Perhaps there is a useful concept around the 'learnability' of states. This refers per my thesis, to the ability of countries to 1.) come to terms with ground realities and not live in a state of wishful thinking 2.) recognize the legitimate (and perhaps not so legitimate) and persistent aspirations of groups of people and do something even if reluctantly, about it 3.) to correct the mainstream view of history regarding an event or events when the party line is wrong or distorted 3.) and to do this in a reasonable timeframe
The Irish 'troubles' are a classic example of lack of learning of a state. It took a huge amount of time (after the initial formation of the independent country of Ireland in the southern part ; a surprisingly forward-thinking decision for colonialist Great Britain) for the UK to come to terms with the conflict in northern Ireland and agree to the final solution that worked there. Simliarly, the Israeli state is learning at a glacial pace in the Palestinian conflict.
In India, the thinking on Kashmir. 60 years after independence, the discussion on Kashmir has pretty much not budged an inch - anything other than Kashmir as a integral part of India is not up for discussion. This is astounding given the dubious nature of the accession of Kashmir to India in the first place, and the incredible amount of conflict, displacement and death over the years. One would expect minimally some form of autonomy to be actively on the discussion agenda, but nope.
And going by this article, perhaps the conventional understanding on China and border issues with them, also needs a significant shift: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/night-of-november-19/729644/0
The relatively sudden shift of China towards capitalism and financial liberalization in India in the nineties are examples of good learning in states perhaps.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Kissinger jokes
Henry Kissinger's work has many examples of what decent people would find enormous inversions of justice. Like, for example, that he was given the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing an end to the Vietnam war, when he was in actuality responsible for things like the massive bombing of Cambodia as part of that war. Giving him the Nobel was appropriately labeled 'the death of satire' when it happened.
Chomsky is not usually given to humor, and one of the few examples I've seen is in relation to Kissinger, whose guts he really hates. Debunking one of Kissinger's arguments where he says that that Western civilisation has a culture of 'toleration' (never mind a couple of World Wars and decades of colonial cruelty), Chomsky comments with an undertone of frustration and bitterness: "One can always count on K for some comic relief, though in reality, he is not alone" ( http://www.iran-bulletin.org/history/chomsky3.html)
And finally one from that fantastic commentator on US political affairs, Gary Trudeau author of the Doonesbury cartoons. In a series of strips, Kissinger is visiting faculty at a Washington DC university and leading a course while doing his stuff as Secretary of State. While he tries to use the seminar to talk about realpolitik and world domination and such, there are one or two idealists in the class who keep bringing up useless questions about truth, justice and the suffering of the common man. Finally Kissinger in frustration bursts out "Human rights! Human rights! I'm sick and tired of human rights!"
Touche. Sometimes I feel a similiar sentiment : "Climate change! Climate change! I'm sick and tired of climate change!"
For perhaps a more rounded portrayal of Kissinger, see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
Chomsky is not usually given to humor, and one of the few examples I've seen is in relation to Kissinger, whose guts he really hates. Debunking one of Kissinger's arguments where he says that that Western civilisation has a culture of 'toleration' (never mind a couple of World Wars and decades of colonial cruelty), Chomsky comments with an undertone of frustration and bitterness: "One can always count on K for some comic relief, though in reality, he is not alone" ( http://www.iran-bulletin.org/history/chomsky3.html)
And finally one from that fantastic commentator on US political affairs, Gary Trudeau author of the Doonesbury cartoons. In a series of strips, Kissinger is visiting faculty at a Washington DC university and leading a course while doing his stuff as Secretary of State. While he tries to use the seminar to talk about realpolitik and world domination and such, there are one or two idealists in the class who keep bringing up useless questions about truth, justice and the suffering of the common man. Finally Kissinger in frustration bursts out "Human rights! Human rights! I'm sick and tired of human rights!"
Touche. Sometimes I feel a similiar sentiment : "Climate change! Climate change! I'm sick and tired of climate change!"
For perhaps a more rounded portrayal of Kissinger, see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
I did another review recently, this time for Pratham Books, a really good children's book publisher in India. They sent out books to people to review, and I got one.
Visit their very nice blog at blog.prathambooks.org and their impressive social media outreach at social.prathambooks.org. And while you're at it, their website: www.prathambooks.org :-)
====
"Grandfather Goes on Strike" is a good book that takes on an environmental issue and makes it accessible to young readers. Sathya's grandfather decides to climb a tree and stay there in order to prevent it from being cut down to construct houses. Sathya is staying alone with his grandfather so on his young shoulders falls the predicament of handling this situation. A stream of visitors, policemen, environmentalists, artists and councillors have to be managed, along with grandfather's well-being, but finally all ends well for both grandfather and the tree.
A very nice feature of this book is the understated humor.
Grandfather grinned: "I cannot hear anything you say, because of the breeze". There was no breeze. There was not even a breath of air.
I hope the child readers get the deadpan humor of jokes such as these.
The book does a good job of being realistic and true-to-life without being boring. The policemens' personalities are done well in text and illustration. The artists are intriguing, they seem to tread a fine line between being superficial do-gooders and being more substantive changemakers. I am not sure what the author had in mind! A few elements are glossed over: How does grandfather manage sleep, poop and pee up in the tree? If the land belongs to someone else, what about his right to use the land as he feels fit?
The book is a welcome addition to Read India's line. Congrats to the author, illustrator and Read India. But one also feels a small disappointment, that still more could have been done to make the book engaging and fun.
=====
and some specific niggles:
1.) The text transition from page 2 to page 3 is not so good
2.) "There was a flash news in a box" - grammatically incorrect ?
3.) "Just then Ramya and Priya, my cousins brought us a flask of steaming, hot coffee". If there were cousins around, where were their parents, and why did the cousins not help out more ?
4.) "Meanwhile breakfast arrived". From where ?!
5.) In one illustration, the councillors are shown wearing suits and carrying briefcases, which is unlikely in India.
Visit their very nice blog at blog.prathambooks.org and their impressive social media outreach at social.prathambooks.org. And while you're at it, their website: www.prathambooks.org :-)
====
"Grandfather Goes on Strike" is a good book that takes on an environmental issue and makes it accessible to young readers. Sathya's grandfather decides to climb a tree and stay there in order to prevent it from being cut down to construct houses. Sathya is staying alone with his grandfather so on his young shoulders falls the predicament of handling this situation. A stream of visitors, policemen, environmentalists, artists and councillors have to be managed, along with grandfather's well-being, but finally all ends well for both grandfather and the tree.
A very nice feature of this book is the understated humor.
Grandfather grinned: "I cannot hear anything you say, because of the breeze". There was no breeze. There was not even a breath of air.
I hope the child readers get the deadpan humor of jokes such as these.
The book does a good job of being realistic and true-to-life without being boring. The policemens' personalities are done well in text and illustration. The artists are intriguing, they seem to tread a fine line between being superficial do-gooders and being more substantive changemakers. I am not sure what the author had in mind! A few elements are glossed over: How does grandfather manage sleep, poop and pee up in the tree? If the land belongs to someone else, what about his right to use the land as he feels fit?
