[silk] wow, what an editorial from the grave...
the editor of sri lanka's Sunday Leader was assassinated last week. on sunday, his paper published an editorial written by him, where he defends the freedom of the press, the risks journalists take, and accuses the government of killing him. -r http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20090111/editorial-.htm And Then They Came For Me No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last. I have been in the business of journalism a good long time. Indeed, 2009 will be The Sunday Leader's 15th year. Many things have changed in Sri Lanka during that time, and it does not need me to tell you that the greater part of that change has been for the worse. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower. Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood. Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognising the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice. But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience. The Sunday Leader has been a controversial newspaper because we say it like we see it: whether it be a spade, a thief or a murderer, we call it by that name. We do not hide behind euphemism. The investigative articles we print are supported by documentary evidence thanks to the public-spiritedness of citizens who at great risk to themselves pass on this material to us. We have exposed scandal after scandal, and never once in these 15 years has anyone proved us wrong or successfully prosecuted us. The free media serve as a mirror in which the public can see itself sans mascara and styling gel. From us you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future. Sometimes the image you see in that mirror is not a pleasant one. But while you may grumble in the privacy of your armchair, the journalists who hold the mirror up to you do so publicly and at great risk to themselves. That is our calling, and we do not shirk it. Every newspaper has its angle, and we do not hide the fact that we have ours. Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy. Think about those words, for they each has profound meaning. Transparent because government must be openly accountable to the people and never abuse their trust. Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours, secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united. Liberal because we recognise that all human beings are created different, and we need to accept others for what they are and not what we would like them to be. And democratic... well, if you need me to explain why that is important, you'd best stop buying this paper. The Sunday Leader has never sought safety by unquestioningly articulating the majority view. Let's face it, that is the way to sell newspapers. On the contrary, as our opinion pieces over the years amply demonstrate, we often voice ideas that many people find distasteful. For example, we have consistently espoused the view that while separatist terrorism must be eradicated, it is more important to address the root causes of terrorism, and urged government to view Sri Lanka's ethnic strife in the context of history and not through the telescope of terrorism. We have also agitated against state terrorism in the so-called war against terror, and made no secret of our horror that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world routinely to bomb its own citizens. For these views we have been labelled traitors, and if this be treachery, we wear that label proudly. Many people su
Re: [silk] BW: How Risky Is India?
On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 12:06 +, lukhman_khan wrote: > > to adapt your analogy about torn shirts and an open fly: > > Person A: your shirt is open. Person B: we're on a boat that's > > sinking. Person A: you're changing the subject. your shirt is open, > ROTFL. Hilarious (by chance or by design?) eliminate terrorism with humour. that's my solution. it's hard to shoot off an ak47 when you're rotfl. -r
Re: [silk] BW: How Risky Is India?
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 22:05 +0530, ss wrote: > You think you know a lot of things that you don't know a great deal about. > > What puzzles me is your desire to expose all that you don't know in one go. shiv, since udhay must be busy, can i post a reminder that we don't do ad hominem here? ashok_ may be "changing the subject" from what to do about terrorism, but it's not necessarily "changing the subject" in the context of what public money and energy should be spent on. to adapt your analogy about torn shirts and an open fly: Person A: your shirt is open. Person B: we're on a boat that's sinking. Person A: you're changing the subject. your shirt is open, let me help you button it up. Person B: let's fix the boat instead. Person A: you're changing the subject. you don't seem to know much about buttoning shirts. -r
Re: [silk] Selling one’s child
On Wed, 2008-12-03 at 23:10 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 8:24 PM, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: > > On Mon, 2008-12-01 at 12:33 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > >> http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mag/2008/11/30/stories/2008113050060300.htm > > > > i will not blame harsh mander but does the hindu no longer have a copy > > desk?? > > I'm not sure I understand what that means. they write lalita in one place and latika in another...
[silk] location Re: Silk HYD meet - hijacked for FOOD!!!
On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 09:26 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: I am hoping he will agree to meet me tomorrow instead. So it's all set > for RR @ 7:30? > http://www.fullhyd.com/profile/locations/975/2 Rayalaseema Ruchulu 1st Main Road, Shanti Nagar, In The Lane Behind JNTU College, Masab Tank, Hyderabad - 500028 Contact Information Telephone: 6610-0033, 6610-0044, 98856-50789
Re: [silk] Silk HYD meet - hijacked for FOOD!!!
On Thu, 2008-12-04 at 19:46 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > Southern Spice and RR are much the same, no? RR is about 0.5-1 kms > down the road from Firangi Paani. the review you linked to said this: "Besides, it's one of the few places in town that is secure enough to base its menu entirely on one geographical area and not include Chinese or Tandoori just to play it safe." southern spice had a handful of andhra dishes, almost all non-veg, and an andhra veg thali. the rest of the menu, at least 3 times as much, was chinese, tandoori, AND "continental". almost none of the dishes recommended by the linked review were at southern spice, except for gongura mamsam, which the waiter did not recommend (he said get the andhra veg thali and the andhra fish fry, which were both really good). and if it's a 5-10 min walk from firanga paani, that sounds like a perfect solution, no? hope your teeth are in eating order, though... if not, can you still join us for drinks? presumably firanga paani has drinks with high enough alcohol content to heal any dental traumas ;-) -r
Re: [silk] Silk HYD meet - hijacked for FOOD!!!
On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 22:11 +0530, Zeenath Hasan wrote: > Yes to Firangi Paani on Friday, Dec 5th evening. hey! i am in hyd for 3 days and stuck at the HICC in the middle of nowhere and want to EAT. so malini and i and other silkers on IGF hereby hijack the silkhyd meet to start off at "Rayalaseema Ruchulu", which has the most recommendations from multiple independent sources, on and off silk. 7.30 pm? must be places to drink afterwards. otoh last night the place for dinner wouldn't even serve coffee, let alone beer. (yes, i speak for suresh without having spoken to him, but i did hear him speak this afternoon) cheeni, are you in or out? :-) the local contact for the ruchulu delegation 09911597756 (malini). -r
Re: [silk] Selling one’s child
On Mon, 2008-12-01 at 12:33 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mag/2008/11/30/stories/2008113050060300.htm i will not blame harsh mander but does the hindu no longer have a copy desk?? > Shyamlal and Lalita Tandi hit the headlines when it was 'exposed' that they [...] > sold their daughter. Latika tried to explain, but they did not seem to regarding the content, while it the sold child might have indeed had a greater chance of living under the care of the buyer, i imagine that it'd be pretty common for the buyer _not_ to be one who "loved the three-year-old like his own daughter". -rishab
[silk] what prepaid gsm sim in india?
hi, any suggestions on a prepaid gsm sim i should get in india? i'm arriving on wednesday in hyderabad (after 8hrs between airports in mumbai on tuesday night) and would like to get it there. but then i'm going to kerala, delhi and rishikesh. so i'm not sure if it makes sense to get one sim, or two, or three - i basically want to receive calls free, and i presume a prepaid sim bought in hyderabad will be expensive to receive/make calls when i'm elsewhere in the country? looking forward to one useful reply before this thread is invaded by a discussion of hindu-vs-muslim terrorists, like my last travel-related post :-) -rishab
Re: [silk] what prepaid gsm sim in india?
