The Thought Curry

I want my Freedom!

2011-08-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

I feel caged. We are all caged. In cages that are closed cells on a big blue ball. We have a cell called Somalia where millions die of starvation. While there is another called America, where millions die of obesity related maladies. There are cells where dictators like Gaddafi exist. There are cells where six million children die of hunger every year. And then there cells where millions and millions of tons of food rot in warehouses.
If only these cells were porus, this imbalance wouldn’t exist.

We created boundaries and then it became our job to “safeguard” it. I hear people talking about dying for their country. And it is ironic, because the reason countries were created was for people to live better. They talk about sacrifice, about a man giving up his life for the greater welfare of the country. What a waste of a man’s life! Why do we need to have countries as we have it today in the first place? Why have cells that we need to fight over? Does it make sense to spend trillions in order to have guns pointed at each other just because they were pointing that way before we were born? Why should Kashmir belong to someone? What false pride exists in having a bigger cell to call my country?

Countries should only be an administrative convenience. But today they are more than that. Today a newborn is taught to unconditionally “love” his country. He is taught to like the people within his cell more than the outsiders. He is taught that the outsiders are bad for the country. Why should two societies as a whole learn to hate each other over an issue that was created sometime in the past? Why should a whole society “belong” to a country? And why should a country own or disown people? Why cannot countries be more like administrative blocks which allow and encourage free movement of people and trade? What possible benefit exists in having rigid boundaries and quarrels?

The idea of countries and nations was relevant for an era past. The Nazis managed to kill about 3 million in the Holocaust. It was a terrible tragedy. But is today any different? I don’t think so. The difference is merely that today we don’t have a single figurehead to blame for all the evils perpetrated on mankind. An estimated 11 million are at risk due to hunger in Africa because of a drought this year. And a significant million of them will. And a strong reason this will happen is because we have such rigid borders. And the longer this system prevails, the more we must hold ourselves guilty.

The starving Africans are helpless. They are prisoners in a cage short of food. WE have locked these people up in cages that do not have any food! Are there cages with excess food? Of course there are. But the starving citizens of Somalia cannot reach there. Imagine a world with no borders. Had it not been for the limits and controls in place across the international borders, chances are Somalia wouldn’t be in such dire straits today.

I choose to be affiliated to ideals, to people and to principles. Not to cells on big blue ball. I want to live in Pakistan and work in India and play in China. I am proud of my ancestors in India but why should that stop me from working or creating things in some other part of the world or for a different audience? I want to be born with the freedom of choice.

This is not just an idealist’s fantasy. It actually makes practical sense. In a world with no international borders, there would be no more international terrorists. No more wars or armies. No more smuggling across borders. There will be effective governance, free movement of trade, materials, ideas and people. Countries as they are today stifle free movement of people, ideas and resources. It creates artificial famines and economic slumps. It also creates artificial prosperity. It creates pools of haves and have-nots. It creates imbalance. An unstable equilibrium. Indirectly or directly this imbalance is the cause for almost all our troubles. Terrorism, global recession, famine deaths in Africa, oil price imbalance, piracy, border wars … Almost every major cause of unrest. All of these exist because we are glued to the idea that countries cannot truly co-exist without having a gun pointed at each other.

Change is difficult. Any shift towards a truly global community will be met with stiff resistance. The birth pangs of the global union will be painful. There will dramatic upheavals across the planet. Mass migration will be inevitable. But that is the price we need to pay for a more balanced world. Every man deserves to be free. How can anyone or any country claim greater right to any resource that nature offers? Some lands are rich and man will want to go there. That man should not be stopped just because he cannot cross a line on the map without getting killed!

I am not a socialist or a communist. I have not read the communist manifesto by Karl Marx. When I hear the phrase “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, I think of Ayn Rand. But I do think that everyone deserves a fighting chance to work hard. If there is one man in Taliban who doesn’t want to stay there, then there shouldn’t be any force conspiring to lock the man in. Taliban does that. Not a civilized society. Is it right for a painter to chop of another painters hand because he is more talented? I think not. Then how did it become right to FORCE billions of humans to rot just because they were born in a territory that was in the wrong cell in the map? That is nothing less than inhuman.

I am not an anarchist. I am only an idealist. I want to see a world where a man can do what he wants to do wherever he wants to do it.

I want my Freedom!

An “Auto” check on Sanity

2011-08-07T20:24:00.000-07:00

It is like a mine field. Only the mines are in motion… Brownian motion! They are everywhere, rickety contraptions running on 3 wheels. The roads are rigged!!!

Be scared.

Very. Very. Scared.

I am. And I survive. Everyday. Listen to me. Believe me. They will get you eventually. You can only prolong the inevitable. One day I will be gone too. Learn what you can from me. Maybe you will survive as long as I have. Or maybe not.

This is my message to any biker out there. You are the smart ones, the ones who listen to advice. Good for you. Now listen. Bangalore roads are not safe, for there are autos on prowl. You see an unstable, three wheeled, black hooded, yellow bodied, phat-phat sounding, insult of an automobile. That is your enemy. It’s the devils incarnate. Hence, the black hood. Take it off and you will see the horns. Be wary. Very wary. Their apparent vulnerability is their greatest strength. And they can be fast. Trust me. When you expect the least, that is when their true strength is displayed. But if it gets there, there is little you can do. Say you prayers and take your hands off the handle bar.

They appear out of nowhere. A blind turn, you don’t think and there it will appear in all its black and yellow glory.

Beep. The End.

You ride adjacent to one, you don’t think, it turns.

Beep. The End.

You wait for the signal to change in a four way traffic intersection. You want to go straight. The auto on right will always want to go right. You don’t think. It turns.

Beep. The end.

And then there are the auto overlords. The auto goods carriers. They are the juggernauts. Autos on steroids. No. Hyper steroids if such a thing exists. Trust me. They CANNOT stop. And they will not stop. Anything and everything in their way will be hit and scratched and toppled and put to dust.

