Something like life

Disconcerting secrecy

2009-12-11T14:20:00.001+05:30

While writing about global warming, I didn’t write on the CRU leak because I have only followed one side of the controversy, and so my opinion on it is naturally biased. However one particular aspect of the controversy which I find particularly troublesome is that some climate scientists are refusing to disclose the information about models used to analyze climate change, now with the caveat that I don’t know to what extent this is true, this is a serious matter. If the scientists are serious about the threat posed by climate change, they should be as open and forthcoming as possible, citing intellectual property rights as excuse for not disclosing the information just diminishes their credibility and what is important that of climate science.

Disnified Politics

2009-12-11T13:01:00.000+05:30

As far as India is concerned, postnationalism is to reality what Winnie the pooh is to real bears.

Why Sarah Palin Is Right*

2009-12-11T02:51:00.001+05:30

(Originally A Call For Inaction)

Related Post

For long I get a uncomfortable feeling whenever the topic of discussion turns to global warming (also known as climate change, or Al Gore's lamentation) . Problem is I don't know about science of climate change, and while arguing from point of ignorance is fun, such a debate doesn't serve any constructive purpose, unfortunately of course for many people entertainment of pissing contests is the point.

Now my ignorance of climate science doesn't surprise me, the things I am ignorant of vary from string theory to cooking vermicelli. However unlike string theory or cooking vermicelli, climate science affects public policy which is why some sort of understanding is required. Now I admit that when I had become skeptic of climate change, it was partly a fatigue to incessant, and one suspects grossly exaggerated, alarm about global warming.

But if global warming is crucial for deciding public policy, some sort of understanding is essential, and yet climate science is too complicated a subject for someone like me to understand in his spare time. This being the case, I was stuck in undecided category.

Then sometime back it struck me I was approaching the problem from wrong angle. The correct approach, since the question involved public policy, was to do a cost-benefit analysis. Again since I don't understand climate science, I can not estimate the cost of global warming. As it turns out, it is much simpler to estimate the cost of global warming mitigation, which I will try to explain in as complicated terms as possible,

For calculation, I am assuming that Al Gore is right and carbon dioxide indeed causes the global warming**, and global warming is a clear and present danger*** (and by clear and present I mean around fifty years on geological scale). Further it is reasonable to assume that warming on global scale must be lagging indicator of percentage of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

This implies that effect of a reduction in carbon dioxide will be visible in terms of reduced temperature only after certain period of time, let's say thirty years (considering the geological time scale it errs on the side of caution)

Now if both the previous assumption statement are correct, one might conclude it is necessary to not just reduce the output but to actually reduce the carbon dioxide present in atmosphere. Which means that the output should be reduced to a amount less than what can be removed by the natural processes.

What does this mean? Again assuming that the amount that can be removed through natural processes has remained constant****, output must be reduced to pre-Industrial revolution level (when presumably the warming started). There is a problem though, carbon dioxide is just a by-product of energy consumption, as there are no significant non carbon dioxide producing energy sourcing reducing output in effect means reducing energy consumption to pre-Industrial revolution level, in fact as world population has increased manifold it would imply an unimaginable reduction in per capita energy consumption.

Why unimaginable? Well, energy consumption is a good indicator of the living conditions, generally better living conditions imply higher energy consumption. Therefore a decrease in per capita energy consumption to less than pre-Industrial revolution levels essentially implies living conditions of average human will revert to the same era.

And while many people may hold romantic notion of a pristine earth unsullied by machines, in reality this will mean a life plagued by poverty, hunger, want and disease, a life wasted in daily grind for survival.

Economic holocaust in other words.

I am not sure that global warming is worth it.

*Not really, this was just to bait Respected Ma'am

** Though industrial pollution also means more smoke which I believe reflects lights.

*** Though to put things in perspective, earth has been much warmer than predicted for global warming earlier, and contrary to doomsday scenario for global warming, life thrived. Also extinction of large number of species is a natural phenomenon.

