The Enemy Within

Launching The Daily Critter!

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Mon, 16 May 2011 01:35:00 +0000

After months of procrastination and excessive sloth, I am really pleased to announce the launch of my new photoblog, The Daily Critter!

The Daily Critter solemnly subscribes to the suspicion that a critter a day keeps the sissies away. We are here to meet your daily requirement of the creepy, the hairy, the many-legged, and the tiny.
The critter, so far as this weblog is concerned, will usually be an invertebrate of some sort. You may be entertained with the odd bird or a beastie on the occasional summer afternoon as well.
Expect updates every weekday.

Please visit, comment, subscribe and all suggestions given by you will be most welcome.

Why Email Reminders Work.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:06:00 +0000

There is varying etiquette on sending people reminder emails. A reminder to attend an event is almost always alright, but a reminder to do something can often be considered brusque.

The norm when it comes to reminding someone to reply to your email, I've found that it can vary depending on where you're from. I remember being taken aback when told that it was quite kosher in American circles. A long time ago when I was applying for internships, not only did I send out emails with my CV and whatnot, but I also sent reminders a month later to people who hadn't gotten back to me the first time around.

Not only did this not offend the sentiments of any of the people I was writing to, but one such reminder was ultimately responsible for my spending a summer in North Carolina.

Email reminders serve a much broader function than just reminding people to reply, though. Sure, while some people really do get tonnes of email everyday where some things could get buried, many more of us are just chronic procrastinators. We get emails that we want to reply to, and intend to do so... only tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes the day after and then the week after and with the passage of time the awkwardness of penning a reply only gets worse, for not only do you need to reply, but you also need to come up with plausible excuses for not having gotten back sooner. The excuse here needs to be a compound one: one that explains why or how you forgot, and also explains how you remembered to reply to it *that* late.

Email reminders are perfect for this. They start with the supposition that you'd forgotten all about the original email until you received the reminder (and all you need to do is nod along,) and negates the need for explaining how you remembered.

And look! Now you've been prompt enough in replying when reminded. The first mail, the poor thing, it had gotten buried beneath fifty others.

Conscience cleared. Problem solved. Reply sent.

PS. Point of the post - People whom I've not gotten back to ought to send me reminders. Not because I forgot, but because I don't want to feel as sheepish. Just sayin'.

Cite as you like - II

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:57:00 +0000

Staying on the topic of the previous post, I was thinking about how citations work in different fields of research.

The poor quality of citations in a field appears to be closely linked to how search-friendly the literature in that field is. If you have to expend as much effort into collecting all papers relevant to your work as what you would in actually doing the work, then it would be unlikely to find many papers with excellent referencing within them. The problem with Google being your main search tool is that you can never claim to have the definitive collection of literature on any field. For example, I've spent a good amount of time these past few months looking for literature on climate change in India. Every week I find something new on some obscure corner of the internet. What I do find usually lacks good references, the few occurring references are either self-citations or incestuous in nature, and end up containing more opinions and leaps of logic than real, hard science.

Who can blame them? No one really knows what the state of the art is, and the few who claim to are almost always liars and charlatans. 'Expert opinion' replaces good research. A collective big-picture takes a back seat to an individual's myopic world view.

As I've mentioned before, the bio and medical sciences have PubMed. The sciences and some of the social sciences have the ISI Web of Knowledge (not free), which is excellent for advanced searching, and also for checking out citations. Then there are also sites like Arxiv and Scifinder and others. Just to name a few.

India-specific research has nothing. India-centric social sciences, even less. Compared to funding research, the money required for developing a good search tool is negligible. Consider the idea that a new repository website is created for India-specific research. Let's suppose that all governmental and foreign funding agencies mandate that at least the abstract of all funded work should be put up on the search website. At least till it becomes a habit. We (hopefully) start building a one-stop shop for the field.

Following the train of thought is not hard: Increase the ease of access to your work > more people read it > more people cite it > your work has higher impact > more people want to sleep with you. Flawless logic. Augment this approach with funds and a system to mine the interwebs and pull up a good fraction of prior work done as well, and we're in business.

Google Scholar is not quite the scholar's Google. Something else can be, though.

PS. I did a lousy job of citing my own sources in the last post. Mea Culpa. Many thanks to KVM and Vatsa for sharing Lamire's posts on the peer review system and academic fraud on Google Reader.

PPS. I'm not very sure about how things work in engineering. I remember hearing things like a journal with Impact Factor of around 3 in chemical engineering is usually a great one to publish in. The good bioscience journals seem to have impact factors higher than 10... and while the research output by itself is far greater in the biosciences than in any field of engineering, I wonder if a poor search system and dubious conference submissions are a factor in poor citations and hence poor impact factors.

Cite as you like - I

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:51:00 +0000

Like I mentioned but six months ago, I'm baa-aack. So here I am. Not in the least tardy.

[Warning: Serious post.]

It is quite fashionable to rail against the peer review system and all associated evils these days, and with good reason. There are not just chinks in its armour but gaping holes, even if perhaps not big enough to be on the next installment of Jon Stewart & Anderson Cooper Look at Gaping Holes. (Yes yes, I am mixing metaphors but I had to segue that in somehow.)

Daniel Lemire, for one, does a great job of highlighting the issues involved. (His post from September titled "How Reliable is Science" is recommended reading to get the context of this article.) He also goes on to provide some nice solutions like trusting unimpressive results more, being suspicious of popular trends, and running your own experiments. While these are good researcher-level solutions (and one can argue that ‘good’ researchers already follow most of it), there are perhaps systemic changes that can be tried out to make things better.