On Fri, 2008-11-28 at 14:43 +0100, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: > hi, any suggestions on a prepaid gsm sim i should get in india? i'm > arriving on wednesday in hyderabad (after 8hrs between airports in > mumbai on tuesday night) and would like to get it there. but then i'm > going to kerala, delhi and rishikesh. so i'm not sure if it makes sense > to get one sim, or two, or three - i basically want to receive calls > free, and i presume a prepaid sim bought in hyderabad will be expensive > to receive/make calls when i'm elsewhere in the country? i noticed here [1] that in india roaming costs on pre-paid sims are a twentieth the cost in europe and about a fiftieth the cost of european roaming, so i guess convenience and coverage probably trumps cost for any solution i'd like. -rishab 1. http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/india/cellone.html
Re: [silk] last-minute itinerary for southie lens workout
On Sun, 2008-11-23 at 21:30 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > Perhaps not, but at least there isn't a persecution of the intellectual as > currently happens in India. huh? didn't we just witness an election in the country where all the brains drain (this terminology puzzled me; is america where the smart people end up the brain gutter, or perhaps the septic tank?) where the main reason not to vote for one of the candidates was supposedly that he was too intellectual, and that nice earthy mrs palin was suitable because she didn't have such intellectual airs? let alone an appreciation for salad greens. it's quite tricky in any society to achieve the laudable goal of increasing respect for all while retaining respect for intellect. -r
Re: [silk] last-minute itinerary for southie lens workout
On Sun, 2008-11-23 at 21:02 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > The specific symptom I'd like to call out here is the growing > anti-intelligentsia feeling I encounter all over India. There was a time not > too long ago when Indian politics, civil service and many other public > fields included scholars and thinkers which is markedly absent today. [...] > I think this is the telling effect of the brain drain on India. really? i think this is a problem of popular democracy combined with an increasing: -unwillingness to accept ones (low) place in the social order, something that was never common in places like, say, brazil (explaining the higher violent crime relative to wealth disparities there compared to india) -perception that education may not be the way to increased wealth or social status -perception that education is inaccessible, in any case this is not just a trend in india, of course. sarah palin comes to mind, or the potato hurling twins who ran poland until the last election. smaller democracies have it easier. -r
Re: [silk] last-minute itinerary for southie lens workout
On Thu, 2008-11-20 at 08:23 +0530, Sajith T S wrote: > Dr Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary at Thattekkad, for birds. (And there was > this place where they did some tree felling so that "tourists can see > birds properly" -- can't remember were, but K K Neelakandan mentioned > that in "Birds of Kerala"..) thanks for the great suggestions! i'll get to trivandrum to leave my bags in a hotel and do a 2-3 day trip and a 1-2 day trip with the conference in between, i guess... someone also suggested periyar tiger reserve (partly because it's closer to trivandrum than kumarakom or thattekad?) do you know it? > Kumarakom (=backwater) also has a bird sanctuary. Landscapes and > portraits are always around you, no? yes, that's true! and i don't need a live human to pose for a portrait, other things will do, too, such as this buddha statue in kamakura [1]. best, rishab 1. http://blag.rishab.net/2008/08/25/profile-picture/
[silk] last-minute itinerary for southie lens workout
in the glorious tradition of silk-list-as-a-travel-agency [1], i am looking for suggestions for what to do when i'm in india next month. i'm in hyderabad dec 3-6 to eat biryani (and speak at the Internet Governance Forum) and then i'm in Trivandrum dec 9-11 for the Free Software Free Society conference. on the 13th i go to delhi where i'll be kidnapped by my parents and disappear to rishikesh till christmas. having never been to kerala before, and having recently added to my collection of zuiko lenses, i would like to do some travelling around the conferences. an ideal lens workout would include scenery (super-wide-angle), birds (600mm telephoto @35 equiv) and portraits (50mm prime f2.0). and one is supposed to do the backwater thing. since i have more than just the 3 days between hyd and triv that i expected, i wouldn't mind taking trains, or even perhaps stopping off along the way. any suggestions? i realise this is very last minute. but what isn't, in life? tia, -rishab 1. i cannot take away an opportunity for udhay to show his instant recall of silk-list message numbers over the past decade by providing the evidence of old threads myself.
Re: [silk] When I Have The Time
On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 13:00 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > Reading > the responses so far it seems fair to make the working hypothesis that > the average silk lister is interested in (in no particular order) > > - Reading up on history > - Getting fit > - Catching up with a long list of unread books > - Traveling the world [...] > I wonder why no one desires the most popular pastime of mankind when > time and money are no object. [...] > Perhaps this silk list place is a bunch of weirdos, eh? i'm a great believer in revealed preferences [1]. this implies that "things to do when i have the time" are basically "things i don't do and don't actually want to do, that much". so the working hypothesis implies that the average silklister is not historical, fit, well read or well travelled. perhaps "enough" should be inserted as a qualifier. similarly, the implication here is that the average silklister is frequently occupied in "the most popular pastime of mankind" that it is not something left for "when i have the time". although perhaps "enough" should be used as a qualifier here, too, for "frequently occupied". -rishab 1. An example of a popular joke among economists: two economists see a Ferrari. “I want one of those,” says the first. “Obviously not,” replies the other. see http://www.economist.com/research/Economics/alphabetic.cfm?letter=R#revealedpreference
Re: [silk] When I Have The Time
On Sat, 2008-11-15 at 10:36 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > That reminds me of all of the various things that I will do When I have > The Time (small unrepresentative sample follows) ... i will make a list of things to do when i have the time. yay recursion. -r
Re: [silk] Determining gender from IP address.
On Mon, 2008-11-17 at 18:30 -0800, Thaths wrote: > > Echo that. > > Did that idea just POP into your head? what's with the frequency of protocol-hopping? 503, i say, 503! -r
Re: [silk] Determining gender from IP address.
"how do you determine gender from IP address?" is a terrific question for a job interview. On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 08:01 +1100, Charles Haynes wrote: > > "Your question does raise a rather important point about the current state > > of computing and networking technology. The fact that all those bright > > people (especially some of them on Silk) are unable to write a simple > > function that can determine gender from IP Address is something I just > > cannot understand."
Re: [silk] obama on net neutrality
ps. the question was from "joe the web-designer" :-) On Fri, 2008-11-14 at 13:09 -0800, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: > wow. this president-elect may not have invented the internet, but he > sure doesn't think it's a "series of tubes"! > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd8qY6myrrE
[silk] obama on net neutrality
wow. this president-elect may not have invented the internet, but he sure doesn't think it's a "series of tubes"! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd8qY6myrrE
Re: [silk] Looking for..
On Thu, 2008-10-30 at 19:29 +0530, ss wrote: > Have you checked out "ladies of calcutta" in my alternate YouTube avatar > channel (shuddhapoly) > > http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=ozKEo8f5cmI which leads to a Most Important Question. why is there no wikipedia entry for kal kahn / bill forbes? is he not famous enough? not obscure enough? -r
Re: [silk] Golfers in the US?
On Sat, 2008-11-01 at 06:16 +0530, ss wrote: > How many kids have been warned by their mothers not > to kick or hit random cans and rocks on the street with a stick? Golf demands > that you execute the same immensely pleasurable action repeatedly and that is > called "sport". Sport indeed. AND you get to make statements like "That would be true of the Mizuno MP23 or 57 but the mx950 is in the game improvement class". how cool is that :-) -rishab, who didn't go much for hitting rocks with a stick and never knows what to do with his KLM PE Golf invitations.
Re: [silk] Intro
On Sun, 2008-11-02 at 11:22 +0530, Deepa Mohan wrote: > Speaking of which, what is that little grape-like thing hanging between the > "i" matra and the letter "ha" in the Hindi rendition of your name? Or is it > something that only shows up on my computer? it is a place-holder for the 'ha' which for some reason is not getting rendered inside (and replacing) the place-holder, but afterwards, leaving the grape to fill the gap.
Re: [silk] The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists
On Thu, 2008-10-30 at 16:45 +0530, Sirtaj Singh Kang wrote: > Sorry sir but you have been misled, correlation does indeed imply > causation. Here is the proof: > > http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/correlation-causation.html heh thanks for that article :-) of course it's a joke, but if it were a serious piece it would be flawed simply due to selection bias. studies are, one imagines (or hopes) more likely to be published if they indeed show causation. since they will all include correlation in their results as one of the pieces of evidence for causation, well causation and correlation would correlate. -rishab
Re: [silk] The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists
On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 10:08 +0530, ss wrote: > But the fact remains that the US has seen virtually no terorist acts since it > undertook thse emasuers as opposed to India wheer terrorism continues > unabated. The obvious conclusion that one can reach, despite your > disagreement is that the measures ARE effective. when i read shiv's original post i thought he was being sarcastic, and didn't really think the US measures were any good, just that they looked good to people. maybe he still is? otherwise this is classic confusion between causality and correlation. and not even good correlation, at that - after all, there weren't many terrorist acts when these measures were _not_ being taken, either. -rishab
Re: [silk] Airtel Redirecting?
