Happy New Year!

Happiness!

More Happiness!

And, do remember to say no to new year resolutions!

Have a great 2006, folks!

The Hindu on the IISc 'incident'

In its second editorial in as many days on the terrorist attack in the IISc campus, the Hindu argues, rightly, that converting academic institutions into 'armed fortresses' cannot be the response.

... Increasing security entails two kinds of costs. One is monetary, which can be considerable. The other is inconvenience: if security procedures become onerous, the institution's links with the larger community of scientists and society will be severely damaged. As the director of a leading national research laboratory remarked, an academic institute cannot — and should not — be secured like a military base. IISc will be increasing its security but will strive to do this in a non-intrusive way through a mix of technology and management, according to its director, P. Balaram.

Moreover, when the aim is to spread fear through mayhem and create a sense of vulnerability, there is no dearth of `soft' targets in Bangalore — or, for that matter, in any southern city — for determined terrorists. ...

Instead, it calls for 'systematic steps' to combat terror:

So putting in place city-wide measures against terrorism is an imperative. In London, for instance, a wide network of surveillance cameras proved invaluable in swiftly identifying the perpetrators of the July 2005 bombings. Likewise, it is important to make sure that the local police have the tools they need to cope with terrorist organisations and terror attacks, including the latest in technology and the training needed to wield it effectively. But even if all of this is done, the painful truth is that absolute security is going to be impossible.

Prof. Balaram, Director of IISc, addressed the presspersons yesterday. You can read the HIndu's report here.

Where do we want to go?

My take on the direction in which our education system should go (partly provoked by this):

• Education at the primary level must be universal, free and funded by the government. Right now, all these are enshrined in law, but large holes remain both in quality of education, and in the number of students being educated. We must find ways to plug these holes.
• Our current system of publicly funded schools discriminates against poor people. The standard of all these schools must be raised, over time, to that of a Kendriya Vidyalaya (at the least).
• Our schools must move from their present, highly centralized paradigm to one that gets the local community involved.
• For admission into undergraduate and graduate programs, we should aim for just one pan-Indian entrance examination, offered on demand and in as many subjects as necessary.
• Higher education, whose real cost is quite high, is enjoyed by a small minority (about 6% of the relevant population). This percentage may increase, but I don't foresee college goers ever becoming a majority. Therefore, I am against subsidizing higher education. Having said that, I have no problem if the government wants to (or is compelled to) fund higher education by running a college.
• A strong, independent regulation of colleges and universities is a must. It should specify a set of essential behaviours and another of unacceptable behaviours, with a focus on mandating unconditional disclosure of a lot -- a lot! -- of information in the public domain.
• Colleges and universities, run as non-profit entities, must have complete freedom to choose their mix of programs, fees, admission criteria, and in fact, pretty much everything.

Currently, our education policies are characterized by over-centralization, rigidity, an inability to innovate, and an inability to create and nurture large (or even adequate) numbers of high quality institutions. Worse, they have run aground quite a few institutions of excellence that existed at the time of independence. Thus, they have, perversely, forced students to compete for entry into the few good places; in an ideal world, it is the universities and colleges which should be competing for good students.

We should move towards large numbers of universities of all sizes, each with its own unique mix of programs and fee-scholarship structure. Such a system will be student-centric, because stringent disclosure norms would allow students to make an informed choice, and diversity will ensure there is something for everyone. With regulators ensuring only the tiniest of entry barriers, universities will have to compete for students -- good ones in particular. The diversity and competition can be relied on to produce high quality education -- if not for all -- for a far larger number of students than at present.

* * *

Let me take this opportunity to wish you all a happy new year.

Just say no ...

... to new year resolutions. It will make you happier. So says Timothy Wilson, a professor of psychology at the University of Charlottesville, in this wonderful NYTimes op-ed.

In his article, Wilson uses a couple of nice quotes:

"Self-contemplation is a curse / That makes an old confusion worse", by the poet Theodore Roethke.

"We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage", by Aristotle.

Social psychologist Daniel Batson and colleagues at the University of Kansas found that participants who were given an opportunity to do a favor for another person ended up viewing themselves as kind, considerate people - unless, that is, they were asked to reflect on why they had done the favor. People in that group tended in the end to not view themselves as being especially kind.

