Monthly Archives: April 2010

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Introduced to the running world

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I would not say I haven’t been introduced to the running world before. Thanks to the alumni runners of stanfordyaars, I have cheered for my friends while they were sweating it out on the tracks. Truly speaking, I am still nervous and I think it will be a tough task to reach the goal but I have the support from Priyendra and from all my friends. Hopefully I should be able to build up on my stamina and run a little more than 0.4 miles at a stretch :):) (I hope no one laughs a me)

Saturday on April 24th 2010, was the first stretching and running session by ASHA. I met my fellow runners for the first time. I met my coaches and the co-coordinators for the training sessions for the first time too. I was amazed to look at how fit people were. Coach Tony, Coach Raman and Coach Charles were eagerly waiting to stretch us apart :) We had to run half a mile, followed by a stretching session and then another 0.5 mile of running.

Yesterday was the shoe and apparel clinic at sports Basement. It was pretty informative. We were not in general very keen on attending it but after the first session we swayed into the other sessions smoothly and loved the entire process. We purchased our first pairs of running shoes and are excited to wear them and run in them soon.

I have never been much of a sportsperson but I am excited to embark into this world of marathoners.

The funny thing about this was my dad asked me whether I knew how marathons started and I was blank. He knew little though but he told me about this Greek messenger Pheidipiddes who would travel to take the message of the king. At times I am stunned at his knowledge. He is not a net-savvy person. All he reads is the Dainik Jagran and TOI Lucknow edition which has a day old news. He watches little bit of TV after clinic, stressing more on day news. Does Dainik Jagran give him all this information? He also suggested that I watch a documentary on it since my new found love is to watch any documentary on Netflix.

After he told me about this today, I read up about Marathons on the internet. Even if he gives me one liner knowledge, it is perfect. Thats my Dad :)

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Khaps and Modern India

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You believe you know your society, your religion, your caste quite well. And then suddenly that delusion is completely shattered! I thought horrible things like honor killings were part of medieval cultures and Hindu society had largely moved beyond such terrible customs. Not true!

In a shocking case that come to light a few weeks ago, a Khap (sort of like a Panchayat) in Haryana ordered and successfully carried out the killing of a couple. Their crime: Marrying within the same sub-caste (or gotra).

Subsequently, a court in Karnal sentenced five people involved in the crime to death. That should have been the end of the case. On a more practical note, that should have been the beginning of the usual decade long appeals process where those five individuals would have begged the Indian state for mercy.

Not so! The Khap leaders are defiant. They don’t even claim that the crime didn’t occur. Rather they are fighting for their right to order such killings in the future! Here are some snippets from an HT article which covered one of the recently held protest rallies.

An assembly of 36 self-styled caste councils on Tuesday vowed to fight for the seven people convicted – five of them sentenced to death – by a Karnal court for their roles in an honour killing.

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Several speakers said the authorities should not interfere in centuries-old traditions, as social norms were above the law

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Former Haryana Police chief M.S. Malik, said, “We don’t want a Constitution or a law that goes against our age-old tradition. We feel strongly against the media for naming Khaps, accepted for the last 3,000 years, as Talibani Panchayats.”

I am sorry Mr. Malik, but the only way to earn the right to not be called Talibani Panchayats is by not doing things that Talibani Panchayats do! It is shameful that a retired IPS officer has such an attitude on upholding the rule of law and the Indian Constitution.

And finally, after all these events, it is the Judge who heard the case, who is running scared for her life. Indian Express reports that Justice Vani Gopal Sharma has requested a transfer from Karnal because she fears for her life after the Khaps have hardened their stance against the judgement pronounced by her!
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Indian Census and Caste Statistics

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I find it weird that no Census in independent India has ever collected any statistics about castes (scheduled castes and tribes aside). Given that so many of our policies and so much of our national resource allocation depends on caste, why does our Government shy away from collecting that data?

The original decision to not collect such data was, I think, to de-emphasize caste distinctions. While the intent might have been good, in reality much of our politics and national discourse is caste based and there are many benefits of accurate data regarding castes.

In fact the Mandal commission estimated the percentage of OBCs to be 52%. A much later survey conducted by the NSS (National Sample Survey) estimated the number to be 36%. Who is right? The cynic in me says the politicians want the public to remain in the dark since caste is one of the main tools they use to rule our country!

When this question about collecting caste data was put to C. Chandramoulli, the Census Commissioner, his reply was:

In Independent India, there has never been a Census where details related to castes were given. We don’t have that mandate from the government. There is no change in policy. We will only come out with total scheduled caste and scheduled tribe population in various areas. Details about caste will not be spelt out.

So we shall continue to live in ignorance!

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Facebook vs robots.txt

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Found this story through someone’s buzz updates. Pete Warden had built a service that crawled public Facebook profiles (public = not protected by robots.txt) and then displayed neat summary information about people’s social graphs (aggregated by country, things like who belongs to your inner circle etc).

In a rather evil move, Facebook decided to sue him! Their legal position was that even though the crawled pages are not protected by robots.txt, the legal validity of robots.txt has never been tested in courts.

Their contention was robots.txt had no legal force and they could sue anyone for accessing their site even if they scrupulously obeyed the instructions it contained. The only legal way to access any web site with a crawler was to obtain prior written permission.

I am willing to bet that Facebook itself has developed at least one web crawler in its short lifespan so far! Even if it hasn’t, should the business need arise, the last thing they will do is obtain written permissions from owners of websites they intend to crawl!

So here’s the irony: Pete knows he is right! Facebook knows Pete is right! But fighting lawsuits is so damn expensive in this country that a big company like Facebook can easily bully him into submission! Sadness.

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Furniture

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We ordered the living room and family room furniture. The living room furniture is from Scandinavian Designs and the family room furniture is from K and D

I am personally excited about the plans that we have for the living room. I think the family room furniture will be sufficient to make the room look good. Family room needs wall mounting for the TV and needs good speakers as well. I checked up Fry’s today and I am happy they do not charge much for mounting the speakers. Let us see when this happens.