Stepping back a little, it's useful to ask how success is measured in scientific research. Sure, there are prestigious awards and scholarships, and then there is success in simply obtaining funding for your research. But fundamental to success is publication, preferably the peer-reviewed kind. So one could say that a fairly basic measure of success in research is the number of publications you have in hand. As with anything that basic, the measure is very fallible. Anyone can (and lots of people have,) publish a large number of fairly banal and hardly original research and accumulate a large list of publications and then claim to be good at what they do.

The next measure of 'citations' was in part aimed to be a better measure of success. A citation can be loosely defined as a reference to a previously published work. To the best of my knowledge, citations started being used more often (and perhaps in a more formal manner) in the 20th century, with the sheer body of science increasing in girth at an alarming rate, such that few (or no) achievements in science could stand on their own and without being connected to past work. Citations as a measure of success rely on the fairly simple idea that the "better" your work, the more "important" your findings, the more the citations that you will receive. This in turn led to many wonderful things like the h-index and the g-index, that combine the number of papers one has published and the number of citations in a rather clever manner. (I'm partial to the former.)

Thus, while the number of publications and citations are fairly good measures of success and impact, there is little to support the notion that they're good measure of scientific integrity and the reliability of someone's research. Most people just expect the peer-review system and other (fairly marginal) mechanisms to take care of that.

With peer review, a complaint that Lemire voices is that reviewers do not reproduce results, and separately, that [c]itations are not validations and that impressive results are more likely to be cited. Given that citations are but references, all of them are certainly not validations, but I hope no one takes issue when I say that some citations are. So if I were to broadly classify the types of citations, there would be:

A) Citations in reviews, citations in the introduction or literature sections of papers. Now these citations have more of a chronicling function rather than anything else, where the more often something gets cited, the more the people who consider the work a significant development in the field. It is also unlikely that even so much as a developed opinion is presented alongside the mention of said work.

Now these are the citations most susceptible to intellectual reach-arounds. Because of the overwhelming notion that citations are primate amongst all directives in humankind, besides making babbies, there’s every incentive for researchers to cite each others’ works to no end. This clustershag is perhaps the biggest problem with citations.

B) Citations that help an author build a story. These are citations where results of a published work and theirs are related in some way. Here, published work that helps them tell their story of how the world works. Often occurring in discussion sections, things that agree with their worldview get cited, or things that go against their view (when the authors think themselves capable of explaining the disagreement).
These are citations that are most likely to contribute to growing popular trends and more big-picture analyses. The trends and big-picture analyses are very much essential to science, to pull back provincial minds from being lost in the minutiae of their specialization, but the simplest suggestion that can be given to researchers is: Maintain your own big-picture. The extra-large ego that scientists are stereotypically infamous for can no doubt help in mistrusting someone else’s grand narrative.

C) Citations where a technique or an experiment from the cited work are used. The rarest of them all. And by far the most meaningful. ‘Ware all this entails: it means that the Citer (or more likely, his little-paid bonded labourer) has read the (no doubt fascinating) Methods section, and most likely the unkempt wards of the Supplementary Information documents as well. Now, note that the citer has used (with reasonable success, let’s assume) this technique or experiment, which means that he’s read all the relevant information, identified all the usual holes that are present in the description of the technique (present in any paper that isn't a methodology paper), tinkered with the system until something worked well enough to produce some results. Now, being true to the spirit of our cynical selves, such a citation can lead us to only conclude that the cited work is good enough to be ripped off by another researcher.

It is now, good reader that I make my small recommendation. As things stand today, we already make the distinction between self and non-self citations in research. Now, what if we were to go beyond that and classify the citations in the aforementioned way? Citations of type A would act as a measure of apparent significance and reach, type B of general agreements with the cited work’s findings, and type C of true repeatability and scientific rigour. It might also be useful to divide type B into positive and negative citations, to get a better sense how validated the work is. The measures would all be flawed and riddled with caveats, of course, but perhaps less so than a simple number of total citations. Thus we would be in a better position than we are right now in observing both the impact of research and its validity and genuine nature.

Afterthoughts.

The amount of resources currently devoted to exposing scientific fraud is next to nothing. This system of classifying citations is perhaps capable of generating selection criteria for investigating scientific fraud. If a piece of work is low on total citations, then it is either in a niche area, or is not considered important enough by the scientific community. These could effectively be ignored by any watchdogs. Low citations would also mean a lower impact of potential fraud. Among those well-cited, papers with citations of type A vastly outnumber types B and C are likely over-hyped and have a greater potential for scientific fraud.

Lemire also mentions the rise of Open Scholarship which allows greater outsider participation in research. Complementary to this, I think, is the rise of PubMed in the world of medicine. Not only is it a very search-friendly database of publications, but since last year the National Institutes of Health mandated that all scholarly work that has been published as a result of their funding should be put up online free of charge at PubMed.

~~PS. Please don't kill me for the terrible title. I'm really bad at them.~~

How to piss me off: 101

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Sat, 01 May 2010 01:34:00 +0000

a) Cross me in traffic. And drive like an idiot in general, like hugging the wrong edge of the road and going straight, instead of turning like a sane person. Well, it does increase the fluency with which I curse in Kannada.

b) Cut my hair like a retard. Seriously. Request anything more complicated than short cut, medium short or laang, and they look at you as if you're trying to converse in Aramaic with a Tambrahm from Thanjavur. I may not have ripped a lion in twain or killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass when I still had my hair, but I've lost it now, superpowers and all. Friggin' retards.

PS. I'm baa-aaack. Well, maybe. We'll see.

The Aftermath.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:38:00 +0000

Here we are. Some two and a half months after the Mumbai attacks. What has happened since? So much, and so very little.

On the eve of receiving Pakistan's reply to the Indian dossier on the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, we need to ask ourselves, how did we get here? Did we do all that we could? Could we have done things differently, and hoped for better results?

