Wanderlust

In the throes of some extreme wanderlust at the moment. The entire day has been SO BLOODY unproductive, its not even funny. I recently moved into a new office, one which has a spectacular view (from the 9th floor of the building), and spent the entire day gazing out, reading poetry that had something to do with travel. That is, I spent hours scouring the web for travel poetry to read. Highly recommend this. Not to mention this lovely anthology of travel poetry here.

Blech. Of course, this means I have more time (rather, incentive) to blog. Once I get home, that is.

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

- J. R. R. Tolkien

[Zion National Park, Utah]

[Yosemite national park, California]

[Seville Cathedral, Spain]

[Chinatown, Singapore]

[Fullerton hotel, Singapore]

[Random apartments, Singapore]

[Road trip, Santa Barbara]

[Ooh, guess where!]

[Chatfield Hollow, New England]

The world's shortest essay competition

From the "World's shortest essay" competition, the winner, when asked to compose an entry that would satisfy the following - Religion, Royalty, Mystery and Sex.

"My God", said the Queen, "I'm pregnant. I wonder who the father is.."

Now this may or may not be apocryphal - but it sure as hell is funny :)

On Computer Security and Sex

Overheard,

Computer Security is like sex.
Once you're penetrated you're fucked.

How true :))

The dangers of Journalism as a profession?

Szerelem pointed me to a link today, about the number of journalists in the Caucasus that have been killed for one reason or another - political rivalries, whistle blowing, or even just standing up for what should be a free press. A total of 31. Since 2000 - a mere 7 year span. An average of 4 people losing their lives due to the whims and fancies of others, in the pursuit of duty. Civilians, to boot. And this figure doesn't even include those who were roughed up, threatened, or just disappeared before publishing their exposés.

One of the things which struck me was how the author of the article above found it extremely tough to put a picture to each name (he couldn't manage it in two instances). And to be honest, apart from the infamous Politkovskaya murder which received wide press coverage due to her criticisms of the Putin's government, I haven't heard about any of the others in any mainstream media. Does that mean these lives were lost in vain?

I looked up some numbers, courtesy of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the International News Safety Institute, and they're rather startling..

The Top 21 bloodiest countries over the past 10 years have been Iraq (138), Russia (88), Colombia (72), Philippines (55), Iran (54), India (45), Algeria (32), the former republic of Yugoslavia (32), Mexico (31), Pakistan (29), Brazil (27), USA (21), Bangladesh (19), Ukraine (17), Nigeria, Peru, Sierra Leone & Sri Lanka (16), Afghanistan, Indonesia & Thailand (13). Iran’s figures were swollen by one air accident in December 2005. A military aircraft carrying news teams to cover exercises in the Gulf crashed in Tehran, killing 48 journalists and media technicians aboard.

As an aside, this puts India at 6th place in being one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. An eye opener of a statistic if there ever was one for the world's largest, and fastest growing democracy. Which brings us to the question of why they were killed in the first place. According to the CPJ,

They either died in the line of duty or were deliberately targeted for assassination because of their reporting or their affiliation with a news organization.

Full coverage of the article is here. There's no one reason for all the senseless killings - and no pattern which can probably be detected without the help of machine learning mechanisms.

Will people one day aspire to thought processes which do NOT involve eliminating potential threats from the arena in order (mostly) to make more money? or is that being naively idealistic?

And now, sporting a brand new look!

As you can probably tell - the new look is meant to give the blog a breath of super fresh air!

(Thats a picture of the Hong Kong skyline, I fell in love with it during some 6 hours I spent there a few days ago :))

Word of the day - "Fobulous"

Fobulous. Like in FOB. Fresh off the Boat. And Fabulous - as in *awesome*.

Referring to someone fabulous who's just stepped into the United States from India. I quite liked it, from an article here

Delhi! Delhi!

Yes! I'm back in Delhi after such a long time that it hurts being here. What passed for normal in bygone eras isn't anymore! (right, I'm being slightly melodramatic here, bear with me okay?) Sure, things change and all that - but its so interesting to see how your perspective does too.

Three days into my stay, I think I'm settling in very well. I've bought myself Orhan Pamuk's "My name is Red" and so far, reading it has been a lovely experience. My favorite part of the day - to read or otherwise - has always been the late afternoon - a time when the Spanish take their siestas, and most people in India tend to nap as well. I could never stand sleeping though - the sun's rays are just perfect, not too bright, not too dull, and there's a certain something in the air which make me really relaxed. Soporific, even. And if you're sitting next to a garden or trees - chirping birds just add to the atmosphere.