Do not expect any sympathy from the auto-drivers. They are the victims too. A lost cause. There is no escape for them. Anyone who dares to take the driver’s seat, falls to the devil. He is the minion. Possessed by demons raised to earth by the dreadlord auto-asura. Treat him as the enemy. To be feared. Never try to take him on in one-on-one. He cannot be saved. So try to save yourself. Try. That is all one can do.

My friend… I now depart to raise my banner and walk into the war field again. I want to tell you more. But time is short and the battle is neigh. I have a presentation to deliver and I need to ride now. Pray for me. It is never enough. If I do not make it, hope to see you in Valhalla!

What inspires people?!

2011-04-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes weird things inspire people to do weird things. This article for instance ( Leave the vegetarians alone i say) inspired me to write this blog-entry.

(At risk of sounding silly, I would like to apologize ... again, for my prolonged absence from the pen. Not that anyone cares anymore).
I am a voracious reader. From the time I made the last entry till date, I have come across several beautiful pieces of writing. And none of them got my "writer's block" unblocked. But somehow this funny, but ordinary piece of writing got my fingers clacking away at the keyboard.
They say an apple fell on Newton and that inspired him to discover gravity. What if it was crow poop? He would have probably been too engrossed cleaning it, to think about gravity. Archimedes took a dip in a full tub and he went "Eureka, Eureka". What if the water was too hot and scalded him? He would have probably run down the streets screaming "O my %#^*@", and the world would have had to wait for his next bath.
What inspires people? Some how I think the answer to that is what differentiates people from machines. Lateral thinking, learning, neural networks, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, classification, etc etc etc probably have gone some way in identifying this. But the day we solve this problem is probably when true artificial intelligence will be created. The ability to see something new. To draw inferences. That is AI. GEB is an interesting read on the topic.

The Gangrene in US

2010-01-08T19:40:00.000-08:00

An SI guarding a ministerial convoy was hacked down by a bunch of gangsters. He lay writhing on the road, pleading for help, bleeding and dying and no one dared touch him or go near him. They walked past the man looking at him suffer, sympathizing with him, but “helpless” themselves. Helpless… what a word! This word absolves an Indian of all his guilt, responsibility and cowardice. The keeper of our morality, the media, kicks in. Breaking news… Ministers in the convoy watch and do nothing for the dying SI. The death is the ministers' fault. SMS’s start pouring in criticizing, lambasting and ridiculing the politicians, the police men near the dying sub inspector… But are they the real culprits???

What about the pathetic public who stood there watching a man die? What about the countless men who thronged the scene waiting and watching “helplessly”? They could not have possibly done anything, could they?
“How can I talk when so many people around me are standing and saying nothing? How could I spoil my new shirt? That man over there, he does not have a new shirt, why can’t he help the SI? Hell… somebody do something… Can’t they see that the man is dying? Shit, this society is so rotten…”
Is this the gang’s fault? The ministers'? The policemen who were the SI’s colleagues?
Or is it mine? Your’s? OUR’s?
Where do these politicians and the policemen come from? Us… What sense of morality do they share? Ours… Who are the gangsters? Us… Us… Us…
What would the dying SI have done if someone else was hacked and he was one of the spectators? It is politically incorrect to say this, but chances are he would have done NOTHING!!!
In the coming few days, we will see candle light vigils, group discussions on tv news channels. Streams of anguish and anger will pour in from all sides. But how angry are we? As angry as were we when we were fighting the British? Would we have got independence by lighting candles in front of the British.
And then there are marches which are a melas for all the Goondas in town and they have a field day burning and looting the cities and towns. There are issues where candle light vigils are acceptable, but genuine anger is NOT always satiated by some candle light marches. Where are the passionate and angry men and women who roared and fought against the British? Dead… Literally and Figuratively... The Bal Gangadhar Tilaks, Ambedkar’s, Bhagat Singh’s… These men had their flaws. Everyone does. But they stuck to what they believed in. They didn’t let up a few days after their protests went out of fashion. Where are genuine leaders and protests which do not die or back off till the issue is dealt with??
They don’t exist in today’s society.
Tee shirts, websites, candlelight vigils get this participation because there is no chance that the participants will be involved in any kind of “problems”. It is cowardice that draws in the crowds and not genuine sense of anguish. Yes, this makes everyone angry. How angry? As angry as when a boy breaks a vase at home. Momentary... Useless...
As for the goonda marches, I do not even want to write about it
I know I can do something. I could at the least try… I know the reader can too.. But will I? No I wont… Will You? Mostly not... I find it more comfortable to cocoon myself in the alternate reality of Role Playing Games where the good and the bad are clearly defined and I am the champion of the weak and I always do right things and I will partly assuage my nearly non-existent pride… What about you? How do you live with the reality that is India today?

Oh S**t

2009-12-15T06:15:00.000-08:00

I went to Mysore the last week to the AFSB to try and become a fighter pilot. Couple of days ago, I did get recommeneded to be one. There are still the medicals though, so I cannot really say I am commisssioned yet...

This post is not about the days there...

I am currently nursing a burnt left hand with more flesh than visible skin and a dislocated left knee. Is this about how I got those injuries?

No it is not...

The narration I am about is of how hard it is to visit the throne room in the mornings with half my body dysfunctional.

I have never been a great fan of going to the bathrooms in the mornings ( Personally I hate this part of the waking up... Well... I dont really like any part of waking up). But life now is definitely fidgety. I am a person who is yet to weternise his lifestyle atleast when it comes to personal hygiene. You see I would rather squat on the commode rather than sit on them the way it is meant to be used. But with my leg plastered straight from my thighs to my ankle, I dont have a choice but to start using that dreadfull chair with a hole for seat. Now the builder of my apartments was not a sucker for hygiene, so he forgot to install that water jet flush to one uses to cleanse oneself after going. So one has to resort to using the traditional Indian hand and water technique to wipe ones backside clean. (I dont think I will ever get used to using paper to wipe my backside.) Its just not that simple though. The gauntlet is to not get my plaster and wounds wet and cleanse myself using only one hand. The pictue one gets in mind is that of throwing water in the air and putting my back under it as is falls and then use the little water it manages to collect to clean myself with the hand I used to throw water with.

