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Yet another Self-Important Blog.
Rohit Singh
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Fri, 24 Aug 2007
Heh
I've been on the other side of the situation this
article describes: looking for my net fix while on vacation in India. I'm sure I sounded just as
annoying as the article describes to the people I bugged.
A particularly annoying thing was dealing with net-cafe owners who don't know the first thing about computers. They were terrified of me downloading a program that'd let me ssh to MIT and work on the command line, and thought that a USB key would inflict unimaginable damage to their computer just by being connected to it.
More Weird Stuff From John Tierney
But this one is interesting: aggregated across all of humanity's history, far
fewer men (than women) have descendants who still live today. In other
words, the average man is much less likely than the average woman to
leave his/her genes hanging around.
Also, a researcher is speculating
that this may be a reason why men are hardwired for aggression and
what not.
Recent work in connecting psychology, anthropology and evolution is quite interesting. Some of it will turn out to be fallacious, of course.
For *That* Smoldering, I'll Suffer Through The Somnolence
Holden on Scarlett Johansson in the Nanny Diaries:
"With her heavy-lidded eyes and plump lips, Ms. Johansson may smolder invitingly in certain roles, but The Nanny Diaries is the latest in a string of films that suggest that this somnolent actress confuses sullen attitudinizing with acting."
Thu, 23 Aug 2007
What Is The Matrix?
John Tierney thinks there may be a 20% chance we are living in one,
i.e, we are "avatars"
in somebody's version of Second Life. My
question: simulating many of the basic physical and biological processes (protein
folding, quantum physics etc.) is very very hard. These simulations boil down to very hard computational
problems (NP Hard, to
be precise), i.e., one can prove that there's a very good chance that they
are so hard that even a computer orders of magnitude faster than
anything we have will have trouble solving them quickly (especially,
when it's simulating the entire universe as we know it). And this conclusion
is based solely on logical arguments that follow from basic
mathematical axioms, i.e., I believe they are just as true for the Mega-Computer that
(possibly) contains us all as it is for the computer I'm writing this
post on. So does that not go against the Matrix
theory?
Tierney writes weird crap at times.
Go Read This
Reckless profiteering goes well with
extremism in religion. Always.
Thu, 16 Aug 2007
Olive Garden?
That does seem a wee bit cheap, no?
The cheapest "business" lunch I've heard of? A friend of a friend at CMU ran into a guy from U. Pitt. when buying lunch from a food truck. Names were overheard, introductions were made, interests were shared and, in due course of time, papers were co-written. Not bad for a $5 (or maybe, $4) entree.
Wed, 15 Aug 2007
Map-Making
Map-making is an exercise influenced by politics. Surprise.
Maps do elicit fairly strong emotions. Whenever I see a map that has India's political boundary in it, I can't help but check how it shows Kashmir. If it's something I'm considering buying, the map should ideally be as we were taught in school-- all of Kashmir (including Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and Aksai Chin) as part of Kashmir. I may buy it if it shows PoK in a different color than either India or Pakistan. But if it shows PoK as a true part of Pakistan, I look for another map.
Thu, 09 Aug 2007
On Powerpoint As An Admission Requirement
GoogleDude's complaining about Chicago GSB requiring MBA applicants to
also send in a 4-slide Powerpoint, allowing the applicants to express
their creativity. I agree with the G-dude.
Using Powerpoint well is an amazingly useful skill; in fact, I was surprised how valuable it is in research. These days, much of the dissemination-of-ideas in research happens by talks given using Powerpoints. And the majority of such talks are terrible. But there are some real gems and the people who give them stand out. Clearly, one can argue that it's valuable for students (including B-school guys) to be good at this lingua franca of presentations.
The problem is, using Powerpoint to evaluate someone's creativity is a rather narrow reading of "creativity" (why not allow video resumes?). Also, as G-dude says, most people are born with very bad skills at Powerpoints. Only those immersed in Powerpoint-rich environments start to get any good at it. A Powerpoint-based admission requirement is just favoring certain job types.
