How much of an exception is this?

Tamil Nadu is one of the states with the best statistics in India. It has a high literacy rate (73%), a high Human Development Index (0.736, compared to India's 0.61). It has a massive urban population and a fertility rate of 1.8 children per woman (which is less than the US' fertility rate). Tamil Nadu is as good as statistics get in India.

So, it is severely disappointing to see this news story from TN. Whipping women (as a form of exorcism) is certainly a big no-no in western society. And it is not as if it is just one woman being whipped - it is 2000 - a number too large to scoff at.

How should policy deal with this outrageous incident? Should the government step in and arrest all the offending priests? Should the women who were whipped against their will (apparently there were some who got whipped consensually) be given free legal aid to sue the priests and get them jailed?

I am sure that this awful incident is the exception and not the norm. My question is: how much of an exception is this?

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The UN is passing a resolution calling the Hindu Caste system a human rights abuse. I whole-heartedly support this measure. If 65 Million dalits still face widespread discrimination (as I know they do, what with myself being Indian and all), perhaps international humiliation will shame Hindus into renouncing their caste.

If I were a hindu, I would renounce my caste. I am not a Hindu. I am an atheist, so I do not have a caste to renounce. As a statement of solidarity with the 65M Dalits of India, I implore all my hindu reader(s) to renounce their caste.

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Varun Gandhi is causing inconvenience to a lot of people around the planet. Much the same way Adolf Hitler caused embarassment and inconvenience for all other people called Adolf on the planet. Varun Gandhi's latest espousal of a delusional right wing ideology (which claims that western music and culture are awful, but Hinduism's shameful treatment of 65M Dalits is the way to go) is no doubt causing immense heartburn to all those called Varun in the country. He has ruined a perfectly good name. Now, how many morons will call their son Varun?

The dying environment and other links

Professor Paul Krugman is filled with despair again. And this time it is because he thinks that (a) Despite the fact that almost all climate models made by smart researchers seem to have reached a consensus that unmitigated global warming will indeed be catastrophic, they are still not able to sell their ideas to the public. (b) This exceptionally hard sell is probably because the truth, as Al Gore contends, is inconvenient. (c) The hard sell is also because there's several vested interests driving media campaigns denying the basic facts. Since action on climate change would require government intervention, conservatives are finding it philosophically more convenient to deny climate change rather than alter their philosophy to account for an externality like climate change.

Can't say I disagree.
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There's a posting for a lecturer position in Baylor University, which has this line at the bottom:

"In light of Baylor’s strong Christian mission, successful applicants must have an active Christian faith."

I was not considering this anyway, but this is the first time I encountered something like this in an educational institution.
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Tyler Cowen says this book is good. It must be. If I ever finish reading the various books I have at home, then purchasing this book (or just getting it from the library) will not be beyond the realms of reasonable possibility.
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I have no Idea what Indians do with so many cows. I must say I am a little skeptical of the claim that there's a cow for every 4 people in India. Considering that the US consumes more milk than India, I suspect there's something fishy about the Indian figures. All the more strange because beef consumption is almost zero in India.
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Did you know that the average Indian works 400 hours per year more than the average American? At 8 hours an american day, that works out to 50 work days more. This is quite telling. (From the stats at the bottom of this page). The next time anybody complains that India is a lazy place where people don't work, I will cite this page and see them writhe in humiliation. (HT: Wife) .
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Working on a Sunday: Today's Links

I'm in the lab today because I want to acquire pressure distribution around a turbine blade experimentally.
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First of all, Stephan Pastis hits a new low today. This is worse than his usual groaners. And I think rat is almost right in the last line.
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What would the world look like if we removed the poorest per-captia, such that they cumulatively would comprise of only 5% of the world gdp? Well, you end up removing 43% of the world's population, including matrubhoomi! This is a fairly humbling statistic - and indicates that India has years to go before it can call itself a developed country. (I think they took nominal rates - and if they did take PPP GDP rates, then india might actually remain in the plot, but just barely).

Pigs, Swine Flu and Other thoughts for the day

How many porkers are currently in Afghanistan? The answer is here. But CNN's Dr. Sanjay gupta and his cameraman caught the H1N1 flu in the same country. Proving once and for all that the term 'swine flu' is a misnomer.
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This article from alternet argues that panic about the swine flu would kill more people than the flu itself. While I do not disagree with the gist of the article, I still think that if a virus like the spanish flu came around again, it would kill a similar number of people overall - especially in developing countries. Though strides have been made in public healthcare, populations have also gone up. And there's more extremely poor people in India now than they were then.
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Further obfuscation on climate: the developed world is trying to sell a fishy norm that they call 'carbon intensity', which measures greenhouse gas per-dollar of GDP. It is also unfortunate that China is playing the same game now.

I have myself sounded off on something similar before.

Off the top of my head I can come up with several objections to this.

(1) This norm rewards wastage. Your denominator increases if you waste a lot. It's like saying a hummer is more efficient that a yaris (which it might very well be, if we were comparing miles per dollar spent on purchase of vehicle).

(2) The west has a large financial sector whose main emissions are only indirect (like air-conditioning their offices etc.) This inflates their denominator and gives people the impression that the west is more efficient. And what of all the goods that China exports to the US dirt cheap?
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How mobile phones are changing the world. Interesting article from the Economist. Apparently, they're saying the 'Indian business model' can help in mobile phone penetration into other under-developed places. Good stuff. This is happening.
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Schmeat? This device is another which seems likely to take the ethical objections away from consuming meat. But how resource intensive is it? How carbon intensive is it? And how do they get animal muscle cells if they don't want to kill aminals?

Professors from my alma mater on strike (and other stories of the day)

Professors at IITs have decided to go on hunger strike, demanding more money. Professors at IITs make anywhere between 40k a month to 75k a month (the most senior of the lot). That's clearly a pittance - grad students in the US make the same amount (if one were to convert directly).

But a good way to compare pay is dividing the rupee amount by 10 rather than 50, for purhcasing power parity. (This is not perfect, because though a $2.00 loaf of bread in the US would cost Rs 20 in India, a $150 TV would cost closer to Rs 10k than Rs. 1500.). But dividing by 10 would be a good rule of thumb.

5 lakhs thus works out to $50k a year. Since assistant professors in the US earn about $70k, there might be some sense in asking for a 40% raise. But IIT professors get subsidized housing in probably the best area of the city - and some other perks. The money value of the subsidy will also have to be considered.

The problem with IITs is that they are run by the government. There are no nobel laureates at IITs. There is scanty industry sponsored research. There is no real incentive to work with the industry back there. Perhaps adopting an American (captialist) model of paying oneself from one's own research funds during summer could prove to be of value.

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And in other news today, people have shown that a heat cannot travel from cold to hot areas; eggs don't unscramble and go back into their shell. Evolution is not reversible.

Coal vs Nuclear and other thoughts for the day.

I have already linked to a not-so-very convincing article about the Coal vs Nuclear bargain. This article seems to be written by better informed people - and the arguments are fairly well made. The consensus seems to be (a) Coal is here to stay. We've got to figure out how to scrub CO2 out of it. There are pitfalls to sequestration (the fear of the unknown!) and they need to be overcome, but still. (b) Nuclear would be nice - and should be pursued too, because it has proven to be safer and cleaner than coal. (c) Demand side management is cheaper than supply side management.

Talking of demand side management, have people seen the New Physics building that they have here at Texas A&M. It's a remarkable, yet disappointing piece of architecture. The disappointment comes from the fact it is entirely centrally air conditioned like every other building in this univerisity. I still don't see the point in air conditioning stairwells, corridors and other places that are not populated for most of the day.

And don't even get me started on the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium in Dallas. The stadium is a shameless orgy of opulence. To create a stadium in the middle of suburbs with square kilometers of parking in the vicinity is wrong. This is why I hope petrol (gas) prices reach $6 per gallon and stay there. This will teach the morons who design monstrous stadia in suburbs lesson that they really deserve. I hope the guys who financed the stadium go bankrupt.
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There's no shortage of characters in India. Had the gentleman profiled in this article had the good fortune of being born in a developed country, I suspect he would have a successful diner of his own - with air conditioning and all. And maybe he would be wedded to his lady?
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Very cogent discussion regarding birth and death rates in the world. The main claim is that, initially, a poor society has a high birth rate to ensure that at least some of the offspring in a family do survive - but better sanitation sets off a population bomb - since people stop dying, but the birth rate takes time to adjust. Asia's population bomb has gone off long ago, and now, the population seems to be stabilizing, birth control is working quite well. Africa should be next. People should read this before talking about overpopulation being the world's only problem.

