This genre is called Anonymous Abuse. It's quite like terrorism, but it involves much less risk. You can be as dastardly cowardly as it is possible for a human being to be, which is saying quite a lot. In fact, there are no risks involved.

There is a particular elite variety of this genre which involves a person in a very safe position at the abusing end and a person in a not very safe position at the receiving end. Naturally, this is even more dastardly cowardly, just like the worst kind of terrorism, minus any risk again.

Even if you surf the net randomly you are likely to find whole sites full of such abuse. But if you go to places like certain kinds of 'forums', you will get more on one forum than you would probably have the stomach to read. Forums of news magazines are one such example, especially those which are not moderated much or at all.

So, from now on, I will, once in a while, present gems of this genre. I can do this freely as the person, by choosing to remain anonymous, has implicitly given me the right to reproduce his (or her) stuff. The anarchist in me likes this.

Here is the first gem I found on the Outlook magazine website. One reason I have selected it is that it is probably written by someone on the campus, but more importantly (for me) it might just be the first 'creative' spoof that someone has taken the trouble to write that is possibly (even if very very remotely and, of course, mistakenly) connected to either me or what I have been doing and writing.

So here it goes. Verbatim.

You don't get it? What's the matter? Don't you like the way the abuser shows contempt for the Dalits as well as the Gujjars (not to mention the Supreme Court or Victor Hugo or Tenzing or Hillary or John Donne or Hemingway or even the Sphinx, for God's, I mean, Abuse's sake)? Can't you appreciate his humor (humour for the non-dominant party) at the expense of the physically deformed? Don't you see the wonderful 'Tenzing Hillary' part? So blatantly racist. How lovely. In this age when people have found extremely innovative ways of hiding their racist and other such tendencies, doesn't this blatancy come as a breath of fresh air? And the sexism. Good old stuff. But it may be a bit mild for some. What about xenophobia against the Nepalis? Isn't that impressive?

Some people have a Muse. Some others have an Abuse.

You would have to know a lot of Indian history if you want to make anything of the reference to 'doctors' stir' and the 'police slaves' in this particular context. Believe me, I know a whole lot about this. I could write ten books about this, but I won't. I won't survive.

No points for guessing that the abuser is a high caste elite professional. You will have to give it to him that he can at least string together more or less grammatical sentences. This is not a characteristic that is very common among the Anonymous Abusers. Because those who can, use their talent (and here I mean for Anonymous Abuse) in a manner that pays.

So what if the abuser doesn't make any sense? So what if the abuser might make even Congress party haters and right wing 'democrats' and 'liberals' flinch? So what if even Narendra Modi or Praveen Togadia won't dare to openly support this abuser.

Make no mistake. This is coming from what is called India's Best. India's Crème de la Crème. India's Very Meritorious Class.

To be frank, I don't like any of the individuals mentioned (by name) in the above abuse, except perhaps Tenzing and Hillary who climbed the Everest for the first time. And I would hate to see the Congress in power again. (Yes, I would hate to see the BJP in power even more).

But I like this stuff, though not for the above reason.

I am happy to post it here. I hope there is more.

As Ali G. would say, Respect!

It's called 'Les Feuilles Mortes' ('Autumn Leaves' in English) and is based on a poem by Jacques Prévert and has music by Joseph Kosma. I am sure a part of the tune has been used in an old Hindi song, but I am just not able to place that song.

This is also a gift from technology. There are people who, over the decades, have helped in the development of technology for this. And there are people who have helped make something like 'precision' (and/or) cluster bombs.

Perhaps the intersection between the two sets is quite large.

Did they have to? Necessarily?

By the way, here is the link for the residents of IIIT, Hyderabad who won't be able to see the video above as the youtube site is banned there.

I mean here.

Too dangerous a technology.

But the in.youtube site (which was inaugurated with news stories in the national mainstream media) is not banned so far. I hope nationalism ensures that it remains unbanned. It should be of some use. Nationalism. Earn its keep. If it works hard enough.

Unfortunately, WordPress doesn't recognize the in.youtube site.

But nationalism has not saved the India Together site from being banned. And the funny thing is that I am perhaps the only person on the campus who tries to access this site.

While I am at it, I may as well share a song by Edith Piaf.

