Experiment on self

I am going to do an experiment. On myself. I have read good reviews on Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi. I think, the book will ultimately make me fall in love with India again. And, I'll hasten to go back. So, I wanted to put this down even before it happens, and I start yearning. So that, I could see whether my reaction will be as predicted.

I'm ordering the book. The clock ticks.

The age of denying god

Slumdog Millionaire - A million abominations

They say reality is stranger than fiction. In the context of Slumdog Millionaire it's hellish ghastlier. Read for yourself the horror:
Here is the link to an article in the Daily Mail.

Ruminating over Purposes

[ Dedicated to my 'gang', the Lopers - which is not much of a euphemism, but crass pronunciation. ]


Hazy,Jazy, Kazy,Lazy
That's what Lopers are, plus crazy
Repeated attempts of utility they resist
That's 'cause its the very definition of Lopers, isn't it?

Permanent Etchings: Made in Taiwan

"How did Taiwan emerge as an electronics workshop to the world? The island has an abundance of relatively low-cost engineers, many of them returnees from the U.S., and strong connections to Silicon Valley. The Taiwan government stimulated the high-tech industry with tax and venture capital incentives. The country has a deeper technical and industrial base than its Southeast Asian neighbors. Taiwan's entrepreneurs have been much more adaptable than its competitors in Japan and Korea to the rapid change and short product cycles in the computer industry.

Taiwan has not been notably successful in branding and marketing its own products. Where it has succeeded is in partnering with the U.S. (and, increasingly, Japanese) computer industry. While being careful not to advertise what they are doing, the U.S. name-brand owners have delegated a lot to the Taiwanese. The brand holder may give a road map, such as product specifications and performance. Or the Taiwan side may generate the ideas and bring them to the customer. Taiwan has a particular strength in the time-consuming design of the printed circuit board, a customized system that is crucial to the overall speed and reliability of the finished computer. A joint development process between the two sides can come up with a new model in six to nine months.

Lam says that Quanta, which has 500 design engineers in Taiwan, did about half of the design work for Apple Computer's G4 notebook. For Dell, Quanta's biggest single customer, Lam says, his army of engineers does about 60% to 70% of the design work on Latitude models; Dell does the remaining 30% to 40%. He asserts that HP was a marginal player in notebooks before Quanta helped to design its products. Compaq, which last year sourced an astounding $9.6 billion of electronics from Taiwan, looks to become Quanta's No. 2 account. "

(...)

"Taiwan's electronics factories started out at the drone end of the business. But there wasn't enough money in that. In the past decade they have evolved from lowly con-tract manufacturers into designer-manufacturers. They differ from the well-known contract electronics manufacturers in the U.S.—namely, Solectron and Flextronics—in typically having a few specialties, as opposed to making a wide variety of products. In Quanta's case the list includes laptops, and now cell phones and servers."

{ Shows how important being focused is. I, on the other hand, am learning it the hard way.}

- Forbes article Made in Taiwan

This [emphasized] explains why the Chinese are and need to be fashionable.

Also, 'tis helps to notice that the government had a major part to play, in helping setting up this industry in Taiwan. Governments can play a major role if they want to. They should've let Tata open his plant in Singur.

Point naught ('tis a bad habit)

You think you are fairly intelligent. But think this.. you are definitely not the most intelligent/ingenious person; you do get snapping ideas from time to time, which you think are fairly smart; what when u realise that somebody's already thought of any idea which you'll ever think, and probably tens or hundreds of years ago? How wasteful, pointless and sweet Fanny Adams will your existence feel ?

Edit (Jan 16 '09): I have proof for this. I was thinking about how one could use any piece of information any which way, in proving yourself right. And, thinking myself to be intelligent to be thinking so. Well, some guy already thought about it, and put it in a book he wrote! Its Aldous Huxley folks. I started reading his quotes to get an idea of what he's like and I found the nemesis of a sentence. What would I like more than sharing it with you. Here, have a look, will you ->

"Facts are ventriloquists' dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism."

* "Bruno Rontini" in Time Must Have A Stop (1944) - Which is actually Aldous Huxley of course, 'cause he's the one who wrote the book.

And by the way, he reigned nearly half a century ago

I frankly object frankly

A comment for a post I came across. My arguments make sense, I think. No offense to the author. But, I don't comment so much, and thought "Hell! one of my posts could be so long! Ok... lets make it a post then!" :P

If you have any objections.. go ahead object!


The post:
http://havetimewillwaste.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-so-reckless.html

My comment:
Hi, found you've put in quite a bit of effort/thought in the post. I have some rebuttals .

You say...

" But IITs don't make people clever. They just provide the finishing touches to people who are already very smart. ... By having a few more buildings, we won’t end raising the IQ of the people occupying them. "

Naha.. but it is exactly not that.Like you said its not getting dumb people and teaching them. It is finding people who are smart and training them. So this clever statement (no offence, sounds so much like one of Chetan Bhagat's sentences, full of rhetoric..dig deeper no actual meaning) of raising IQ by raising more buildings, actually has no grounds, and doesn't actually make sense. As, nobody is doing what you say they are. It is just not raising new buildings, they'll get more staff, more facilities etc and probably a newer method of education.

As some IITians (though any reasonably well-educated, intelligent, experienced person would do) have mentioned that the JEE exam does not really have everything in it to identify intelligence/creativity etc holistically. I do agree the exam is quite demanding and rigorous in terms of how much effort a person puts in, how he tackles new questions in basic science etc. But, it does not test other important aspects like creativity, innovation and other things which India is crying for lack of. These aspects too are related to 'success' (which they say IITians are surrounded by). So why shouldn't the govt. open more IITs.. call it exactly that, and have more 'capable' people as you call them?

Also, assuming you are an IITian, maybe you wouldnt be in IIT if the govt had not constantly increased the no of seats. :) . And then maybe you wouldnt be defending it so passionately.

"We do not have twelve Stanfords, fifteen Oxfords or twenty two ETHs."

But Stanford is not the only university in its cadre, there's Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Caltech, MIT, Princeton, and many others who are good in a particular fields. MIT is certainly not the best for everything. In Europe, there's not only Oxford, there's Cambridge, St.Andrews, EPFL, ETH, etc... So India having the population of US and UK combined(nearly!) should do a favour for her children and open more such universities ! Can't you see the imbalance??

Actually it does not really matter so much, whether they open more IITs or not. But it certainly isnt a bad idea.

Don't be so selfish and think in terms of market value of yourselves. You clearly don;t want more competition out there. If you are getting good education and its possible to extend it to more people, don't you want that? What kind of breed is India raising in the name of IITians? I don't know.

Selfishness is way over-rated. Somebody shoot Ayn Rand. Wait. She's already dead. I guess we'll have to invent a time-machine after all, to back in time and kill her.