Recently, I blogged about an important dispute related to the Right to Information Act. The dispute dealt with two issues 1) that of hard copy verus soft copy data 2) protecting the privacy of students.

Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi ruled on this issue. The good news: IITs have to provide a soft copy of the data. The bad, rather ugly news: can kiss your privacy goodbye.

Here is a quote from this truly horrible ruling (the PDF is here. It is only 3 pages. You can read it yourself)

the Commission rules that merely giving the name of the person and the pin code with the marks obtained cannot be considered as an invasion of the privacy of an individual

If revealing an individual's test scores publicly does not violate privacy, I don't know what does.

I hope somebody appeals this ruling to a High Court or the Supreme Court. After all, India's courts have consistently ruled that the right to privacy is a fundamental right. The courts have also ruled that the right to information is a fundamental right. The RTI act talks about the conflict between the right to privacy and the right to information.

information which relates to personal information the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information

As someone who cherishes both the right to privacy and the right to information, I am sure there will be complicated situations that courts will consider in the future, in deciding when public interest justifies disclosure and when it does not. This case, in my opinion, doesn't even come close to causing a conflict. No public interest is served by revealing a student and their test score to the public. Mr. Shailesh Gandhi did not even bother to articulate when that would be true in his ruling. Violating an individual's fundamental right to privacy at the very least deserves a few more drops of ink.

PS: Thanks to Prof. Gautam Barua for his comment :)

Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi is going to hear an important dispute relating to the Right To Information act. Prof. Rajeev Sharma, a computer sciences professor at IIT Kharagpur has filed an RTI application seeking test scores of all applicants who appeared in the IIT Joint Entrance Examination in 2006. The JEE exam board is stalling the process.

It has been very hard to get complete information on this dispute. Reporting, like it is usually the norm, has been pathetic. Here is what I understand of where this dispute currently stands.

Some irregularities in the JEE exam

The plaintiff Prof. Kumar has been doggedly seeking information about the IIT JEE 2006 examination. He alleges irregularities in calculating which students made the cut. In fact, the Calcutta High Court is currently hearing a case on this very issue. The court asked the IITs to submit the formulae used to calculate applicants who are offered admits. The IITs have submitted several different formulae on different occasions. Moreover, they destroyed all answer sheets before they were supposed to.

Soft-copy versus hard-copy

Now, let's come back to the RTI application that that IITs have not yet responded to. Times of India has reported that this is an issue of soft-copy of data versus hard-copy. The paper reports that the IITs have offered to provide printouts of the data (running to tens of thousands of pages) at cost to the plaintiff. This clearly would be ridiculous.

However, I am not sure if this is the case. Prof. Gautam Barua, Director of IIT Guwahati, who is also responsible for the entrance examinations, responded to me that the dispute was not one of hard or soft copy, but one of privacy. I could not reach the reporter and got no response from Prof. Kumar. So, I have to give the IITs the benefit of doubt.

Privacy issue

Prof. Barua claimed to me that the IITs offered to provide the data after removing personally identifying information. In fact, a news report seems to corroborate this claim.

IIT Guwahati Director Gautam Barua has said that he had offered the appellant data for scrutiny with the names made anonymous. IIT Guwahati [...] had refused to provide marks and personal details of candidates on a CD as requested by Prof Rajeev Kumar of IIT Kharagpur.

Releasing personal information of applicants would be ridiculous. However Prof. Barua did not clarify where he stood on the soft-copy issue.

Where it stands now

To me this is such an open and shut case. There is no question that privacy should not violated. There is also no question that information should be provided in the most accessible form, in this case a soft-copy. I don't know why this has been dragging for so long.

Prof. Barua agrees that they have not provided the application any information yet, and are waiting for the CIC's hearing. This puzzles me. They could have provided a soft copy of data without private information on their own accord.

Resolution?

Shailesh Gandhi is going to hear this soon. I hope he clarifies one important piece of this issue. The RTI act clearly specifies that information includes electronic data and that citizens have a right to this data in an electronic form or in the form of printouts. The act does not specify that a soft-copy, where available, should be preferred. I hope he does that.

"information" means any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force;

["right to information"] includes the right to obtaining information in the form of diskettes, floppies, tapes, video cassettes or in any other electronic mode or through printouts where such information is stored in a computer or in any other device;

Sagarika Ghose is currently a senior editor on CNN-IBN. I am not particularly a fan of her. To be fair to her, I might be misrepresenting her by taking issue with a couple of occasions where she has been, let's say, less than stellar. As with all of Indian news channels in English, she is an active champion of the shouting match culture. Don't take my comments to be condemnation of her, but merely two incidents where I did not like what she did.