His party, after the retirement of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is now making the most of Advani's abilities, as it is of Modi's. And Modi himself is now suggesting that we fight inflation with fasting, as once advised by India's former Gandhian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.

From Advani to Jaswant Singh. Add the charms of being a former Maharaja.

As we all know, Nepal has finally got rid of the monarchy (lock, stock and non-smoking barrel, unlike Britain). Moreover, that country will now also be a 'secular republic', like India. This is our (possibly) future Prime Minister's 'measured' take on these developments:

As for abolition of monarchy, Mr. Singh said, “It is for the people of Nepal to decide not to have a monarchy.”Was the BJP happy about Nepal becoming a secular state? He said: “As an Indian and a believer in ‘sanatan dharma’ [Hinduism], I feel diminished. … There are four ‘dhams’ [pilgrimage centres] in India and the fifth, Pashupati Nath, is in Nepal. There is nothing more secular than ‘sanatan dharma’. … This is a negative development [in Nepal].”

If there is nothing more secular than ‘sanatan dharma’, why does he feel diminished about Nepal becoming a secular state?

Don't be insane. Be measured. It's not good to ask such questions.

And here is the not-so-measured take of his party president Rajnath Singh on the words 'secular' and 'dharmanirpeksh'.

Nice combination.

Winning Combination.

Where do I find the words for Modi?

In almost all the reports about the blasts, the names of these localities were given wrongly. Badi Choupad was being called Badi Choupal, Choti Choupad was being called Choti Choupal, Chand Pole was being called Chandi Pole etc. Does it matter? Only if you believe that getting the details right is important if you not only want to find out the truth, but also want to punish those responsible for these acts of terror. Note that all these localities are Big landmarks in Jaipur. So much that every Jaipurvasi knows where they are. And how to pronounce them. And I am not talking about the foreign media. Nor am I talking about the South Indian media. I am talking about reporters from New Delhi, which is only a little over 250 km from Jaipur and is home to a lot of Jaipurvasis.

Soon after the blasts, as usual, we were being told who might be responsible. The same familiar names were cropping up. The same chants were being repeated. The same red alerts were issued, about which we (Indians) have been hearing for the last quarter of a century, if not more. The same kind of statements were issued.

There was one difference. As I was watching one short video on the Net (I don't have access to TV, which is why I came to know about the blasts later than many others), there was one person who was answering questions about the implications of the blasts and what was being done to ensure security in the coming days. Then he was asked some questions, which, along with the answers given to them, baffled me completely. I finally realized (Tubelight! Tubelight!) that the man was not an official of the Home Ministry, nor was he a high ranking police officer, nor was he a politician (in the conventional sense). He was someone connected with the IPL, the new 20-20 cricket match league. I couldn't make out exactly in what capacity. He was being asked a lot of questions by all the mediamen gathered around him, and he was answering quite confidently and with a great deal of, shall we say, responsibility.

Anyway, apart from such indications of the changes that have happened in the world during the last quarter of a century, the same records are being replayed:

• Condemnation, dastardly, cowardly, despicable etc.
• Appeals to maintain calm
• Nationwide red alerts issued
• Crackdown on 'Bangladeshis staying illegally in India'
• The opposition's talk about the government's 'recurring failure to combat terror'
• Demand for harsher laws to combat terrorism, to bring back the dreaded POTA, as if it had, at any point. succeeded in stopping terrorists from doing what they wanted to do
• Demands to strengthen intelligence agencies

So on and so on. All of it is so predictable that you could almost write a program to do all these things every time a terror attack occurred.

Sure, there were some articles in newspapers like The Hindu, saying that we should try to deal with the causes of terrorism, rather than repeating the same old knee-jerk reactions. But one can be sure that they would remain unheard amidst the shouts for revenge and bouts of witch hunting.

Which brings us to another demand: Hang Afzal Guru. Supposedly it would magically reduce the incidents of terrorism. Many have pointed out that there seems to be something seriously wrong about the whole investigation carried out in the strange case of the attack on the Indian parliament building, and indeed with the attack itself. The person who was in charge of the investigation, the infamous encounter specialist Rajbir Singh, is now dead. Conveniently?

