Reading deponti's post about Thattekad made me go back to my archives and revisit that fascinating place. Thattekad is south India's top birding destination and doesn't usually have elephants in attendance, but during my February 2006 trip, there were a herd (or two) of elephants in the park. From the safety of a building inside the forest, we watched these magnificent creatures in the river...



( Photographs of elephants in the water... )

I read somewhere that the US president does little bold work during his first term as his sole intention at that point of time is to get re-elected. In his second term, however, he tends to take more risks and make bold decisions, for he knows that he can never be re-elected.

I was wondering what would be the consequences if we limited the number of terms for chief ministers and prime ministers in India to two. And this limit will stay irrespective of the lengths of the government. So irrespective of whether you've been CM for five days or five years, you've exhausted one of your chances, and you have one more.

In order to be fair to people who have been in power for a number of terms now, we can say something like their current term is counted as their first in this regard, and hence they have only one more turn left at leading their respective governments. However, there is no limit on the number of terms they can work as a normal representative.

One fallout of this - I think - is horse trading and formation of minority governments will come down. If you want to form a government that may not run it's full term, a number of leaders may not want to lead it for the fear that one of their turns will get over very quickly. There will also be less of this tamasha that usually happens where central leadership keeps changing the chief minister to suit its whims. I don't know how much of the 'bold decisions' will get taken for even if the chief minister can't be elected again, most people in his cabinet will be hoping to become CM the next time round and will want to keep electoral chances in mind.

However, the problem is in bringing in this rule. Looking at the number of parties that have a "supreme leader" ideology, it is hard to see any of them supporting this kind of a rule - for that might go on to clip the wings of their supreme leader and so on. Of course - they too can work around this by institutionalizing the concept of O Panneerselvam. However, it's unlikely any non-cadre based parties (= left and BJP) is going to support this kind of a thing.

From Wired Magazine:

"When the Republican Party issued a clarion call last week for its grassroots supporters to submit ideas online to build the party’s platform, Republican National Committee officials probably weren’t expecting a concerted push for the dismantling of the Federal Reserve… "

(via Campaign for Liberty)

Many people may claim many different things, but I think the main motivation for people to watch so many soaps is schadenfreude.

• Why do you think most characters in soaps are shown leading such miserable lives? I mean not miserable in the material sense, but everyone seems to have one problem or the other.
  
• Assuming that people who watch soaps, on the average, lead not-so-happy lives, I can't think of any reason why they will want to worsen their state of mind by bringing in more negative thoughts - if anything, by indulging in activities classified as "entertainment" you are supposed to be looking to lighten up your mind blah blah

The only other explanation I can think of is that all these soaps are part of some elaborate joke, and avid watchers are silently giggling as they watch these soaps. That they don't want to let their secret away so they give reasons such as "it reflects life so we love it" and all such.

Some 3-4 days back, I wrote a post in the Indian Economy Blog with a conjecture as to why India never got an overwhelming "gentleman class" in the way that European countries did. I forgot to cross post it here back then, so I'm doing it now.

Actually, when I posted this I wasn't even sure if it would be appropriate for the IEB. I'm not sure even now - given that this isn't something that is of direct consequence to the economy. Nevertheless, I thought it might be interesting to the readers of the IEB and I could concoct some kind of a connection with the Indian Economy if questioned so I put it there anyways. I'm copypasting the post here.

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visited 15 states (42.8%)
Create your own visited map of India or determine the next president


visited 9 states (18%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or determine the next president

So, finally louiswu is the third Gentoo developer from India. woohoo! This calls for a major partyyyy. One more to the Indian Conspiracy ;) Welcome to the brotherhood, dude :D

PS : I heard of Gentoo from him and can now stop needling him about giving back to the community :p

PPS : Time to grab some more sleep before getting ready for work :p

The last few months have been dreadful for "capitalism", as the the dollar comes unhinged. With the Fed bailing out their main house loan institutions, and most leading Wall Street firms turning losses, the dark side of paper money has been exposed. Proponents of "free markets" will have to look long and hard in the mirror before making off with the mint's largesse again and again.