(Hmm, I just thought I'd ask a friend about what she thinks is her favorite part of the day - and surprise surprise, she'd never even given it any thought before :))

Another stark difference I've felt here is the sounds and smells you encounter in India, something which the very spartan and organized west (ok, maybe just the US) doesn't have. As I type this, I can hear a host of sounds, all amalgamated into a low roar which just creeps subliminally into your consciousness. If I try and really listen to it, I can hear the distant sounds of traffic as they filter in through a group of trees outside; a rickshaw seller hawking his kulfi ice cream; heck, i can even hear a group of women singing wedding songs, complete with a Dhol; barking dogs, children playing cricket, someone talking on a mobile phone far away...

And then there are the very unique smells which I've really missed - gulmohar trees, eucalyptus, the slightly smoky smell of a dense fog which hovers over the treetops; open wood fires used by road construction workers to cook rustic food - the occasional pungence of frying garlic, or the earthy aromas of roasting rotis! there's also, atleast in parts of the city where I live, stacks of freshly cut grass from the various lawns and gardens in the vicinity - a slight breeze just wafts the smell from these into the already heady mix; and the occasional cigarette smoke, as someone near by steps out for a break before heading home, or back indoors to finish whatever it was they got tired of.

Sigh.

Of course, the traffic here's gone to the dogs. What was merely chaotic before is now a battle for life and limb - literally too, if you've been following the recent episodes of how blue line buses in Delhi have caused the deaths of almost a hundred people in the last few months. Road quality seems to have improved, as has the quality of air in the city. There are far more cars on the streets; shopping centers have been elevated from being mere grocery stores and odds-n-end shops, to high end luxury brands which cater to an exclusive set of the rich and famous. Heck, I've noticed that the price of goods is proportional to the part of the city you buy them from!

Guess capitalism has a new address. And its definitely the heart of New Delhi, for now.

Free speech and virginity

Quoting a friend when discussing the Ahmedinejad episode at Columbia -

"free speech is free speech. it's like virginity, you either have it or you don't."

How true - there's no way you can reasonably fake either.

Noam Chomsky, Democracy and invisible barriers to free speech

Came across a very interesting interview of Noam Chomsky, the celebrated linguist and extreme left wing political commentator at Le Monde Diplomatique today. Apart from talking about Democracy in the typical firebrand way he usually does, he mentions a very pertinent point on the topic of censorship of the free press in countries that are (or call themselves) liberal democracies, vis a vis totalitarian ones.

It is one of the big differences between the propaganda system of a totalitarian state and the way democratic societies go about things. Exaggerating slightly, in totalitarian countries the state decides the official line and everyone must then comply. Democratic societies operate differently. The line is never presented as such, merely implied. This involves brainwashing people who are still at liberty. Even the passionate debates in the main media stay within the bounds of commonly accepted, implicit rules, which sideline a large number of contrary views. The system of control in democratic societies is extremely effective. We do not notice the line any more than we notice the air we breathe. We sometimes even imagine we are seeing a lively debate. The system of control is much more powerful than in totalitarian systems.

This has never been more relevant than it is today - given the handful of countries in the world which can be termed actual democracies, how many of them can really count themselves as being part of a tiny faction that allows completely free speech?

Granted that the latter is a rather naive approach to real world issues, and any country which allowed the press full freedom in action would pay dearly for it. (This was rather interestingly illustrated by the media representation of the referendum of France a couple of years ago - in may 2005 referendum on the European constitution, most newspapers in France supported a yes vote, yet 55% of the electorate voted no). The same goes for the obvious anti war sentiment in the US, which is less than accurately reflected by the mainstream media.

But as Chomsky mentions elsewhere, do you really want to be in a country where you need to satisfy minimum constraints on your views, political affiliations and (even) sexual orientation in order to make yourself heard in the mainstream?

Back from a hiatus.. or, On the rise of India as a global power

The last 2 months have been filled with doing much more than I could even begin to start writing about. Or had the time to anyway. Or maybe I was just being lazy! Oh well.

Time magazine has an excellent series of articles on the rising star that is the Indian economy and state. What struck me specifically were the articles on KP Singh, the founder of DLF Real Estate which today has a market capitalization 3 BILLION USD *greater* than General Motors. At $24 billion, they're one of the biggest in the world. And of course, there were the occasional numbers on the growth of the economy to a trillion dollars (this April) et al. But the author summed it up (brilliantly, I thought) as

"Extraordinary as it is, the rise of India and China is nothing more than a return to the ancient equilibrium of world trade, with Europeans no longer appearing as gun-toting, gunboat-riding colonial masters but instead reverting to their traditional role: that of eager consumers of the much celebrated manufactures, luxuries and services of the East."

