see this amazing reconstruction of the night sky from space. it is said that the relative deveopment of regions can be seen from the areas which are lit up or not. all tough it cant be taken over one night i believe it does have some value. notice the contrast between north and south korea, india and pakistan, coastal china and its interiors, density in japan, along the nile and in coastal europe. the dark continent is truly dark. northa america is truly astonishing(no ednsity of population but amazing density of light/development/wotever)

your comments on today's india-pak match.

in keeping with the mood (24 straight hours of algorithm complexity analysis and coding a maxflow push-relabel algo)

(Imagining a situation when I am left alone in the company of a goat and I have nothing to do. The goat, interestingly can talk, and that makes me curious. The following is an excerpt from one of the conversations that I had with the goat)

Goat: Let me ask you something. Do you think you are superior to me in anyway? “Superior” – within quotes, like mini me does in Austin Powers!

Me: Oh yeah I do! But very well, after you mentioned you are fan of Austin Powers, I may have to rethink the whole thing. *sheepish grin*

Goat: Now you thought that was funny? Can I ask you why exactly do you think you are superior?

Me: Well if you are giving me a choice there, I would opt for you not asking! I am not really looking forward to an intellectual argument with – of all things in this far and wide world – a GOAT!

Goat: Don’t ever dare you say that, dimwit! You don’t think you have two horns extra, do you? For the fact of it, I do! *proud laughter – something that goes muhaahaahaahaa*

Me: Aargh! I never imagined a goat could laugh that way. Or for that matter any way!

Goat: And before you skip the point, and this time I don’t give you a choice – c’mon tell me what makes you superior?

Me: You know something – now this is so ridiculous! I mean, I don’t understand why I have to answer this!

Goat: I will probably explain why at the end of it all, but first answer me – you Bozo!

Me: *frustrated and helpless* Well then, if that is what it is, let me try some inspired guessing. Goatie, you can’t drive a car and I can! Simple eh?

Goat: Duh – and you talk about training! Has anyone ever tried training me to drive a car? Try doing that and I bet I will learn quicker than you! Not to mention the bribe you gave to that officer to get your license *blurp!*

Me: Now look here! I know I am throwing arrows in the dark. But do you really think we have something to debate here? I mean this is so outrageously obvious!

Goat: I don’t think so! So better get serious on this!

Me: Okay then! * a brief pause for some gasping * Now this is serious! I mean, serious trouble!!

Me(again): I can sum up a huge list of numbers and tell you what the total is – atleast approximately – if you know what I mean! Believe me, I have never seen a goat do that! Uh!! * sense of relief *

Goat: Same thing again. Teach me how numbers work and what you mean by “summing” them up and I will do the total for you! Accurately, for that matter!

Me: Hmm.. playing smart eh? Don’t know anything and blame it all on me? Am I committed to be some kinda life long coach for ya? I have other things, you bet!!

Goat: Now gimme a break! I thought we were debating this on paper! I ask you – theoretically – what is it that makes you superior than me? See if you can answer that! Don’t complain on training issues – and by the way, I can find better trainers than you – if at all I choose to get trained! * evil grin *

(And as the argument reaches fever pitch one Mr. Alan Turing passes by the wayside! Being the eternal supporter of the human race, he inquires me what’s the trouble! I cry out the whole thing to that guy. He smiles gracefully (though I didn’t seem to like it) and whispers a solution in my ears. And here I go.. )

Me: Ok you goatie demon! If you think it is all about training and experience, let me tell you this! If you and I were born at the same time; And if you and I were given similar training to walk talk and do things; And if you and I – after sufficient training – were presented with a maze which we had to solve; And if that maze was an impossible maze – in the sense that it did not have a solution – and we were never told that; I claim that after sometime, I will come out with a decision and announce in all glory that this maze cannot be solved; While you will still be trying to solve the impossible maze!!