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Oil prices went up earlier this decade - so people invested more in finding more oilfields. And it turns out that the oil companies are reaping the benefits of thes e investments this year. A lot of new oil reserves were found all around the planet this year. This is actually horrible news in my opinion. Emissions are not going to go down - and gas will never reach the $6 and the guy who owns dallas cowboys will not go bankrupt. Sad.

Discussions for the day

This article is wrong. India should not test its H-bomb again, even if the original has been an abject failure. Nothing good can ever come of it. Sanctions from the west (after a hard won nuclear deal) would be disastrous to the 1billion poor of India's 1.2 billion people.

Since Pakistan does not have any N-bomb, India's only arguments for building the bomb are threats from China. But how will building one h-bomb ever act as a deterrent? China has tons of them. And if India builds one, china can build 10. They have the know-how.

India should work on its h-bomb only if it is known for sure that Pakistan is proceeding with its h-bomb plan (which it is not, right now).

And by this time, India should have realized that the largest threat to its stability is (a) Inside Maoist Rebels (b) Islamic terror which is destroying Pakistan right now. China does not figure in that list. Only some perverse ultra-nationalistic alarmist would think of China as a threat rather than an inspiration.

Throwing the sub-continent into an arms race and unifying the Pakistani people in hating India is certainly not what India needs right now. India and Pakistan must join hands and destroy terror in Pakistan - India's own self interest lies in this.

No amount of thermonuclear devices, no amount of N-bombs will ever quell the threat of terror. Talking about these devices is an immoral waste of time.

Discussions for the day

Paul Krugman seems to think the same way I do about GS employees getting back to whatever they do, after their jobs were saved by the American (and European) taxpayers. He makes a strong case for the Obama administration to impose strong pay caps on these jokers who don't do anything tangible but make tons of money on wall street.
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This is a fascinating article on poverty in India, from, Rediff. The thesis is that inequality in India seems to be increasing - and in some cases, can even be more dire than China. Also, there is a claim which says that India's rapid economic growth has not trickled town to the poorest of the poor - which is a worrying trend. If this is indeed the case, does further market liberalization hit a political road-block?
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Rice that does not need to be cooked, just soaked in water for half an hour? This seems like a good idea to cook without using fuel, which could be a good thing. Until one considers the following: where will the poorest of the poor in Orissa (the obvious targets of this thing) get the water to soak the rice in? Odds are it will be from a borewell or a river or something. And with India's water being notoriously congested with microbes of all variety, I am afraid this innovation will either be a non-starter or will kill many people. Probably the former.
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This report from the New Scientist makes sense. If we allow the people of this planet to deposit 750B tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere until 2050 (which most scientists agree is the maximum we can allow before the magic 2C increase in global temperature, thought to be a climate tipping point), then how should be distribute them?

If we were to distribute them to nations according to their current population, the US would get to put in a measly 35B tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere - something it would do in 6 years. India on the other hand would have 30 years to spare at its current level - a statistic which India is working hard to change to perhaps 10 years in the red. The only way for the US to continue would be to purchase energy credits from the poorer countries who will wind up with a surplus. This will make Americans become more energy efficient.

I will change my name to Adolf Mussolini if this works. There's no chance in hell that any legislation to curtail emissions in the US will ever comply with the recommendations of this report. The USA cannot agree on something as trivial and black and white as healthcare reform. Imagine the US trying to pass a bill which will require Americans to buy credits from poor countries.

And if Obama tries this, he will lose the elections. The republican party will come back to power, attack Iran and create more quagmires on the planet.

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A few posts ago, I had contended that the Cash For Clunkers situation was an ecological sham. Turns out, I am almost right. There's two reasons. Firstly, the Prius itself is an energy hog (during its manufacture phase). It takes more energy to manufacture a hybrid than it does to manufacture a conventional vehicle. So, if all clunkers in the US are trashed for Priii, the amount of emissions increase, because people who would not be in the market to procure transportation will actually purchase more energy intensive vehicles.

And secondly, consider this. If your vehicle gives a larger mileage, people will simply drive more. A fuel tax is the only reasonable solution, short of auto rickshaws or Tata Nanos for everyone. Not going to happen in the US. If Obama tries this, he will not get elected again.

Today's discussion (s)

Here's a fascinating image of the American space shuttle discovery re-entering the atmosphere. At these speeds, the velocity of air that the space shuttle encounters is immense. This results in a significant viscous dissipation within the boundary layer - especially in the 'impingement' stagnation zones.

Today's links

Tiny Vehicle of the Day. I've always held that small, efficient things will do well in India. So, this Reva car should be right up India's alley. The biggie here is the price. If the four seater is anything beyond 2.5 Lakhs, then it is probably going to flop.

That said, I like their idea of having some reserve battery power which can be remotely activated by customer service center - this makes it doubly sure that the vehicle will not be stuck in no man's land. It reminds me of the 'reserve' knob that auto-wallahs have under the passenger seat in India....

Green Initiative of the day. There's this gentleman in the North-east US, who has come up with a plan to industrially digest plastics and spew out diesel fuel for as less as $10 per barrel. I'm not fully sold on the idea yet, primarily because there's this jarring line in the article:

Production depends on the plastic used as feedstock, but each ton of waste will produce 3 to 5 barrels of product, according to Envion. Producing a barrel consumes between 59 and 98 kilowatt-hours — two or three days’ worth of electricity for a typical house. The price of electricity per gallon comes to 7 to 12 cents, the company says.

That's a lot of high grade electricity that they're using for this. So, the question is, is this sustainable?

And this is bad for the environment, because carbon trapped in plastics is being released into the atmosphere as climate changing CO2. Why is this on the "Green" blog again?

Cheap information fact of the day. Guess who is planning to set up kiosks all around the place which can print any of 2 million books on demand? Who else?

This story has fascinating repercussions. We're moving in the direction of having all our information, opinions, arguments and written art accessible to every (prosperous) human being, just a click away. Already, the internet is revolutionizing the way research is being done. What Newton, Einstien and the like would take months to do (perform a literature survey), an upstart philistine of a professor can perform in a couple of hours beside a computer.

The question is, has this seemingly infinite access to an infinity of verifiable information made us any better off? I suppose we could argue that we're living in the most peaceful time that the planet has ever seen (I am serious, the current time has the highest life expectancy and least unnatural deaths per capita), and this is probably (at some level) due to the ease of access to information in modern age. Because technology is the product of free flowing information.

Discussions for today

Shashi Tharoor has made a big fool of himself.

Politicians are servants of the people in a democracy. They are elected by the people - and the people decide whether they get hired next time. So, if a politician wants to make some not-very-pc jokes about his electors, then he/she is doing so at the risk of losing the election next time. Mr. Tharoor's elitism (agreeing that the economy class, that of his voters cannot afford to fly in, is 'cattle class') could (,should and will) be exploited in the next election cycle by his rival.

Perhaps Mr. Tharoor should sit down and get some good work done in his ministry (of state) for external affairs. If he does well, then perhaps he has a future in politics. Otherwise he shall just be consigned to an eternity of making pointless appearances in American comedy shows.
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This thing from Freakanomics. What is the probability of me conking off before I complete this sentence? I am sure that I can get a decent estimate looking at the plots in this post. A few quick thoughts about this:

1. I am sure insurance companies do know about this. Does this mean that the younger people get lower premiums?

2. Wonder how this changes with different geographic locations. Wonder how the curve would look in (a) India (b) Iraq, where a lot of the young have been killed by the war

3. And temporally, how was the distribution before and after the green revolution happened in India?

Lies on Climate Change

Professor *** Hall (I have removed his name, because I don't want google searches for his name leading people here) from the Chemical Engineering department delivered a talk yesterday for the ME Grad student seminar. His talk was supposed to be on biomass fuel conversion - which is his area of expertise.

What is not his area of expertise is the science of Climate Change. But that did not stop him from delivering a few slides straight from the Rush Limbaugh pocketbook .

Firstly, there was this horrendous claim that the world has been cooling for the last few years. Not warming. Cooling. His view was that all plots about global warming in the media were "MODELS" and not actual temperature data. The hockeystick curve is a "model".

