Villain Today, Victim Tomorrow

There is nothing better that the media likes. It likes to launch a vicious attack on a person who is vulnerable (irrespective of whether or not he is guilty), destroy his reputation, dignity, muck him with all the filth possible and once he gives in, it likes to recast him as an unfortunate victim. It tries to portray him as the sacrificial lamb and just a small spoke in the big wheel of this World. It tries to show how the whole system is conspiring against him.

It happened with Sourav Ganguly. When he was in the team not scoring runs, the media were after his head. Once he was dropped, the wheel turned a full cycle. He is now the man who is being made the victim of a witch-hunt, being deliberately plotted against and kept out of the side for purely political reasons. Suddenly Greg Chappell who was being portrayed as the saviour of Indian cricket is now being talked about as being a tyrannic dictator trying to take over the reigns of Indian cricket. It matters not a jot that ever since Ganguly has been out Greg Chappell has done a fantastic job of taking this team to great success.

And now, it has happened to Natwar Singh. After causing him to nearly tear his hair apart due to continuous hounding, now this article in DNA tries to project the not-so-negative side of the man. Agreed, this is just a start. Soon we will start seeing articles about how Natwar was just an unfortunate pawn in the hands of Sonia and Manmohan.

(Cross posted on Cricket's Outside Edge)

Flash, Actionscript, XML and DTD

There is no way to validate an XML document with a DTD using Flash and Actionscript !! How frustrating !!

And now, a certain property, getSetResults, of a certain object LocalConnection works fine in Flash MX 2004 Professional 7.2 but does not in Flash MX 2004 Professsional 7.0. To make matters worse, I need it and I have only the latter, not the former.

OK. Unbelievable Nugget of Wisdom. If you are trying to establish a local connection between flash movies, you'd better declare the local connection object as say "my_lc = new LocalConnection()". Do not go for the more correct style of declaring separately as "var my_lc; my_lc = new LocalConnection();"

Why etc. don't ask.

Why Are You Quiet Now ?

In this article in DNA Minhaz Merchant poses some pointed questions to the Indian Muslim intelligentsia and celebrity. The article talks about the politics of fatwas in India in relation to the pre-marital sex controversy. The point the article makes is predominantly not about just that, but in the bigger picture about the freedom of speech and expression.

From the article:

It also raises the larger question — rarely debated in polite society — of why prominent Muslims, ranging from Shabana Azmi to Shah Rukh Khan, such voluble critics of Hindutva-inspired communalism (and rightly so), do not equally vociferously and publicly condemn fundamentalist Islamic communalism of the rabid sort that was directed against Sania Mirza when she first defended Khushboo's views on pre-marital sex.

And if I remember correctly, none of these ventured in support when the poor girl was tortured about her clothes on the tennis court either.

What Do You Mean ?

It is an honorable and praiseworthy move by India to honour the cylones striking her coasts by assigning then names. It would have been even better however if the names chosen were much simpler. Pray what does "Baaz" mean ?

Anyway Baaz has decided to postpone its visit by a few hours as it has taken a halt somewhere i the Bay of Bengal. However, it has done the damage already to the test match in Chennai.

The Bihar Elections

So the NDA won the Bihar elections. I tend to be a centrist when it comes to national politics. I do not care what happens in Bihar. I do not care about Laloo, Nitish, no one. But one thing I do care about it is secularism. And I am glad that Ram Vilas Paswan who had set out on the election campaign with the aim of giving Bihar a Muslim CM has been soundly thrashed. As in he is not going to be a king-maker. Find great satisfaction in that.

The 81 ers

Trying to list all the famous people born in 1981 other than me of course. Of the top of my head I can remember:

Roger Federer
Lleyton Hewitt
Michael Clarke
Graeme Smith
Yuvraj Singh
Shahid Kapur
Anna Kournikova
Serena Williams
Mahendra Singh Dhoni NEW

Shanghai Knights

Must admit I have been pretty much cut off from what's happening in tennis since the US Open. The injury to Roger Federer was a major reason as was the fact that in India you simply do not have enough time to deliberately follow the circuit - there being other distractions like cricket and family.

