Land of stark contrasts

India and France signed a nuclear commerce agreement yesterday. Another step forward in international diplomacy. Sadly, while India's control over its nuclear programme is acknowledged, it is also recognized that Indians have no idea of crowd control. How else can anyone explain yet another temple stampede,this time in Jodhpur, right at the start of the festival season, the fourth major one this year to claim more than a 100 victims? Hundreds of small and big holy places are visited by millions of people everyday and yet there are no coherent public laws on crowd management. The next step up in the comity of nations will only come if such basic issues as public safety are addressed.

Festival season

Sharad Navratri has begun, so has Rosh Hashanah or the Jewish New Year, Ramzan is ending and it will be Id-ul-Fitr in a couple of days - it is that time of the year when tradition, family and delicious food occupy prime space. We will keep you up to date with events/celebrations in the days to come.

A huge prime (no sub)!

For numbers enthusiasts, a big piece of news. The frontiers of prime number research have been pushed back even further. A new 13-million digit prime number has been found by researchers at University of California,Los Angeles. Apart from the sheer pleasure of the discovery, they are also in line for a $100,000 prize.

TIPping point

Economists invariably use that phrase when describing a period, such as last two weeks in the financial sector, that causes decisive far-reaching changes. Could a similar similar situation be developing in science and technology? A report by the NGO, The Innovation Partnership (TIP)suggests that the patent system needs drastic overhaul. They argue that endless circles of patent protection have stifled innovation, sharing and co-operation. It has achieved the reverse of what it set out to do, namely, create novel products and services by assuring investors that strong intellectual property defences would protect thier investments. Instead, it has created isolated fortresses of patents that cannot be linked to develop new products such as cancer treatments.

Friend,guest,guide,invader

10 years ago, Google was founded in a garage in California. Today, it is most unlikely that you would browse the Web and not use a Google product or service on every visit. The rise of the company has been extraordinary - tomes of literature are available on this subject - and like all great businesses, it is based on the simplest of thoughts. The thirst for knowledge, the desire for information and the quickest way to find it drives every individual on the planet. What started as a simple Websearch tool has become a gargantuan network that many complain invades personal (and confidential) space. Perhaps it does. But think back and imagine if outstanding engineers like Visvesarayya or architects like Corbusier and Lutyens had Google maps at their disposal - the mind goggles!

The birds

Any casual observer in Rome would not have failed to notice the bird clouds at dusk especially over Termini. The short explanation for these formations is staying together to guard against predators. The real advantage these formations confer (given the steep drop in predator populations in our cities) is achieving cohesion when moving together. Have you ever been in a rally or a march where the crowd straggles and fails to keep together? That does not happen with the birds and they are in mid-air. For a layman's gist read here and you can find the full scientific article by researchers from CNR,Rome here.

If you want to know why predator numbers are down, this is the link to the 'State of the World's Birds Report' by BirdLife International. Sobering.

The end of ‘leave it to the markets’...

...in the words of a financial expert. I had blogged earlier about the return of समाजवाद – that is, the intervention of an avowedly pro-free market government when the situation requires. That was before the collapse of Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch. Since then the near total bailout of Wall Street institutions by the US government has only confirmed that thought. Thomas Friedman says it succintly in his NY Times column :

In sum, government’s job is to police that fine line between the necessary risk-taking that drives an innovation economy and crazy gambling with other people’s savings in ways that threaten us all.

The autumnal equinox

'An equinox in astronomy is the moment in time (not a whole day) when the centre of the sun can be observed to be directly above the Equator' according to the Wikipedia entry on this subject. Like with all celestial events, for mankind, the autumnal equinox tomorrow is associated with a range of festivals and fables. For geeks, it may cause temporary disruptions of your Internet conections!

