Best ways to react to India's '9/11' | csmonitor.com

Best ways to react to India's '9/11' | csmonitor.com

And ...

Both India and Pakistan know their abilities to uplift their poor would be hurt by another distracting confrontation. And with so many recent terrorist attacks within each country by a range of groups with grievances, the two nations need to find common ground. India now sees that a majority of Pakistanis are against global jihadists. And after this latest attack, it has every right to ask for information from Pakistan's military about likely groups behind the Mumbai assault, which may include Lashkar-i Tayyaba. If Pakistan's military does not cooperate with their civilian leaders, the US needs to use its leverage over that military and help India gain the reassurance that all Pakistani forces will not condone any sort of terrorism.

The last thing the world needs now is a unilateral attack by India on suspected terrorists inside Pakistani-held territory. While such an attack may seem morally similar to US attacks against Al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan, the history of war between the two neighbors – three since 1947 – would argue against such provocative action that could lead to nuclear war.

Amen brother!

KING NERD??

This is not possible, I don't think I'm _that_ nerdy!!! WTF???

Also, I don't have a slide rule! That should be a question, and also, not owning one should be 20 points off... dammit!!




jeez!! but I like the results of the v2.0 test though, seems like I'm only 18% dumb/dork/awkward or something like that ...

U.S. Population Functionally Illiterate?

An interesting post that claims that the U.S. population (or large parts thereof) is functionally illiterate, and bases that on some statistics on the U.S readership trends. I suppose that all depends on the definition of "functionally illiterate".

Here are some numbers s/he uses to back up the claim:

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.

70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.

If this is indeed the case? why are all these bookshelves on all these bookstore monopolies filled with all these books? I sometimes wonder about that. If nobody is reading these books, then what are all these books doing here.

I also seem to notice a "trend" as it were , in the types of books printed. Before the Iraq war, it was ra-ra-ra.. then it was all the anti-bush-junta stuff that filled the shelves and now it is all about the "new threat", namely, Iran and the new geo-politial wars being fought.

Maybe it is my own bias towards books on politics etc which makes me notice these things, but sometimes I wonder if books are actually printed these days to be actually read or just to be browsed in the bookstores. Their catchy, "sound bite-ish" titles seem to indicate to me that to some extent, they also serve as subliminal messages.

Walk through a bookstore and you get the idea what the boys up in the capitals are upto.

Hackety Hack Video

The Boston Ruby User group has a number of good Ruby related videos up on google. I especially like the 3rd one which seems to cover some of the technical details of the project.

Enjoy and check out their other videos as well (click on "From User" link in the sidebar)

Rails 1.2.3 LOC

Here are some interesting numbers. Just for the heck of it, I counted the number of lines in the ruby files (including comments) and here are the numbers:

* actionmailer-1.3.3     =  10224
* actionpack-1.13.3      =  34142
* actionwebservice-1.2.3 =   7096 
* activerecord-1.15.3    =  32750
* activesupport-1.4.2    =   7049
* rails-1.2.3            =   7433

Total:                   =  98694

I used the following sh command in each directory:

 find . -name "*.rb" -exec wc -l '{}' ';'  | cut -d . -f 1 | (tr '\n' +; echo 0) | bc

What difference does it make?

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

- Mahatma Gandhi

The Trouble With the World

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

- Bertrand Russell

Using Twitter as a backup alert system

I was just wondering today that it would be cool if I could have secure twitter channel for all my server alerts. Twitter doesn't seem to have a secure email interface and it would be hard to convince "powers that be" to allow production system messages to a public site, but if the channel was encrypted, then maybe.

But I find the idea intriguing. Along with system level alerts, one could also get numbers on system loads, cpu usage, runaway queries etc. The possibilities are endless.

Sarkozy Wins! :(

Damn! Damn! Damn! BLASTED!

Reaching another Critical Mass?

Looks like the sacked Chief Justice of Pakisan is becoming the catalyst for the people to come together under the same banner. It is interesting to see the flags of PPP and the various right of center parties in the same rally supporting the ousted judge.

What will Musharraf do? Pakistan's institutions are rotten to the core. The one that remains standing, still is the Army who thing they are gods sent to earth to "guide" this country.

Looking at the video's of the protest and the number of the people reminded me of the historical Rally in lahore in 1986 (or was it 1988?) to welcome Benazir Bhutto back from exile. I was in that Rally, and it stretched from the airport to downtown Lahore. It was literally kilometers long!

Is this the latest 'Lahore Spring' ?? Not sure, but certainly, it seems that the democratic forces in the country are coming together. This rally may be regarded as a watershed moment in terms of cooperation between the right/left and centerist parties.
Could this become something bigger than this? Not unless Musharraf does something stupid like the Shah did.

The utter disgraceful state of education, and therefore political confusion helps the Army junta as well. Takes ages for people to recognize they are being exploited, and every movement for democracy peters out because the new set of leaders are just as corrupt as the army which they want to replace. (see exhibit a: Benazir Bhutto, exhibit b: Nawaz Sharif)

Oh well, the cycle goes on.