Quite obviously, I've been mulling over topics that most people have been mulling over the last few days - under water basket weaving. 

Hiatus ends with this.

So am happy that the UPA has defeated the whiny lefties and the fascist right wingers.
Not only that, the PM did it with style.
I thought it was brilliant of the PM to contrast his own record (impeccable) with that of Advani's (the bloody thug). And I'm also surprised and elated that the PM decided to lace his own vision with good science and technology.
I only hope that now the govt. will act soon and finalize the nuke deal before the democrats come to power.

woohoo!

While my views on the nuke deal have been voiced before, this piece of excrement
just bolsters my already dim view of the Left in India. Now they are ready to side with the fascist right wingers. Wonders never cease!

What's next?
The Left officially recognizing religion? I wouldn't be surprised if they did that.

...and raise you Hanuman?

OK, it didn't go down in exactly that fashion, but Obama carrying around a small good luck charm in Hanuman's image has India going ga-ga. I'm sure he didn't realize the significance of it, and of course at some point someone in McCain's camp will try to label him as a pagan idol-worshiper. And then will that insult result in Indian-Americans fleeing to the Democrats in droves? What's that? Their only religion is money? Oh...

So what does this mean for Obama? Is he steadily taking up his position as the anti-Bush? Clearly, he is becoming increasingly popular around the world, and this can only mean an improvement of America's international image down the road.

By the way, for all that Bush-McCain talk about not negotiating with your enemies, in the end they found diplomacy an apt solution to at least one of their problems.

Wanted to do a piece on rock music in India for some time. Might as well start off with this.
Much like everywhere else, rock music first find its place amongst alienated and disgruntled (yes, the favt. word of this blog) youth . In this case, the people from the Northeast.

When I was a strapping young lad during my undergrad days in Delhi, the biggest set of rock music fans were people from the northeastern states. If anything, if you were from the northeast, you had to be in with Pink Floyd, Metallica and black/death metal bands - that was considered the norm and anything else (like listening to Bollywood tunes) was an anomaly, an aberration.
And yes all of them strummed a guitar, even the birds. At that time I figured they were into rock music because the northeast was so far from Bollywood, and didn't have any representation in Bollywood, that they were in any case different and needed to find something to latch onto to create a common identity, and that 'something' was rock music and the entire rock culture.

But from the article that doesn't seem to be the case. They only want to be cool, thats all.

This article did not surprise me one bit. Why? The ugly truth is that Indians by and large are racist. It is well known we are fascinated by fair skin, and I cannot add to all that has been said in this regard.
When I was young we had people from African countries who would come to Delhi to get a
college education. I would see these guys while playing football (soccer for all you amrikans).
And I can attest that there were racial slurs being passed around.

Casteism, along with this, and the prevalent sexism all leads to the unfortunate conclusion - India is the most racist place on the planet.

Went to a concert by the indescribable Zakir Hussain yesterday. First the show was fantastic, 

My bro pointed me to this piece of awesomeness.
All I have to say - its about time!

Given that we have a super rich mythology, I don't see why it should not be exploited.
While I've already ordered all there is to order, the one piece of mythology which can be made into a comic book to end all comic books - the story of Karna.

Top that bitches! Meanwhile head over here and buy.

Lot has been said on why only cricket looms large on the Indian psyche, why other sports are languishing, and why its not good to put all eggs in one basket ; cricket.

However, I would also like to blame people in other sports not really caring enough or not voicing their concerns enough. Case in point: this interview with Vishy Anand.
Time and again Karan Thapar gives Anand many opportunities to lash out against cricket, and
generally use his status and his celebrity to represent his sport and other sports as well to make a strong point - enough is enough, we need to develop and foster other sports as well.

What does Anand do though? Gives dumb diplomatic answers. Anand, dude, we like you and we are really proud of you. You've earned all your kudos (and money) the hard way and you deserve it.
But please, for the love of all that is good, grow a pair and say what is obvious -
"what is being done for other sports is not enough you bitches! We need more, lots more!"

Me thinks it is morally incumbent on Anand, being in the unique position he is, to lead the way. Instead he opts out. Disappointing.

Perhaps i'll find where he lives in Spain and TP his house..

Would you rather make $200000 per year and have your neighbors make $300000, or would you rather make $100000 and have your neighbors make $80000?

Surprisingly, most people would choose the latter. So how would you then quantify inequality? In this article , the author debunks a common myth that the GINI index is useful in measuring inequality - apparently the use of this index tells us that India is more "equal" than the US.

A casual read of how this index works can easily tell us that the underlying income distributions can be markedly different and yet yield similar GINI values.

What can be a more equal measure? I'll mull over this once my deadline passes..

Absolutely.

We ought to be proud that we voted in a woman, a foreign woman , one belonging to a minority
religion all the while displacing a right-wing govt.

While I hate political dynasties as much as anyone else, I would have voted for Sonia.
OK so she was involved in Bofors with her buddy Ottavio .
So what? Which politician aint corrupt? Atleast she is consistent and doesn't flip-flop.
And she is a liberal.

To give up the chance to get into the history books for ruling over a billion people - I can't think of many people who will do that.

First watch this: Grown man bawling

A good friend suggested that instead of sending emails with links and commenting on them, I should instead start blogging for the benefit of mankind and all.

If nothing else, this would presumably save the otherwise innocent bandwidth.

Anyway as a first topic, I decided to take up something slightly controversial - India, with its nukes and the precarious situation it is in with its neighbors. As a catalyst, here is a recent editorial in IHT which largely echoes my thoughts.

The basic problem is India has China on one side, Pakistan on the other. Both have nukes.
The question is - should India have gone nuke in the first place knowing that someday it'll be surrounded by nuke-toting countries?

While the pseudo-official line is that India went nuke because of China, surely someone should have thought of the ramifications - it ain't pretty surrounded by nucular countries.

Is this a case of a country applying a greedy heuristic at the given time (going nuclear in the 70s), only to be left in a local minima decades later (now).

Perhaps a dynamic programming approach might have been more fruitful..