Being poor in a poor country
What is, still, striking about India is its poverty. What is even more striking is the absolute indifference that people display to the poverty they see right in front of their eyes. Last evening, as I was walking around in T Nagar, Chennai, I saw a little boy (no more than 4 years old), holding something small in his hand and playing with it in the street. I could not see what he was holding in his hand, as the street was not that well lit. He was, basically, playing like any other kid his age – with something that he has access to, and moving it around as if it was moving a car or a bus. I have seen my own son play like this all the time, but the obvious difference was that this kid was doing so on the street, right next to a dumpster. The real shock came when I saw what was happening inside the dumpster – the kid’s parents were looking for food to eat. Worse still, I was the only passerby even remotely interested in this. Others were minding their business, most with a cell phone attached to their ear, completely oblivious of what is happening around them. Such desensitization is common here and that is something truly disturbing.
It is merely random chance that the kid I saw was born in poor household and I just don’t know how people who believe in God can square what this kid has to go through with their belief in a benevolent god. This child, needless to say, has not done anything to gain anyone’s wrath. If an all powerful god exists, shouldn’t He be making life better for this innocent child? Not that this kind of argument has not been made before – just that the striking disparity that exists here highlights the inherent contradictions in the benevolent-god model.
Upcoming events
Couple of interesting events at Chennai this week. First
Chennaiyil Tiruvaiyaru will be part of the Music Festival to be held in Kamarajar Arangam, Chennai from 20 to 25 of December, 2008. On the Inaugural Day, December 20, 2008, Pancha Ratna Kritis will be rendered at 10:30 a.m.
…
Led by the renowned musician Padmabhushan P.S. Narayanaswamy, all musicians and music enthusiasts will sing Pancha Ratna Kritis.Admission to the inaugural session is FREE.
The stage will be the replica of the Thyagaraja Aradhanai Mandapam at Tiruvaiyaru. It can accommodate about 300 artistes. Besides, arrangements have been made to distribute printed version of Pancha Ratna Kritis to the audience, who too can join in the rendering on the inaugural day.
This six day Music Festival will commence at 10:30 a.m. and end at 10:00 p.m. on each day.
and then …
Carnatic Music is in the air at Chennai
16th of December, the first day in the month of Margazhi in Tamil Calendar, marks the start of Carnatic music season at The Music Academy in Chennai. Concerts take place in several venues in and around the city, and are covered well by the local print, online and television media outlets. Significant number of these concerts are free. There is even a free shuttle, named “Carnatic Express”, to go from one venue to another!
This is the place to be for Carnatic fans at this time of the year. Enjoy Sikkil Gurucharan sing Papanasam Sivan’s “Mahalakshmi Jaganmata” – ragam Shankarabharanam, set to Misra Capu Talam.
iPaper for document publishing
I have been looking for a way to embed documents in a blog post. PDF or word document links are ugly as they require downloading of the document for searching. I think iPaper is an interesting option for publishing documents in blogs. It is fast, searchable and embeds easily. Here is a sample – Life, Work and Legacy of Physicist Subramanyan Chandrasekhar presented in 25 slides.
No yield is good yield
or so it seems. You can buy 1 month and 3 month US treasury bonds now, and get back what you invested on maturity. Needless to say, the last time this happened was during the great depression.
People are willing to accept lower and lower interest rates from US Treasury now, as it is seen as a very safe place to invest money in these troubled economic times. So, there is a clear flight-to-quality reason for the treasury yield rate drop. But why would the yield hit zero? Why not shove the money under the matress, instead of doing something bizzare like investing on something that returns nothing? Well, fund managers of money funds that only invest in safe Treasury bills do not have the option of not ivesting. Demand for treasury bills from such fund managers has caused this event.
An instructive king and pawn endgame position
Robert Wade vs Victor Korchnoi at Buenos Aires, Round 10, 1960
Black played 36…Kh5-g5 to reach this position
White has a forced win at the board position. But, black could have drawn, if he had not blundered with Kh5-g5.
Anti Doping Madness
Chess as an Olympic sport sounded awful to me when I heard it 10 years back and that idea hasn’t aged well. First of all, chess has its own, once in 2 years, Olympiad with a rich tradition and history. It does not make sense to include chess in a setting where the motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius – Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Olympics is fundamentally an athletic endevor, after all. But, FIDE has been pushing for inclusion of chess and IOC has been rejecting it for a while now. That has not stopped the overlords at FIDE from insisting on the insanity that it is – drug testing in chess, which apparently is an IOC requirement for a sport to be included in Olympics. Now, it looks like this madness is going to have its first high profile victim – Vassily Ivanchuk. In the frustration of losing his board one game against Kamsky in the last round of the Olympiad, Ivanchuk, the person designated in the Ukraine team to take the drug test, left the venue without taking the test. Of course, in the world of drug testing one is guilty until proven otherwise. So missing the test is equivalent to being tested positive under the rules and this could result in a 2 year ban for Ivanchuk. That is right – a two year ban, for one of the finest characters among the top pros in chess, for not participating in something whose value no one can adequately explain, anyway. Shirov thinks FIDE should be banned. It should atleast be cleansed of the likes of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. It is a disgrace that top quality professional chess players have to dance to the tunes of this millionaire autocrat, but I still think FIDE will find some excuse to bury the matter rather than solve this problem once and for all by removing the dumb doping regulation. For a nice compendium on what the leading chess players in US think of this doping regime read this.
Meteor blogging
Massive fireball lights up Prairie skies in western Canada.
It wasn’t a bird, and it sure as heck wasn’t a plane, but whatever was in the sky over western Canada on Thursday night was very exciting for the people who saw it.
Was it the lost tool bag?
UPDATE:
No, it was not, says Space Weather
On Nov. 22nd, veteran satellite observer Kevin Fetter video-recorded the backpack-sized bag gliding over his backyard observatory in Brockville, Ontario: 900 kB video. “It was easily 8th magnitude or brighter as it passed by the 4th magnitude star eta Pisces,” he says. Spaceweather’s satellite tracker is monitoring the toolbag; click here for flybys.
UPDATE: Ed Light of Lakewood, NJ, saw the toolbag on the same night. He observed it using 10×50 binoculars and estimates its magnitude at +6.4. “It was a favorable pass, elevation 70 degrees,” he says. “Lower apparitions would be fainter.”
नास्तिक (heterodox) 