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Atlantean Thoughts

Yes, I have changed the platform to Wordpress.

Change makes life more colourful.

Now, this is serious!

Over the past two days, Bangalore witnessed an event which is hard to describe logically.

What happened?

*7 deaths - 6 civilians killed in police firing and 1 policeman beaten to death by an angry mob.

*150 policemen injured.

*60 civilians injured.

*3 petrol bunks, 6 lorries, 12 buses, 3 autorickshaws, 20 cars and 54 two-wheelers of civilians and 7 vans, 3 cars, 5 jeeps and 4 motorcycles of police were set on fire.

*563 arrests.

*A lot of intangibles damaged, which includes the image that Bangalore and its people have not only in India but also outside.

Reason?

Famous Kannada actor Rajkumar died of cardiac arrest. Nobody killed him

Now, I said it is hard to describe what link there is between the death of one man of cardiac arrest and whatever happened that I mentioned above.

Various reasons were cited however. One of them - antisocial elements having a gala time. Jane Galt(link from Amit Verma's blog) has an explanation of the recent Paris riots, which is quite convincing and can probably be applied aptly to the situation in Bangalore too. Still, Bangalore is not Paris in the sense there are no immigrant black Muslims who have been experiencing racial discrimination for decades in Bangalore.

This is really annoying. I wish I can get hold of one of those who perpetrated the violence. I would probably smash his head with a blunt weapon and throw him to the hungry street dogs near my room. He'll then get to know how it feels to die.

If Paritala Ravi was brutally murdered and violence erupted, it is easy to understand. But this? No, I cant. Seven people lost their lives and over 200 got injured just because a few inebriated idiots wanted to have some fun. How worse can it get?

What's happening!

Hmmm, so Rajkumar is dead.

Hmmm, okay, he's a great actor.

How'd he die? Cardiac arrest. Nobody killed him.

Bangalore almost shut down? Oh, okay. Happens in India.

Stone throwing and violence? What the...!!

Some history is not bad, once in a while

A historical perspective of Americans of Asian Indian origin (1790-1997) by Srirajasekhar Bobby Koritala. Very enlightening. I quote the ending lines:

The behavior of visa officers in American consulates in India and immigration officers in the USA who deal with Indians too often reflects terrible racist and ethnic prejudices. From my conversations with an acquaintance who worked as a visa officer for the State Department it is apparent that these people are trained to discriminate against Indians. My own experiences with visa officers and immigration officers confirms this belief. I will do everything within my power to fight these racist policies. It is vital that America not slip back into the sordid policies of its past. Of course, things are much better than they were, but it is important to keep the trend from reversing.

The sentiments I have raised in this epilogue deserve more detailed analysis and I will try to deal with them in separate documents.

Finally, I want to emphasize that I believe America is a wonderful country. I believe most Americans (white, yellow, black, brown, green, blue - regardless of what color or ethnicity they are) are decent people. The purpose of this perspective is not to say "see what the white people did". It is to say "see what mistakes were made by people in the past. Let's avoid them in the future".

How much truth is there in the visa argument? Though I heard of the "fat lady" at the Chennai consulate, I still find it hard to believe that sort of thing happens. Probably, some of my dear readers, who have a first hand experience can help?

Time for a cooler baby!

Man, it's hot! It's 36 degrees inside my room. I asked my room owner for a cooler and I was relieved when he said he'll get me one but my relief turned to disappointment when I saw the cooler. He must've salvaged it from an old stone age site somewhere. When I turned it on, it was terror. The noise could've run another cooler. Thu! I'm going to get a brand new one tomorrow. :p

SETI@home needs your help

Here's the copy of the letter sent by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Dan Wethimer, SETI scientists at UCBerkelely to all SETI@home users. Dear reader, please participate in this important project:

Dear Atlantean,

SETI@home needs your help. But before we tell you why - and how you can help - Dan and I would like to thank you for your role in the SETI@home success story.

We would first like to thank you for your participation in SETI@home. During the first SETI@home project you personally assisted us by searching for extraterrestrial signals in 3 data chunks and providing 0.015 years of computing time. We want you to know we appreciate your efforts and the efforts of the other 5.4 million volunteers who have donated over 2.4 million years of processing time. When we started, people thought our projection of 100,000 users to be overly optimistic! You helped us prove that public participation in scientific computing could work. You also helped us to see that this type of community effort deserved to be more common. That's why we developed the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing or BOINC. BOINC has the benefit of allowing our volunteers the option of sharing their processing power with other worthy projects in addition to SETI@home. These projects range from looking for gravitational waves to searching for cures to diseases.

