of any movement produces some seriously loopy individuals. Hell, some of Barack Obama's supporters like to paint him naked, being given an oil massage by a Unicorn. Uniting the rest of the world, the vast majority of the people on this planet, is achievement enough. In making their strange decision, the Norwegian Nobel Committee have united the fraternity of peoples in a way that Alfred Nobel could scarcely have imagined. So take a bow, you crazy Norwegians, and award yourself the Prize you so richly deserve.

That Silly Tom Friedman

2009-10-01T18:21:00.011-04:00

So earlier today, a friend of mine posted a link to a column by NY Times impresario Thomas L. Friedman on Facebook. Foolishly misinterpreting her accompanying comment as agreeing with my general view of Friedman, I commented on the link, saying how I marveled his ability to churn out incredibly silly columns at a brisk clip. Now my friend was actually agreeing with that one column, and she must have thought me a prize ass to hate on her link the way I did. Complaining about my unfounded accusation of silliness, took the link down. I do feel like quite an ass myself, but I would like to stress that I am not in the habit of randomly telling people their links are silly. I have some long standing issues with Friedman's columns, and I honestly thought my friend was a kindred spirit on this issue. (Aside: An astonishingly high proportion of my FB notes seem to be long-winded explanations to people I have pissed off why I am not as much of an asshole as they think I am. This is probably not a good thing.)

But back to the issues. To begin with, let me say that Thomas Friedman is a pretty awesome writer and journalist. They don't randomly hand out Pulitzers to the unaccomplished, and Friedman has three of those babies sitting in his trophy cabinet. His reporting on Middle East conflict and the First Palestinian Intifada in particular are well regarded. His book From Beirut to Jerusalem has won awards for what I presume is its general awesomeness. Another thing is, being who he is he has access to the world's elites, and in between wining, dining and golfing with them, he manages to glean some of their insights and knowledge in a way few other people do. Most of all, Friedman is a good writer, and he manages to hold his reader's attention even when they do not agree with him. I don't generally share Friedman's views, but I have been reading his columns off and on for the past six years.

But here's the thing, Friedman tends to take all these great things he possess and harness them to create arguments of unsurpassed silliness. Let me give you three examples, three especially egregious columns from the New York Times:

Our One-Party Democracy
In this howler, Friedman, lamenting that the Republican legislators vote like Republicans, decides that this means that the Chinese political system is now better than the US's. After making some unsupported statements about Chinese commitment to "green technology", he notes that the Republican failure to vote with the party in control of the Presidency and supermajorities in both Houses of Congress implies some sort of failure of Democracy itself. He notes that even though authoritarian systems have some problems, they generally manage to do stuff they think is important in spite of such nuisances as popular opposition. The key, he insists, is getting the right people in charge.

The New Sputnik
Here, Friedman claims that the US has just had a Sputnik moment (ie a sudden and dramatic demonstration of its technological inferiority, as with the Soviet launch of the first ever artificial satellite) with China and green technology. Let us leave aside the fact that the realm of "green technology" is in no way a race as early space exploration was, or that any Chinese advance in such technology does not threaten the US in any way. What sudden and dramatic Chinese advance in alternate energy reminded our Tom of the Space Race? Two things: first that a solar panel manufacturer opened a research center in China, and second that an ethnic Chinese businessman reported that local party bosses were supportive of his multi-billion dollar solar panel factory in China. How he manages to go from this evidence to his conclusion, I cannot discern. Presumably to Friedman, two solar equipment manufacturers setting up in China prove that the world's biggest polluter is not only going green, but surpassing the US in sheer greenness. I, however, do not see the logic.

Where Did ‘We’ Go?
Here, a Facebook poll about killing President Obama so horrifies Friedman that he remembers Israel in the lead up to Yitzhak Rabin's assassination by a right-wing extremist. Never mind that there are polls, groups and pages on Facebook that talk about killing almost every political leader from a country with internet access. (I checked this by searching for "kill+names of prominent politicians" on FB - which means I am probably now on every FBI watchlist ever. The things I do for my readers...) Friedman is convinced that unless Obama's opponents come out strongly against the poll (which has since been deleted), they are as good as sanctioning his assassination. From this rather astounding leap of logic, Friedman goes on to note that this is a particularly horrible time for American political discourse. Technology, gerrymandering, campaign finance and (worst of all) cable news have made American politics so partisan, he says, that the whole political system itself will collapse. The nation that saw a Vice President and a Secretary of the Treasury duel to the death, where a man was beaten to an inch of his life for making fun of a stroke victim on the Senate floor, where a President was assassinated over his ideas for the civil service and whose legislators have resorted to bloody brawls to break filibusters is apparently no longer strong enough to deal with a Congressman being rude to the President during a speech. Go figure.

Now, you might argue that three such weird columns are no more than can be expected from a guy who churns one out every week for years on end. But the really sad thing is, this in not a list of all time Friedman howlers. These were only the three worst op-eds Friedman put out in September. This September. As in, the last thirty days. And its not like the other columns from this month were exemplars of fine rhetoric either. They were the same mish-mash of half-baked ideas, unsupported assertions and wild extrapolation from one or two data points - the difference was not in kind but in degree, to use Mr. Friedman's phrase.

Unlike others, I do not fault Tom Friedman for his wanton mixing of metaphors, or for his preaching environmentalism while living in a power-guzzling mega-mansion (with gargoyles and everything!), or even for cheerleading, supporting and then slyly seeking to distance himself from the Iraq War. Me, I'd just like very much if he would make sure his premises are connected to his conclusion by some form of logical structure. Until then, unfortunately, I shall persist in calling his columns silly.

Why Can't We All Just Say Hi?

2009-09-24T21:41:00.002-04:00

Ever since I came to the US, I have noticed (and appreciated) how polite the people here are. Store clerks and shoppers greet each other while shopping. Passengers thank bus drivers while getting off the bus. Strangers smile at each other while passing each other on the street. People always, always tell you that you're welcome when you thank them. I realise it may sound weird to any US/Western readers that I am citing these as examples of extraordinary politeness, but in India these things do not happen. At all. There are complex sociological reasons for this difference for sure, but that is fodder for another post. We will not get into them here.

One thing that strikes me about American politeness though, is how so many of the greetings these polite people call out at each other are interrogative. You might hear "What's up?" or "How's it going?" or "How are you?", depending on the formality of the situation. The expected, and completely rote answer to such a question generally aims to reassure the questioner that you are fine, and inquires about their general well-being in turn. Again, American readers might think it weird that I spell this out, but it really is not obvious to foreigners. Many US universities inform their international students about this convention in orientation. Unless specifically told how to respond, many of us actually do start telling people making polite inquiries how we're actually doing. In great detail. You can see, of course, how that might get ugly.

All this is fine, of course. International students can, and do get used to quaint local customs. What is exasperating about this very American way of greeting your fellow men is that many of them take a hit-and-run approach to it. "How's it going?", one of my colleagues once asked as she walked by me in the hallway, with nary a pause to hear any rejoinder. "How are you?", asked a friend from my department as he stepped into an elevator I had just stepped out of. "Hey Kunal, whats up?" shouted an acquaintance as we passed each other on escalators going opposite ways (yes, this actually happened). Now my regular readers know I have trouble responding in time to unfamiliar greetings, so it will not surprise them that I reacted to these situations by gaping open-mouthed at the greeters. But I seriously doubt that even someone born in this country, with quick, socially conditioned reflexes could have gotten out an "I'm great, how are you?" in time. Well, maybe auctioneers. But not normal people, that's what I am saying.

I'm sure this kind of thing happens all over the country. Well meaning people, conditioned by long years of such behavior, unthinkingly call out such greetings in situations where they cannot possibly be answered. When the equally conditioned response is not forthcoming, however, at least some of these people must feel nonplussed, irritated even. Surely this causes some ill-feeling, and ill-feeling is something this country can do without right now. I therefore propose that the US, as a nation, should collectively stop using interrogative greetings at all times. Instead of asking "What's up?", say "Hi!". Instead greeting your boss with a cheery "How are you?", say "Good morning!" instead. If the entire nation takes urgent action, surely the amount of bad feeling will decrease. Who knows, that might even decrease the spate of incivility, racism, heckling, mic-snatching and wanton frog-boiling that has been troubling the country for the past couple of months. And that can only be a good thing for America.

(This post has been slightly edited for length and style since it first appeared)

Amit Varma for English Czar

2009-09-22T00:19:00.006-04:00

For the past week, the English language media in India has been all over the utterly bizarre controversy following External Affairs minister Shashi Tharoor's offhand remark referring to economy class air travel as cattle class (in response, mind you, to a question about whether he would be flying cattle class). Amongst the incredible amount of mind numbingly stupid things said about this incident was a remark by BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad that really stood out. Responding to remarks by Amit Varma during a TV debate, he said, "Our English may be weak, we need to take lessons from Mr. Amit about that, but that is a separate chapter altogether."

(Video of Amit Varma and Ravi Shankar Prasad debating l'affaire Tharoor on CNN-IBN)

Thinking about this, it struck me that perhaps that should not be a separate chapter at all. Perhaps what we really need is a rigorous introduction to spoken English for India's supposedly Anglophone ruling classes. Too long have we suffered our betters ignorantly (or perhaps willfully and mendaciously) misinterpreting perfectly innocuous usages in the English language and taking offense at them. There was this little tempest in a teapot at the phrases "cattle class" (which is apparently offensive to economy class travelers) and "holy cows" (which, in an incredible case of cognitive dissonance, is held to be offensive to Hindus by the same people who took offense at the previous phrase). There was the ridiculous assertion that the title of the film Slumdog Millionaire was offensive to either slum dwellers, dogs or millionaires (I forget which). Then there was the insanely idiotic brouhaha about the title of the movie Billu Barber (apparently the word "Barber" is offensive to barbers. Or something).

In any case, there is a pressing need to educate supposedly English-speaking people about the existence of metaphors in English, and that not all English words are a direct condemnation of them personally. And I can think of no man better suited to lead this effort than Amit Varma. Yes Amit Varma - he of the novel My Friend Sancho, of the blog India Uncut, ~~creator of~~ writer for the immortal Timex Timepass, journalist, Bastiat Prize winner and sideburn-wielder extraordinaire. (Aside: I would probably support raising Amit Varma to any executive position - God-Emperor of the Entire Known Universe even - just so that we could create an entire Kurvi-Taschist cult of personality around his magnificent sideburns. But I digress.) Aside from these impressive qualifications, Amit is also a graduate of Fergusson College, home to the finest English Department east of the Western Ghats.

To carry out his important mandate, Amit will surely need wide-ranging executive powers removed from legislative checks and interference. Happily, precedent for such positions exists among the Obamite Czars of the US. I propose that the Government of India create for Amit just such a position - that of English Czar Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary. The holder of this office would have wide ranging powers to force public figures to read the classics (and India Uncut), to summarily quash litigation based on an utter lack of understanding of English metaphors and ultimately plenary authority to punish English-language media for excessive cliche and overenthusiastic punning.

I hope, dear readers, that you will see the urgent need and the utter good sense of this proposal. It is imperative that we not let this issue rest - we must take action, and take action NOW. Write to your MP, talk to your politician uncle, organise candlelight vigils, compile petitions, sit on hunger strike, burn buses, whatever. We must do whatever it takes to get this done. Because together we can, and we will.

Inglorious Basterds: A Revue

2009-08-22T20:39:00.003-04:00

MAAJAR SPOILER ALERT

(Don't read this before watching the movie. If you do, don't bother watching it. Unless you see it on HBO for free. Then it's okay.)

Tarantino fans might think I blaspheme when I say this, but here goes: Inglorious Basterds is my favorite Quentin Tarantino movie yet. Now to be fair, Tarantino's previous masterpieces haven't dealt with the genres that I am particularly familiar with, so perhaps they did contain the peculiar blend of homage and parody that I appreciated so much in IB. This movie though, hit all the right places, at least for me.

The movie is divided into chapters, and each one of them is awesome by itself. I especially enjoyed the first chapter that acquaints you with the chilling terror inspired by the sociopathic SS officer Hans Landa. I also really liked the chapter in the middle, when two of the basterds and a British spy must rendevous with an agent in a cellar full of drunk German soldiers and secret policemen. Other reviewers found this scene boring, but I was on edge throughout the scene, waiting for the inevitable moment when the spies' cover would be blown. There were several ways that could have gone down: the bumbling drunk Feldwebel Wilhelm or the suspicious SS Sturmbannführer Hellstrom could have found seen through Lt. Hicox's not-quite-there German accent, Stiglitz anger at being in the presence of a hated Nazi secret policeman could have got the better of his patience, the double agent von Hammersmark could have betrayed the spies. But the way the British Agent blew his cover was amazing and (IMO) showed the kind of geeky attention to detail I like to see in movies, but seldom do.

The chapter that really blew me away though, was the end. So many "historical" movies change the course of history to fit their story or even worse, their writers' political and moral biases. But rather than change the lives of obscure Roman emperors (as in Gladiator), Crusader noblemen known only to historians (as in Kingdom of Heaven) or Scotsmen known more through legend than History (Braveheart), Inglorious Basterds makes a change we all know to be a historical innacuracy. After all, Hitler did not die in Paris in 1944 - he died in 1945 in Berlin by his own hand and the Second World War ground on for another year because of it. But if you are willing to watch the emperor Commodus die in the Colisseum by a gladiators hand when he was actually by his Praetorian Guard, or see Balian of Ibelin showed as a working class hero who shows remarkable tolerance to Muslims instead of a bigoted aristocratic Crusader, you really have no grounds to complain about this innacuracy. I may be overanalysing this, but I see the end of IB as a big F.U. to historical accuracy in Hollywood movies.

Yet another thing I like is the Tarantino's refusal to resort to the many creative shortcuts in charatcer development that fills the pages of tvtropes.com. Apart from the characters who were intended as homages to stock characters in such movies (such as Mike Myers' walking stereotype of a British General), almost none of the characters are cliched. The stoic and heroic Frenchman Perrier LaPadite, who seems to be almost a shoo in for a place in Yad Vashem, caves under the implicit threat to his family and betrays the Jews he was sheltering. The nameless German NCO the Basterds capture in chapter 2 seems to be brave, respectful and honourable - in other words the archtypical "Good German" in the vein of The Eagle has Landed's Rolf Steiner. But then, just before he is killed. he shows himself to be an antisemite by shouting a racist epithet at the mostly Jewish unit that has captured him. There are other instances through the film where bit characters subvert the tropes you expect them to follow, and appear to be more human than simple stock characters.

The one little quibble I had with the film was with the translation of the German ranks in the English subtitles. The character of Feldwebel Wilhelm, the new father from the cellar scene has his rank translated as Master Sergeant (although I am pretty sure the subtitles say "Staff Sergeant"). Feldwebel, a rank that is not really equivalent to any American rank (although it is close to the British concept of a Warrant Officer, or an Indian Subhedar). While it is understandable that this nuance is not easy to convey in a line of subtitles, a generic "Sergeant" would have worked as a translation, as it can mean any number of senior NCO ranks in armies. The translation to specifically Master Sergeant or Staff Sergeant is clearly wrong though. Similarly, the translation of Sturmbannführer Dieter Hellstrom has his rank translated as Major. Now while SS Sturmbannführers were held to be equivalent to German Army Majors, Hellstrom is not a soldier but a member of the Gestapo and a secret policeman. The British police rank of Inspector is equivalent to British Army Lieutenants, but you would not expect American adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories to refer to Lieutenant Lestrade of Scotland Yard, would you? But hey, I am a the kind of military geek that can write a paragraph on the comparison between military ranks of the SS and the US Amry, and such little inaccuracies bother me. YMMV.