A little over a week after the attacks I, the very fresh and very young student of geopolitics that I seem to have become, had scribbled a short list of things the Indian government should do in response to the mayhem back then.

Two months since, I think that it is time for a review. Let's see what I had and compare that to what was done, shall we?

1) Remember Kargil. Take the high road, no matter what. Pursue diplomacy. If it fails, go to the UN. Implore the international community to press sanctions.

It's very important to remember what we did in Kargil. So there we were in 1999, caught with our pants down when the Pakistani military forces and militants supported by them had occupied all the high-altitude positions along the Line of Control just as the winter was retreating. Tactics apart, India had two strategic options to choose from: a) Go around the mountain peaks, across the line of control and into Pakistani territory, and block off the supply routes to the militants' advanced positions., or b) do not violate the LoC, stay on the Indian side and fight a difficult, uphill battle with the militants and win land piece by piece, peak by peak. The then Vajpayee government chose the latter, harder option, and eventually we were able to gain back all the territory we had lost, in the process of which, we had garnered international support from all across the globe. There was no doubt in anyone's mindn as to who the aggressor was. (Except perhaps for the confused Pakistani populace, having been fed too many lies and too much propaganda.)

That, I think, resulted in the beginning of the dehyphenation of India and Pakistan in the west. And now, by and large India has shown restraint. Belligerent talk apart, exhaustive diplomacy has been key to what India has done since then.

2) Go with gifts to Bangladesh. Give them aid, and develop some mechanisms to combat terror on their soil. Rope in the commies.

This, I'm pleased to say, is happening as I write. Till December of last year, Bangladesh was under military rule, which had put the country in an unofficial limbo for the better part of the last two years. Things changed after the army lifted its state of emergency for what were by and large free and fair elections, when to India's delight, a friendly government led Sheikh Hasina was able to form after winning the elections by an overwhelming majority.

And as I type now, the Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee is in Bangladesh, signing trade agreements, promising the extremely poor country more aid and investment, and in turn has been succesful in getting Bangladesh to cooperate extensively with India's Northeast insurgency and terrorism issues.

The past few years had seen an alarming increase in the number of suspected terrorists who sought safe haven in Bangladesh, with an increase in recruitment of local youth as well. The coming to power of an India-friendly government and immediate lobbying by the Indian MEA could reverse these trends with a little luck.

3) Go to China. Get them to poke Pakistan. China is seen as a friend by the junta (a la the military GHQ at Rawalpindi) and the people. Commies here as well.

The role China has played in the aftermath of 26/11 has been cryptic to say the least. It started with some baseless and alarming reporting by the state-run People's Daily speculating about the involvement of Hindu youth with the Mumbai attacks. Other than some largely symbolic and meaningless joint declarations to fight religious extremism and terrorism, China did support the ban on Jamat-ud-Dawah at the UNSC meeting convened by India, something the veto-wielding country had failed to do before.

After that India did its due diligence by providing China with ample information about the attacks, and it is reasonable to assume that India urged its communist neighbour to put some pressure on Pakistan. Things took a very weird turn late in January when the Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi annouced that Pakistan was giving a "blank cheque" to China to deal with India on its behalf. Eventually this went nowhere as India refused straight up to deal with any middlemen.

It might be considered unreasonable to expect more from China, and it would be wise to be happy with whatever concessions we can get.

The rest, and more, in the second part of this fun analysis. Please wait. And as ever, with bated breath.

Joie de vivre.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:32:00 +0000

Contentment is not something I feel often. Today it seems to overwhelm everything else.

Thank you. ^_^

India, The Navy and Aspirations of Regional Supremacy.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:13:00 +0000

The Indian navy was successful in yet another anti-piracy operation yesterday. The INS Tabar spotted a pirate ship accompanied by speed boats at around 10pm during one of its patrols off the coast of Somalia. The pirate ship was challenged by the Talwar class stealth frigate, at which point the pirate ship tried to ram Tabar.

You have to give the pirates some credit for the sheer audacity of such a move. Maybe they did not really see what they were up against in the darkness. The result, surprise surprise, was that the INS Tabar opened fire and sunk the pirate vessel. Earlier this month, the very same INS Tabar had been instrumental in repelling two successive attacks on commercial ships plying off the territorial waters of Somalia.

So far this year, only the Indian Navy has had high-profile run-ins with pirates off the coast of Somalia. At a time when the Indian profile in world affairs has been markably ascendant, and when the Indian high command has started talking in public about force projection, these successes hold great value in furthering India's cause in regional and global diplomacy.

Over the past few years, many have expressed great concern about the direction India has been heading militarily. Apart from extensive defense spending in general, bilateral and multilateral military exercises such as the Malabar naval exercise in 2007 involving Indian and U.S. navies, along with those of Japan, Australia and Singapore have drawn a lot of flak. The direction in which Indo-American military ties have been heading has also been criticized. A report from 3-4 years back by the Information Assurance Technology Analysis Center (IATAC), quoted here, reads, "U.S. military seeks a competent military partner that can take on more responsibility for low-end operations in Asia, such as peace-keeping operations, search and rescue, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and high-value cargo escort, which will allow the U.S. military to concentrate its resource on high-end fighting missions." (emphasis added).

While the American conceit should not be overlooked, India needs to look at its options dispassionately. For sure, India should refrain being from allowing the U.S. to setup military bases in India similar to those in Turkey or Poland, or allow too much inter-operability to be established between the armed forces of the two countries (which could potentially allow the U.S. to remote-control maneouvres and operations of Indian forces should they wish to.) However, the low-end operations should not be looked at with too much disdain.