The book is a welcome addition to Read India's line. Congrats to the author, illustrator and Read India. But one also feels a small disappointment, that still more could have been done to make the book engaging and fun.
=====
and some specific niggles:
1.) The text transition from page 2 to page 3 is not so good
2.) "There was a flash news in a box" - grammatically incorrect ?
3.) "Just then Ramya and Priya, my cousins brought us a flask of steaming, hot coffee". If there were cousins around, where were their parents, and why did the cousins not help out more ?
4.) "Meanwhile breakfast arrived". From where ?!
5.) In one illustration, the councillors are shown wearing suits and carrying briefcases, which is unlikely in India.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Vibhat September 2010
Since my last upload Vibhat has developed enormously as this video shows. He's walking very comfortably, enormously curious about all objects, physically stronger with better motor skills and is developing a personality
Saturday, August 28, 2010
On education
What is the purpose of education? There are many answers, and three common ones are below:
-'to succeed in the fast-paced, competitive modern world' (an answer that I find particularly moronic)
-'to equip the child with the knowledge and skills to find work to support themselves'
-'to discover one's talents'
Are you satisfied by any of the above answers ? I'm not, in fact I'm tremendous dissatisfied with the education system (of personal interest now that I am a father). Human minds are complex. We experience emotions - joy, anger, jealousy, contempt,love. We complain about other peoples' actions and justify ours. But do we have to take all these as given, these things are how we are, or is it possible to 'step outside' of oneself, and be able to observe how our minds work, why we react the way we react, what are the hidden motivations or insecurities. As the child is growing up and its character being formed - is it possible to have serious conversations about the rather imperfect nature of the world we live in, with how we rationalize the way we (in India atleast) make our peace with the enormous poverty and suffering outside our doorsteps in order to carry on our lives. Is it possible to teach children to be decent, happy individuals ?
Can we teach children to be alive to the mystery of life ? Here we are, blobs of protoplasm with odd projections that enable us to locomote manipulate, on a large orb circling a ball of fire, in the middle of a vastness we cannot comprehend. We are one in billions today and have been preceded by billions and will be followed by billions. So how do we come to terms with all this ? Normally all this is pushed to the back of the mind so we can get on with the day to day business of life, survival, freedom from pain and discomfort, pleasure, achievement and all that ? Can we teach our children to do a better of job of this than us? And what of the infinite complexity and variety of life on earth. Can we teach our children to be open to that?
Schools have to teach maths, physics and geography and so on. But if we as parents and teachers don't weave in the above we have lost the spirit of education. And this is the state of affairs across the board. I am sure the most expensive and fancy schools don't do that much better of a job than the middle-class schools in this, because the management and the parents are as much invested in the status quo of the world today, in fact even more, so that they are uninterested in questioning it.
Post Script:
We were casually talking about something related to schools at work once, and during that I spontaneously burst out: "I have zero faith in the educational system!". I was myself suprised by my vehemence as it was not premeditated, and to some extent I didn't even know that I felt this way. Some subsequent reflection resulted in the picture I lay out above. I find it ironic that having done excellently by conventional standards in most of my education, I now am completely disdaining it. But all the reflection, discovery and learning that happened for me, mostly slowly and haltingly, completely parallel to or outside the educational system, is central to what I am today. I see that as a tremendous failure of the education system.
I don't think many people feel so negatively about schools as I do. This leads to a nicely ironic dilemma for me: at least others are comfortable with the current system, and they are true to themselves if they don't fight against it. If I don't, I am being a complete fake. And the job I am talking about above is so gigantic and so seems so much beyond my capabilities.
The above thoughts are tremendously influenced by J. Krishnamurti's writings. But I have internalized them so completely and find them so obvious now, that I am not parroting what someone else is saying.
"It is our earth, not yours or mine or his. We are meant to live on it, helping each other, not destroying each other. This is not some romantic nonsense, but the actual fact"
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Orhan Pamuk's 'Istanbul'
DONT READ IF YOU HAVENT READ AND PLAN TO READ ORHAN PAMUK's CLASSIC 'ISTANBUL'
The superb dramatic ending of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul. To get the full effect, you have to read the book. Nevertheless, the context is that the young Pamuk is a very talented painter but gives it up temporarily after a painful breakup with his lover and muse. Meanwhile he drops out of architecture school and is having huge frequent fights with his mother who is adamant that there is no future or career for a painter in Turkey and that he must finish his architecture degree. Often he would leave the house in a rage after one of these fights and wander the streets all night:
"On my way up to Taksim, I'd stop for a moment to look at the lights of Galata in the half dark view, and then I'd head for Beyoglu to spend a few minutes browsing through the bookstalls at the beginning of Istiklal Avenue, and after that I'd stop for a beer and vodka in one of those beer halls where the television drowned out the noisy crowd, and smoke a cigarette, as everyone else was doing (I'd look around me to see if there happened to be any famous poets, writers or artists sitting nearby) and when I felt I was attracting too much attention from all those mustachioed men - because I was looking around me, and alone and had a child's face - I would go out again to mingle with the night. After walking down the avenue for a little I'd head into the back streets of Beyoglu and when I had reached Cukurcuma, Galata, Cihangir, I would pause to gaze at the holos of the streetlamps and the light from a nearby television screen flickering on the wet pavements, and it would be while peering into a junk shop, a refrigrator that an ordinary grocer used as a window display, a pharmacy still displaying a mannequin I remember from my childhood, that I would realize how very happy I was. The sublime, dizzying, pure anger I felt at this moment, after listening to my mother, would leave me after an hour of wandering around Beyoglu - or Uskudar, or the back streets of Fatih - wherever I went, as I got colder and colder, I'd be warmend by the furious flame of my brilliant future. By then my head would be light from the beer and the long exertion, and the mournful streets would seem to flicker as in an old film, a moment I would want to freeze and hide away - the way I used to hide a precious seed or a favourite marble in my mouth for hours on end - and at the same moment, I'd want to leave the empty streets and return home to sit down at my desk with pencil and paper to write or draw."
And then one day, the insight that resolves everything ...
"The streets of Beyoglu, their dark corners, my desire to run away, my guilt - they were all blinking on and off like neon lights in my head. I knew now that tonight my mother and I wouldn't have our fight, that in a few minutes I would open the door and escape into the city's consoling streets; and having walked away half the night, I'd return home and sit down at my table and capture their chemistry on paper.
"I don't want to be an artist", I said. "I'm going to be a writer".