But now is the time for the season-ender and the return of Roger Federer really makes it something to look forward to. Quite keen to see him do battle with Rafael Nadal (one of only 3 players to beat him this year) and of course the grand old man, Andre Agassi.

With the withdrawal of Safin, Roddick and Hewitt the tournament has definitely lost some of its sheen - imagine there are players like Nalbandian, Gaudio, Coria (3 Argentines !!) Ljubicic and Davydenko in the frame. Well, it does not really matter when the Swiss king is in charge does it ? His injury is a bit of a worry though and interesting to see if it in anyway affects his near-flawless game.

Five Point Someone

Well, this has been one of the bestsellers in India for some years now - but I only happened to read it today. Well, started it two days ago and finished it today. Why the delay you may ask ? Well I am never one for laying my hands on a book the minute it arrives (except the latest Harry Potters). Nor do I believe in letting other people's opinions decide whether or not I am going to read one. If it sounds interesting and if I have not been horribly disappointed at any of the author's previous books, I believe in giving it a fair chance.

So by what could justifiably be called a sudden impulse I decided to read this book which has been topping Indian charts for quite some time. My brother, a senior at IIT, Powai had warned me against reading it. His exact words were to the effect that if I did go ahead and read it, his opinion about my taste in literature would deteriorate. My friend, an MTech student at the same place had also read it sometime back and gives his view here.

Anyway, why I am bothering to write all this stuff ? As I mentioned earlier, I don't care about other people's opinions when it comes to books, right ? Well, I guess, it is just blogging culture to try and link to all related stuff .. blah blah .. whatever ... ok let's get to the deep end of it.

Overall impression - Nice stuff. Sure, it won't be hailed as a literary classic or even be looked at in more serious circles, but for college kids and those just passed out, definitely an enjoyable read. The Tabloid Of India calls it as Dil Chahta Hain in print (ah there I go again) and for once is pretty much spot on.

Superb pace, easy informal style definitely the great plusses. Plus you can easily identify with the characters ... ah well deep insights, you might say ... but there you go - I said it is not ground-breaking stuff ... nor is my review about it anything out of this world. It's just that you "like" it you know ... so much ... taking you back to college days ... and well it does not give any earth-shatteringly deep message either ... but then little things you know ... like whether it is right to judge someone by his/her GPA, the importance of the IIT stamp, the way they are handled provide a nice sentimental touch to go with the basically fun-filled story of 3 friends.

Well besides the trio-thing, the other similarities with DCH include a fallout and reunion of two of the friends. Well, as we know DCH went on to be a mini-classic. Well, not quite but it will - 50 years down the line - it definitely portrayed so well a generation - the decade of the 2000s. Will FPS go the same way ? I heard it is soon to be made into a Hindi flick ... well for now ... I would say it is definitely more than a five pointer ... and hell should I really be judging in those terms ??

Now We Might Understand Women Better !!

The Venus Express lifts off and the mission hopes to "lift the veil" off the planet named after the Goddess of Love. About time, I should say - after all we have been concentrating on Mars all these years. Men are from there isn't it ? So now that we have focussed our attention on Venus ...

Idealism Gone Awry

Ideally no one should have a problem with the ideals liberty, equality and fraternity. These are the ideals of French secularism that are themselves threatening to shake its very foundations and send France into a near Civil War - Dileep Padgaonkar of DNA analyses.

Cable Problems in Pune

Hathway cable service in the Erandawane region has been most unsatisfactory to say the least in recent times. Firstly, only 40 channels can be decently viewed. The other 30 that are available the signal is extremely weak. What's more is that important channels such as ESPN, BBC, DD Sports (at times STAR SPORTS) figure in the later group of channels. While pretty ordinary channels like the recent sensationalistic news channels, hungama etc. that hardly anyone would care a damn about are shown in the first category. Another issue is that Zee Sports which telecasted the Challenger series last week is not shown at all - it was shown in the adjoining Rajendranagar area - while several other Z channels ranging from Z Gujrati to Z Punjabi are shown.