Low-end operations such as off-shore patrolling, and securing the high seas and busy shipping lanes from acts of piracy ought to be seen as confidence-building measures among regional countries. In geopolitics, a country is often only as powerful as other think it is. So far, a non-specific acknowledgement of Indian ascendancy is sometimes given in various parts of the world, but the Indian point of view has rarely been given due consideration. By winning over smaller powers by gestures of goodwill, India can develop its sphere of influence from the bottum-up and in an arguably more stable manner.

A landmark pact in defense cooperation was signed just earlier this month by Manmohan Singh and the Emir of Qatar, where India agreed to 'go to the rescue if the latter's interests are threatened '. Chief among Qatari concerns was piracy on the high seas, and the pact lays out 'a structure for joint maritime security and training '. India has also been deploying its navy for piracy patrol in the straits of Malacca since 2006, relieving U.S. naval ships and joining the Singaporean and Malayasian navies. When taken together with the Indian Navy's recent activities off the horn of Africa, one can comfortably make the claim that India now is a major player in securing three strategically important areas in South Asia: the strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Aden, and the Straits of Malacca. Over half the reported incidents of piracy in the world these last few years have taken place in the latter two.

If success continues over the next few years in similar ventures, India will also be in a much better position to get the U.S. to dismantle its military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, amongst others in south Asia.

All this needs to be given priority while setting the defence budget by whichever government that comes to power in 2009. Acquisition of 4th and 5th generation fighter aircraft, T-90S Bhishma tanks, aircraft carriers such as the Admiral Gorshkov and nuclear submarines, though all vital for national defense and necessary to maintain a suitable deterrent against external threats of agression, by themselves they will not actively enhance India's importance in the region or the world. Instead, it would be the construction and deployment of lower-profile ships such as corvettes, frigates and offshore patrol vehicles that would truly make a difference.

It is assuring to learn though, that the current defense budgets and proposals are not ignoring such needs. 5 frigates, 8 corvettes and several patrol vehicles are either currently under construction or have been ordered, with many more planned for the near future. Whether these are enough, or whether there is a need for increased spending for such ships is hard to say.

Personally, I should admit that I am very impressed by the diplomatic and strategic overtures made by the current administration, more so over the past few months than before. Where there was a certain lack of will and apparent sycophancy among certain members of the current government, it seems to have been replaced almost entirely by a rational, considered and deliberate (even if a bit too deliberate) outlook in India's foreign affairs.

May I have the next dance, Miss Ball?

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 07:16:00 +0000

Stephen Colbert, in his inimitable style, talks of Jane Austen and Baseball.

A Wag of my Finger to British Author Julian Norridge, who claimed that Baseball originated in Britain, just because the word 'baseball' first appeared in the Jane Austen novel, Northanger Abbey, forty years before the sport was played here.
That doesn't mean that baseball is British! Austen wasn't writing about American baseball, it was a Jane Austen version, where the ball is not hurled about rudely, but introduced to the bat through proper channels at a society function. And one does not steal bases like a commoner, one sends word to the next base ahead by messenger, requesting to approach at the base's leisure. Of course, what the bat cannot reveal is that though he loves the ball desperately, he's sworn an oath of loyalty to the glove, to whom the ball was promised. So the bat must pretend that he hates the ball, swatting at it though he wishes nothing more than to profess his undying affection. But he can't, he musn't, he shan't.
And so... the bad must retreat to the gardens of his estate and pine.
The point is... the point is, Jane Austen, stay away from baseball. Stick to what you're good at, making your readers believe some debonair stranger will ride his horse through the rain over your father's fields.
[Cut to Stephen behind an old window, with rain in front.] Oh, where are you, Mr. Darcy? Keep your promise!

*is rolling on the floor*

(It comes somewhere near the middle of that video. Enjoy! And you can go here in case the video doesn't work on my page.)

And to hell with Palin. Colbert for 2012!

A World Lost.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:16:00 +0000

It is with disbelief and sadness that I am writing here today, that Michael Crichton, author extraordinaire, died on Tuesday after a private battle with cancer.

From the shores of Isla Nublar to the lost city of Zinj, from mediaeval Dordogne to the Nordic lands of yore, he will be missed. The sadness is in part quite selfish, I will admit, that I will never get to read another Crichton novel for the first time.

A generation of authors seem to be breathing their last. Robert Jordan, Arthur C. Clarke, and now Michael Crichton. Is there anyone capable enough of stepping into their shoes? One can but hope.

Michael Crichton

October 23, 1942 - November 4, 2008

"Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way." -- Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park.

If I had to pick five people who were responsible for my interest in science and a scientific career, Crichton would undoubtably be among them.

You could find his excellent opinion piece about the death of mass media here. You should note that he wrote this in 1993, fifteen years ago. And he was vindicated 11 years later, in 2004. I should also mention that along with Al Gore, he has had a great influence on my views on global warming. (The last link seems to be temporarily down perhaps due to excessive traffic.)

Sirigannadam gelge!

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 02:19:00 +0000

On the eve of the fifty-second anniversary of the formation of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, the central government gave the two states a most coveted prize: the granting of classical status to the two languages Kannada and Telugu.

A status enjoyed only by Tamil and Sanskrit so far, the Union cultural minister Ambika Soni announced today that two languages had been allowed to join this elite group. A nine member committee of linguistic experts had been formed for this purpose after four years of intense lobbying by the respective state governments and an assortment of political and civil entities from the two states.

Is this but a cheap political trick on the part of the Congress government which is soon to face nation-wide elections and the expected anti-incumbent factors? Or will the parties currently in power in the two states tout this as a victory and try to score some political points? Did the committee have to lower prior standards for this classical language status in order to award it to Kannada and Telugu? All this even if one forgets to consider the validity of those prior standards and the ulterior motive behind awarding the classical language status to Sanskrit and Tamil four years ago.