This is incorrect. The hockeystick curve does not come from a model. Is is actual temperature and CO2 data based on ice cores, alga concentration, CO2 concentration in trapped air, tree ring width measurements and several other techniques (primarily because those stupid pterodactyls on ancient earth were not considerate enough to measure temperatures and record them). While it would be wrong to just believe one reconstruction, when several totally independent actual (not simulated) reconstructions tell the same story, it would make more sense to believe them. And that's what the smart climatologists have done. We've got several hockey-stick curves tracking temperatures for a very long period.. And they all tell the same story.

And then he went on to make an amateur flaw, in the spirit of "The ocean is salty. The rivers feed the ocean, so they must be salty". He went ahead and stated that human emissions are a small percentage of the actual co2 concentration on the planet. They're so small that they can't change anything.

But he fails to notice that human emissions are ANNUAL. They're a time derivative. The earth's co2 concentration is a concentration. Of course it is meaningless to talk about percentages. It's the compounding effect of using these for a very very long time (100 years). There's a thorough debunking of this argument here.

And when asked why climate change skeptics were not able to publish in reputed journals, he answered that all climate change is in political documents (such as Science, Nature and New Scientist, I added.). His discussion of climate change seemed to resemble the flat earth society website. Here is a very good sentence from that website:

Q: "Why do you guys believe the Earth is flat?"

A: Well, it looks that way up close. In our local frame of reference, it appears to take a flat shape, ignoring obvious hills and valleys.

Almost all his claims on climate change are incorrect. I felt like yelling out "You Lie!" during his speech. But I did not.

If many different methods agree

.. then they must probably be right. Here's the famous Hockeystick curve (published by Mann et al in '99). The curve is based on historical projections of temperature based on several different methods (tree rings, etc..).

Discussions for the day

It's getting tiring to think of monikers for the daily blog posts that I am now making. So let's stick to 'today's discussions' and 'discussions for the day' and subtle variations thereof?

I was unable to post to the blog yesterday; I was busy with career fairs and meetings and stuff like that there. But today promises to be more free.

Firstly, let me talk about something that I found quite interesting yesterday. Anecdotal first impressions of the Nano. The first few 'lucky' owners of the Nano were interviewed about their car. The interviews were fairly standard fare. But the interesting part was, when asked for the mileage of the vehicle, the mean estimate seemed to be around 23kpl, with only one estimate being below 20 kmpl.

This is in tune with Tata's estimates.

22kmpl translates to 50mpg, which would beat the socks off the current Toyota Prius (or the Chevy Volt, if GM were honest about the Volt's mileage). Goes to show how important being small is. Not that the hedonistic west will ever listen.

Assorted Links for the day

Let's start the day out on some climate-change related causality. There's this article in the times of India which quotes a breakthrough study which claims that the antarctic ice cap was created by decreasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere some 34M years ago. More evidence that CO2 helps warm the planet. Another article to throw at the face of the so called 'climate change skeptics' - not that they know how to read...

Here's an article on various socio-economic indicators in the USA. Note how the median household wage falls in the bush terms, but goes up in the Clinton terms? Looks like this is giving some ammunition to the progressive side of the asile - considering that the per-capita income went up in the bush years, but the median household income did not. What does that mean? The rich have become richer, while the poor have not.

Of course, let me add my standard disclaimer. Americans are plenty rich anyway, and I think that they must reduce their average household income if they want to reduce their ecological footprint - that's the most sure-shot way to do it. But this must happen across the board, not just the poorest of the poor.

India's Child labor dilemma. Ought Indians be stopped from employing young children as domestic help, or will these kids just die of hunger if their employment halts? Is there something to be said for regulating the child labor market. Ought sweatshops be cheered? (Al-la-Nicholas Kristof).

Norman Borlaug is Dead

RIP, Prof. Borlaug.

Prof. Borlaug is probably one of the reasons that a lot of India's billion have not yet starved to death. I think he probably has saved more people than any other single human being ever on this planet. He was also instrumental in 'proving' Malthus wrong. And that's quite something.

As an Indian and an Aggie, I hold Dr. Borlaug with a special respect.

Here's an emotional article from the ToI about Prof. Borlaug.

One of the more outstanding critics of the green revolution has been Dr. Vandana Shiva. Here's a piece by her, which should help one understand her viewpoint. (Incidentally, Prof. Borlaug did finally admit that there was some truth to her stand..)

I intend to look up pieces on India's green revolution and discuss them here. Because there's several arguments which contend that the green revolution wasn't a good thing. I just want to examine how well founded they actually are.

Here's a detailed obituary in the NY Times on Prof. Borlaug. Praise from the New Scientist here. And some disconcerting words about UG99 and its imminent foray into India in the coming few years.

September 12th

Eco-environmentalism in India. The success story (so far) of the save-silent valley movement, summarized in this documentary. The same environment vs progress debate in India - and I feel this is one of the successes of Indian democracy. (As opposed to China - and its three gorges project).

Silent valley seems to be in good shape now - what with buffers being created by the left leaning UDF government. Keeping fingers crossed about the future.

September 11 2009

Here's an interesting take on Nuclear Power from the examiner. This article alleges that emissions from various steps of making uranium fuel ready to generate power make nuclear power a far cry from being clean. This article asserts that some amount of electricity will be used in refining the ore - and some amount of diesel.

Also thrown in are arguments about other kinds of pollution including toxic non CO2 emissions - such as sulphuric acid and carcinogenic particulates.

While this article raises reasonable questions about nuclear power, I don't think any issues have been settled by the arguments within. A quantitative comparison of emissions is necessary - and this I don't see here. How much CO2 is emitted by producing a megawatt hour of electricity using uranium? This information can't be so hard to come by. And here it is. Will have to be read slowly and critically - considering that the gentleman writing this has an axe to grid - he is associated with the fusion energy program at Wisconsin-Madison.

Here's an article on a wholly different subject altogether. Education of women in India. And why doing something as simple and common-sensical as building toilets in schools could stop women from dropping out of schools. I don't think any woman in the west (or any man in the west for that matter) would attend a school without adequate sanitary facilities. It is plain scary to imagine that there's schools in India without bathrooms, actually.

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Here's an interesting one: ending hunger. There's this city in Brazil which had awful socio-economic indicators back in the early '90s. And now, it's doing pretty damn well. You could say it almost ended hunger. Nice to note noted Indian activist, Dr. Vandana Shiva taking an interest in this model. Perhaps with some lobbying, she can coax some city governments in India (a medium sized city like Pune comes to mind) to take such action.

Links for today - September 10th

Rather than share links on facebook, I shall do so here. This is because this blog is archival, I have more space to rant, opine and pontificate.

Firstly, we start off by a fairly solid piece by Professor Noam Chomsky, who proves once again that he is one of the last remaining voices of conscience in the rich world today. It's a fairly lengthy piece - and I will read it occasionally for a break. Better than seeing some nut's super-wall.

There's also a bunch of articles by Malc. Gladwell - a smart guy. They're apparently being compiled into a book, but they're available for free on the internets. (HT: Tyler Cowen).

Another article from the New Scientist on the Nocebo Effect.

Interesting article in NYTimes about a person who has moved back to India from the US - and how he is unable to tolerate life in general in the Indian city. Nostalgia?

I was listening to Obama's speech on healthcare yesterday - and I think he can do it. If he could coax the American people to vote for him due to his gifted oratory, then why can't he get some legislation passed by mere rhetorical flourish - especially, when everybody agrees about almost everything in the legislation?

And this one about median household income in the US. Note the horizontalness in the bush era. And this one is the plot of (median income / per capita income) with time in the US. Note how it falls - indicating that money is going into the richest pockets.

I'm off Facebook

I've decided to lay off Facebook on weekdays, because I just don't care if someone is doing well in some inane mafia wars game. I hate farmville. I really don't care if people send me a hug, what with me being happily married and all.

I just realized that I was spending way too much idle time on facebook without actually enjoying it. I would reflexively go to the facebook site and see that some nut out there has taken a quiz about how well he/she knows some other nut. My time is more valuable than that.

The only possible advantage with facebook is of course, the constructive discussions I have had with several people. Facebook acts as a conduit for sharing interesting articles and having discussions with smart people regarding the same. And this aspect shall be missed.

But I do think a competent blogger should be able to overcome that issue - by blogging about said articles instead. The blogoshpere is a better place to vent one's opinions - because one's thought process is not cut short by message size limitations (as they are on facebook). One can be as articulate as one desires - and there's plenty of space for rhetorical flourishes.

So, as of today, I have requested the wife to change my FB password log in for me on Sundays. That's the only time I intend to spend on FB. Lil green patch, you'll have to wait.