* punching my fist and hugging Alan Turing *

Goat: * In deep thought *

i chanced upon this article on sulekha. its pretty goood. it reflects what i want to say exactly. this is totally in line with my earlier posts abt life, its meaning etc.
refer to : [10/11/2002 3:55:14 PM ]
Meaning of life 3 : Existence of soul
and what thinking now said:
10/10/2002 7:34:44 PM | thinking now]
i guess it all boils down to ones perception of joy, happiness, sadness, sorrow, et al. your perception of joy would be different than mine and so would the case with someone else. at this point of time, i wouldn't like to be like mother teressa or do some social work because i know i am not going to be happy by doing that. maybe you would be or somebody else would be. i hope we could have some kind of an agreement here. it is solely upto an individual about how he/she feels about the struggle/fight/drudgery etc etc. and i guess that would be one of the reasons why people go into depressions, have nervous breakdowns, become psychics or even commit suicide. when people start thinking that whatever they are doing is not worthwhile and is not going to bring them happiness or joy which they desire, that is when they start questioning their very existance. you say that the pleasure achieved is short lived and is not what you deserve after all the hardships you go thru. then how do you decide what you really deserve, what you are really meant for. it is i guess this short lived, temporary happiness that drives you. again its a matter of perception of what you think about this joy or happiness that you achieved. it could be long lived for many. but whatever it is, it is this very thing which makes you go in this search for happiness, sometime, someday you would achieve what you thought of and you would be happy. but then you can't be complacent and you desire to be more happy and go in search for more happiness and in turn face more hardships, more bitterness... but then at the end of the day you want to be happy and hence you go thru the hardships to achive it. and it is these small, temporary, short lived everyday pleasures which make you strive for better pleasures of life.

i am very saddened by the lack of hype(not i take that back. lack of information or interest) by america in cricket. for gawd's sake the game is palyed by about 1.5 Billion people. after the win over england we(my friends and me) who were watching the match in a stadium type atmosphere were so excited abt it. but came out of the building and reality hit us. nobody else is interested. felt sad. i heard some matches of the next world cup (to be held in the west indies) will have some matches in florida and the icc is trying to rpoe in america as a participating team (this is purely for financial reasons am sure). hope this generates interest in this country abt cricket.

why am i seeing more and more blogs having long write ups which are modelled as romantic stories(see i said modelled as romantic not romantic). the authors of the blogs themselves write the stories. they are long and deal with every day life situations. that means that the authors have thought abt them a lot. but they are not good. actually they are bad. but i guess as first time writings they must be ok. but i dont understand why this sudden urge to write romantic stories. point to be noted all the bloggers engaging in such activities are indian.

the Obuya story
perfect for a trivia quiz.
It's Obuya for the record

Arvind Lavakare on the Chief Election Commissioner

I guess we always end up getting strong election comissioners. first there was T.N. Seshan, then came Mr. Krishnamurthy and now Lyngdoh. but it seems as if Mr. Lyngdoh is overstepping his limits. he has no say in what issues make up the election campaign and this is precisely what he is trying to do.
a snippet from the article

That day he first described HP as an orderly state where people are well behaved. Then came the antagonism and the allergy. 'Himachal must ensure,' he said, 'that people should not allow outsiders from other states to communalise the election campaign...'

He was responding to queries regarding the possibility of the 'Hindutva' card being played by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

for not-so-politically-mided, chief election comisinner is the head of the 3-member totally independent body which oversees all indian elections. all troops and officers deployed during elections report to them and they are responsible for conducting free and fair elections.

my rant
Would somebody explain the new FCC decision to me or point to a link. Has anybody clearly understood the telecom act of 1996? its too confusing for me.

Strippped for parts
A very good article on how transplants really are done. the writing is amazing with details that you would not think of. Changed the way i think of the brain-dead.

Its articles like this which make wired such a great read.

Plane carrying the Pak Air Force chief carshes.
what is interesting is that a similar thing happened with the pak ruler Zia some years back. there is a strong possibility that it was a silent coup or an assasination.
theory abt the crash
It is amazing how these things happen in pak-land without any sort of public protests. forget protests what about public concerns or responses. I guess they have not
come out of the feudal mindset yet.
ps:- thanks to teshu for the link.