Yes, the worse the idea, greater the chances that it's true. But. None of that matters. Kannada finally got the classical language tag that it so rightly deserves! The Halmidi inscription, the earliest known use of full-length Kannada, dates back to circa 450 CE. 1500 known years of continuous use surely deserves something. The kingdoms and dynasties which ruled over ancient Karnataka all switched their loyalties from literary Sanskrit to the common man's Kannada, slowly developing the literature of the language. Over the centuries it has enjoyed the royal patronage of the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas, the Gangas, the Hoysalas, the Vijayanagara empire and the Wodeyars of Mysore after them. It is the language of kavirajamarga, it is the language of Pampa and Ranna and Ponna. It is the language in which Purandara Dasa sang of Vittala, it is the language in which Carnatic music as we know it today was systematized and stylized.

Modern Kannada has been living up to its glory days in courts of Amoghavarsha I, Veera Ballala II, and Krishnadevaraya. With the likes of Kuvempu, Gorur and Maasti, since independence Kannada literature has managed to bag seven Jnanpith and fifty one Sahitya Akademi awards, more than any other language in the country. It is in our times that Bhimsen Joshi introduced many non-Kannada speakers to the language with his sublime rendition of Bhagyada Lakshmi Baaramma.

So sit back, relax, forget all politics for a while and bask in the glow inherent to being a Kannadiga.

Sirigannadam gelge!

Top right. A Hoysala stone inscription from a Lakshmi temple at Doddagaddavalli, Hassan district, circa 12th century CE.

Bottom. Dated circa 700 CE, the Kappe Arabhatta inscription at Badami, Bagalkot district is the earliest known example of Kannada poetry. It is written in what appears to be an early form of the tripadi meter, ubiquitous in early Kannada verse.

PS. It is with regret that the author of this post refuse to claim having any significant reading or writing skills in the language he so identifies with, as a prime component of his cultural heritage even.

PPS. As corny as it may sound, I offer the heartiest of congratulations to Telugu and Telugu speakers as well. As the language of Tyagaraja's music, its positive impact on me hasn't been insignificant.

Intoxicate me now.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:17:00 +0000

Toxic. The latest song which has managed to bury itself into my head and get stuck there. And before you run off thinking that it's the Britney Spears song I'm talking about, stop. Yes, it is her song I'm talking about, but covered by the most wunderful Yael Naim.

Rising to fame when Apple featured her song "New Soul" in the MacBook Air commercial, rumour has it that it was Steve Jobs himself who discovered her. Of French-Israeli origins, she sings rather well in English, French and Hebrew.

And she was in Madison last night. Music is usually so much better live, but yesterday was so much more. Giving off an Anne Hathaway-Julie Delpy vibe (which could never ever go wrong, obviously,) she was enthralling, accentuating the music with some memorable antics. And that voice!

I'm positively smitten. :)

The highlight of the concert for me was Toxic. The studio recording is lovely, and the live version magical. What she played at SXSW comes close, I suppose.

It was hilarious when she started playing New Soul. Half the girls in the audience (and two guys. Just two,) ran up to the stage and started jumping up and down.

And the applause after the concert did not stop until the whole troupe came back on stage wearing red (Go Badgers!) and performed New Soul again and then some. My feeble words cannot do justice to her music or her performance. She's touring in the US for the next week or two. Hope you can catch a concert!

New exhibit unveiled.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 02:26:00 +0000

Chicago, IL. A new exhibit was unveiled on Saturday at the Art Institute of Chicago containing a single photograph by a reclusive French artist who wished to remain unnamed, titled Au large de la fonte.

Noted Italian art critic Grigio Pellegrino had this to say about it, "... [the photograph] embodies contrapositive destruction, the removal of one object from the universe by another leaving only the shell of existence which reflects the human condition."

The late Henri Cartier-Bresson was unavailable for comment, but the manager of his estate expressed strong feelings of disappointment that the photograph was not in black and white.

The Indian Association of Orthopedic Surgeons issued a vociferous statement alleging that the photograph belittled the human trauma that ought to dominate any study undertaken, however artsy(sic), of orthopedics. When asked if the leg ought to be included in the photograph, the director instead suggested an inclusion of the surgeon involved in the creation of the cast.

The exhibit is open from 10:30am-8:00pm Monday through Thursday, 10:30am-5:00pm on Friday and 10:00am-5:00pm on Saturday and Sunday.

In between lenses.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:03:00 +0000

Most people who love photography get stuck behind the lens a little too often for their own liking. It isn't something that is easily admitted, though.

It's nice to have someone better than yourself at photography come along with you to lovely places. And include you in the frame in a most tasteful fashion when possible.

Taken in MahakooTa and Badami, Bagalkot district, Karnataka.

Photos courtesy Grey skull. And that awesome cam of his.

To drink philosophically.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:05:00 +0000

Café Descartes: I drink, therefore I am.

Taken from a bus somewhere in the Near North region of downtown Chicago.

The other side of the veil.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:45:00 +0000

Ok, just so you're on board from the very beginning, this isn't another article criticizing the journalism of the Times of India.

Earlier today, the ToI ran an article titled Pak claims girl killed in LoC firing.

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Army has alleged that a girl was killed on its side of the border after Indian troops fired at its troops at the Line of Control (LoC).
However, terming the charge as 'baseless', Indian Brigadier Gopala Krishnan Mural said that militants from Pakistan infiltrated into India and triggered a gun-battle that left several of the insurgents dead.
Pakistan Army spokesman Major Murad Khan said the girl has been identified as Rania. "Indian troops fired across the LoC and Pakistani troops returned the fire," The Daily Times quoted Khan as saying. While strongly protesting the Indian firing at the LoC, Pakistan has demanded a flag meeting.