Cash for clunkers is not Green

You get a rebate of $4500 from the US government if you turn in your old low mileage vehicle for compaction and purchase a new high mileage vehicle. It is being touted by almost everyone as a smart idea. A green initiative.

I have my misgivings about the whole plan.

(1) Since a clunker has a low mileage, the high cost of refueling the thing acts as a disincentive from driving long distances.

(2) Since the new vehicle has high mileage, (and is in all probability much safer than the clunker in question) will that not increase the amount of joy rides? More vacations to Yellowstone from Texas? Since the economic need for car-pooling to work reduces, will people not feel tempted to just go it alone and keep their routines flexible?

(3) And here's the most important issue. If you were using your clunker, you would not be purchasing a new vehicle. Building and transporting a new vehicle constitutes ~ 30% of its lifetime energy costs. So, by tempting people to get rid of their clunkers and replace them with high mileage Prius-types, you are inadvertently creating a spike in greenhouse gas emissions.

I intend to elaborate on point 3 a little while later, with actual figures regarding the energy consumption (carbon footprint, if you will) of manufacture of vehicle.

Cash for clunkers is far from green. It is a stimulus program aimed at rewarding bad behavior, little else. As a matter of fact, the only way legislation can be green is if it mandates steep fuel taxes / energy costs. (I am pessimistic about cap-n-trade.It might have a tough time getting passed in the US senate, what with climate change denial being quite the rage in republican circles these days.).

Frisk 'em all

This was a bad month for the great Indian VIP ego. Things started with an American airline (Continental) frisking Dr. Abdul Kalam, India's most popular president ever (who was not popular enough with the politicians because he had a conscience, so was consigned to just one term, but that's a different story. The post of the president in India is as redundant as the appendix in humans, but that is another different story.). Everyone except Dr. Kalam himself seemed quite outraged about the whole thing. Is it not arrogant on the part of the lowly employees of a commercial airline to frisk a former head of the state of the world's largest democracy? Does Indian Airlines ever frisk Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton? This is clearly American arrogance!

The only reason that Indian Airlines does not frisk former American heads of state on visits to India is that they don't fly Indian Airlines. They do not fly Continental airlines either. Their country considers them important enough to fly them using either in Air Force One or some other state plane. If India does not care enough about her former heads of state and lets them travel like the common man, then the former head of state must be treated like a common man wherever he goes -especially when the person in question goes abroad, where there is little face recognition.

Every airline based in India must frisk any traveling VVIP, if it is also frisking the common man. And the VVIP must sit down and enjoy it. If the VVIP feels outraged and creates a fuss then he must be detained. Indians are reluctant to do so. Most people have this fear of the VVIP, the feeling that they're better than us somehow. It was this servile mentality that got the Indian parliament attacked a few years ago. The parliamentarians felt insulted when their vehicles were checked. If India needs to be taken seriously as a democracy, we must reaffirm our commitment to the notion that all people are equal. Some are not more equal than others.

And let's come to the whining by King Khan, India's most famous actor, who was detained in Newark because his name appeared in a watch list. It happens to everyone, Mr. Khan. You are not alone. Don't whine about it. None of your fundamental rights were violated. America is justifiably worried about people who enter it (especially after 9/11). Increased security is probably the best way to deal with it - it creates only minimal inconvenience and does not kill people in far-away lands (like other methods adopted by the US do). The TSA dude screening you did not know who you were. He did not see your movies. It's possible. You're not that famous here. You're one of us. Deal with it.

If you have the flu now

... it's probably the swine flu. Go ahead. Get checked.

Looks like the pandemic has spread its tentacles into India. Here's to hoping that this will be nothing like 1918.

Why do Indian Professors in the US work on Weapons?

Anybody who is living right now should have realized that

(a) War is miserable - especially for people that are being bombed.
(b) A significant proportion of current wartime death is being brought about by America's military misadventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and now (alas) Pakistan.

Professors are supposed to be smart. They should be the first to understand this point. Especially professors who began their learning career elsewhere - say at some IIT in India. This is because (a) they are smarter than the average human being (by mere virtue of them being professors) (b) They are not subjected to the patriotic propaganda that Americans have been subject to.

So there's essentially two possibilities.

One. Maybe there is not anything unethical with killing millions of innocent people in war (I kid you not, the Iraq death toll alone exceeds a million) in order to achieve ill-defined goals. Maybe I've been wrong all along. Maybe there's something to be said for the Limbaugh-Bolton-Cheney worldview which I have not been able to fathom. Maybe these smart professors know something that I don't.

Two. Maybe the professors are doing what is best for their career, treating money from the military as they would money from other sources. Their families won't feed themselves after all. Since the money only implicitly tainted, most people won't know the difference. And since this taint is that implicit, it's nothing that going to a church/temple/mosque won't solve.

I don't have anything against the poor joining the military in the US. They're doing this because they are convinced that they're doing the right thing for god and country. They are doing this because they are convinced that the other side is evil. Military recruits in the US (much like anywhere else) are overwhelmingly lower middle class. They are doing this for opportunity - and also because they been subjected to propaganda from the get-go. I'm not judging these people who are convinced they're doing the right thing. They are brave enough to put their lives on the line for a cause they believe in. They are more victim than oppressor. I am also willing to give professors who were educated entirely in the US the benefit of the doubt.

But professors who underwent a significant amount of education beyond the US borders are a different story. They have a choice to take a conscientious stand. Some refuse to work on military projects. A tip of my hat to them. But some sell their souls and participate in the mass goring of people elsewhere. And in my book, they rank lower than GS employees.

Emissions, Development and Gandhian Engineering

Poverty and inequity are probably India's largest current bug-a-boos. With a massive poor or lower middle class approximately thrice the size of the next most populous country (USA), development is quite a challenge for India. India's development (along with China's development) will indeed be the story of this century. All around the world, a massive population will likely wake up this century - and will seek to use the planet's resources in making itself more prosperous.

Another telling battle this century will be a battle against nature's tendency to heat up the planet in response to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. It is widely accepted in the scientific community it is probably in humanity's best interests to spew out as little CO2 as possible.

Energy is the cornerstone of modern civilization. The cheapest available energy these days is fossil fuel based. The combustion of fossil fuels releases the carbon sequestered by plants millions of years ago under the ground as low temperature radiation trapping CO2. This cheap access to fossil fuel based energy has let today's rich accumulate their wealth.

The party's over now. Ignorance was bliss. But now we can ignore no more. Unrestrained CO2 emissions will result in runaway global warming, with the ever increasing danger of droughts, fiercer and more frequent hurricanes, erratic monsoons and horrendous sea level rises. The ice reservoirs that are the arctic and antarctic are melting at a rate unknown to human civilization, lifting sea levels around the planet.

So, here we have two of humanity's largest problems. Poverty and Climate change. Poverty requires that the developing world develop - increase its GDP - and in the process increase its carbon foot-print. And this inevitable increase in the standard of living of the poor has serious environmental repercussions. The biggest problems of this century have contradictory solutions, a cursory observation might suggest.

No politician in their right mind will ever deny that the poor nations have a right to lift their billions from poverty. [But comments regarding the over-population of the poor world are inevitably made. It is a strongly held view in the west that overpopulation is the root of all evil in the third world (India in particular). This is downright wrong - but probably the best that uninformed unadventurous minds can come up with, But we'll get into that in another post.] But the poor nations get blamed anyway - like Hillary Clinton's (whose own carbon footprint is probably larger than that of a few villages in India) recent stand that India ought to do more to cut its own paltry carbon consumption.

These seemingly contradictory goals of development and abating climate change can be achieved by an extremely parsimonious form of engineering that is being called 'Gandhian Engineering'. While it is inevitable that India and Africa (and other under-developed regions) will try to get a taste of the good life, whoever said that it should be extremely inefficient, like it is in the US? Can, using really smart engineering, India increase its standard of living without increasing its per-capita GDP to levels comparable?

Given the tremendous pressure on India's natural resources due to large population densities, a tremendous focus on miserliness (called 'value for money') and efficiency of resource utilization exists. Such pressure on resources exists nowhere else on this planet (perhaps with the exception of Japan).

A case in point, of course, is the Tata Nano. If the bottom billion of this planet were driving cars, would the environmentalist in you rather have them driving around in Hummers or Nanos? The tata Nano has the smallest carbon footprint amongst all vehicles in the market now. Even though the Prius gets a comparable mileage, but it takes a significant amount of energy to build and transport.