Climate change is in the news because India's Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh recently suggested that India should look to curb its CO2 emissions. CNN-IBN had a shouting match to discuss "India selling out to the West on Climate Change?". Sagarika Ghose then went on to tweet these enlightening words

• 1. Interesting point raised last night: our problem is poverty, not climate. lets first get rich, then we can go green.
• 2. The richest countries in the world are the greenest. the fact is we need hell-for-leather development, nothing will happen to our skies!
• 3. Is even the science of climate change dodgy? is there any evidence that CO2 is bad for us? who says the climate's changing for the worse?
• 4. for those interested--read The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lamborg. huge amounts spent on "green" tech is a waste of money
• 5. @scanman lamborg says drought deluges were regular 100 years ago when no greenhouse gases.Difference: today you see them on TV!!.

It is reasonable to say that India should ignore climate change since poverty is a larger issue (assuming that development conflicts with the climate), but to totally misrepresent facts and science is atrocious.

• Note the contradiction between the first and the second tweet. 1) "lets first get rich, then we can go green." and 2) "The richest countries in the world are the greenest". Wouldn't becoming rich make us green automatically?
• "The richest countries in the world are the greenest"? Where did she get this information from? I have never heard of Africa being affected by acid rain or such ills of industrialization.
• "nothing will happen to our skies!" Very naive. I will give her a pass an blame it on twitter's 140 character limit.
• "Is even the science of climate change dodgy? is there any evidence that CO2 is bad for us? who says the climate's changing for the worse?" I don't know where to start. Now, I am not a researcher in this area, but I know well to rely on scientific consensus, as that is the best I, or anyone, can hope to do. Scientific opinion on climate change is overwhelming in that global warming is real and the blame lies on man-made CO2 emissions.

She mentioned Bjorn Lamborg. I recommend that you watch his awesome TED talk on what global priorities we should set. Among other things, this talk argues that we should not fight global warming now. Addressing the problem and accepting a scientific fact are two separate issues. I have not read his book, and do not know if he outright denies global warming. Even if he does, she should have put it in perspective in light of the overwhelming scientific consensus being in the other camp.

About the Indian media, I was happy that we did not have clowns like Glenn Beck who grossly misrepresented facts in topics they were not experts on. I have to to change that view now.

India's founders could have installed statues in the Supreme Court to function as judges and these statues would have done a better job than India's current crop of judges in the Supreme Court. For one, these statues wouldn't be able to hear any stupid cases. Like the one about Mayawati and her statues.

I am absolutely annoyed over India's Supreme Court hearing this case. I am no student of law, and would appreciate if any one could point out what I am missing here.

Just to recap, this is the story. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati seems to be megalomaniac. She wants to unveil several statues of herself throughout the state, costing taxpayers about Rs. 5.5 billion ($ 120 million). Unsurprisingly, this has riled up several people. Activists are seeking all avenues to stop this nonsense. A common strategy in such situations is to approach the judiciary. So far so good.

They file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in India's Supreme Court. For any case there needs to be a litigant, the affected party. Presumably, a few taxpayers file a case against the government claiming that their tax rupees are wasted. For them to have a case shouldn't the administration have done something unconstitutional, or have broken the law? How can any democratic system allow any case where litigants argue about an administration and legislature's spending priorities? Some folks might want to spend money on education, some might favor welfare measures, while others might like statues. Aren't elections meant to settle these issues?

What legal basis do courts have to hear such cases? And what basis are they going to use to make any judgement? Are they going to prevent the government from installing Mayawati's statues? What if the statues were those of Gandhi? What if the plan was to install one statue of Gandhi? When does a rightful expenditure become wrongful and what authority does the court have? Forget the authority, what capability do they have? How did judges suddenly assume they were smart enough to decide how to allocate a state's budget?

What next? Are they going to direct the Central Government to invade China?

I usually use the word moron to describe such actors. In this instance, doing so would be insulting to morons.

One interesting outcome of the case is that, the Supreme Court threatened to get the Central Government dismiss the UP State Government if they would not follow the court's orders. Now, I do agree that any government should faithfully follow any court's orders. Disobedience should be an impossible solution. Otherwise, our system of Rule of Law would break down. What happens if the Central government refuses to listen to a court's orders? The court stages a coup?

In this situation, statues serving as judges would have done a better job. They would not have heard this case at all.

I very briefly mentioned about Indian Government atrocities in Manipur, while talking about the abject state of civil liberties in India.

On July 23rd this year calm unarmed Chongkam Sanjit, a 27-year old was murdered by Manipur police. Here are a series of pictures that document Sanjit's murder. Shoma Chaudhury's excellent story from a month ago goes over the history of violent state overreach in Manipur. CNN-IBN has an educative news story on the same issue.

Manipur's story seems to like that of Blackwater in Iraq. Only that it is by India's own government on its own people.

PS: I have written several posts where I have complained about India's media and CNN-IBN. I have to give them their due for this story and others by Arjit Sen. Good reporting.

