AFP reports:
Security forces in Natanz have arrested two suspected “spy pigeons” near Iran’s controversial uranium enrichment facility, the reformist Etemad Melli newspaper reported on Monday.
[...]
“Early this month, a black pigeon was caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring, with invisible strings,” the source was quoted as saying of the second pigeon. The source gave no further description of the pigeons, neither their current status nor what their fate will be.
I read this news; I look out my window to ascertain the source of that cooing noise; and I realise that the Americans are spying on me as well. I shall, regardless, continue to enrich my nucleus. Time for a snack.
(Link via email from Neel.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 24 October, 2008 in
News |
WTF
Rediff reports:
The Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha are usually adjourned because of commotion. But on Thursday the Upper House was forced to adjourn briefly for an interesting reason—malfunctioning of the presiding officer’s seat. [...]
Deputy Chairman K Rahman Khan, who was in the chair, rose to cool tempers. But, when he was about to sit, the back cushion seemed to fall off. [...]
Soon after, Khan adjourned the House for 10 minutes. [...]
But the problem with the seat persisted when the House reassembled at 12:45 pm and Khan adjourned it till 13:30 pm.
There are two things to note here:
1] Parliamentary proceedings cost taxpayers Rs 26,000 a minute, and these dudes showed a remarkably cavalier attitude towards that money. If I was the speaker, I’d just have taken any random chair available and sat on that. Khan’s attitude is of a man who thinks that politicians rule the people, not serve them.
2] If our government can’t maintain a simple thing like the seat of the presiding officer of the upper house of parliament, what chance do you think they have of running the rest of the country well?
Earlier posts on parliament: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
(Link via email from Deepak Iyer.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 24 October, 2008 in
India |
News |
Old memes |
Taxes |
Politics |
WTF
I’m constantly amazed by how seriously many people, especially bloggers, take the online world, and this is a great illustration of how bad it can get:
A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband’s digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.
[...]
The woman used login information she got from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married, and killed the character. The man complained to police when he discovered that his beloved online avatar was dead.
I guess we’re all just looking for validation, and it’s as good in the virtual world as in meatspace. And rejection always hurts. But how do they punish this woman now?
(Link via email from DD.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 24 October, 2008 in
News |
WTF
Someday years from now Usain Bolt will look back fondly and tell a child on his knee, or maybe just his knee, that he was once able to run 100 metres in less than 10 seconds. Similarly, I am pleased to inform you that I once made 22 posts in a single day on India Uncut, and averaged five posts a day for a year. (I can’t be bothered to find that day now, but it’s somewhere on the old Blogspot avatar of this blog.) Well, I just counted how many days it took me to make my last 22 posts, and I find that they span almost two weeks.
Clearly I’m going through some kind of blogging midlife crisis, because there’s been nothing else in my life to keep me busy. It isn’t that I haven’t been in front of my computer, or have stopped surfing the net—I’m online as much as I used to be. But I’ve just been listless, unable to find anything interesting enough to blog about, unwilling to blog just for the sake of it. I’m certain this is a temporary phase, and the WTFness of the world will inspire me to resume my normal blogging pace. But until then, I wish to offer you consolation in the knowledge that the variety of bloggers out there for your edification is growing with every passing day—just consider the newest addition to that list.
Posted by Amit Varma on 23 October, 2008 in
Miscellaneous |
Personal
... has been announced. Your favourite blogger hasn’t made it there. My congratulations to the writers who did—I’m happy for them and look forward to reading their books, but if I ever find one of them walking in front of me on a promenade, and I happen to have a poison-tipped umbrella available, I don’t promise inaction.
Excerpts of most of the longlisted works are available here, and you can check out the first chapter of “My Friend, Sancho” if you feel like. I haven’t yet decided which publisher to go with—I have generous offers from three of them—but the book should be on the stands by the middle of next year.
Updates will follow.
Posted by Amit Varma on 23 October, 2008 in
Arts and entertainment |
My Friend Sancho |
Personal
1. If Rahul Gandhi is complaining about not having got justice, what chance does the rest of India have?
2. How often do celebrities change their clothes?
The first reader to answer both questions correctly wins a weekend holiday in Patna with Raj Thackeray.