In the end, I guess Inglorious Basterds is definitely the kind of movie you would like to read the annotations to and watch again, as Roger Ebert said. There are so many little details and references in the movie, that seeing it once just will not do it justice. I plan to watch the movie again, and I would definitely buy a DVD, and so should you. It really is that good.

Predatory Taxation

2009-04-19T01:41:00.004-04:00

Imagine this:

A smooth, oily mortgage salesman is selling his product to a newly married couple. Try our adjustable rate mortgage, he says. Its got an initial rate of only 3.5% per annum, he says. Well, technically, the rate will reset after two years, but the prime rate is going down and your payments will never increase. Balloon payment? What balloon payment? You don't think I would do that to you, do you? No, this mortgage is exactly how I say it is. No need to read the contract, just sign here and initial here, and you are on your way to owning your dream house. How can we afford to finance such an expensive house at such low monthly payments, you ask? Why, we'll just securitize your mortgage, of course! We'll bundle it up with hundreds of others, and sell them to investors all over the world. The geniuses at Wall Street have figured it all out. No need to worry, this makes sound financial sense.

The couple, thrilled, sign and move into their new home. They make their low monthly payments for two years, and all seems to be well. But at the end of two years, suddenly, their rate shoots up. They can't afford their new, high, montly payment. Worse, prices of homes in their neighbourhood have begun to fall, so their mortgage will soon be underwater. Even worse, they realise that contrary to what the salesman promised them, the mortgage does not amortise completely, and they will have to make a large balloon payment at the end. Clearly, the costs of staying in their home are higher than they can afford. But the mortgage salesman made it sound so much better! He specifically said that they would not ever find themselves in such a situation.

Now, what phrase would you use to describe the mortgage salesman's conduct? Why, you'd call him a predatory lender, of course. And you'd be right. While I am a little wary of using the P-word indiscriminately, surely such outright lies and innacurate statements qualify.

My question is, if this is predatory, what about a guy who gets elected by promising tax cuts to 90% of the population while simultaneously embarking on the largest peacetime spending increase in his nation's history? He's got financial and economic geniuses on his side who claim that the quantitative easing and the securitisation of his country's liabilities allow him to get something for nothing, but does that really make him so different from the mortgage salesman of the earlier example? The current regime of low taxes may survive in the short term, but the debt that finances current spending has got to be paid back eventually, either through higher government revenues or the devaluation of the currency. People who have been convinced to vote for and support such spending increases based on the promise that their taxes will not be increased have been deceived. "Preyed on", if you will

I therefore propose that Barack Obama's tax policy, insofar as it leads to high approval ratings for him, be referred to as Predatory Taxation.

My article on Indian Elections and the Anti-Defection Law

2009-04-14T16:04:00.006-04:00

An article I wrote about how the Anti-Defection Law makes Indian politics is up at The South Wing. Please check it out here. [Note to Indian readers: This was written for a mainly US audience. Please do not pain me about stuff like "saris (a garment worn by Indian women)".]

To see a previous (if less coherent) post about the Anti-Defection Law, see Is Indian Anti-Defection Law Undemocratic?, right here at Ceteris Paribus.

New Featured Quote

2009-04-07T13:01:00.001-04:00

A great system is one where Caligula could be elected president, and it wouldn't affect our liberties one iota, because he'd lack the power to do anything awful.

- Commenter Pro Libertate, commenting on the Reason Hit and Run Blog.

Gordon Brown: The devalued Prime Minister

2009-03-25T22:35:00.002-04:00

I must learn to speak like this.

Taking NYU Back from Sanity

2009-03-16T11:17:00.002-04:00

There was a flap recently at NYU, my university, about a student group staging an "occupation" of the student center to protest... well, something. The group, Take Back NYU (TBNYU), had presented the administration with a list of 13 demands and threatened to occupy the cafeteria at the Student Center and stage dweeby hipster freak-ins until their demands were met. The list of demands (which you can see here) went from things such as disclosing NYU's budget and the investment strategy for its endowment to scholarships for 13 Palestinian Students and the donation of surplus University supplies to the Islamic University of Gaza*. The University authorities quite magnanimously allowed the students to stay in the cafeteria overnight on the condition that they not break anything. Incensed by this condition, no doubt, the protesters broke open a door leading out to the balcony and started haranguing passers-by on the street below. Amazingly, the University allowed them one more day at the student center before moving in and expelling the protesters from the cafeteria (although not, regrettably, from the University). A protester (who as it turns out, is not even from NYU!) captured this footage from the last moments of the "occupation": (CAUTION: Video NSFW due to loud swearing. Also make sure you are not drinking a liquid while watching this video, spit-takes are likely)

Regrettably, the protesters could not reach their beloved consensus and were ejected from the building. The NYU students were suspended and stripped of student housing and financial aid. The non-NYU protesters (of whom there appear to be many) were politely show out. Order and sanity was restored to the campus.

I think there are lessons in all of this for aspiring student protesters. First, think your damn demands through properly. The thirteen demands TBNYU presented not only had very little to do with each other, but some of them actively pissed off the student body (opening our already crowded library to the general public, for example). Second, if you are going to make wide-ranging demands that will actually cost this University, make sure all the protesters actually are stakeholders in the University. Many of the TBNYU protesters were students from other schools bussed in to swell the numbers of the occupation. Kids, this isn't rocket science. If there is one thing that is almost certainly guaranteed to piss of the entire student body, it is bums from Muhlenburg College telling us how our University ought to be run. Thirdly, do not come between NYUers and their quesadillas. Surely TBNYU could have thought of a better place to occupy and deny to NYU than the NYU student cafeteria. I mean, you couldn't have pissed off more ordinary students if you were frikking trying to do so. And finally, if you are going to ignore all these things, please, please do not make videos of your dweebiness and put them up on YouTube. This video is now publicly available to anyone who searches YouTube for NYU. People might look at this video and think we're all like this. You are allowed your douchebaggery, but please, we did not sign up to be associated with you consensus-using non-corporate-water-drinking morons.

My NGO (actually, make that QuANGO)

2009-03-06T01:28:00.005-05:00

I have decided to form a new NGO dedicated to a cause dear to my heart. I shall call it The Society for the Promotion of Beards and the Prevention of Shaving.

For too long, my brothers*, we have been in thrall of a pernicious fashion that forces us to deny the truth of our hairy visages. For too long, we have bowed to the power of the Razor regime, the evil Gillette empire that seeks to enslave us in order to secure a permanent market for their infernal blades. (Incidentally, did you know that King Camp Gillette was a Socialist?) Too long have we denied our masculine instincts at the behest of dweeby pretty-boy celebrities and bogus claims of high technology. Far too long have we participated in a bogus tradition designed to avoid beardless sissy Alexander the Great undue embarrassment from comparison to real men.

Enough, I say. No more. Cast off your chains and throw away your razors. Follow the inspiring example of Joseph Palmer, and defy you smooth-cheeked persecutors. Obey the precepts of Leviticus, Mohamed (p.b.u.h.) and Guru Gobind Singh. Rebel against the Man, that clean-shaven bastard. Be different. There are many, many reasons to grow your beard. Embrace one of them. Stop shaving. Join me, and be what you were meant to be.

[* I do not mean to be sexist, I'm just going by probabilities here. Any woman who can meet our entry requirements is welcome to join our Society.]

New Featured Quote

2009-03-02T14:19:00.003-05:00

"Organic food is grown in shit by hippies."

Anthony Bourdain, speaking to Deborah Ross.

I mean, how can you not love someone who says something like that?

(H/t Salil Tripathi)

Sita Sings the Blues

2009-03-01T17:53:00.004-05:00

A couple of years ago, I started reading Ashok K. Banker's Prince of Ayodhya. I couldn't finish the book for various reasons, not least of which was that I did not like it. But I remember the introduction Banker had written to the book, which spoke about how there are many, many versions of the Ramayan, and its silly to uphold one version as canonical over others. Furthermore, we do not have an original written copy of Valmiki's Ramayan and surely much of the story has changed as the story was passed from generation to generation through spoken retellings*. In such a situation, it is a little silly to say that a particular version of the story is wrong and promote, instead, another version of the story that might differ from what actually happened. It is a little like dissing 300 for its un-historic depiction of the Spartans and praising instead The 300 Spartans where the "Persians" have blond beards and the "Spartans" are clearly wearing Roman legionary armour (as a friend of mine once did). But I digress. Basically, Mr. Banker basically said that there is no reason for our epics** not to be retold in a more modern way. It is not necessarily disrespectful*** to the epic to come up with a new version where the characters behave a little more like modern people. And I totally agree with him. It would be cool to have a version of the Ramayan where we can identify a little better with the characters, where they speak our language, so to speak.

Well, while I agreed with Mr. Banker's sentiment, I just didn't like his story. It is true that I did not give it enough of a chance, and perhaps I should have at least read the first book through. And perhaps, some time in the murky future, I will (yay NYPL!). But what reading the introduction and first half of that book did to me was leave me wanting a modern, non-bowdlerised**** version of this quite frankly amazing story.

Which sort of brings me to what this post is all about. Sita Sings the Blues is an animated film based on the Ramayan, from the point of view of Sita. SStB is the work of Nina Paley, an American animator, who made this amazing full-length movie single-handedly over the course of five years, working from her personal computer.

(The Trailer for Sita Sings the Blues)

The film tells the story of Sita using Flash animation alongside several other animation techniques, including rotoscoping (which I personally find very cool). There are song sequences set to songs by the 1920s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw (copyright problems due to the inclusion of the songs have so far kept the movie from a commercial release, but the movie just would not be the same without them). The film has a hilarious narration by three Indonesian shadow puppets, who tell the story of the Ramayan, and illustrate the various (sometimes conflicting) versions that many Indians grow up with. It has segments that tell the story of Nina Paley's break up with her husband, and how it perhaps parallels Sita's abandonment by her husband. It has perhaps the coolest Hanuman in the history of animated Hanumans.

There is, in fact, no reason not to watch this movie. Unless you're one of those uncool people who thinks that any non-Ramanand Sagar/Amar Chitra Katha version of the Ramayan is disrespectful, or that it is "against Indian culture" for an American to make a movie about a great Indian epic. In fact, Pramod Muthalik would be very happy if you did not watch this movie. You wouldn't want to make Pramod Muthalik happy, would you? Then watch the movie.

Sita Sings the Blues can watched online here. If you're living in New York, you can watch it on WNET/NY Channel 13 on the 7th of March at 10:45 pm. Unfortunately, due to copyright issues, these are currently the only ways of watching the movie.

* As Neha Vishwanathan once wisely put it, it is "incredible how [Indians] managed to reproduce so much despite our oral tradition".

** I detest, detest, the use of the term "mythology" to describe the stories of the Hindu Gods and works such as the Ramayan and Mahabharat.

*** Doubtless it is possible to write a disrespectful version of the Ramayan; I remember several bawdy jokes based on Ram and Sita that my friends made while we were at school.

**** I'm looking at you, Amar Chitra Katha!

New Featured Quote

2009-01-29T17:18:00.004-05:00

This is Friedman’s life: He flies around the world, eats pricey lunches with other rich people and draws conclusions about the future of humanity by looking out his hotel window and counting the Applebee’s signs.

From Matt Taibbi's takedown of Thomas L. Friedman's writing in the New York Press. Another wonderful excerpt from the NY Press article:

Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique that goes something like this: “I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train, when suddenly I said to myself, ‘We need better headlights for our tri-plane.’” And off he goes.You the reader end up spending so much time wondering what Dubai, BP and all those Balinese workers have to do with the rest of the story that you don’t notice that tri-planes don’t have headlights.And by the time you get all that sorted out, your well-lit tri-plane is flying from chapter to chapter delivering a million geo-green pizzas to a million Noahs on a million Arks. And you give up. There’s so much shit flying around the book’s atmosphere that you don’t notice the only action is Friedman talking to himself.

As someone who read half of The World is Flat, I can vouch for the accuracy of Mr. Taibbi's characterisation.

Also read Taibbi's review of The World is Flat here.

This is why I love the Daily Show

2008-12-02T16:59:00.003-05:00

The thing with doing a comedy show parodying news shows is, you're often making light of events that might be tragic or shocking. This is very hard to do without being very very tasteless and insensitive.

That being the case, I was quite surprised and dismayed when I saw that Jon Stewart and John Oliver were doing a bit on the Mumbai terror attacks on yesterday's Daily Show. Whats happened in Mumbai affected me personally, and I really don't appreciate people making fun of it. But Jon and John came through, and the segment that followed captured my sentiments perfectly, while at the same time being hilarious.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mumbai Tragedy

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

"There will always be motherf**rs. What we can't do is let them control our motherf**king lives."

Amen to that.

On Samuelson

2008-11-20T17:57:00.003-05:00

The great Paul Samuelson, November 2008:

Such systems [ed: "unregulated" free markets] cannot regulate themselves, either micro-economically or macro-economically. Wherever tried they systematically breed intolerable inequalities. And instead of such inequality being the necessary price to encourage dynamic progress via technological and managerial innovations, it instead breeds dysfunctional shortfalls in what economists call "total factor productivity."

Convincing proof of these points can be found in the deterioration in the US from 2001 to 2008.

The great Paul Samuelson, 1989:

The Soviet Economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.

An anonymous commenter on Kids Prefer Cheese, in response to the above:

Paul is not so much with the R-square.

Hat tips to Angus and Tyler Cowen.

Dear Mr. President

2008-11-14T16:54:00.002-05:00

Dear President Bush,
If it isn't too much trouble, could you please stop pretending to be in favour of laissez-faire economics for the remainder of your Presidential term, and for the duration of your life after? After all, you've just authorised and signed a multi-trillion bailout of every politically connected business in the US. Throughout the better economic climes of the earlier parts of your administration, you've grown government, you've criminalised and regulated previously legal forms of commerce, and you've sought to extend your administration's reach to regulate and prosecute commerce in foreign countries and by foreign nationals. You even supported Sarbanes-Oxley for God's sake. What I am saying is, when you say things like this, you sound awfully hypocritical. Worse, you make look people who support freeing markets (as opposed to merely cutting taxes for Rich Texans) bad. Throughout your two terms in office, you've given conservatisim and free markets a bad name. Is it really too much to ask you to stop now, seeing as you've already hurt us so much?

Sincerely,
Kunal Sawardekar.

Why the First Bailout failed

2008-10-14T12:14:00.002-04:00

As you all know, the recent 233 billion gyro-on-pita bailout (note to the the financially-challenged: the dollar is pegged to the gyro-on-pita at the current Sammy's Rate of GOP 1 = $3) of Wall Street is supported wholeheartedly by every single Libertarian, Free-Marketeer, Conservative, Neoconservative, Evangelical and General-Purpose Nutjob*. This might cause confusion as to why the bailout was opposed in the US Congress by the Republican Party, the legislative voice for all the above groups.