**** Though geoengineering may remove atmospheric carbon dioxide. Its feasibility should be studied.

Not that ...

2009-12-09T20:53:00.000+05:30

..any of you will have any idea but aren’t restrictions on insider trading kind of stupid?

The List

2009-12-06T03:16:00.000+05:30

Here is what I want to write about if the notion strikes me, swiss minaret ban, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, and Swapan Das Gupta.

Combinations you like

2009-12-06T03:12:00.000+05:30

You know what tastes really good ? Black Currant. Hey wait, Rum n Raisins is wonderful too. A bit of dilemma, isn't it? You know what, go ahead take a double scoop, 'cos you deserve that.

Now 'spose there is a special place in your heart for sci-fi, but wait you also are a sucker for western. Well if that be the case Firefly is just what you need. It is awesome and it is double scoop. Now why the heck was it cancelled!

For Code Monkeys

2009-12-02T14:37:00.001+05:30

1. No you don’t have to design before implementation in all cases. You may have read it in some standard software book, or you may have learnt it in your first company, but it is wrong. You should design only if you need to. So when do you need to design? Glad you asked. Here is when you should design. When you think that spending time on design is going to benefit the implementation, this is only when what you are implementing is non-trivial, i.e. some sort of system or framework for system, it also implies that you are familiar with the underlying infrastructure. However if what you are doing in effect is tweaking parameters of some function, and you are not familiar with the underlying implementation, there is no point in having a design.

2. Guess what is not in the ten commandments Moses brought with him from the mountain. If you guessed thou shall comment every line of code, Congratulations. See, comments are for a purpose, specifically to convey information for maintenance of the code. And believe it or not, there is something like too much information. Which is why, comment no more than what is necessary for the intended purpose. This is why comment should not be trivial. Here is what you can comment.

a. A brief comment at the beginning of the function stating the purpose of function and some other critical information. This is useful for automatic documentation.

b. Inside the function, comment only to provide overview of the algorithm and that too only when the implementation of algorithm is non intuitive.

c. Similarly comment there is some particular piece of code which is not very intuitive to understand, this may happen when you are fixing some bug.

Fortunately rule for what not to comment is simple. Never comment on any thing which is trivial. This means, you need not comment for every damned variable declaration /definition, loop, or control.

3. I forgot, there is one more rule about what not to comment. It is the FREAKING OBSOLETE CODE. Yes, I know some of you are under impression that it is a very good practice. Here is my request, die, preferably painfully. Obsolete code is not documentation and doesn’t provide information in concise form for maintenance. Instead the commented code keeps piling on cycle after cycle and the rotting stench of thousands of lines of obsolete code just repels anyone from actually reading the code. If you are commenting obsolete code for reversion, then either you are too stupid, or you work in a really pathetic company which can not afford any tool for version control.

4. Objected oriented programming is a paradigm which means approaching the problem from a specific direction. Specifically the problem must be understood in terms of objects which are implements as classes and their behaviors which is implemented as functions. This means that if you have flag to track some property of the object it is not required to return the flag in the “Get” function. Instead the proper behavior of the function is to return the property of the Object as accurately as possible.

Hindu fascist thought of the day

2009-12-02T10:37:00.001+05:30

In secularism Hindu is the Untermensch.

Dear (intellectual) wannabes

2009-12-02T10:33:00.001+05:30

Not to go all Goldwater on you but, nuance for sake of nuance is NOT a virtue.

Band karo ye bakwas

2009-11-27T20:59:00.001+05:30

And since I am speaking truth to inanity, could someone please, with sugar on top, clue in me about this famous Mumbaikar spirit. Oh yeah city was up on its feet barely a day or two after 26/11, as it was after all the bomb blasts, flood, and all the acts of God and man. But as disrespectful as it may seem, it has less to do with the courage or spirit, and more to do with a grinding daily struggle for common comforts, if anything Mumbai with its frenzy reminds one of ant colony or beehive, that of anything resembling human spirit.