I have not used the bathroom yet for the past two days. I think I will have no choice but to try tomorrow morning.. Wish me luck...

No!! We didnt do nothin

2009-08-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

Pakistan is a country in denial.
No matter how blatant the infraction they are charged with or desperate their internal situation is they believe the answer to all their problems is in issuing a stout denial. In fact denial is so ingrained into their psyche that if we “blame” them vociferously enough being an Islamic Republic, we might get them to issue a denial to that too!!! The mentality is similar to the head digging ostrich. Somehow they are under the impression that if they deny things hard enough, then the rest of the world will shut up. Maybe they are right. How long can anyone argue to a person who only says “NO” to everything thrown at him. If they are not denying it, they are discombobulated about the issue with contradictory answers coming from different quarters.
Q: Did Pakistan lose the 1971 war?
Pakistan: Of course not…
Q: Has Pakistan ever misused aid by America to procure and develop weapons?
Pakistan: Hell NO!!!
Q: Has China ever used Pakistan against India?
Pakistan: You must be crazy to even suggest that…
Q: Does Pakistan have enough evidence to convict Hafiz Saeed?
Pakistan: Nope…
Q: Did Pakistan sponsor terrorists to infiltrate India and wreck havoc?
Pakistan: Yes… Sorry No.. I mean yes but no…

Laloo Prasad Yadav

2009-07-06T01:44:00.000-07:00

The rustic Bihari baboo, the former railway minister of India, self proclaimed bucolic hero from the hinterlands of Bihar, Laloo Prasad Yadav is perhaps the most recognized face of the Indian political class outside India. To his credit he is one of the few, if any, politicians to have a doll look alike.
Like it or not, with his rustic charisma, Laloo has found a place in our cultural and social life.
An LLB graduate, he was one of the youngest MPs in the parliament at the age of 29. This seemingly affable politician was the prime suspect in one of India’s most shameful scams. Between him and his semi-literate consort Rabri Devi, this man had an iron hold over Bihar for 15 years. It was during his rule, widely criticized as the dark days of Bihar, that the once golden city of Pataliputra became a haven for extortionists, kidnappers, murderers and their ilk. His rule saw the rise of the Yadav community, particularly his seemingly endless family. His brother in laws, sisters, nephews, etc soon took up important positions in the administration. His was the royal family in Bihar and he acted it. He coined this catchy phrase during the 2005 state elections: jab tak rahega samose mein aaloo, tab tak to rahega Bihar mein Lalu. Though he lost Bihar, he managed get the railway portfolio in the 2004 Manmohan Singh government. His administration saw the dramatic turnaround of the Indian Railways which was once on the verge of bankruptcy to become the second largest profit making public sector enterprise in India. He was hailed all over the world by business pundits for his understanding of the Indian junta and his simple yet novel ideas. His words became THE new mantra in management. Courses were planned on his management style and he was invited to deliver lectures at reputed business schools including Harvard. That’s till 2009. Today he is sulking behind the scenes after the crushing defeat in this year’s elections. The new railway minister Mamata Banerjee has declared that a white paper will be made on the Lalu regime. It seems that his fortunes have turned. He is perhaps at his all time low. But knowing Laloo, this is perhaps only a temporary glitch. After all it is his proclaimed ambition to be the Prime Minister of India!

Is 9% India's Limit?

2009-06-17T03:50:00.000-07:00

Development for the masses… Yes… that is the term. Oh… since you just came here, let me acclimatize you with the season in my mind right now. I was thinking about the development pattern in India.

Recently I traveled by train from Palakkad to Bangalore via Tamil-Nadu in the daytime and I had a first hand feel of the urban-rural divide as the adage goes. Believe it or not, I actually saw people working in the fields completely naked. Being naked is perhaps the most comfortable way to beat the scorching sun when you are toiling in the field. But the point I am trying to convey is that if the people there had a proper education and exposure to the outer world then it is unlikely that they would have the mindset to go about romping stark naked in the middle of the day. I saw children running barefoot wearing rags. I saw vacant buildings with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) painted on it with crumbling pillars and rotten rooftops. I saw such small fields that I wondered how they could even sustain themselves with it, let alone sell their produce for a margin.
To me it became apparent that these villagers had no idea about how rapidly the world is changing and how much it has already changed.

When I read about the government schemes, I realized that bulk of the planned growth happens only in the cities. Yes, there are a few schemes like the NREGS, SSA, etc which primarily focus on rural areas, but they are far too few and too ineffectively implemented to cause any tangible change in the rural landscape. All of our 9% growth rate is confined to pockets of urban India with the other India, the rural India, the true India being deprived of the progress. A good case in point would be my own village in Kerala. I cannot think of a single major change that has happened there in the last 15 years. They still don’t have a hospital worth its name. All the landmarks and the shops and the roads are still the same. Not an extra meter of road has been added. All that great social development indices they talk about was already achieved 20 years ago and the place has not progressed since.

Cities don’t require that much government attention to grow. People there already have the mentality to grow and they will consciously try to raise their standard of living. The government needs only to act as a small catalyst. The governments’ efforts I believe must be primarily on the rural sector. Yes, we are progressing at a healthy 9% rate by focussing on cities but that is nothing when we look at the possibilities. There is a HUGE potential waiting to be tapped in our rural heartlands. Just imagine if only 28% population can bring about a 9% growth, then the opportunities if the entire population can be harnessed are limitless. If somehow we can invigorate our countryside, then, my friends, India would be unstoppable.
Au contraire, if we don’t do something about this rural-urban divide I fear that the progress that we see today, will someday, end. Social inequality will be our bane and the cause of our downfall. We have an opportunity today to make India something it has never been since the Vedic ages, a country of uniform prosperity and peace and we must not be found wanting.