Ecological Sunday in Chennai

Residents of Rome are familiar with the total pedestrianization of the centro especially in spring and summer. Now comes this initiative from the citizens of Chennai (Madras to those who still can't get over the name change) to reclaim space for the pedestrians of the city. The exponential growth in personal vehicles has made walking 'a hazardous activity' in many cities. Crossing the road anywhere, even at a zebra crossing, is risky. A bold step forward by the organizers of this event to focus attention on traffic and pollution.

Two contrasting timelines

On one hand, the credit crisis built up into a tsunami and swamped the big names in banking and investment. Billions of dollars have been lost, moved or injected as a result (all the figures here). Moves are afoot by the hour across the globe, to prop up the financial system.
In contrast, the saga of Alitalia continues as the latest buy out offer is withdrawn. The timeline started nearly two years ago and as yet there is no firm conclusion in sight. Evidence enough that even in a globalized integrated economy, similar events can still run at a different pace.

उधार की जिन्दगी!

झूठा झूठा मीठे बचन कहि रिन उधार लै
जाय लेत परम सुख ऊपजै लै
के दियो न जाय लै
के दियो न जाय ऊंच अरू नीच बतावै
रिन उधार की रीति माँगते मारन धावै
कह गिरधर कविराय रहै वो मन में रूठा
बहुत दिना होइ जायँ कहै तेरो कागद झूठा
—–गिरधर
The collapse of the US housing market introduced brought the word 'sub-prime' to the frontpage of every newspaper and website. The tumultous events of the last few days have affected thousands of people and have injected some more terminology in the public domain such as 'investment bank' and 'derivatives'. For a short glossary, read here . For details on the heart of the current crisis -living beyond one's means - an analysis by the Wall Street Journal. It is curiously similar to the words of Kavi Girdhar.

Lighten up -with odd book titles!

Humor may just be what is required in these gloomy market times. Earlier this year, Sir Salman Rushdie was awarded the Booker of Bookers for 'Midnight's Children'. This month, the Diagram of Diagrams, for the oddest book title in 30 years was announced and the winner is...

"....Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, Derek Willan's comprehensive record of a sector of Greece's postal routes, has been crowned the oddest book title of the past 30 years. Gary Leon Hill's People Who Don't Know They're Dead finished second and John Trimmer's guide to avoiding maritime mishaps, How to Avoid Huge Ships finished third.The vote to discover the oddest title of the past 30 years was run in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. The prize was first conceived by The Diagram Group's Bruce Robertson as a way of avoiding boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair."

For a complete list of annual prizewinning titles and how to get your hands on them, go here. If you have read any of them, please share your review!

Do we need a comma here, somewhere?

The Singur impasse, believe it or not, is stuck on the interpretation of the following sentence in the agreement between Mamtadi and the West Bengal government.

"....land to be provided to the maximum within the project area and the rest in adjacent areas as early as possible".

Mamtadi believes that it means that the "maximum amount" (400 acres by her demand) will be returned to the farmers. The government says it means "'maximum extent possible" and the exact area is yet to be defined. Read more about it here.
Can those who draft multilateral agreements help?

Blast from the past/ समाजवादी की वापसी

The grey haired generation (GenX, in Web language) among us will remember the halycon 70s when all banks in India were nationalized in one stroke. Over the last 6 months as the credit crunch assumed crisis proportions

• The UK government nationalized Northern Rock Bank
• The US Federal Reserve assisted the buy out of failing Bear Stearns by J. P. Morgan
• as well as the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America
• and propped up mortgage institutions, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
• On a related note, the Italian government has left no stone unturned to save Alitalia.

More than 10 years ago, the dot.com collapse left investors and entrepeneurs with huge losses, but no government agency intervened. That it is doing so now indicates the gravity of the situation, probably for a huge number of people. Governments have to step in when crises go out of hand. So, were the critics of unbridled laissez faire capitalism correct? Aren't these acts of socialism, a much maligned word in a post-WTO world?

