Jharkhand Debacle

I can’t share Swapan Da’s outrage over Jharkhand. Now don’t get me wrong, one is perfectly entitled to feel outrage over the rather unsavory spectacle of Rajnath Singh colluding with Shibu Singh Soren, otherwise known for rather dubious distinction of absconding from law as minister at centre, for spoils of power.  This crass display of opportunism is a perfect example of the cynical maneuvering infesting Indian politics that so disgusts decent middle class. So I get the outrage expressed by petite bourgeoisie over the fiasco.

 

Unfortunately however, for BJP supporters like myself (and Swapan Da, presumably), that boat sailed long ago when Kalyan Singh did bulk purchase of Congress and BSP MLAs to prop up his government, or when Keshubhai Patel rescued his government through rather questionable means.

 

If someone supports BJP at present it means he or she supports BJP despite the (hardly concealed) acts of corruption by BJP when in power both in past as well as at present. This fact makes any display of indignation specifically over Jharkhand puzzling at best. Of course there is always the proverbial last straw, but in that case it simply doesn’t make sense to reserve ire solely for Rajnath Singh or specific individual, rather pox should be on the whole Delhi Durbar, and that includes Arun Jaitley.

 

This is not to say a BJP supporter can not feel indignation, but the ground for that is markedly different from issue of ethics viz. the arrangement in Jharkhand is an ill conceived political strategy. This is because the action erodes BJP’s credibility at a moment when it can not afford to. Because BJP’s experience with coalitions is far from inspiring confidence, with delivery of gains in short term but severe liability to the party in long term. I think one can safely assume that present situation has been engineered by a coterie of fixers for personal gain over larger interest of party.

 

To reiterate what I said in earlier post, if BJP wishes to survive if must regain the trust of public, which is only possible if BJP gives heed to voters instead of Napur or Delhi.

Respecting the intelligence

Here is the thing. When I watch movies, I want entertainment. As long film entertains me, whether a screwball comedy, or a high adrenaline thriller, I am not really concerned if the director respects my intelligence. Movies are for escape, books are for enlightenment. I suspect that people looking for respect in films doubt their intelligence and hence look in the cinema for confirmation. Thankfully on account of being incredibly intelligent, I am protected from such madness.

Mandatory Voting

I am not a big fan of mandatory voting. This has less (read hardly anything) to do with individual rights. Even if I were a Randroid instead of a Hindu Fascist, mandatory voting is no more a violation of individual rights than mandatory taxation. The reason I am not in favor of making voting mandatory is it inconveniences people without anything positive to show for it. I have written it many time but it bears repeating, problem with democracy in India is disengagement at grass root level, people blame this disengagement for disenchantment with the democratic institutions and this is true to some extent, however the main reason for this disengagements, I believe, is that our democratic institutions, combination of Westminster style democracy and relics of colonialism, were imported, instead of being allowed to evolve from existing social institutions. The result of this was culturally there was hardly any connection between democracy and Indian society, which is manifested in the disengagement.  

Forcing people to exercise their franchise will not change this situation.

Disconcerting secrecy

While writing about global warming, I didn’t write on the CRU leak because I have only followed one side of the controversy, and so my opinion on it is naturally biased. However one particular aspect of the controversy which I find particularly troublesome is that some climate scientists are refusing to disclose the information about models used to analyze climate change, now with the caveat that I don’t know to what extent this is true, this is a serious matter. If the scientists are serious about the threat posed by climate change, they should be as open and forthcoming as possible, citing intellectual property rights as excuse for not disclosing the information just diminishes their credibility and what is important that of climate science.

Disnified Politics

As far as India is concerned, postnationalism is to reality what Winnie the pooh is to real bears.

Why Sarah Palin Is Right*

(Originally A Call For Inaction)


Related Post

For long I get a uncomfortable feeling whenever the topic of discussion turns to global warming (also known as climate change, or Al Gore's lamentation) .  Problem is I don't know about science of climate change, and while arguing from point of ignorance is fun, such a debate doesn't serve any constructive purpose, unfortunately of course for many people entertainment of pissing contests is the point.

Now my ignorance of climate science doesn't surprise me, the things I am ignorant of vary from string theory to cooking vermicelli. However unlike string theory or cooking vermicelli, climate science affects public policy which is why some sort of understanding is required. Now I admit that when I had become skeptic of climate change, it was partly a fatigue to incessant, and one suspects grossly exaggerated, alarm about global warming.

But if global warming is crucial for deciding public policy, some sort of understanding is essential, and yet climate science is too complicated a subject for someone like me to understand in his spare time. This being the case, I was stuck in undecided category.