A very good article on Intelligence sharing between the spookes of different countries by B. Raman.
Some snippets:

It was the Mumbai bomb blasts in March 1993, in which over 200 civilians were killed, that first provided Indian intelligence with evidence against Pakistan in the form of an unexploded explosive device with a detonator and a timer of US origin. The FBI admitted these were part of the stock given by the CIA to Pakistan's ISI in the 1980s for use against Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

Besides, they do not hesitate to withhold intelligence against commonly perceived adversaries as well, if they consider it to be in their national interest. The US, for example, did not alert India to the Chinese troop build-up in Tibet and Yunnan before the 1962 Sino-India war. Washington DC had calculated that an Indian defeat would make New Delhi more amenable to US influence.

Sincerity in intelligence sharing, whether vis-a-vis State or non-State actors, is never total. Deliberate misleading and cheating are part of the game. Intelligence agencies are not charitable organisations. For every piece of intelligence shared, they expect a quid pro quo, which could be a piece of intelligence or political support or other gestures. The US, which is the sole superpower now, dictates the rules of the game.

When spooks of the world unite

Rajeev Srinivasan on "free trade"
here the rediff writer talks about global free trade in terms of labor too. this is a issue very close to my heart as i believe it affects all of us. he talks about how huge agricultural subsidies in the developed world affect negatively farmers in the third world countries and how the west is trying to curb the movement of service oriented jobs to counries like india. link to rajeev's article

i have addressed my concerns on this issue here

a very good post on how 38 goats were cut before his eyes. thanks bijoy for an excellent write-up. reading it moved me.

Thomas Friedman
Thomas Friedman is a thinker and foreign affair analyst with the new york times. he is one of the few people who has understands the post-9/11 world. yesterday i saw him talking to charlie rose and was amazed by how well he analyses the situation. according to him the main reason america is going to war is to set an example in the middle east of a decent country with a decent ruler (see its not democracy but decency). hopefully america will be able to this. but he argues that america will not be able to do this alone (the setting up of the regime) even if it wins militarily. so its even more important that most ppl in america and the world must be convinced that the ambitions of america are not oil but establishment of a just leadership.

he also states that bush with his team does not have the experience to build a global coalition. they are stupid and impatient (his words not mine). during the last gulf war the secretary of state james baker made three world trips visiting all the main countries. this time not even one leader has made one trip. this shows the lack of maturity and depth in the present administartion.

henry kissinger who was a part of the program aslo made the same point about setting an example regime in middle east. he predicted that once the new country is up and working there will be a change of direction in many countries like egypt, saudi arabia etc.

aap ko dekh kar dekhataa rah gayaa
kyaa kahuu.N aur kahane ko kyaa rah gayaa

unakii aa.Nkho.n me.n kaise chhalakane lagaa
mere ho.nTho pe jo maajaraa rah gayaa

aise bichha.De sabhii raah ke mo.D par
aaKharii ham-safar raastaa rah gayaa

soch kar aao kuu-e-tamannaa hai ye
jaaneman jo yahaa.N rah gayaa rah gayaa

For an exhaustive listing of jaggu bhai's works see
one of the best links on this subject
i guess its works like these due to which i miss not knowing urdu.

Flushing problems
today after my daily dose of wall street journal when i got ready to stand-up; i flushed. nothing happened. no water sound, nothing, zilch.
then terrible anxiety. whazzap??!!
how will i get rid of my output. shouted out to my roomie. he so non-chalantly says. its like that only. you will have to fix it. it was like that when he went to sleep. he noticed it before he went to pee. so he peed in his friends house(our neighbor). wow. this was a nice situation. then my 6+ years of engineering education took over. decided to fix the damn thing.
first things first. cover the water+solid mass. lower the cover. open the water container. study it for all of 3 mins. remove the rubber plug. hear the amazing sound of water rushing into the receptable below. now hook the chain back in with the outside lever.
amazed by such low tech stuff. i guess the only reason i could debug it was bcos its low tech. imagine if it were a microprocessor controlled system.

