School Snobbery

A Flood of Crimson Ink

The Cheshire Cat and I were talking last night about our undergraduate institution (an elite college, at least by reputation) -- whether we had made the right choice at the time, and whether, with the benefit of hindsight, we would do things differently.

Speaking for myself, I wouldn't change a thing. I mean, did we ever really have a choice ? Were there any alternatives for a middle-class Indian high-schooler ? Also, everybody knows that snob value is THE most important criterion when making a crucial life/career decision.

What I find amusing is that the same kind of snobbery exists in the US - one school hogs the limelight in spite of a plethora of superb universities.

Hackers (hardware engineers) and painters - II

Paul Graham might have a point after all...

"Debugging", Paul Graham said, "is as relaxing as painting a wall". This guy literally spent his time painting a wall when he was supposed to have been debugging!

I like the mural but think that the artist provided too much interpretation of his own work. Not only does it make the inspiration and the process seem a little ordinary but also stifles the viewer's response. If I hadn't read what he wrote, I would have probably made some connection to the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie trailers.

Copyright and IP

Deconstructing Stupidity

A controversial topic. I am sure there are about 6 billion distinct opinions on this issue but I think the article raises some valid questions about the abuse of IP laws and the claim that stronger IP laws always promote innovation.

I was reminded of an example in my last post : Bill Gates taking material that was formerly in the public domain - paintings from 15+ public galleries - and acquiring copyrights for their digital reproduction. What a great incentive for future Monets, Manets and Tippy-Tippy-Day-Days -- one day you're gonna be pimped out by Bill Gates and the money goes to Corbis.

I also think the author's solution is quite interesting - do an approximate cost/benefit analysis on a case by case basis to determine how much protection is necessary/useful.

How to make fire...

.. from a can of Coke and a chocolate bar

For those of you aspiring to be on Survivor (or whose apartments, thanks to years of careful carelessness, have become Survivor-like-habitats) this is a must read. Now, where will you get a chocolate bar when you are stranded on an island? Apparently, the same can be done with toothpaste too. So, the next time you are given a choice to bring one item with you to the Survivor island - that's two reasons to carry a toothpaste.

Personal news/blog/g-mail reader

RSSOwl

Here's a wish. There are some blogs that I read ocassionally. Some of these are personal blogs/team blogs. And some of them are news blogs. Then there are the news websites that I visit. And of course I check my gmail too. What if all the updates to these webpages of interest are collated and brought to me dynamically at a single e-mail client kinda app. Even better, what if I wanted a pdf of these updates, so I could print a copy and read it on the flight? The wish has come true - use RSSOwl.

Read through the pages describing this client. The RSS feed for this site is http://ogsandends.blogspot.com/atom.xml and you can check your g-mail box for the corresponding URL. And many news sites also offer RSS feeds. And yes, you can print a pdf copy of all the updates.

When all Gaul was occupied by Romans

The Asterix Annotations
Goscinny and Uderzo's Universe

Goscinny and Uderzo created a wonderful universe that has enthralled me over the years. They spared no effort in filling everyone with details of the Roman empire and presenting a social commentary of our times as well. It's doubtless that I owe a lot to Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge for the wonderful translations - Robert Steven Caron comes nowhere near their subliminality. And then, for some years now, The Asterix Annotations has gone further and has thrown more light on the creations of Goscinny and Uderzo.

The Infinite Library

From the MIT tech review

"When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy" - JLB, "The library of Babel"

Borges must be turning in his grave. The good man, when he came up with the idea of an infinite library, imagined it to be a sort of labyrinth. Look what it's turned out to be !

So here's an inside look at the google project that's been getting a lot of attention lately. There's lot of stuff in there I didn't know - e.g. did you know that google started life as a citation-analysis type project ? So the chakra's come full circle.

But the most interesting factoids for me were about the Bodleian library at Oxford which apparently lives in the 18th century - many of its old volumes are still chained to the shelves.

World's No.1 Film Director

Landscapes of the mind

Abbas Kiarostami - he be world's no.1 film director. Makes nice, relaxing movies about landscapes and children and innocence. Western critics, and other greats, Godard, Herzog, Scorsese, Kaige, have nice word or two to say about our gentleman. Self-reflexivity, irony, the comedy of silence, there's life in a nutshell, a very small nut shell, buried deep underground.

Besides stellar employees like me...

What makes Cisco run?

It is true that Cisco's stock is seriously undervalued. The company does have record earnings quarter after quarter and the stock market is yet to respond accordingly to this performance. Call it irrational indifference. One of these days, there's going to be a random stimulus to the market and Cisco's stock will be the first to go through the roof. And rightly so.

One comment in the interview particularly stood out. Besides its core business, Cisco is the market leader in a number of emerging and advanced technologies. Most of these capabilities were acquired through start-ups. If theses business units were still start-ups, each of their stock independently would have been very highly valued. Cisco is one of those rare big firms that is really well managed technology/strategy wise and consistently beats even startups at their own game however specialised and small the market is. Go buy that stock - that's easily my best advice to date on this blog.

Serenity Now!

John Bolton on edge

My main source of entertainment over the past few days has been the John Bolton affair. Seems the Republicans aren't so united after all. But that's what happens when you have an overwhelming mandate, the moderate wing starts to assert itself. And the opposition is leaner and meaner. Doesn't help that Bush's ratings are so low, either...