The trick is to go out of our way to be kind to others without thinking too much about why we're doing it. As a bonus, our kindnesses will make us happier.

Wilson advises us to not waste our time thinking about all that we did wrong during this year, and about how we can improve upon them in the new year. In other words, no new year resolutions. The advice is based on the finding that when you brood over negative stuff in your life, well, you end up with an even more negative mood. The punchline is this:

If we are dissatisfied with some aspect of our lives, one of the best approaches is to act more like the person we want to be, rather than sitting around analyzing ourselves.

I like the advice about new year resolutions, and it has already made me happy. I can't imagine how much happier I will be when I actually follow this advice ...

***

Cross posted at nanopolitan 2.0, where I also featured another article on the theme of 'happiness and the new year'.

All that glitters: the complete series

A while ago, we looked at a New York Times story about the serious damage unleashed on the environment by a violent production method known as heap leaching using cyanides. Since the present day gold ores have far lower gold content than in the past, more and more abusive and 'torturous' methods are used to tease gold out, and heap leaching is the most common.

It turns out that the reporters of that story have also published two other stories, examining some of the ill effects of gold production in several other countries as well. I seem to have missed them, but found them all through today's story by Kirk Johnson.

They are all quite long, and highly informative. The environmental damage they recount is chilling. Do read them, and you won't look at gold with the same fascination again.

Here they are:

• Behind Gold's Glitter: Torn Lands and Pointed Questions (24 October 2005)
• Tangled Strands in Fight Over Peru Gold Mine (25 October 2005)
• Below a Mountain of Wealth, a River of Waste (27 December 2005)
• A Drier and Tainted Nevada May Be Legacy of a Gold Rush (30 December 2005).

There's also a Q&A section in which the reporters Jane Perlez and Kirk Johnson answer readers' questions.

Outlook awards ...

... for dubious distinction. I like them all. But, this one is the best.

Hat tip: Shivam Vij.

In praise of pranks

The best pranks have always blurred the lines between legality and illegality, good and bad taste, right and wrong conduct. Festivals like Saturnalia appeared to undermine the social order, but paradoxically helped to reaffirm it, by allowing people to act out their frustrations in a harmless way. The nearest thing to this today is April Fool's Day—“the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year,” as Mark Twain gently put it—though the best April 1st jokes tend to be media hoaxes, rather than traditional pranks. A classic of the genre is a 1957 BBC “documentary” on Swiss spaghetti farmers. Many British viewers asked where they could buy pasta trees.

Some of the best April Fool's stunts are those that send up national characteristics. To prove the point that Germans who break even minor rules struggle with their guilt, a few years back a newspaper in Tübingen announced a new experiment by the traffic authorities. Local drivers who had knowingly exceeded the speed limit in recent days were to turn themselves in, pay a fine and take lessons in safe driving. More than 60 sinners obliged.

From this absolutely wonderful essay in the Economist.

Link via slashdot.

Some press-speak, and some me-speak

From the Hindu's editorial:

...Terrorism may do precision-targeting or it may not. Shock-and-awe serves to demonstrate the softness of civil society, the vulnerability of a whole system. IISc was a soft target, if ever there was one. Praveen Swami's exclusive report published on page one sets out a disturbing context in which two dozen intelligence warnings over the past four years should have better prepared the Bangalore authorities for Wednesday's heart-rending tragedy. ...

... can anything be done to prevent trained gunmen fielded by a resilient fanatical outfit from spraying bullets or lobbing hand grenades on unsuspecting scientists coming out of an international conference? Provided intelligence inputs can be acted on quickly, in a coordinated way, and the system can be made to assign a high enough political priority to vigilance and pre-emptive action against terrorism, the answer could be `yes.' ...

Praveen Swami's report, referred to by the Hindu editorial, is here.

Some snippets from another report by the Hindu's Bangalore reporter:

A heart-wrenching scene was witnessed at the M.S. Ramaiah Hospital on Thursday morning, when Saurab Puri, son of M.C. Puri, the Delhi IIT professor killed in the terrorist attack, and other relatives came to take away the body.Saurab Puri and other family members reached the hospital by 11.15 a.m. The son broke down on seeing his father's body. ... IISc director P. Balaram was seen consoling the family. Several IISc staffers had volunteered their services to help out at the hospital.