the man behind Godhra
finally it seems to have been proved that the attack on the train carrying Hindu devotees in Godhra, Gujarat,India was a premeditated attack by led by a Muslim cleric who has been detained by the police.

link to article

My exam
today i had a small exam. i screwed up badly. but the real reason i am upset is, i knew some answers(to some extent) but i didnt write them. i know am going to get very low on this test. incidentally my worst performance till now in graduate school is also under the same prof. so i was apprehensive from the beginning abt this course. am really really sad. have not been like this for quite sometime. more than 3 years i guess. i know am more knowledgable/intelligent than what my results will show but thats what the results show. period. what to do.

i can always say i will do better in the next exam. but then what abt this one and will i really do better next time. this is an attitude i hate and i myself have this attitude.

its sick how a guy who has spent a quarter century in this world still is upset abt his performance in a exam. but thats the way it is. i hope at least something good out of this angst. maybe its times like this that believing in god helps.
ok. end of my rant.

no posts till wednesday
hi, my loyal fellow bloggers. am having quite a busy time till wednesday so i will not be updating my blog till wednesday evening 10 pm EST.
but as usual i will keep tabs on the blogs of my regular visitors.

Friedman's lecture in Yale
wow. thats all am going to say. a big thanks to jim for the link.

Anti-Terror Fight Has to Be a Marathon Run on Wilsonian Principle, Not Cheap Oil

Comment out
hey whats hapenning to my comments. they are dissapearing. i remember having comments in the last few posts yesteday. today there are none. another case for the X-files.

There is this interesting table on the blog i visited which places india as the world's 4th largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity. also note the interesting coloring scheme. note also the ratio of ppp gdp to exchange rate gdp for both china and india.

i guess as the ratio is more or less equal it means that india has not done badly as compared to china in growing the economy. keep in mind that china started its liberalisation more than ten years before india. so i guess all the noise about how china is "so far ahead" of india is just hot air.
link to table

Got this from roshanpaul.blogspot.com
he has mouthed exactly the words that i was thinking.

State of the Union critique? First, 'tis hard to critique something that doesn’t say much.

It’s inexplicable (though amusing) to me that the most powerful man in the world can actually mispronounce nuclear (nukular), peninsula (penininsular) and uranium (iranium), not to forget the classic subliminable (subliminal). Sigh...can anyone think of a more apt metaphor for the state of the world today?

your say?

Online Death


this is an interesting article about a person who showcased his own death. there are also reports of other things like suicide, murder of girlfriend etc. all this out of the closeness that online communities breed. closeness without any actual commitment according to some. i wonder how blogging is going to affect me.

Link to Article

My say on the Iraq war

why did US choose to act now against Iraq. Why not a year earlier or when Clinton was in office. Why now? what prompted Bush to act on Iraq now?

Privacy : The American Way

I think privacy is an uniquely american(or western) concept. it dosent exits(of any consequence at least) in India and am sure its very less prevelant in Europe. by privacy here i dont mean the close the door while pissing variety but the variety where we dont know who our neighbors are, what they do for a living etc. ppl in america dont seem to be very concerened about the lives of others. they give each person their own private space. this can be seen everywhere, in trains(ppl avert their eyes and direct eye-to-eye contact is not a social thing). this is in total objection to the Indian way of things. going on the trains everyday for 4 years i made lotsa "train friends", ppl who i meeet only on the trains(that two the timing and destination specific ones). for example i had the 7:57 Belapur friends. these are some close friends(a few of them saved my lives once when i slipped while getting on the train and i have did the same to many of them). i came to know many things abt them only through the talks we had everyday. we talked abt all kinds of things with no inhibition. this is not possible in USA.

here i dont know who my neighbors are. but at the same time americans are open about things which i would think are personal and private. like having open showers in gyms and ppl going abt completely naked in the locker rooms. it intrigues me a lot. i cant believe that americns wouls have had a look at a guy's private parts but wouldnt know his name or anything else about him. i guess its a very cultural thing.