Don't miss out on the backstory - all those anecdotes about Bolton. Chasing a woman down the corridors of a Russian hotel, the North Koren denunciation etc. Bolton seems a thoroughly unpleasant guy, but it's funny how they're getting to him on character issues rather than policy issues. I would have loved to see his reaction when the Senate Committee deferred the vote. That's the problem with having a temper - people complain about it, which makes you even angrier...

The Fate of French Cinema

The French New Vague

Coming off of a recent viewing of Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep, I have been thinking about the relation between cinema and nation as well as the relationship between cinema and thought. Has the average cinéaste become less demanding? How far does the cinema of a country go in shaping a national identity? The article by Jon Frosch looks at the state of French cinema and the shape that the New Wave - popular with more than just theoreticians - seems to have taken.

Similarly much could be said about the state of Indian cinema but without much elaboration I will simply say that I long for films like those by Guru Dutt. Recall the final scene of Pyaasa with Vijay and Gulabo walking away into the mist: a journey that might have led them to the silent character in the movie, a new India. Where has that aspiration gone?

Naach Naach!

A dance dance revolution (4.6MB WMV)

It is most unlike me to make a post about dancing but this is a video of kid juggling three pins while amazing us with Dance Dance Revolution at a rather fast setting. Very impressive.

How do you pick a job?

ISB Graduation Day Speech by Rajat Gupta

Before I got into the corporate world, I had two simple criteria of appoximately the same importance. First (courtesy, my advisor) - imagine the best possible outcome of the pursuit; if it compels you to spend the rest of your life trying to make it happen, you've found a pursue-worthy project. Second - your colleagues have to be smarter, more hard-working and more ambitious than you. 'You are the company you keep' kinda thing.

Having worked for a few months, I am increasingly realizing that the single most important criterion has to be the learning/growth opportunites a job presents to you. You can work on a fine project and accomplish a lot; but if you aren't 'learning' enough, you might want to reconsider your pursuits.

So, imagine my surprise when I found this speech. Curiously, these criteria are not specific to just professional (yes, our other favorite pastime) pursuits.

Slavoj Zizek

Fascism vs Communism

Slavoj Zizek, psychoanalyst and dialectical materialist philosopher extraordinaire, "senior researcher" at the University of Ljubljana, plays the intellectual's favorite parlor game: which was the more malign force in the last century, fascism or communism? After about half a second's thought, I'd go with communism (which, as it turns out, is the wrong answer), but that's neither here nor there. The aphorist Lec: "In a war of ideas, it is people who get killed".

I watched Zizek speak once at the U of C. You heard right, watched, not heard, for a Theorist is first and foremost a spectacle. The hall was packed with people in strange and somber raiment, for each of whom there was only one other person in the world, the master Zizek, who shuffled around the podium, beetle-browed and bushy-bearded, secure in the knowledge that he could say nothing wrong. Sadly he had a head cold, and drew a colorful handkerchief from his coat at well-chosen intervals, and picked his nose flamboyantly. I learned something that day, the answer to a question I had long pondered: what is a Theorist?

Someone who picks his nose flamboyantly.

An article on Woody Allen ...

The Castration Sonata

... his "polymorphously perverse" fantasies, his castration obsession etc.

TAAQ show

NPR : Indian Rock from Thermal and a Quarter

Very interesting feature on TAAQ on NPR. Couple of things stood out. The "leather bar" in Chennai. The five and seven beat songs (hey, even I could figure out that there was something "odd" about the beat in their song 'Steal'). And also, the band's confession that their greatest achievement so far has been to move beyond cover-bands. I actually want to experience this "TAAQ live @ leather bar" thing, the next time I'm in Chennai.

Twenties are the new Teens ...

...Grey is the new Black...

... and other examples of a phrase much favored by advice columnists (question: why are they always female ?) and fashion writers (question : ditto).

Thanks for the Mammaries

A Rupert Murdoch Retrospective

Interesting article on Dr. Evil - especially because we're all in the same business as he is. I was recently wondering why our blog-readership is so limited. I mean why aren't we all millionaires yet ? I think the title of this entry is a step in the right direction.

Penn Masala

The brown album

This is easily the most popular all-desi acapella group out there. They supposedly put up quite a show, though I've never seen them live.

WUSTL had an acapella group too. It was led by a guy who simply insisted on playing a single note on his harmonica before every song. It was particularly comical when the guy used to struggle locating the pockets of his long kurta (Diwali ethnic wear), find the harmonica, play a short note and again locate the pocket, put back the harmonica and lift his hands like a conductor and get the group to dish out a number. Being tone-deaf I still do not understand what the significance of this routine is.

Also, after or maybe even before, chutney and samosa, masala seems to be the most misused word by pravasi desis.

Don Quixote was a Frenchman

French = Comedy

I used to think that the stories about the French and their obsession with language were just a joke. Then I visited Montreal. The lady at a subway ticket booth held up rush hour traffic for 5 minutes to teach me how to pronounce "Cotes Des Nieges".

This latest Quixotic enterprise has me convinced that France is the Don's true home.

The latest from Wall Street

Desis at Morgan Stanley

After the Great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, here's the Great Indian Mutiny at Morgan Stanley... Mera Bharat Mahaan!