World was never flat

I get somewhat amused every time I hear people talking about world becoming flatter and people shunning the boundaries that separate them. The more I think about that, the more dubious the evidences appear. The world certainly seems to be better than at the Cold War. During those times, our media was so biased that we would hear extreme opposite coverage of the same incidents when reported by West and East blocks. The Gulf war or even the post-911 war-mongering was probably not nearly as bad as how things were during Cold war. The sentiments against each other were so deep that the most intellectual pursuits failed to overcome them. On one hand, the Eastern block had scientists commanded by the dictator of proletariat while on the other scientific communities were shying away giving Nobel prizes to intellectuals from the East. At one point, the peace Nobel prizes seemed to be a prerogative of previous US Cold War is over, but the institutional propaganda and our conscious ignorance are still a part of our lives. My last few observations have been the about the way East is covered in the West (I am clearly more likely to observe them than most of others). The fact that we get filtered information about the world in US is very well established. One thought that I wanted elaborate was how media has successfully been able to engineer into most of our minds that India is a rising power, and that to a large extent, outsourcing is responsible for it. presidents. Both of these claims are inaccurate. That India is rising as a competitor to West, is itself a myth. A country with such extreme poverty and malnutrition clearly doesn’t have enough resources and institutions to sustain its own people. Poverty is not an unfortunate side-effect of growth in India. Poverty in India is incomparably widespread and a part of life. The little progress and growth that account for 8% GDP growth rate, is largely due to foreign investments in India and is limited into Western establishments localized into metropolitan areas.

But that is not to suggest that India by itself is incapable of doing much. Of course, the investments in India are not out of charity. They are market holdings in an economy capable of clear growth. But that is not what we learn from our media.We are made to believe that most of India is coming out of poverty because of American intervention - a combination of foreign aid and monetary investment. India's growth is indeed tied to the growth of US, but the relationship is not out of charity or a cold-war era agreement. It is largely due to the way world is changing. The impact of the kind of fear built against imaginary monsters like India and China are long lasting and extremely susceptible to political manipulation. One example is how Americans are made to fear about Iran’s possession of nuclear power; the American media chose not to mention the pact between India and America, which was not liked by the most of European countries as it gave undue advantage to India despite it’s refusal to sign the test-ban treaty. People are made to fear the outsourcing (something that apparently jeopardizes American interests but is widely accepted in the corporate world) and the nuclear proliferation (in India’s case it was favored by the corporate America) at the same time, yet it is institutions in the US itself that are are responsible for these developments in the East. Media doesn't offer any transparency in those matters. It offers us contradictory yet comfortable truths that we want to believe in.

baghmati

My memories of baghmati river are that of fearful and hefty seasonal river as seen from a bridge in Bihar. In that trip to far east of india, bihar seemed a place deep into wilderness. Like in that scene of the movie Gandhi, I saw people taking their train rides on the top of the train. The pricing of tickets, the slip of schedules of those trains were too distant ideas for the people who rode those trains. Baghmati was an image of that fearful wilderness.

In that same trip, we had met an old couple, who were traveling for free in the first class compartment. The old man had a privilege, of having been a freedom fighter against the British. Later in my life, I would recall how strange it sounded to have fought against the british to be rewarded with what british had left. It sounded preposterous for once, but if you traveled with that old man, who seemed unmoved with the scorching heat or the wilderness and chaos that bothered me, you would realize how modest was a free ticket as a reward to his spirits.

His wife told me that baghmati changes its course every year and causes a lot of havoc that way. It could more formally be considered as a seasonal flood. But the woman talked about baghmati with a sense of comfort and acceptance of the floods. She might not have known science but she knew that if flooding stops the regular alluvialization of the lands would stop and we would all starve anyways. It was that acceptance of natural calamities that still amazes me.

It is unique and somewhat distinctive of the Eastern culture. This photograph just seemed to have put all of that in perspective.

hv world affairs council

I was listening to Haviland smith earlier today. By the time his talk was over, I had started building hopes for a better foreign policy. The talk didn't demonstrate his great oratory abilities nor did it have any rhetoric or ideology that he was vouching for. Haviland's was merely an introspection into the foreign policy of US in the past 8 years. He was neither like those liberals who think we should do nothing but charity in rest of the world, nor like the republicans he constantly called horribly incorrect. At one time he called the Islamic society as repressive and inherently different from the Western democracies. He was thinking of a solution along those lines.