When a news article talks of an Indian jawan being shot near the LoC, there's no doubt in our minds. If it wasn't the militants, it was the Pakistani army. But here, doubts linger. In our minds, in the journalist's mind, in everyone. Things become "alleged". It is possible, is it not, we ask ourselves, that the Pakistani army spokesperson may be lying.

I am not saying that it isn't. I'm only questioning our lack of even a little doubt when "our side" makes of claim of similar nature. For sake of argument, is it also not possible that the Indian army misattributed the cause for one of its jawan's deaths?

Also, have you ever noticed how these articles follow a rather fixed template? I dug up this article published in Pakistan's Daily Times on the 20th of May this year. Here are a couple of excerpts from the piece.

Pakistan Army denies shooting Indian soldier across LoC
Military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas has termed Indian military allegations of Pakistani troops killing an Indian soldier across the Line of Control (LoC) as baseless.
...“No firing from this side of any kind has taken place,” Abbas said, adding that military officials would pursue a meeting with their Indian counterparts to clarify the matter...
...“The soldier died in unprovoked firing from across the LoC,” an army spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Anil Kumar Mathur, told AFP... The Indian army said the firing was unprovoked and they would lodge a protest.
“We have sought a flag meeting with the local commander to lodge our strong protest over the incident,” he added. “Pakistan is only responsible for this unprovoked attack,” he said.

Baseless. Check. Unprovoked attack. Check. Protest lodging. Check. Flag meeting. Check.

Funny game they all play.

PS. There's a very interesting article by Robert D. Kaplan in The Atlantic, that I would recommend for those interested, on the world view of the ISI and how it looks at Indo-Afghan ties (via Sepia Mutiny). While it is unfair to assume that the perceptions and paranoia of the common Pakistani and the ISI are the same, it does give us a glance as to what lies on the other side of the veil. We feel so threatened every time China helps Pakistan, how do you think Pakistan feels about the Karzai government becoming chaddi dosts with India?

No one can help Sgt. Jimenez.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:40:00 +0000

What the fish? I thought I'd posted this ages ago. Anyhou, here it is.

As it turns out, Staff Sgt. Jiminez Alex Ramon is a real person. Of the delta company, 4th battalion, 31st regiment, 2nd brigade combat team, 10th mountain division of light infantry. Hailing from Lawrence, Massachusetts, he was really in Iraq.

And then he went missing on May 12, 2007, during an ambush on the 4th Battalion somewhere in South Baghdad. His body was found earlier this year (a few months ago, the news reports seem to have conflicting dates, so I cannot say for certain when,) and returned home.

So I wonder why the good fellow who sent me that e-mail used this particular name. Maybe he started using it while the soldier was still missing, maybe? To attract even greater curiosity? Or was there an implicit assumption that it would be unlikely in the extreme for me to know anything about the real seargent? I'm very much aware that I might be over-thinking it, but I've never stopped for that reason alone.

Anyhou.

The tracking software on my blog told me something rather interesting last week. Someone from the town of Wetter, Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany visited my page by searching for "spcjiminez@live.com". Which, as of right now throws up only one result. I'm assuming that if it were someone who had also got the same mail as me, he or she would've left a comment there.

So. Sgt. Jiminez's shade seems to be resting in some nondescript li'l town on the Franco-German border. And in retrospect, has picked up a German influence in the written English grammar that he uses. In German one capitalizes all nouns, irrespective of position in the sentence, something that can potentially explain the ease with which he's capitalized things here and there in the mail.

Lemme know if you have analyses more interesting than my own.

Between the lines.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:15:00 +0000

VS Acharya, the hon'ble Home Minister of Karnataka, had this to say in an interview with the Times of India on Thursday.

Q: What is your assessment of the issue?

A: The incidents were both a surprise and shock to us because no such incidents had happened earlier . They were stray incidents and I am quite confident that such incidents won't repeat in future. The Constitution does not allow illegal conversions, inflammatory booklets, pamphlets and derogatory statements on Hindu Gods, tradition and culture.

Deceitful ways, inducements and exploitation of the people's situation is forbidden in the Constitution . Due to this, a section of people have taken law into their hands. If they had any information on conversions, they should have complained and we could have sent a team to tackle it. However , by strict action, we have brought the situation under control within two days. In the BJP government, we will ensure that both minorities and the majority are protected.

(Text italicized by me.)

This was just a part of the interview. All the interviewer cared to talk about was how VS Acharya patted himself on the back in doing a first class job. While no one should sit idly by as someone in power pats himself on the back, come now, it's nothing new, is it?

The 'issue' there was the church attacks in the state. The church attacks, mind you. Not illegal conversions, inflamatory booklets and whatnot. Instead of deploring the attacks (something even Shivraj Patil manages to do every time something goes boom,) he is instead giving reasons and trying to justify the attacks. While this is expected from a VHP leader or anyone that partisan, one does expect something better from the government.

A government that gives excuses on the behalf of individuals who take the law into their own hands, something the government is here to uphold. Vigilante justice isn't justice. And please don't bring in the Dark Knight just because I used the word 'vigilante'.

Would the government have given excuses on the behalf of any fundamentalist groups of any other religion, I wonder. Well, not really. There's little to wonder there. What is even more galling than the Home Minister's justifications here is the journalist's apparent oblivion to it.

Can you help Sgt. Jimenez?

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:55:00 +0000

Here I thought that all the Nigerian princes who wanted to get out of the country with millions of dollars had all managed to do that.

Apparently, some of them had the misfortune of coming to the US, becoming Hispanic, and then getting enlisted in the US army.