Interesting.

Its stories like this that make getting up in the morning..

.. a treat.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/951D9596-498E-4735-9DBC-58AA497596EA.htm

of Bill Gates and Bates Gill?

Bates Gill holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is the author of Rising Star: China's New Security Diplomacy

*cracks up*

Really, I've made so many of those Gill Bates jokes, but to encounter someone actually named thus was priceless! :)

Reflections on Spiderman and his webs

Well. We all know how good (or bad, depending on perspectives) Spiderman 3 was. Don't worry, no spoilers here. This is just a question I need to ask the world at large.

Spidey looks cool doesn't he, when he swings about on his webs, to and fro all of New York Ci.. er, I mean, whatever fictional city he lives in. But.

*WHAT in HELL* does he do with those pieces of webbing stuck all over the city?!!!!

I'm flummoxed.

Don't move or you're geography.

Human: Er, don't you mean history?

Dragon: No.

Human: No?

Dragon: No.

Human: Why not?

Dragon: Because once I'm done, they'll be scraping you off the ground.

Human: Ah.

You know the US is losing it..

.. when

On his News and Comment radio show this morning, ABC Radio Networks host Paul Harvey said “the media should put a stop” to labeling “women and children” killed in war as “civilians.” He said, “It was civilians, for goodness sake, who decapitated New York City.”

Dictionaries define a civilian as “one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force.” Harvey disagrees. According to him, “Since the invention of the aerial bomb five wars ago, there have been no civilians.” In other words, innocent people who are killed in war are military combatants because they are victims of a military attack.

Paul Harvey News describes itself as “the largest one-man network in the world, consisting of over 1200 radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations that broadcast around the world, and 300 newspapers.” President Bush gave Harvey the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.

This isn’t the first time Harvey has callously wished for more viciousness in American war fighting. In 2005, he said the United States should use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq. After recalling the use of atomic bombs during World War II, Harvey lamented that “we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq and kept our best weapons in their silos.”

Of course, things might improve when,

“Two years after writing a law requiring highway ‘Welcome to Texas’ signs to tout the state as the home of President Bush, state Rep. Ken Paxton [yesterday] passed a bill that will remove the designation once the 43rd president leaves office.”

Not to get too political, but I just couldn't resist. OTOH, I was going to do a big post on the rising ludicrousnesses of modern Indian morality and culture. Should I?

09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0

George Orwell's 1984 was a watershed in how humanity in general thought about the future. If you haven't read it, I really, REALLY recommend you do. It (along with Animal Farm) gave us chilling insights into a society which could, if left unchecked, become dystopian in the very near future. But over the decades since its release, people have always taken it for granted that this was but the fancies of one man, and mankind was savvy enough to protect itself from the beginnings of its own demise.

Up until now.

"Big brother is watching you", the refrain of many a snide comment about totalitarian governments has never been so chilling in its applicability to the modern democratic state. And no, I'm not getting unnecessarily melodramatic or anything - a series of events which have happened in the past week have made me question a lot of things I'd taken for granted before. Not in the least, the concepts of privacy and freedom.

The slow erosion of the founding principles of the United States has been evident for a while now - certain quarters have taken decisions to curtail basic human rights in the name of eradicating terrorism. Others have launched campaigns about Intellectual Property, in the name of which thousands of innocents have been legally targetted - I refer to the RIAA's attack on individuals over the past year or so. And then of course, there's the Indian context of banning blogs which condone terrorism, or are against the sentiments of a particular religious or ethnic group. Censorship for a cause, but still censorship.

All aspects of our social life are on the internet - our email, our invitations, photos, contacts, files, credit card databases and bank accounts. Drivers licenses when swiped in a card reader let the government know where you are. Combine all this information, and you can find out where I shopped, what I bought, when I did so. Google earth allows you to look at my backyard. You now know where I live. You have me on surveillance cameras. Practically every aspect of my life is available to those who want it - legally or otherwise.

The first inkling of the approaching storms was the recent tie up of Orkut, the social networking site, with Indian law enforcement agencies in order to help nab people making a nuisance of themselves online. Not only can you now be censured, you can be thrown in jail! As if that wasn't bad enough, surveillance cameras have now been put in force around Britain which can, hold your breath, READ YOUR LIPS! Thats right! Now, not only can they use facial recognition to find out who you are, they know what you're saying. Perhaps the shouting cameras they installed a while ago will find something to talk about with these.