On Tue, 2008-10-28 at 20:37 +0530, Jude Britto wrote: > OpenDNS is no better, perhaps worse: In addition to redirecting nonexistent > domains to their own error pages, they resolve google's domain names (and > perhaps others) to their own range of IP addresses. > http://forums.opendns.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=226 i don't see this as a bad thing, given their reasons. google installing spyware on dell computers to generate more ad views. that's basically ad spam! do no evil! -r
[silk] in search of gandhi in the land of gandhi
Want to be heard in India? You'd better form a militia http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/23/asia/letter.php [...] Yasin Malik once commanded a militant group in Kashmir, waging war against India. Fourteen years ago, he surrendered his weapons and declared himself a "Gandhian." This week, he told me he is struggling to recruit a new generation to nonviolence. "Gandhi is the person who created and gave the concept of nonviolence to the world," he said. "He inspired Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. But, unfortunately, in India right now Gandhi is no longer relevant." "I'm in search of Gandhi in the land of Gandhi," he added. "I've failed to find him."
Re: [silk] Bruce Schneier (was Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists)
On Mon, 2008-10-20 at 08:41 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > All that said, here's an interesting article that just got published, > and you will note Bruce's involvement. > > http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/airport-security americans haven't figured out when to check ID? i hadn't noticed this bug because in europe it's done differently. > To slip through > the only check against the no-fly list, the terrorist uses a stolen > credit card to buy a ticket under a fake name. “Then you print a fake > boarding pass with your real name on it and go to the airport. You > give your real ID, and the fake boarding pass with your real name on > it, to security. They’re checking the documents against each other. > They’re not checking your name against the no-fly list—that was done > on the airline’s computers. Once you’re through security, you rip up > the fake boarding pass, and use the real boarding pass that has the > name from the stolen credit card. Then you board the plane, because > they’re not checking your name against your ID at boarding.” in europe, when you check in at a counter, you must show ID. so they can check your ID against whatever lists they have. at security, they do NOT check your ID, only that you have a "valid" boarding pass. why? because it's pointless to check your ID at that point, as bruce notes. but at the gate, when you board, they always check ID against your boarding pass which is also usually checked against the computer. so if you bypassed the previous checks - using online check-in, say, and faking an online boarding pass is way easier than bruce's fake "real" boarding passes - you still get checked against both your real ID and the computer when you board. so the US hack doesn't work in europe. of course, you could always forge an ID... or do some damage before you get on the plane. -rishab
Re: [silk] The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists
On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 13:10 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > So what exactly do you disagree with? You believe that searching > people for shampoo before letting them on airplanes is of critical > importance to society? You think randomly assembled "watch lists" of > names with millions of entries helps us "catch terrorists"? What is it > exactly that makes sense here? speaking of sophisticated and efficient security measures - last week i met someone at a conference who was having trouble, as always, checking in her 3-yr-old son who'd travelled with her, because he's on the no-fly list. she did try to get him off it, but the TSA was a) reluctant to acknowledge he was even on the list and b) said nothing could be done until the evil terrorist with a similar name was caught. meanwhile, the TSA has forgotten to expire or reclaim the security badges of former employees, one of whom had a pass valid over 2 years after he quit [1]. -rishab 1. http://www.securityinfowatch.com/online/The-Latest/Report--TSA-failed-to-track-security-passes-/18021SIW306
Re: [silk] how to get an idli cooker
On Tue, 2008-10-07 at 08:54 +0530, ss wrote: > NIKHIL SWAMINATHAN > If you’ve ever shopped for milk, you’ve no doubt noticed what our questioner > has: While regular milk expires within about a week or sooner, organic milk > lasts much longer—as long as a month. what a silly article. you get both non-organic and organic UHT milk and fresh milk. if anything, organic milk consumers are more picky about freshness and less likely to buy UHT milk. that said, different countries have different milk preferences. in the netherlands, like india, fresh milk is popular. supermarkets are full of it. in belgium, like france and much of southern europe, fresh milk is not popular, since milk in general isn't popular. so people buy UHT milk, and only a few bottles of fresh milk are in the refrigerated section - usually only organic. so
Re: [silk] how to get an idli cooker
On Mon, 2008-10-06 at 23:17 +0530, Alok G. Singh wrote: > Either. I had some half-baked theories about stabilisation of the > cultures to account for the 3 cycles before the curd tasted good when a > biologist friend of mine shot all of them down. I buy the probiotic > (whatever that means) one purely based on taste now. most yoghurt sold in western supermarkets is sterilised. obviously, it became yoghurt because there was a live culture, and was _then_ sterilised. probiotic or live-culture yoghurts are sold with the bacteria still living. you can only use these as starters for your own yoghurt, and they often have different - sometimes trademarked, even patented - varieties of bacteria that are supposed to lead to better taste, digestion, eternal life etc. -rishab
Re: [silk] Kids' poverty charity in Mumbai?
On Wed, 2008-10-01 at 11:25 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > Yah, that's probably right. Optimism hopes that somewhere, the > education system doesn't suck, but realism says that's not likely... finland, so they say... well, it produced linux, instant messaging (irc), nokia AND varttina! -r
[silk] $700 billion how?
"it's not based on any particular data point" [1] is my new favourite explanation for any thing i say. i love it. -rishab FORBES In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy. "It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number." Wow. 1. http://tinyurl.com/700billionhow
Re: [silk] Food and Empire
On Tue, 2008-09-30 at 18:21 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > FWIW, by way of an interesting plot twist, an alien love that I've > picked up which is now very dear to me is bagels and cream cheese. > Toasted with plain low-fat if the bagel is cinnamon raisin, scallion > cream cheese otherwise. perhaps perry will disagree but i think the world's best bagels-and-cream-cheese is at 'bagels on the square' on father demos square in manhattan, metro w4th. the cream cheeses are in tubs like an ice cream store in as many flavours, and you can't sit down - but you can take out and sit on a bench in washington sq park, watching the random musicians and walking dogs. -r
Re: [silk] Kids' poverty charity in Mumbai?
On Mon, 2008-09-29 at 22:29 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > The best students are also often > foreigners, who were not subjected to and destroyed by the abysmal public > primary/secondary education system. selection bias. these foreigners are the top few of their own countries who managed to survive their own abysmal systems. -r
Re: [silk] Kids' poverty charity in Mumbai?
On Mon, 2008-09-29 at 12:06 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > with this approach when you consider that even with a very fine > education system, most Americans are interested in searching the > internet for hot pictures of Sarah Palin, and not her political > beliefs. the US has the world's best universities. however, the _average_ of the US education system is rather poor - by rich-country standards (as with healthcare, india is totally off the charts when you look at _average_ services, rather than the excellent services that may be available to a tiny elite, including silklists membership). see, e.g. the OECD PISA rankings. note that the US is a big country, so "better" education can be found if you slice and dice a sample appropriately - as in india, for that matter. -r
Re: [silk] Kids' poverty charity in Mumbai?
On Mon, 2008-09-29 at 11:27 +0530, . wrote: > As if inspirational movies were not enough we just had to show the > American (privatisation) and the German (socialist/public) model that > we can do a better job of messing up. um... most (>80%) americans attend public school [1]. it's 77% public (but not free) for undergraduate and 59% for public (not free) graduate level education. -rishab 1. http://tinyurl.com/usschoolcensus
Re: [silk] Kids' poverty charity in Mumbai?
On Sun, 2008-09-28 at 08:31 +0530, . wrote: > constitutionally ingrained weasel keywords allows any govt. to > continue the pipe dream for the next 500 years. If the education > quality in state/govt schools sucks big-time, bringing every school > under that sucky umbrella will force each parent to demand better > education quality and hence hopefully usher in change. you mean banning private education, then? that's the only way it'd work. same thing for hospitals and doctors. this does work in some countries, but only when they're able to implement high quality public services. do you seriously think better-off indians are going to wait for public education to reach above-abysmal standards? and if private services are allowed as a "temporary" solution, we're back to the present situation - where even very poor people in villages send their kids to private "schools" where the same teachers supposed to be working in the public school come and provide classes (often in english) for extra money. to be fair, they may not be receiving much of their salaries, especially in the lands aravind adiga refers to as "the darkness" in his brilliantly satirical _white tiger_. -r
Re: [silk] Kids' poverty charity in Mumbai?