After careful review of the evidence, I believe I have the answer. Take a look at Nancy Pelosi's speech before the vote:

Observe closely her right hand. Its all over the place! It twirls! It swirls! It waves and it weaves! Now Nancy Pelosi apart from being a suspected Bene Gesserit, is from San Francisco, home of all manner of deviants, including Wiccans. It is obvious to me that she was casting a spell on the Congressional Republicans, inducing them to defeat the vote that Democrats (the party opposed to the extreme free market ideology) opposed all along.

Pelosi's brazenness in working her spells on the floor of Congress, in full public view came back to haunt her though. Senate Republicans, working quickly to save the free market, passed a new bill that was the same as the old bill except for the addition of 50 billion gyros-on-pita worth of tax exemptions to wooden-arrow-manufacturers (who are of course, vital to the future of the global economy). Pelosi tried to defeat this bill too, but as we all know, spells dissolve in the presence of legislative pork. Enough Republicans freed themselves from the foul magic to switch their votes, and Capitalism was saved!

*All these terms mean the same thing.

Amit Varma, Ottoman

2008-10-13T02:30:00.010-04:00

Between 1915 and 1919, the Ottoman Empire killed between 1 and 1.5 million ethnic Armenians as part of a campaign to wipe out their Armenian population. This group of events is generally accepted by historians to be a genocide. Many international organisation, most religious groups, and many governments accept this categorisation of the killings as a genocide.

The government of Turkey, however, refuses to accept that there was a genocide. They protest recognition of the genocide by other nations, and acknowledging the genocide is a crime in Turkey.

Do you know who else denies the Armenian genocide? Amit Varma. Yes, that Amit Varma. Since he began blogging in the December of 2004, Amit Varma has not published a single article accepting the commission of a genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces. Nor has he condemned the conduct of Ottoman forces towards Armenian civilians during and after the First World War. Clearly, this is because he denies that the genocide ever occurred, out of sympathy for the Ottoman cause.

This whole sordid affair also raises questions about Libertarianism in general. Why do libertarians accept such an odious Armenian-genocide denier into their ranks? Why has Amit Varma not been expelled from the Libertarian Cartel for his gratuitously pro-Ottoman views?

This is a serious issue, and one that all libertarians should think about.

(/Not)

On the need to separate "Marathi" from "Maharashtrian"

2008-10-06T11:45:00.005-04:00

Years ago, I had a conversation with Yazad Jal about who could call himself a Maharashtrian. A Maharashtrian, I said, is someone who speaks Marathi. A Maharashtrian is someone who knows how to pronounce पूरण पोळी properly. A Maharashtrian is someone who thinks Shrikhand is haute cuisine. No doubt this rankled Yazad, who is presumably a Mumbaikar born and bred (we shall not discuss, for reasons of decency, the heretical notion that Mumbai should not be a part of Maharashtra).

Although I now realise I was wrong then, it seems many people share this misapprehension. Ajit Pawar, for one:

ASSERTING that the next Lok Sabha MP from Pune would be a 'Maharashtrian', the district guardian minister Ajit Pawar on Saturday said that it is time for the present Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi to shift to Rajya Sabha

Now Suresh Kalmadi, being as he is a cad and a bounder, was born and brought up in Pune. His family owns half of the city. He even went to St. Vincent's School (proving, if any proof was needed that Vincentians are never under any circumstances to be trusted). He might be a shady bugger, but Suresh Kalmadi is as Maharashtrian as they come.

Raj Thackeray, that champion of the Marathi Manoos, seems to think on similar lines. In this interview, he speaks of Ratan Tata as a non-Maharashtrian who has contributed much to the state. Now this is highly irregular. Ratan Tata, as far as I know, was born and brought up in Mumbai. He has lived there most of his adult life. It could be said, without exaggerating, that Ratan Tata is more Maharashtrian than Raj Thackeray. Ratan Tata's family has been in Mumbai longer that Raj T's has. Ratan Tata's grandfather, unlike Raj Thackeray's, actually went to college in Maharashtra. If Ratan Tata is not Maharashtrian, I'd like to know who is.

The problem here, then, is that all these people are confusing "Maharashtrian" for "Marathi". The problem is, ever since the peasant/warrior caste in Maharashtra appropriated the word "Maratha" for themselves, Marathi-speakers have lacked an acceptable ethnonym. We may call ourselves the Marathi people, but that just doesn't cut it, somehow. So people started using the word "Maharashtrian" as an ethnonym to describe Marathi speakers and followers of the Marathi way of life (in other words, the Chosen People). But this is imprecise. Some people are Marathi but not Maharashtrians. Some people are Maharashtrians but not Marathi. Shivajirao Gaekwad and Madhavrao Scindia fall in the former category, while Ratan Tata, Yazad Jal and Suresh Kalmadi fall in the latter. The people living in the Occupied Territories are Marathi, but are denied the status of Maharashtrians by the evil Kannadiga Occupation Government and their nefarious northern allies. In fact, everybody who lives between Attock and Cuttack can be considered Maharashtrians regardless of language and culture, living as they do in Greater Maharashtra.

The way is clear. "Maharashtrian" must never be used as an ethnonym. That word should only be Marathi, as in the Marathi people, or that Marathi person. Any and all residents of the Great State of Maharashtra in good standing may be called Maharashtrians. I encourage you to adopt this usage, and educate others about the difference.

Because together, we can, and we will.

An Allegory

2008-09-28T19:58:00.010-04:00

Crowned in 1894, Russian Emperor Nicholas II went down in history as one of the worst rulers Russia ever had. A champion of liberalism, Nicholas called the first parliament Russia ever had, the State Duma, in 1905. He appointed Sergei Witte Prime Minister, a first for Russia, which had hitherto been ruled autocratically by its Tsars and Emperors. He issued the October Manifesto, promising civil liberties, universal male suffrage and freedom of religion among other things. The following year, he further abandoned the autocracy that had served his country so well by introducing the first ever Constitution of Russia.

Nicholas' reckless liberalisation of Russia's polity reversed the sensible autocratic reforms of the Emperor Nicholas I, who ushered in the "Autocracy, Orthodoxy and Nationalism" policy after the Decembrist Revolt of 1825. The unprecedented openness allowed the unfettered forces of political expression to expand and gain new adherents. Radical new parties, such as the Social Democratic Labour Party (famous for its extremist, or Bolshevik, wing) were formed. The extreme liberal ideology championed by the Emperor encouraged anarchists, who assassinated among others Sergei Witte and numerous members of the aristocracy.

The Emperor used a shock-doctrine to force his policies on an unwilling policies. The October Manifesto and 1906 Constitution, for example were enacted after the disaster of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. At the outbreak of the Great War of 1914 (known to us as the First World War), Nicholas doubtless planned to use the emergency situation to force more liberal programmes on an unwilling public. However, his extreme liberalism finally bore fruit in February 1917, when a political crisis of unexpected proportions forced his government out. In the November of that year, a further crisis engulfed Russia as the Bolsheviks launched a further revolution. The following year, Nicholas himself succumbed to the revolutionary forces he had unleashed.

What was worse, the trend of liberalisation of thought to which Nicholas had contributed meant that the contagion of revolution spread across the world. Within three decades, all of Eastern Europe and large part of Asia were part of the new world order that replaced the stable polities of the 19th Century. If Nicholas had only stuck to the tried policies of his predecessors (Nicholas I and Alexander III in particular) and avoided a programme of political deregulation, the Russian Empire might have survived to this day.

In which my girlfriend totally pwned me

2008-09-27T17:54:00.007-04:00

So last night, I was watching Reason's coverage of the Presidential Debates (with commentary by Bob Barr, which was awesome). They were showing it live, and the webcast had a chat thread going on by the side. Now I'm a regular reader of Reason's Hit and Run blog, and if there is one thing about that website that is better than the quality of the writing, it is the quality of the comments. So there I was, reading and participating in the awesome chat thread. Somewhere along the way, someone made a comment comparing Obama with ManBearPig. I responded with the following comment (reproduced from memory, since they don't seem to have saved a transcript):

If you're going to make Southpark references to Obama, how can you not mention Night of the living Homeless? "CHANGE!! CHANGE!!!"

Now I think that was pretty funny, and apparently so did a couple of the other participants. They like it so much, in fact that I was nominated, and seconded for a thread win. (A thread win is a tradition on Hit and Run's comments, given to an especially awesome or funny comment. Naturally for a libertarian blog, it is conferred by acclamation.) I was elated, of course. So elated, in fact, that I changed my status on Gtalk to

I won a thread on Reason. Bow to me, lowly mortals!!

Confident in my supreme awesomeness, I went to sleep. When I woke up, I saw that my girlfriend had sent me the following cartoon:

So yeah. I suffered such extreme pwnage that I had to stay home all day to recuperate. When you get pwned so completely, there is but one thing to say and that thing is orz. But I bet right now you're wishing your girlfriend was as cool as mine.

Public Service Announcement - I

2008-09-17T12:44:00.003-04:00

Years ago, I read in a Bournvita Quiz Book* that milk is excellent for cleaning ball point pen writing/stains. Well, the other day I had a ball point leak in my pocket, and got a bunch of ink over my phone. I tried cleaning it out with milk, but here's the thing: it DID NOT WORK. The stains are still there, and I'm out a couple of ounces of precious milk (milk is very precious when you have to lug gallon jugs of it 9 blocks over from Bhawani Cash and Carry).

So kids, do not believe everything you read in Bournvita Quiz Books. Derek O'Brien can be, and has been, wrong.

This Public Service Announcement brought to you by the BCQC.

[* I realise it looks bad for me that I read BQC books, especially since my admission last week that I bought a Backstreet Boys album. But hey, I got it for free (for qualifying for the BQC, no less). What did you want me to do, not read something I got for free?]

A Haunting Tale of Opportunity Cost

2008-09-07T02:49:00.003-04:00

I just remembered that in the year 1999, I bought the album Backstreet's Back for the sum of Rs. 125. Rs. 125, at the rate of 3.5% annually (which is what I might have earned if I left the money in my savings account) would have worked out to Rs. 170.36 today. At the current exchange rate, that works out to about $4. Which is the price of a gyro on pita at Sammy's Halal food stall.

Thats right. My foolish decision to purchase that execrable album has left me poorer by one gyro on pita today.

Damn.

Surely you're joking, Mr. Nadeau

2008-04-11T15:03:00.003-04:00

George Mason University environmental science professor Robert Nadeau has a very strange article up at Scientific American magazine.

[T]he mathematical theories used by mainstream economists are predicated on the following unscientific assumptions:
The market system is a closed circular flow between production and consumption, with no inlets or outlets.
Natural resources exist in a domain that is separate and distinct from a closed market system, and the economic value of these resources can be determined only by the dynamics that operate within this system.
The costs of damage to the external natural environment by economic activities must be treated as costs that lie outside the closed market system or as costs that cannot be included in the pricing mechanisms that operate within the system.
The external resources of nature are largely inexhaustible, and those that are not can be replaced by other resources or by technologies that minimize the use of the exhaustible resources or that rely on other resources.
There are no biophysical limits to the growth of market systems.

He goes on to argue that Economics is not therefore a serious science and we can ignore all that economists have to say about, for example, the environmental crisis.

Apart from noting that I have heard a more coherent critique of economic theory by Ali G, I have only one thing to say to Mr. Nadeau. Read a book, sir. Read a book.

(Hat tip: Reason's Hit and Run Blog.)

Australia enters Weimar mode

2008-03-04T23:14:00.008-05:00

In the 18th and 19th Centuries, Prussia (and later the German Empire, of which Prussia formed the main part) was an unstoppable military force. Barring a defeat to the armies of Napoleon, Prussian armies defeated the Austrians, the French, the Danish and the Austrians and the French again, all withing the space of a half-century (well, almost a half-century). The Army of the German Empire, which was for all practical purposes the Prussian Army, was acknowledged as the best in the world. Their leadership, the Prussian General Staff were renowned to be second to none. Then came the First World War. The Prussians initially expected to have won the war by Christmas (that is, Christmas of 1914). However, the War dragged on much longer than they expected, and soon the Prussians found themselves fighting the British Empire, the Russian Empire and the French. Showing their impressive military skills, the Prussians knocked out the Russians, but the USA soon took their place amongst their enemies. Finally, by the end of 1918, the Prussians were out-produced, out-maneuvered and quite plainly out-fought. The defeat was especially shocking to those who had grown used to a hundred and fifty years of Prussian/German military dominance (ie, all Germans). How could we have lost this war, when clearly we are so awesome at this war thing, they asked.

Thus was born the Dolchstoßlegende (literally, stab-in-the-back-legend. Germans can be pretty uncreative with names). The military leadership, and a large portion of German soldiery refused to take responsibility for the defeat and the fact that the better armies won. Instead, they blamed the civilian leadership and the people on the home front for not backing the war front adequately. The war would have been won, they said, if it hadn't been for the civilians stabbing the army in the back (slyly omitting to mention that the civilian government that surrendered to the Allies did not come to power until just before the surrender). A certain Mr. Hitler cunningly exploited this feeling, and won election after election right up to the German Presidency railing against the "November Villains" who lost the War. As we all know, this phase of German history also ended in tears.

Cut to the present. Since the mid 1990s, Australia have dominated world cricket. They've won three One-day World Cups in a row and all Ashes series apart from 2005. They gone months, whole years even, without losing a single match. The Australian Cricket team was acknowledged as the best in the world. Its leadership, embodied by S. Waugh and R. Ponting, was hailed as peerless. When the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup started in September 2007, Australia were clear favorites to win. Except they were knocked out by India in the semi-finals in a hard-fought match. India then went n to defeat Pakistan in the finals and won the Cup. Later that year, the Indian cricket team went to Australia on tour. Australia narrowly won the Test series, one of the most acrimonious in recent history. In the one day series (where the two teams were joined by Sri Lanka) the two teams faced each other in the finals. And Australia lost, two games to none. Australia's ascendancy in international cricket was looking to have finished.

The very weekend this was happening, an article appeared in the Australian press, in effect blaming Cricket Australia (the governing body of Aussie cricket) for the defeat that came the next day. As this blog post is being written, Australian journalists are scrambling to blame this disaster on the perfidy of the Indians, on their own spineless board stabbing their team in the back and on every factor except that their team was outplayed and outperformed. The Australian Dolchstoßlegende is being written as we speak.

The last Dolchstoßlegende led directly to the chaos of the Weimar Republic in Germany, to civil war, economic collaps and thence to the horror of the Nazis and the Second World War. What untold suffering this one will bring, only time will tell.

From the Department of Carry On-Movie style Names

2008-03-02T22:46:00.003-05:00

It transpires that Air Chief Marshall Sir Graham Eric Stirrup GCB AFC etc etc, the British Chief of Defence Staff likes to go by the nickname Jock. Yes, the UK Defence Chief is called Sir Jock Stirrup.

(Hat tip: Samizdata.)

