Coalgate

Ah the refreshing logic of our leaders. There is no loss since the coal is not mined. Coal was not auctioned in spite of ministry's own secretary advising same because there was urgent need for coal and so discretionary allotment was the only way.
Few questions:

• If need for coal was urgent than what action if any was taken on firms that left the coal inside earth saving a lot of loss that otherwise would have happened?
• If no action was taken than what action is taken against those who were supposed to take action?
• Why is it that anything non discretionary under this government takes so long even in face of urgent need it cannot cut time on the advisable course of action but the same system is brilliantly quick when doing discretionary allotments?

Schooling Kids

Historic day today with the Right to Education becoming a fundamental Right. Its a beginning that will fructify when that right also translated into quality eduction.
Why don't we begin by setting up 2 schools 1 exclusively for Schedule Tribes and 2nd exclusively for scheduled castes. Not more than 2 to begin with for reasons of funding and also as a proof of concept. Doing it for scheduled tribes and castes will also serve an additional cause of 1 blunting the invariable reservation clamor etc that is bound to ensure in any public funded scheme and more importantly will also serve to prove that the reason for backwardness is that of access to opportunities (reservations started to blunt that) And access to preparatory training (why reservations still fail and attempts to fix that by creamy layer criteria that was effectively politically neutered).
Assign 1000 crore each to these 2 schools (if that seems excessive, remember UP government spends more money on monuments - not infrastructure items named for itself but statues and concrete parks). Have the best of Global faculty - many will come to it to be a part of social cause - do not reserve faculty positions, 100% student reservation should be enough and besides foreign faculty will have no caste and hence crowd out Indian faculty should reservation in faculty be allowed.
Have a common course till at least class 8, preferably till class 10.
In place of courses like SUPW have classes in forestry, crafts etc - I assume most students at least in tribal school will come from tribal areas and we want them to go back to their families and success story and uplift the living standards back home - not become an urban migrant looking for non existent jobs.
Based on candidates aptitude and interest, allow for students to choose a vocational +2 course or continue traditional maths/science/bio/commerce/humanity courses after 8th or 10th as the case maybe. Those who do well in traditional courses can than compete for admission in top institutes and given the excellent training should be able to make it through easily.
In order to make it worthwhile for family to send kids to school which must be residential since we are talking of a single, well funded and monitored school instead of attending local school with questionable quality and then work at home/fields, give them decent scholarships - say a 1000 bucks a month which the students can send back home - in effect a scholarship for family of kids attending school. We can make this scholarship effective for only 2 kids/family if need be. This will also make it worthwhile for students and families to actually compete to stay in school.
Once we monitor this scheme for like 10 years so that we can see that a student from the most disadvantaged of family can be as good as rest we can setup more such schools. Students not very keen on traditional courses can be trained and government can then recruit them as forestry officers/guards. Those good in traditional arts can be given outlets like Delhi Haats and trade fairs to commercialize traditional arts.
Others can train as health workers and work in rural areas. In short a win all.

How does one measure poverty

Interesting that it took so long to finally junk calorie intake as the poverty estimation tool. Even if one take mere food as an indicator I wonder if the calorie intake took into account nutritional needs like proportion of protein/carbs/minerals/vitamins etc.
I think putting things like Education, access to health-care in ambit of calculating poverty is a step in right direction. After all these define your quality of life and also define in a rudimentary way the opportunities available to better the quality of life. Lack of opportunity is what will keep the poor poor and as such is as much a handicap as lack of food/shelter etc.
Its kind of sobering to think by that yardstick India is still miserably poor. I suggest we also put in place a mechanism to evaluation the effectiveness of poverty removal programs. Accordingly government agencies (and private/NGOs) can also be rated as 'good to reduce poverty, not so good etc'. Organizations that serve to reduce total poverty can be given additional incentives. Otherwise I wonder if any real poverty alleviation will happen in near future.

Still happens in India

Just where is NHRC when you need it?

Begining of the Begining?