On Sun, 2008-09-28 at 02:15 +0530, . wrote: > Maybe the government should make it mandatory and ensure > education for all by going the German way - Free state education for > every kid, irrespective of gender, right up to the PHD level. ROTFL. here's article 45 of india's constitution: "Provision for free and compulsory education for children: The State shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years" since we're 50 years late on this, free education in india for anything more than primary education is a real pipe dream! (let's build more bombs instead) -rishab
Re: [silk] Kids' poverty charity in Mumbai?
thanks, ingrid. was this published somewhere? google can't find it. On Sat, 2008-09-27 at 20:47 +0200, Ingrid wrote: > P.S. Coincidentally, I received this today: > Chasms between Children > Harsh Mander
Re: [silk] Musings on Youtube et. al.
On Sat, 2008-09-27 at 01:23 -0400, Lawnun wrote: > So by that logic, since i'm not in fact depriving you of your credit card > when I steal it, you won't mind posting the numbers on Silk? of course you're depriving me of my credit card if you take it from me. i suppose you mean you're not depriving me of my credit card number when you take my number. stealing my credit card number is not a big deal. but taking $5000 from my bank account with that number is, and it'll be harder to stop that if i post my number here. > If theft is to steal, and stealing can be defined both as a (physical) > taking, and an *appropriation of ideas*, *words, credit*, etc., *without > right or acknowledgment*, then it seems pretty clear to me that to infringe, > or appropriate another's ideas without right or permission, is in fact, a > theft. it's amusing but unhelpful to use recent definitions of words - which can mean many things - to try to mix up concepts. so - "intellectual property" is not, and has never been, in legal or economic terms, equivalent to property. it is, and has always been, implemented as a state-granted temporary monopoly. there has never been any sense of implied ownership, for the simple reason that - to use economic jargon - information is "non-rivalrous", meaning that when someone takes information from you, you don't lose the information. state intervention is required to artificially make rival constructs around information, through the use of state-granted monopolies. state intervention is not required, for instance, to make the chair i sit on a rival good - when someone takes that chair, i don't have it, whatever the state says about it. > Copyright > law isn't designed to protect business models. It's designed to protect > creative works. And it works beautifully in that regard, and protects all > works, big or small, and regardless of the relative effectiveness or > ineffectiveness of the business model they may or may not be attached to. you know why discovery channel only shows programmes on sharks or nazis? because the current copyright regime, "working beautifully", makes it impossible to show documentary films. the purpose of copyright, as an instrument of state intervention in the free market, is to support creativity. this is an economic (or if you wish, social) purpose, it is not an issue of ownership, since there is none. unfortunately, to quote from one of my presentations at WIPO, copyright does not actually protect or support creativity, or "protect" creative works. copyright "protects" control over past works, at the expense of future works. in theory this could work to support creativity, which is why copyright has always been tinkered with to try to find the best "balance". > change? Make copyright less important by educating people on the other > alternatives, instead of scaring them into clinging more closely to what > they feel is their only option. Not only is it more effective, but its > already starting to happen. um. educate as in the WIPO comics [1]? the funny thing is that people don't need to be educated to think that copying music is not stealing. they do this anyway. the dogmatic copyright-ists desperately try instead to teach children that "sharing is wrong". like IPpy, from the australian govt[2]; they were embarrassed into abandoning their plans to brainwash kids in schools. and WIPO's sheepish discovery that their pro-IP comics were perfect self-parody made them pull it off their website, which is why the link is to the ministry of trade in lebanon. incidentally, the "blood sweat and tears" argument has never really worked as a justification for IP protection. there's lots of stuff you work hard on and don't have any guaranteed protection for, and when you working hard on creating a painting, say, there are many things you might want as a reward more than the exclusive right to copy. copyright doesn't give most creators any reward at all. hey - not even nirvana, as courtney love said so lucidly in a lengthy speech 8 years ago: "What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software. I'm talking about major label recording contracts. " [3]. -rishab 1. http://www.economy.gov.lb/MOET/English/Navigation/News/MoreNews/ThisYear/WIPOComicsOnIntellectualProperty.htm 2. http://www.innovated.gov.au/Ippy/html/p01.asp 3. http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/
Re: [silk] Food and Empire
On Fri, 2008-09-26 at 23:29 +0530, Deepa Mohan wrote:
> About the Bong cookbook, dunno...but...Thaths, I wanted to tell you that the
> preparation of plantain flower ('vAzhaippoo') is a fairly labour-intensive
> task. Every one of those small flowerettes has to have its pistil removed;
> the pistil does not cook, and can cause diarrhoea.
the bengali recipe - the "mochar ghonto" cited by ams, mocha being the
banana flower and ghonto being one of those delightfully semi-ideophonic
words for a sort of fried dish - is different. but also requires all the
painful pre-processing. which is why i haven't made it even though here
(again, unlike delhi) the chinese shop has these things available every
day.
-rishab
Re: [silk] Musings on Youtube et. al.
On Fri, 2008-09-26 at 12:07 -0400, Lawnun wrote: > The same cannot be said for laws against theft. There are victims who suffer > loss. The difference in IP theft and others is one to degree, not > existence. it is not a question of degree, but a question of quality altogether. theft does not occur when you can't deprive someone of something. i can't deprive you of your song when i copy it. i can deprive you of your revenue from that song, yes. but that not theft of the song, but of the revenue. you don't have any guarantee to that revenue from your chosen business model. perhaps you operate the only taxi in town. if i start a bus service, i'm depriving you of your revenue from your taxi. but you still have your taxi. so i'm not stealing. -rishab
Re: [silk] Food and Empire
On Thu, 2008-09-25 at 15:31 +0530, Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote: > Speaking of which, we ate some Mochar ghonto at this restaurant in CR > Park (called "Babu Moshai") some time ago, and were quite disappointed. > I had high hopes, because I like it so much, and haven't had any for a > long time. Even their Alu posto was quite sad. last time i was in delhi my parents took me to this restaurant in nehru place, "calcutta club" or something. posh, "calcutta cuisine" (thus not just bengali) and i think we had both mochar ghonto and alu poshto. i thought it was pretty good. steamed dahi alu with a bit of methi seeds. and also some other stuff i can't remember. not sure if i had chhanar dalna, which is a favourite of mine, and i do cook that. alu poshto though, i have made here, you can even get jhinga (tori / ridge gourd) here, though typically they're more frequently available in the chinese stores than in the (punjabi) indian/pakistani ones. -rishab
Re: [silk] Food and Empire
On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 15:54 -0700, Thaths wrote: > No. She probably meant Avial-able. I.e. A dish made with a hodge lodge > of left over veggies. of which i forgot to take photos after cooking sunday before last :-( i remember how difficult it used to be to find in delhi the principal ingredient, winter melon / ash gourd (white petha in delhi hindi)[1]. it is similarly hard to find it at indian stores here, since they're a) punjabi and b) pakistani. so south / east indian ingredients are not kept. however, i was surprised and pleased to discover that this south indian vegetable is incredibly common in chinese cooking, and easily available in chinese / south east asian stores that keep fresh vegetables. it is dong-gua in mandarin. this is also true for green papaya, which is used in bengali cooking as a veg, and north indian (but non-punjabi!) non-veg as meat tenderizer; not available at punjabi stores but chinese/south-east-asian ones. and banana flower, though i haven't tried to cook that myself yet. cue discussion of the bay of bengal trade routes and mediaeval tamil sea-faring empires, and how india is not a country. -r
Re: [silk] Food and Empire
On Tue, 2008-09-23 at 13:03 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > An updated, glossy version of Meenkashi Ammal's "Cook and See," is > avaiable. This new book has none of the quirks of the origial 3-part > series. um, aren't the quirks essential? i don't recall what was in my mother's battered ancient copy, but i think 'cook and see' must have contributed in spirit if not in letter to her tendency to include in her own recipes instructions beginning with "five minutes BEFORE it is done, add xyz". that reflects the holistic indian view of life (and cooking), where time does not run sequentially as it boringly does in the West, but can be measured from any direction or perspective. -r
Re: [silk] Blackberry in India
On Mon, 2008-09-22 at 12:16 +0530, Madhu Menon wrote: > I, for one, am very happy that the Economic Times helpfully included a > slide show showing the Blackberry from various angles. It provided much > clarity on the matter. i found their definition of "decompression" even more enlightening than the slide show: "Decompression is the process of decoding information with an aim to transfer the data to a different medium like data to voice, data to video or data to text." -rishab
Re: [silk] we're slowly getting there
On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 15:24 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > The times is wrong. The fed is loaning money to AIG. in return for warrants for almost 80% of the company and full management control. actually, i'm not so sure it's that terrible to have a US-taxpayer takeover of the US finance sector, since while the AIG management for instance took enormous risks, the risks were to the benefit of millions of irresponsible US... taxpayers! normal govt subsidies of big companies may be like subsidies from "the little guy" to a "big company" but in this case it's to cover the big company's losses that were caused by "the little guys" not paying their bills. and being protected by government regulation from being forced to pay their bills. -rishab