Pankaj Gupta, a scientist who was injured in the shoot-out, is recovering from his wounds in the same hospital, doctors said. Another injured person Patelappa, a lab assistant, is also recovering. Both are in the intensive care unit. Gupta, was wounded in his right arm and nose and Patelappa went through a 90-minute operation for an injury in the pelvis.

At Mallige Medical Centre, Vijay Chandru of IISc is recovering after a long operation to treat multiple wounds. Several colleagues gathered at the hospital on Wednesday night to donate blood. Sangeetha, another scientist wounded near her eye, is also recovering at the ICU there.

Yesterday, when a colleague and I visited Vijay Chandru at the hospital (we couldn't see him, since he was still in ICU), we saw Sangeetha leaving the hospital after being discharged.

The Economic Times's editorial:

Yes, an institution like IISc can and should be guarded better. But there are so many other soft targets — cinema halls, shopping malls, restaurants, railway stations, schools — that it is futile to place the entire burden of security on the state machinery.

Even if the government releases all those policemen currently guarding our cash-for-questions specimens for policing the populace at large, they will be spread out too thin to be effective in terms of conventional policing.

[...]

It is up to the government and the political leadership to institute effective frameworks for coordinated action by the citizenry and ensure voluntary involvement.This is a complex, multifaceted challenge. It means politics that eschews both communal hatred, which sows the seeds of terror, and appeasement of communalism, which allows the malaise to spread.

It means inclusive politics and justice that do not close all avenues other than violence. It means throwing out the legacy of the caste culture that fragments society, to enlarge the framework of cooperation beyond one’s own group to the entire nation. It calls for replacing custom and tradition as guidelines for personal conduct with disciplined adherence to new systems of organised action. Ad-hocism and quick fixes must give way to strong systems.

Many commenters fail to appreciate the trade-offs which are an essential part of our life when they demand 100 % action, 100 % preventive measures, and 100 % security. There is no such thing; by definition, these 'features of modern life' can only be provided at sub-100% rates. In other words, we necessarily have to deal with probability of security; this probability is reduced by anything that takes the police forces' time and effort away from providing security to people, such as 'guarding our cahs-for-questions specimens' as the Economic Times put it, or raiding dance bars in our cities and towns, and arresting some hapless people who are just trying to earn a living.

This doesn't mean that our police forces need not improve their capabilities in collecting, assessing and acting on intelligence that has a bearing on people's safety and security. Those efforts must be beefed up as well; what I would argue for is to take a whole lot of unnecessary baggage off from our police officers' backs, and allow them to concentrate on things that really matter. From this point of view, harassing streetside vendors (selling vegetables to dads abd moms, and balloons to kids in Malleswaram) will possibly emerge with a far lower priority than other things. Yet, this sort of shit happens on a daily basis. I would argue strongly for taking those pieces of 'law' that allow this sort of harassment out of our lawbooks as well as improving our police forces' capabilities in combating terrorism.

One day later ...

Let me thank all of you who came by and left a comment on my previous post. It was really touching to see so many messages. In this post, let me add a few more personal impressions.

Yesterday, I wrote about how we all needed to get back to work. Fortunately, today was not declared a holiday, and the campus had a chance to prove that it can spring back to life. Everyone did show up for work, the coffee and tea shops were buzzing with life.

I just saw, on NDTV, Nupur Basu asking several members of our campus community about the attack, and how they reacted. Prof. Sulochana Gadgil reminisced about Vijay Chandru (who co-founded the PicoPeta Simputers and Strand Genomics), and said she was shocked. The other two interviewees, Smita Visweswara [I'm not sure if I got her name right] and Diptiman Sen, said something which may safely be paraphrased as "yes, the attack was a horrible thing; but it's time for us to move on!" Basu also informed the viewers about a high level meeting called by our Director, Prof. Balaram, who told all the participants to put the attack behind and get back to work.

Last night, the reporter from Headline News asked a bunch of our students for their immediate reactions. One of them said [I am paraphrasing here] his first thought was to go out and donate blood. I am not sure if he did, but I do know that several students landed up at the hospitals offering to donate blood. This is another wonderful thing about the student community here; whenever there is a medical emergency, someone takes charge of organizing help. Usually, it is in the form of blood donation, but it could also be help for those who need hospitalization.