Comments Turned On Now
After GoogleDude bugged me for the n-th time about
comments("It's not a blog if it doesn't allow comments!"), I decided
to figure out a way that'd turn them on without the spam. I like using
Blosxom (the Python port PyBlosxom seems better maintained these days) for generating
this blog, since it lets
me create the blog just as I like. It is a simple script, fairly clean
and easy to use. For each new post, I just create a simple text file; the first line
of the file is the post's title. Very simple. I've complete flexibility
in designing the entire blog-page (yes, it was designed at a time when I
was really enamored with light-on-black color schemes).
However, commenting is Blosxom's bane. It can do comments but it's not built to deal with spam. Last time I checked, I found it hard to set up user accounts or captchas etc. in Blosxom. Still, just for kicks, I turned on comments a year or so ago. Within days, there was just too much spam. So I closed off the comments.
Today, I remembered that you can host comments etc. on a 3-party website. Haloscan's a really cool solution for people like me. In my templates, I just put in Javascript blocks that pull in the comment link and the number of comments currently posted. Haloscan handles comment creation, comment storage, user-accounts, spam etc. Easy.
Mon, 06 Aug 2007
Being Rich
I'm not rich. But that won't stop me from pontificating on being rich. NYT is
running a series of articles on the new "Gilded Age" and writing about the
new rich and their attitudes about money, themselves, society and
everything else.
As expected, some of the rich are quite obnoxious, convinced that they walk on water and that their wealth is entirely due to their skills and abilities. Surely their wealth has nothing to do with them being in the right place at the right time or having a great supporting team (members of which get a lot fewer rewards!).
There's a much larger category of people who are what the NYT describes as the working-class millionaires-- people who have a couple million in the bank but don't feel like they are millionaires. This isn't false modesty, necessarily. Some of it is probably situational: if you live in Manhattan or Los Altos and all your neighbors make twice as much, you are bound to feel poor. And I can see the point that a million needn't mean luxurious living: if one of your loved ones has a serious medical problem and insurance won't pay, you could run through a half-million or million very quickly. The high real-estate cost of areas like Silicon Valley only adds to the feeling that a million ain't what is said to be.
Still, it'd be nice if people counted their blessings. If you can take 18 months off from work and fly your entire extended family to Hawaii, you should at least acknowledge you have it better than most.
On Yakking
Cellphone networks influence talking patterns between friends.
Conversely, people choose networks based on what their friends are on.
Before I got married, I wouldn't have really believed it.
Tue, 31 Jul 2007
Desis on Dating
Sepia Mutiny has an ongoing discussion about dating patterns---
specifically, interracial dating patterns--- among the various desi
communities in the U.S.
By far the most discussed
post on SM ever, the discussion is a veritable trove of information for the
armchair sociologist.
Among other things, it has the female angst about "why do all the good
desi guys prefer non-desis?" and the corresponding male angst about
"why do all the good desi girls prefer non-desis?".
The funny thing is, the statistics seem to indicate otherwise: desi girls like desi guys and vice-versa. Roughly 70% of Indian men raised in the U.S. (and a similar fraction of women) are married to Indians. Indian-white couplings make up most of the rest. I'd be surprised if the within-community marriage rates for other communities (e.g., the Jewish community) were as high. For example, the 70% rate is certainly higher than that for other Asian-American communities. But then again, within another 1-2 generations, the inter-mixing will likely be quite a bit higher. A few more generations and we'll be like the Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans today, hopefully with the Indian-American equivalent of St. Patrick's Day (with its attendant revelries, of course).
As an abstract question, inter-group marriages are a fascinating, if somewhat controversial, subject. Questions about inter-group marriages involving desis are even harder to untangle, I think, because it's not clear which of the following two factors is at play: (1) desire for/against a partner from a similar cultural or religious background or (2) a physical preference for/against people of specific skin-colors. In contrast, marriages involving a white Jew and a white Christian will have little to do with skin-color, I'd imagine.
Sun, 29 Jul 2007
Nekkid Feet
They
don't mention MIT. My impression was that students of the Institvte
were alone in being Godless, shoeless heathens. Interestingly, the feet in the photo are surprisingly clean.
