bitter-truths dept.

Arundhati Roy has written a very thought-provoking article in the Guardian newspaper about the Mumbai attacks and the general state of affairs in India.
Because it made me feel very uncomfortable and unnaturally defensive as I read it, I guess her analysis is probably very
close to the truth.

future-readings dept.

This book seems to be related to my post on the emergent role of social networks in mass mobilization. Adding to read queue.

lost-in-translation dept.

Sometimes, people can be a tad overenthusiastic about globalization.

corruption-is-a-global-phenomenon dept.

I used to think only our Netas were shamelessly corrupt. I stand corrected. At least they're smart enough not to get caught.

towards-gaia dept.

This story talks more about how the Obama campaign leveraged the so called 'new media' in their quest for the White House.

We're likely to see some of this in the forthcoming assembly and general elections in India. Probably not as part of a conscious effort by any political party, but more spontaneously.

missing-links dept.

The post-Mumbai popular outburst has provided an interesting insight to me. For too long, the actors (stateful, not stateless ;-)) in Indian democracy have been completely unaccountable pretty much for five years of their elected terms. This has rendered a good state in theory, practically dysfunctional. For any truly functional democracy there has to be a closed loop where the common man gets to hold everyone in power accountable.

There were two crucial elements missing in Indian democracy to close the loop, and now I see those two elements gradually taking their rightful place, and plugging this gap.

The first, with the electronic media, has happened over the last decade, and continues to go from strength to strength. However, someone needs to keep a check on the media too.

The next, with social networks and cellphones, is giving unprecedented community mobilization and expressive power to common people. The next decade belongs to the emergence of this particular piece of the puzzle. For it keeps all of the other pieces in check, and is more or less self-regulated. You can see it throw up temporary structures as responses to particular situations, even though for the most part, it is structure-less. Politicians the world over, with the singular exception of a certain compulsive-Blackberry-using President-elect, are really clueless about this phenomenon.

The result is this amazingly organic system that's really self-evolving, and is mutually accountable. Its not mandated by the Indian constitution, no one set out to create it -- it has just appeared out of thin air. A politician who can keep this formless beast happy can go a long way in life :-).

Perhaps a few years from now, when enough has been written about this phenomenon, the technology has matured and become truly ubiquitous, and the politicians begin to grok it, the 'last piece of the puzzle' will finally get its due, and some official constitutional recognition.

known-unknowns dept.

The following story is probably very important indeed, but I am still undecided...

Quantum Test Found for Mathematical Undecidability.

oye-lucky-lucky-oye dept.

Not everyone can take on Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott, and then outdo them.
Its unfortunate that an outstanding movie with great performances has to release at this time :(.
I hope everybody goes out and sees this one.

its-the-end-of-the-world dept.

On September 11, 2001, I was on a flight to San Francisco, sleeping soundly somewhere over the Pacific when the twin towers were attacked. I was originally scheduled to fly on the 9th, but I was down with the flu, and my departure was delayed by a couple of days. Three-fourths of the way from Singapore, the flight was redirected to Vancouver. After landing, the plane sat on the tarmac for five hours before being carefully unloaded. (We were given no information about what had happened until about two hours after we had landed). I then spent two days in Canada, glued to my television set at the Hyatt Regency, where Singapore Airlines so graciously put us up -- a displaced, disjointed lot.

The world changed then, and the world is about to change again. The attacks on Mumbai, in that sense, are exactly the same and seek to send the same message to the world. It would be a mistake to think this is an attack on India. I wouldn't relegate it to such a narrow context. Fundamentally this is an attack by a closed, nihilistic society on an open and progressive one. Ostensibly, the message being sent is, "No matter how superior you think you are, we can bring you to your knees."

Any old-world ideology can be twisted into this template, and made to work in this way. In this case, and this time in the world, Islam is being used in this way. The mental trick being used here is to really zero in on the most intolerant parts of scripture, and use that as an intellectual override for irrational acts. Every old-world religion has enough material in its body of scripture to be vulnerable to this kind of manipulation. After all, they were only created by human beings.

The desired effect of the attack is more subtle, it really seeks to transform the victim (a vibrant, open society) into a mirror of the perpetrator (a prejudiced, closed one).