[silk] feelings hurt more
udhay, having a non-sentient moment, asked me to post this to silk. it is one of those 'hey i knew that anyway but just didn't have the data' studies. "Psychologists found memories of painful emotional experiences linger far longer than those involving physical pain." [1] on a note possibly related to something, my recent policy of "there is no jetlag" worked so well that i have been trying out "there are no hangovers". seems to work, too, especially if accompanied by a litre of water. -rishab 1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7587780.stm
[silk] paternalism
i have noticed that the term "paternalistic state" has fallen out of favour, left to academics, in favour of the "nanny state" in western public discourse. in india, on the other hand, people still refer to "mai baap sarkar" - mother father government. is this a sign of the decline of the family in the west, or is it an increase in wealth that allows the substitution of parents by the nanny? -r
Re: [silk] india's seat at the security council
On Sat, 2008-08-30 at 21:14 +0530, Amit Varma wrote: > And on 295(a) and its impact on free speech: > http://indiauncut.com/iublog/article/dont-insult-pasta/ amit, shouldn't insulting pasta be illegal under british hate crime laws too? unfortunately, pastafarians may have to wait a couple of centuries for equal treatment, as societies seem to provide more respect to older sets of irrational beliefs. memetic darwinism, if you will. an example: germany is currently waging war against scientology, an organised cult that tries to include powerful people and get them addicted to bizarre beliefs in order to extort money out of them. at the same time, the german state collects taxes from its citizens and pays them out to older organised cults (you can choose protestant or catholic). i encountered the weirdest example of this ageist approach to people's preferred delusions in ... a public tender for german development aid! normally, when we prepare bids we have to do swear all sorts of things e.g. that we are of good moral character and not bankrupt. the germans weren't interested in most of that, but they did want a sworn statement that we will not employ nor associate with any scientologists! subject to immediate termination of the contract and return of german funds. -rishab
Re: [silk] Casual Hellos and Food
On Sat, 2008-08-30 at 15:09 +0530, Venkat Mangudi wrote: > Actually, the great Indian nod is not particularly associated with the > south. > At least in the US of A. but that's because head-wobbling south indians are overrepresented in the US of A! -r
Re: [silk] Casual Hellos and Food
On Sat, 2008-08-30 at 07:53 +0530, Bonobashi wrote: > ...And I'm glad to report that even today, the hospitality sequence in a > traditional Bengali household is water - sweets - tea. That's if you aren't > there for a formal meal or such-like big-time stuff. sweets being an even faster way of injecting glucose into the bloodstream than tiffen. thus proving that the bengalis recognise how to calm down guests. or perhaps bengali guests are ready to fight quickly and need rapid calming down with lots of sweets? -r (who realised that growing up in delhi with a palghat iyer mom who grew up in bangalore and bombay and a calcutta-born delhi-educated dad, he can claim to be from all four corners of the country and therefore insult everyone)
[silk] india's seat at the security council
many indians today complain about nehru's "daffodil-sniffing" idealism, and unwise economic policies. he probably was essential to keeping india a democracy, which most of the elite recognise today is a good thing for india; his contemporaries would probably have turned india into a failed authoritarian state. but i didn't know his "daffodil-sniffing" went to such extents: he refused to accept a permanent security council seat at the UN for india, when the US offered it in 1953, and suggested that the seat go to china instead. http://www.thehindujobs.com/thehindu/2004/01/10/stories/2004011004021200.htm
Re: [silk] Casual Hellos and Food
On Fri, 2008-08-29 at 14:59 +0530, Deepa Mohan wrote: > The appropriate answer is the Diagonal Indian Head Shake. are you sure you don't mean the Mostly South Indian Head-Wobble?
Re: [silk] indian parliament ict who-is-who ?
On Sat, 2008-08-23 at 23:34 +0530, Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: > 2008/8/23 Bonobashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > The closest fit is Rajeev Chandrashekhar, who ... as an elected MP, > Nominated. nikhil kumar otoh is an elected mp of the lok sabha, from aurangabad in bihar. so it depends what you're looking for someone in the parliament for? committee chairs are useful for legislation and committees are supposedly where the expertise, such as it is, gets concentrated. or at least the interest. but if it's just to ask questions in parliament that require the response of ministers, any mp whose attention you can grab will do. -rishab
Re: [silk] indian parliament ict who-is-who ?
couple of months ago i spoke at the UN on a panel along with nikhil kumar, the MP who chairs the IT committee of the indian parliament. he's very keen on (fighting) cybercrime. well, he was a former chief of the national security guards and commissioner of delhi police, so no wonder. On Fri, 2008-08-22 at 19:01 +0300, ashok _ wrote: > Does anyone know who is currently who in the Indian Parliament in terms of > ICT ? > > I mean a person...someone like a member of parliament or committee > chair who is involved in ICT policy both within and outside > parliament. Any ideas where i can get such info ? >
[silk] sometimes, linux rocks
i've been playing around with pulseaudio and the gui pulseaudio device chooser. it mixes the sound output of any application running that's playing sound; let's you set the volume controls for a particular application; and remembers that for the future. so you can have your music loud, your mouseclicks soft, your skype ring even louder. pretty cool! -r
Re: [silk] aadu pambe
On Mon, 2008-08-18 at 16:30 -0700, Thaths wrote: > On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Madhu Kurup <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The name of the song translates into "Dance (or perhaps a combination of > > dance and sway) Snake". Broadly, I believe it's talking about the > > environment - "The time of the children of the forest has gone by...". so i sent the track to my mom, who said: "You know that Aadu Pambe is quite shocking. As children, we would be exposed to this, in dance class, on dance stage and from mother/grandmothers. It is actually a snake-charmer,s song, saying , Dance Snake, I am searching for you. The raga is I think PunnaagaVaraali, one of the Varaali famiily. Panthuvaraali is like Shree. Punnaaga (note the incorporation of naaga = serpent in the name of the raag) is more like Gauri, [a mind-blowing raag in hindustani music that's almost never performed as it is supposed to drive you mad - RG] and singing the raag on stage is considered an adventure, as snakes can actually come with these vibrations being created. [...]. So I really think that they shouldnt have put this on Mallu Rock! " i pointed out that i'm sure the rockers would be pretty thrilled at the thought of conjuring up snakes on the stage :-) -rishab
Re: [silk] A Capital Idea
On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 22:17 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > for rishab. hehe. i think it's a sign of good writing to be able to do 500 words on an essentially inexplicable quirk of language. although i actually rather preferred the economist's article [1] on english spelling reform: "You write potato, I write ghoughpteighbteau", and the alternative spelling of fish and chips as "ghoti & tchoghs". english spelling is truly idiotic. -rishab 1. http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11920829
Re: [silk] Vir Sanghvi on Kashmir
On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 09:12 +0530, ss wrote: > The other principle that India the modern nation state is that diverse people > of many religions and faiths - and this includes Islam CAN live together in > one country. The Indian constitution, and the ethos of India the nation state > does not allow Islam to opt out and indeed the majority of Indian Muslims do > not want that either. The one opportunity for those who wanted out came in while this is a much cited reason to keep kashmir part of india, it's an odd argument. 4 million kashmiri muslims make little difference one way or another to india's religious composition, compared to the 150 million or so muslims in the rest of the country. > Indians are such a meek people that they will boldly shout in support of > extremists and not even squeak about the fact of ethnic cleansing of Hindus > from Kashmir. And now some separatists in an ethnically cleaned Kashmir want > freedom. I refuse to accept that, in the light of what is happening in lots of people talk about "some separatists", tiny minority etc. isn't the appropriate way to find out how much support there is independence or whatever among certain people to poll them? of course, including the "ethnically cleansed" hindus, who as i noted earlier have their claims to kashmir much better documented than refugees from many other places. geeking out on military maps and geopolitical strategy is a (fun) distraction from the basic question of what people want for themselves. -rishab
Re: [silk] Vir Sanghvi on Kashmir
On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 03:44 -0700, Thaths wrote: > I have nothing intelligent to add to this thread. Both Singhvi's and > Aiyar's articles quoted in this thread talk about the perceived > ingratitude of the Kashmiris. It oddly echoes the feeling the Han > Chinese have of being slapped on the face by the ungrateful Tibetan > protesters. yup, and the indians claiming some right to "hold on" to kashmir regardless of what kashmiris want sound like the han chinese too. no wonder some chinese look on in injured bemusement at india's supposedly principled support of the dalai lama. -r
[silk] aadu pambe
so can someone give me a rough idea of the lyrics of the song i've had looping for hours now [1]? i saw rumours of english translations somewhere but can't see them. not that you need to know what it means to enjoy the music, but one wonders. -rishab 1. Avial's "aadu pambe" - http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=FKE5_6QDX6c
Re: [silk] Vir Sanghvi on Kashmir
On Mon, 2008-08-18 at 16:19 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > Yes, but that's begging the question I raised, which is, for reference, > "Do we actually *want* Kashmir?" and if the question can even be posed in these terms - india as a separate entity, "holding on to what she wants", kashmir, then it is recognition of the separateness of kashmir and doesn't seem terribly different from occupation, as pointed out by both the writers.