Jinnah continues to haunt an Indian political party. First it was Advani of BJP who hailed Jinnah as a secular leader (which he was - staunchly secular till maybe his demand for Pakistan which came in much later in his long political career). Now it is Jaswant Singh of the same party who reasons in a book why Jinnah was secular.
Both these are important points for us to understand. For Pakistan to understand its own genesis and more importantly for me (since I am an Indian) Indians to understand the dynamics of politics and ideologies that shaped our own freedom struggle in the 20th century.
Were Hindu-Muslim relations always hostile to each other? If so why did the Hindu soldiers from Meerut and Avadh rebelling against East India company raj in 1857 march to Delhi to fight in the name of the Muslim Mughal King Bahadur Shah Jafar? It certainly wasn't because he was a powerful king? It was because there was a certain sense of Indian identity and the last Mughal king represented a dynasty that had ruled much of India in the past and hence had a certain identity.
A lot of Muslim leaders were within the mainstream of congress and worked totally within the overall congress ideology. Even some areas of now Pakistan (NWFP) actually voted for India.
Was the idea of a unite single post British India sacrificed at the alter of 2 egos? Some say Jinnah wanted to be PM, Nehru wanted to be PM so we ended with 2 countries. Will the partition have been avoided if Jinnah's health conditions were not hidden? How did 1 (or 2 men) managed to create 2 countries despite the wishes of Mahatma (surely the most popular Indian during the 20th century among Indian masses)? Jinnah must have articulated a certain wish that found resonance with many who while loved Mahatma and many other leaders who stood for a unified country still found Jinnah's arguments compelling. For that to happen there must have been another political undercurrent that was against Jinnah's argument and not Muslims.
Unfortunately any such debate or articulation of thoughts is suppressed at the alter of our own demons. Gujrat prefers to ban Jaswant's book on grounds of insult of a respected leader instead of instituting a debate that would allow Indians to evaluate the argument dispassionately.
I am sanguine though that a beginning is made. That 2 big leaders of a mainstream political party have thought about it and articulated it is a good sign. BJP's expulsion of Jaswant for the act of writing a book in his personal capacity will hopefully make more Indians keen to read this book and start thinking about it. Let the debate begin.

Finally the reason!

So this might explain why India's population is so high and still growing!

Those Magnificant Men in their magnificant Flying machines

Hudson Miracle is a happy ending to a trying situation. An ordinary flight 'might' be a piece of cake for a well trained pilot with computers doing a lot of work, its the out of ordinary that requires exceptional skills and training. I am reminded of earlier stories I read that illustrates how its also a matter of mind and skill.
One story I am reminded off was where one of the wheels on a plane got blown off (cant remember whether it was while take off or during the flight). Now a plane is a massive beast. So apparently landing with a wheel blown is somehow more dangerous than a wheel blown during a car ride. And the airport in question had a concrete wall some way off the runaway. Now with a wheel blown it would have been probably that the plane would skid and apparently there was significant danger of it skidding towards that wall.
And this is where the skill and prowess comes in. The solution itself was elegant - simple, but not easy. The pilot(s) came down at high speed purposely hitting the runway with the other wheel and whizzing off. 3 attempts and the wheel on the other side blew too lending that necessary symmetry to the plane essential to avoid the slammer of a wall. The plane then landed safely staying on the runway. Wouldnt have been easy on the passengers especially the dive and surge but hey then landed all right!
Another case I recollect was a case of a plane going down under overflying Asia. Somewhere near Indonesia or some place in Pacific a volcano coughed spewing ash all over. Now a lot of ash is carbon. So this plane going high up met the ash and ended up all sooty. So much ash that the engines got choked!
Attempts to revive the engines consternating the passengers. Unburnt carbon can burn and engines seemed on fire. No good. So what do the pilots do? Sit back and simply pray? No Sir we will think of something almost wickedly cool. So these bright folks actually came up with an idea.
The plane was taken to a much lower altitude. Now planes can glide a lot and I am not sure if the engines were totally knocked off or as the fire spewing remark indicate, they had some juice though not enough. So now at low altitude the air gets thicker, a lot thicker (which is why these jets fly so high, thick air means a lot of resistance). So this air now starts acting like a giant blower (the kind that sometimes comes with vacuum cleaners) and it cleaned off the ash that was filled in the engine and there you have the engines back online. Whew! But hey it ain't the end of story. After all an ash bath wont just dirty your engines, it'll mess up your windshields as well. So the wind screen is caked and so we have no visual. Almost no. Apparently a corner had some visibility. So the brave co-pilot stands on the seat and looks out relaying instructions while the captain lands the plane! Wheeewh!
Then there is this case of a jetliner pilot in Canada who was a hobby glider too and one fine day found this engines gone kaput while in the middle of a flight. The cool dude actually glides the plane for almost 250 kilometers to a nearby disused airfield. The locals enjoying their usual cycle races on the paved tarmac had the scare of their lives but the plane landed safely as a glider.
The best story - my recollections are sketchy but it was I think a FedEx plane flying transatlantic. This case apparently got the pilot a medal for bravery and none deserved it better. Now FedEx had a policy that any employee can travel in their planes - these were old days, and a bloke did travel. This bloke was depressed, suicidally depressed and harboring some notions of deep injury done by FedEx. So the plane is over Atlantic coming to US and in between the cockpit door opens (those were easy old days remember) and this traveling bloke comes in with an axe (those were easy old days remember) and hits the caption and the co-pilot. The captain takes a hit and gets paralyzed on side. The co-pilot is also severely injured. So imagine you are those pilots, critically injured, being stricken and are also flying. Not the easiest of time to be thinking one.
So the captain sees the attacker behind the co-pilot getting ready for a fresh heave. Thinking quickly he turns the plane nose up. The co-pilot falls behind and he along with the attacker slide to the rear of the plane. Amazingly maybe because of survival instinct or because he and captain were on same wavelength the co-pilot realizes this is lucky and holds on to the attacker (who maybe did get injured himself in this slide, i do not know) so that he is unable to strike further and both stay in rear grappled.
Meanwhile the caption radios US which arrange for immediate touchdown as soon as the plane arrive and the captain, semi paralyzed flies the plane alone and manages to reach US and land. Amazing story.