Kunal's Law

2008-02-29T01:55:00.001-05:00

I have decided to boldly go where practically everyone has gone before, and coin a law named after myself. Seeing as pretty much every eponymous law is a corollary of a more famous law, I have decided that I too should take this expeditious route. Hence, I present this humble offshoot of Occam's Razor:

If a phenomenon can be equally explained by the decline of human civilization and by people responding to incentives, it's probably the incentives.

Seriously, you see this every day. You see people everywhere point to this or that example of something they think is going wrong and say, back in the day people were smarter/politer/nicer/less corrupt. Evidently, the new generation has lost these qualities, and hence the (presumably) bad situation we're in right now. F'rinstance, here Ramanand complains about people wasting food at buffets, something that I have heard many people decry. Now while he does not directly ascribe this to the inexorable descent of the human race to savagery, some (Hi Grandma!) do so. However, there is another, incentive-based explanation for this, as Harish points out in the comments. In buffets, you don't know how good the food is before you eat it. You serve yourself extra, so that if its good , you don't have to stand in line again. If it isn't so good, however, you waste it.

There is probably an incentive-based explanation for every phenomenon blamed on the decline/decadence/whatever of modern society. Like divorce rates, something thats regularly blamed on modern decadence. You might, of course also attribute rising divorce to the reduction of incentives (such as social ostracization, female equality, etc) to stay on in bad marriages. This is also somehow far more likely an explanation than the human race suddenly losing its moral bearings. Yet, somehow people seem to be much fonder of the first explanation.

So, the next time you decide to tell somebody that आमच्या वेळी असे नव्हते *, remember to apply Kunal's Law first. Oh, and if it turns out that someone came up with this first, just remember to comment on his blog and remind him to change the name on his post to "Kunal's Law".

* - old Pu La Deshpande quotation that means, literally, that "it wasn't this way back in our time".

Barack Obama is secretly Matt Lantos Santos

2008-02-29T00:31:00.006-05:00

Or is it the other way around?

You have got to love this US presidential election for the huge amount of entertainment it's produced.

(Tip o' the ha': Ezra Klein.)

(PS: The title original spelling of the title wasn't a misspelling, I swear. It was intentionally spelled that way to catch future plagiarists. I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling commenters!)

New Featured Quote

2008-02-17T22:24:00.003-05:00

How many times do I have to see footage of Danes licking ice cream cones and riding bicycles as though this were the final station of moral human development[?]

- Celia Farber, writing on the Scandinavians-have-it-much-better-than-Americans cliche at Dean's World.

The Shocking Implications of US Policy

2008-02-17T01:34:00.001-05:00

If you're reading this, you're probably an Indian. You're also almost definitely computer literate (unless someone prints out my posts for the less digitally blessed. I believes this actually happens to other, better blogs). If so, read on. This is super-duper seriul. This is far worse than Global Laming. This is worse than ManBearPig. This is some bad shit right here.

Okay, so most of you probably agree that the United States government does some pretty stupid shit sometimes. They go to war for silly reasons. They put people in jail for taking pain medication. They enact boneheaded copyright law. They enrich little fishing villages in Nicaragua. The list goes on.

But two particular boneheaded policies, put together, are potentially the biggest threat to the Indian nation since a chappie named Robert Clive joined this little trading company in order to score discount opium. Consider the facts:

The US government has an absolutely zero-tolerance policy regarding child porn. Which is absolutely fine, you say. Kiddie Porn is terrible. And I agree. It is terrible. But the US government is especially anal about this. Any pictures or video, whether or not meant for distribution, involving anyone even a minute under eighteen years old, will get you a mandatory minimum sentence of a couple of decades.
The US government also claims jurisdiction over crimes committed in foreign nations, by foreign nationals, and in some cases, against foreign nationals (that is to say, if the word "against" can be used meaningfully while talking about victim less crime). Witness Guantanamo Bay. Witness the arrest of David Carruthers. Witness the case of Marc Emery.

In isolation, both these positions are stupid, but not exactly world-changing. Put together, however, a far more sinister implication emerges. That implication is this:

Every single person who has seen the DPS RK Puram MMS is in violation of US Federal Law. What's more, the US Justice department has the precedent, and indeed the obligation to arrest anyone who has shared, saved, or even just seen the clip. If the US Government has its way, every computer-literate Indian adult will be incarcerated in a Federal gaol.

Be afraid, India. Be very afraid.

(With inputs from KR Aadishtan and Sarika Chuni.)

New Featured Quote

2007-11-28T14:50:00.000-05:00

(Yes, I know it sucks that this is the only portion of this blog that gets updates. Sorry 'bout that.)

[I]f we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?

-The innominate one, commenting on Reason.

New Featured Quote

2007-07-27T11:27:00.000-04:00

"If you die a virgin, in heaven you have to have sex with a terrorist."

Timothy Dreier, commenting on the Reason Hit and Run Blog.

Jihad!!

2007-05-28T13:21:00.000-04:00

There's this old joke, where Lord Mountbatten is about to leave India after his term as GG ends. As his plane is about to board, J. Nehru and V. Patel come running to say one final goodbye. As they part, the two ask Mountbatten, hey you've been running this country a while now, got any advice for us? Mountbatten thinks, and says, yeah, I do. Don't take faltu pangas. I normally find this to be some very good advice. But sometime, some shit happens, and you're like, "This is too much now!" Some stuff you cannot let go by. Sometimes, you have to take a stand. This is exactly that kind of time.

Now I normally have no problems with the blogger known to us as Krrish. Krissh may have a pathological hatred for libertarians, be totally anal retentive on ~~Global Warming~~* Climate Change, and display a complete and utter lack of taste and decorum on occasion, but hey, nobody's perfect. But this time, young Kriish crossed a line.

(referring to an article about MoD funding for research into the Arthashastra) If any king had ArthaShastra at his disposal, why didn’t he conquer the world. Why was Hindu religion confined to the subcontinent area? Well, it (the research) came from Pune. I am not surprised about it. What else can you expect from places like Pune and Nagpur, which are infested with Hindutva fools and ideology. (Link)

Dude, you want to riff on Hindutva, you go right ahead. You don't like the NDA government, you write how much suck all you like. But when you a) impugn the record of Pune University (my soon-to-be alma mater), b) cast aspersions on my city and c) badmouth a work as great and dear to me as the Arthshastra, you, my friend, have earned my undying hatred. You've managed to compress, in five concise sentences, an undeniable trifecta of suck. That makes you a three time loser in my eyes, you punk.

Taking all of this into account, I have decided to declare a Jihad against Krishh. I hereby pledge on the Light and my hope of salvation that I will never let an opportunity to speak against him go by. I will take his words out of context and use them against him. I will leave no stone unturned in making him look bad. I will also enlist others in this ~~Crusade~~ Jihad. I will utilise all the resources and contacts of the vast right-wing conspiracy in making sure that every person's hand is turned against him. I will ask my faithful readers to join this cause and bring him down. Because together we can, and we will!!

Kkrish, if you're reading this, take heed. Your wickedness and your mischief is coming back to haunt you. Your chickens are coming home to roost. I advise you to set your affairs in the blogosphere in order, punk, because this is a declaration of war. May thy knife chip and shatter, motherbitch!

*Sorry, I forgot its not cool to use that phrase anymore.

I can't believe it's not News! - Vol. 2

2007-04-06T12:18:00.000-04:00

India has Nothing to do with Sanjaya, says Embassy
Washington DC, April 6.

The Indian Embassy in Washington today issued a statement denying all links between India and allegedly Indian-American American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar. "All references to India as the "country of Sanjaya" are absolutely wrong. Sanjaya Malakar has never been an Indian citizen, and we are now planning to strip him of his Person of Indian Origin (PIO) status" said Ambassador Ronen Sen while speaking to reporters.

The Indian Foreign Ministry has spent the past week trying to manage the fallout from Sanjaya's entry into the top 9 of the competition. On Wednesday, the Indian Consulate in New York took out a full page ad in the New York Times, detailing, among other things the fact that most Indians can sing quite well and do not, in fact, sport outlandish hairstyles. Among other things, Indian diplomats have tried to highlight Malakar's non-Indian ancestry in an attempt to dissociate him from the country. "Sanjaya is half Italian-American", said Ambassador Sen. "Its that side of the family that's responsible for his weirdness. This is more Italy's fault than India's." (Related article: Congress workers demand Sen's resignation)

Mr. Malakar has declined to comment so far, but is believed to be planning to hold a press conference to respond to the Ambassador's statement in front of the Indian Embassy in Washington tomorrow.

Sudden Phrase Change

2007-04-06T11:17:00.000-04:00

For some time now, I've been noticing a sudden phrase change amongst people referring to the greenhouse effect and strategies to combat it. What was earlier almost universally referred to as "Global Warming" is now mainly referred to as "Climate Change". I did a scientifical study of this phenomenon by using that great friend of scientifcologists, Googlefight. Here are the results:

The use of the phrase "Climate Change" to describe the effects of the Greenhouse Effect makes much more sense than that of the phrase "Global Warming", because now you can blame all manner of climatic phenomena such as blizzards, hurricanes and rain on Guy Fawkes Day on it. Pretty nifty.

Meanwhile, the media continues to ignore the far deadlier phenomenon of Global Laming.

The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Theory of Socialism

2007-02-22T13:59:00.000-05:00

Today, in International Economics class, we were discussing the work of Janos Kornai. Our teacher, who studied at the Moscow State University and knows such things, was telling us about the chronic shortages in old Soviet Union and its socialist satellites. At this point, an avowedly Marxist classmate of mine interjected to point out that the USSR had never been a Socialist Economy. They were, he said, a State Capitalist Economy. This, he explained, was because they paid wages to their workers*. If they had worked on a simple from-each-according-to-his-ability, to-each-according-to-his-needs principle, Red Square would still have kick-ass parades every first of May.

This reminded me of something Douglas Adams wrote about the secret of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's success, viz "their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws". This, it seems to me, is also the secret of the success of Socialism. Whenever a Socialist policy fails, the blame falls on some minor (in the greater scheme of things) deviation from the Socialist Golden Path. For example, the National Rural Employment Scheme is a brilliant solution to rural poverty, it will only fail because the bureaucrats have weakened the Employment Guarantee Act. Forcing banks to give farmers in Vidharba low-interest loans in a good idea, the problem is that the interest is not low enough. Five-year-plans are a great idea, its just that our planners sucked. And so on.

This theory is, of course, at an early stage of development. So please, gentle readers, if you come across any other examples of the SCC theory of Socialism, let us know. And please remember to share and enjoy!

*I feel he does the old Soviet apparatchiks a great injustice here. The Soviet Union (as the old joke goes) pretended to pay their workers. In return, they pretended to work

Free Kareem Amer

2007-02-16T02:51:00.000-05:00

Kareem Amer is an Egyptian blogger imprisoned by his government (one of the thirteen countries listed by Reporters Without Borders as enemies of the Internet and grave violators of freedom of expression over the Internet) for, basically criticising the powers-that-be in his country. He is currently on trial for "Defaming the president of Egypt", "Incitement to hate Islam", "Highlighting inappropriate issues that harm the reputation of Egypt and spreading these publicly" and other such ridiculous charges.

Today is Free Kareem Amer day. Alongside with peaceful demonstrations at Egyptian embassies and consulates in several cities around the world, there are also going to be an online protest against the persecution of Kareem Amer and the denial of his right to express himself.

Kareem Amer doesn't deserve to go to jail for eleven years, even if he did everything the prosecution in his case insists he did. One of the amazing things about this Internet thingy for me is that we all get much greater opportunities to say what we want on a public forum, and I find such brutal suppression of the freedom of expression on the Internet particularly abhorrent (which is not, of course, to say that I'm okay with its suppression elsewhere). We, as junta living in the 21st century, have far greater freedom to express ourselves than our predecessors at any time. The persecution of Kareem Amer is a throwback to earlier times when dissent was far more easily suppressed, and must be opposed for the continuation of those freedoms everywhere.

For more information on Kareem Amer, you can see the Wikipedia article and FreeKareem.org, a website dedicated to securing his release. To know more about Free Kareem Day, visit the Rally for Kareem Amer website. You can also sign a petition calling for his release here.

Go Mooninites!

2007-02-03T13:17:00.000-05:00

So Cartoon Network was running this big ad campaign in the US, as a part of which, eight cities were covered with LED devices that depicted characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a show on CN. One of the devices is pictured at left. Now, to any sane human, this looks like a harmless LED placard. But to the authorities in Boston, this had all the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda bomb plot. They swung into action, and used all their fancy new Dept. of Homeland Security financed equipment to shut down half of Boston. Finally, when they realised that there was indeed a difference between an LED and an IED, instead of apologising for their stupidity, they arrested the two guys responsible for putting up the placards for "perpetrating a hoax".

Which brings us to the point of this whole post. The two men, Peter Beredovsky and Sean Stevens, were mobbed by reporters as they were leaving the jail on bail. Here is what happened:

Man, these guys rock!

(H/t: Radley Balko.)

New Featured Quote

2006-11-28T09:10:00.000-05:00

Greg Chappell has no right to say anything he wants against MPs. There should be more transparency and accountability from him

-Mohammed Salim, Deputy Leader of the CPI(M) in the Lok Sabha. (Link. H/t Gaurav Sabnis)

Oh, the irony!

Go borrow heat from the next fellow's oven

2006-10-20T17:56:00.000-04:00

Boy, do I have a treat for you loyal readers.

Not only is this here a video of possibly the best Hindi movie song ever (that being Beedi from Omkara), but is also features English subtitles. Yes, English subtitles to the Beedi song. This, gentle readers, is the shit. All hail YouTube.

(Note: This is a 6 minute video, so no joy if you have a download limit or somesuch)

Hat tip: Varun "Fez" Deshpande.

Princeton, we have a problem.....

2006-08-29T14:36:00.000-04:00

I always wondered what it would feel like to answer a multiple choice test, take wild guesses, and luck out totally. In fact, every multiple choice test I take, I spend (on average) three times as much time daydreaming about such a situation as I do studying. I wish that would happen to me someday, I think.

Well, today it did.

So I'm sitting is a claustrophobic cubicle in Mumbai, wishing to all the darker Gods that I had studied harder, when the comp throws up my GRE score*:

Verbal: 800

Quantitative: 760

Ka-ching!

I just wish I hadnt spent so much time convincing myself that the GRE is useless....

(*Of course, the worst thing about the GRE's scoring pattern is that the computer shows you your score for a couple of seconds, but you only get confirmation when your scores reach you by mail two weeks later. Which leaves you with the abiding fear that you read the scores wrong, and that two weeks later you will get a letter informing you that you got, say, a 670 on your GRE, leaving you looking like a bit of a twit, really. Needless to say, I have the creeping heebie jeebies that exactly that will happen. Especially since 670 sounds far more likely to me than 1560.)

New Featured Quote

2006-07-20T10:10:00.000-04:00

"Only three good things ever came out of Belgium: Fabrique Nationale, Front 242, and the German Army."

Commenter Sigivald, on Tim Blair's blog.

(Note: Sigivald may have been quoting someone else, but since i dont know who that is, I'm attributing it to him.)