[silk] "Steve Jobs names God as successor"
the subject line of a spam message i got today :-) unfortunately i deleted it before seeing what the spam itself was, probably something less creative.
Re: [silk] apple - defective by design
On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 23:09 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Somebody is just getting a lesson in what free/libre means. well, apple is reminding us that the reason windows took over the world, rather than the mac, is that microsoft was way more open than apple (and pretty much anyone else out there) at the time. as the game development market shows (or the mp3 player market) you can be proprietary and succeed well if you're a single-purpose application platform. when you try to become a multi-purpose application platform, i doubt that it'll work. -rishab
[silk] apple - defective by design
i love this. FSF's defective by design campaign has hundreds of people booking slots to talk to apple's "genius" experts at apple stores to ask them detailed questions on apple's insanely proprietary strategies. real-world ddos :-) (thanks to danese for calling this out from across the room!) http://www.defectivebydesign.org/apple-challenge
[silk] US to discuss visas at WTO!
wow. the one free-market thing nobody likes to talk about. -r U.S. ready to talk about temporary visas at WTO By William Schomberg and Jonathan Lynn GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States, responding to a key demand of developing countries, said on Saturday it would discuss giving more temporary access to foreign professionals, injecting renewed optimism into world trade talks. The U.S. offer -- its second this week in make-or-break talks to secure a breakthrough in long-running trade negotiations -- had ministers and businessmen talking optimistically about improved prospects for a deal. "When it comes to temporary entry of business professionals we signaled that we are ready to have that conversation in the context of the Doha round," U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters. "But obviously it has to be in conjunction with our consultations with Congress," she said after a session on services at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The issue of granting temporary business visas to skilled foreign workers is controversial as many politicians consider it an immigration issue that should not be included in trade pacts. But Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, who earlier in the week was blamed by many ministers for blocking the talks, welcomed the U.S. move and showed understanding for the needs of U.S. negotiators to coordinate with the U.S. Congress. CONSTRUCTIVE SIGNS "These are constructive signs," Nath told reporters. "There is good movement by the United States and by the EU."
Re: [silk] Annual Status of Education Report; Technology Use
On Tue, 2008-07-22 at 13:05 +0530, Gautam John wrote: > One of our largest annual programs is the Annual Status of Education > Report [1] that we conduct. this looks very interesting, but i was wondering if there are more recent versions than the 2005 report? -rishab ps. nice to see you briefly in alexandria, and looking forward hopefully a less brief meeting in sapporo!
Re: [silk] Disadvantages of an Elite education
On Sun, 2008-07-20 at 20:00 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > Unfortunately, bigotry and xenophobia, and the insane belief that > immigrants "take jobs away from locals" will prevent this from ever > happening. that's not an insane belief, it's just insanely expressed. immigrants drive labour prices down directly, or indirectly through competition. but saying they take jobs away from locals sounds nicer than saying they make locals have to work hard(er) to compete than they would have to otherwise. you don't have to be xenophobic not to want to admit to laziness :-) -r
Re: [silk] Anarchy
On Sun, 2008-07-20 at 19:25 +1000, Charles Haynes wrote: > As long as some arbiter of Hinduness can refuse me entry to a temple > because I'm not Hindu enough, then Hinduism is hardly the ultimate > decentralization of religion. not defending hinduness here just decentralisation - which is perfectly compatible with someone refusing you entry to the temple of which he is the priest, with little say on whether you are refused entry to some other temple, and no say at all over whether you can call yourself hindu and start your own temple. as people do. -r
Re: [silk] of fiddles and fires
On Sun, 2008-07-20 at 13:34 +0300, ashok _ wrote: > the funny thing i notice about italians (and i meet many of them...) > is that nobody > admits voting for berlusconi's party, yet he keeps coming back. kinda like bush, no? guess we just meet the wrong (right?) kind of people. > the other thing is there is a massive disparity between what common > people actually earn and things like cost of buying[...] > (i mean, you could be earning a salary of 1,000 euros...[...]paying a rent of > 800 euros for a very tiny apartment...) i think this is particularly italian. salaries are low compared to living costs everywhere in western europe (perhaps with the exception of switzerland) but italian salaries are particularly low while living costs seem ridiculously high, though it's mainly literally _living_ costs - rent - in big cities. food etc is much cheaper. i'm sure part of the reason (and result) is the enormous black economy in italy, but typically this means people with regular salaries from regular companies with the lowest possibilities for money-on-the-side suffer the most. we frequently get requests from collaborators in italian universities to provide private subcontracts with them rather than working through their universities, which is not something we can usually do though we sympathise... -rishab
Re: [silk] http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/07/bollywood-stung.html
On Mon, 2008-07-14 at 20:19 +0530, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > --Jace, who went to Inox with friends last night and saw the fine Rs > 250 print on the ticket post-movie. Rs 40 used to be grumble-worthy > barely half a decade ago. this is called differential pricing. i'm sure there are cheaper places to watch a movie in india... :-) but when you can charge some people in india near-US prices (or much more) for beer, you can charge near-US prices for a movie ticket.