Me and My Eloquence

2009-06-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

Three years of disuse and neglect has left my English in a pitiable state.
I used to think of myself as someone who was eloquent. And today, I find myself lacking. Language is like a sword, it needs to be scrubbed and polished, or else it rusts. And that indeed is the plight I suffer today. In case you are wondering why I have broached this topic at all, let me put your mind to rest. It was during my preparation for the GRE examination I am supposed to be taking in a few months time that the “great, painful truth” became apparent. Though I never expected to do exceptionally well in the sample test without any preparation I was not prepared for the shocker of marks I obtained in the verbal test. On introspection I realized that my only exercise in English has been this blog the past few years. And even when I wrote this blog, I was not really paying serious attention to my language. As I read through my blog today, my obliviousness became apparent. As my brother so rightly pointed out, the way I write is not “beautiful” anymore. That is something I hope to correct in time. Anyway the only way from here is upwards… hopefully…

Non-Smoker's Plight

2009-06-03T01:48:00.000-07:00

Hey “Smoker”... Yes you…!
The one smoking smack in the middle of the bus stop… I am speaking to you… Have you ever stuck your head in an automobile exhaust??? I am pretty sure you have not. Try it sometime. Go take the pipe from the hookah and stick it to the exhaust and take a puff. Inhale all that filth into your emaciated lungs and let us see how it feels. You don’t think that such an exercise is going to be the next high you desire huh. Let me tell you that the fumes you so exuberantly expel in perfect ellipses is not the spiritual “high” that I desire either. I don’t care what others think, I can’t stand you smoking. That old lady probably dislikes it, this baby must, the beautiful girl over there loathes it, they all hate it, and it’s just that they don’t protest. But my friend, I have absolutely no problem in battling for my life if I have to. I don’t intend to let you kill me like this. Yes, it’s me. I am “Non-Smoker” or “Smoke-Hater”, probably just a weirdo in this “Smoked” world. I don’t look ethereal surrounded by smoke, but at least my alveoli and bronchi are in the pink of their health. I can’t understand your compulsion for self destruction but why are you forcing me to walk through nicotine fog every time I want to drink a coffee or catch a bus or go for a jog or well just continue with my inconsequential existence!!! Yes I know you don’t smoke inside McDonalds or the Coffee House or inside a bus. But I don’t live there. I walk in the crowded street, have my breakfast in the crowded dhabha, and sleep in a bus stand. So why-o-why do I have to sit like a POW with fumes trying to kill me. Is this the curse of the not so privileged non-smoker???

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Back in Business... God Promise.. :P

2009-06-02T23:38:00.001-07:00

Well after my loooong hiatus and with a lot of self-motivation I have decided to start up with my blogging again…
Yeah I know my last post was on why I wanted to blog and all that. So I won’t lecture you with that again… (Maybe I should write on why I didn’t stick to my word, but that would only take a single word to describe – LAZINESS !!!)

So now that my confession is over, I think we can move over to more pressing matters…

Quandary of a Non-Blogging Blogger…

2009-02-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

I know this post took a long time coming. Thank god it did come at least. This particular attempt happened to be my 5th or 6th attempt at a post. Truth be told, blogging had become hard for me. I had become picky about topics and also very suspicious of my language. Given the fact that I hardly studied any grammar at school and that I had not read a decent book in a long time, my English, was (still is) perhaps as good as a that of a 5th grader. Added to this was my new obsession with writing sensible posts. Multiply it to the nagging question as to why I blogged at all. Put a few more exponential functions and you can see how lethargic I had become to blogging.
For a few days I even contemplated terminating “arbittalk”.
But there was something about blogging that attracted me and still attracts me and I figured I’ll give it another shot. I scrapped on a myriad range of topics from the psychology of the reserved people to the beauty of the Eigen values and vectors (arbit stuff.. :)). But none of them, when read, felt like a well written post or even an interesting read. Now why do I want to post anything anyway? My posts are hardly earth shattering, ground breaking, revolutionary stuff which the world cannot be deprived of. They are just a few more useless Bytes to the TBs and TBs of 1’s and 0’s stored in the servers that make up the internet. But I have grown attached to my blog. It feels good to see something new gracing this page when I key in the website IP. It is a feeling; I am sure most bloggers experience. And that is the only thing that kept me from just deleting the blog.
So I figured if all I want is something new on arbittalk.blogspot.com, then I will give myself exactly that and this post is the fruit of the all that deliberation. There is virtually nothing sensible about this post. Even less of this is interesting. But hey, I finally managed to cook something up. Maybe articulate prose will follow in time. Maybe my lethargy will drown with this post in this macrocosm called the internet. Let me hope so for my sake and for the sake of “arbittalk”.

Installing GRUB after installing Windows

2009-01-22T17:44:00.000-08:00

Windows is THE most popular OS in the world...
It is also the most unfriendly to other OSes. One common problem that affects people is that when they install Windows after Linux the GRUB bootloader is overwritten. So the poor chap often ends up reinstalling the whole of linux... The following post by David Mooney on xubuntu-users mailinglist tells you how to reinstall GRUB without all that circus..

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If for some odd reason you missed having the Windows operating system and you decided to install it on another partition, you will notice your GRUB is missing afterwords. This usually happens and is a huge headache for those trying to get their GRUB back. Here’s what you need to do to get it back:

Put your bootable Ubuntu/Xubuntu install disk in the CD drive and run it. Instead of installing anything, click on the menu to open the terminal application.

In terminal mode, type the following:

sudo grub
find /boot/grub/stage1
root (x,y)
setup (x)
quit
sudo shutdown “now” -r

The resulting “find” command will display something like (hd0,1). In this example, you would then type root (hd0,1) and then setup (hd0) in the above area. These numbers might be different; that’s why I included the “find” command so that folks who might have their Ubuntu partitions located either in front or behind their Windows installation or on a completely separate internal/external hard drive so that you will get the appropriate/correct setup numbers.