The superb dramatic ending of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul. To get the full effect, you have to read the book. Nevertheless, the context is that the young Pamuk is a very talented painter but gives it up temporarily after a painful breakup with his lover and muse. Meanwhile he drops out of architecture school and is having huge frequent fights with his mother who is adamant that there is no future or career for a painter in Turkey and that he must finish his architecture degree. Often he would leave the house in a rage after one of these fights and wander the streets all night:
"On my way up to Taksim, I'd stop for a moment to look at the lights of Galata in the half dark view, and then I'd head for Beyoglu to spend a few minutes browsing through the bookstalls at the beginning of Istiklal Avenue, and after that I'd stop for a beer and vodka in one of those beer halls where the television drowned out the noisy crowd, and smoke a cigarette, as everyone else was doing (I'd look around me to see if there happened to be any famous poets, writers or artists sitting nearby) and when I felt I was attracting too much attention from all those mustachioed men - because I was looking around me, and alone and had a child's face - I would go out again to mingle with the night. After walking down the avenue for a little I'd head into the back streets of Beyoglu and when I had reached Cukurcuma, Galata, Cihangir, I would pause to gaze at the holos of the streetlamps and the light from a nearby television screen flickering on the wet pavements, and it would be while peering into a junk shop, a refrigrator that an ordinary grocer used as a window display, a pharmacy still displaying a mannequin I remember from my childhood, that I would realize how very happy I was. The sublime, dizzying, pure anger I felt at this moment, after listening to my mother, would leave me after an hour of wandering around Beyoglu - or Uskudar, or the back streets of Fatih - wherever I went, as I got colder and colder, I'd be warmend by the furious flame of my brilliant future. By then my head would be light from the beer and the long exertion, and the mournful streets would seem to flicker as in an old film, a moment I would want to freeze and hide away - the way I used to hide a precious seed or a favourite marble in my mouth for hours on end - and at the same moment, I'd want to leave the empty streets and return home to sit down at my desk with pencil and paper to write or draw."
And then one day, the insight that resolves everything ...
"The streets of Beyoglu, their dark corners, my desire to run away, my guilt - they were all blinking on and off like neon lights in my head. I knew now that tonight my mother and I wouldn't have our fight, that in a few minutes I would open the door and escape into the city's consoling streets; and having walked away half the night, I'd return home and sit down at my table and capture their chemistry on paper.
"I don't want to be an artist", I said. "I'm going to be a writer".
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Sensible things to do on (next) Independance day
1.) Join the Clean Bengaluru campaign and clean up some area of Bangalore (www.cbengaluru.com)
2.) Revisit and reflect on the freedom struggle by watching a movie or reading a book. "Gandhi" by Attenborough is of course the default option, but there are some other less known options like movies on Bhagat Singh.
3.) Acknowledge people who serve you. At our apartment complex they gave some recognition (including monetary) to some employees who had helped put out a fire. A really nice thing to do.
4.)Spend time at an old age home, orphanage kind of place, like Sourav Gupta. Or take the opportunity to donate some money to them.
5.) DON'T take part in meaningless displays of patriotism like flag-hoisting or singing the national anthem.
2.) Revisit and reflect on the freedom struggle by watching a movie or reading a book. "Gandhi" by Attenborough is of course the default option, but there are some other less known options like movies on Bhagat Singh.
3.) Acknowledge people who serve you. At our apartment complex they gave some recognition (including monetary) to some employees who had helped put out a fire. A really nice thing to do.
4.)Spend time at an old age home, orphanage kind of place, like Sourav Gupta. Or take the opportunity to donate some money to them.
5.) DON'T take part in meaningless displays of patriotism like flag-hoisting or singing the national anthem.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Notes on "Inception"
I saw it twice running on the same day to catch everything I had missed and get the movie out of my system :-)
'Matrix' did it already so in that way this one didn't blow the mind the way Matrix did. But still probably the best movie of the year? And certainly better than Avatar (thank god they didn't do this in distracting 3d).
The visuals and settings were gorgeous and pitch-perfect (except for the goofup with the carpet :-). And same with the acting.
Lot of gratuitous shoot-em-up.
The main motivator of one company battling other felt flat, did not have an importance or urgency to it.
And isn't it gratifying and amazing that a big-budget Hollywood film would do something like this without putting the romantic angle to Codd/Ariadne ?
==
PS: It isn't a co-incidence that the two blog posts I squeezed in, in a long time, happened when Priya and the kid were away. A one-year old is a real time consumer even for a hands off dad.
'Matrix' did it already so in that way this one didn't blow the mind the way Matrix did. But still probably the best movie of the year? And certainly better than Avatar (thank god they didn't do this in distracting 3d).
The visuals and settings were gorgeous and pitch-perfect (except for the goofup with the carpet :-). And same with the acting.
Lot of gratuitous shoot-em-up.
The main motivator of one company battling other felt flat, did not have an importance or urgency to it.
And isn't it gratifying and amazing that a big-budget Hollywood film would do something like this without putting the romantic angle to Codd/Ariadne ?
==
PS: It isn't a co-incidence that the two blog posts I squeezed in, in a long time, happened when Priya and the kid were away. A one-year old is a real time consumer even for a hands off dad.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Notes from Raghuram Rajan's talk
The UChicago BSchool professor who was Chief Economist at the IMF for a few years, and gained prominence recently for having 'predicted' the financial meltdown talked at Bangalore today, mostly about the root causes of the meltdown and also about India. The main talk did not resonate much with me but a few points that did:
* India will be the 2nd or 3rd largest economy in the world in a couple of years he said (I think he must have meant 4th, or else he was referring to many more years than just a couple). Do we have the thinking going on that would be needed for a country with that clout ? Like geopolitical thinking ; what should be our policy towards different countries/blocs, towards Africa ? A country like the US has a whole bunch of people discussing and debating these kind of things, and finally it crystallises into policy. Absolutely I agree -- there is a complete lack of depth in thinking about all the many areas of a complex industrialized (post industrialized) society. (Now this is where I step in ...)
* He felt that land/real estate has become a stumbling block for India's growth. Like if you have land or control of land then you can make money and if you don't, you don't. There is lot of lack of trasparency and distortion in land ; political people influence things unfairly, who you know matters. He also cited POSCO which has been trying for a long time to get land for its plant in Orissa. While I don't agree with the POSCO example (there is a lot of popular resistance to this from the local people), I agree completely to the broader point. When I see all the building construction in the cities of India, it gives me a very uneasy feeling. I've tried to analyse this and usually conclude that putting up such large buildings feels such a complex business and requires so much financing, that it makes me feel very small in comparison. But now I think the kind of thing Rajan was talking about also feeds into it ; the whole business of real estate is so opaque and criminalized and common people feel completely helpless in front of the forces involved. This shouldn't be.
* He pointed to UID and cash transfers (apparently being proposed) as critical pieces to stem the massive leakage and put more power in peoples' hands.
*Government's role need not be as a service provider per se. in areas like education and healthcare, the critical thing is that govt. plays a transparent regulatory role, so that whoever is delivering the service is constrainted to deliver a certain quality.
* India will be the 2nd or 3rd largest economy in the world in a couple of years he said (I think he must have meant 4th, or else he was referring to many more years than just a couple). Do we have the thinking going on that would be needed for a country with that clout ? Like geopolitical thinking ; what should be our policy towards different countries/blocs, towards Africa ? A country like the US has a whole bunch of people discussing and debating these kind of things, and finally it crystallises into policy. Absolutely I agree -- there is a complete lack of depth in thinking about all the many areas of a complex industrialized (post industrialized) society. (Now this is where I step in ...)