Re: [silk] google email anonymity
On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 19:04 -0700, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: > There have been a few fun cases where RIAA subpoenas have been sent to IPs > that were actually permanently assigned to a university laser printer > (duke? tufts?) yeah, but also lots of cases where law enforcement used IP addresses to track down individuals who may or may not have done anything wrong. well, of course law enforcement can do that, but if something is useful for them as having a high chance of identifying an individual, it's useful to anyone else too. the argument that theoretically, IPs could be non-personal is made frequently by ISPs but for some reason ISPs just don't provide the facts to back that up, which should be easy for them, more than anyone else. what are the probabilities that when X logs in repeatedly as [EMAIL PROTECTED] from 2 or 3 specific IP addresses over a few weeks that you can identify X as the person with access to that email address? and that you can identify the address X accessed the email address from? i'd say the chances are pretty high, and the ISPs have the data that _could_ suggest otherwise - if in fact IPs are as useless as identifying people as they claim. -rishab
Re: [silk] google email anonymity
On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 22:37 +0530, Sumant Srivathsan wrote: > privacy and copyright laws. And given Google's stand that IPs are not > PII[1], it looks like they will give Viacom the stuff they're looking for. i'm glad the EU disagrees with google and some other ISPs on this one. IPs along with timestamps are definitely personal identifying data to a high enough degree of probability that they are widely used by law enforcement. google has recently hired about 40 senior people worldwide to work on policy and government interaction at least partly because they've woken up to the fact that there are public interest and policy concerns about parts of what they like doing - but they have, for good reason, ended up making microsoft claim a high moral stand for not storing IP addresses. perhaps this is because MS just wasn't good enough at putting them to use, but MS has done well to turn this bug into a feature... -rishab
Re: [silk] melanin distribution
On Sat, 2008-07-05 at 18:17 -0500, Tea BeeDi wrote: > I feel that by allochtoon they mean alag tone > after asking my friends to indicate/identify to me some allochtoonen it's true that allochtoon seems to be used mainly for non-whites; however, technically, poles (and even germans) are also allochtoon, but that's just less noticeable. -r
Re: [silk] Disadvantages of an Elite education
On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 13:55 -0700, Thaths wrote: > I replied off-list because I thought my reply, while being a wink and > a nudge acknowledgment of the joke, was not adding much to the > discussion. well, exactly, but it adds to the atmosphere! > Imagine the s/n ratio of silk-list if everyone started > sending 'me too' emails and one-liner ROTFLs to the list. surely you don't need to imagine that! *nudge* *wink* :-) -r
Re: [silk] melanin distribution
On Thu, 2008-07-03 at 07:54 +0530, Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: > They are being non-conformist. When the bosses come in t-shirts and > jeans that look as if they have been slept in, they feel an urge to > restore the cosmic balance. well, if everyone wears a t-shirt then you're conforming when you wear one! long ago i decided not wearing a tie simply because one was supposed to is being bound by the rules as much as wearing one is. clothes are a language - you pick the one that will best communicate to your current audience. -rishab, wearing a beret today
Re: [silk] Disadvantages of an Elite education
On Wed, 2008-07-02 at 09:10 -0700, Thaths wrote: > Rishab is referring to a reply I sent to him off-list. The reference > was not difficult to see if you wore the right kind of black > horn-rimmed glasses with attached eyebrows. Easy as shooting Duck in a > barrel of Soup. why did you send that reply off-list!? you were trying to see who else would ROFL? :-)
Re: [silk] Disadvantages of an Elite education
On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 18:38 -0700, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: > >and marxist to not want to belong? :) > > Comrade Karat and the rest of his bhadralok faux communists (the sort that i thought brinda karat was a woman. but as thaths figured to his amusement, the marx i was referring to was not The Bearded One but The Mustachioed One :) -r
[silk] melanin distribution
On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 13:33 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > My friends (both those with lots of melanin, and the melanin deficient > like myself) have taken to using the term "Brown" when speaking > ironically in the voice of bigots -- as in "Oh my God! The Supreme > Court is going to allow prisoners at Guantanamo to have access to the > courts! What horror is next, allowing brown people to vote?" i joke about what happens to browns all the time. but i recognise that the melanin-deficient (oops, sorry, the differently melaninated) may not get away with that so easily. you used the greek word for earth. i actually find the dutch practise of differentiating between people who are "autochtoon" and "allochtoon" [1] more offensive than differentiating between skin colours. i don't know why... perhaps because a skin colour is innate and doesn't really relate to your connection to a country, but allochthonous while no less factual than "brown" seems to imply that you can never really be part of that country. that said, the netherlands does FAR better than pretty much any other country (including the US) at having non-indigenous ethnic minorities represented in parliament [2], with a share almost as much as their share in the population (8% vs 11%; the US is 16% vs 31%; france is a pitiful, racist, 0.4% vs 12%). -rishab 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allochtoon 2. http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10024517
Re: [silk] Are you a different person when you speak a different language?
On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 16:11 +0200, Giancarlo Livraghi wrote: > I don't want to clutter the list... but I think this is a relevant point. huh? isn't the description of this list "intelligent clutter"? you are intelligent, surely, or us elitists wouldn't have let you join. so you must clutter the list! -r
Re: [silk] Are you a different person when you speak a different language?
On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 22:11 +1000, Charles Haynes wrote: >If you read the article, you see that it is making a distinction > None of the comments so far have made this same distinction. I think > bi-culturalism is much rarer than bi-lingualism. because none of the commentators actually _read_ the article :-) -r
Re: [silk] Are you a different person when you speak a different language?
On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 16:18 +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: > Not just languages, dialects. Do you find yourself talking say regionally > accented Italian with someone who has a strong regional accent, and a more > "BBC Italian" (or is it RAI Italian) with someone who has that kind of > educated upper class accent? it's not clear that the study controlled for class and context. the bilingual hispanic women may well have had a totally different context in which they spoke spanish from where and when they spoke english. this is in fact typical of the US, and to some extent london, which is why i don't pay too much attention to the "200 languages spoken here" rhetoric of new yorkers. in brussels, where expensive pilates studios advertise personal trainers' fluency in english french dutch german spanish italian greek portuguese polish... i doubt that the quadrilingual customers would become different people when they switch between most of the languages they know, except perhaps (depending how long they've been away from home) when they speak their mother tongue to another native speaker. the administrator at my institute in the netherlands who's from across the border in belgium switches between dutch french english and german several times an hour and is certainly not changing personality since it's all in the same context. perhaps when she switches to limburgs dialect she's a different person... but probably not when it's with the accountant, who happens to speak the dialect too. the results of specific studies are unfortunately constrained by the specific subject studied; it is so easy, and sloppy, to generalise. to be fair, the sloppy generalisation is rarely in the study itself (and i have not read this one) but in the press and PR articles around it.; -rishab
Re: [silk] Disadvantages of an Elite education
On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 09:53 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > This sparked a train of thought in me. I belong (inter alia) to the > TamBram elite. I strongly suspect that the kind of high cost you're > talking about might be absent, at least in the more traditional > societies, because of the utter focus on academic performance and > 'centum' in the society at larger, which translates into a different > set of high costs for the students [1]. danese's high costs are far from absent in traditional societies. indeed, they are so much higher as to become invisible. the cited article was amusing, but in an omphaloskeptic [1] way - a bit like frasier's club in someone else's post where the super-elite try to figure out who's platinum and who's gold. none of the people in the club relate - on remotely equal terms - with 90% of indians, who are generally assumed to be unequal in social, cultural or intellectual abilities. india wastes a lot of brains thanks to its "traditional" elitism. india's education system, where the poor subsidise the upper middle class (someone else can dig up the subsidy-per-student costs for IITs this time) lets the "elite" get a total free ride and flee the country afterwards (smarter countries like brazil or singapore beneficiaries of subsidised education to pay the state back in cash or in kind through socially useful employment). it irritates me to hear IITians claim they're giving back by investing in india now. this is like someone who skips town after taking a loan coming back to invest in his now rapidly growing lender who's forgotten about the original loan. i like talking to taxi drivers in europe. especially northern europe. the peculiar form of elitism here pretends to be egalitarian - you can't look down on someone because he's a taxi driver, and shouldn't have a problem going on holiday to the same place, which you may well end up doing if you live in holland, or going to the same bar. however, if he arrived in europe as a refugee you _can_ make him drive a taxi instead of teaching physics or conducting eye operations. you're not intimidated by his phd from iran, no way! he can drive a taxi like the rest of them! is it elitist to respect a quadrilingual iranian physics professor driving a taxi more than a white belgian taxi driver whose reading doesn't extend beyond the football news? -rishab 1. the economist style guide [2] says one should not (be elitist and) use complex words in foreign languages when simpler, clearer expressions would do, such as "navel-gazing". 2. I Confess, my frequent citations of the economist are elitist! 3. footnotes are elitist! and i'll make a special footnote for the first person to spot badly hidden reference in the previous footnote.
Re: [silk] Disadvantages of an Elite education
On Sun, 2008-06-29 at 09:00 +0530, Venkat Mangudi wrote: > I guess it is just human (or > should I say, animal) instinct to want to belong. and marxist to not want to belong? :)
Re: [silk] Nationalise the InterTubes
On Thu, 2008-06-26 at 11:27 +0530, Gautam John wrote: > Should the Internet be owned and maintained by the government, just > like the highways? Vint Cerf, the "father of the Internet" and highways in many parts of the world are not owned and maintained by the govt. e.g. france, italy, spain. it puzzles me that americans, with their supposed aversion to government funding of public goods (e.g. healthcare), leave roads to the government. the potholes on the 101 could compete with some delhi roads! -rishab
Re: [silk] Is conflict necessary for progress?
