He isn’t talking of blogs

In Indian movies, when they need to need to imply that sex has taken place, they use some rather interesting techniques, such as showing the sun rising the morning after, showing fire burning brightly, showing leaves and other objects shaking, showing clothes strewn about…

Now that people can’t be shown lighting up, what techniques will they use? I don’t have the vivid imagination required, so I must ask my readers to help me with this. Inputs from Gults will be most appreciated, as their movies seem to show the most imagination, especially where creative use of a heroine’s belly button is concerned.

I don’t know the answer and you don’t, either. I just want to point out that there are many wrong ways of looking at it. Two wrong reasons to oppose the British Rule are:
Continue reading →

On 15th May 2005

Since we have been talking of gender differences, here is some more. Every year we see headlines like “Girls outshine boys” in CBSE/ICSE/State board results. The basis for the headline is that the pass percentage is better among girls than among boys. Can you tell me the real reason for the gap?

Hint: It involves discrimination against girls. Also, ignore the gap mentioned for CBSE results in the linked article. That is most probably not statistically significant. Usually the gap in state board exams is much higher – and that is another hint.

(See update below)
Prof Abi, over at Nanopolitan, has been tirelessly campaigning for politeness in debate. Dilip D’Souza in the comments section makes a perceptive observation. (See comment #17)

Abi, I notice you’re running up against the old motto: if I broadly agree with you, you’re arguing reasonably (even if I sometimes have my disagreements with you); if I don’t agree with you, you’re spewing vitriol.

Now let me change the subject completely.
Continue reading →

The last time I had published my Beginner’s guide, I had some success with tables. So let’s try again.
Continue reading →

Charu is puzzled by the questions being asked in the DNA survey. For those who are puzzled, DNA is the new newspaper being launched in Mumbai. It stands for – get this – Daily News and Analysis. They are making much of the fact that we, i.e the readers will create the newspaper, presumably by answering their questions and telling them what kind of newspaper we want.

Now I am not the marketing guy (Charu is) but my understanding is that the “survey” is basically fake, more of a brand-building exercise. I mean, if I were launching a newspaper or any other consumer product, I would certainly do a lot of surveys and focus group discussions. But I wouldn’t create a hoopla about doing those surveys. I can think of many, many ways in which such hoopla can bias the results. So I am inclined to think that what they are doing is not the real survey. But then, to repeat, I am not the marketing guy.

Shivam Vij* makes the strange, but all too common case that we libertarians pay insufficient attention to unethical business practices. He says this, not exactly in the main post, but in the comments section where Yazad tries to answer him. I think that Shivam’s criticism is misplaced -in a rather fundamental way.
Continue reading →

Amit Varma posts about Sanskrit names. As I remember it, one oddity of Sanskrit grammer is that gender is determined by the form of the word rather than the sex of the person. What I mean is, the first part of my name – Ravi is supposed to be pronounced with a short i at the end. That makes it male. But if my mom had named me Raveeee, then you’d have to address me as female, even though to the best of my knowledge I’ve been male all my life. And remember Sanskrit has a neutral gender too. One of the words for “wife” in Sanskrit is kalatram which, because of its form (ending in “um” ) is neuter. So if refer to your wife as kalatram, you’d have to point to her as “it”. (Actually, there is a word in for wife which is male – I don’t remember it)

More complications. How a noun ends in Sanskrit depends on the case. So if I am the object of a sentence (Amit shot Ravi) you’d have to call me Ravim (Amitaha shot Ravim.) In other words, google searches would become impossible in Sanskrit.

Wow! As I read this, there are 119 comments on Yazad’s post about poverty and if Yazad’s blog weren’t acting up a bit, I suspect there would be more. Unfortunately, much of the debate seems to be centred on Amit and others trying to get Dilip to confess to something. I don’t see the point. The question is not what he believes in his heart, but what he conveys through his article. I must insist that we look only at what the article says and not at any subsequent clarifications that he gives at Yazad’s place. The reason is simple. An article on Rediff and the Hindu reaches lakhs of ill-informed readers who aren’t going to come over to Yazad’s place to get further education on the topic. They are going to leave with an “overwhelming impression” and it is that impression that I am concerned with.
Continue reading →

found to be wrong.