Ok, now you got your GRUB-on, but what about that darn GRUB menu? It’s not displaying what you want it to display? Well, let just see here…

Upon reboot, select “Recovery Mode”, usuaully the second option down on the GRUB menu. This will allow you to boot into the root. Once you’re in the terminal mode, type:

editor /boot/grub/menu.lst

Well, the rest is pretty much self explanatory. There should be enough comments in the menu.lst to direct you to what you can and cannot do to your GRUB menu.lst.

I usually put the Windows option at the top of the menu so that others (none-Linux users) who use my computer can find it easily if they have to do a reboot. Your Windows installation will have a different root than your Ubuntu/Xubuntu, but it’s usually automatically placed by GRUB once it’s set up again (like the above). I also recommend removing the timeout option as this is sometimes annoying. Have fun!

-David :D

P.S.- If you have a question, I’ll be happy to answer to the best of my ability.
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Thanks David...
Hope the above helps you..

How Random is REALLY Random

2008-09-13T21:28:00.000-07:00

Statuary Warning : Long and Technical entry..

Random is a beautiful word and randomness, a strikingly beautiful concept. The most intriguing thing about” randomness” is probably that it is virtually impossible to generate something TRUELY random ourselves or by a computer program
(However this line of thought is debatable), the reason being we have ‘Memory’ and so do most of our modern day computers (They are something called ‘State Machines’ which again can be memory-less but in general are not so.). To be able to generate truly random sequences, we have to be ‘memory-less’, that is we should be ignorant of what we did at a time just before now! Sure there are random sequence generator programs, but when I say random I mean “REALLY random”. Before this article goes any further, I believe its best I define ‘random’. Specifically I will define “Random Numbers” since that’s the prime focus of this article.
Two often quoted definitions are one due to J. M. Franklin which says – “A sequence of numbers is random if it has every property that is shared by all infinite sequences of independent samples of random variables from the uniform distribution” and the other credited to D. H. Lehmer which goes the following way – “ A random sequence is a vague notion embodying the ideas of a sequence in which each term is unpredictable to the uninitiated and whose digits pass a certain number of tests, traditional with statisticians and depending somewhat on the uses to which the sequence is to be put.” The above two definitions don’t obviously mean the same thing. However the second definition appears to be a rather practical definition in that it means that the random numbers that are practically used in communication and information theory need only be approximately random in the domain over which they are used. A sequence satisfying the first definition is a lot harder to generate ( I call it harder because I don’t like the word impossible).
Before I commit the heresy of making this all too abstract let me give you an example of a sequence a layman would probably generate if asked to generate a sequence of random numbers involving only 1s and 0s –

110010010110010001101010011010010101101100
110111010010011010011011001101011001110010
010100010101010101011001001011001001

It probably looks good but fact is that the above sequence is far from random. In fact it can be shown mathematically that the sequence written above fails miserably when tests are conducted. For instance it can be shown that the probability of getting a sequence of consecutive 1s or 0s in a sequence of 120 bits is a surprising 0.9865 ( ~1 ) ! Likewise the probability of getting random numbers having less than 3 or more consecutive bits of same type is just 0.000053!

A more acceptable sequence would be –

111000111010111111101000110011010100111010
011101000010111011001110110011111101101011
100000000110111011110111101011011010

People tend to put bits looking at what they have written previously and tend to put a 0 for every 1 since that’s what appears to be intuitively right. But intuition fails in domains we have never been to. Intuition cannot tell you how to move or eat in space unless you have seen it. Intuition cannot imagine how things work in the submicroscopic domain unless you are a physicist. Similarly intuition cannot really tell you what really a random sequence is unless you study it.
Mathematically a very simple test for randomness is the correlation function. Any correlation with another random sequence should give you a zero. Practical algorithms like Lehmer’s Algorithm (nth term = (n-1) th term mod (m))use the modulus function to generate RNs. However they are periodic functions that repeat after some interval, ‘m’ in the example given above. Making the interval larger makes the sequence tend towards being more and more random. But to be truly random this interval has to be the unattainable infinity!!
For instance it will give us a very good random sequence if we ask a crowd of people to just say 1 or 0 as they wish and record what they say. Even here it will give us a better result if we make sure that no one hears what the others said! One simple way of generating a random sequence is to toss a coin and record the heads and tails as they appear. However if the generator involves anyone or anything that has memory then, my friends, generating a random sequence is going to be hard (again I say hard because I don’t like the word impossible).
So I ask again - How random is REALLY random?
My answer : Oh, really RANDOM

India vs Pakistan - The Real Battle

2008-08-29T00:47:00.000-07:00

This NOT a blog on Indo-Pak cricket matches and definitely not on how it has improved brotherhood between us and all that Blah Blah Blah...

"Why do India and Pakistan fight?What is Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir and why did we have the wars with them?"

That’s something that we all should know, but also that many I talked to didn’t.
When we got independence from the British, it was decided that all territory with Muslim population of more than 75% would be called Pakistan and the Hindu dominated territories would go to India. However the princely states were not a part of this agreement. It was up to the rulers to decide what they wished to do. The Maharaja of Kashmir, Hari Singh Dogra decided to neither join India or Pakistan and desired an autonomous state, something similar to the Hurriyat’s stand today. However Pakistan invaded Kashmir as a reply to which Indian government sent troops to Kashmir to defend it. Rattled by the Pakistani aggression Maharaja of Kashmir decided to join India. Pakistan claims that the tribal lashkars that they sent to Kashmir were actually envoys to the Maharaja asking him to rethink his stand on the issue.

The second war of 1965 - After the Indo_China war or '62 Pakistan was under the impression that India was considerably weakened. Also the prevailing mood in Pakistan was that a single Pakistani soldier was equal to 4 on Indias side. So the Ayub Khan Government decided to attack us. India really was weakened and hence the war ended in a stalemate.

Then in 1971 Pakistan tried to placate the Bengali peasantry by annexing the Hindu lands and distributing it among the Muslims. This boisterous act created about 8 million refugees who moved into India putting a huge pressure on us. To stem this flow, Indira Gandhi declared war on Pakistan and defeated them in 2 weeks.
The Kargil war is well known and need not be recounted again.