Kumbhkarna's slumber/ कुम्भकर्ण की नींद

Delhi,Varanasi,Mumbai,Hyderabad,Jaipur,Bangalore,Ahmedabad, Surat (as a warning) and today, Delhi again. The chain continues and the average hardworking Indian is reduced to think ' where next' in this series of macabre attacks. Every time there is a series of blasts, a terror group quickly claims responsibility. Sadly, the government neither accepts nor discharges its responsibility. The terror mongers have their plan all thought through. But the law enforcing authorities have none in reply.Till date, India has not been able to formulate a coherent response - political, economic, judicial or military- to the rising tide of homegrown terror. (In contrast, Italy has soldiers on the streets to fight crime). Will the country's security set up stop sleeping on the job at least now that it has struck Delhi's poshest shopping areas?

Before the Nano, there is ......

....the bicycle.It is heartening to note that this non-polluting, no-space occupying and healthy mode of personal transport is showing robust sales in India. This year in particular has been excellent according to this article. No, the reason is not high fuel prices or inflation but something in keeping with our electoral traditions. Read on.

9/11- In memoriam

The tragic events of this day 7 years ago in the USA marked the end of the laissez passe (let it pass) phase in modern history. Since then safety and security are the buzzwords in all aspects of life - shopping, travelling, jobs, cellphone conversations and even Internet browsing. Wars are being waged on terror and just like the rest of the world, India has had to face up to the reality. That of fighting an organized and unseen enemy. A lot of individual freedoms have been compromised in its wake. Whether these are justified or not is a debate that will continue. But for all of us who lived through that day watching in horror at the TV screens, no single event has changed our lives in the last 10 years as the 9/11 attacks have.

In search of the cosmic beginning

The world's most ambitious physics experiment begins today near Geneva, Switzerland. Using a 27km-long underground tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scientists will attempt to re-create the conditions of the Universe at its birth. The project has taken 30 years from conception to switch on and has cost $10 billion so far. Read more about its mindboggling size and complexity here.

Would you like to be the President?

If so, just follow this link (thanks to a friend) and get your electoral campaign off to a great start. Just shows the power of computing and the Internet. You might just be a click away from the Presidency.

Paens

It has been a good year for Indian sport. There was an encouraging show by athletes at the Beijing Olympics. India beat Sri Lanka on their home soil in an ODI series for the first time. This weekend, the battle-scarred veteran Leander Paes, won the US Open mixed doubles title with Cara Black of Zimbabwe. He and his Czech partner, Lukas Dlouhy, finished as runners-up in the men's doubles. A phenomenal performance by the Warrior.

IAEA/NSG clearance to India

The issue of a nuclear deal between India and the USA has raised a storm over the last few months. Yesterday, the two principal multilateral organizations (the IAEA and the NSG) ended more than 30 years of nuclear isolation and allowed India to resume trading in civilian nuclear energy. While the debate over the impact of this waiver ('clean or not') rages on,the least that India gains is a chair at the nuclear high table and the space to negotiate for energy technology. A great achievement, by any standard.

The noble profession

My favourite teacher in high school was a gentleman who gave weekly lectures on science outside the school curriculum. Astronomy and its immense sweep was one topic. Another was items of daily life such a the utility of torque in bicycles, the principle of priming in water pumps, the difference between AC /DC. He comes to mind often when I explain something similar to my son.
Today is Teacher's Day in India. It is a time to remember that much of India's current knowledge muscle and technical expertise-based economy owes a lot to millions of unsung teachers who educate generations of young people.
Do you want to post a memory about your teachers? Go ahead and do so.

Ganapati bappa morya!

On the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi (3rd September), our greetings to all in the Indian community. Ganesha is probably India's favourite in the pantheon, for children and adults alike. The day also signals the start of the festival season.

Open thread 1: Rome schools

Many of you asked about schools and English medium education in Rome. Here is a link that summarily gives details about such schools in Rome.
http://www.romeschools.org/
- Does anyone want to start a discussion on this issue?
- Do you want to share your experiences?
- Which school would you unhesitatingly recommend to someone who has just arrived in
Rome?
Use the comments link below this post to communicate.