Fri, 20 Jul 2007
Religion and Individualism
I've been reading Edward Luce's "Inspite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of
Modern India". It's a really good book, though I'll hold a full-fledged rave for
later. For now, suffice to say that I even like
the parts I don't agree with (and there's a fair bit in the book that I disagree with).
In the book, Luce describes his visits to VHP's National Office and to the Deoband Madrasa. Both places--- bastions of Hindu and Muslim right-wing thought, respectively--- have their fair share of kooky characters with crazy theories. Luce is struck by how similar in their craziness the two places are. Both believe quite literally in treatises and religious texts which probably were never meant to be taken literally. In this, of course, they are not alone. The Christian right is just as cuckoo. BTW, my issue here is not with right-wing politics (I hate the left, particularly Indian communists) but with the religious right.
On reading this, I was reminded of a David Brooks op-ed that I'd liked. He talked about how Catholics are starting to become richer and more influential and traces it to the new generation of Catholics who are slightly more individualistic and slightly less religious (but they still *are* religious, and this is key!). He goes on to talk about such quasi-religious people:
"Quasi-religious people attend services, but they're bored much of the time. They read the Bible, but find large parts of it odd and irrelevant. They find themselves inextricably bound to their faith, but think some of the people who define it are nuts."
Bingo! This is the crucial thing: being in the sweet-spot of having a spiritual anchor and, at the same time, religious convictions weak enough that you can stray a fair distance from the more confining rituals and thoughts of your religion. As Brooks goes on about the current generation of quasi-religious Catholics...
"On the one hand, modern Catholics have retained many of the traditional patterns of their ancestors' high marriage rates, high family stability rates, low divorce rates. Catholic investors save a lot and favor low-risk investment portfolios. On the other hand, they have also become more individualistic, more future-oriented and less bound by neighborhood and extended family. They are now much better educated than their parents or grandparents, and much better educated than their family histories would lead you to predict.
This embodies the social gospel annex to the quasi-religious creed: Always try to be the least believing member of one of the more observant sects. Participate in organized religion, but be a friendly dissident inside. Ensconce yourself in traditional moral practice, but champion piecemeal modernization. Submit to the wisdom of the ages, but with one eye open."
Well said.
Fri, 08 Jun 2007
What does it say...
...about you if see "Hamiltonian" in the title of a NYT op-ed and you
think of this, rather than this?
A perpetual puzzle in Physics 101 in IIT Kanpur used to be the "H \psi = E \psi" equation from QM. People couldn't understand why that didn't imply "H=E".
Sat, 31 Mar 2007
Effortless Overachieving...
An interesting article about girls trying to handle the twin pressures
of being (1) smart, athletic, cultured, well-rounded and (2) enjoying their life. Needless to say, the second often loses out. "College" always wins.
It's sad that NYT would probably have not run this story if it were about boys, rather than girls. The article would've been so much better if it talked about the pressures on boys as well. The fundamental conflict before high school students has very little to with gender and very much to do with current societal attitudes to what good education means. Essentially, we'd like our best kids to be effortless overachievers. Every year, it becomes harder to be an overachiever. Needless to say, the "effortless" part has been losing out.
Thu, 29 Mar 2007
On Roads, Hell and Good Intentions
Fifty years ago, newly independent India was not particularly good at growing enough
food to feed itself. Later, with the aid of people like Norman Borlaug,
the productivity of Indian farm-lands improved. Another big factor,
however, was the government's increased role in procurement and
distribution by setting up the Food Corp of India (FCI) and Minimum Support
Prices (MSP) on staples like wheat and rice. I'm sure the MSP saved many a
poor farmer from loan sharks.
However, like many good things an excess of zeal in procurement can be harmful.
Wed, 14 Mar 2007
Stupid Communists
I've given up hope that the communists of India will ever get any sense. One can just hope that they'll be marginalized as soon as possible. Until that happens, we will have to listen to our Crazy Comrade Karat.
Fri, 09 Mar 2007
One more reason why I love this place...
Most organizations would be loath to put so much of their intellectual
property on the net for free. Not MIT.