Satyam Saga: Case of missing money

Something just doesn't square up in the Satyam saga. Raju's letter to SEBI mentioned figures to the rough tune of declared profits like 5400 crore and of this 5100cr is inflated. So that means actual profits are like 300 cr over a turnover of like 8000 cr. How is that possible and especially over a period of years?
My early days in IT while I was pretty much the end of food chain even then I had to explain a lot if my small team was below the margin threshold. and here is a firm that apparently has a 3% margin over all and its Project managers not realizing that their current project is like at 3% and their previous projects were at like 3% and their friend;s projects are like at 3% and yet they aren't being flogged by senior managers? And senior managers can't be flogging everybody?
And such state of affairs would have leaked out. So how can what is said by Raju be true that that's the extent of over reported earnings and only he and his brother knew. I would expect 2/3rd of the firm to know when there is orders of magnitude kind of differences. and if 2/3 of 50000+ know, all the world gets to know it very quickly. So things don't seem to tally up there.
Then there is the question of why did Raju confess it, why in such dire times? And why did PwC not uncover the fraud. How come only Raju knew? What about the financial analysts of the projects generating the invoices for clients? the finance guy collecting bills etc? Did PwC not check with banks? Was someone in banks giving Satyam false statements?
My initial thought was that maybe Satyam ran out of money for payroll so he confess to get a ligther sentence. But then there is the PwC angle. How come PwC didn't uncover anything? If a bank employee was giving false certificates what abt the other bank top brass who might be reading of a top client's disclosures and finding discrepancies?
Today's Business standard though gave another very plausible answer. Apparently after the Maytas fiasco Raju got Meryl Lynch to come and suggest some M&A activity. Meryl Lynch within 1 week of due diligence noticed huge issues with accounts and walked out. M L would have been obligated to report it to stock exchange so Raju came clean.
Which begs the question if PwC is not lying and they actually saw credible receipts than how did ML discover this? If that's not true then PwC is exposed? Maybe the truth is somewhere in between. The auditors where hand is glove with the embezzlers. But still that leaves the issue why did most of Satyam not realize the extent of fraud? Remember is not like 1 cr inflated to 3 cr, its more like 1 cr inflated to 30 cr which is very tough to carry out.
My hunch is that the real over reporting is not as bad as is made out in Raju's letter. They were earning more than 3%. But somewhere a lot of that money has been siphoned off. Apparently overstating profit while being a crime is a lot less serious crime than actual embezzlement of funds. And it might be done in connivance with auditors certainly in a group lot larger than 2.
Already there are reports in TV of how there are huge real estate investments done by promoters and some very credible people had already leveled charges of politicians awarding huge contracts and land allotments to the Rajus and these charges were levelled earlier.
It seems to be that some very serious crimes have been committed here and many shareholders and employees have been destroyed. This deserves serious examination