You can also read some of the 'Readers's Opinions' about the blasts here. This is one good thing about the Internet. What was earlier said in private, is now often said in public. On the Net, it is quite possible and very easy (under the cover of anonymity) to make statements like 'hang all these Muslims' or 'sack the Prime Minister & shoot every one suspected'. Even to say an absurdly amusing thing like 'where ever in india a blast is done the route is from hyderaabd'. Or like 'Root out this nuisence of hate and terrorism from Rajasthan, as Modi has done in Gujrat'.

Or like:

ITS enough yaar.....i just request our POLICE to catch those terrorists and hang them till death...

Or like:

As long as we have sikh Prime Minister and foreigner (Sonia Gandhi) is holding the power ,these thing will be very common in near future.

Or a gem like this:

If god gives me one wish to fulfill in my life I will ask all these terrorist together to come face to face to me. These all enuch animals one side and I am the other and i swear I will surely clean 100% of them and i dont want this poloticians to be arround there they are worthless. I am very sure most of indians would agree with me KILL them. This is challenge to all those terrorist who r killing innocent people if they have guts and if they are not enuchs then come out you cowards and face the real MEN.

On this particular site (Times of India) alone, there are 67 pages of such comments from ordinary peace loving innocent civilian Indians who are educated and privileged and 'developed' enough to have access to the Net. The citizens of India Shining. A lot of them must be members of the IT industry, which has 'done India proud'.

All of the above are Hindus, of course.

But there was a comment from one Omer Khan, NY, which went like this:

Let Indians also feel the taste of tragic killings. Read the sceanrio of Kashmir. If 80 People of jaipur are killed whole india is schocked ,what about 25000 Muslims of kashmir who are still missing in Custody & what about those 1500 People found in Mass graves. I really condemn killings but it is good medicine for those who mutiliate the facts of killings in kashmir.

On the other hand, there was a comment by one Rizwan Rafat, Karachi, Pakistan:

i am very sad to see the comment by Omar from NY. Those who died in the blast are innocent civilians who have nothing to do with kashmir. also to add to the knowledge of mr Omar, Kashmir issue has reached this point due to the Indian political mistakes, and also due to vested interest of Pakistani Army who see no gain in solving the kashmir problem and is eating the country. I am behind the people of Jaipur, may god give them patience. also i urge Pakistani government to help India in tracing these coward terrorist if there is any Pakistani connection. hindus, muslims whoever should be ruthlessly crushed to bring peace for everyone.

I looked through many pages to find one reasonable comment by a person with a Hindu name, but I couldn't. Of course, almost all the people who have written articles I referred to, who will remain unheard, are Hindus. Is there some pattern in all this? Something from which we can learn something?

And one comment was not very clear to me:

please do not now hear talks like 1. excercise maximum restraint 2. Let the law take its own course 3. Jail the terrorists etc etc let the politicians like yada get killed - maybe we will then act?

The social subconscious spills over into the public domain. And is hard to make sense of.

While this may have been the dominant story in the last two weeks, there have been many other events which might merit some of our attention.

On 15th May, militants killed 11 persons in Assam in two separate incidents. Among the 11, there were train drivers, truck drivers and helpers. There have been a series of such attacks in recent days.

Binayak Sen, a highly respected doctor serving in the villages of Chhatisgarh (one of India's richest states in terms of resources, but one of the poorest in terms of the well being of inhabitants, a lot of them being tribals), who is also associated with the human rights organization People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) has been arrested for being a 'messenger' for Naxalites, the Maoist revolutionary 'terrorists'. He was arrested after he actively criticized the state sponsored terrorism of an organization called Salwa Judum, which consists of tribals who have been given arms by the state to fight the Naxalites (in Chhatisgarh), whose cadres also are made up of tribals. So tribals fight tribals while other tribals are forcibly (by the government) holed up in camps under conditions which you can easily imagine if you are an Indian and keep your eyes and ears open.

Binayak Sen has been refused bail even after appeals by a lot of intellectuals and activists. Even the alumni of the medical college where he had studied have come out in his support and a campaign has been launched to get him free.

On May 10th, a teenager Raj Kumar was lynched to death for picking 'four luscious shahi litchis without permission'. His body was then thrown into a pond.

On May 11th, 'in yet another case of honour killing, a retired army jawan has allegedly hacked his 20-year-old daughter to death for marrying against his wishes'.