It is after the ’71 war or around this time (I guess) that Pakistan got the idea of sponsoring terrorism. The idea was to make India bleed and when they spot a weakness; they thought they would go for the kill. The effects are there for all to see.

Pakistan’s dreaded ISI sponsors dreaded underworld dons like Dawood Ibrahim and his ilk and is also believed to have had a role to play in many of the blasts that have occurred in India.

Reams and reams of pages that can be written over this issue, an issue that is in essence very hard to resolve. So i think its best i stop here for now. I have only accounted the Indian side of the argument as that is the only side I know of. But I believe both the sides have very valid claims.

So that was short summary of the issue as I know it. It is by no means a complete picture of the issue.

My extra comments : There are numerous other blames that we throw on each other over a line that is drawn on a map. Countless people have lost lives over an issue that to me seems strikingly similar to the dogfights we see in the streets over which part of the road belongs to which dog. Just as they don’t realize that It is not theirs to fight for, we too seem to be oblivious to the fact that borders are just a line on the map. In this era of globalization when the world is slowly but surely moving toward the Utopian dream of a global community when will we realize that land is not something that we as “higher species” should be fighting over. Makes me think have we really Evolved at all????

Optmist Quotes

2008-08-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

I like to call myself the Optimist. Historically there have been a few optimists who were great writers and thinkers. Here is what they had to say about optimism-

->Lucimar Santos de Lima - It doesn’t hurt to be Optmistic, you can always cry later.
->George F Will - The nice part of being pessimist is that you are either
proven right or are pleasantly surprised.
->Robert Brault - The average pencil is about 7 inches long with a half inch
eraser,in case you thought optimism was dead.
->Elbert Hubbard – Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant, the digitalis of
failure.
->Susan J Bissonette – An optimist is the human personification of spring
->Oscar Wilde – The basis of Optimism is sheer terror.
->Daniel L Reardon – In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the
optmist has a better time on the trip.

Our Democracy-A Farce (Part 2)

2008-07-19T18:34:00.000-07:00

(Click here for 'Democracy-A Farce'-Part 1)

Some time back I had posted a blog on our democracy being one big joke these days. I rejoiced when Dr Manmohan Singh’s government finally showed some spine and decided to go ahead with the nuke deal. But now I wonder if it was worth it? Politicians are a corrupt lot. That’s public knowledge, but I had hoped for an iota maybe even a fraction of an iota of decency in the community. But who am I kidding?
The Indian politicians are the cream of the lot. They are the least principled, the filthiest, the incorrigible set of Bakasuras that infest this 'blessed' earth. They plague this land. These leeches will suck your bones dry if that makes them an extra paisa or or grants them as much as a whiff of power.
The current scenario demands that we put things in perspective. What are we doing to this country of ours? Politics has fallen to levels I frankly don’t dare to imagine. To indulge in such blatant horse trading and corruption in public… Well what do I say… We Indians suck… I suck… You suck… We all suck… In spite of all this we will still go and vote for the unprincipled jackals when the next elections come around. Some of us will develop an aversion for the filth called politics and commit a greater heresy of never taking part in the elections. We say all candidates are bad. We ask-“Are we supposed to choose the lesser evil? “ Well, truth be told, we have to do exactly that. Have you ever wondered how criminals like Shibu Soren come back into the parliament house year after year? I am sure you have. I also know that you know the answer too. We vote for the guy. Surely if we select a person who stands against a really corrupt one, the politicians will realize that the people are going to choose the better guy and this will send a message across that to everyone that good guys do have a chance after all. This will encourage many of us to join politics and try and do something for this country. But the way things are going around here… It makes me sad… I am still optimist about India’s future but am I being too naive??

My Culinary Instincts

2008-07-11T04:59:00.000-07:00

Now that the holidays are at the terminal stage, I was contemplating life that doesn’t involve mega slumbers, aimless wandering and marathon fragging to which I had to return soon. It was during one of those contemplative moods that I set about to think as to what I had done in the last quarter year of my life. (I did say I was contemplative, didn’t I?) An internship, a trek, a visit to kerala, sketching (I learnt to sketch females… human ones to be precise… ;->), joined the gym (and promptly dumped the idea as a bad job), played some chess, learnt the head stand, etc… Not bad... But I thought something is amiss. I wanted to try out something new this time. And so I decided to don the chef’s bonnet.

So the stage was set. My mummy dutifully passed the ladle over to me with an amused smile playing on her lips. It is understandable considering that I can’t make out an onion from a potato. (Not literally... But you get the idea)
Well anyway I decided to prepare SAMOSA. (sfx: stars and ‘ta ta ra’ sounds)
They say the male pride peaks in the kitchen. We just refuse to take help. It is true. But the problem was I DIDN’T KNOW to make a samosa in the first place. In fact other than the fact that it was a great snack I knew little else. So what do you think I did? Google comes to rescue. (sfx : heroic entry) So after a few minutes I stand in front of the stove with a neat print-out of the recipe in hand. The author had somehow managed to forget the 5 important questions. Read on…
It said take some chili (How many..?) and garlic. (Or was it ginger…)Fry them together. Then cut some potatoes to cubes. (How Big?) Then add garam masala, amchoor (whatever that is…), chilli powder and salt to the potatoes and mix uniformly. Take some green peas (How much?) and cook it. To make patty mix flour, oil, water and cumin seeds (???). Make dough of a uniform consistency. (ehh... how am I supposed to know when that happens?). Then spread it (Easier said than done… It took me two hours to do that). Finally mix the potatoes and peas. Mash them together. Prepare that thing to be fried and then fry it.
Well I did all that. Finally when after 5 hours of hard work when the time came to eat, I saw my mummy acting deaf to my cries of food ready and my brother nowhere in the scene. Fuming I (Optimistically) tried the samosas myself and guess what... IT WAS DELICIOUS…
I guess I have that culinary instinct after all…

Weathering Mangalore Weather

2008-06-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

Living in Mangalore during the rainy months is an exercise in the fortitude of mind and body. To be able to survive being holed up in your bedroom reeking of damp clothes, of days of boredom that can only be surpassed by the boredom in the class of a certain someone I have studied under, of doing nothing but reading novels and slumbering on them, does call for a ‘kumbakarna’ean effort . To tell the truth I am yet to agree with this place and I have been here for 5 years.