Lets follow the due process of Law

I am saddened that in their zeal to show their patriotism, some parties and many people have forced lawyers not to take on the cases of Kasab. Infact many bar associations have been guilty of such misplaced enthusiasm. If memory serves me right after the Nithari case too, UP bar association passed a resolution asking lawyers not to defend the accused.
A cardinal principal of rule of law is that accused be given a chance to defend him/herself and when lawyer associations of all try to force its members to go against it, its sad. A lawyer does not merely try to save a client, (s)he is an officer of the court charged with helping a court reach the truth and deliver justice. Let a lawyer serve the man and let the court decide how to punish.
Rule of mob, politicians, emotions will only make us stoop to the level we accuse these terrorists/Taliban of falling.

ProtoLife, LHC and the End of the World Mad Scientist Party

What an interesting week this. First Wired reports that scientists are on the verge of creating a new life form synthetically. There have been earlier attempts but they used some existing cell as the base machinery. This seems to be completely synthetic.
Then the big one. LHC goes live today. Not the big bang that its expected to perform but the first scaled down run to test systems happen today (might have actually happened - slow net here so not in a mood to open too many sites). The world's biggest physics experiment starts today. LHC (thats a machine that 'accelerates' particles to near the speed to light) in CERN (a lab in Switzerland build by European countries. it was one of their scientist who built the "www" you see in internet to easily share documents) turns on today.
LHC will if all goes well in the full trial today, swing a beam of protons in an underground 27 mile long circular tunnel cooled by 2000 superconducting magnets and another in the opposite direction. If that goes well, they will attempt to do it many times eventually reaching very very high speeds and then collide the two protons. What will result is interesting. It will be like a billionth of a second after big bang (theory that says universe was created in a sudden instantaneous explosion creating mass and energy). Then they'll check for many things among which is a particle called colloquially the "God Particle" or Higgs Boson, something that is postulated but not proven. It is what is supposed to give a mass to every other things.
Apart from the sheer engineering there is also a lot of controversy on the experiment, one of which is that the collision may create a microscopic black hole that may eat up the world. Apparently many such microscopic black holes are produced also in upper atmosphere due to collisions with solar radiation and our atmosphere but they "evaporate" since they are so small they can just go through everything without actually bumping into anything (most of an atom is just empty space) so the world in majority opinion is safe. Another view is that the microscopic black holes created by cosmic radiations are created at near speed of light and so have the escape velocity while those created in LHC may be too slow to escape Earth's gravitational pull and may stuck around like bad guests.
Time to call for a End-Of-The-World-Mad-Scientist-Party?

What was that?

Chinese government bans reincarnations screamed a headline on MSNBC. Closer reading revealed that the law prohibits spirits from choosing a new body only if the spirit and bodies are both outside China!
Talk about extraterritorial jurisdictions. This goes beyond even carnal world. Behind the farce is a serious issue of decimation of an entire civilization at the hands of totalitarian politics. Reminds me often of those Calvin and Hobbes strip that often bemoan our behaviour.
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists in this Universe is that none has tried to contact us"
--- Bill Waterson in Calvin and Hobbes.

More About education

Economist makes an interesting case for a voucher based education subsidy. Given our own state of absymal education system (see my cribs on the poverty pushing jhoolawallah, that blight on our nation, I think this should come as an eye opener to those who decry any private initiative while simply burying their heads in sand about the shocking failures of policy past 60 years.
I wonder if we would keep going to same doctor prescribing same treatment for a malady that keeps getting worse when other treatment exists (some as shown here, even work). Somehow its so ingrained in our psyche that we must take it as gospel truth what our rulers spew.
Maybe system needs to answer
1. What has been the investment in education till now?
2. What is the annual expenditure on education today?
3. If this expense was instead directly given to students free to choose a public or private school in fees subsidy, how many kids could it have financed?
4. What is the quality of education been given in our public schools, measured in terms of success in objective exams by independent agencies over a period of time?

Oh no the Tower of Babel!

