-
Does Gandhi need a two-bit politician to defend him?
Predictably, there's been quite a brouhaha over Joseph Lelyveld's book on Gandhi. All the self-appointed guardians of the honour of the nation, have frothed at the mouth and spouted nonsense, in their usual manner. I haven't read the book and, therefore I have no opinion on whether Gandhi was a homosexual/bisexual or any other kind of deviation ( Read more... ) -
Can we have a scam-free event in India, please?
I wonder if the World Cup tickets will be sold without controversy. It's not like selling tickets is rocket science. We know the expected demand, we know the available seats, we know the number of reserved tickets for sponsors and their ilk. We know all the variables in the equation! Create a transparent system for buying tickets. It shouldn't be ( Read more... ) -
steadily declining ambition
To every omega-consistent recursive class K of formulae there correspond recursive class-signs r, such that neither v Gen r nor Neg(v Gen r) belongs to Flg(K) (where v is the free variable of r ( Read more... ) -
alleyways, cul-de-sacs on the big road
I've been staring at the screen, trying to think through my next steps, for the past couple of days. I've tentatively planned two experiments and one dose of formal analysis for the next term. My supervisor thinks that the formal analysis is a bit ambitious, but I'm willing to give it a shot. While I know the general aim of the two experiments, ( Read more... ) -
The scientific method and the Election Commission
Recently, a team managed to conclusively prove that the EVMs used in Indian elections are vulnerable (ref: http://indiaevm.org/evm_tr2010.pdf). And as a even more scary conclusion, it's difficult to prove that tampering has taken place. This is the perfect circumstances, that someone ( Read more... ) -
connectedness, privacy and the orwellian nightmare
I wait a week or so before posting about a topic (as a sort of litmus test of whether I really feel strongly about it. But this time I've waited for more than a month and I find that the more I wait, the more disturbed I get ( Read more... ) -
a quick link to a disturbing essay
More often than not, I don't agree with Arundhati Roy's methods or conclusions (and sometimes her writing is downright silly ["We count to twenty and then start from one, because that's as far as most Gonds count. Twenty is enough for them. Maybe it should be enough for us too."]), but democracy means the stories that she tells must be allowed to ( Read more... ) -
Sierre, Switzerland
Am in Sierre for a conference. Of course, I'm couchsurfing :-). My hosts are constantly amazed at my attempts to speak french. It's just the fact that I'm making an effort, when I could easily get by in English. My hosts are all art students and hence one of my assignments is that I have to create some art before I leave their house. I'm more ( Read more... ) -
first python project
By sheer chance, I've started using Python for my experiments. I'm coding up a double-auction market with buyers, sellers, applications that ride on top of buyers and strategies. It's basically a discrete event simulation package and by far the definitive implementation is JCAT (http://jcat. ( Read more... )