There are only two kinds of weather here in Mangalore during the monsoon. One, it rains and two, it rains harder. Imagine a leaky tap that is so ubiquitous in our bathrooms. The one that makes a steady tap-tap-tap sound of water drops dripping on the ceramic floor. Well… then imagine a million such taps fitted on the sky. It doesn’t rain hard enough to drench you, but enough for your clothes to get sticky and stinky. It is during this kind of rain that people quickly get out of their house to stock up and do the other important things that need to be done. For this is the calm before the storm.
Have you ever been under a dam when the sluice gates are opened? Well that’s close to the feeling that comes over you when it rains harder. The sluice gates of the seven heavens open up and the rain that follows can only be faithfully rendered by someone with a lot more writing skills than I currently possess. Streets are flooded, trees uprooted and power promptly cut off. Planning to go out with an umbrella? You might as well use a paper napkin. Winds blow horizontally and the rain follows suit. Days turn into night only to be momentarily brightened by lightning. Heart-stopping thunderclaps follow. The word ‘thunderstorm’ is taken to an all new level. Once you are caught in this rain, I can guarantee, you will never be caught under it again. People can be seen scurrying for cover at the first signs of the ominous black sky that characterizes this type of precipitation.
So that was the case study of the Mangalore rain.
It all ok to be here as a tourist and enjoy the rain for some time and so do we when monsoon starts.
But, to live here, day after day, week after week, watching nothing but H2O... That’s not exactly my idea of fun.

Inflating inflation

2008-06-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

Oh man… here it comes again. Petrol price hiked. Diesel price hiked. LPG price hiked.

The Congress must be cursing its stars. I, for one, sure am cursing them. No more pleasure biking till the oil rates fall or I start earning (time to 'oil' my rusted cycle). I never knew my fun trips will depend so much on OPEC, Nigeria’s militants, the weakening dollar and other such world affairs. Hey come on… I just want to speed along the highway, carefree and oblivious to all around me (especially the fellow commuters…) and now this…
Even starting the bike burns my pocket…

SAD… super SAD…
I am angry and hurt. So please pardon me while i unleash my angry thoughts.

Screw you America… (Global Policeman.. Naah.. More like a global Bully)

Screw you Osama… (Just leave the oil pipelines as it is… Don’t break them please)

Screw you OPEC… ( You can definitely do better, But then why would you eh..? you are, after all making money now..)

There are a lot more screws to be given away… I am stopping short of giving the entire list…

But just one more… I can’t resist…

Screw you Bush… (This guy just has to be there)

Why did you have to attack Iraq? Why do you have to always have to go hammer and tongs against anyone who doesn't believe in the American Way? Why does everyone in America need an SUV? Why… Why... WHY???

And why on top of all that do you say Indians eat too much...?

Last time I checked America topped the charts in obesity count and we in the hunger count…
My dear Bush, if we eat any less, we will just vanish… And you don't want that to happen. America would not be America without us. We are your doctors and engineers you know...
So please tell your countrymen to eat less and walk more and save the rest of the world...

Travelling in a KSRTC bus

2008-05-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

Harrowing… Traumatic… Suicidal… Revolting… AWESOME!!!

I mean it. It really is awesome. I happened to travel by a KSRTC bus in the western ghats a few days ago. And I loved it. The view was unparalleled. I was left wondering why people even bother to go to the swiss alps when you have such a beautiful place right here that can be visited at a thousandth of the price.

But that is not what I ‘enjoyed’ the most. What I enjoyed was just the feeling of sitting in the bus. The environment in a bus is that of India at its secular best. It’s a wonder how people manage to squeeze themselves like the idiomatic sphagetti. Fat men, old women, excited children, bawling babies… All of them shed their inhibitions and try to cram themselves into the atomic spaces between people. What results is a single body responding to the motions of the bus in perfect tendem. The conductor deserves an award for work efficiency. Its incredible how he manages to keep track of the people and issue tickets to all of them.

Travelling in the ghats adds its own charming elements. The bus winds through the snake like roads, screeching and howling down the hills or spluttering and coughing up the hill with the driver at his reckless best. It wouldn’t be fair to call him reckless, but it does take a strong hearted to keep his heart from popping out of his mouth. On an average day don’t be surprised to see a bus sticking upwards at the cliffside after sliding off the road. Road barriers are non-existent. If you do manage to keep your heart in its proper position, there are other things that just might pop from your mouth. Its disgusting to see people in the bus sticking their retching heads out of the windows. And the bus I travelled in, seemed to have an extra ordinarily large assemeblage of the spring stomached. Everywhere I saw was the same scene of people retching. The conductor was sitting in his seat oblivious of all the commotion around him. Probably it was a routine affair for him.
This article will never end I think. So I better stop.
I could go on and on, but its better I stop here or I might scare away the prospective tourists from this blessed land of ours…

Poor Kapil

2008-05-11T18:08:00.000-07:00

You remember ICL…? The league that started it all…

Well I don’t blame you if you don’t. It was a brillant idea concieved by the Zee TV people with Kapil Dev’s help to cash in on the cricket mania in this country. They got the concept right. The got everything right except that they forgot that they are dealing with the BCCI. The ICL guys had imagined that they will be received with open arms and given a loving hug by the BCCI. Instead what they got was a bear hug from the body. ICL is now tottering… The BCCI declared the poor league a rogue league… Banned players from playing in it… Kicked Kapil Dev from anything related to cricket in this country… Enforced the ban on players from other countries and the icing on the cake – they started their own IPL. The BCCI haas acted like a typical capitalist whom the Indian politicians like Sharad Pawar love to hate. It has destroyed the people who concieved the idea and then imitated the same and are now raking moolah like there is no tomorrow. This year ICL got a mediocre response at best.. I will be surprised even if it gets the same response the next year... What with all the big names in cricket going to IPL? And the money involved only increasing.. IPL now has become a heady cocktail of glitz, glamour and cricket... The kind of power and money the BCCI wields in matters related to cricket makes it imposssible for any one to beat it. With IPL it has only increased. Looks like the ICL is bound to die prematurely.