So you thought that only people who pirate DVDs and music are in trouble? Sure they are - as the recent *dictat* by the US shows. They have recently targeted 12 countries which apparently have bad track records when it comes to containing piracy. India and China included of course. But here's the funny part - they mention Thailand too, because of that government's efforts to subsidize patented drugs from the US for their own use, to make them available cheaply to people who have AIDS.

Whats that? Make their own drugs so that they can save people dying of AIDS? Those *bastards*.

(end sarcasm)

'Sure, the U.S. government can impose economic sanctions on non-compliant countries, but that only takes you so far. The U.S. Constitution requires that the federal government respect the sovereignty of foreign nations. U.S. courts won't typically touch a copyright infringement case if the infringement occurs overseas.'

Oh wait a minute. respect the what? Last I saw, Iraq was a sovereign country with its own government. Bleh.

But the icing on the cake is yet to come - and explain the title of this post too. Everyone who watches DVD movies knows that DVDs are hard to copy like VCDs used to be - thats because of the built in encryption, and Digital Rights Management (DRM). Well, the flip side of this is that even if you own the DVD and say, break it - there's no way you can get a replacement without paying for it all over again. Which is basically an extra few bucks for the big record companies. Of course, what one man can build, another can break. An enterprising hacker here
recently cracked this system, and put it up on the web for all to see. To summarize this hack, all you need is the code 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0 to break this encryption. And of course, some more technical knowhow. But you see my point. The fact that this number was published was going to make the AACS (the people who collect royalties on movies) pretty bad. So they issued a cease and desist order against.. hold your breath.. GOOGLE! and Yahoo. and others. And thats what broke the camel's back.

The internet as we know it was built to enhance communications amongst groups of people around the world - and the advent of modern communication technology like faxes and teleprinters was in no small way responsible for the demise of the USSR. When the masses have a collective decision and a medium to act upon, there's not much that can be done to stop them. And this is what is happening. The entire web is up in arms against the AACS. Instead of being able to clamp down on this number, everyone is making new web pages with this number to spread it even further. In my opinion, this is a watershed in the history of the internet because for the first time, people across boundaries have as a group targeted one specific entity. Even as I type, people are printing out coffee mugs, t-shirts, banners, stickers and all sorts of other merchandise to showcase this number. At this point, it has ceased to be just a number - it now stands as a symbol of 'sticking it to the man' - as poignant as the photo of that lone chinese man at Tienanmen square, stopping the approach of an entire column of tanks, and as the world collectively watched, the rising storm of communism.

Except that this time, its not one man. There's a few million of them. And they rise not against communism, but the capitalistic hegemony of corporations. Ironic ain't it?

Of big fat Indian weddings, Rock, paper, scissors and other generalities

A lot seems to be happening around the world today. Really, the people who must write sections for "Oddly enough" at Reuters must be celebrating with joy at the sheer number of events that far transcend "incredulously amazing".

Lets start with Liz Hurley's big fat Indian wedding, arguable the "wedding of the year", which couldn't get any more famous with big elephants, lots of trumpets, and other exotica like ice sculptures in the middle of (the desert Indian state) Rajasthan. No, that was a mistake. It DOES get better. Apparently, they have been sued by a group of responsible Hindu citizens who feel that the marriage rites were but a travesty to the pure and scared event that a hindu wedding ceremony is. Because? No reasons given. Oh well. Next, it turns out that the father-in-law himself disowned his son because the latter - under the auspices of his new wife of course - snubbed him at a [sic] 30,000 pound dinner organized in his honour. Duh. If someone organized a 30,000 pound dinner for me... But then, if I were getting married to someone as supremely hot as Liz Hurley - nah, I'd still go for it.. But come on people. So they didn't precisely follow hindu rituals - perhaps, there were tulips rather than marigolds. Isnt the fact that 2 people who (presumably) love each other got married count for anything? And seriously, don't you have anything better to do than waste money on frivolous lawsuits against people you are likely to have o direct connection to?

Anyway. Topping this was my serendipitous discovery of the .. World Rock, Paper, Scissors Society! Yes, that such a thing exists is a marvellous reaffirmation of the obscenely huge amounts of time some people have in order to devote it to such (trivial?) pursuits. Did you know that there are official strategies to play this game? And that the math involved in calculating probabilities of what the other persons are going to put forth based on a history of what you've put forth is rather advanced? That people who play this routinely do these calculations in their heads in a matter of seconds, before they decide what to play with?

I didn't either.

And since this post started with the easily hurt sensibilities of the hindu populace of the world, lets end it with a particularly interesting piece of news which I chanced across - that really showcases just how many good-for-nothing-too-rich-to-care people are out there. Apparently, the California school curriculum system was sued by .. yes, another hindu watchdog group in California which argues that the textbook syllabus in American schools portrays the religion in a bad light. Go figure. I'm too lazy to recount the entire scenario here.. but the links before should give you some idea of whats happening.