Then sometime back it struck me I was approaching the problem from wrong angle. The correct approach, since the question involved public policy, was to do a cost-benefit analysis. Again since I don't understand climate science, I can not estimate the cost of global warming. As it turns out, it is much simpler to estimate the cost of global warming mitigation, which I will try to explain in as complicated terms as possible,

For calculation, I am assuming that  Al Gore is right and carbon dioxide indeed causes the global warming**, and global warming is a clear and present danger*** (and by clear and present I mean around fifty years on geological scale). Further it is reasonable to assume that warming on global scale must be lagging indicator of  percentage of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

This implies that effect of a reduction in carbon dioxide will be visible in terms of reduced temperature only after certain period of time, let's say thirty years (considering the geological time scale it errs on the side of caution)

 Now if both the previous assumption statement are correct, one might conclude it is necessary to not just reduce the output but to actually reduce the carbon dioxide present in atmosphere. Which means that the output should be reduced to a amount less than what can be removed by the natural processes.

What does this mean? Again assuming that the amount that can be removed through natural processes has remained constant****, output must be reduced to pre-Industrial revolution level (when presumably the warming started). There is a problem though, carbon dioxide is just a by-product of energy consumption, as there are no significant non carbon dioxide producing energy sourcing  reducing output in effect means reducing energy consumption to pre-Industrial revolution level, in fact as world population has increased manifold it would imply an unimaginable reduction in per capita energy consumption.

Why unimaginable? Well, energy consumption is a good indicator of the living conditions, generally better living conditions imply higher energy consumption. Therefore a decrease in per capita energy consumption to less than pre-Industrial revolution levels essentially implies living conditions of average human will revert to the same era.

And while many people may hold romantic notion of a pristine earth unsullied by machines, in reality this will mean a life plagued by poverty, hunger, want and disease, a life wasted in daily grind for survival.

Economic holocaust in other words.

I am not sure that global warming is worth it.

*Not really, this was just to bait Respected Ma'am

** Though industrial pollution also means more smoke which I believe reflects lights.

*** Though to put things in perspective, earth has been much warmer than predicted for global warming earlier, and contrary to doomsday scenario for global warming, life thrived. Also extinction of large number of species is a natural phenomenon.

**** Though geoengineering may remove atmospheric carbon dioxide. Its feasibility should be studied.

Not that ...

..any of you will have any idea but aren’t restrictions on insider trading kind of stupid?

The List

Here is what I want to write about if the notion strikes me, swiss minaret ban, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, and Swapan Das Gupta.

Combinations you like

You know what tastes really good ?  Black Currant. Hey wait, Rum n Raisins is wonderful too. A bit of dilemma, isn't it? You know what, go ahead take a double scoop, 'cos you deserve that.

Now 'spose there is a special place in your heart for sci-fi, but wait you also are a sucker for western. Well if that be the case Firefly is just what you need. It is awesome and it is double scoop. Now why the heck was it cancelled!

For Code Monkeys

1.       No you don’t have to design before implementation in all cases. You may have read it in some standard software book, or you may have learnt it in your first company, but it is wrong. You should design only if you need to. So when do you need to design? Glad you asked. Here is when you should design. When you think that spending time on design is going to benefit the implementation, this is only when what you are implementing is non-trivial, i.e. some sort of system or framework for system, it also implies that you are familiar with the underlying infrastructure. However if what you are doing in effect is tweaking parameters of some function, and you are not familiar with the underlying implementation, there is no point in having a design.

 

2.       Guess what is not in the ten commandments Moses brought with him from the mountain. If you guessed thou shall comment every line of code, Congratulations. See, comments are for a purpose, specifically to convey information for maintenance of the code. And believe it or not, there is something like too much information. Which is why, comment no more than what is necessary for the intended purpose. This is why comment should not be trivial. Here is what you can comment.

 

a.       A brief comment at the beginning of the function stating the purpose of function and some other critical information. This is useful for automatic documentation.

b.       Inside the function, comment only to provide overview of the algorithm and that too only when the implementation of algorithm is non intuitive.

c.       Similarly comment there is some particular piece of code which is not very intuitive to understand, this may happen when you are fixing some bug.

 

Fortunately rule for what not to comment is simple. Never comment on any thing which is trivial. This means, you need not comment for every damned variable declaration /definition, loop, or control.

 

3.       I forgot, there is one more rule about what not to comment. It is the FREAKING OBSOLETE CODE. Yes, I know some of you are under impression that it is a very good practice. Here is my request, die, preferably painfully. Obsolete code is not documentation and doesn’t provide information in concise form for maintenance. Instead the commented code keeps piling on cycle after cycle and the rotting stench of thousands of lines of obsolete code just repels anyone from actually reading the code. If you are commenting obsolete code for reversion, then either you are too stupid, or you work in a really pathetic company which can not afford any tool for version control.

 

4.       Objected oriented programming is a paradigm which means approaching the problem from a specific direction. Specifically the problem must be understood in terms of objects which are implements as classes and their behaviors which is implemented as functions. This means that if you have flag to track some property of the object it is not required to return the flag in the “Get” function. Instead the proper behavior of the function is to return the property of the Object as accurately as possible.

 

Hindu fascist thought of the day

In secularism Hindu is the Untermensch.

 

Dear (intellectual) wannabes

Not to go all Goldwater on you but, nuance for sake of nuance is NOT a virtue.