Do you think that every room will be air-conditioned in a developed India? I suspect that bathrooms, corridors and kitchens will be left out - and perhaps even living rooms. Do you think Indians will ever build those palatial monstrosities that pass for houses in Houston or Dallas? Nope. My money is on reasonably spacious apartments.

All in all this will mean that India's GDP (PPP) will not be comparable to America's $40k per person - or even Japan's $30k per person. If the emissions are to ever be controlled, the onus will be on the west to do the cutting(possibly by reducing its per capita income, ultimately, possibly through 'cap and trade?'). And since a lowering the standard of living will not be an option - guess what the west will have to adopt. Gandhian engineering!

On GS-type market manipulation.

In most American States, prostitution is illegal. But investment banking (of the Goldman Sachs' variety) is not, which is ironic. Because prostitution these days is not a danger to anyone (what with condoms and all to stem the spread of aids). But GS style I-Banking is different.

Since GS does not make anything, lots of its activities are zero sum activities. Since their entire business model is based on not adding any tangible value to anything, all their profits, at some level, do come out of the losses of others. Whenever they make money, it usually means that some other poor dude is losing money elsewhere - and not getting anything for it. At least with prostitutes, they get momentary pleasure. With GS, everyone involved gets ripped off - except GS investors and GS employees.

Of course, one must think twice before one blames a company for doing something that is fully legal. Splicing and selling securities. If there is money to be had, and you know how to get at it within the framework of today's restrictions - they would be wholly irrational if they did not do it. So, the blame must not lie with GS' employees or with its management - who have just exploted a loophole in the law. Just like one must not blame the prostitute for selling sex. She's got a family to feed - as does a GS employee. The GS employee feed his/her family with Caviar - wheras the prostitute does so with bread - but the picture is the same. I have no beef with GS employees (except that I view them with utter condescention - because they had a choice to do something meaningful with their lives, but they chose to do something utterly meaningless and damaging to others). I do not view prostitutes with condescention, of course. They, on the other hand really have no choice. I don't think they like performing demeaning sexual acts with anyone with a thick wallet. But they have to.

My issue is with the nexus between the policy makers and GS. American public policy, it looks like, is more in tune with keeping GS alive by bailing out everyone that ower it money (AIG's $13B bailout comes to mind) than looking out for American taxpayer interests. If the US taxpayer had not bailed out AIG, it looks like GS would have perished. That would have been lovely. Perhaps its employees could do something useful with their lives instead.

Climate Change

That the climate is changing because of Carbon Dioxide emissions due to human activity is a fairly well accepted fact. There's a mountain of evidence in the scientific literature corroborating this - and very little questioning it. This article will not question this scientific consensus, because the author believes that Climatologists would probably know more about this situation than politicians and Cable TV pontificators.

Given that the planet is probably warming because of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, what is the best course of action a developed country can adopt? What steps ought be taken to mitigate this situation? What steps would be fair?

The earth has been warming and cooling over its entire history. There's always been ice ages; there's been extremely warm periods. The planet's climate is cyclic, nay, chaotic. Climate change has been triggered by a variety of events in the past - such as massive volcanoes, solar activity, life and so on. The new increase in temperature is nothing new. The earth is used to it. Planet earth will not collapse. If the goal of the environmentalist is to save life on earth, then the environmentalist needs to fret not. The planet will be just fine. Life will do just fine.

It's the human race that we must worry about. An increase in sea level would sink some of our more densely populated places on the planet. NYC. Mumbai. And the entire of Bangladesh's Ganga delta. A change in precipitation patterns could result in the desertification of currently inhabited areas (Australia is already facing this). The failure of monsoons could spell disaster more more than a billion people. So let's get this clear - the environmentalist impulse is not an altruistic impulse - it is grounded is pure selfishness. The dangers of climate change are real, clear and present. Climate change is worse than models have predicted. The Arctic AND Antarctic are losing ice cover every year. Planet earth is finding it more and more difficult to support 6B humans. We are getting closer and closer to a Malthusian scenario.

If I were a neutral observer hailing from another planet. An observer who did not have a horse in the race - and I heard something like this about Earth.

Of the 6B people on this planet, 1.5B people live relatively luxurious lives - they have cars, centrally air conditioned houses and live up to 75 years each. They have heated indoor swimming pools which are in air conditioned rooms which they use in mid-summer. They waste two or three times of what they eat. They eat other animals that are fed more food than the bottom billion of this planet.

Then there's 3B middle class people who drive cycles and two wheeled motorized vehicles. They have ceiling fans rather than air conditioners. (A few of these have an air conditioner in their bed rooms). They use public transport. They can feed their families quite well - but they do not waste that much food. Their diet contains a lower proportion of meat.

And then there's the bottom billion or so in this planet that has no roof to sleep under; a bathroom called the wide outdoors. Most children can't make it to adulthood. Those who do live under the treat of AIDS and foreign misslies fa

I would immediately make some quick recommendations. Get rid of those things that you can do without - all those things that result in emissions that you really don't need. You know, like those excesses. Do you really need those massive portions in restaurants when you're going to leave half of it on your place. Do you really need to gorge yourself to the brim? Do you really need to drive that ridiculous SUV when you get from one point to another in a Tata NANO - or public transport?

Does the GDP of a country really have to be so large? Why would any country need a GDP (per capita, PPP) of $40K - when the same standard of living could be obtained with a lower GDP of, say $20k (per capita, PPP) . Why all the excess inefficiency? Economic heresy, even the most liberal of the economists would call this. But what are our choices?

I know that this sounds a little too much like some socialist propaganda that most Americans are brainwashed into thinking is evil. So, let me spell it out in language that will not turn off too many Americans (and other victims of western propaganda)

I hate socialism for the same reasons that Americans hate s. I think socialism is little else but an excuse to be lazy and corrupt. That's why things do not work in India (yet). Petty corruption has reduced only after Dr. Singh set India free from license Raj.

Capitalism will spew out garbage (like it has been doing right now in the US and other advanced economies) if all the costs are not accounted for accurately. I look at free markets and capitalism as means to an end rather than an end itself. A tool, if you will, which brings out efficiency - as long as the inputs given to it are correct. Of course, if you do not price the externalities (such as the cost required be carbon neutral, restricting climate change) appropriately, then you end up with Garbage. Garbage in, Garbage out.

And it is my firm conviction that henceforth, all non-green utilities must be required to sequester the carbon. All oil refiners, all coal mining companies - everything - must be responsible for sequestering all their carbon. This will not come cheap - and this cost must be passed on to the end user.

Of course, this will result in higher energy costs. That's the idea. These higher energy costs ought to result in a contraction the economy (I suspect, since I think the current standard of living is unsustainable) - a contraction which will lower the GDP across the world - a contraction that shall help make the planet more sustainable. If the economy really does grow, it will do so by developing cheap and environmentally friendly (carbon neutral) technologies. And with such technologies, it deserves to grow.

Even if the rich world contracts 10% per capita, the developing world (such as India) will need to grow significantly to achieve standard of living parity. So, yes, the developing world must be given the same opportunities as the developed world. The economy must rationalize - making the west more efficient.

But here's the rub. There's no chance in hell that the current democratic system that the developed world enjoys will ever let a politician take any steps that will result in an economic contraction. The polar bears, I'm afraid, will sink. Obama's cap and trade will be designed such that it won't hurt the economy - and therefore, it won't work. You know, the only hope for humanity right now is in Wall Street's hands. The only hope for the survival of humanity as we know it lies in wall street inflating another bubble that sends the planet into a full fledged economic depression - destroying GDPs all around the planet.

Historic Verdict in India

The Delhi high court judges have understood that you should not be punished for choices you don't make. Just like you're not punished for having pimples on your face - or not having pearl white teeth, you will no longer be potentially punished for being gay in India.

The Article 377 (an embarassment that the drafters of the constitution copied from the British laws for India - which even makes "unnatural sex" (oral and anal) between a man and a woman illegal) - has been struck down by the Delhi high court - saying that it was a transgression of fundamental rights. While this is a fundamentally fantastic ruling, I am a little worried about constitution being amended by the judiciary rather than the legistature. But that's a different story.

This is a wonderful ruling, a victory for civil rights over ridiculous, stupid, archaic and bigoted religious fanaticism (purveyed by the Church, Mosque and Temple in India). This is a victory for the people.

As an Indian in the USA, no longer do I need to feel uncomfortable when I see the video of Mahmodoud Ahmedinijad (Iran's dictator who was believed to be legally elected back then) hold that there are no homosexuals in Iran.