Poor Kapil…

What more can I say???

To Do An Intership At Home

2008-05-06T03:02:00.000-07:00

How do you work from home? Ok lemme start from the beginning. I got an internship in a very nice company and the company being in another city, they allowed me to work from the place I stay. So far so good…

The trouble, my friends, is that I just cant concentrate at home. ( Can anyone do that?) Well… I can concentrate on games, on tv, on anything that doesn’t involve more than a few brain cells working at a time, but when it comes to something serious, it just is futile. Look at what happens typically. I have my breakfast and decide to start my work.So I start working on MATLAB trying to generate some piece of code. I minimize the window to open some other application that I need on the desktop and lo behold, whats there on the desktop… the flashy icon ‘S.T.A.L.K.E.R – Shadows of Chernobyl ’ ( for the help of the ignorant, it’s a nice game) lying adjacent to the not so flashy icon of the application I planned to open. Now what do you do huh? You can fight your mind once, twice, thrice, but every time… that’s asking for too much. I start the damned game and the next thing I know about the outside world is when my mom calls me for lunch.

Then there is the TV, the friends, the girls hostel at the side ( He he..) and a million other distractions that just ensures that you do no work. To top it you have your mother screaming at you saying- “look at you. Wasting your holidays playing and doing god knows what? Why cant you do your project or at least some thing worthwhile?.. .. “ and on and on and on…

In spite of all this I have mangaed to start the project. Now does that not deserve a big pat in the back?

Democracy... A Farce ???

2008-02-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

Click here for Democracy - A Farce(Part 2)

Is this democracy just a farce???

Is this so called democratic system just not another version of the Wild West where the power hungry or the ‘adventurous’ people reap all the gain and leave the people who choose them with a raw deal? ...

Think about it.

The politicians are a cunning lot. They make us believe that we are living in a democratic world, that we are the king makers. The issues they raise to raise our collective conscience are things that the public has no complete knowledge of. They take advantage of our half knowledge and then try to convince us that they are the saints in this country. I still am not clear what the hell is going on in Nandi gram. I mean the complete picture. One set of them say it’s bad, some others say that it’s not the fault of the government, others think that the people are to be blamed, blah, blah, blah…

I have no clue where the so called oppression against the dalits is going on. Sure I have read about it, I have heard speeches about it, but I have never seen it happen… I am yet to see a person marginalized for being a dalit… I don’t deny its existence. But if it was as bad as they make it out to be, how is it that I have never seen it before?

They say that the Bangalore- Mysore infrastructure corridor project is ridden with corruption and black money. They never give us proper proof. They call these press conferences and wave some papers for the media to take pictures of, but they can’t prove it in the court of law even with all their ‘proofs’... or are they just ‘spoofs’?

They stir up emotions about the Sethu-Samudram project. They tell us that the bridge is a representative of our country’s culture, that this project will destroy the ecology of the system. Some say it’s boons outweigh the banes. Who do I believe in?

There are a million other incidents I could quote…

When you vote do you actually give a lot of thought to it? No! Very few do… and that is the greatest tragedy of this system. This is a system run by public vote, that public, which is manipulated like puppets, and brainwashed to think that it’s thinking independently. Is this system then not a failure? People just can’t decide what is good for them. Today all that the democracy does is put the best liar on the corridors of power. How else does one explain the support for the politicians who contest and win elections from jails?!

What do I suggest?

Nothing…

I have no clue what a better system would be.

All I can say is that democracy as exists today, is by no means the perfect way to live. It’s better than aristocracy, but by no means the perfect one.

We need a better system.

What would it be???

A question for deep thought…

The Chase

2008-02-26T19:55:00.000-08:00

I stood there my back bent, my head bowed, my legs taut, my forehead knotted, my eyes burning with the sweat from my brow, my temples throbbing in anticipation, waiting, listening… The noon sun was relentless. It burned the back of my neck. But that was the least of my problems. There were others besides me in the same state as I was in. All of us waiting, listening…

The Man had taken his stance as the end of our lineup. He had a gun. The gun was holstered, his fingers hovered on the holster, the holster was unlocked and the lip of the holster, open. He looked at us like a butcher looking at the sacrificial lambs with an expression that conveyed nothing. He was doing his job. He was asked to shoot, no questions asked. And he knew his job well.

“God”, I thought, “If only I could run away… If only once… if only once, I could run faster than a bullet!”

I looked down one last time at the mud trial we were standing on. There was a puddle there. I had lost a lot of water. “When I get out of here”, I thought, “I am going to treat myself with lots of water.”

“Its time” the guy next to me muttered. I looked up one last time. Through the corner of my eye I saw the fingers of the Man itching. It WAS time.

CRACK!!! The gun cracked. I forgot everything. My legs got wings. I lept…

I saw someone fall down. I felt nothing. I ran. There was a goal. I just had to run. And run I did.

I looked back and I saw that they were hounding me. The Game was on!!!

I clenched my fist, grit my jaws and thrust myself forward. My heart was drumming at its limit, my stomach knotted, my legs furiously beating the ground. My nails dug itself into my palm. I felt nothing, heard nothing. My goal was clear… To run… And run I did…

They were gaining distance on me. Adrenaline surged through me. I panicked. And panic granted me strength. I put my last ounce in. I had to.

Then suddenly it was over. I stopped, they stopped… My heart swelled with emotion. I broke down… I cried… I shook hand with the Man… And why not? After all I had won the running race!!! :)