* He felt that land/real estate has become a stumbling block for India's growth. Like if you have land or control of land then you can make money and if you don't, you don't. There is lot of lack of trasparency and distortion in land ; political people influence things unfairly, who you know matters. He also cited POSCO which has been trying for a long time to get land for its plant in Orissa. While I don't agree with the POSCO example (there is a lot of popular resistance to this from the local people), I agree completely to the broader point. When I see all the building construction in the cities of India, it gives me a very uneasy feeling. I've tried to analyse this and usually conclude that putting up such large buildings feels such a complex business and requires so much financing, that it makes me feel very small in comparison. But now I think the kind of thing Rajan was talking about also feeds into it ; the whole business of real estate is so opaque and criminalized and common people feel completely helpless in front of the forces involved. This shouldn't be.
* He pointed to UID and cash transfers (apparently being proposed) as critical pieces to stem the massive leakage and put more power in peoples' hands.
*Government's role need not be as a service provider per se. in areas like education and healthcare, the critical thing is that govt. plays a transparent regulatory role, so that whoever is delivering the service is constrainted to deliver a certain quality.
Friday, July 16, 2010
'Mobilized'
A friend put me in touch with a startup mobstac.com that is beta testing its product to optimise websites and blogs for mobile. So now this site , despoki.blogspot.com can be viewed cleanly on a mobile. You should be able to navigate to despoki.blogspot.com on a mobile and get the mobile version, else go to despoki.mobstac.com . If you aren't able to get it through despoki.blogspot.com, please let me know.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Walking
The long awaited event. He started walking (more like staggering) about a month back, and slowly got better and better at it. Now he walks more than he crawls.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Rework The World
I went to the Rework the World conference, www.reworktheworld.org in early June, representing Arghyam. The conference was in Leksand, a lakeside resort a few hours north of Stockholm. The conference was a very good experience. The next and last edition of the conference , which is one of a series is going to be held in Alexandria , Egypt in 2012 and I heartily recommend that to any young person, though needless to say, it would be quite expensive.
As luck would have it, my passport was quite close to expiring and I needed to get it renewed. I had a difficult time getting the renewal done ; worth its own blog post!
I flew out of Delhi and back to Delhi which make the overall trip more strenuous.
The event was on youth and social entrepreneurship. It was co-organised by two interesting groups the Yes Foundation (one of whose key people is an Indian American, Poonam Ahluwalia), and the Tallberg Foundation, a wellknown think-tank in Sweden. The trip expenses were sponsored by the organisers which was really nice of them, though I think they were hoping I would play a more active role than I did.
From Stockholm Airport, I drove down to the conference location by car with Thomas Bjelkeman-Petersson of Akvo.org, who's visited us in India a few times. It was a great drive through open sparsely populated countryside. A very welcome break from the crush and the dirt of Bangalore and India which gets to me.
There was a huge amount of infectious energy in the gathering ; so many people, especially youth (1500+), all trying to make the world a better place, all over the world.
Lots of particulars that bear a passing comment but maybe in a later post.
Some videos below:
1.) The Max hamburger chain in Sweden now tracks the carbon footprint of each kind of burger and lets you know !
2.) There was a lot of great music at the event:
Friday, May 28, 2010
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Mutyalappa : In memoriam
Mutyalappa is my friend and Sarpanch of Mushtikovela village whom Asha for Education (www.ashanet.org) supports on a fellowship for which I am co-steward. On 4th April night/ early hours of 5th, Mutyalappa passed away after a road accident in which he suffered severe head injuries.
He was brought to Bangalore from Anantapur as the medical facilities there were not good. I met them here. He was on a ventilator so he had a pulse but the doctors at multiple hospitals said that he was beyond resuscitation due to damage to the brain. We then took him off the ventilator and his body was taken back for post-mortem and funeral.
His pillion rider on the mobike also suffered injuries but is recovering.
If you can contribute some money for to help his family piece their life together ; as well as cover the medical expenses for him and his co-rider, it would be very useful.
Below is something I wrote for the Asha website:
==
It is with shock and sadness that ASHA notes the death of N. Mutyalappa, ASHA fellow. He passed away on the night of 4th April/early hours of 5th. He was 33 years old. He had a road accident and suffered severe head injuries while driving his motorcycle on the Bangalore/Hyderabad National Highway near his residence in Chennekothapalle village of Anantapur district.
Mutyalappa was nominated as a ASHA fellow in mid-2007 to support his work as a Sarpanch of Mushtikovela panchayat in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. The details of his work can be seen on the Asha page tracking the fellowship here: https://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=854 His extensive previous work with the NGO Timbaktu Collective laid a solid grounding for him to undertake village development work as Sarpanch. He made Mushtikovela panchayat an outstanding example of NREGA implementation, with more than 1 crore rupees in cumulative disbursements to labourers. His most recent project which was just reaching completion at the time of his demise was the optimal utilization of Mushtikovela's tank through a process of consensus and dialoguing, so that a crop of paddy could be taken even in a drought year, creating significant income for the village.
Mutyalappa was a highly dynamic individual who understood the system and decided to work within it, by entering the political arena at the village level. Despite tremendous pressure and continuing difficulties he worked for proper implemention of government schemes for the benefit of the village. In interactions with him, his tremendous capacity to mobilize people, put pressure on the goverment to make the will of the people prevail came through clearly. He had an amazing talent in negotiating the delicate terrain of caste, political, personal and other divides in a village to get people together to achieve something of value. It is tragic that a person like him met an untimely demise while he had much more to contribute. The circumstances of his death were also unfortunate as he was shuttled between hospitals and places in a desperate attempt to find appropriate emergency treatment.
He is survived by his wife, a young son and an elder brother. ASHA volunteers would like to convey their profound condolences to his relatives in this time of grief.
===
Some videos and posts about his work:
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Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Times of India
I recently began subscribing to the Times of India. The reason was a bit stupid and the kind of ass-backwards decision-making that I sometimes indulge in -- I find the Hindu so compelling to read that in the morning, I get absorbed in it, so that it both makes me late and distracts my mind. A bad way to start a work day. So finally I decided not to subscribe anymore. But my wife still wanted to subscribe to a newspaper so that she could keep in touch with what was going on outside Vibhat-world ; so we subscribed to the Times of India instead. It seems to be working out; I am definitely not absorbed in the newspaper in the mornings nowadays.
Subscribing gives me an opportunity to take a closer look than when I would just pick up occasionally at the office or elsewhere. My observations backs up that of many others, that The Times is a breathtaking newspaper and I feel compelled to add my notes to the reams that have already been written about it. This is hopefully just a beginning.
The first thing to say I think, is that a simple switch of context makes all the difference when thinking about the Times. Its as follows:
The Times of India is a business: then it becomes a predictable, sensibly run, run-of-the-mill, moderately interesting entity which is not very special compared to all the other zillions of businesses in India.