Sach Ka Samna

2009-11-27T13:10:00.001+05:30

All right, this may sound disrespectful but this is too important to be hushed for sake of politeness. Let’s face the truth, we were asking for what happened last year in Mumbai. We were asking, not in the sense that a pretty girl wearing high heels is asking for rape, but as some mentally unhinged masochist who is compelled to subject herself to flailing in zed’s basement. As a nation we love victim hood. Because we have been indoctrinated by the secular liberal vanguard of nothingness that to be victim is to be noble, to submit to Islamic barbarism is a proper expiation for the cardinal sin of being a kaffir and a dhimmi, a just retribution for imaginary Islamic grievances and paranoia. We also love being victim because for us this is the only way we can have west’s attention and what’s even better (for us), its sympathy. But we are deluded, because weakness is never respected, the earth will never be inherited by the meek and the lamb will always lie in the lion’s belly.

Au Contraire

2009-11-26T17:52:00.001+05:30

We can not fix our drains unless we find the willing to fix terrorism.

२६ / ११

2009-11-26T09:14:00.000+05:30

Revenge Of Cheerleader

2009-11-25T19:38:00.001+05:30

*Spoiler Warning*

Horror genre has one particular cliché (among many others), the Cheerleader. This Cheerleader character is a pretty girl, mostly blonde, remarkable for her annoying combination of vivacity and stupidity. She is usually first to be slain by the killer, often in a particularly macabre fashion, when she has sneaked to some isolated place to fool around with her boyfriend (who is a football player). This character is usually just there to get the things started.

The makers of Heroes have inverted this cliché. We have, in Claire (who incidentally was a cheerleader), the perfect embodiment of all what is irritable about the Cheerleader, and yet, in an ironical twist, she is immortal, and annoying like hell.

Anyway since we are on horror genre, I had a sort of insight, which is not particularly original. Horror movies, in a very grotesque way, are closest any genre comes to morality tales of bygone era.

Aphorism: Vanguard

2009-11-24T09:56:00.001+05:30

Secularism is vanguard of Nihilism.

It is about ideas.

2009-11-23T10:50:00.000+05:30

Consider this as an addendum to previous post. Reg. BJP President, I find unable to make myself more enthusiastic about the debate. This is because I am convinced that whatever the merits of proposed candidate(s), he (or she) can not revive BJP on his (or her) own. People may not realize but when Rajnath Singh was anointed he was hailed in the BJP sympathetic circles as the grass root politician who could recapture Delhi by reviving BJP in the UP. We all know how that story turned out. I am afraid that supporters who are pinning their hopes on some particular candidate *Nitin Gadkari cough cough* are just setting up ground for future disappointment. Of course this is not to say a charismatic leader doesn’t matter. A popular leader will of course help in the revival. However it is crucial to understand that present political environment precludes the possibility of any leader with pan-Indian appeal. Similarly while election of president by workers will, to some extent, undo the disconnect between grass root workers and the leadership, it in no way guarantees that public support. In the end it is about ideas.

Political realignment

2009-11-23T10:36:00.001+05:30

If you, like me, believe that Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is a gentleman (although of left suasion) and not a commie bastard, then I think one can make case of curious realignment in west Bengal, which goes something like this. As the things stand in West Bengal there is an unprecedented situation whereby Mamata Bannerji led TMC is running left to the ruling Left Front and appears to be winning, of course with help from Maobadis and Islamists. In contrast the Bengali aspiring middle class is slowly consolidating behind Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. Now since the BJP at core is a party of Hindu middle class, it makes sense, in a very strange way, for BJP to atleast tacitly support Left against TMC. This will bring dividend not only in immediate elections, but also in long term as it provides a foothold for BJP to expand its base.

Again while some people may find absence of a popular face in West Bengal BJP as a serious handicap, I think it is an advantage, in the sense that it will force BJP to discover ideas which find resonance with the people.