The Chief Minister of Karnataka, Mr. Dharam Singh, visited the victims of yesterday's attack at the hospital. It is a nice gesture by itself; it may also help the patients indirectly.

After I wrote the comment (here) about how our coffee shop did some 20% less business today, it occurred to me that this drop in business must be due to tighter security in the campus. There is always a floating population in our campus, with product vendors, job seekers, bookshop visitors, and students coming in to buy forms for various programs, etc. Their number is quite significant. Most of these people would not have been able to enter our campus today because of lack of identification. So, in effect, all the regular IISc-ians were all back at work, but these other people who make up a vital part of our ecosystem didn't show up.

There were tons of police personnel; I would put the number at about 100 near just one entrance this morning! However, later in the day, things were slowly getting back to normalcy even on this front. In the morning, no one could enter the area where the shoot-out took place. By this afternoon, that restriction was gone. I didn't have the stomach to venture into that place, though.

All of which is to say that our campus is back on its feet, and is full of life. A life that's almost normal, and little (just a little) less innocent.

Kudremukh

Subir Roy has a nice piece arguing why the shut-down of the Kudremukh Iron Ore Company (scheduled to happen three days from now) is actually a good thing.

Roy is a columnist for Business Standard, a business daily; so it's a pleasant surprise to see an op-ed in that newspaper arguing strongly for protecting the environment and the biodiversity in the Western Ghats, even if it means shutting down an industrial enterprise.

Terrorist attack in IISc

Yet another conference. Academics and industry professionals come out of the last session of the day; some of them are on mobile phones, and others are in deep conversation, and all of them are on their way to dinner. A pretty mundane, ordinary sight in IISc during these December days, actually. Except today.

At around 7:30 p.m., unidentified gunmen (one, two, or more? no one is sure) opened fire on a group of conference participants leaving the J.N. Tata Auditorium, which is just across the road from the main campus of IISc. As of this moment, one academic (Prof. M.C. Puri of IIT-Delhi) has succumbed to the gunshot wounds and several others are being treated in at least two different places: M.S. Ramaiah Hospital and Mallige Hospital.

TV footage from these centres (IISc and the two hospitals) show quite a few familiar faces. At Mallige Hospital in particular, where one of our colleagues Prof. Vijay Chandru (of the Department of Computer Science and Automation) has been admitted for surgery. Through the glass windows, we can clearly see two other colleagues Prof. Swami Manohar and Prof. Ramesh. Reports indicate that Prof. Chandru will pull through. I hope the others do, too.

The police have announced that the perpetrators of this crime is still at large, and that the entire city has been put on high alert. Back in the campus, though, things have quietened down. Most students are back at work, just as they normally are. Tonight, however, they will probably spend substantial amounts of time trying to find and share new information, and trying to come to grips with this atrocious attack within our campus.

Whatever spin one puts on this incident, it is clear that it is big for Bangalore, and even bigger for us in IISc. Some day, we will probably look back at it and say "That was the day when ...". Tomorrow, however, we will all be back at work, just like any other day. For, that's the only way to beat the terrorists. I sincerely hope the government does not declare tomorrow a holiday -- for us in the Institute, or for any of the other establishments in the city. Except, of course, for security reasons.

Even more importantly, tonight, right at this moment, our thoughts -- and best wishes for a speedy recovery -- go out to our colleagues and other conference participants who are in the hospital. Our sympathies and condolences -- go out to the family of Prof. M.C. Puri, an unfortunate victim of a random act of violence in the Garden City of Bangalore.

Sexy scientists?

Cross-posted from nanopolitan 2.0, which is now active. Please visit me at my other home, and (if you feel like it) do tell me what you think.

While at it, I might as well point to this particular post, in which I wrote about a recent op-ed by Prof. Ranjit Nair on this year's physics Nobel, and he has come by to offer a comment.

Science is sexy, but scientists?

Yeah, I know the idea sounds spooky. But there is this uber-elite club, and I know quite a few among my colleagues who would qualify.