The Gujarat state government banned Jaswant Singh's book "Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence" and had this to say:

Jaswant Singh's book questions role of Sardar Patel during the partition of India as well as his patriotic spirit. This is an attempt to tarnish the image of Patel who is considered the architect of modern united India [...] So, the state government has decided to ban the book with immediate effect for wider public interest

Translation: "We are morons. We exercise our constitutional right to be stupid." My first reaction was, "You could do that?"

A couple of days ago, the leading news story in all of India's news channels was that of actor Shahrukh Khan being questioned by US Customs and Border Protection at Newark Airport. A brouhaha was raised (I can't tell by whom). But from this screenshot from NDTV, one might conclude that the entire country is up in arms. (That's a different topic for another day). Famous Indians on twitter were surely expressing their displeasure. Shashi Tharoor tweeted

This also happens to 100s of innocent Muslims daily who don't have 1 billion ppl to stand up for them. Raises real qsns abt US procedures

I am not sure if means the billion comes because he is Indian or because he is Shahrukh Khan? Then we have our bone-headed Union Cabinet Minister Ms. Ambika Soni who wants a tit-for-tat

I have always felt - even when I was frisked there - that the way they frisk us we should do the same for them here

Yeah, right. This is how a Union Minister wants to organize our security apparatus -- to spite people.

I am bewildered by these folks' (and new channels) reactions. And I am still trying to figure out what exactly outrages them. Is it the fact that an Indian star was stopped, or is it the fact that an Indian was stopped, or that the US government is (only) alleged to have resorted to racial profiling at its borders? After all, SRK was still not yet inside the US when he was stopped. Visiting the US is after all a privilege (not a right) and the CBP is well within its rights and duties to check who they let in.

And which country have these folks been living in all along? My friends tell me several stories of being stopped by police within Indian territory. I too have an incident where I had my civil liberties violated. I was travelling in a cab in Chennai. A cop stopped the vehicle and shined a torch light into the car to see what's inside and then let us go. He violated my right to privacy. Now, your reaction on hearing about this incident will likely be one of ridicule. "Keep all your privacy, 4th amendment stuff in the US. This is India." If that is your reaction, I have made my point.

Where where these folks when recently the story broke, of a young unarmed man shot by police while being detained by them? The news channel websites did not have such elaborate coverage. A year ago, the Andra Pradesh government admitted to torturing Muslim youths. No one seemed to care. Recently, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing abuses by Indian Police. Not a sound was heard from India's political class. Don't know if there are 1 billion ppl or the government that represents them standing behind these victims.

Indians are silent about such violations of civil liberties and even abuses and murders by government officials within India, but raise a hue and cry when one was merely stopped not within the US, but at its borders. Fascinating.

I have to mention how Shahrukh Khan has conducted himself. In a dignified manner he answered in an interview

They said my name was common. I was too polite to ask, 'common to what?'

I am really happy today over the Delhi High Court ruling parts of Section 377 unconstitutional. The ruling is available in PDF format here. The entire judgement is awesome. The judges did not restrict themselves to narrow legal issues, but spoke overwhelmingly about broad constitutional issues such as privacy, dignity and equality.

In the run up to the court case there was a lot of discussion about homosexuals accelerating the spread of HIV/AIDS, and that was one argument for same-sex intercourse to remain illegal. I was always baffled by such discussion and to me the issue was about privacy and individual liberties in a democratic society. It was clear to me as day, that Section 377 is unconstitutional. I am glad that the Judges spoke about civil liberties in no uncertain terms.

Here are a few nuggets from the ruling:

• The ruling cites court cases from various countries including Lawrence v. Texas which struck down sodomy laws in the United States.
• I did not know that the Indian Constitution (like the United States Constitution) does not have an explicit "Right to Privacy." On the issue of privacy there are mentions of Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

• The Court went above and beyond what it was called to do. In a single stroke, it accorded protection against discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation." I found this really surprising.

  We hold that sexual orientation is a ground analogous to sex and that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is not permitted by Article 15. Further, Article 15(2) incorporates the notion of horizontal application of rights. In other words, it even prohibits discrimination of one citizen by another in matters of access to public spaces. In our view, discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation is impermissible even on the horizontal application of the right enshrined under Article 15.

• The Court clearly understands that a Government or a Constitution cannot grant fundamental rights to people. Sweet :)

  In the present case, the two constitutional rights relied upon i.e. 'right to personal liberty' and 'right to equality' are fundamental human rights which belong to individuals simply by virtue of their humanity, independent of any utilitarian consideration. A Bill of Rights does not 'confer' fundamental human rights. It confirms their existence and accords them protection.

Kudos and thanks to Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S. Muralidhar.