International T20s are Meaningless

The world was subjected to a T20 world cup a few weeks ago - hosted in the UK, where most of the followers were sub-continent ex-pats. The tournament saw the elimination of Australia in the preliminary round - and the elimination of the economic giant of the game (India) in the round before the semi-finals.

The problem here is the very nature of T20. It is a game which depends tremendously on luck. All sports depend on luck; cricket possibly more than others. But T20 cricket is at a different level. T20's results are more random; they are more like the results one could obtain by tossing up coins. Let's say that (for argument's sake), in test cricket, 90% of the time, the better team wins (if there is a result in the match). One day cricket, the better team wins around 80% of the time. But with T20, I would conjecture that the better team would win 65% of the time - which makes upsets more likely.

Why is T20 more dependent on luck than test cricket? This is quite easy to answer. Because T20 matches are very small - and very competitive. One bad over by a bowler can mean the difference between a bad score and a good score. One mishit by a well set batsman be the difference between a successful chase and a loss. The results of T20 are very sensitive to random incidents.

Whereas, in test cricket, an expensive over can be compensated for by an economical over down the line. A mishit can be compensated for by the same batsman in the second innings - or by another following batsman, who has relatively less pressure. The longer duration of the game smudges out the randomness - time-averages out the noise, if you will. Test cricket is thus more reliant on strategy and raw talent than T20s. It would also stand to reason that one day cricket would lie somewhere between T20 and Test cricket in the 'dependence on luck'.

International T20s give the victors bragging rights - and send the losers soul-searching. But one would do well to remember that with luck dominating the whole situation.; the emotions of a massive number of people (the entire population of cricket-crazy India, for instance) are played around with with randomness. This is meaningless.

The ICC would do well to abolish the T20 world cup. That's because the IPL provides cricket of similar (if not higher quality) than the world cup. And there's plenty of close finishes - and the tournament is long enough to require consistent performance to succeed (the ensemble average effect?). The Deccan chargers were indeed the best team throughout the tournament this year - and the Kolkota was certainly the worst. The same cannot be said of the mercureal Pakistani team.

I dare say that each of the IPL franchises was at least as good as the 'world champion' Pakistani team. (This makes sense even when one looks at the sample size of the population that each of the IPL franchises is picked from: 1200M/8 = 150M, which is the population of Pakistan!). We can argue that all International cricket is meaningless based on this - and will become even more so as India's economy grows - but I've already done that before.

More on Iran

I've been following the situation in Iran quite closely (as seems to be everyone with a TV / internet connection). The Iran situation is getting coverage all around the world. It is creditable that the plight of a suppressed people is getting such media traction.

There are several articles which argue that the results of the elections (the current bones of contention, if you will) are rigged. There's this article (with the feel of a Journal paper) by people who seem to be academicians at a British University. Then there's the amusing analysis written in a recent edition of the Washington Post which argues that the numbers bear the signature of a rigged election. And then there's this analysis in the New Scientist which uses that old statistical treasure, Binford's Law to argue that the results were generated by a computer.

And for a historical perspective, Alternet has a brutally passionate piece on why claims, not unlike those purveyed by the Mullahs in Iran, that America is the Great Satan - do have a strong basis.

Clearly, I do not have any business sounding off on Iran. I am not an Iranian citizen. I am an Indian - and India's political system at least does not have the kind of repression that Iran bears. But I have always sounded off on things that are none of my business. So, of course, I will open by mouth here are talk about what I think. (The entire US of A is doing this - so why should I be left out?).

Firstly, why are the Iranian protests getting so much airtime? Does the fact that American drones are killing more civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan per day count for nothing? Why are we not looking at the plight of the Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans here? This is WRONG.

A popular (albeit somewhat sexist and inappropriate) analysis seems to be doing the rounds on Facebook. Apparently the plight of the Iranian people is getting so much airtime because they're using many pretty women as protesters. This analysis might have an iota of truth in it. The fact is that the wronged people here are MIDDLE CLASS. Iran is a fairly well-to-do nation - with a per capita income 4-5 times that of India - and 30% of the US.

The Iranians (who are protesting) are cellphone toting, twitter and Facebook people. Americans (and the rest of the developed word) can therefore identify themselves with the Iranian cause. An Afghan shepherd who has never heard of twitter – they can’t identify with. His life is no value - as has been proven by zero-outrage-inducing drone attacks in Pakistan.

So here’s a lesson for you. If you are an oppressed community – and want the rest of the developed world on your side – somehow, stop being poor. Become middle class. Beg, borrow, steal! And America (and the rest of the world) will be a your champion. If you’re still poor on the other hand, and do not have access to twitter, then watch out! A drone will drop a missile on you sometime.

Update: Time's Joe Klien has a very insightful piece on the Iranian situation. I quote

Iran's government is a conservative, defensive, rational military dictatorship that manages to subdue its working-class majority softly, by distributing oil revenues downward. (On June 23, Ahmadinejad announced that doctors' salaries would be doubled, for example.)

Smelling fishy in Tehran

Mahmoud Ahmedinijad's government is certainly not one of my favourite governments. A pointless, unpragmatic hardliner whose record in Iran is Akin to Lalu's in Bihar (as far as the economy is concerned) - and whose record outside Iran includes denying the holocaust thus lending illegitimacy to the genuine grievance that Palestinians have about Israel usurping their homeland. He, along with the hard-line former American president (Bush) were responsible for ratcheting up fears of yet another war in the middle east.

Since America hates Ahmedinijad, it does look like the American media has a horse in the race. Building up the rally in Iran would tend to give it a ratings boost. So, one does wonder, is the whole situation in Iran manufactured by those with vested interests?

This does not seem to be the case. You can't count 50 million paper ballots in three hours and decide a winner. The election results do not seem to make sense when viewed side by side along with the older election results. The reformers should have got a larger amount of the vote. And the main challenger (Moussavi) should have won in his home town at least - looking at how large his rallies are in Tehran. This probably proves once and for all that democracy in Iran is a sham. And Iranians, the smart and proud people that they are, are likely to revolt - if the ruling government does not have a genuine majority. And that's exactly what they seem to be doing right now.

How will the government react to this? Will they use excessive force and kill a lot of protestors? Are we seeing the beginning of a repressive regime? Or will the Iranians have another revolution that shall result in a more liberal democracy.

It is inevitable that the government shall try to ban services such as twitter and facebook. They might even end up banning blogs and access to the internet. But people are experts at setting up proxy servers. But it remains to be seen how long this rage against the government shall last. Will the Iranian people be able to sustain this rage in the long run?

The west must do what it can to ensure that access to these services goes on. If necessary, wimax routers (which offer wireless internet for a range of upto 50 km or more) can be installed along the borders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey (and Pakistan?). This will give Iranians unlimited access to facebook and twitter (at least in a narrow geographic region). Services passing on information must be orgainzied by email. Satellite photography should replace on-the-ground cameras to monitor unrest. This is the 21st century. We must use current technology to avoid the biggest mistakes of last century - the rise of totalitarianism - especially in large, rich and populous countries.

Expressing solidarity with the Iranian people. [ And hence the sudden green-ness]. Here's to the hope that the truth shall prevail - and that the election results are processed more transparently. If Ahmedinijad's victory was indeed so transparent, then why are the powers that be making this process so opaque?

To watch this

Niall Ferguson's 'Ascent of money' needs a reading. Or better still, a viewing. It has spent way too much time on the NY Times bestseller list to be ignored.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ascentofmoney/

I intend to do so as soon as I get some 'me' time. Probably will make some inroads into it tonight.

W.T.F., Texas!

The state of Texas, in an attempt to increase average university grades across the board is considering allowing concealed handguns on campus. This is by far the worst and stupidest of laws I have ever seen passed by an elected government since that law in Afghanistan that legalized raping one's wife. This is disgusting. I suddenly feel like an endangered species.

This bizarre even by Austin's ridiculously perverse standards. It takes a phenomenal amount of brainwashing for a bunch of fully grown men (and women) to sit in a room together and pass a law to allow notoriously emotional 21 year olds to carry guns into class. How on earth can a teacher feel safe handing out Ds and Fs in a class - when it is not impossible that one of the students might fly into a rage and whip out one of those weapons? It looks like that pompous fool, rush limbaugh has done his fair bit of brainwashing.

That A&M and U T Austin said NO to this legislation (the former, a staunch republican school) apparently had no impact on those making decisions. W.T.F. And they call this a democracy.