One of them was clever enough to get a hold of my e-mail address and contact me.

Dear Friend,

Good day and compliments, i know this letter will definitely come to you as a huge surprise, but I implore you to take the time to go through it carefully as the decision you make will go off a long way to determine my future and continued existence. Please allow me to introduce myself I am Sgt. Jimenez Alex Ramon, a US Marine SPC. Serving in the 3rd Battalion, 25th US Marine Regiment which Patrols the Anbar province, Iraq .

I am desperately in need of assistance and I have summoned up courage to contact you.I am presently in Iraq and I found your contact particulars in an address journal, I am seeking your assistance to evacuate the sum of $12,570,000 (Twelve million Five Hundred and Seventy Thousand US dollars) to the States or any safe country of your choice, as far as I can be assured that it will be safe in your care until I complete my service here. This is no stolen money and there are no dangers involved.

SOURCE OF MONEY:
Some money in various currencies was discovered and concealed in barrels with piles of weapons and ammunition at a location near one of Saddam Hussein’s old Presidential Palaces during a rescue operation and it was agreed by all party present that the money be shared amongst us.

This might appear as an illegal thing to do but I tell you what, No compensation can make up for the risks we have taken with our lives in this hell hole. The above figure was given to me as my share and to conceal this kind of money became a problem for me, so with the help of a German contact working with the UN here (his office enjoys some immunity) I was able to get the package out to a safe location entirely out of trouble spot.

He does not know the real contents of the package as he believes that it belongs to an American who died in an air raid, and before giving up trusted me to hand over the package to his close relative.

I have now found a secured way of getting the package out of Iraq for you to pick up. I do not know for how long I will remain here as I have been lucky to have survived 2 suicide bomb attacks by Pure Divine intervention.

This and other reasons put into consideration have prompted me to reach out for help. If it might be of interest to you then endeavour to contact me and we would work out the necessary formalities but i pray that you are discreet about this mutually benefiting relationship.

Contact me via my private box: (spcjimenez@live.com) so that I can furnish you with more details.

Respectfully,

Sgt. Jimenez Alex Ramon
United States Marine Corps. IRAQ

-----------------------------------------------------------------
本邮件通过35企业邮箱发送

:D

I love the words "Pure Divine intervention". Which could even double for some Jehadi group when translated to Arabic. =) And heh, the random chinese characters at the bottom of the e-mail.

The sender's address is funny as well.
FROM: Sgt.Jiminez@usmc.army.mil spcjiminez@live.com
The account name is the fake e-mail ID. So devilishly simple. And I would've never seen it unless I had asked gmail to "show details".

So, will you help the poor man?

Can it always get worse?

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:18:00 +0000

The first question one should ask a potential roommate is not Do you smoke? but should instead be Do you snore?

Mine does both.

Help. Me.

For the sake of a post.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:11:00 +0000

Hello. I'm alive and well, in case you were wondering. I have a lot to blog about and possibly enough time to do it, but somehow I am unable to. And I'm tired of giving excuses. So here's a post for the sake of one.

Lifted from The Wertzone.

The rules:

From Box Office Mojo's list of Top 48 Sci-Fi Films Based on a Book (or Story) (1980- present).

Here are the rules.

- Copy the list below.
- Mark in bold the movie titles for which you read the book.
- Italicize the movie titles for which you started the book but didn't finish it.

1. Jurassic Park
2. War of the Worlds
3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
4. I, Robot
5. Contact
6. Congo
7. Cocoon
8. The Stepford Wives
9. The Time Machine
10. Starship Troopers
11. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
12. K-PAX
13. 2010
14. The Running Man
15. Sphere
16. The Mothman Prophecies
17. Dreamcatcher
18. Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
19. Dune
20. The Island of Dr. Moreau
21. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
22. The Iron Giant(The Iron Man)
23. Battlefield Earth
24. The Incredible Shrinking Woman
25. Fire in the Sky
26. Altered States
27. Timeline
28. The Postman
29. Freejack(Immortality, Inc.)
30. Solaris
31. Memoirs of an Invisible Man
32. The Thing (Who Goes There?)
33. The Thirteenth Floor
34. Lifeforce (Space Vampires)
35. Deadly Friend
36. The Puppet Masters
37. 1984
38. A Scanner Darkly
39. Creator
40. Monkey Shines
41. Solo(Weapon)
42. The Handmaid's Tale
43. Communion
44. Carnosaur
45. From Beyond
46. Nightflyers
47. Watchers
48. Body Snatchers

Nobbad. 5 out of the top 10 and 9 out of the top 20.

Wrapping up Mysore.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:24:00 +0000

I've been thinking of unusual, non-linear ways of spinning a tale out of my recent travels, and though the voices in my head have thus far been unable to reach consensus on the matter, they all unanimously decided to get the Mysore trip out of the way.

We were quite lucky while at the palace, managing to catch the only patch of blue sky that July Saturday was willing to favour us with. And after Madras, midday heat at Mysore seemed rather trivial.

So here ya go. A photographic tour of the Mysore palace from the outside. Wish I could've given you a similar tour from the inside.

Mysore has two beautiful traffic circles built in an Indo-Saracenic style to commemorate the rule of two of their recent kings, (Nalvadi) Krishna Raja Wodeyar IV (1902-1940) and Jayachamaraja Wodeyar Bahadur (1940-1950). Managed to get a decent photo of one of them (JC circle) from within our vehicle.
The Mysore palace complex has several wonderfully-preserved temples from the Vijayanagar era when the Wodeyar kingdom was a vassal state of the Tuluva and Saluva emperors.

Shweta Varahaswamy temple, Mysore palace, Mysore. (Photo courtesy Arun Verghese.)