It must be noted that whenever there is a cricket match on, one of the sports channels is swapped from the later group so it clearly proves that there is no technical reason as to why they should not be able to show all good channels at all times. Even assuming there is, it is understood that we are paying to see all available channels PROPERLY. This is really disturbing and someone needs to voice their concerns over this.

The Bacon Number

This is doch brilliant !!

Find out how Kevin Bacon is connected to Madhubala, Shahrukh Khan, Ajay Jadeja, Sunil Gavaskar, Will Smith and Nicole Kidman !!

The brilliant ideas some people can come up with ! And so ingeniously simple !

Link via Gaurav.

When Killers Become Healers

This post on Rediff describes how the jehadi organisations in POK are helping out the quake victims - common people, police and army-men alike.

They have reached the remotest areas where the Government has failed.

Goodness of heart or plain opportunism ?

The article goes on to imply that jehadi movement has been strengthened by the quake and that grateful 16-year old kids are keen on joining the Mujahiddeen.

The Unimplementable Laws

Last month was the nth occasion when the Maharashtra government was supposed to start the strict enforcement of the draconian helmet rule in Pune. And for the nth time it flopped. Why the Government expected that it would be successful on this occasion given n-1 previous failures and all other things remaining constant is a mystery. The Government's vain efforts on this front are now a source of great hilarity for Puneites and although it might have escaped them, an embarassment for the authorities.

And then some time last month, they announced a much more reasonable law comprehensively banning use of plastic bags in the state. This was, it was reasoned, as a response to the July 26th floods in Mumbai. Apparently, it was the clogging caused by plastic bags that caused the drainage systems to fail. The language of the legislation was terse and strict - no exceptions made. There were protests by the usual suspects happened of course - how will one get milk ? what about cooking-oil ? what alternatives are we supposed to use ? does the Government realise the amounts of price-hike this will cause ? etc etc - of course we needn't have bothered. After making a few noises for a couple of days everyone has forgotten about it. The starting date for the proposed ban is long gone and yet we see plastic bags existing happily in our daily lives, carrying items of day-to-day use, littering roads and (maybe) blocking drainage.

Writing

I am worried that I might lose my writing skills forever. By writing, more precisely I mean handwriting. In this era of the WWW who has the time or will to take a pen and paper and write ? Well, even if one decides to take the effort he is going to be the loser as he will be spending extra time and effort reproducing that in print again. Unless some one is willing to employ specialist typists for every little piece he writes ...

I do believe this is a great tragedy of the modern era. Surely, we agree on the importance of getting children acquainted with computers at an early age via courses in school but I don't think the day is too far when kids will not know what "hand-writing" refers to.

And there is more loss than one can immediately perceive. Handwriting is universally accepted as reflecting the character of a person. There is no need for me to go into details of this. Handwriting breeds of individuality - the lovely curly one, the straight clear yet not-very-beautiful one, the childish flabby one, the completely incomprehensible rubbish - all of these reflect different types of personalities. Hell, it is not for nothing that we used to have hand-writing contests and prizes for the best hand-writing in school in those good old days. What individuality does the typed word signify ? Reading this post, does it indicate in any way what kind of a person I am ? (Of course I do believe that reading emails and conversations a person does develop a certain style and it is reasonably possible for me to identify the sender/chatter based on the type of net-language used ... (for eg someone may be one to say 'yeh' one may say 'hi' etc) ... but that's not quite the same is it ?)

And most frighteningly, I do not see any really feasible solution. Any ideas ?

Go Gaurav

This post is to support Gaurav Sabnis, a Mumbai blogger who is involved in some pretty serious legal matters on account of some of his blog posts that sought to bring to the notice of the blogosphere certain issues regarding IIPM and a certain Arindam Chaudhary.

Im sure many of you must have heard about the story but for those of you are uninitiated or are unclear this post of Amit Varma is a good point to begin.