This blog has been censored

2006-07-17T15:05:00.000-04:00

As of today, I am unable to see my own blog, which seems to be because my government has decided to goahead and block all Blogger (and maybe Typepad) blogs in India. No reason has been given for this move, and this has happened suddenly, without warning or any announcement.

ThisWiki is a good place to start if you want to read about, or join in the protest against this odious censorship.

Update (20/7/2006): The block has been lifted. Blogger blogs are accessible in India once more.

Update (20/7/2006): Fireworks still banned in the USA.

New Featured Quote

2006-07-06T09:23:00.000-04:00

Don't hit people, and don't take their stuff. The government's only legitimate function is to deal with those who do either.

Radley Balko's definition of Libertarianism.

Fourth of July Bloody Mindedness

2006-07-04T11:29:00.000-04:00

Every time I think that the US is so much better a country than mine, it has much better roads, much politer people, the trains run on time, I think hey, maybe my country is poor, socialist and generally f***ed up, but at least I can light fireworks any day of the year.

India, fuck yeah!

It's a Blog!

2006-06-18T09:20:00.000-04:00

It is with a distinct lack of pleasure that I announce the creation of a new blog in which I am a co-contributor - Triumph des Villains. I can really think of no reason why I should have started a new blog, but this decision was made in the wee hours of last night, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

So for your daily fix of irrelevance and incoherence, I urge you to read Triumph des Villains. Its not like you have anything better to do.

PS: The first commenter to spot the reference in the title shall receive half-hearted praise.

New Featured Quote

2006-06-14T16:15:00.000-04:00

"...burning American flags is a lot like soccer: Americans have never gotten all that into it, but it's wildly popular in much of the rest of the world."

Julian Sanchez, on the Reason Hit and Run Blog.

Arjun Singh Facts

2006-05-31T15:53:00.000-04:00

Arjun Singh killed all those women in Whitechapel a hundred years ago.
Arjun Singh stole the Jules Rimet trophy from Brazil.
Arjun Singh was the Monkey Man.
Arjun Singh only eats meat if it belongs to an animal from an endangered species.
Arjun Singh knows how to cure cancer, but won't tell anyone.
Arjun Singh supports the Pakistan Cricket team, especially when they play India.
Arjun Singh was initially hailed as the Antichrist by Satanists, until they realised he was way too evil for them.
Arjun Singh framed Roger Rabbit.
When Rome burned, Nero played the fiddle. Arjun Singh was out among the flames throwing petrol at buildings.
Arjun Singh never tips.
Arjun Singh takes your socks out of the dryer and hides them.
Arjun Singh stole the cookie from the cookie jar.
Arjun Singh is the source of all chain e-mails.
Arjun Singh makes sure your luggage gets sent to a different airport than you.
All your base are belong to Arjun Singh, and he isn't giving them back.
Arjun Singh is a master of Kitten Bonsai.
Arjun Singh bullshits better than Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf.
Arjun Singh killed Kenny.
Arjun Singh is more evil than Bert.
You have two cows. Arjun Singh takes them away from you. Now you have nothing.
Arjun Singh spells "potato" with an e at the end.
Arjun Singh moved your cheese.
Arjun Singh brushes with Topical Cream for Treatment of Fissures and Festulas.

(Fine Print: This article may or may not be about any specific person named Arjun Singh of your acquaintance. Any references to any person, living or dead, may or may not be coincidental. Any similarity to Internet memes may or may not be intentional. Thank you.)

First rule of the Louisiana Purchase: Nobody talks about the Louisiana Purchase

2006-05-27T08:58:00.000-04:00

The Llama Butchers have horrifying news: Brad Pitt and Ed Norton are to reappraise their Fight Club partnership playing the lead role in the upcoming Lewis and Clark movie!

Also in the TLB article, a free sneak preview of the plot outline for the movie (Down with Big Whale Oil!)

Of course, I still think Edwards and Hunt kick Lewis and Clark's asses.

(H/t: Dean's World. Post title dhaaped from a comment on The Llama Butchers by Robbo the LB)

I can't believe it's not News! - Vol. 1

2006-05-20T16:01:00.001-04:00

(In line with our usual policy of copying popular features from other blogs, Ceteris Paribus is proud to present, in the vein of Faux News and Someachaar, I can't believe it's not News! - Vol. 1. Any resemblance to margarine brand names is purely coincidental)

Catholic Secular Forum demands ban on Amar Akbar Anthony
Mumbai, May 21

Following their demands for bans on movies such as The Da Vinci Code, Tickle My Funny Bone and Sacred Evil, the Catholic Secular Forum today demanded that Censor Board certification for the movie Amar Akbar Anthony be withdrawn.

"The posters of the movie Amar Akbar Anthony clearly show what appears to be a Catholic priest. When we see such imagery, we want to know in what context it is used", said the general secretary of the CSF in a statement issued to the press today.

The group has demanded that the film be re-reviewed by the Censor Board, with a Catholic present to ascertain whether the movie hurts the community's sentiments or not. This parallels demands made by the group about the movie Sacred Evil.

When asked if he thought such demands were looking increasingly ludicrous to the general public, the chairman of the group replied, "We are Indians! We can get offended at anything! We can demand anything! I demand that I be offended!".

The Archdiocese of Mumbai has appealed for sanity, terming such efforts "extremely stupid". The Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi has announced a high-level inquiry into the film, and promised a recall of all DVDs, VCDs and videocassettes of the movie.

Amitabh Bachchan, the actor who played the alleged priest declined to comment. "Mr. Bachchan is incapacitated by extreme mirth and laughter and thus unable to comment", his PA said in reply to requests for comment.

Don't the Cops get the Law?

2006-05-20T12:40:00.001-04:00

(I know this is old news, but hey, I haven't had net access for a while, so please adjust.)

Recently, out-of-the-spotlight actor Naveen Nischol came back right into public consciousness when his wife Geetanjali committed suicide. Apparently, she blamed his behaviour for driving her to suicide.

Geetanjali, who was found hanging from the ceiling fan inside their bedroom on Saturday night, had left behind a note next to her bed saying she was disturbed by Naveen’s heavy drinking and had repeatedly asked him to put an end to his habit because it was affecting their finances.
She also allegedly said that Praveen supported his brother on the issue.

So what did Mumbai's finest do in this case? They arrested the brothers Nischol on charges of cruelty to women, and, incredibly, abetment of suicide.

‘‘They were arrested under Sections 498 (a) (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) and 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code,’’ said Senior Police Inspector Joe Gaikwad, refusing to divulge any other details.

Now while the cruelty charge may or may not be justified, the abetment charge seems (at least to my legally-ignorant eyes) moronic. Abetment according to Dictionary.com, means:

To approve, encourage, and support (an action or a plan of action); urge and help on.
To urge, encourage, or help (a person): abetted the thief in robbing the bank.

Obviously this does not apply here. Navin and Pravin Nischol may have behaved badly, but they did not force Geetanjali to commit suicide. And there certainly does not seem to be any evidence to show that they urged, encouraged or helped her to commit suicide. She committed suicide because she could no longer live with their behaviour. If this is abetment of suicide, then isn't the Government of Maharashtra guilty of abetting hundreds of farmer suicides?

Although the Nischols have been granted bail on the grounds that there is insufficient evidence to convict them of the charges (btw, shouldn't that lead to an acquittal?), there is a larger issue here. This case seems to show that the Mumbai Police (if not other departments all over the country) does not adequately understand the laws that it is supposed to enforce, and labours under serious misconceptions about what they mean. That really cannot be a good thing.

Ecclesiastes 4:1

2006-05-20T12:40:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm back. My phone connection, on the blink for two months, has been restored (for now). Its been a horrible two months, bereft of water supplies, phone connections or internet access, and we've had to go through the worst kind of stupid, bureaucratic pettiness to get just the phone company to do its job (our water connection still isnt restored). I have no confidence left in BSNL (my phone company and ISP), the Maharashtra PWD or the Pune Municipal Corporation, so I'm not optimistic this semi-happy state will last long. While this connection persists, however, I shall endeavour to keep blogging.

¿Socialismo o muerte? ¡Prefiero muerte!

In the meanwhile, however, here's something cool I noticed. Here are pictures of Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show and Rajdeep Sardesai, newsman, late of NDTV and working at CNN-IBN when I last checked.

I don't know about you guys, but I see an uncanny similarity. Considering that Jon Stewart's a comedian caricaturing the role of a news anchor, I think the joke's on Rajdeep, eh?

Wtf?! (Part Deux)

2006-05-11T06:43:00.000-04:00

While I don't normally blog from the comp at my dad's office (which I'm forced to use as my home internet connection is off the blink, again), I just couldn't let this one by.

This is the text of an email forward I got from two friends of mine, with the identical subject "Be ready for 22nd SEP 2006 If u r real INDIAN" (sic).

The text of the email reads (with many, many (sic)s):

Dear Friends !

Petrol in Pakistan Rs17 per litr
Malaysia Rs 18 per litr
In India it's 48 per litr

Why this difference in Asia itself ? World Market CRUDE Oil is not the reason for this. It's all Gain for private owners? As we are the general public, or Common Man as R.K.Laxman wud hv said, we have to raise our voice, let's raise thru Emails.

Forward this to all Indians who care.
IT HAS BEEN CALCULATED THAT IF EVERYONE DID NOT PURCHASE A DROP OF PETROL FOR ONE DAY AND ALL AT THE SAME TIME, THE OIL COMPANIES WOULD CHOKE ON THEIR STOCKPILES.

AT THE SAME TIME IT WOULD HIT THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY WITH A NET LOSS OVER 4.6 BILLION DOLLARS WHICH AFFECTS THE BOTTOM LINES OF THE OIL COMPANIES. THEREFORE "THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 22nd " HAS BEEN FORMALLY DECLARED "STICK IT UP THEIR BEHIND " DAY AND THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION SHOULD NOT BUY A SINGLE DROP OF PETROL THAT DAY.

THE ONLY WAY THIS CAN BE DONE IS IF YOU FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN AND AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN TO GET THE WORD OUT. WAITING ON THE GOVERNMENT TO STEP IN AND CONTROL THE PRICES IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REDUCTION AND CONTROL IN PRICES THAT THE ARAB NATIONS PROMISED TWO WEEKS AGO?

REMEMBER ONE THING, NOT ONLY IS THE PRICE OF PETROL GOING UP BUT AT THE SAME TIME AIRLINES ARE FORCED TO RAISE THEIR PRICES, TRUCKING COMPANIES ARE FORCED TO RAISE THEIR PRICES WHICH AFFECTS PRICES ON EVERYTHING THAT IS SHIPPED. THINGS LIKE FOOD, CLOTHING, BUILDING SUPPLIES MEDICAL SUPPLIES ETC. WHO PAYS IN THE END? WE DO!

WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.IF THEY DON'T GET THE MESSAGE AFTER ONE DAY, WE WILL DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN. SO DO YOUR PART AND SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND MAKE SEPTEMBER 22nd A DAY THAT THE CITIZENS SAY "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH"

We forward so many junk email to many of our friends, now let us do
it for some useful cause to cut down the price of the petrol .. ...

REMEMBER : SEPTEMBER 22nd 2006

Pls "Think Of It ...............

And F/w it 2 all

I don't have time to coherently comment on this, just thought that this should be brought to greater attention (as far as exposure to my usrviving readership counts as greater attention).

Just to be absolutely clear about this, this blog DOES NOT ENDORSE this 22nd September petrol boycott.

Finally, the video you've always been waiting for (or not)

2006-03-07T14:07:00.000-05:00

Click here to see a video of the Simpsons' opening sequence, in live action (that's right, live action). Its muy cool.

(Hat tip: Hit and Run)

2006-02-23T08:56:00.000-05:00

Due to some sort of diagreement between the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (who are among other things, our telephone providers and ISP) and the Maharashtra State Public Works Department, I have lost internet access at home temporarily (I hope). As I am too stingy to go to a cyber cafe, and too lazy to go to my dad's office (that's where I am now) on anything approaching a regular basis, I regret to inform you that it will not be possible for me to post regularly to this blog (as if I needed an excuse anyway). Also, if you were wondering why I haven't relpied to your email or somesuch, this is the reason. I am sorry for the inconvenience, but BSNL and the MSPWD aren't, so I'm not sure how much of a difference that'll make.

Thank you.

Core Dump 2

2006-02-13T08:30:00.000-05:00

Just got back from Delhi where I was a part of the FC team at the finals of the IMS IQ Quiz. We had many funs, and I will be blogging about it soon.
Due to IMS's generosity in flying us to Delhi, I got a first hand look at the mayhem in airline industry at the moment. Our flight to Delhi (by Jet) was delayed by three hours on account of fog over Delhi. We later learned that the said fog had screwed up airline timetables all over India, and almost all the other teams who came to Delhi were delayed. Our flight back was even more eventful as the airline on which we were supposed to fly (Sahara) suddenly decided not to fly because of some sort of pilots' strike or something. Due to the large number of flights cancelled, we could not even get an endorsement on another airline, and we had to finally resort to buying tickets on Kingfisher Air, on a flight that left five hours later than the one on which we were originally booked. Fortunatley, Kingfisher turned out to be a really cool airline with great service, good food, amazing in-flight entertainment and really hot (or as my friend put it Rasssa) cabin crew, so it wasnt all that bad.
The phone lines at my place came on today after eight days of isolation from the outside world. I've spent most of today reading the gargantuan stack of mail in my inbox and the even bigger backlog in my feed reader. I really hate BSNL now, the bloody Vogons.

Excellent!

2006-01-31T11:36:00.000-05:00

I came across this most non-egregious site that is probably the rival of this most outstanding article. Do check out The Bill and Ted Official Website's Guide to how to speak like Bill and Ted.

Do read, and be excellent ot each other!

Vote for me!

2006-01-11T12:10:00.000-05:00

(Shticky post: New posts (if any) will appear below)

The Indian blogosphere has finally hit rock bottom. This blog has been nominated for an Indibloggie!

Yes, its true. Ceteris Paribus has been nominated in the "Best Tagline" category, my tagline being "Omnia dicta fortiora si dicta Latina". Of course, I think I should explain my highbrow Latin tagline. It means, "Anything sounds good if said in Latin" (loosely translated). Now that you know, you have no excuse not to vote for it.

Many thanks to the fine people who nominated me and voted to shortlist me (and actually took the time to figure out what it means), and also to the junta responsible for the whole Indibloggie thing. Debashish, take a bow!

So, folks, go on and vote for me. You can vote here, right up to January the 10th.

Update: Suhail Kazi points out that apart from my tagline, the title of this blog as well as the blurb on my Blogger profile are in Latin (which actually adds credence to my tagline). However considering that most people (including me) do not understand Latin, perhaps translations are in order. Well, here they are:

Ceteris Paribus: This is a Latin phrase, beloved of social scientists and their ilk, which means "with all other things constant". It is generally used by economists and others to avoid taking all possible variables into account (eg, "a rise in prices causes a rise in supply, assuming ceteris paribus", where it cleverly allows the Economist in question to avoid taking responsibility for the operation of the statement in question in a real economy).

Ita erat quando hic adveni: This one is a more modern phrase (although doubtless much used by delinquent Roman kids) which means "It was that way when I got here".