I am not a US citizen. As an F1 student, I am not allowed to carry a gun. When I did make my decision to come here, this stupid legislation did not exist. I did not think that I could ever end up in a situation where people around me in the univeristy would be allowed to carry guns. I feel ripped off. I feel decieved.

You know what this is? This is an incentive for myself and wife to get done with our PhDs ASAP and get out of Texas before someone kills us here. Because staying alive is a priority. You could say I'm pro-life here. Mine.

Congratulations, India!

Democracy in India is doing well. The world's largest and most improbable democratic exercise is not just surviving, it is thriving. India has voted overwhelmingly for a progressive yet conservative fiscal agenda; for a liberal social policy. They have voted out the politics of jingoism and polarization based on religion.

Voters have rejected non-performing social engineers such as Lalu Yadhav - and have hammered Mayawati. Voters seem to have voted for performance - and have rejected incompetence. (Except in the case of Maharashtra - because all parties in contention were, well, incompetent!). Nitish (from the NDA) hammered Lalu - and it was most gratifying to see this. Modi won because, though he slaughters minorities in his free time, he actually does a lot of developmental work. Muslims in Gujarat are better off economically than Muslims in UP for this very reason.

And this decisive mandate in these elections is excellent news for India. Since India does not have to dilly dally trying to maintain a coalition on a knife's edge - the government will have more time and resources to face the hostile current economic climate. Indian markets will see a boom.

The overwhelming numbers of India's poor need a compassionate government. The American style republican garbage will not work in India - because you're talking about life and death situations here (i.e. if the govt. is not compassionate, the poor will die in larger numbers). Policies at the center MUST be conservative enough to spur growth and generate wealth - and liberal enough to ensure that growth is inclusive the wealth is spread around. And Dr. Singh has done just that in his first term. And now that he has a freer hand, it looks likely that he will do a better job. The left, purveyors of a failed, archaic and corrupt ideology have been thoroughly 'decimated' in these elections. Good riddance.

The hope is that the current elections send the following message to our political parties. Dividing the electorate among caste and religious lines shall work, at best, for one election cycle. To be consistently successful - one needs to keep the electorate happy by making their lot better. (Unless you're in Maharashtra).

Am I being too optimistic? Would a healthy dose of scepticism be needed for my conclusions to be more realistic? Am I cherry picking results to justify my arguments? Am I indulging in a certain amount of truthiness? Please feel free to sound off in the comments section.

A very, very important week

This is possibly the most important week of the decade for India.

Keeping my fingers crossed for a somewhat fiscally conservative, socially progressive, non-chauvinistic government in India, which selects its leaders based on merit rather than nepotism. (Unfortunately, this disqualifies every major party in the fray in the polls).

I will probably not be distraught if either the BJP or Congress come to power again this time. As long as it isn't those stupid Marxists who are doing their best to perpetuate the rule of corruption in India by keeping the multitudes extremely poor. Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that the Marxists are about to get gored in Bengal and Kerala.

Both t BJP and Congress are likely to follow 'liberal' economic policy (which, ironically means fiscal conservativism). And this is the key to lifting India's millions from extreme poverty. But that said, the BJP comes with horrible baggage of overseeing India's latest Genocide - the indiscrimimate slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat. If had a vote (which I do not, because I am not in India), I would have voted for congress for this very reason.

Awaiting the 16th of May.

Dying Newspapers in the US of A

I keep myself abreast of world affairs - by reading many newspapers. The New York Times, The Hindu, The Times of India and the Telegraph (UK) to name a few. If I'm in a foul mood, I get some comic relief reading the garbage in the WSJ editorial pages. But I don't purchase these; I just go to their websites.

If I need the funnies, I look at the Pearls before Swine page in comics.com. I follow the Huffington post and Alternet.org. I see Drudge often (if I want to know how the right wing is spinning things). I laugh at Glenn Beck's antics ( which are often ridiculed on Huffington Post). For quick breaking news, I use google news and cnn.com. For news pertaining to India, I check out NDTV and The Hindu.

A common theme among all these is that I don't like to pay for information. I am a free rider. Since information is available for free, I would have to be absolutely irrational actually pay for these. But this tendency (which seems to be the way with most people these days), is actually posing an existential problem for newspapers.

More people are reading the New York Times than they ever were, mostly on the internet. Not many are buying it. Advertising revenues do not seem to be enough to justify their costs. Every passing day, it is becoming more and more evident that the business model of the newspaper business is fatally flawed. Soon shall come a time when the New York Times will not be able to afford correspondents in far flung places.

And this will be a sad day for Journalism. The New York times is a remarkable institution. It is, in my opinion one of the US' most reliable newspapers. A change in the NY Times will change the world as we know it - for the worse. The times is a liberal bulwark in the US - a reasonable, moral counter to Murdoch's garbage.

I would not mind paying for newspapers if I had to. But a subscription based model for the newspapers on the internet is a non-starter. If the NY Times charges money, some devotees will purchase subscriptions; but most people will just move on and start frequenting other websites. Factual reporting will take a hit (except in the TV).

Another issue is that if I buy a subscription to NYTimes and not to Washington Post, and one of the blogs on NYTIMES.com links to Washington Post, I will not be able to access that information. The internet surfing experience will cetainly deteriorate.

Two options come top mind here:

1. Newspapers adopt a cable-tv type model, where you purchase a 'news package' from your internet service provider. Let's say $30 a month, which gives you access to all sites that get their cut from the internet service provider / package provider. This ensures that links are not broken.

2. Perhaps newspapers ought to be allowed to have stakes in TV channels (like Murdoch has been allowed to). Maybe if the NY Times merged with MSN or someithing, perhaps their online presence could become more profitable (by sharing resources). This will result in a contraction in the industry - but at least the most important players (the fact-gatherers) will not collapse.

Toying with Minimalism

I am experimenting with blog layouts, as the avid reader would doubtlessly have realized by now. There is something to be said for the soothing effect of a plain white background and a basic, uncomplicated font. I've also tried to keep the page clutter free, and various components easy to find.

I hope this layout stays for a while. I like it a lot.

Pitfalls of Technology?

The other day, I was going through one of the newer editions of New Scientist. It is an excellent magazine - and it gets one up to date on advances in science and technology. One of the articles in the magazine talked about little robots which can climb the wall and walk on the ceilings - a design inspired by the gecko. Essentially geckos have little hair on their feet, which allow them to cling on to the wall using intermolecular van-der-wall's forces. But this is not what the post is about.

The story was very nice, well written and all that. But one particular line left a jarring impression on me. It was regarding potential applications of the upside-down robots. The inventors reckoned that their little robots could be used by people to paint walls and ceilings.

This set me off on a tangent which has little to do with the actual nitty gritties of said technology. Are little robots scouting the walls excreting paint what the world needs right now, with hundreds of thousands of people (especially in the third world) paying their monthly rent and feeding their families with day jobs as painters? Should we, at this point in time, be encouraging technology which will result in further unemployment?

I also do understand that this line of thought is not new. Mulayam Singh Yadhav, head of the UP based Samajwadi party, came up with a manifesto recently (which Sonia Gandhi calls a 'stone age manifesto'). The manifesto promised to minimize the use of computers in government - among other things. The argument, of course, was that computers do the work that people could do instead - therefore, technology destroys employment.

Let us consider a thought example. Suppose a company makes a significant breakthrough in dish-washing technology. It is willing to sell dishwashers that cost Rs 10,000 - which use very little water and electricity (and therefore do not have a significant monthly running cost). What possible impacts could this have on the Indian society? What about the servant maids who labour twelve hours a day seven days a week? Would it be fair to say that technology did indeed destroy employment - or forced their wages down?

Of course, some jobs were created in the factory which manufactures these dishwashers. But these just cannot replace the jobs lost by the servant maids (in number). The argument goes, that the money saved by the people by utilizing this technology could actually go into further investment - and this could end up creating employment opportunities. (You could ultimately start a business if you kept saving money, employing more people). This is exactly how it has worked so far in the west. But the question is: is the same model valid in India - where poverty is more extreme - and when an immediate denial of employment will result in immense financial hardship? (It seems that India's disastrous experiment with socialism for the first 40 years after its independence would indicate that shunning technology is just not an option),

This seems to indicate to me that there's a certain type of technology that opens doors - and there's technology that destroys jobs. A computer is a good example of technology that creates more opportunities (Mulayam Singh's manifesto notwithstanding) - just by making information easier to access. Cell phone service in India alone has created a lot of employment . But robots that paint the roof could be a different story altogether.