Tue, 13 Feb 2007
Go read this
I'd read things about Atul Gawande. This is the first time I've read something by him.
Patenting Genes
Patenting genes is a bad idea. A really bad idea. Michael Crichton argues
likewise in the NYT. He is, of course, a bit more articulate about the
whole thing. Genes are not your inventions--- just because you are the
first one to find a particular gene doesn't mean you can patent it.
Furthermore, given the astounding genomic-level similarity between
organisms as seemingly diverse as fly and humans, enforcing a patent might
well be impossible. For example. if I design diagnostic tests using a copy
of the Chimp gene instead of the corresponding (patented) human gene, it is
possible my test will still work. Did I then violate the patent?
Gene patenting is just stupid, whether it is done by companies or researchers in academia. The former often do it to justify their investment in the related basic research. Well, this is not the way-- such ludicrous patenting is just another indication the totally out-of-whack IP and incentive system in the pharmaceutical sector. For an academic researcher to patent the genes is even more perplexing. After all, they were funded by public money, exactly for the purpose of doing basic research others can build upon.
Sat, 10 Feb 2007
High Order Unbelievably Nasty Series
aka HOUND. Heard on the Discovery show "Future
Weapons". The military has a fascination for acronyms. Sometimes,
they go overboard with the whole thing. HOUND (actually, it is "HellHOUND"--- but the "Hell"
part hasn't apparently been de-acronymed yet) is some kind of a grenade.
The show (Future Weapons) is a bit like Mythbusters. They both purport to be about other things but really just seem to enjoy blowing stuff up.
Wed, 07 Feb 2007
Yuck!
Is there no limit to what we humans will eat!
Climate Change
I like the NYT videos. They are pithy and often cover things that the
written word doesn't convey very well. But more interestingly, often the
reporter's tone is also quite different from their tone in articles.
Look at this video about climate change. For some reason, this
simple but stark statement of the current situation doesn't usually come through
in the newspaper articles.
Attention, or lack thereof, on climate change and space exploration indicates some deep flaws in our political institutions. They are invariably focused on short-term problems and can not quite grasp the importance of a challenge whose full impact will be felt only by our grandchildren. Also, they are completely unable to handle situations that require real international cooperation.
Sun, 04 Feb 2007
Natural Curiosity, I say
Starbucks can't seem to catch a break today. Apparently, people seem to
prefer McDonalds' coffee over theirs and somebody in Seattle--- the birthplace
of Starbucks itself--- has come upon what in hindsight
should've been obvious: semi-naked female baristas serving you your grande
mocha, rechristened "Sexual Mix" (or somethin' like that).
The Seattle Times carried an article about it. Predictably, people were outraged-- after all, the paper's clearly not thinking of the children. Just as predictably, the article was a smash hit. So the editor asked his readers: ""You can decide whether that suggests salacious interest, natural curiosity or both." Me? I wonder if the baristas at the drive-thru' window don't feel cold in them skimpy clothes. Seattle can get mighty cold.
Mon, 01 Jan 2007
London On The Cheap...
Just after I mentioned how costly it is to visit London, I found this
article about seeing London for 1000 pounds over a 3-day weekend for a
family of 5. Granted, they didn't count the travel costs. The key,
apparently, is to find cheap housing.
Isn't that true for visiting anyplace, though? If you find cheap transport and cheap digs, the rest can be worked out fairly easily.
Fri, 29 Dec 2006
DVD Players and Region-ness
Silly MPAA. In case you are going to buy a DVD player from Best Buy, the Philips player DVP3040 seems to play Indian DVDs while the cheapest Sony player doesn't. What's more, the Sony player seemingly can't be hacked to do it either.
36 Hours in London
The "36 Hours in ..." NYT columns are a sham. They mention so many things
to pack in 36 hours that I am not sure somebody can actually do all of
them. The latest one is about London and the
only thing I could say I've done was 'stand on the Waterloo Bridge'. In my defense, some of them are about visiting museums and galleries and what not and I don't regret skipping them (the In-house Economist probably does). Also, the author of the article clearly didn't go with their spouse-- no reference is made to the horror of battling hordes while looking for deals in the insanely overpriced shops near Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus.