The Times of India is a newspaper: It becomes a jaw-droppingly amazing, completely crazy, death-of-satire, evil-empire, laughing stock, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, death-knell-of-Indian-civilization entity.
Again:
business -- nothing special
newspaper -- what the **&&^&#(@*@*!&&!!* is going on?!
Moving on:
the paper design seems really bad. Actually I have not been really looking at the paper with a critical eye, I've been just reading it, so to say, since we started subscribing, so this post will be more off-the-cuff comments. Having said that, the paper is just a mess. The pages are a loud clash of colours from all the ads and the colors used in the articlespace too. I haven't yet figured out the logic of the newspaper in terms of what kind of articles go where or on what page, because the cues towards this are not there or not strong enough. The mixing up of editorial and advert makes the jaw drop lower each day.
Today's front page had a truly stupid artistic illustration of a big-boobed woman being flagged at airport security, because of some news that the new airport security detectors are set off by silicone implants. I mean... really, this is too idiotic.
More often than not, upto 30% of the front page is taken up up by a single ad which completely distracts the attention. Today its about 25% distributed between several ads. A couple of days back there was some absurd article of less than 12 column-lines on one of the pages, and all the rest were ads. Today the first "City" page has about 5% of articles and 95% of ads.
On the plus side: generally they seem to have a lot of coverage of water issues, and not competely superficial which I can vouch for, since I keep an eye out for this. So they do have some news going. For a couple of days now they've had a lot of coverage of the naxal issue, ("Deep Focus"), though I haven't had the enthu to read in detail.
Today's "Global" page, had an "Around the World" section (probably a standard feature. It had a.) a picture of an unknown (but stunning) South Korean actress, b) "Teri Hatcher looking for love" c.) "Postmen boycott UK house because of cat".
Swaminathan Aiyar, one of their usual columnists had a stupid article on irrigation, something about using piped or drip irrigation instead of canals. Not a single figure about how economically viable this might be.
They've expanded their "Speaking Tree" column into a full Sunday supplement and are running a slick, nicely designed, but, to me, predictable ad about it in the main paper for a while ("Visit yourself, once a week", "If you listen, you hear", "Somewhere between our head and heart (Ed- our neck?) lies a land we rarely go to")
Enough of Times bashing for now.
Subscribing gives me an opportunity to take a closer look than when I would just pick up occasionally at the office or elsewhere. My observations backs up that of many others, that The Times is a breathtaking newspaper and I feel compelled to add my notes to the reams that have already been written about it. This is hopefully just a beginning.
The first thing to say I think, is that a simple switch of context makes all the difference when thinking about the Times. Its as follows:
The Times of India is a business: then it becomes a predictable, sensibly run, run-of-the-mill, moderately interesting entity which is not very special compared to all the other zillions of businesses in India.
The Times of India is a newspaper: It becomes a jaw-droppingly amazing, completely crazy, death-of-satire, evil-empire, laughing stock, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, death-knell-of-Indian-civilization entity.
Again:
business -- nothing special
newspaper -- what the **&&^&#(@*@*!&&!!* is going on?!
Moving on:
the paper design seems really bad. Actually I have not been really looking at the paper with a critical eye, I've been just reading it, so to say, since we started subscribing, so this post will be more off-the-cuff comments. Having said that, the paper is just a mess. The pages are a loud clash of colours from all the ads and the colors used in the articlespace too. I haven't yet figured out the logic of the newspaper in terms of what kind of articles go where or on what page, because the cues towards this are not there or not strong enough. The mixing up of editorial and advert makes the jaw drop lower each day.
Today's front page had a truly stupid artistic illustration of a big-boobed woman being flagged at airport security, because of some news that the new airport security detectors are set off by silicone implants. I mean... really, this is too idiotic.
More often than not, upto 30% of the front page is taken up up by a single ad which completely distracts the attention. Today its about 25% distributed between several ads. A couple of days back there was some absurd article of less than 12 column-lines on one of the pages, and all the rest were ads. Today the first "City" page has about 5% of articles and 95% of ads.
On the plus side: generally they seem to have a lot of coverage of water issues, and not competely superficial which I can vouch for, since I keep an eye out for this. So they do have some news going. For a couple of days now they've had a lot of coverage of the naxal issue, ("Deep Focus"), though I haven't had the enthu to read in detail.
Today's "Global" page, had an "Around the World" section (probably a standard feature. It had a.) a picture of an unknown (but stunning) South Korean actress, b) "Teri Hatcher looking for love" c.) "Postmen boycott UK house because of cat".
Swaminathan Aiyar, one of their usual columnists had a stupid article on irrigation, something about using piped or drip irrigation instead of canals. Not a single figure about how economically viable this might be.
They've expanded their "Speaking Tree" column into a full Sunday supplement and are running a slick, nicely designed, but, to me, predictable ad about it in the main paper for a while ("Visit yourself, once a week", "If you listen, you hear", "Somewhere between our head and heart (Ed- our neck?) lies a land we rarely go to")
Enough of Times bashing for now.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Bringing up baby
I haven't been writing about the baby on the blog, taking the shortcut of posting videos instead. Writing takes some 'quiet' time which is hard to come by nowadays.
Lets give it a shot here.
Vibhat is now 8.5 months old. And according to the latest doctor report that's the typical weight of a 13 month old. So that's taken care of immediately, we continue to be far ahead of the curve on weight ! Don't dare make fun of him! He's very nicely proportioned and just darlingly chubby nothing more. Maybe he's taller too and that's how he manages it.
Due to work commitments on my side, we postponed the first hair-cutting that is traditionally done as an event, so that his hair is now far too long and unruly. I'm sure he finds it irritating, poor bebe. The ceremony is on 2nd May at our village in Chittoor district and you all are cordially invited to join!
Priya is completely sucked into the baby's world as the major portion of the work falls on her. Her mother left yesterday so right now she doesn't have any real help as I don't count. We are planning to get a maid or use a pre-school soon. He is also very strongly attached to her which makes life difficult as most of the time he wants her attention. We hope he will come off this in stages.
The first gleanings of a personality that I can make out for Vibhat, is 'strong' ! He is not a mild or meek baby. He jets around the house with great enthusiasm now that he is crawling. He gets angry, as opposed to just being upset, and can scream *pretty* loudly if he feels like it. He doesn't cry a lot though, which is really nice for us. He is physically strong and likes to bang on tables, beat/scratch whoever is carrying him and so on. We have to figure out a way of communicating to him what's acceptable and what's not.
As with all babies I think, the experience and emotions of being a new parent can be quite strong. I resent (when I get the time to think about it!) the constant emotional seesaw from the joy of the baby to the demands it puts on you.
Well, there you have it for a quick summup. Hope I get to write more.