Of course you can find details of the latest from the above post and on Gaurav's blog. I just want to support Gaurav wholeheartedly for the principled stand he has taken and his determination to stand for freedom of speech. I also wish him all the best and hope that he emerges victorious.

Yes, I do have a lot more to say on the role of the blogosphere in this context, but for lack of time, that will have to be some time later.

Art And Science

What is Art ? What is Science ? How are they related ? Where does the boundary lie ? Is there an art in doing scientific research ? Is there a scientific way to create art ?

Questions aplenty.

Iqbal

Quite a fabulous movie. No other way to describe it.

About the only negative point about the movie was the way it was promoted - somehow it gave people the feeling that it would be a somewhat sad movie about a deaf-and-dumb youngster. But in fact, it is quite a brilliant feel-good movie while all the time being extremely realistic and down-to-earth. Definitely one of the best films of the year.

The simple life in the village is so beautifully portrayed with no efforts to glamorise or dramatise it anywhere. It feels as if you have just walked into this village and are meeting these lovely people. Cricket of course is the theme of the film, but it is not just about cricket. It is about the life of these villagers including but not restricted to the central character, their hopes and aspirations, their despairs and disappointments. It is about the bubbly and loyal younger sister (who is in the truest sense the heroine of the film - whoever said that a hero and heroine need to be romantically linked in a movie ?). It is about the loving and supportive mother, the stern yet good-at-heart father and most importantly about the extremely adorable, alcoholic coach Mohit- portrayed by the as-usual-brilliant Nasseruddin Shah. Mohit in his time himself was a fast bowler and a victim of political selection policies.

He is initially reluctant to coach Iqbal. This is due to various factors. Firstly he prefers to drink and sleep all day. Second he does not know how he is going to communicate. This is where the sister plays a stellar role. And third, he is convinced that nothing good can come out of being a fast bowler based on his own experience. Iqbal's persistence pays off and finally Mohit is drawn completely into it. He even tries his best to convince the austere father when the situation arises.

How he goes about teaching the raw, talented but extremely naive Iqbal the art of bowling is very cleverly depicted. The idea of Iqbal naming his buffaloes Kapil, Kumble, Harbhajan, Balaji and Irfan is very appealing. As is his idea of using them as stumps in his early days to practice bowling. Using them as fielders during practise to make the batsman play the shot that the bowler wants him to (a brainwave of Mohit's) is an intelligent one.

Of course towards the end, the plot is lost somewhat but that is bound to happen. But it is not completely lost like in most movies. The predictable aspects such as fixing in matches and selection are dealt with and while the end is a little over-dramatic it can be pardoned after such a beautiful effort.

My Experiments With Myself

Yesterday I planned my day to a T. Every minute was assigned a task (even relaxation and TV surfing was allocated a separate time slot).

Today I had the urge to try the exact opposite. I would plan nothing. Just take things as they come and do what I feel at that moment.

So far I am not really able to say with any conviction whether one was any better than the other. Maybe a compromise is the best solution. Ah well, the experiements will continue.

Happiness

The other day I read a brilliant article in The Times and cited on slashdot about happiness and its pschycological links. Unfortunately can't find it right now.

The most important point it made however, is that often are wants and likes are different. We crave for certain things and try our best to get them expending time and effort but in the end we do not end up liking them even if we manage to achieve them on most occasions. Such a simple thought and so true - yet something we don't always realise. It would be a good idea hence to remember the moments that made us truly happy and then try to recreate the situations that caused them.

The article also talks about, among other things, how the human race might have evolved in a manner such that when there is a danger or a crisis we make efforts to fight it but when all is going well we move into cruise control and take it for granted - make no effort to enjoy it or improve it. This is attributed mainly to the fact that our prehistoric ancestors had to fight against natural calamities during the Ice Age and then with wild beasts just to survive and now while that is no longer relevant our brain which has adapted to that resists change.


Update:
Meanwhile completely tangentially The Times (not the London times our very own Tabloid) says that Pune is the happiest city in India !! Isn't this too good or what !! Link via Amit Varma.