Update 2: Well, I didn't win this one then. I must at this time point out that since the other three nominees in this category actually took the time out to think up of a good tagline for their blogs, while I just lifted mine from Wikipedia, all three of them probably deserved the award more than I did ;-). Anyway, thanks to the bloke who nominated my tagline, the jurors who voted to shortlist it, and all 57 people who voted for it, I really appreciate it. Oh, and congrats to Shivam!

Kaun Banega Chhatrapati?

2006-01-09T12:44:00.000-05:00

Anish ~~Bhat~~ Bhatt has an excellent post up that should be compulsory reading to every Maharashtrian politician. Do read.

Note: May not be too relevant to people living outside of of Maharashtra.

The word you're looking for is "Strawman"

2006-01-06T10:26:00.000-05:00

The Coyote is irked.

What irks me is portraying concerns about the Patriot Act, indefinite detentions without trial, and eavesdropping outside of the normal separation of powers checks and balances as "concern for the civil liberties of terrorists".
I am sure that there is a name for this kind of semantic trick, though I can't remember it, but I will say its bush league, right out of high school debate. You could just as easily stump for repeal of the fourth amendment because it is only concerned with the "civil liberties of criminals".

No one except a few crazies cares much for the civil rights of convicted criminals and terrorists. After all, what could be more of a violation of their civil rights than incarcerating them, but I have seldom seen a bond issue for more prisons that people won't vote for.

No, the problem is with the civil rights of the rest of us who are innocent. We don't want our email read just in case we are terrorists. We don't want our houses broken into at night just in case we are drug dealers. And if we find ourselves in police custody, we want our habeas corpus rights respected and we want to get our due process or be released.

Too damn right, I say. He goes on to sum up his arguments against such "for the greater good of all" anti-terror legislation here.

PS: Anyone object to my characterisation of the right-wing-nut-job argument? Anyone?

Somewhere, the shade of Indira Gandhi is smiling...

2006-01-04T10:03:00.000-05:00

Sharad Joshi, agrarian leader, and the closest thing to a real liberal politician India has got, recently made a demand in Parliament that I am surprised is not made more frequently and vociferously: that the requirement of Representation of People Act that requires candidates for election to any political office swear, among other things, to be socialists. The Indian Express reports:

An association of people not subscribing to socialism had to swear allegiance to the philosophy to get themselves registered as a political party and get an election symbol, he said.

As expected, the ~~Children of Satan~~ Congress Party have opposed this move.

Disagreeing with Joshi’s plea that socialism has lost its relevance and, therefore, should be dropped from the Constitution, Congress members Moolchand Meena, Raashid Alvi, E.M.S. Natchiappan and Jayaram Ramesh said spirit of the Constitution had been democracy, socialism and secularism which was not fully understood by Joshi. (H/t for both links: Madman)

Of course, they are, as always, totally wrong. The declaration that India is a socialist republic, and the requirement of candidates to uphold the said socialism must go, not because socialism is no longer relevant (even though it is), but because this clause totally limits the ability of the Indian people to elect to public office people whom they believe will represent them. It is impossible, under the current state of affairs, for anyone who is opposed to socialism to stand for office without lying under oath. Denying the people of India the right to elect people opposed to socialism is quite undemocratic, IMO. That is the real issue here.

Idiots.

New featured quote

2006-01-04T04:36:00.000-05:00

Why is it that, despite all of the money we have spent over the years on education, half of our students are still below average?

Chris O'Leary, commenting on Cafe Hayek.

(Clarification: He's joking.)

Lol!

2005-12-23T14:15:00.000-05:00

Will he now be suing these guys as well?

And now... The longest comment in the American East Coast Collegiate Blogosphere

2005-12-21T14:04:00.000-05:00

Josh McCabe recently put up a post on how English majors suck (linked to by the Indian blogosphere's most prominent ~~FMS~~ English Major). Predictably, he received a lot of ~~hate mail~~ intelligent criticism from ~~liberal wieners~~ NHBs. However, there was one amazing, incisive comment by this one punter called Mike Guerra. It was huge (though at 1483 words it is dwarfed by Chetan's bandwidth buster). So huge that Livejournal (the crappy service that Josh insists on using) couldn't handle the load, and Josh had to manually post it in three parts.

Exceprt:

The answer, I think, is to stop being so damn ignorant, to start actually talking to one another, and trying to understand why it is that we don't agree with each other. We don't need Ann Coulter to explain to us how to talk to liberals, its easy...just visit one of our English classes and ask. And we don't need Michael Moore to teach us how to get in conservatives faces and twist facts and video to make them look like idiots, he can have that job all to himself. What we need is honest open conversation. Until that happens we will continue to be forced to choose between our cookie cutter two party candidates, and Josh will never have his libertarian president, and nothing will ever actually change.

Read them here .

Respect to Mike bhai, thats some mighty good writing.

Core Dump for the week ended 16/12/2005

2005-12-16T05:17:00.000-05:00

I took part in the Seth Walchand Hirachand Memorial (or somesuch) Competition for Elocution on an Economic topic last week. I wasn't actually going to take part, but when I found that there were only two participants competing for three prizes, I changed my mind, and spoke about the "Changing Role of the World Bank". Although six people ended up speaking eventually, my hastily prepared speech (I actually wrote it as the first participant was speaking) found favour with the judges, two teachers from our department (another advantage of having a pro-free-market faculty, I'd say), and I won. Final Year luck strikes again!
I attended a lecture by Prof. Akeel Bilgrami of Columbia University on "The Gandhian Critique of the Thick Notion of Scientific Rationality and it's antecedence in the Opposition to the Enlightenment by 17th Century English Radicals" at the Philosophy Dept. of the Pune University. The lecture, despite its torturous name, was quite good, inspite of being quite leftist. The professor theorised that although rationalism is a good thing, it is perhaps going too far to view nature and inanimate objects as, well inanimate. We must view them as full of value, as this makes ethical and normative demands of us, and ultimately leads to (insert leftist goal here). Note: I must say here that this is a very inadequate summary and Prof Bilgrami put the point forward much more convincingly (he would; I doubt Columbia just hands out Johnsonian Professorships of Philosophy to just any T, D or H).
I learnt a Spanish Christmas Carol (Los Peces en el Rio) that our class is supposed to sing at the Department Christmas Party. I also learnt to change orders given in the past into reported speech using the imperfect subjunctive tense. Yeah, my Spanish course is a lot of fun, thank you very much.
I attended my Economics Special II lecture after a couple of months and was shocked to realise that I'm totally out of touch with my course (must.... study.... now!!). To make things worse, my professor took digs at me all through the lecture, using the probability of my attending lectures to show the shortcomings of the Frequentist School of Probability, for example. Being ridiculed in front of your entire class is bad enough, but being ridiculed in a friggin sum is more than one can take.

The All India Economics Students' Meet 2005

2005-12-07T07:52:00.000-05:00

I just got back from the meet a couple of days back, and I am pleased to say that I have survived the experience successfully. Our team won the 2nd prize in the Paper Presentation (our paper was a monograph on why the Employment Guarantee Act is a piece of crap). I also won a prize for the best question asked in the same Paper Presentation.

I'll update this post to give more details, but I got to go now.

Ok, I delayed this a long time, but here's the version with slightly more detail:

The organisation of the event was very good. The Hindu College guys took very good care of the participants, except for a little snafu with the accomodation.
We presented a paper on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and were one of eight teams to do so. Our stand on the Act was that it is fundamentally unworkable, and the government has a hundred better things to do with our money. Six of the other eight teams presented paper that said (generally) that the Employment Guarantee is a fundamentally good concept, but the act has been diluted by bureaucrats (the Jean Dreze viewpoint). The eighth team, St. Xavier's Calcutta, was, like us critical of the NREGA. They made some really strong points, and in the end beat us to the top spot.
I also won a prize for the best question asked (by a member of the audience) to a team making a paper presentation. The team in question was Ramjas College, who were presenting a paper on Energy Security. They said that India can rely on pipelines such as the Iran-Pak-India pipeline or the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline for energy security. My question was that since both pipelines pass through conflict zones (the Iran line through Baluchistan and the BTC line through Nagorno-Karabakh), how can India depend on staedy supplies through them. The guy tried to dodge the question with some crap about Musharraf's guarantee about regular supplies, but was unable to answer my point about Nagorno Karabakh (I strongly suspect I got the prize just for knowing that name). As it turns out, the BTC pipeline does not go through Nagorno-Karabakh at all, in fact taking a significant detour to avoid the region.
There was also an incident involving four girls, a three kilometer cycle rickshaw ride and a monkey, but I'm really pressed for time, so it must wait for another time, I guess.

2005-11-29T11:40:00.000-05:00

I will be going to Delhi tomorrow for the All India Economics Students' Meet, where a bunch of friends and I will be presenting a (mostly terrible) paper on the Rural Employment Guarantee Bill. Blogging will be non-existent, but you're used to that happening every other week anyway. I will be coming back to the Citadel of Potholes on Monday.

¡Hasta Luego!

Bloody Hell!

2005-11-29T02:25:00.000-05:00

Marginal Revolution has some figures by Rudy Rumell on Democide, or murder by governments:

I have estimated it (the world's democide totoals for the 20th Century) to be 174,000,000 murdered, of which communist regimes murdered about 148,000,000. Also, compare this to combat dead. Communists overall have murdered four times those killed in combat, while globally the democide toll was over six times that number.

Read the article here.

Judge Kent and the Bolivians

2005-11-25T10:27:00.000-05:00

Apparently, the governments of several Latin American countries have sued US tobacco companies for healthcare costs caused by tobacco. Cunningly, they've sued in US courts that are in geographically diverse rural areas in the US that have a history of awarding huge sums of money to plaintiffs.

One such case was filed in the Brazoria County, Texas courtroom of a certain Judge Kent. Josh McCabe has a transcript of his opinion, kicking the case upsatirs to a Washington DC court. An excerpt:

The governments of Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, Thailand, Venezuela, and Bolivia have filed suit in [several geographically diverse locales in the U.S.] Why none of these countries seems to have a court system their own governments have confidence in is a mystery to this Court. Moreover, given the tremendous number of United States jurisdictions encompassing fascinating and exotic places, the Court can hardly imagine why the Republic of Bolivia elected to file suit in the veritable hinterlands of Brazoria County, Texas. The Court seriously doubts whether Brazoria County has ever seen a live Bolivian ... even on the Discovery Channel. Though only here by removal, this humble Court by the sea is certainly flattered by what must be the worldwide renown of rural Texas courts for dispensing justice with unparalleled fairness and alacrity, apparently in common discussion even on the mountain peaks of Bolivia! Still, the Court would be remiss in accepting an obligation for which it truly does not have the necessary resources.

The rest of the judgement is equally hilarious. If only the US had more jurists like this guy, maybe their justice system (and especially their tort system) would have a slightly better reputation.

As I do not have a link to the opinion directly, you can read it at Josh's blog here.

Ha ha!

2005-11-23T02:30:00.000-05:00

Laloo Yadav concedes Bihar Elections.

Wonder what they will put in the samosas now.

Update: Abhishek seems to have beaten me to this (rather obvious) joke. Dammit ho gaya.

Pseud-level Funda of the Month

2005-11-10T03:30:00.000-05:00

Aadisht Khanna over at Maajorly Shadymax Arbit Fundaes (IMO, the best blog name I have ever heard) has written an amazing post on why there need to be more IT jobs in Punjab.

Not only is the post full of amazing insights into the Punjabi psyche, but the way he links his narrative to the conlusion is brilliant (really good, like Ashwath-from-RVCE level). Read it here.

This really ought to deter Corruption

2005-11-07T09:49:00.000-05:00

From Rediff.com:

Natwar Singh has been stripped of the external affairs ministry and made a minister without a portfolio in the United Progressive Alliance government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The decision followed Natwar Singh's hour-and-a-half-long meeting with Dr Singh. Finance Minister P Chidamabaram was also present at the meeting.

Wow, this one decision will act as a deterrent to corrupt officials all over India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the ~~real head of Government~~ UPA Chair Sonia Gandhi have sent a clear message to prospective wrong-doers: If you commit a crime, we will do our best to ignore it. If provided with firm evidence that you committed the crime, we'll wait for a week or two to make sure there's no way to get out of punishing you. And if that strategy doesn't work, we'll put you in a job that has the same pay scale, the same status, and no responsibilty.

Yeah, good job. Now no one will even think of taking kickbacks.

There's Hypocrisy, and then there's this

2005-11-06T02:12:00.000-05:00

Michael Moore owns 2000 shares of Halliburton.

Pardon me while I roll on the floor laughing.

(Hat tip: Neo-neocon.)

The Welfare State Intifada

2005-11-06T00:08:00.000-05:00

One thing that really surprised me about the ongoing Paris Riots has been the almost total news blackout that surrounds it. Hardly anyone (any news outlet, that is) talks about it, and no one speaks about the possible reasons for the riots.

Although the news blackout affects them just as much, blogs have been trying to fill out the analysis vacuum. Here's a brilliant analysis of the causes of the riots, from Coyoteblog:

So far, a better explanation seems to be that these neighborhoods have been the victim of of the current form of Euro-socialism. In this economic model, a whole collection of laws make it very expensive for companies to hire anyone. If you do hire anyone, you have to pay them a very high salary, give them a fat package of benefits, weeks and weeks of paid vacation, and they only have to work 36 hours a week for you. And, if the person doesn't do a good job, too bad because it is nearly impossible to fire them. This may appear to be a great system for those who already have a job, but for the unemployed, the young, and the unskilled, it is a disaster. Who in their right mind is going to take a chance on a young, unskilled employee who you have to pay a fortune and who you can't fire if they aren't any good. And in particular, who is ever going to hire a young, unskilled immigrant for a job in France?

You can read the article here.

In other news, Josh McCabe has wriiten an open letter to the rioters in Paris (and the rioters in Argentina as well).

And you thought it was impossible to write entertainingly about Economics

2005-11-04T12:46:00.000-05:00

First, Benjamin Friedman wrote a book called The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, arguing, among other things, that huge government deficits (which he calls "dissavings" hurt investments.

Then, Nobel Laureate Joseph Siglitz (he's an Economics Prize winner, not one of your pansy Peace or Literature laureates) wrote a review of it in which he said that no perfect market economist would make an argument like that.

Finally, Brandon Berg complained in Catallarchy that Stiglitz should have at least taken off his Nobel before saying something that is (and I paraphrase) so incredibly stupid.

You can read this entertaining article here.

PS: This is a must read if you are one of those people who think that only Amit Varma cares about Logical Fallacies.

You are what you read

2005-11-02T09:41:00.000-05:00

Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution has a very interesting look at the top purchases by people in various fields.

The MIT list is, as you would expect, very geeky, with tech books and accounts of the exploits of MITians abounding (Pune readers, this is the Boston college I'm talking about here.) The George Mason University (that's where Prof. Cowen teaches) list is somewhat dissappointing, because there are two Dan Brown books but nothing remotely academic in the top ten. The US Federal Judiciary list is somewhat non-intellectual. The US Marine Corps list, though, contained a lot of books I would read (It also had a fat loss book at no. 6: I would have thought the USMC had little reason to worry about fat loss)

Unfortunately, Amazon.com doesn't show you lists less specific than "Country" for people outside the US, so this is the best we get. You should check out the MR article, though. It's good. You can see Amazon's purchase circles page here.