But all these successes are just a beginning. If you have not visited the SETI@home website recently, we have successfully transitioned to operating under BOINC. Because of this, new searches are on the horizon for SETI@home. We are releasing a new version of our processing software that increases the sensitivity of our search by a factor of two or more. We are building and installing a new data recorder at Arecibo. This data recorder operates in conjunction with a newly installed receiver that has the capability to observe seven places on the sky simultaneously. It also increases our sensitivity by another factor of five. These increases in sensitivity mean that SETI@home will have capability of detecting signals that are three times more distant than we could before. The region of space we can search will expand by a factor of thirty. That's thirty times the chance that your computer will detect that faint signal from another star.

This increase in capability isn't without cost. Following the "dot com" bust, the commercial support that kept SETI@home running has largely disappeared. Because of this loss of support, we can no longer count on matching funds from the University of California. We are rapidly approaching the end of what funds we do have. We we will need to raise about $750,000 to pay for these new capabilities and to keep SETI@home operating for the next year. Without this support SETI@home may be forced to shut down.

We hope that you will consider making a donation to SETI@home. You can make a secure donation by credit card by clicking this link. Instructions for donation by check or money order are there as well. Unless you specify otherwise, your donation will be noted by a star icon next to your username on the SETI@home pages and your username will appear on our list of donors. If you do not wish to have this recognition you may indicate that as well. Please be assured that regardless of whether or not you choose to have your donation be anonymous, SETI@home will not share your address with other organizations.

You can check on our fundraising progress by visiting our main site at http://setiathome.berkeley.edu

Thank You,

Sir Arthur C. Clarke Author and Futurist	and	Dan Werthimer Chief Scientist, SETI@home

Whaa...

What's up? -> What up -> Whaddup -> Wassup -> Wassa-> Whaa (latest version).

Endi ra bai godava?

To a large extent, I agree with the majority popular reaction to the recent hike in reservation for OBCs from something in the 20s to about 49%. Reservations should be given to people who really are backward, mainly in economic terms. Instead of a reservation system based solely on caste terms, there can be a new system which takes into account not only the caste but also the income and economic history of the family the student is coming from.

This is what is happening in the case of OBCs in the civil services examination atleast, in which if you fall into the creamy layer as defined by the NCBC, you are not eligible for reservation and you are required to apply under "General Category". I'm an OBC and this is exactly what I did and I feel good about it. Heh, I dont need any reservation. :p

Now, my question is why isnt the same system being implemented in the case of SCs and STs?

Quality concerns

There has been a lot of noise of what this hike will do to the quality of these institutes. I dont think increasing the reservation quota to 49% in the IIMs and the IITs will affect their quality. They're too good for that to happen. Sure, it seems their quality may be affected by the kind of students they admit but if the quality of students becomes the whole criterion, then you're stripping away the competitiveness of these institutes. If they're really good, which they are, they'll still produce quality graduates and the nature of the admission process to these institutes is so competitive that you still have to be pretty good to qualify even for reservation.

Wont be that bad

The question, therefore, is not of quality but of fairness. A lot of forward caste people are complaining and there is truth in their reasoning that the lower castes will gain at their expense. But you must realize that by increasing the reservation to the lower castes, they didnt shut the door entirely to you. You can still qualify... only that the competition will be 25% tougher. This is the most unfair part of it. Then again, if you're really good, you'll get through - same thing for the OBCs who are going to get reservation.

This argument of mine doesnt not, however, mean that I support this hike in reservation. I'm only saying its effect will not be as bad as it is being portrayed. I'm not an enemy of affirmative action too. Instead, I feel we need an entirely new reservation system which will be much more practical and one which actually will do its job.

What was the motivation for this move anyway? We all know Congress very well. We also know that elections are ahead - there you go! Look for a reason and the answer is clear. It was politically motivated than by sympathy towards the backward classes. I can picture a wily Sonia Gandhi whispering something into a peeved Manmohan Singh's ears before this decision was announced.

PS: This post was actually a comment of mine inspired by a post in Aditya's blog.

Other blogs on the subject: 1, 2

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