You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2011.
Times Now has posted an interview of Bal Thackeray. I liked it. He make outlandish statements but he also shows a human side I almost felt sorry for. (Before someone writes back, that doesn’t mean I agree with him.)
The reporter could have asked better questions. And speaking of that, why wasn’t Arnab Goswami interviewing Thackeray? That would’ve been a cracker.
Kapil Sibal joins the IIT-’world class’ debate:
“25 per cent of the IIT faculty are students of IITs who have done B Tech. Surely the 25 per cent students who are world class students must be world class faculty,” he told reporters here in reference to Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s remarks that the faculties of IITs and IIMs were not world class.
This circular logic is incidentally what IIPM had made popular.
Not surprising, but faculties disagree with Jairam Ramesh that IITs and IIMs are not world class institution. And I’m glad they let their words do the talking as opposed to their deeds.
[Source]
In a development being seen by many as an embarrassment to ruling JD (U), party MLA Ramsevak Singh was on Tuesday arrested along with his brother, three bodyguards and a driver for allegedly assaulting four youths and pouring petrol into their rectum at Asmat Gola in Gopalganj district’s Balesara village on Monday and Tuesday.
I have stopped seeking explanations for human behaviour.
The popover text in today’s XKCD comic reads: Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at “Philosophy”.
I started with the first word that came to my mind: Tokyo. Thirty links later, I was at Philosophy.
Give it a try. 93% of all Wikipedia articles lead to Philosophy. There is even some literature on the internet about it (which is the best sentence I’ve written in a while).
***
May I interest you in reading a paragraph linking this phenomenon to the fact that our lives are filled with existential questions we all seek answers to; in other words, Philosophy?
The Big Picture, as always, brings the only silver lining to a disaster: Photos from Joplin, Missouri after yesterday’s devastating tornado.
Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has kicked up a controversy claiming that the faculty at the premier Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management is not world class.
“IITs are surviving because of their students. There is hardly any worthwhile research from our IITs. The faculty in the IIT is not world class. It is the students in IITs who are world class. So the IITs and IIMs are excellent because of the quality of students not because of quality of research or faculty,” said Ramesh in New Delhi on Monday.
Why is this a controversy? Who disagrees and why?
***
I don’t agree that the students of IITs and IIMs are world class: They are the best we have at cracking systems. I wouldn’t equate that with being good students of a field.
But that’s getting into semantics.
Coke Studio is back: Season 4 Episode 1. I’m having trouble downloading songs from the official website but you can watch videos there or over at YouTube.
I’ve had a few minutes and I see that the backup singers are different. Oh and the music looks good.
***
Your move, Indian Coke Studio.
***
P.S. Links to mp3s and videos here. The songs are meant to be freely available so don’t feel guilty downloading them .. unless you’ve done something else horrible.
Me, writing about Himalaya:
It’s theme is the conflict between old and new and it’s plot is the survival of indigenous people in some of the harshest geographical conditions on this planet.
I want to blame something. Let’s start with sleep. Then general rustiness. If nothing works, anxiety about tomorrow’s rapture.
(Don’t go looking for it; it’s been corrected.)
**
Thanks, Manasi.