Check out the list of 10 Sexiest Geeks of 2005, compiled by the folks at Wired. Quite a few of the good looking ones in the list are people who have mastered the new media options offered by the internet (ermm, Web 2.0). The list also features at least two scientists:

• Wise Young (you’ve got to love that name!), “a world-renowned spinal cord injury researcher” at Rutgers University. He also runs CareCure, an online community devoted to “the art and science of managing therapies, routines, medication, supplies, equipment and everything else needed to maintain the spinal injured person in top health..”
• Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist at Claremont Graduate University, who specializes in “neurophysiology of economic decision making”. One of his recent papers is on “neuroeconomics of distrust: sex differences in behaviour and physiology”. It sounds really interesting, and I would love to link to it, except that the link on his site doesn’t work!

I am sure some of the more hardened souls among you wouldn’t take Wired’s word; hey, they *are* the techies, and they can be weird, right? I wouldn’t blame you if you want some real, serious evidence that will convince everyone of the existence of sexy scientists. Tell you what: just wear your seatbelt, and get ready to go to that ultimate destination where good taste and great judgement rule. The People magazine!

People has featured, in its “Sexiest Man Alive” issue,   Michael Manga, an academic in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. [link via inkycircus, a group blog by three women who are in the process of starting a science magazine for women. This particular post (and other such posts) are listed under the category: “men whose babies we want to bear”!]

Tsundue and Tibet

Dharamsala, like the 36 other settlements that the Indian government allotted to Tibetans fleeing Chinese-occupied Tibet, was meant to be a temporary refuge. But four decades after these settlements were established, Tibetans born in India still belong to the category of "stateless people." As permanent refugees, it is not easy for them to get jobs or own property. Tibetans selling woolen clothes and cheap electronic goods are a common sight on the streets of Indian cities. Even in Dharamsala, the Tibetans told me, they live in constant fear of India's often highhanded police. A few days before I arrived in Dharamsala, the police intervened in a dispute between an Indian shopkeeper and Tibetans by frog-marching the Tibetans through the main street. Yet few Tibetans wish to return to what they regard as a country under brutal occupation. According to recent Human Rights Watch reports, which confirm many Tibetan accounts, the Communist regime in Beijing continues to detain without trial, to torture and to execute those it suspects of being separatists or merely sympathizers of the Dalai Lama. More than 2,000 refugees arrive each year in Dharamsala from Chinese-occupied Tibet.

The quote is from Pankaj Mishra's sympathetic portrayal [via Sepia Mutiny] of Tibetan nationalist movement. In particular, its younger leaders like Tenzin Tsundue, the man who staged dramatic protests by unfurling the Tibetan flag during the visits of Chinese Premiers at the Oberoi Towers in Mumbai in 2002 and at IISc in Bangalore earlier this year.

Mishra, who argued (in a recent NYTimes op-ed ) that nationalism has been a great driving force for large scale violence, tries hard -- and to an extent, succeeds -- in this article to sympathise with the cause of Tibetan nationalism.

You can read Tsundue's essay My kind of exile (which won the Outlook-Picador Essay Contest in 2001) here. Dilip D'Souza has a post about Tsundue's protest at IISc, and another about three courageous nuns who suffered torture and solitary confinement in prisons for ... refusing to sing the Chinese national anthem.

Update (25 December): Dilip, in his comment below, points to his report on the meeting addressed by the three Tibetan nuns.

Science of the beauty myth

Via Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance, we have this link to a Flash animation that shows how to "turn a photo of an (already attractive) young woman into magazine-cover material".

At the end of the demo, its creators say:

[...] This photo (featuring 14-year old Lynn) is a good example of how easy it is to alter a photo so it suits the beauty ideals of the media world.

We cannot stop the photos but we can make you aware that many of them are based on a lie. Because of this, it is impossible to compare yourself to them.

The demo from the Girlpower project (of the Government of Sweden) asks people to spread the word. I would recommend shouting from the rooftops.

In any case, just blog it!

8:00 p.m. on 25 December 2005

I am going to be glued to my TV, watching the Discovery Channel program describing some recent research on tsunami. The Hindu's R. Prasad has a report about some of the findings; its report about the program is here. The same program will be shown again at 8:00 p.m. on 26 December as well.

The Hindu also carried a short report (by Vani Doraisamy) on Sandhya Rao's book My Friend, the Sea about the devastation unleashed by the tsunami, as seen through the eyes of a young boy.