Austrian economics begins to look appealing. Ron Paul had another epic encounter with Bernanke earlier this week (gets better after 1 minute) and now he is doing the rounds on many TV channels. On Larry Kudlow below, they hit all the right notes - socialism of US government, fascism of Wall Street, central economic planning etc. Awesome interview!

Ron Paul on Larry Kudlow's show - 1 (3m:56s)

This blog post is about a relative of mine, who, for purposes of this blog post, shall be called "Commie Uncle". That name is intentional, for he is surely a commie. Ages back, he managed to land himself a PSU job with the help of a recommendation from his cousin's wife's cousin's girlfriend's cousin's uncle. And no sooner had he got his appointment, he became prominent in the union, and started fighting against the very person who had recommended him for that job. About four years back, he had visited us, jubilant in the knowledge that the left would play a major part in the UPA government. My father and I had tried to drill sense into his head, but not to much avail.

Actually this post is not so much about Commie Uncle (I have told most of his life's story in the first paragraph) but about his wife, who, for the sake of convenience of nomenclature, we shall call "Commie Aunty" for the rest of this post. I don't know her political views, I'm not even sure if she has one, for I know that they've never subscribed to a newspaper. But "Commie Aunty" seems like a convenient name which will not end up confusing the reader.  If you can look at this post as a case - of the types that is discussed in MBA classrooms - let me tell you that the question posed at the end will be "What should Commie Aunty do?". Even if you don't like MBA-type cases, you might want to read on. And despite the tone of the post so far, let me assure you that this is a serious post.

The cost of credit default swaps (CDSs) for 10 year US Treasury bonds have reached an all-time high, trading at as high as 24 basis points. In this regard, what should we use as the risk-free rate?

Traditionally yield on government bonds has been used as the risk-free rate. But when the government bonds are themselves not really risk-free (as the CDS rates show), what should we use? One measure I can think of is to use the yield on treasuries and subtract the CDS price from it.

Of course, this method assumes that the CDS on the government bonds has been priced properly by the market. Can you let me know how we can do better?

Last week, Kumble was issued a notice by the BCCI for talking to the media about selection committee meetings. Kumble's "crime" was telling the Mumbai Mirror that he insisted on two specialist keepers in the party.

Leaving the controversy alone, my hunch is that the selectors might have insisted on Parthiv Patel being the lone keeper on tour, thanks to his excellent batting in the last Ranji championship (albeit in the Plate League). Even if Patel has improved, the only thing Kumble remembers of him I think is the Sydney test in 2004, when he kept missing stumping after easy stumping, which was ultimately partly responsible for India failing to win the test and the series (Bucknor was the other reason).

In contrast, even if he gave away a record number of byes in his last test, Dinesh Kaarthick has generally kept well to Kumble and co. The general opinion is that he's a better keeper than Dhoni, who usually gets the nod for his superior batting. I remember that during the last tour of England, every day Siddhartha Vaidyanathan used to write an article in Cricinfo demanding that Dhoni be dropped.

It is quite clear that Kumble significantly prefers Kaarthick's keeping to Patel's, and Kaarthick is also a competent batsman having played a significant number of his tests as a specialist batsman. And when the selectors wanted to pick Patel over him, Kumble reasoned that the best way to keep Patel outside of the area behind the stumps was to also get in Kaarthick into the squad.

Vodafone as a promotion brought a replica of Mc Laren Mercedes Formula One car to India. It was in bangalore over last weekend and I had the pleasure of going and watching it in person :) Here are the photos I managed to snap up.

*Smile else the camera will not click your photo*

Every heard of a camera that will not take your picture unless you smile. Presenting the Casio Exilim EX-S10.

I read about this in the latest edition of "Better Photography". This is a new feature that's introduced in this camera. When turned on you better smile to get your photo !!! He he :)

Another feature about this camera is that it's face detection software will priorities the face and records it in the camera.

Planning starts for *Drive to Goa*.

If every thing goes according to plan then in exactly one month i will be in Goa along with my friends.

So it's sudhi_11in, suz_me, theju, anisike, ashwindevadiga, Shiva and Me (sandy_tr)

Sujay also a got a new car this month. We will be going in 2 cars, One of Sujay's and the other car belonging to theju.