PS: The amazing photo is from Siddhu who managed to catch me looking presentable and smiling a natural smile, and also get a fantastic smile out of Vibhat. Click to enlarge
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
The Economist on climate change science
Summary/excerpts of a recent Economist article on Climate change science, mostly for my own reference:
Full article here:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15719298
======
In any complex scientific picture of the world there will be gaps, misperceptions and mistakes. Whether your impression is dominated by the whole or the holes will depend on your attitude to the project at hand. You might say that some see a jigsaw where others see a house of cards. Jigsaw types have in mind an overall picture and are open to bits being taken out, moved around or abandoned should they not fit. Those who see houses of cards think that if any piece is removed, the whole lot falls down. When it comes to climate, academic scientists are jigsaw types, dissenters from their view house-of-cards-ists.
The defenders of the consensus tend to stress the general consilience of their efforts—the way that data, theory and modelling back each other up. Doubters see this as a thoroughgoing version of “confirmation bias”, the tendency people have to select the evidence that agrees with their original outlook.
No one doubts that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, good at absorbing infra-red radiation. It is also well established that human activity is putting more of it into the atmosphere than natural processes can currently remove. Measurements made since the 1950s show the level of carbon dioxide rising year on year, from 316 parts per million (ppm) in 1959 to 387ppm in 2009. Less direct records show that the rise began about 1750, and that the level was stable at around 280ppm for about 10,000 years before that. This fits with human history: in the middle of the 18th century people started to burn fossil fuels in order to power industrial machinery. Analysis of carbon isotopes, among other things, shows that the carbon dioxide from industry accounts for most of the build-up in the atmosphere.
Disagreement is not with the level of C02 or that it comes from human activity. It is with the warming associated with a particular level of CO2. Problems:
Background natural climate cycles.
Climate is a complex non-linear system
Oceans can absorb heat and add inertia to the climate system, so atmosphere warms more slowly than expected.
On the data front: There are three records of land-surface temperature put together from thermometer readings in common use by climatologists, one of which is compiled at the Climatic Research Unit of e-mail infamy. They all show warming, and, within academia, their reliability is widely accepted. Various industrious bloggers are not so convinced.
Pure theory says that doubling Co2 will result in 1 degree C of warming, which is not so problematic. "climate sensitivity". However there are feedback effects that can increase this. The most important involve water vapour and clouds. Warming air will absorb water vapour (powerful greenhouse gas) which is a positive feedback loop for warming. There is scientific uncertainity about how much the water vapour adds, one estimate is 1.7 degrees C, up from the 1 degree C above.
Another point of contention: greenhouse warming should cause warming down below and cooling in the stratosphere. Earlier observations did not corraborate this, but now evidence is building up in favour.
Clouds have both a cooling effect (reflecting sunlight from the upper atmosphere), as well as a greenhouse effect. Sorting these two out to get the net is complicated.
Another source of evidence is the climate of the past, like ice ages and the associated CO2 and other factors that contributed to it. The temperature records of the past millenium is one particular hotspot of debate. Tree rings is one source of data. A 1998 Nature article found a 'hockey stick' shape for temperatures of the last century, mostly flat but with the blip towards the end of the 20th century. This paper is widely contested by sceptics. One contestation is that this curve does not account for the 'medieval warm period' ; when, it is believed, temperatures were as warm or warmer than now.
The most accurate recent climate data cannot be used easily for checking the quality of models because of complexities like aerosols in the atmosphere whose effects are not known well enough so their effect is parameterized in the model instead of being strictly modelled. This also leads to accusations that they are parameterised in such a way as to make the models show higher levels of warming.
Full article here:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15719298
======
In any complex scientific picture of the world there will be gaps, misperceptions and mistakes. Whether your impression is dominated by the whole or the holes will depend on your attitude to the project at hand. You might say that some see a jigsaw where others see a house of cards. Jigsaw types have in mind an overall picture and are open to bits being taken out, moved around or abandoned should they not fit. Those who see houses of cards think that if any piece is removed, the whole lot falls down. When it comes to climate, academic scientists are jigsaw types, dissenters from their view house-of-cards-ists.
The defenders of the consensus tend to stress the general consilience of their efforts—the way that data, theory and modelling back each other up. Doubters see this as a thoroughgoing version of “confirmation bias”, the tendency people have to select the evidence that agrees with their original outlook.
No one doubts that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, good at absorbing infra-red radiation. It is also well established that human activity is putting more of it into the atmosphere than natural processes can currently remove. Measurements made since the 1950s show the level of carbon dioxide rising year on year, from 316 parts per million (ppm) in 1959 to 387ppm in 2009. Less direct records show that the rise began about 1750, and that the level was stable at around 280ppm for about 10,000 years before that. This fits with human history: in the middle of the 18th century people started to burn fossil fuels in order to power industrial machinery. Analysis of carbon isotopes, among other things, shows that the carbon dioxide from industry accounts for most of the build-up in the atmosphere.
Disagreement is not with the level of C02 or that it comes from human activity. It is with the warming associated with a particular level of CO2. Problems:
Background natural climate cycles.
Climate is a complex non-linear system
Oceans can absorb heat and add inertia to the climate system, so atmosphere warms more slowly than expected.
On the data front: There are three records of land-surface temperature put together from thermometer readings in common use by climatologists, one of which is compiled at the Climatic Research Unit of e-mail infamy. They all show warming, and, within academia, their reliability is widely accepted. Various industrious bloggers are not so convinced.
Pure theory says that doubling Co2 will result in 1 degree C of warming, which is not so problematic. "climate sensitivity". However there are feedback effects that can increase this. The most important involve water vapour and clouds. Warming air will absorb water vapour (powerful greenhouse gas) which is a positive feedback loop for warming. There is scientific uncertainity about how much the water vapour adds, one estimate is 1.7 degrees C, up from the 1 degree C above.
Another point of contention: greenhouse warming should cause warming down below and cooling in the stratosphere. Earlier observations did not corraborate this, but now evidence is building up in favour.
Clouds have both a cooling effect (reflecting sunlight from the upper atmosphere), as well as a greenhouse effect. Sorting these two out to get the net is complicated.
Another source of evidence is the climate of the past, like ice ages and the associated CO2 and other factors that contributed to it. The temperature records of the past millenium is one particular hotspot of debate. Tree rings is one source of data. A 1998 Nature article found a 'hockey stick' shape for temperatures of the last century, mostly flat but with the blip towards the end of the 20th century. This paper is widely contested by sceptics. One contestation is that this curve does not account for the 'medieval warm period' ; when, it is believed, temperatures were as warm or warmer than now.
The most accurate recent climate data cannot be used easily for checking the quality of models because of complexities like aerosols in the atmosphere whose effects are not known well enough so their effect is parameterized in the model instead of being strictly modelled. This also leads to accusations that they are parameterised in such a way as to make the models show higher levels of warming.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Kerala percussion
Vibhat was in India and invited us to join him while he was in Kerala. I went with Siddhu, since Priya and kid are at her parents place. Vibhat's mom organised a cool music concert at the house. The video of of this. As a matter of fact this is pretty rare footage. This particular instrument is not common and is rarely played in public. The musicians here are students from Kala Mandalam -- a university for traditional arts in Kerala. We visited the place later, pretty impressive.