So when we put it in that context, this is really a sequel to 9-11, and the London Underground bombings and needs to be put in proper perspective.

The scale in terms of physical impact may not be as extensive as 9-11, but its equally powerful in terms of its media impact, and hold on the popular imagination. Also, India has been attacked only because it is the most accessible open society that can be subject to such an attack. New York and London have significantly raised the bar for any attack of this kind, and so Mumbai was the best soft target.

The challenge here is to preserve openness and freedom, without becoming an image of the attacker. The more we seek to defend ourselves, the more closeted we become as a society. So, IMHO, offence seems to be the best form of defence in this case. The hardest part is finding what form the offensive strategy should take, without causing the world to come to an end :-). This last bit because the target of the offensive strategy is a failed state with nuclear weapons. Who really runs this state? Who would be the target of retaliation?

I do hope such an offensive strategy exists, and is found in time by those whose job it is to think more deeply about such things.

the-tiger's-tale dept.

This reviewer has, as a rule, refrained from evaluating self-help books, having suffered from a chronic aversion to self-improvement since childhood. However, this year, he feels compelled to make an exception, considering that the honorable jury members of the Man Booker Prize committee have themselves given their nod of approval to this genre of literature. A genre -- one has to say -- that is popular and omnipresent, yet hitherto unfairly ignored by the critics.

The book under examination is The White Tiger : A Novel, written by Mr.Aravind Adiga, erstwhile South Asian correspondent for Time Magazine. Mr. Adiga has written a simple, clear book in a very lucid prose that details quite explicitly for the very first time, a well-defined set of steps by which one may move up the socio-economic hierarchy. Moreover, it builds on a fine Indian tradition of letter writing (please see: Letters From a Father to His Daughter by Mr. J.M.Nehru) -- a rhetorical style that successfully employs correspondence as a means towards advertising one's opinions and ideas.

The book borrows one of its central theses from that other great writer of self-help books, Mr. Mario Puzo (The Godfather, The Sicilian), who so famously quoted Honoré De Balzac: "Behind every great fortune there is a crime". In his book, Mr. Adiga has followed an interesting two-step approach to flesh out problems and solutions relating to the pressing topic of social mobility.

In the first phase, he shows us the psychological makeup and trauma of a repressed individual. Here, we see the social conventions and psy-ops that are used by those up the hierarchy to keep those down below in check. This discussion, although targeted towards the layman and hence presented in a jargon-free and to-the-point style, may nevertheless rival any scholarly tome on this subject.

The second phase however, is what sets this particular book apart from others in its category. For in this phase, Mr.Adiga lays out clearly, the steps one may follow to correct one's position in the hierarchy if one so desires. He describes quite vividly the psychological preparation required for undertaking the necessary action. But importantly, he very clearly defines the steps required, once the necessary psychological preparation is in place. It is the reviewer's opinion that it is this factor which will significantly endear this book to the reading public, and inshah-allah catapult this book to the status of a classic in its genre.

In conclusion, The White Tiger is another classic in the genre of self-help literature, to rival other mainstays of the field, such as How to Win Friends and Influence People, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Getting Things Done and The Godfather. The reviewer expects this book to remain long in circulation considering that the masses would find the concepts and methods discussed therein useful and practical in their daily lives.

the-niagara-river dept.

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice—as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced—
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.

-- Kay Ryan

from-lamports-bakery dept.

Leslie Lamport is due to speak at Hopkins in the weekly seminar series. Needless to say, I'm excited and looking forward to hearing one of the great sages of Computer Science speak.

Here is a Bio that was circulated by the CS Department, probably self-authored :-)

Dr. Lamport is best known as the author of LaTeX, a document
formatting system for people who write formulas instead of drawing
pictures. This naturally led him to join Microsoft, a company with
little interest in such people. He is also known for writing

"A distributed system is one in which the failure of a
computer you didn't even know existed can render your
own computer unusable."

which established him as an expert on distributed systems. Among his
other contributions is the TLA+ specification language--a Quixotic
attempt to overcome engineers' fear of and computer scientists'
antipathy towards mathematics.

The fact that I am currently taking a Distributed Systems course right now, can only be decribed as poetic.