Now there's Maaz for you

2005-10-29T10:50:00.000-04:00

The Samizdata Illuminatus advertises the Libertarian Alliance Conference 2005 over at the Samizdata Blog thusly:

We may be wandering through a vast desert of stupidity, monstrosity and petty tyranny but never forget that there are some oases of sanity still to be found.

Now I do agree with most (though not all) of their politics, that seems a bit over the top even to me.

The Vedic Maths does not compute...

2005-10-29T02:42:00.000-04:00

Ok, this is really funny.

In the Hindu lunar ~~calender~~ calendar, dates are reckoned by fortnight. So the 16th day of the month will be called Krushna paksha pratipada* (first day of the fortnight of the waning moon). Hindu festivals often have the name of the day they fall on within their name (eg the Ganesh festival falls on the fourth day of the fortnight, hence Ganesh Chaturthi).

Now in the four days of Diwali, their are four major tithis, Dhana Trayodashi (thiteenth day), Narak Chaturdashi (fourteenth day), Amavasya (New Moon) and Bali Pratipada (first day of the new month).

However, this year, Dhana Trayodashi is on the 30th of October. But Narak Chaturdashi is on the 1st of November. Also, Amavasya and Bali Pratipada are on the same day, the 2nd of November. It seems impossible to me that there can be a day's gap between the 13th and 14th days of the fortnight, or that the last day of one month and the first day of the next month fall on the same day.

So am I missing something here, or are the tithis in Diwali reckoned differently?

(*By my Marathi Kalnirnay ~~calender~~ calendar. The names might be different in other languages, I don't know.)

One Excuse and two Links

2005-10-28T10:55:00.000-04:00

No doubt due to a severe manpower shortage in the Fergusson College Economics Department, I have been selected to represent FC in the Second All India Economics Students Meet, which will be in Delhi in December. I am part of the Paper Presentation team. Our topic is "the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme 2005: A Stopgap Measure or a Revolutionary Approach to tackling Poverty?" (No prizes for guessing what stand we're taking). So while I'm leafing through old issues of EPW or even older tomes on Indian Poverty, blogging might suffer. Apologies.

In the meanwhile, here are two good links.

Warren Meyer has a great article on Republicans abandoning their small-government platform, with some excellent gyan on why governments ought to be small in the first place:

Despite what politicians may argue, the government has only one unique quality no one else can match. They are not uniquely smart, or uniquely capable, or uniquely compassionate, or uniquely efficient, or even uniquely able to run large organizations. Their only unique capability is to deal with people by force, and to use force and the threat of force and imprisonment to compel individuals to do things they would no choose to do themselves.

Good stuff. You can read it here.

Russel Roberts has an article up on The Fallacy of Affordability:

Exxon and Mobil made a lot of money last quarter. The Drudge Report headline on the story:

OK, HOW ABOUT LOWERING THE PRICES NOW?!?
I'd be tempted to answer by saying, well, Drudge, if they lower prices when profits are high, are you willing to make a charitable contribution to oil company stockholders when profits are low or negative? But the real error isn't the asymmetry. It's the assumption that transactions are zero sum--the implict assumption in the headline that when prices are high, I'm exploited so it's time to give me a rebate.

You can read it here.

Fighting Globalisation with Goebbelisation*

2005-10-25T09:27:00.000-04:00

In my previous post about MICANVAS 2005, I briefly mentioned a Film Appreciation Workshop I attended. I also mentioned that the conductor of the workshop would require a whole article dedicated to himself to do him justice. This is that article.

Abhiskek and I turned up at MICA at around 10 am on Saturday. As it turned out, we had about six hours to kill, as the quiz (which we had come to attend) did not start till 4 pm. Seeing the schedule we were given, we saw that there was a Film Appreiation workshop that morning. Abhishek was interested in going, and I decided to go along as well. On the way to the workshop, we met Gaurav Sabnis, who told us that the conductor of the workshop was a leftist, and fun would come. So, we went for the workshop.

The four of us (Abhishek, Gaurav, Ramanand and I) turned up at the venue of the workshop and took our seats. Soon after, Prof. AF Matthew, who was to conduct the workshop, came in, and gave us a brief introduction to Film Appreciation (the standard bromides about how it is an art, with the equally standard warning that owners of ringing mobile phones would be castrated).

The good professor showed us the first film, Alain Resnais' Night and Fog, a good, if gory depiction of Nazi concentration camps filmed in Auschwitz in 1955. It is an amazing documentary, no doubt, but is quite disturbing. To be fair, Prof. Matthew had warned us that he'd decided not to "play it safe" with his pick of two films, and told us to expect disturbing footage. But the long and short of it is, the audience were left quite mind****ed by the end of the first screening.

Night and Fog ends with an admonition to the viewer that the kind of people who built the concentration camps still exist even thought the Nazis were defeated and we might see the likes of Auschwitz even after the Fuhrerbunker fell ( prescient considering that the Gulag system endured another 45 years). Prof Matthew took this opportunity to remind us that capitalism (which he took to be the enemy in Resnais' warning) was still alive and kicking, and that every effort should be made to defeat it. He also mentioned that according to Indian Government statistics poverty in India has risen 3 percentage points (from 38% to 41%, IIRC) and that according to the Union Home Ministry, Maoist Rebels control an area from Karnataka to Nepal, the "Red Corridor". "Red Corridor?" he challenged, "I call it the Liberated Corridor". Then he went on to inform us that the Maoist publication People's War has in fact a higher circulation than the Times of India (Aside: I wonder if he noticed that the ToI sales staff don't carry automatic weapons). He then made a few more unsubstantiated statements ("Indian advertising in the past 10 years has been anti-Muslim") before going on to a photo essay.

Now, as a preface to the photo essay, he mentioned that behinad all good art, there must be politics (I don't recall the exact words, but it went something like that). He went on to stress the importance of the "right" politics, which were embodied by the photgraphers his essay showcased, like the man who "inspite of a million dollar salary" went and photographed Iraqi insurgents in their own ranks. He showed us the photo-essay, which was admittedly quite good. The pictures he had selected were usually of people who were suffering "the effects of Capitalism". Each photo was accompanied by a little talk on the suffering of the subject of the picture, and it's cause (you guessed it, Capitalism). He did gloss over some pictures of suffering, notably one of homeless people in Lithuania in 1979 (I wonder why).

Then came the fun part. Our friend the professor started showing us slides of prominent US political figures (usually Republicans) making outrageoulsy right-wing comments. Some of the people featured (like Ann Coulter or Fred Phelps) were bonafide right-wing nut-jobs, but a majority of the comments were takeen out of context. In particular, he showed a particular US minister (I forget which one) saying that there was no need to protect the economy, because the second coming was at hand. Now Gaurav interjected to say that the comment had been a joke (can you provide me with a source if you're reading this), but the professor refused to listen. he went on to the next slide, that of Pat Robertson making his (in)famous statement on Hugo Chavez. This was the point where Prof. AF Matthew, the peaceful leftist and avowed Nazi-hater said, "He shopuld be put in a concentration camp and gassed (for saying that)".

Now the audience, mostly quiet till then, began to speak up. One particular chap began to question him, mainly about his assertion that Pat Robertson represented US government views. The guy pointed out that Robertson was forced to apologise for his remarks, and lost quite some advertising and other evenue thanks to it. The professor, in response, deftly shifted goalposts. What about the Kasmiris, he asked. So many of them, Indian citizens all, have been killed. The dissenter (gamely, IMO, considering the abrupt shift of topic) countered that Kashmiri Pundits had been kicked out of their homes by their freedom-loving neighbours, to which the professor replied that a majority of the Kashmiri Pundits had not left Kashmir. That statement is a model of disingenuoity: Kashmiri Pundits have been driven from the Kashmir Valley to refugee camps in Jammu, which lies in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. He then spoke about Indian government run concentration camps in Nagaland, where he said, "people are rounded up from their villages, put in camps along the Highway, and Carpet-bombed". Before anyone had time to respond, he moved to the LTTE in Sri Lanka, whose struggle, it appears, began way back in the 60s, when the majoritarian Sinhala government used crop-dusters to drop feces on the Tamils.

At this point, perhaps presciently seeing the surge of disagreement in the audience, he announced a ten-minute break, for, he said, us to cool down. Which was sad, because although I wanted to argue with him, going back into that room, with all the straw men, was beyond my powers of endurance. Abhishek, Gaurav, Ramanand and Amit Varma, who'd joined the workshop midway, agreed with me, and we ran out.

All in all it wasn't a bad experience. I got a chance to see many fallacies, so far only encountered in boring Logic lectures, being used in a real-life argument. I also took hope in the fact that if the left stormed to power with arguments as verifiably false as these, Classic Liberalism/Libertarianism too has a chance. I'm totally looking forward to the next leftist rant I hear. Fun comes.

¡Viva la Revolución!

(*Headline Quote originally by Gaurav Sabnis.)

MICANVAS 2005: A series of events of variable fortuousness

2005-10-23T06:47:00.000-04:00

Went to Ahmedabad this weekend to participate in two quizzes at MICANVAS 2005, the annual CulFest of the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad with my friend Abhishek. Had a very eventful two days, which I will try and recap here:

I was searched by undercover cops twice on Pune Railway station, all because I'd grown a beard, had a backpack and was walking around suspiciously. I was also interrogated twice by undercover Ticket-Checkers twice on the train. I intend to take this up with Amnesty International and the National Commission for Human Rights, of course.
We took an unguided tour of Ahmedabad on the way to MICA from the railway station. That is because the "Ahmedabad" in MICA's name is a misnomer, MICA is actually in a village called Shela, and is 25 kilometres from the railway station (it is actually surrounded by wheat fields). Of course, it must be mentioned that the MICAns were nice enough to come all the way to station to pick us up.
MICA has a higher ratio of pretty girls to general population than any college I have ever seen, and I say that as a Fergussonian. (This statement inserted purely to make these three guys feel like idiots for not coming.)
Attended a Film Appreciation Workshop by the most rabidly unthinking Marxist/Maoist/PolPotist person I have ever met. I think he deserves a post to himself (Amit Varma, who was there, has promised one), but let me just say here that I learned more about logical fallacies than I did about Film Appreciation.
I must say, the MICAns took very good care of us. Food and transport was provided for and the volunteers were very helpful. Its true that the response to MICANVAS was much lower, but perhaps the volunteer junta at Mood-I and Malhar could take some lessons from these guys.
Heard some amazing soundbytes like this one by Gaurav Sabnis: "Marxists fight Globalisation with Goebbelisation". Good stuff.
Saw the offical music video of the MICA band (or the music video of the official MICA band or something to that effect). It is amazing, especially the lyrics (which, sadly, I cannot reproduce here).
The quizzes, which were what I was there for, started somewhat late in the day, at 4. Ramanand conducted the first one, a General Quiz, and J. Krishnamurthy conducted a Solo Trivia Quiz right after that. I think the quizzes made the whole trip paisa vasool, especially since we (Abhishek and I) won an indeterminately large amount of money by coming second in the general quiz.
The MICAns had organised a rock show (featuring Parikrama) which I missed thanks to my idiotic decision to come home on Saturady night itself.
We had a fun trip back, which included a ride on a brand new Western Railway local train from Andheri to Dadar. Now normally, Mumbai locals are not very crowded on Sundays. However, yesterday, the Western Railways had decided to stop local trains between 11 am and 3 pm, and so we experienced a rush-hour like situation, which was fun, especially since we both had large backpacks.

Well that's about it, and apologies for the crummy writing style, but this really is the best I can do right now (you know, sleep deprivation and all). Later, da.

Posted in Quizzing, College Fests and ther Crap.

Mosquito studs help in eradicating Malaria

2005-10-16T10:15:00.000-04:00

A bunch of scientists in London has developed a novel way of eradicating mosquitoes in malaria-hit areas.

Led by Andrea Crisanti, the team added a gene that makes the testicles of the male mosquitoes fluorescent, allowing the scientists to distinguish and easily separate them from females. The plan is to breed, sterilize and release millions of these male insects so they mate with wild females but produce no offspring, eradicating insects in the target region within weeks.

What an idea! Using sterile mosquitoes to breed with females so that the population decreases! I wonder though, if these will be like super-stud-mosquitoes, with whom normal mosquitoes cannot compete for the attention of the ladies. The article mentions making their testicles flourescent. Does that arouse mosquito females?

(Note: I read this srticle in the ToI originally. However, as I couldn't find an online version, I've linked to the Taipei Times article instead.)

Update: It apperars that this technique has been used before.

New Featured Quote

2005-10-16T01:29:00.000-04:00

"When you write thing on the Internet, other people might read them!"

-Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey.

Posted in Featured Quotes.

Craptacular!

2005-10-15T00:42:00.000-04:00

Marginal Revolution, in its "Markets in Everything" talks about a new Arabic TV show that features the life of Omar Shamshoon. Sound familiar? Yeah, that's Homer Simpson in Arabic!

An Arabized "Simpsons" -- called "Al Shamshoon" -- made its debut in the Arab world earlier this month, in time for Ramadan, a time of high TV viewership. It uses the original "Simpsons" animation, but the voices are dubbed into Arabic and the scripts have been adapted to make the show more accessible, and acceptable, to Arab audiences.

The Arabic Homer, apparently has given up beer and bacon, which to me seems quite sacriligious. Here and here are two articles by an Arab blogger who is equally angry at this blasphemous translation (h/t: MR again).

Al Shamshoon? Worst. Idea. Ever.

Has IIPM committed perjury?

2005-10-12T01:59:00.000-04:00

The plot in L'Affaire IIPM thickens. The "IIPM Legal Cell" emailed Blogger Varna Shri Raman a legal notice that was a virtual copy of the mail sent to Gaurav Sabnis last week. Among other things, it said:

Warning: This email has been judicially notarized and has been tagged to validate receipt and response

and

Be warned, your telephone numbers, physical addresses thereon, login details, network access mechanisms have all been documented, notarized and legally ratified through google and blogspot.com, thus ensuring that any arrest warrants can be served and implemented on you within one day.

Now, giving the IIPM blokes the benefit of the doubt, I'll assume that they were telling the truth about the judicial notarisation. However, as a TechMag article by Thejesh GN says, the second statement does not seem very likely. For, as Thejesh notes, Google's privacy statement precludes such a disclosure. Google's privacy statement says they will only release your information if:

· We (Google) have your consent.

· We provide such information to trusted businesses or persons for the sole purpose of processing personally identifying information on our behalf. When this is done, it is subject to agreements that oblige those parties to process such information only on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
· We conclude that we are required by law or have a good faith belief that access, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public.

Now Google cannot possibly have had Gaurav's and Varna's permission to give their account information to IIPM. Nor could there have been a legal requirement, because a no court would issue the requisite subpoena on such flimsy grounds. And we can be sure that Google did not have a good faith belief that releasing the data was necessary to preserve anyone's rights, property or safety.