Let me know what you think of the music:
Let me know what you think of the music:
Friday, February 19, 2010
The vegetable pushcart man as hero
As you drive on the streets of Bangalore you often come across vegetable pushcarts. These are flat 4 wheeled contraptions, loaded with vegetables and being trundled around the city. Sometimes its just piled high with tomatoes and potatoes, sometimes its a wide range of vegetables. Consider the life of the vegetable pushcart man:
-- the daily pollution and dust
-- being completely at the mercy of the weather ; from hot sun to sudden showers. Imagine trundling your way home maybe 5 kilometers away in one of Bangalore's thunderstorms in roads running full of water with your business day washed out.
-- reducing business as the big shops like Reliance undercut everyone else
-- negotiating Bangalore's traffic and intersections where to the man in the CAR the pedestrians and pushcarts are irritants to be honked angrily out of the way as they interrupt the smooth flow of traffic.
Despite all these obstacles, the pushcart man endures. Why does he do it? Does he go home to a loving family that makes it all worth it for him? Does he feel he has no choice? Or does drink do the trick? Where does he draw the strength from, to continue his useful but uneviable role? Does he fall prey at some point to the many options for a spiral into self-destruction that a city offers? Does he feel a proud sense of dignity in doing a honest day's work?
Vegetable pushcart man: I don't (yet) have the humanity to stop my vehicle and have a real conversation with you, so I just have to imagine all the above. But I salute you.
-- the daily pollution and dust
-- being completely at the mercy of the weather ; from hot sun to sudden showers. Imagine trundling your way home maybe 5 kilometers away in one of Bangalore's thunderstorms in roads running full of water with your business day washed out.
-- reducing business as the big shops like Reliance undercut everyone else
-- negotiating Bangalore's traffic and intersections where to the man in the CAR the pedestrians and pushcarts are irritants to be honked angrily out of the way as they interrupt the smooth flow of traffic.
Despite all these obstacles, the pushcart man endures. Why does he do it? Does he go home to a loving family that makes it all worth it for him? Does he feel he has no choice? Or does drink do the trick? Where does he draw the strength from, to continue his useful but uneviable role? Does he fall prey at some point to the many options for a spiral into self-destruction that a city offers? Does he feel a proud sense of dignity in doing a honest day's work?
Vegetable pushcart man: I don't (yet) have the humanity to stop my vehicle and have a real conversation with you, so I just have to imagine all the above. But I salute you.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Notes on "3 Idiots"
I saw it today, long after everyone else. (Impusively went to it Everest near our apartment ; was passing by at 9:20 pm and saw that they had a show at 9:30pm! I and Siddhu have been planning to go together sometime and he was genuinely shocked that I ditched him. I'll have to make it up).
Too long and loosely edited. Maybe I've just seen too many good movies but I get impatient easily at the movies.
Definitely didn't live up to the hype and good reviews. But was quite nice.
Stuck too much to stereotypes with Chatur Ramalingam and Suhas. Would have been interesting to make Chatur in particular much more serious and accomplished (that's what successful Indians in the US tend to be like) rather than an easy-to-dislike clown.
Nicely made its points about the education system including using old legends (urban or otherwise) like the NASA pen. We should have had this movie made 20 years ago, and maybe it would have saved me :-(. Delivery scene was far too contrived.
Scene where Farhan convinces his father was genuinely moving.
Gorgeous Ladakh scene at end. We don't need no Switzerland!
Would have made the movie lot more cool if they'd situated it in IIT like in the book. Campus they used looked very nice.
Kareena was weak in places and looked overawed at the star cast she was competing with.
Handling of Raju's parents was pretty good.
Song sequences were mostly a pain.
How do Aamir and Madhavan manage to look reasonably realistic as 20somethings ?!
After all the controversy with Chetan Bhagat ; I felt that while the movie was irrevocably situated in the ideas of the book, there was a huge amount of original stuff overall. Which doesn't say much I guess !
And they had some truly atrocious product placements. Shame on you Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Friday, January 29, 2010
Quote from "Catcher in the Rye"
J.D. Salinger also passed away yesterday. Here are two quotes from Catcher in the Rye:
"She was a pain in the ass but she was very good-looking" (from my memory)
"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."
More nice quotes: http://www.quotegarden.com/bk-cr.html
"She was a pain in the ass but she was very good-looking" (from my memory)
"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."
More nice quotes: http://www.quotegarden.com/bk-cr.html
Howard Zinn passed away on 27th Jan
Image from Wikipedia
I read a couple of his books including "A Peoples History of the United States". The books were a great way of relooking at history, from the point of view of what was going on with common people rather than with the power holders, hence "Peoples History". They were pretty cool reads and recounted lots of unknown stories of resistance and courage of the common people. He was a pretty cool personally, he followed through on the theoritical understanding of racism as a bad thing, by actually walking the walk at a very early stage when it was difficult to do so and when there were no examples or role models for what could be done. He was a teacher at a school and hung out with the black kids and encouraged them to resist and fight discrimination, stuff like that, and lost job in the process.
I had the opportunity of listening to him talk in Berkeley once. Extremely warm and gentle person, he came across as.
Noam Chomsky spoke warmly about him to the press after his death: "He's made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture. He's changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect".
Read the Hindu's piece here: http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article96513.ece
On Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn
His books are well worth a read (and for me a re-read). Unfortuntely I don't have my copy with me.
There's lots of his stuff on YouTube, here's a random one :
Bye "Howie" and thanks.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
This year's Padma awards
Today's announcement of the Padma awards gives some scope for criticism:
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, A.R. Rehman, Resul Pookutty: We must be the only country that gives national awards to our people after they get international awards. I guess we give awards to people for having gotten international recognition, not for their work. A thoroughgoing shame. It would be interesting to dig deeper and see how often we are able notice and recognise peoples achievements before they reach international renown. I don't think we do a good job.
Prathap C. Reddy (Apollo Hospitals), C.P.Krishnan Nair (Leela Hotel Group chairman), DLF Chairman Kushal Pal Singh : I find it disturbing to see awards going to successful businesspersons whose where the work done or the business concerned doesn't have any otherwise important or socially relevant features. In the case of Apollo Hospitals and other corporate hospitals there is a definite ambiguity about them - there is a common perception of money-driven practice of medicine. Why award Leela Hotels for running a business of luxury hotels which 99% of the country will never stay at? And how many think DLF got to where it is without underhand dealings ? On the contrary, I find the award to Venu Srinivasan of TVS and current head of CII appropriate. M.S.Banga of Unilever is a bit on the borderline.
Looking through the entire list of awardess, overall, for a poor country like our, perhaps the awards should be more focussed on people who are contributing a bit more directly to national development.
Comments ?
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Using Twitter
I'm learning and enjoying Twitter ; here are my notes on how I'm currently managing the overload that is always waiting around the corner when you use Twitter:
1.) I'm using TweetDeck which is pretty nice, haven't tried any of the other Twitter tools so far other than Twitpic. I post on two Twitter accounts @ahminotep and @indiawater and TweetDeck allows me to manage both of those, though currently I'm constantly 'crossposting' due to negligence
2.) I've gotten over the initial phobia of following too many people ; now I feel comfortable following interesting accounts I come across. The way to manage this is to try lots of accounts and unfollow or use lists to manage an overflow of information.