I'm no economist. I'm just thinking on a tangent here. I would not be surprised to hear that there's a gazillion papers building upon, corroborating, disproving and downright rejecting this notion in the literature.

Skeptical about the 'flu?

The American media is going nuts. Crying wolf. Or should I say, crying pig?

Most 'thinking' humans are skeptical. They contend that

(a) America is known to have a hyper-active media. The media always tends to hype things up. When the media says we're all going to die, it does not mean it. It is a slave to its ratings.

(b) Good ol' normal influenza kills 100 people per day on average. The swine 'flu cannot hold a candle to it. This is all misplaced concern.

While these points of view are indeed not without merit, we would do well to remember the great pandemic of 1917. The Spanish flu killed anywhere between 20 Million to 100 million people around the world. (No, this is not a typ0 - almost one third the population of Europe was wiped out). And this was caused by a virulent strain of the influenza virus. The single most deadly event of the previous century. And arguably the largest death toll by any single incident. Clearly, 'flu is serious business.

Perhaps the immense death toll of the Spanish flu would be enough to justify the media fear mongering. Staying on the safe side, after all. While this does convince me that some amount of fear-mongering is indeed warranted by the popular media, I would still like a few clarifications.

1. Does this swine disease have a larger probability of morphing into something like the Spanish 'Flu, than does a normal influenza virus? If it does not, then all the hype is but pointless.

2. Why isn't the original spanish 'flu still around, if it was so successful?

3. Why are deaths being reported only in Mexico? Is it because the disease is far more widespread than acknowledged? This would appear to be so, since so many people who have traveled to other parts of the world from Mexico have contacted the disease. If the number of sick people in Mexico were only 2000, then the probability that so many tourists caught the disease is very, very low.

It's Election Time!

When I used to live in India, I did kind of take Indian democracy for granted. But only now, when I look at it from a distance do I see how historic, inspirational and remarkable the whole thing is.

Because what is happening this month (Mid-April to Mid-May '09) is the largest exercise of democracy in the history of humanity. With 700 Million potential voters and turn outs of the order 60%, this is a mammoth undertaking. The number of ballots cast will be larger than the entire population of the world's second largest democracy, the US! Every subsequent Indian general election that happens from now till around 2050 (when the Indian population is expected to peak) will set the record for being the largest the planet has ever seen.

What I meant when I said that I used to take Indian Democracy for granted, was that I assumed it was infinitely robust. I thought Indian democracy would stay until infinity. But a little time away from home (and regular perusal of world news) later, I realize how feeble the whole thing actually is - and how close India is to being an illiberal democracy.

The single largest threat to Indian democracy is not Islamic terror. It is not Hindu terror. They are irritants - the latter, possibly more so than the former. It is not jingoistic Nationalism. If America has its Glenn Becks, then India does need every square cubic centimeter of its chauvanists. (Perhaps more nationalistic versions of Bal Thakeray?) . Don't get me wrong: I will still hate them. But I will hate them less than I hate the current Thakeray. Nationalism is necessary to prevent India from disintegrating into little nation states fighting against each other.

In my opinion, the single largest threat has more to do Maoist terror than with religious extremism. It is extreme poverty. With 14% of India living on less than Rs 20 a day - and 1,500 farmers taking their own lives this year (in Chattisgharh alone), one can appreciate how seductive a call for revolution - a call to over-throw the 'oppressors' can sound. Suppose, for argument's sake, your Dad is a cotton farmer in Vidarbha. And suppose he takes on some debt to sow some crop. And suppose that either (a) the monsoon fails (b) The monsoon succeeds and everyone has a bumper crop pushing down prices and the big farmer with his larger fleet of trucks reaches the market first. Then he (your dad) is left with a huge loss and a loan shark pursuing him. He has no option but to commit suicide.

Of course, Milton Friedman (and the like) would probably interject at this point and claim that the business model of the farmer is fundamentally flawed. He should not be sowing cotton in his field, they will claim. He should sow something that fetches him more reliable profit. But one would do well to remember that we are talking about some of the poorest of the poor farmers in the world. It is not likely that these folks will be able to hire McKinsey to tell them what to sow.

And now you, after seeing your father die because either

(a) The government did not intervene and help him out in a drought
(b) The big farmer manages to sell all his cotton before your father could even get his produce to the market

you are justifiably disillusioned with the whole system. You are convinced that the system that we are living is has ceased to function. The notion that a revolution is necessary is becoming more and more evident to you. You would only be rational to respond entusiastically to a call to arms; to a call to spread Anarchy and exact revenge on you deem a hearltless, exploitatory society. You, along with your cohorts then proceed to hijack a train or something.

India's economic reforms have left some of its poor behind. Though poverty has indeed reduced in India in the last few years - and the middle class has indeed become richer, the prosperity is yet to trickle down to a staggering percentage of Indians. Can we really blame the opressed for feeling that Democracy has failed them?

That being as it may, it still can be argued that Indian elections is the lone voice of a suffering people. Every five years, the long suffering farmers in rural India have a chance to throw out candidates who do not address their plight. And they do faithfully reject these failed candidates. India's suffering multitudes are quite politically savvy. They attened their rallies, they listen to their candidates - and they have a track record of throwing out elitists. (The BJP government is a case in point, as is the Naidu government in AP). They throw out tyrants (Ms. Indira Gandhi). They respect development and honesty (I will grudgingly admit that Gujarat's butcher, Modi comes to mind here).

You vote out one set of jerks. But if the new bunch of people are also a set of jerks who are unlikely to help you, then how long does it take for you to lose faith in the system and then radicalize and become a Maoist (or something similar)? I say this because the numbers are extraordinary. More than one lakh (100,000) farmers have committed suicide in India in the last decade! If this is the number of people who have actually taken the drastic step of committing suicide, then the number of discontented people must at least be 5-10 times more. And that's as many people as we have in the Indian Army.

Shoes, Tea Parties and the Like.

Firstly, some apologies for not updating. I've hardly been getting time to do anything other than work these days. I have been catching up with my news regularly - but I have just not been able to sound off on the numerous events that have transpired since my last significant post.

Inspired by that Iraqi journo who hurled shoes at the American Bush, several Indian journalists, teachers and party workers have hurled shoes, shoes and slippers respectively at their over-lords. Home minister P Chidambaram (at the recieving end of the second of the said projectiles at the hands of a political dissident) actually went ahead and did a Gandhi ("I forgive him".).

Since these projectiles were traveling at sub-sonic velocties and certainly did not originate in a barrel, one does find them rather amusing and disconcerting at the same time. This method of expressing discontent seems to be decidedly better than methods being used by some in Pakistan these days - but still, does one really want to go there? Ought we be throwing shoes at anyone? What good could possibly come out of throwing shoes at Chidambaram?
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This proliferation of projectiles propelled towards leaders does at least indicate that Indians are staying cognizant of events occurring on the international stage. It is obvious that these incidents were inspired by the intrepid Iraqi who was reluctant to buy into the idea that his nation was prospering under the US of A's imperial presence within its borders. What's next? Tea parties in Patiala?

Update: As of April 28th, shoes (and slippers) have been hurled at Dr. Singh and the CM of Karnataka and alleged Muthalik sympathizer, Yeddyurappa. Looks like the shoe event horizon has truly arrived in the sub-continent (positive economic growth rates notwithstanding).

Tea Parties

Several hundred (a few thousand) Americans, oblivious to the fact that Obama's stimulus package actually cut taxes on the middle class, took to the streets claiming that their tax rates were too high. They went ahead with ridiculous proclamations that Obama was Hitler's reincarnation - and threw the f-word ("fascist") around quite liberally.

In my opinion, the tea parties are the most perverse events on the face of this planet. There is nothing worse than seeing some of the richest people on this planet whine about paying their taxes - especially when their taxes are at historically low levels.

Considering that people around the world are dying of starvation and extreme poverty it seems offensively selfish to see the pampered elite of this planet complain that their government is eating up their hard earned cash - especially when their taxes are lower than other liberal democracies.

Rich Americans and Europeans, the only reason that you're rich is because you have colonized a rich land that you snatched away from indigenous folks and (slaugtered them all). If all of you were stuffed inside continental Europe, I dare say, you would not be about as prosperous per-capita as you are right now. Europe has a population of 0.7B. Americans (mainly descended from Europeans) number 0.35B. Add them together and take away the entire area of north America - and you will probably have a sub-continent-esque economic situation in Europe.