London is a cool place, though. The core of it is very walkable, like Boston. The rest of it is very subway-accessible, like New York.
London is also, in my opinion, the best place to celebrate Diwali. The size of the desi population is beyond the critical mass for the holiday to register on the mainstream consciousness (and calendar). And fireworks are legal (unlike USA) and relatively cheap (unlike India) so you can buy really massive ones-- by the bucket. Just that makes it the best place for Diwali.
Wed, 13 Sep 2006
Too Poor To Get Treatment
Everytime I go to India, things seem changed. Delhi feels cleaner,
richer, and brasher (Delhites were never very bad at that last one). The roads are better, people have
decent power backups, and the Delhi Metro in its brand new glory is
better than any of the Metros I've been on-- New York, London, Boston,
or D.C.
But some things still haven't changed. There are too many shockingly poor Indians. The excerpt below is from a NYT article about India getting another rich man's disease-- Type II Diabetes. The irony is, the guy who got the rich man's disease was too poor to find treatment:
"In his lectures, Dr. Ramachandran recounts the case of an impoverished diabetic with a hideously infected leg. Unable to find medical care, he laid the leg across the railroad tracks. The next train to hurtle past did the surgery."
For what it's worth, it's not even that money will guarantee you good care. There are so few good doctors and facilities that even rich people sometimes can't buy the level of treatment they want. From personal experience, I can say that you may have to plead and cajole to find a room at a hospital where the daily room charges are four times the monthly income of the average Indian. Imagine how small a fraction of Indians would be in a position to pay that; and yet there aren't enough top-notch facilities that can serve even them. It's depressing how far India has to go.
Tue, 12 Sep 2006
Mmm...horses...
Horse Slaughter Prevention Act passes in the House. Goes to show that every
society has foods and meats it considers gross or inhumane or whatever.
I ate horse meat a few times in Kazakstan. No, it didn't taste like chicken; it was more like mutton. And once I knew what I was eating, it tasted a lot worse. Still, there are people who'll pay good money to eat horses; so there's not much sense in banning horse slaughter.
Fri, 08 Sep 2006
Even If I Had The Money...
...I still wouldn't buy this thing. It looks kinda ugly and stocky, not
sleek. Still, it does blow up Pulitzer Prize winner Dan Neil's finely tailored skirt.
Wed, 06 Sep 2006
Nobody Pays List Price
Except suckers and the helpless. This guy briefly mentions how American
colleges are getting
costlier (partly because of the customer demand to improve facilities)
He mentions in passing one of the weirder oddities of higher education in
America-- the tuition setup.
My I-20 says MIT will spend upwards of $55K on me per year, including
tuition and research assistant stipend. However, that's really voodoo
math. Almost all PhD students get financial support and tuition waivers,
so the tuition amount during PhD really is meaningless. MIT might as well
charge me an annual tuition of $1000 or $100000; I'll still be paying $0.
All it does is act as a tax on faculty who have to find more money to fund
their students. Sneaky, no? And compared to undergrads, the PhD student
takes far fewer classes, and usually lives off-campus; most of the resources
he needs are for his research, which is paid for separately by his
advisor.
The particulalry sad part is what happens to those who can't work the system and finagle a "discount", e.g. foreign students in Masters programs. They borrow large amounts to essentially subsidize others.
Tue, 05 Sep 2006
From The Late-Night Infomercial Desk
Saw an infomercial for the Package Shark (eBay it to see a pic) today. Simple box cutter, set in a groove cut into a disc. Intended for cutting open those pesky hard plastic wraps that many electronic items come in. Those really are a pain and I wondered why nobody does something about it. Well, somebody did.
I am always amazed at the American penchant for building and using tools. And not just big ones-- indeed, some of the most impressive are the smaller, simpler ones. I guess such widespread innovation is enabled by there being a good system for even individuals to design something on their own, take it to market, and make money. For an inventor and his idea, there are companies which will help patent it, others which will help make it, and yet others who'll help sell it.