Sangham Janata saranam gacchami

2009-11-20T01:49:00.001+05:30

(This post took two months to complete)

I don't have anything to say about Maharashtra elections, or the UP elections, or even Karnataka crisis. There are people far more capable than myself to comment on them. I will restrict myself to observing that Congress is now the default choice (or as we used to say TINA).

No what interests me more are the efforts by all and sundry to find villains for impending demise of BJP, and the buck almost invariably stops at Rajnath Singh. Almost everyone agrees that it is his provincialism and insecurity which has ruined the party. Now it is not my case that the Rajnath Singh doesn't deserve the criticism. However my problem with the criticism is that it falls far short of identifying BJP's malaise. For sure Rajnath Singh has proven to be a terrible party president, however as far as precedent goes he is the norm rather than the exception. With the exception of Shree Advani in 90's, past presidents have been, at best ineffectual, and at worst venal. This includes those anointed by RSS, as is the incumbent.

To understand the fall of BJP, one should realize that rise of BJP had only tangentially to do with competency of those at the helm of organization, or, contrary to what RSS and its sympathizers would like to believe, "the ideology". No, what catapulted BJP on center stage was that for some time following the end of Congress's hegemony BJP became recipient of people's aspirations. This in turn owed itself to popular discontent with the corruption and stagnation visible in society. BJP being outside the boundaries of liberal-secular establishment benefited from this. In this it was similar to previous non Congress experiments. What was different was that the challenger to Congress was not a rag tag coalition of socialist parties but a single nationalist party.

Which brings us to first point, the most crucial mistake BJP made was to believe that it had got a mandate for what passes off as "ideology" in the Sangh Parivar, while in truth it had got a political probation. Now to be fair NDA government performed well enough. However BJP leadership was unable to realize that its ascendancy was facilitated by the unprecedented support for Ayudhya movement, the norm for national politics being aggregate of local issues. This mistake resulted in BJP fighting holding the banner of "India Shining" which predictably failed to enthuse the electorate. More importantly BJP was not helped by various scandals during NDA's tenure which robbed the party of its sheen or USP. The defeat in 2004, however shocking, was nothing more than a misfired strategy, one from which it was possible to recover.

However failure of BJP to rebound and its subsequent descent to irrelevance are owing to three causes, first, already mentioned, was erosion of its credibility, and with that, the claim of being "party with difference", second, absence of any political platform meant that BJP could not act as effective opposition and cause any significant damage to UPA government. But more serious than these two is the fact that Party has for all purposes isolated itself from the public. Party has been hijacked by fixers and ideologues who have other priorities than public approval. This, in the final analysis, is the malaise which has corroded BJP from within.
If BJP has to revive it should not be looking in direction of Sangh, instead it must win back the trust of the public.

Aphorism : Idolatory

2009-11-16T11:37:00.001+05:30

The quickest way to kill a thought is to make an idol out of it.

Relationship advice

2009-11-09T12:00:00.001+05:30

Guys don’t love for sake of love, love because you love.

Aphorism: World

2009-11-06T20:16:00.001+05:30

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a bureaucracy.

Freedom

2009-11-04T15:58:00.001+05:30

Freedom comes from barrel of gun.

Nepal Maoists admit links with Indian Naxals

2009-11-03T19:49:00.000+05:30

I am shocked, shocked! This is inconceivable. What next, Pakistan is trying to destroy India !

Our democracy stinks ...

2009-11-03T13:19:00.001+05:30

Because we litter our roads. This should have been a chapter of superfreakonomics.

Also global warming is hoax*.

*Not really, I am just trying to rile up Respected Ma’am.

People

2009-11-03T13:12:00.001+05:30

Please don’t try to strike up conversation when one is trying to relieve himself, especially conversations about designs or implementations. In fact, try, as far as possible, not to even glance in one’s direction. It is very discomfiting and just stops the flow.