While on these trips abroad to client sites, lack of a common language is often a boon. It allows you to converse with your own folks about things you may not want the others to understand for whatever reasons - confidentiality, privacy etc.
Alas mere scientists are not so sensitive to social situations. So here we are. It seems these pesky computers are now creating the Tower of Babel. What it does is that it hears a word, figures out the language somehow and then translate it into another language. While UN jaw-jaws can do with it, business love it during interviews, the poor developer with a geographically sundered sweetheart on phone and pesky client on next table cannot but shudder with horror!
Thats the problem with technology. It makes life better and takes the charm away.

We kissed. She melted. Mop please!

Wired runs this positively brilliant story about "very short stories". Short stories are a rather tough genre to dabble in. What these guys did was to invite some authors to compose short stories of 6 words each. The whole idea seemed interesting enough and so here we are gentlemen and dear ladies, the fruits of an experiment available for sampling. You can read it here.

The title of the post is one of these (by James Patrick Kelly) , another one I liked is
"Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood" (this could be about me!!!)

And some which remind me of HHKG
"Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth.
- Vernor Vinge

We went solar; sun went nova.
- Ken MacLeod"

Happy reading

Those who couldn't run away And one who did

Now normally having life's great plans gone awry usually makes for painful reading but ever once a while comes some specimen of God's own image to make even these chuckle-able.
While going through some old clips, came across these jams.
There was this dude in Devon who broke into an occupied house, collected booty and ran off with it in a ... give a guess... another try?.. a Wheelbarrow!. The owner alerted by a neighbour called in police who were too busy elsewhere to come quickly. The owner and his kids after waiting for 2 hours for police decided to chase the thief in their car and caught up with the gentleman still tootling along with the booty bearing barrow. I tell ya some men will always overestimate their sprinting speed

In other news, a German, punches in for directions to the nearest loo in his car satnav. The ever dutiful technoslave did what it does best and gave the directions. The rather hassled driver took the directions dutifully and drove the car right as per directions running over the portaloo! I'm impressed buddy by your satnav service, amazing accuracy.

There was this other one, sorry could find the link, where this gentleman from America ( :) ) called in cops to report some contraband stolen from his house! The cops came, took info and managed to even zero in the thief - a dealer this dope once went to get his dope!. Both were last reported to be in the cooler.

In others - This granny got a thief in such a grip the bugger was glad to see a police car come in!

This dude tried to rob a CCTV store`while the cameras were whirring away!!

Wonder how it feels to have a mugger return stuff to you because its too cheap for him to mug?

Once a while though the thieves do do better. In this case they just walked away with the entire surveillance system!

I think I'll start making a series of such chucklethons, the site can do with some extra traffic :)

In other News

Sony electronic book reader is out here. Been waiting for a long while for a product like this. While nothing to me, beats the plain old fashioned books, having a heavy tome on the tummy while reading in bed can get uncomfortable very soon. Laptops again are out for the same reason.
While this baby from Sony, being Sony- will be I'm sure expensive.
The whole ebook, e-ink thing has been so long in the making. I remember discussion about this in pre-2000 days. Sadly no worthy product did hit the shelves. I am skeptical about the whole availability of the ebooks at an affordable price. If the books are like $20/- + to begin with, affordability will ensure that the product stays just a gadget love rather than a real useful way to read books.
The real utility of an ebook for me is if its very light. Then keeping one around for late night reading, short travels where the weight of packing books is an issue. Why pack? because eg Hindi books are not all that available elsewhere. Publishers may do well to pack in a ebook edition along with the paperback for a small additional consideration.
So hopefully I soon shall not have to worry about hunting for the right reading material on those trips abroad.

Another con job

Kolkata couple buys a plot on moon screams a news item in expressindia. I am mildly surprized that people still fall for such a con, but greatly surprized that the expressed printed it as a news and not some humour item. Someone please explain to this couple that how will they ensure they actually have the plot and no other agency/government shall deny them the right.
For starters I suggest they go up there in a hurry and fence the whole area! I wonder what happens if some meteor strikes the area and they end up with a crator there? do they get a permit to live on the floor of the crater or do they get the whole lake-assuming that there is a lake there somehow?
Still maybe $100 aint that bad a deal when so many people get a free laugh in turn. cheerios dear couple, may your career get better.

Zidane Zidane

This is great fun! and probably true.
Well I'll leave it to the boffins of the Rag to say it in their own words.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/13/zidane_headbutt_outrage/