On May 13th (I am not sure about the date), the car of a cabinet minister in the UP government hit a man in Lucknow (who was riding a bicycle) and left him to die on the road. The bicycle, you might recall, is one of most common modes of transport in India. And road accidents are one of the biggest causes of unnatural deaths in India. More than 100,000 every year. The majority of those who die (who also happen to be innocent civilians) are either pedestrians or those riding a two-wheeler. A bicycle, you might recall, is a two wheeler.

A Kerala godman Amritha Chaithanya, whose real name apparently is Santosh Madhavan has been accused of cheating. He has been arrested, but may go free as 'the cheating case against him in Dubai may not have legal standing in India.' You might also recall that the situation in India right now, as indeed at any time in history, is that of godmen galore.

A UN report (World Economic Situation and Prospects) says that 'about 3 billion people are food insecure' and that 'approximately 18,000 children die daily as a direct or indirect consequence of inadequate nutrition'. The largest number of them are from India. Have been for as long as I can remember.

Around May 19th, at least 68 people died as a result of consuming illicit brew in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Note that 68 is a number higher than of those killed in the Jaipur blasts. Note also that there is something in common between the two incidents of serial deaths. Both occur quite regularly in India and both are followed by the same ritualistic responses. And so it goes on. And on.

On May 11th, there was again firing on the Line of Control (LOC) between the Indian and Pakistan administered parts of Kashmir. This was also a very regular feature and is followed by very predictable responses, but this one is important because there had been a lull for a relatively long time, as India and Pakistan seemed to be heading for a better relationship, whatever be the causes of that. Combine this with the blasts in Jaipur (which is the capital of a state bordering Pakistan), and the prospects of a better relationship don't seem so bright any more. Let's hope this is wrong.

On May 21st, 'forty Bhopal gas leak survivors, including 15 children and 23 women, chained themselves to the railings around the Prime Minister’s residence here on Wednesday afternoon demanding speedy resolution of their demands'. The gas leak, due to which a few thousand people had died and a lot more were left with dysfunctional bodies, had happened in 1984, the same year when Indira Gandhi was assassinated and more than 2000 people were killed during the riots that followed.

Coming back to the Jaipur blasts, there may or may not be a doubt about who was behind this attack and why, but there is no doubt at all about who is going to benefit the most from this. The elections (in Rajasthan, among other states) are coming and India's party of Fascism-under-the-cover-of-right-wing-nationalism has sensed this and has already started to exploit this incident. If there was any chance of BJP being defeated in the Rajasthan elections, it is now gone.

This is what the terrorists have actually succeeded in doing, whatever they might fool themselves into believing.

The people in charge who implement ridiculous rules and block sites for no apparent reason and take action against people (who get caught) for the smallest and the silliest reason, are apparently powerless against these network goons. If the statement sounds hyperbolic, let me mention just a few facts:

• The URL www.cs.rochester.edu has remained blocked for around two years now. The only reason (if it can be called that) seems to be that this sub-domain has a page where NLP and Computational Linguistics conferences are listed.
• So is the India Together site which publishes articles by people like P. Sainath.
• For some time, even the site of the national newspaper The Hindu was blocked.
• Many other sites are blocked at one time or another, such as the YouTube.

Just a few days ago I checked the network activity on my system and found that many other systems were connected to my laptop, even though there was no reason for them to be and I had even switched on the Windows firewall. This is not happening after I did some things like blocking connection on the netbios-ssn port etc.

Why am I writing this post instead of talking to the people in charge? Because I don't really think anything is going to come out of that. This rant was provoked by a particularly bad network notworking day.

Another thing that has happened is that the goons who are forming the private network and thereby causing problems for the others, have named their network with my initials:

I take it as a tribute. The people who hate you and create problems for you for no reason (whom you don't even know) pay tribute in this way. It is one of the best tributes one can have.

Of course, there are the side effects, but, as they say, no free lunches.

Except perhaps for those who already have a lot of purchasing power.

The more, the better.

The more, the free-er.

The more, the more.

This breakthrough patent grants broad protection for how artificial intelligence, including neural networks, genetic algorithms, and vector space models can be used to learn the meanings of symbols - such as words, categories, or numerical values. Understanding the subtle meaning of terms in context has been one of the “Holy Grails” of artificial intelligence. Not only is Digital Reasoning® fully able to accomplish this feat, it is now patented.