On Sun, 2008-06-22 at 09:50 -0700, Thaths wrote: > I was pointing out that the argument that conflict leads to progress > is only a few steps away from the invisible hand argument of the > Libertarianism. hm? as opposed to the visible hand argument of stalinism? i think you've stepped into the Abyss of Strawmanism there, thaths :-) -r
Re: [silk] On Japanese Waistlines
On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 20:43 -0700, Charles Haynes wrote: > I do not see that happening in Japan. I could see a smaller and > smaller population of citizens eventually ruling a large population of > resident aliens, but not granting them citizenship, nor much political > control. since japanese old-age-home residents prefer to be served by robots than japanese-speaking "foreigners", maybe they'll just rule a large population of mechanical beings. the robots would be truly japanese, too. no wonder the country is a favourite setting for cyberpunk authors! -r
Re: [silk] Silk in evolution?
On Fri, 2008-06-20 at 11:27 +0200, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: > been tough. no wonder the translator got a prize for it. my favourite > though is life: a users manual [3]. the absence of the footnote was not an intentional void, a footnote on absence... sometimes a pipe just _is_ a pipe! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life:_A_User%27s_Manual -r
Re: [silk] Silk in evolution?
On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 23:24 +0530, Nishant Shah wrote: > marvu che" - literally - take a stick and beat you up / beat you to hell. I > am hoping that Rushdie actually knew that what he was reporting was a > corruption and still retained it. the narrator is a young boy at that time, and is asked by a marathi mob if he's marathi, he says no, is he gujju, no, not really, but he stammers out the bit of gujju he knows... so perfect language is not assumed :-) > P.S. I have no idea why "Betty bought some butter" never occured to me as a > vowel oriented 'mouth twister'... probably because it is the tongue that > stutters over the overlapping sounds of 'b' and 't'. Maybe there is no such > thing as a 'mouth twister' :) if you just string together vowels, you get a tarzan yell... some languages (polynesian and related - e.g. hawaiian) have few consonants, but still don't really use vowels without them! on this topic, is anyone else a fan of george perec[1]? now HE must pose quite a challenge for translators - while english and french both use 'e' a lot, translating A Void [2] and retaining the meaning while avoiding words containing the vowel throughout the novel, would have been tough. no wonder the translator got a prize for it. my favourite though is life: a users manual [3]. pace the previous discussion of post-modernish, perec is an author who brilliantly, humorously, entertainingly (and often movingly) illustrates the notion of communicating meaning through form. the literary critic quoted in wikipedia says about the e-less book: "The absence of a sign is always the sign of an absence, and the absence of the E in A Void announces a broader, cannily coded discourse on loss, catastrophe, and mourning. Perec cannot say the words père ["father"], mère ["mother"], parents ["parents"], famille ["family"] in his novel, nor can he write the name Georges Perec. In short, each "void" in the novel is abundantly furnished with meaning, and each points toward the existential void that Perec [who lost his parents in WW2] grappled with throughout his youth and early adulthood". -rishab 1. http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/perec.html 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void_(novel)
[silk] inshallah
a silly western reporter discovers that egyptians say "inshallah" all
the time [1] and thinks, from the literal translation ("god willing")
that it represents a new religiosity in egypt.
the writer spends two pages elaborating on this conclusion, and doesn't
himself get distracted by his own evidence, that he does admit at the
end, ""It doesn't matter whether you're a Christian or a Muslim," he
said. "I'm going to take you to your house, arriving there in a decent
amount of time is already a miracle. Of course I say inshallah!"
i'd be surprised of the use of this word represents "new" anything in
egypt; at least in north india enough non-muslims use it and everyone
uses it as the quintessential expression of philosophical uncertainty
about achieving timely outcomes in a chaotic world.
-rishab
1. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/19/africa/20inshallah.php
Re: [silk] Silk in evolution?
On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 10:35 +0200, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: > speaking of gujarati... perhaps it's due to my limited exposure to that > language, but whenever i think of it i remember the passages in > _midnight's children_ [1] where the bombay language riots are supposedly > caused by marching gujaratis bumping into marching marathis as the > narrator looks on, the latter shouting a supposed parody of the gujarati > language: "su chhey saru chhey danda leykey maru chhey". oops sorry, the narrator doesn't look on... typically of the whole plot of the book, he supposedly caused the riots and the resulting separation of the bombay state into maharashtra and gujarat by teaching marathi activists that chant...
Re: [silk] Silk in evolution?
On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 12:15 +0530, Nishant Shah wrote: > any other languages? I can't even think of any in Gujarati! speaking of gujarati... perhaps it's due to my limited exposure to that language, but whenever i think of it i remember the passages in _midnight's children_ [1] where the bombay language riots are supposedly caused by marching gujaratis bumping into marching marathis as the narrator looks on, the latter shouting a supposed parody of the gujarati language: "su chhey saru chhey danda leykey maru chhey". i'm not sure i understood all the nuances of that phrase. -rishab 1. a great book, but so much so that rushdie seems never to write any other.
Re: [silk] Silk in evolution?
On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 12:15 +0530, Nishant Shah wrote: > tongue twister emerging I think :) Incidentally, does anybody know of tongue > twisters that use vowel sounds. Most of them play with consonants (at least > the ones I know in English) and I have been wondering if there would be first, most consonant sounds are made using the tongue, while vowels rely more on the shape of the mouth. so something that relies on possibly confusingly changing vowel sounds should be a "mouth twister" :-) one of the most famous tongue twisters in english, betty botter's better batter [1], is all about vowel discrimination since the consonants are almost entirely alternating /b/ and /t/. this is quite different from, say, she sells seashells on the seashore. -rishab 1. many variations, but this one seems to have fewer words that are not variations of b*t*r: http://www.teaching-esl-to-adults.com/tongue-twisters-for-pronunciation.html
Re: [silk] Silk in evolution?
On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 08:06 +0530, Abhishek Hazra wrote: > of course it should be Gaiman - what a horrible typo! not so horrible. much of his writing is about (and for) gamins, after all...
Re: [silk] Silk in evolution?
On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 06:45 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > > Nature's first green is gold, > > Her hardest hue to hold. > > Her early leaf's a flower; > > But only so an hour. on the topic of aging, i much prefer: I grow old ... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. -r
Re: [silk] In an ideal world...
On Sun, 2008-06-08 at 12:16 +0530, Gautam John wrote: > http://www.fugue.com/pics/goodnews.html must have taken a lot of effort to make that page. but not enough. in an ideal world j k rowling is a manatee? -r
Re: [silk] euroglish
On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 20:06 +0530, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: > > a native english speaker may find this incomprehensible. but any > > continental european would understand what it means. native speakers are > > Actually, I disagree. I have difficulty parsing that sentence, and I > speak more than half a dozen languages. yes, but as an indian on silk, you probably count as a native english speaker. my point was not that only monoglots have trouble with euroglish, but that people who speak english particularly well as a first (more-or-less) language do. > It's really the cultural > context that may make it more understandable to other Europeans. I > think there are similar Indian constructions in English that make > sense to other Indians, but rarely make sense to non-Indians. yes, that's another valid point of course. the specific example i gave was euroglish, as i said it would be understandable to any continental european, since all the latin languages have something similar to the french verb "offrir" meaning ... literally, to offer, but also used as to gift. in fact, that's the root in english too; in non-latin languages like dutch, offer is a sacrifice. so the default notion of tagging on "for free" to that sentence as suresh read can be quite natural, unless you've learnt from early on _not_ to do that. loads of other examples. i find living in benelux that my english is getting littered with odd turns of phrase, and that my tolerance for imperfections in the english of the loads of reports and papers we publish, written by non-native-english speakers, is increasing dramatically as i realise that improving the english beyond a point wouldn't improve the comprehension of the writing for (frequently non-native-english) readers. -rishab
[silk] euroglish
"for bookings before june 15th the 4th night is offered" a native english speaker may find this incomprehensible. but any continental european would understand what it means. native speakers are frequently at a disadvantage since they do not allow for the same flexibility in the interpretation of words as 2nd/3rd/4th language speakers of english do. especially if they're monoglots, as most native english speakers are. for the disadvantaged native english speakers in this world of "english dominance", the website does add a helpful translation: "Book your stay before June 15th and get 4 nights for the price of 3" -rishab