Posted by Amit Varma on 22 October, 2008 in
India |
Miscellaneous |
Politics |
WTF
I have blogged before about how the malls in Mumbai tend to have security at the front entrance, and a terrorist could easily drive in to the parking lot in a car full of explosives and use the lift from there to enter the mall, strapped full of explosives. Well, front entrances aren’t much better.
Every time I go to Infiniti, my favourite mall because it contains the bookstore Landmark, the dude with the handheld metal detector does two things. One, he runs the detector over my left pocket, where I keep my cellphone and my keys—it beeps. Then he runs it over my right pocket, where I carry my wallet—it beeps. He then waves me through—no questions asked, no other part of my body checked.
In the Malad mall, In Orbit, they make me pass through a metal detector, and it always beeps. No matter, I am waved on through. Ditto at the Marriott in Juhu, where I once spotted Salman Khan—I’m guessing chinkaras would be stopped at the gate, so that’s okay.
And what about airports, where security should be highest? Well, there’s no checking of baggage all the way until the security check, so you could walk in with a bag full of explosives all the way till there. After that point, one would hope, we passengers are safe.
Or are we? Check out Jeffrey Goldberg’s splendid piece in The Atlantic, “The Things He Carried”, in which Goldberg describes how, with the help of security expert Bruce Schneier, he tested the USA’s airport security system in almost every detail—and found it wanting. As the introduction to the article says:
Airport security in America is a sham—“security theater” designed to make travelers feel better and catch stupid terrorists. Smart ones can get through security with fake boarding passes and all manner of prohibited items—as our correspondent did with ease.
Indeed, smart terrorists could also run circles around authorities in India with ease. Either the terrorists who’ve targeted us so far are not too smart—or we’ve been lucky. How long will that last, I wonder.
Also read: Bruce Schneier’s piece in Wired, “The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists”, which challenges conventional wisdom about “what motivates terrorists in the first place.” (And while on the subject...)
(Links via emails from Neel and Udhay respectively.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 20 October, 2008 in
India |
Miscellaneous
Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal:
More than ever on the campaign trail, the candidates are dropping their G’s. Hardworkin’ families are strainin’ and tryin’a get ahead. It’s not only Sarah Palin but Mr McCain, too, occasionally Mr Obama, and, of course, George W Bush when he darts out like the bird in a cuckoo clock to tell us we are in crisis. All of the candidates say “mom and dad”: “our moms and dads who are struggling.” This is Mr Bush’s former communications adviser Karen Hughes’s contribution to our democratic life, that you cannot speak like an adult in politics now, that’s too austere and detached, snobby. No one can say mothers and fathers, it’s all now the faux down-home, patronizing—and infantilizing—moms and dads. Do politicians ever remember that in a nation obsessed with politics, our children—sorry, our kids—look to political figures for a model as to how adults sound?
Noonan’s right, of course—but I would argue that this “infantilizing” of political speech is entirely appropriate. After all, consider the content of all our political rhetoric. Both Obama and McCain, like political leaders anywhere else in the world, speak in ridiculously simplistic terms that they surely don’t believe in themselves. On one hand, they pander to their base, whose vision of the world is often formed out of ideological slogans; on the other, they try to assuage voters by proposing simple solutions to complex problems such as unemployment, global warming and the financial crisis. To win elections, they have to dumb it down.
So it shouldn’t be surprising, then, that the style of fighting elections is catching up with the substance of it. Isn’t it like that in India also?
(Link via email from Sanjeev.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 20 October, 2008 in
Politics |
Small thoughts
This is superb. If only it was for real…
(Via email from Udhay.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 17 October, 2008 in
Politics
"The celebrated German poet Friedrich Schiller,” reports BBC, “dead for more than 200 years, has been sent reminders that he should pay his TV and radio licence fee… With the annual fee of about 200 euros (£157) unpaid since 1805 Schiller would owe more than 40,000 euros.”
“Three days after their suicides were discovered,” reports DNA, “recovery agents are still chasing the Nair siblings. Unaware that Suchitra, 46, and Sudhir, 42, committed suicide after killing their parents at their Raheja Estate apartment in Borivli, recovery agents and bank officials have been constantly calling up with repayment reminders.”
One funny story, one sad story. Such it goes.
Posted by Amit Varma on 16 October, 2008 in
News