Yesterday I gave my old bike for servicing. It was in such bad shape that for a while I was worried that the cost of servicing would be greater than the salvage value of the bike. This morning, when I went to pick it up, I was pleased to see that the bill came up to Rs. 445 only. The first thing I did after that was to ask the mechanic how much I could get if I were to sell my bike. And he started laughing loudly.

He then told me that I was lucky that most of the problems with my bike were easily fixable, and minor, since it's impossible to get components nowadays. It is a Kinetic Challenger - the first ever bike released by Kinetic. My parents had gifted this to me in 2001 at the time of my thread ceremony, and the reason this bike was chosen ahead of the Splendor, the Victor and a couple of others was mainly because of its looks. In every other department, it seemed to be below par. And every time someone asked me what bike I had, I had to spend ten minutes convincing them that the Kinetic Challenger was a real bike and not an ungeared scooter.

The mechanic then took me inside the garage and showed me another kinetic bike that had come to him. It was some GF125 or some such thing. One of those snazzy looking things that cost upward of Rs. 80,000. It had been lying in the garage for a year and a half it seems, for want of spare parts to repair it. The mechanic went on about various other bike models that were once THE hot thing. For most of these, spare parts are extremely tough to find nowadays, and the cost of maintenance is really high. He told me this was the case with all non-Pulsar Bajaj models, most Yamaha models and many more, not to mention all Kinetic models.

One major problem with the large number of bikes being released in the last few years is that production for the not-so-really-successful models stop a couple of years after they are released. And with that, they also stop making spares for these models, thus significantly pushing up the costs of maintenance of these bikes.

To put it in other words, there is a chance that the cost of maintenance for a bike can suddenly shoot up, if the manufacturer decides on not making them any more. Hence, when you go out to buy a bike, you need to be reasonably confident that it is going to be a successful model, in order to keep maintenance costs low. So it really makes sense for you to go for popular and already successful models. What this shows is that it may not be so obvious, but network effects are definitely there when it comes to automobiles.

Before I left, I told the mechanic that my next bike is likely to be an Enfileld. "Enfield will always be Royal, Sir", shouted one junior mechanic who was working on the adjacent bike. "Definitely buy that and get rid of this jalopy".

This happen to me quite often:

( 2 photographs... )

Samosas and catching up with a friend yesterday. We walk around in a park afterward, to work off the calories. While we reminisce about old friends and he offers me exaggerated and half-true stories about how he used to kick the class bully's ass, a kid finds that my inconveniently large self has gotten in his way, and decides to try his best to push me away. He obviously enjoys the effort, the examination of physical strength, the show of aggression. We laughed it off then, friend and I, because we are grown up enough to find kids cute. But it set me thinking - I've never been the kind that commands authority.

Perhaps it sounds a little ridiculous that a kid trying to push me out of his way should lead to self-esteem issues, but the truth is, I've always had these self-esteem issues. I've never liked how incapable I am of commanding respect, and I especially hate how I cannot get kids to respect me. It's a harder problem to deal with kids - you can't ignore them, you can't expect even a minimum amount of maturity from them, and you certainly can't beat them up. It's one of the reasons I do not want this whole career-marriage-children deal for myself. It's not me. I could never raise kids right.

But this isn't just about kids. Let me explain.

I woke up this morning from a surprisingly coherent dream (or rather, I should say, that I was surprisingly coherent *in* the dream). I was with an interview panel who wanted to know what my opinion was about student leaders in college. I said something like this:

"My opinion on this issue is as follows: while one may be tempted to pick a candidate for a formal leadership post on the basis of academic achievement or perceived intelligence, these are not necessarily the leaders that students will naturally respond to. Leaders emerge naturally among students, people who naturally dominate others...."

At this point I woke up, and immediately began to think about William Golding's Lord of the Flies. I read the book about a couple of months back, and my copy was seemingly intended for schoolchildren (and if that were the case, wouldn't it be like telling people in POW camps stories about other people in POW camps?). Anyway, the edition actually had chapter summaries at the end, and one of them blabbered with familiar and schoolteacher-ish eloquence about how Golding was attempting to demonstrate that some kind of order and leadership was necessary to civilization.