Yawn. more later.

Five Unknown things about me

Tagged by Something to say

Five unknown things about me? Thats a toughie - never imagine it would be this hard to look at myself from the perspective of someone else. Lets see now,

- I love the smell of petrol/gasoline. I just do. Some people have told me its weird, and I shouldn't - but hey, thats your problem not mine. And when I say this, it doesn't mean I go around sniffing fuel tanks, but I do take a deep whiff whenever I'm fueling my car or I'm passing by a filling station. Although, I *hate* burnt fuel smells.

- I used to love eating bits and pieces of a particular wall when I was a kid (Yeah, I *know*). Perhaps 3 or 4 years old. I have vivid memories of taking small chunks off this small hole in the wall (I think it might've been where a small bit was shorn off when hammering a nail in - and this was in the lobby of an apartment complex, overlooking the balcony.) I think I stood there (on the 7th floor) munching bits of grit and staring at the world go past. Good times.

- This is getting easier by the minute. Hrmmph. My music tastes are pretty eclectic, but sometimes, I will listen to one song that I end up liking SO MUCH that I play it on constant repeat about a zillion times, interspersed with very few other songs. I think it helps me appreciate the beauty of the melody or lyrics, or whatever it is that I really admire. Most recent such song was "Echoes", by Pink Floyd. Music also plays a really important role in how I'm feeling at that point in the day. Something nice and beaty, will cheer me up to no end - and sometimes, Enya-esque songs will relax me. And some really special songs bring about a flood of memories, smells, and images from long times past! Weird eh?

- I'm a technology person. I would feel lost without a computer - something I've been using ever since I was 4, my PDA, a phone, et al. Okay, its not as bad as I make it out to be :) But, I've realized that there's a gap in my life, especially when I've been on multiple day hikes to remote locations where there's no cell phone coverage, let alone internet access. I do a lot of stuff using the computer, and its like an extension of myself.

- I've got heightened senses. Smells and taste - I can normally figure out all the ingredients in a dish, and identify people or certain objects by passing smells. Wery Vierd? Perhaps :) As for hearing, I can figure out exactly what my housemates are doing, where they are, and even predict what they will do next based on sounds they're making. Like, I'll know when someone in the room I can't see is say, lifting a pen, writing on paper, and then pausing to think. Sometimes, its VERY irritating though. Imagine the above situation sitting in a classroom hehe.

Ok, I think I've waxed eloquently about myself! Now, to tag some more people. I choose: hobo, punkster, snake anthony, szelerem and whitelight. Not to mention iz and surly girl. Hehe, who says you only have to tag FIVE more people? :)

How do you make a dog chase its tail around?

I saw an ad on TV today. It showed a dog chasing its tail over and over again, as dogs are wont to do, for about 45 seconds. It must've done so *atleast* 30 times in that time span.

And once it finished, the caption at the bottom was - "Comcast. Non Stop. 24/7/365". Not too bad you say? Perhaps, but commenting on the sad state of affairs that is the America Television Industry is not the topic for a short post.

Instead, it got me thinking about how such an ad would be implemented. Consider - you would need to find a dog which is known to chase its tail around. As an ad person, how would you approach this?

First thoughts include trying to find people who have talked about or perhaps written about their dogs' eccentricities. Hmm, but how often do you find people like that who live near you? Just finding a dog which doesn't look ugly as hell and is known to chase his tail for eons isn't enough. Although this by itself is a tough problem, once you DO find him - how do you make him do his thing? surely, you wouldn't be cruel enough to attach salami juice onto his tail and make him sniff it. and in case of a particularly stupid dog, even have him bite it. Its not unknown, after all.

I'm still trying to work this out. Next post is going to be a tag which STS gave me a couple of weeks ago!

Updates

Holy Crap. A MONTH without a post. Sigh, this is what happens when you get to a point where real life gets to you more than compulsions towards online avatars. Hehe, which might actually be a good thing.

But so much has happened. And thats best illustrated by the fact that in 5 days, I've travelled abouit 6000 miles, across 4 time zones, with about 8 hours of sleep, partied till 2am, chicken wings at 3, and then early morning conversations till 6. Repeat. Fun times, I have to admit.

Now couple this with some interesting tours I had to conduct, discuss possibly life changing business ideas, and a couple of other things which I can't really talk about.. I think its safe to say that the lack of updates has been *because* i've had too many :)

But more stuff coming up. For instance, the tag which "Something to Say" left me. soon, very soon.