Update: Cancelled because of rains.
I hope that Mumbai’s recent difficulties have not put the Bombay Bloggers Meet out of your minds. It will still take place as planned, at Prithvi theatre, at 3:00 PM this Sunday.

I had some trouble over two days, not all of which I asked for. Here are the highlights.
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Amit has a link filled post on what happened at Gurgaon yesterday. As far as I can make out, it was not a case of crowd-control gotten out of control. It was a retaliatory act. The police beat up the protesters to punish them. Amit points out, correctly, that both sides seem to be responsible for escalating the fight. That may be true, but that is not the point. These are not two “sides”. One “side” is the police, who are an instrument of the government. If my speculation is true -i.e. they beat up the workers as a punishment for the crime of beating up the policemen, the policemen should be punished more than the guilty workers. I am sure Amit will agree with me on this.
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Nilu accuses three of us, i.e. me, Yazad and Gaurav of having developed a patronizing attitude bordering on condescension. The problem, you see is that we are so smart that we sometimes find it difficult to get down to the appropriate level to explain things to you people.

I commonly hear this complaint against us libertarians. We are too impractical because we insist on dogmatically following our own principles. Far better, our critics say, is it to take a case-by-case basis.

This post is for them. Please note, I am not addressing people whose principles differ from ours. This post is only addressed to those who say that it is more pragmatic to take up things on a “case to case” basis. It is my intention to prove you wrong. If you feel that my description of your views oversimplifies the issue, please accept my apologies and read on. The actual post will make amends.
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What does “sic” mean?
No googling.

The Economist reports on China revaluing its currency and says that this has made a soft-landing more likely. However, I stick by my prediction.

The Indian Blogosphere has gotten into one of its periodic fits of wondering about what to do about nasty comments. I have stayed out of previous discussions on the subject, but I fear that I cannot resist any more.

As you can see, I do enable comments. I have been fortunate in that most of the comments – in fact, the overwhelming majority of them, have been civil and intelligent ones. I’ve hardly had to do any policing, and the little I do has to do with deleting spam that spam karma catches for me. It’s not as if I steer clear of controversial topics. So I suppose that the quality of my comments section entitles me to some bragging rights which I shall herewith proceed to expend.
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Update: Cancelled because of rains.
As I was saying, the Bombay Bloggers Meet for July will actually take place. It will take place on the 31st of July, which is a Sunday. I was saying that we have chosen a venue for the Meet. It will be held at Prithvi Theatre.

Wait a minute! I hear you ask. Isn’t that a somewhat unusual place for a Bloggers Meet? Apparently, no. I am told that there is a restaurant at the premises, where food and coffee can be had. If the location proves unsuitable, there are many other places nearby where more coffee can be had. Therefore, it has been decided (after extensive and wide-ranging discussions) that that is where we shall all meet. The only downside to the venue is that newcomers can no longer adopt the usual heuristic to find the table where the Bloggers are sitting, viz. check for the table where the people look the weirdest. Hence we shall find some other way of identifying ourselves.

What else? Yes, the address. This is what I have been able to find:

Prithvi Theatre
Janki Kutir
Juhu Church Road,
Mumbai
and the time of the meet is 3 PM as usual. Unfortunately, apart from this, I have no idea how to get there. But I am sure I can find a way, and so can you. Thank you.

Remember, long long back I had asked Was the British Raj good for India?

That post got me an astonishing 64 comments. That makes me feel guilty about leaving that tantalising “January 14th, 1761” remark open ended. Now that the Prime Minister has caught the Advani disease, I suppose this is as good a time as any to examine what happened on January 14, 1761.

Yes, that date refers to the third battle of Panipat, one which the Marathas lost rather ignominously, and some would say, unnecessarily. There are two ways to look at the defeat. One way is the Narlikar way.
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Indira Gandhi declared the emergency after losing an election related court-case right?
Who was her lawyer? Very easy. No googling.

The onerous task of conducting the next Bombay Bloggers Meet has fallen on my shoulders. I realise that this is not a task that can be undertaken lightly. Therefore, after extensive and wide-ranging discussions, I have taken the first (and only) decision that is involved in being a Conductor of the Bombay Bloggers’ Meet.

I have chosen a venue.

The importance of this decision cannot be misunderestimated. The two most important decisions involved in setting up a meeting are choosing a venue and deciding a time. Opinions are divided on which of the two is more important.

Some say that deciding on a time is the most important thing. If a venue is chosen, but not the time, people will probably land up at the venue at different times. They will not find other participants and naturally, they will get confused. If the venue chosen is a public place like a restaurant, they might go around asking random people if they have come to attend the meeting. Finding that no one there has come to attend the meeting, they might give up and join some other meeting.

“Precisely” says the opposing school of thought. If a venue is chosen, but not the time, people can still have the meeting. It will just not be with the same set of people they were supposed to meet in the first place. On the other hand, if a time is chosen but not the venue, people will start off without knowing where to go. Now, while time is a single dimension, space is two-dimensional.(Some people say that given that highrises are a fact of life in a city like Bombay, it is more accurate to call space 3-dimensional.) Therefore, the probability that two people who set out for a meeting without knowing a venue will meet accidentally is much lower than the probability that two people who attend a meeting at a venue without knowing the time of the meeting will meet.

This discussion of course, does not take into account the impact that technology has had on the conduct of modern meetings. In many respects, it has made it possible to conduct a meeting without choosing a venue, though purists might object that such meetings would amount to stretching the definition of “meet” too far.

The foregoing discussion, while interesting in its own right, is reduced to being of only academic interest in the present context. That is because I have, after due deliberation, chosen both a time and a venue for the Bombay Bloggers Meet for July ’05.