Here is one comment about this:

Anyone from the ACL/ML/AI community can immediately recognize this and start citing their favorite papers on these topics starting from at least a decade ago. A promotional video from the company on YouTube can be found here. Excerpt from the video: "... We treat the text representation of human language as a signal ... ".

I think everyone should stop taking patents seriously. Wishful thinking?

Here is another:

Do the people 'in-charge' have any clue about the previous/current reseach done in the related field? How can they accept such stuff? Doesn't make any sense, whatsoever.

But then they had accepted patents on haldi, neem and basmati. I am worried about jal jeera and pani poori.

Also, ganne ka ras.

Madness.

No need for me to say more as so many others have already talked about this:

• 'Patent Nonsense' by George Monbiot
• 'What are software patents good for?' by Z. Wagner
• 'Patent absurdity' by Richard Stallman
• 'SOFTWARE PATENTS: AN INDUSTRY AT RISK' by The League for Programming Freedom
• Patented European webshop

In August last year there was a news item about Yoga devices being patented in the US. Small mercy that the Government of India succeeded in cautioning the U.S. Government against granting patents to Yoga postures (asanas).

There was a time (in India) when patents were awarded on processes, not products. That meant that even if some company had patented a method for producing a particular medicine, someone else could come along and find a better way and sell the medicine cheaper. Now, since the patents are granted on products, under orders from the empire that rules the world, that kind of thing can't happen.

It can a be matter of life and death for millions of people.

I look forward to the day when self-respecting researchers won't proudly list the patents they have been able to obtain.

Patents are among the most evil inventions of humankind.

Within one answer to a question about the idea of Clash of Civilizations, he has compressed almost everything that one needs to know to understand how the world works. Even though I am very much familiar with his ideas, it was a treat to read this transcript.

I can't resist the temptation to just quote him wholesale in this post. It's not a very long article, so it can be read quite quickly. If you think something that he is saying is wrong, you can go ahead and verify it. He has written about the details elsewhere.

As there is no need for me to add or explain, I will just quote. I hope I am not infringing on anyone's IPR. If I am, I will withdraw the quote. But I would hate to do that.

Here he is:

Reminder: This is the the transcript of an answer that Chomsky gave after a lecture on 5th November 2001 in Delhi.

(Courtesy the makers of Rushmore)

I should have known. The network is back to being the notwork with a perfect timing. Period. Either no one else is affected, or no one else cares.

Life is beautiful.
Hope springs eternal.
Human being are social animals.
All of us are good people.
Great are the wonders of civilization.
What a wonderful world.

Deja vu.
Which means snafu.

By the way, the Gmail account is still disabled.

Summary execution Google style.

I thought I was the victim of a phishing attack, though I realized it was a case of phishing so I didn't do what was suggested in the fake mail. I mean I was not the perpetrator of the attack or anything similar.

Does Google punish the perpetrators of such attacks or the victims? Nice New Year's gift.

A few days ago when I tried to login to my primary account, I got the message that my account has been locked as 'some unusual activity has been detected'. Unusual? Yes, I do a lot of unusual things, but certainly not on my Gmail account. There I am as usual as you can get. Fortunately, I succeeded in logging in on my third attempt.

While I am on this topic, I might as well write about one suggestion for improvement in all email systems. Whenever you log into your account, you should be shown if there is some other session open for the same account. This will help in ensuring that one has not accidentally left one's account open somewhere. And, in a worst case scenario, one would also be able to check whether someone else has somehow got access to one's account, by stealing password or by hacking.

One lesson learnt from this story: It is not so good to rely on one email provider alone, even if it's Google. I will have to do something about this.

Small comfort to find that I am not alone: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7].

There is one more thing I should say here. I am against spam like most people, but I don't think heavens would fall if one gets a few useless mails on some particular day. I don't support anti-spam fanaticism either.

How about having a Spam-Scam Aesthetics Appreciation Society?

I am too overwhelmed to write a review of this story. You will have to judge for yourself. For that you can start with this summary and then, if you are brave enough, you might want to read the story itself.

Did someone mention bleeding hearts?