3.) I'm finding that its actually not difficult (and its fun) to scan quite rapidly through the 'pending' tweets. The trick that made this work for me is to keep clicking on links that are interesting but *not* follow them right away. Earlier I used to look at each link as I viewed the tweet and found it too disorienting and needing too much context switching. Instead now I go through all the tweets, click-click-click, till I'm up to date and then go and look at all the links that I've opened up (or even just keep them up and look at them later when I want a break). The only difficulty with this is that when one of the links is interesting and you want to retweet, you have no easy way of finding the original tweet.
4.) Its become a little game now to try to see how many mentions and direct messages I can get to happen
5.) Here's my take on some prominent Tweeters and why I follow or don't follow them. Its also interesting to follow well-known people and get some idea of the kind of people they are, but you often find out later that they (or atleast their tweet persona) are not so interesting:
-Kevin Smith, the director @thatkevinsmith : Great guy, really genuine and authentic, raunchy, but huge amount of tweeting, so I had to unfollow and move him to a list instead.
-N.Ram, @nramind : Wider range of interests than I expected him to have (don't ask me why), retweets stuff from prominent foreign newspapers, but I generally don't find his stuff interesting enough to clickthrough. Still following
-Pritish Nandy @pritishnandy: Bursty tweets, often annoying because its like a blog post divided into tweets, lots of analysis of news headlines, intelligent but I don't agree with a lot of his opinions and am not clued into the mumbai stuff he tweets about
-Gautam John @gkjohn, a goldmine of interesting links
-Anand Mahindra, @anandmahindra, just unfollowed :-) , insipid (sorry!)
-Jack Welch @jackwelch, doesn't tweet very often, goes on about sports teams, and I'm beginning to find his opinions pretty annoying, a big difference from the persona that came through in his books which I was a big fan of
-Sivakumar Surampudi, @s_sivakumar, CEO of eChoupal (I think), quite an interesting tweeter especially for a head honcho type, seems to get Twitter
- Genelia D'Souza: @geneliad, seems to tweet quite a lot, does the next generation style grammer that puts me off, I think I'm going to have to unfollow soon
- Brahma Chellaney @chellaney , security analyst and writer for the Hindu, fairly bland
- Chetan Bhagat @chetan_bhagat : Very much like with the books, just a nice down-to-earth kind of guy to follow
- Manjit @chefmanjit : Not exactly famous, but is the chef at one of Bangalore's good restaurants, Herbs and Spice. Just checking him out.
- Shah Rukh Khan, @iamsrk: I just started following him. It looks like its the real guy, not a fake.
- Gates Foundation, @gatesfoundation : Utilitarian news and publicity stuff, worth followingt
I've purposely desisted from following Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai and their ilk (though keep bumping into them in retweets), and same with Shashi Tharoor.
1.) I'm using TweetDeck which is pretty nice, haven't tried any of the other Twitter tools so far other than Twitpic. I post on two Twitter accounts @ahminotep and @indiawater and TweetDeck allows me to manage both of those, though currently I'm constantly 'crossposting' due to negligence
2.) I've gotten over the initial phobia of following too many people ; now I feel comfortable following interesting accounts I come across. The way to manage this is to try lots of accounts and unfollow or use lists to manage an overflow of information.
3.) I'm finding that its actually not difficult (and its fun) to scan quite rapidly through the 'pending' tweets. The trick that made this work for me is to keep clicking on links that are interesting but *not* follow them right away. Earlier I used to look at each link as I viewed the tweet and found it too disorienting and needing too much context switching. Instead now I go through all the tweets, click-click-click, till I'm up to date and then go and look at all the links that I've opened up (or even just keep them up and look at them later when I want a break). The only difficulty with this is that when one of the links is interesting and you want to retweet, you have no easy way of finding the original tweet.
4.) Its become a little game now to try to see how many mentions and direct messages I can get to happen
5.) Here's my take on some prominent Tweeters and why I follow or don't follow them. Its also interesting to follow well-known people and get some idea of the kind of people they are, but you often find out later that they (or atleast their tweet persona) are not so interesting:
-Kevin Smith, the director @thatkevinsmith : Great guy, really genuine and authentic, raunchy, but huge amount of tweeting, so I had to unfollow and move him to a list instead.
-N.Ram, @nramind : Wider range of interests than I expected him to have (don't ask me why), retweets stuff from prominent foreign newspapers, but I generally don't find his stuff interesting enough to clickthrough. Still following
-Pritish Nandy @pritishnandy: Bursty tweets, often annoying because its like a blog post divided into tweets, lots of analysis of news headlines, intelligent but I don't agree with a lot of his opinions and am not clued into the mumbai stuff he tweets about
-Gautam John @gkjohn, a goldmine of interesting links
-Anand Mahindra, @anandmahindra, just unfollowed :-) , insipid (sorry!)
-Jack Welch @jackwelch, doesn't tweet very often, goes on about sports teams, and I'm beginning to find his opinions pretty annoying, a big difference from the persona that came through in his books which I was a big fan of
-Sivakumar Surampudi, @s_sivakumar, CEO of eChoupal (I think), quite an interesting tweeter especially for a head honcho type, seems to get Twitter
- Genelia D'Souza: @geneliad, seems to tweet quite a lot, does the next generation style grammer that puts me off, I think I'm going to have to unfollow soon
- Brahma Chellaney @chellaney , security analyst and writer for the Hindu, fairly bland
- Chetan Bhagat @chetan_bhagat : Very much like with the books, just a nice down-to-earth kind of guy to follow
- Manjit @chefmanjit : Not exactly famous, but is the chef at one of Bangalore's good restaurants, Herbs and Spice. Just checking him out.
- Shah Rukh Khan, @iamsrk: I just started following him. It looks like its the real guy, not a fake.
- Gates Foundation, @gatesfoundation : Utilitarian news and publicity stuff, worth followingt
I've purposely desisted from following Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai and their ilk (though keep bumping into them in retweets), and same with Shashi Tharoor.
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Update (18/4/2010)
- Vinod Khosla the venture capitalist: @vkhosla : Just started following him
Here are a couple of interesting Twitter related episodes:
- Did live tweeting from our Coromandel colony get-together ; find this much faster in reporting events than trying to do a blog post and uploading photos
- Even without an internet connection , my phone hooks up to a wireless internet access point. This is really convenient and cheap to tweet photos from the phone without having an internet connection on the phone (expensive).
- We have multiple instances at work now of Twitter enabling us to make connections with people we didn't know which has lead to productive results. In one case we met up with an org and tweeted about it and got back negative feedback about the org from someone with relevant links -- very useful.
- N.Ram responded to a crack I made once about Hindu content. Cheap thrills :-)
-- Makemytrip.com corrected the spelling of Visakhapatnam on their site after I tweeted about it.
I'm stuck right now in trying to increase my followers on Twitter .
Friday, January 01, 2010
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