He said something that I had been dying to listen to from someone more mature than me -that language is important. He condemned the use of words like war-against-terror or rogue-nations. Avoiding such jingoism in language would only help a foreign policy. He questioned the assertion, both of media and administration that Muslims essentially hate the West. He actually said that Arabs have hardly ever expressed much hatred for America ; them being the core of Islamic world.

money in new york

Despite having had a small town, third-world background I think I have unconsciously so, got acclimatized to the city-life. Slowly I see that it is more than just acclimatization that has happened over this decade that I spent in the city. I see things differently now, very different from how I would have when I first moved here. A thing about the big city that bothered me a great deal when I was a kid was the comfort with which city folks set money to be the most important goal in their lives, or judge everything on grounds of money. I used to think that dreaming of big money is really a lot about being superficial. Looking back I think it could have been because of having been brought up in a culture where I was not encouraged to aspire. I was made to choose one amongst the few jobs that were offered to me. Success was achieved by adaptability, not through working to make one's dreams come true. I still feel sometimes that I wasn't encouraged enough to be doing what I absolutely loved to do. Through years of subjugation and colonial exploitation, it was actually discouraged in my circles if someone broke free of norms and started anything with a fresh perspective. When I came to the city, I couldn't help but notice that people were not doing anything halfheartedly. If you were into something then it is so because you absolutely love it or at least convinced yourself that you do. Nobody chases money as such. Everyone is doing what they absolutely love to do. Money is only a measure of how good oneself is. It was surprising to see that dreaming to make money in the city is not at all about being superficial. It was actually quite the opposite.

It was difficult for me to choose what I wanted to do. At the point where I was I felt that I hadn't have enough opportunities or didn't feel confidence about myself to take charge of things - mostly because of personality and partly because of the background. Those two factors might not have been completely unrelated. But with time, I had chosen a way and was willing to make sacrifices for choosing what I loved to do. I remember having loved analysis a lot. When I talked about things they were abstract things - things that most people were not ready to grasp. People didn't like that. I still loved it. A human being rooted in his history and ready to understand his aspirations. I felt a sense of bliss in being that way. I swayed from being a conservative to being a liberal and sometimes a moderate, but all this while I think I maintained a sense of honest curiosity, something that I was made to develop by training in science. An education in science does give you quite a bit of money, but not a whole lot. No matter how good you are at something you have to be entrepreneurial after one point. I don't seem to have the opportunity, but if I am positive, I might grab an opportunity if I see one. But being extremely analytical makes you a cynic and somewhat of a pessimist, mostly because you can't connect with many people. I love this energy and vigor of the city, but because of my very nature I can't lie to people that I don't like making so much money. That usually hinders the process of adaptation to the city life and I think that is where I am at this point.

A friendly Map

I have been working on this idea that I haven't found enough devlopers for. The development is thus quite slow and of course, I haven't been able to get any investments either.

But here is the idea anyways. When you visit a new city (for purely tourist purposes) you have little idea of where your favorite places can be. Of course, it takes time to find out what your favorites are. But what if a friend could tell you where you should go, a friend who has known you for years and understands what kind of places you would be really interested in. If you are an art-lover like me, the friend would've told you about the museums and ongoing exhibition in the city, or may be a journey to the house of a famous architect outside the city followed by relaxing in a neighborhood bar where mostly artists hang out.

Well the idea is to have a website do that for you. networking websites like facebook, orkut already know a lot about you. They know what kind of a person are you and what kind of people you would share your interests with. Even if they don't a little survey can tell a lot about your personality, objectively.

I came up with a clustering algorithm, in order to organize people in different categories. There are no rankings of parameters in the whole algorithms. Everything is based on the distance from individuals. In other words, the algorithm doesn't try to calculate how much you like something but instead it only purports how far are you from a museum lover or a party animal (a distance metric based on the feature vector in the clustering).

One the algorithm discovers your personality - it suggests you what places you should go, fetches schedules from the museum sites and tells you what train to take. If the trains are not running, it tells you what other means you can take. It calculates fare as much as you can and adjusts the costs that you have already given to you. It even takes the weather forecasts and asks you not to go to the park when its raining... and a lot more.

Tell me which real friend would do that much for you..

The opposing argument is one that favors uncertainty. Of course, there is fun in serendipity. Nothing takes away the joy of discovering things that you hadn't planned. But i mean, you can't plan for accidental discoveries and that doesn't make planning worthless.

Hay Bale

Hay Bale
Originally uploaded by rachel sian

Izaura

A woman that sings in João Gilberto's sounds - Izaura - sounds like someone striking a glass gently. If I close my eyes I can see her wavy hairs, deep dark eyes, thin lips, a beatifully carved nose all that.. from just the very deep soothing voice. Wonder how the song tells all that to me.