Rubbish, I thought. IMHO, what Golding attempted to demonstrate was leadership emerges not through ability or intelligence, but through sheer aggression and dominance. Some people have naturally dominant personalities, and others have naturally submissive personalities (or perhaps, in the light what foot_notes has to say, some people develop dominant personalities at an early age, while others fail to). Those with dominant personalities rarely know what is best for the group. And those who know what is best for the group are rarely taken seriously. A bunch of schoolboys without adult authority demonstrates this best, but these lessons also hold true for adults in general.

(Of course, I do not hold that those who are not aggressive know what is best for the group, or that there is some kind of connection between competence and aggression. Rather, I believe good sense and aggression are independent, and although not mutually exclusive, are rarely found together in the same person. On the other hand, stupidity and submissiveness might be found much more easily in the same person - it is simply the case that both stupidity and submissiveness are far more common than their opposites)

When reading the book, I decided that I was most like Piggy. OK, I wasn't the brightest in school, but I was like that in college. Among the smartest but least popular kids in class. No one took me seriously, perhaps because I was too regular to class. But I learned in college that the game of bullying and alpha male monkeys does not end with school. In college, things are more subtle. People assert themselves by making seemingly friendly but aggressive jokes. Groups form naturally, and leaders emerge with a disgusting inevitability.

I think what Golding sought to demonstrate was that ultimately, the human species is incapable of governing itself. It is because we rarely choose the most sensible leaders. Instead we choose leaders with charisma, aggression and an innate talent to mobilise others. Sometimes, these leaders actually have a great deal of sense in them, and we get lucky. But more often than not, we choose the wrong leaders.

I don't know what made me post this not-so-insightful piece now. I guess I was bored. Also, I've been wondering to what extent democracy (or indeed, economics) can dilute this human tendency.

Long ago, Soviet Russia decided that a good way for them to propagate propaganda in India would be to distribute magazines at subsidized rates. My father had taken the bait and subscribed to all such magazines available - Soviet Union, Soviet Woman and Misha. All of them were available at dirt-cheap rates (don't exactly remember them). It was so cheap that buying the magazines and giving them to the raddiwala was almost a profitable business.

This is the extent to which the Russians went to propagate their propaganda. And sadly, in those days, the world was yet to hear about anti-dumping duties.

For some reason, I never liked these magazines. My father would sit with me and make me read Misha. He would help me set up and play some of the games mentioned in that. Even then, I never managed to appreciate the magazine, and most of it went straight into the raddiwala's hands. However, given the extremely low cost, my father didn't particularly mind.

It was a jobless summer afternoon - as jobless as you would expect a seven-year-old kid without siblings during summer vacations would be. The postman had just dropped off the post - two fairly heavy books. The latest editions of "Soviet Union" and "Soviet Woman". I don't clearly remember, but looking back, it seems like I wasn't in a terribly good mood that afternoon. And so I set to work.

I decided to tear the two magazines to pieces. Each and every page of them. I tore it out carefully from the book, and using my hands, tore each page into innumerable shreds. I must have either had tremendous determination, or tremendous patience, or both, for these books were fairly big. However, I diligently sat down and did my job. And I wouldn't budge until I was done with each and every page.

I think seven (or maybe I was eight then, but I tend to believe I was seven. Even my super-strong long-term memory can't  give me a clue on this) years is an early age to display your political leanings. However, watching me having diligently and efficiently torn down the Soviet Union and Soviet Woman to pieces, I think my parents were convinced that I'd grow up to be a right winger.

Shortly after this incident, I was taken to a field near my house and enrolled into the RSS.

Why do new system still come with support for Floppy Drives ?

How long does it take to go over it and realize "Dude, Floopy disk are now History!!!".

I still remember carry 10's of these disk in my College days, since not every one could afford a CD writer then and more over all that you can carry in one floppy is just 1.5 MB.

It's been a long 8 to 10 years since then, Floppy's were replaced by CD's, then came DVD and now even DVD might not stick for long since Blue Ray disks are already catching up.

What's annoying for me is that the computer manufactures still think that a system is incomplete with a Floppy Disk. I wanted to buy a New Cabinet for my System. Unfortunately every single cabinet that i liked had space for Floppy disk. I brought a new SMPS (This one cost me a Bomb) but even this has support for floppy. I wonder who uses these any ways.

Any one on LJ who are still using Floppy Disk ?