Sun, 03 Sep 2006
No really, the snake did it...
...As if snakes weren't creepy enough, somebody thinks they are
responsible for the relatively high quality of human eyesight as well.
Personally, I think the author's mistaking correlation for causation.
But hey, that should never get in the way of a juicy theory.
Sun, 09 Jul 2006
Almost like that Honda ad..
..where the guy sacrifices his jacket for the car but not his girlfriend. From the NYT ethicist column:
"My cousin and his girlfriend were the victims of an attempted carjacking. Two armed men ordered them into the car. As one assailant was climbing into the backseat on the driver's side, my cousin grabbed the keys and ran, leaving his girlfriend. He quickly reached an emergency phone, and the police responded within minutes to find that the carjackers had fled, leaving his girlfriend unharmed. Did he do the right thing? "
The Ethicist gives a somewhat tortured answer about how it would've been better if there was a cop nearby and the guy ran *to* him, instead of just running *away*. But, no surprises, the love-birds broke up.
I'm sure there's a preemptive warning in it somewhere for me.
In defence of flesh trade
Not that kind, silly. This one. It is certainly defensible-- actually, I find it immoral that we do *not* have this one. After all, many high-paying jobs are high-paying precisely because they have the risk of causing bodily harm (think fire-fighters)
As for the other kind of flesh trade, ah well, somebody could make an argument for that one as well. An entire country would agree with him.
Tue, 30 May 2006
A Tutorial on String Theory
A week or so ago, I was poking around the PBS website, looking for free
stuff to watch. Saw this series, narrated by a famous Columbia string
theorist. It's a good introduction to String Theory. Unless you know
quite a bit about String Theory, you'll almost certainly learn more and
probably enjoy it quite a bit. Here's the page with the videos. The videos are in short pieces which is a bit irritating, but as I said before, it's worth it.
As an aside, it's a sad commentary on my knowledge of modern physics that I am getting my contemporary physics education from TV, but hey, it's PBS, not TV! And it's better than nothing.
As another aside, I was chatting with a friend who does String Theory. He says that the String Theory community is fairly small (about 300 people, he said) but incredibly competitive; it is not uncommon for people to be scooped. And there are lots of prima donnas and arrogant bastards. Computer science is positively civil, by comparison. Computational biology too, though less so than computer science.
Tue, 02 May 2006
Funny Videos
Gamma Dance: This one is made by some guy at my alma-mater, IITK. Funny geek stuff. I am wondering if one of the guys who put his photo in there couldn't find a scarier photo.
Sour Eggs: This one is by Columbia Business School grads who are satirizing their Dean's (supposed) reaction to being passed for the Fed Reserve Chairman's post. They did a great job! In particular, the guy singing is a spitting image of the real dude, Dean Glenn Hubbard.
Sat, 29 Apr 2006
It's been a few weeks
Blogging is a bit like going to the gym, only more enjoyable. If something
comes up and you can't do it for a couple days, suddenly you find it's been
two weeks and you haven't blogged even once.
So, yeah, to anybody who stops by this blog on even a semi-regular basis, apologies :-) !
On another note, I now have the Dictionary of Hindustani Proverbs, bought on Amazon. Very interesting. Hope to quote samples from it. Kind of sad that such interesting studies of Indian culture were performed by Britishers (in the 1860s etc...) and now we don't really care anymore.
Wed, 12 Apr 2006
Economic Nationalism
A few days ago, I'd written about Lou Dobbs being a jackass, because he
was implying that Lenovo selling laptops to the US State Department was
a ruse for Chinese espionage.
In a recent Rediff column, Rajeev Srinivasan starts from the same point-- the NY Times article about Lou Dobbs-- to talk about economic nationalism. His feelings on this are way more ambiguous than mine. However, he goes on to point out that various Dubai and Chinese companies are involved in port-management and port-construction activities at various sites in South India, some of them quite close to strategic/military areas. He doesn't make the leap to say that we should NOT be having those projects-- after all, the projects make sense, economically speaking. However, he does have lingering security concerns. I can see his point, but I think that for the port stuff, security concerns are manageable.