Therefore, the IIPM are clearly lying about having obtained Gaurav and Varna's details through Google. So, the question is, isn't lying (and telling verifiable lies, at that) on a judicially notarised email perjury?

(Technorati tag: IIPM)

IIPM

2005-10-11T03:22:00.000-04:00

The facts, for the three readers of this blog who have not already heard them:

JAM Magazine wrote a story about the Indian Institute for Planning and Management (IIPM) which questioned the claims made by the said institute in its ads. The story, as Amit Varma says, is "a terrific piece of journalism: professional, thorough, and relying entirely on facts that are verifiable by anyone." Gaurav Sabnis wrote about this and linked to the article. Although he was not the only blogger to do so, IIPM singled him out for special attention, and sent him a legal notice. Thus far, IIPM stayed within their rights, for is it not the God-given right of every Indian to threaten all and sundry with legal action?

Then, perhaps seeing that their grandiloquent threat did not have the effect they desired, the IIPM junta decided to up the ante. They complained to Gaurav's employer, IBM. However, as the post is on Gaurav's personal blog, IBM is not really responsible for what he said. So (and this is the point where they went really low) they told IBM that the IIPM Students Union had decided to burn IBM laptops in front of their office if Gaurav did not retract his posts. Perhaps they thought that such threats would make IBM pressure Gaurav to remove his posts. Rather than allow such harm to come to his employer, Gaurav Sabnis resigned from IBM (which I totally respect him for).

Parellely, IIPM and their supporters ran a campaign against JAM magazine and its editor, Rashmi Bansal. They served a legal notice on JAM, and posted (under several aliases) vile and filthy comments on her blog (which I have decided not to link to, for their vileness and filthyness).

So there it is. IIPM, earlier known only as a crap MBA Institute, has now been exposed as a bunch of craven bullies. The blogosphere, of course is not taking this lying down. Amit and DesiPundit have good roundups of people who have blogged about this. The affair has caught the attention of our American cousins as well, with Glenn Reynolds Himself linking to Amit's post. IIPM is now Technorati's #2 tag.

IIPM, in choosing to personally pick on Gaurav Sabnis and Rashmi Bansal, have made a big mistake. They have caused Gaurav and Rashmi (at the very, very least) severe inconvenience just to cover up their own malpractices.What they perhaps did not count on is that this has pissed off the entire Indian Blogosphere and many International Bloggers as well. Or perhaps they did realise this, but went ahead with their campaign uder the assumption that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Well, I think they are about to find out. I, for one, will enjoy being part of the campaign that destroys what little reputation IIPM has left.

Support Gaurav Sabnis! Death to IIPM('s reputation)!

Update: Have the mysterious IIPM supporters started deleting their blogs? Check out IIPMAndy, Not a Nice Man to Know and Desi Howard Roark, all of whom commented on Youth Curry, and all of whose blogs are since defunct.

Update 2: There is now a Wikipedia Article on IIPM (h/t DesiPundit) with a section on the controversy. As Ravikiran says, it is up to concerned bloggers to prevent miscreants from deleting details about the controversy. But it is also up to bloggers to edit responsibly, because Wikipedia depends on us to keep the whole thing unbiased and objective.

Update 3: The MSM picks up the story.

(Technorati Tag: IIPM.)

Nigerian E-mail Scammers finally get the recognition they deserve!

2005-10-09T12:27:00.001-04:00

The Ignobel Prizes, announced last week, honoured Internet Enterprenauers from Nigeria, for

creating and then using e-mail to distribute a blod series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters -- General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sani Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others -- each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them.

These brave literateurs (is that even a word?) who daily risk imrisonment or worse under Nigerian Criminal Code Section 419 to entertain and delight thousands of readers worldwide have finally got the recognition they deserve, in the form of the Ignobel Prize for Literature.

The other prizes, too are quitte awesome, like the Economics Prize, awarded to Gauri Nanda for inventing an alarm clock that runs away (Btw, I've noticed that Indians and PIOs win way more Ignobels than they do Nobels, I wonder why?). The Peace Prize went to two British researchers who electronically analysed the brain activity of a locust while the insect in question watched selected highlights from the movie Star Wars. But the one that takes the cake, however, is the Medicine Prize, the details of which, unfortunately, I cannot reproduce here. You can read it, along with the other citations, at the official Ignobel Website here.

Posted in Attempts at Humour.

The Baap of all Conspiracy Theories

2005-10-03T05:20:00.000-04:00

[SPOILER WARNING: Do NOT read this if you have not seen Fight Club, but want to.]

All of us, I'm sure have spent sleepless nights pondering one of the 20th Century's greatest unanswered question: Whatever happened to Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes? Did he grow up? Did he realise that Hobbes was actually a figment of his imagination? Did he grow up to be a nerdy insomniac who invents an imaginary friend, starts an antisocial group with him and becomes the subject of a David Fincher movie? If you did, then 1) Get help and 2) Read this article at Metaphilm.

Just as Calvin has an imaginary jungle-animal friend named Hobbes, whom everyone else believes to be nothing but a stuffed toy, "Jack" in Fight Club has an imaginary cool-guy friend named Tyler, whom no one but Jack can see.

In both cases, the entity that began as the ideal companion soon took on a more realistic, three-dimensional quality. In other words, they became real. This is evident in that both Hobbes and Tyler also began to function as scapegoats for their creators. For instance, consider that Calvin often blames broken lamps and other assorted household mischief on Hobbes, and that Jack is inclined to believe that Fight Club and other various anti-society mischief is brought about by Tyler, not himself. Calvin claims Hobbes pounces on him every day after school; Jack believes Tyler beats him up next to 40 kilotons of nitroglycerin in a parking garage—the list goes on and on. The relationships between the two sets of friends are the exact same. Is this mere coincidence?

Is it? I don't know, but if you enjoy such deep, philosophical and pointless movie musings, read the article. If you're still not satisfied, check out the rest of Metaphilm (they replace all their "f"s with "ph"s, I don't know why).

Hat Tip: Shivaji Marella.

Decisions, decisions

2005-10-03T05:09:00.000-04:00

3rd October 2005 2:43pm.

On HBO: Ali G: IndaHouse

On Star Movies: Dude, Where's My Car?

How do I decide??!!

Inquizzition 2005

2005-09-21T09:33:00.000-04:00

Me and some friends of mine in college are organising an open quiz on Saturday, the 24th of September. Here are the details:

Open Trivia Quiz (Not restricted to college teams).
Two member teams.
Cross-college and cross-institutional teams allowed.
Venue: Fergusson College Amphitheater.
Date: Saturday, 24th September 2005.
Time: Registrations from 11:30 am. Elims begin 12:30 pm, Finals begin 2:30 pm.
Big prizes for the winners. Really big, I kid you not.
Prizes for all Finalists.
Audience Prizes.
Contact: Kunal [kunalns(at)gmail(dot)com], Puranjay [puranjay(underscore)p(at)rediffmail(dot)com].

So if you are in Pune on the 24th between 11:30am and around six, do drop in. ¡Hasta luego!

Posted in Quizzing, College Fests and other Crap.

Ever wondered what Rhetorical Brilliance is?

2005-09-12T02:01:00.000-04:00

Then read this article on GWB and Hurricane Katrina.

(Hat Tip: Samizdata).

Posted in Blogging, Links and Plugs.

Them Dense Indians

2005-09-12T01:11:00.000-04:00

Tom Lantos is an angry man. He is so angry, in fact, that he lashed out at Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh and called him "dense" (a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with, for different reasons). The reason? India's foreign policy with Iran vis-a-vis its nuclear program is not "in sync" with US policy. The good Congressman said:

"It was incomprehensible to me that people as sophisticated and knowledgeable as our Indian counterparts should not be aware of how significant their position, vis-a-vis Iran is to this Congress, and, I hope this hearing will make them aware at least tangentially that this may be destroying far more significant relationships than they are having with Tehran unless they become sensitive to our view on that subject."

The Americans want India to vote in the IAEA Board to refer the matter of Iran's nuclear program to the Security Council (h/t Nitin Pai), who will then decide what to do in terms of sanctions or worse. India, like China, France and Russia, is reluctant to do so, given its relationship with Iran. Consequently, the Yanks are furious.

Those dense idiots at the Indian Ministry for External Affairs! Don't they see they're ruining the Indo-US bonhommie by consorting with a reprehensible dictatorship? I mean, sure, they've got their own foreign policy concerns, but c'mon, you should feel for your friends when they might have nuclear tipped missiles pointed at them, right? And what about the nuclear proliferation? Will someone please think about the nuclear proliferation? Should you throw away such an incredibly fruitful relationship because of your narrow, short term goals? Hell no! Wake, up, you dense idiots!

Nitin Pai, however, has a solution to the problem:

India is a member of the IAEA board. Unlike China, Russia and the United States, it is not a member of the UN Security Council. By that token, the burden of actually imposing sanctions on Iran will lie on China, Russia and France. India should let them have the privilege of defending a nuclear bad boy at the United Nations. The permanent five, including the United States, are not keen to admit India as one among them. So why should India allow them to escape the responsibility that comes with their position?

Ha! Why indeed?

Posted in Politics and Economics.

Some perspective on the Sania Mirza fatwa

2005-09-09T10:01:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, the NDTV news channel interviewed an obscure Islamic scholar, who reportedly issued a fatwa against Sania Mirza's dress sense. BBC reports:

Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui, a leading cleric of the Muslim organisation the Sunni Ulema Board, said: "The dress she wears on the tennis courts not only doesn't cover large parts of her body but leaves nothing to the imagination."

Mr Siddiqui said Islam did not allow women to wear skirts, shorts and sleeveless tops in public.

"She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence on these young women, which we want to prevent," he said.

Now this is a pronouncement that is guaranteed to piss off a very large section of the Indian public. Coming after the controversial Imrana case and intense public scrutiny of fatwas, this seems to be yet another instance of the Islamic clergy running wild.

But perhaps all is not what it seems. Google searches for both Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui and the Sunni Ulema Board yielded nothing meaningful. It seems to me that the guy is a lightweight. But the Indian news agencies make no mention of this, they do not even mention his name or organisation, just that he is a "religious scholar from Kolkata". Since fatawa are only binding on the muftis who issue them and their followers (see the Wikipedia article on fatwas), it may not even apply to Sania Mirza. What, then, is the big deal? The scholar in question is obscure, the judgement not binding on Miss Mirza, and since no one has indicated that Mr. Siddiqui is a mufti, the whole thing may not even be a bonfide fatwa. Why is this such a big news story?

The answer, I think, is ratings. As Saeed Naqvi wrote in Indian Exprees, "... newsdesks have been alerted to the idea that stories of fatwas embarrassing to the Muslims has a growing audience." Fatwas are big stories, and a about Sania Mirza would be a very big story indeed. Fatwas, as the Wikipedia article informs us, are a legal pronouncement in Islam, issued by a religious law specialist on a specific issue. Most fatwas are clarification of religious terms or advice on how to be a better Muslim in response to specific queries (see the Darul Uloom Deoband's archive of fatwas).You can make a Muslim cleric issue a controversial fatwa by asking him a leading questioin the same way you can make the Pope say something controversial by asking him his views on, say, homosexuality. If Mr Siddiqui rang up NDTV and told them Sania should be banned, then that would be bad. But if he was asked if he thought whether Sania's clothing was un-Islamic and a bad influence, I don't see how a conservative, religious man could have said otherwise. Replace "Islam" with "Indian culture" and I could show you several Hindu men who would say the same. Since I don't have the transcript of the NDTV interview, I can't say for sure, but it seems to me like this whole thing was something of a setup.

To be sure, many sections of the Muslim clergy have some pretty extreme views on Life, the Universe and Everything. Anyone who says that a woman raped by her father-in-law is no longer married to her husband, is in my view, a pretty disgusting individual. But this does not justify tricking someone into making a controversial statement to increase your ratings (if that is indeed what happened). However, I think that some good may still come from this incident. I predict that either the mainstream Muslim clergy will condemn this fatwa, or will take flak for not having done so. But please, let's get some perspective on this.

Wtf?!

2005-09-05T03:21:00.000-04:00

Mid-Day reports:

The 20th year of Independence Rock which was to be held yesterday and today, was cancelled when Mumbai Police Commissioner A N Roy decided “rock music” couldn’t be allowed at the Gateway of India.

In an impromptu press conference, Farhad Wadia, the organizer , showed the media permission letters he had obtained from: The state government, BMC, fire brigade, PWD, Archaeological Survey of India, local police, traffic police, and the entertainment tax officials.

However, joint commissioner of police, Arun Patnaik said, “Although they secured a no-objection certificate from all the authorities, finally the police has to allow permission for the event. Wadia should have come to us earlier on. It is wrong to say we denied him permission at the last moment.”

Farhad Wadia, in an open letter to rock fans, writes:

This too me reeks of a simple prejudice that Rock listened to by Middle Class Non-Affluent College Kids is Sound Pollution & Jazz Rock Or Fusion patronized by the Page 3 Crowd was Sweet & Appropriate Music …. Once again a Government Official who has been invested with these Absolute powers by the Government has let his personal taste in music / perception of Rock Music influence his decision. (H/t for both links: Amit Varma).

This is an absolute outrage. Who the hell died and made AN bloody Roy king? And the bugger has the nerve to say that the concert was cancelled due to fears of "sound pollution". This after his political masters have abased themselves repeatedly in front of the Supreme Court to extend the loudspeaker deadline for Ganpati mandals, loudspeakers that play earsplittingly loud trance and remix music all night long.

As I see it, the police made three basic objections, all of which I find baseless. First: The police said that the noise will damage a historical monument. However, Farhad Wadia had obtained a No Objection Certificate from the Archaeological Survey of India. Does AN Roy think he knows the sound tolerances of the Gateway better than the chaps whose job it is to maintain it? Second: The police also maintained that I-Rock could not be allowed because "it is a private event." However, in the past six months, the police has okayed four events at the same venue, two of which were the Mumbai Mirror Launch and Bal Thakeray's Book launch. Now it seems to me that both the Times of India and Bal Thackeray are equally private. Perhaps they are more equal than Farhad Wadia. Third: The police claim that I-Rock is not an appropriate event to hold at the Gateway. But, last time I checked, the police was there for law-enforcement, not for nebulous-extra-legal-propriety-concerns enforcement. They ought to look that up.

There are, of course, larger issues here. There has of late been a rising trend of paternalistic we-know-what's-best-for-you regulation enforced by various state and local governments. Politicians like Dharam Singh and RR Patil have come to regard enforcement of their interpretations of "Indian culture" as a higher calling than mere administration, which is ostensibly what they were elected for. The people appointed to preserve and protect our Constitution don't give two shits for the rights to freedom of speech and expression enshrined in it. Two-bit babus and cops feel that they have the right to force their prejudices and narrow-minded views on the people they are supposed to serve.

This is unacceptable. We must not allow this incremental erosion of our fundamental rights to continue unabated. Today they try and control what you listen to, tomorrow they will try to control what you wear, who you can marry (the Bombay Univ VC and N. Modi have already tried these two), and ultimately, what you think. Please spread the word about this, and join the protest. This shit stops here.

Posted in Rants and Raves.