Krishna as kALinga mardhana, south gate, Mysore palace.

JC Circle and the north gate, Mysore palace.

Okay, okay. 'nuff stalling. I give you the Mysore palace, by day.

PS. This is something I noticed only now, going through all the pictures from the trip. You can see something similar ff you zoom in on the north gate image as well: Indian-ized angels! Some part cupid, some part generic angel, only male. I don't think I've seen their like elsewhere. Apsaras adorning brackets or columns in other places like Badami or Belur are very different from whatever these are.

Is this what Indian art free from cumbersome nationalist pride and (hence) overtly influenced by European ideas would look like? Slightly creepy as the man-angels may appear, I like the notion.

Window detail, Jagan Mohana palace, Mysore.

Also see:
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 1
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 2
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 3
And the road becomes my bride.
Shine on you crazy diamond.

A Lil' Bitta H-D-R.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:26:00 +0000

Title stolen from here.

HDR, or High Dynamic Ranging is this lovely photographic technique for capturing both very light and very dark parts in an image. And as much as I like silhouettes, it's nice to get both a pretty looking sky and all the detail in whatever it is that I am trying to photograph.

At first I thought that this needed a more fancy cam than what I had, but apparently you don't. I simply varied the exposure levels and clicked multiple pictures of the same objects, and then combined all of them using a really simple desktop software, Photomatix Pro 3.

And voila!

Inside the South Fort, Badami, Karnataka.

The North Fort, Badami, Karnataka.

One of the rock-cut temples, Badami, Karnataka.

"Durga temple", Aihole, Karnataka.

Kailasanathar temple, Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu.

Too many questions.

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:07:00 +0000

I'm officially tired of traveling. I might still do a little more, some compulsory, some voluntarily, but that doesn't change the fact that I am really tired. All I want to do is spend time at home, going around Bangalore and actually acquainting myself with places here and give some credibility to my hometown claims.

Before you go and accuse me of writing about Bangalore and yet not about the despicable blasts of yesterday, please. Stop.

I don't know what is an appropriate response to an event like this. Apathy and self-interest reigns supreme in the minds of the public, in the mind of the individual. This one individual is trying to shake all that apathy off, but does not know how successful he is, or will be.

The government response in this case, like all others before, will be woefully inadequate. The usual combination of blame games, grandiose, redundant statements about the inhumanity of the blasts that the media shamelessly quotes, clichéd calls for solidarity in the face of adversity... it's all the same.

How does one really show courage in the face of something like this? Should we go about our lives, as if nothing happened? Is that courage, or mere lack of caring? How big should the blasts be, to truly upset our lives, beyond disrupting traffic and shutting down shopping malls for half a day?

If we don't go about our lives, are we, in the clichéd words of the US government, letting the terrorists win?

Too many questions. Very few answers. Very little comfort. Now I get to feel happy for having cared enough to think and write about it. Hmpf. Shameful.

A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (PS) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:05:00 +0000

This will the third and last segment on birds for some time to come. After this I'll get back to showing off pictures of things that don't fly off or dive under water without a moment's notice, but stay squarely centered in viewfinders.

#12 Spot-billed Duck: Anas poecilorhyncha.
Also known as the Spotbill, it's the one in the centre, behind the twigs. That's the best shot I got of the bird. It's being flanked on both sides by:

#13 Little Cormorant: Phalacrocorax niger.
Cormorants were the most common birds there, I think. It was the same with Ranganthittu 3 months ago. There are three species of cormorants found in large numbers in India, this one being the smallest and darkest.

#14 Indian Cormorant: Phalacrocorax fuscicollis
Slightly bigger, a little browner. They swim much lower in the water than ducks, giving them an almost Nessie-like appearance. This particular bird dived under water and did not resurface for at least 20 seconds, and it re-surfaced quite far from the place where it dove in.

(I like my silhouettes. :))

I haven't been able to make up my mind about the bird on the right. The Indian and Great Cormorant species are far too alike, and having enough morphological variation amongst themselves to be easily differentiated.

#15 Oriental Darter: Anhinga melanogaster.
The bird on the right, with the snake-like neck. Wasn't easy to identify, this.
Melanogaster means black-bellied, by the way. Drosophila (the fruit fly) and some species of buttonquail also shares the same name.

#16 Purple Swamphen: Porphyrio porphyrio poliocephalus.
Yes, a swamphen. Who knew such birds existed?

I can't get my head around why birds evolved such fancy colours. It's certainly not as a part of some fiendishly clever camouflage scheme (Purple in a swamp?). Yes, I know, colours and the display of fancy plumages is a big part of bird mating rituals, but surely there must be a more substantial evolutionary reason, like co-occurance with some other vital trait.

#17 Brahminy Kite: Haliastur indus.
The bird on the left. I remember them being very common in Delhi, and I've seen quite a few of them in Bangalore as well. Very distinctive white plumage on the head and neck, chestnut everywhere else. Usually identified with the Garuda of Indian mythology, the eagle vehicle of Vishnu.

#18 Black Kite: Milvus migrans.
At least, I think it's a black kite, cannot be sure. Too many birds which are similar in appearance. Could be a Lesser spotted eagle, a Steppe eagle, or a Common buzzard. The last of them is the most likely alternative. Eagles are bigger and half well-built feet unlike kites and buzzards, but it's difficult to check both size and the nature of the feet from this photograph.

There. 18 birds seen in some three hours. Not bad, eh? There would've easily been double the number of species there, if not more. With this being off-season. One little lake supporting this many birds. Hard to believe.

Pictures 5 and 6 courtesy Arun Verghese.

Also see:
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 1
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 2
And the road becomes my bride.
Shine on you crazy diamond.