Today, the Delhi High Court stuck down discriminatory provisions of Section 377 which criminalized homosexual behavior. This is not too late, compared to what happened in the United States. It was only six years ago, on June 26, 2003, that United States Supreme Court struck down sodomy law in Texas. The case is Lawrence v. Texas and was ruled 6-3. Add a couple of Scalias and Thomases to the court and they'd have ruled against freedom.

The Delhi High Court ruling talks clearly about liberty and equality guaranteed by the Constitution of India. A win for human rights.

A couple of days ago I visited Doordarshan's Chennai studios for a recording. After I left, I couldn't help but think about gender roles and women in the workplace.

Nearly every person I encountered was a male. When we entered the studio room, there were a coterie of about ten men, whiling away their time (which I guess is typical of a state-run enterprise, but let us not get to it now). Security personnel at the gate, a group of people collecting information on who enters or leaves the place, camera crew, sound engineers, and the show's producer were all men. Employees in the make-up room were all women, reinforcing gender stereotypes. There was one woman in the studio who checked the sound level, and two there were two female janitors.

I am curious to know why there were no male employees in the makeup room. Or, why all cameramen, light operators, studio foreman and the producer were all men. Is this because women were denied opportunities by their own families, or because society discriminated against them?

My final score on election night (Nov. 4, 2008) is 2-3 (won 2, lost 3).

Al Franken has finally won the Minnesota Senate race after the state's Supreme Court ruled in his favor. I like Al Franken for this video, where he rips stupidity (aka Fox News) apart.

Government-owned businesses are running huge losses. Air India is Rs 10,000 crores in the red. Tamil Nadu's transport corporations lost Rs 700 crore last year. Whenever privatization is mentioned as a solution, politicians oppose it strongly. Tamil Nadu's Minister for Transportation recently said that state owned transport corporations "would never be privatised, whatever the losses they incurred and they would continue to function as government undertakings." J Jayalalitha is organizing protests in Neyveli opposing any move on the part of the central government to divest itself of stake in Neyveli Lignite Corporation.

I am sure there are good arguments from both sides of this issue. What surprises me most is why parties exhibit no ambivalence. After all, they present a strong case for privatization, when it comes to Tamil TV channels. The leading parties in Tamil Nadu all "have their own" private TV channels. The DMK family owns Sun TV, Jayalalitha owns Jaya TV, PMK owns Makkal TV. These channels are all successful. So are private channels without any political affiliation. Hardly any one watches state-run Podhigai.

Tamil Nadu's citizens overwhelmingly view and support private TV channels. If privatization can work for TV channels, why can't it work for a transport corporation?

Stop saying "Girls outshine boys," because they don't. It is this time of the year, and board exam results across the county are announced. The recurring theme is girls do better than guys. I was always puzzled on how this could be possible. The data is crying out loud asking someone to take a look. Where are all the anti-Larry Summers of India?

This year, 82.28% of girls cleared the CBSE exams while only 71.29% of boys did. In this article from 2004,

[Educator Rita Kaul] feels that "the methodology of CBSE exams is more suited to the girls who find cramming easier. Boys, on the other hand, do better in entrance exams that are application-based."

Great. Thanks for sharing your feeling.

Everyone conveniently ignores the most important story here. Only 41% of candidates in this year's CBSE exams are girls. Girls do not get educated as much as boys do. (I know this is just one board, but after cursory glance at numbers in state boards exhibit the same disparity. World Bank development indicators convey the same.) It is likely that underperforming girls drop out at higher rates than underperforming boys.

People and the media either want to ignore this, or think it is just the norm and not newsworthy. At the very least the media can afford some attention to this fact and get people thinking for a moment before they go back to discussing IPL's closing ceremony.

The seemingly never-ending battle between religion and science in the United States reached a federal court once again in the Dover trial, a case pitting the theory of Intelligent Design (ID) against Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. For those who don't know, ID is a relatively new concept that contends that living organisms we see around us today are too complex to have come about by evolution and must have been "designed" to take their present form by their "designer". ID makes no attempt explain who the designer is, or what mechanism the designer employs. At the surface it sounds like a good idea and hence the debate in school boards around the US that students should be exposed to alternate views.

What is not well known is that intelligent design itself is simply a substitute for Creationism as described in Genesis, with all references to God replaced with designer and creation replaced with intelligent design. In fact, the primary text book for ID Of Pandas and People is a find-and-replace job on a creationist text book. A draft of the book even had the term "crintelligent designism", a result of a poor find-and-replace.

The trial in Dover was specifically about whether or not ID is religious propaganda and whether teaching it would be a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the US constitution. I originally came to know about the details behind the trial from this talk by Ken Miller, who is a professor of Biology at Brown University and who testified during the trial.

In the library here, I came across a copy of The Devil in Dover by Lauri Lebo stacked among other newly released books. I was hesitant to pick up this book since I already knew a lot about the trial. But I am glad I did. The book is very well written. The author has brought a dull courtroom battle to life. In addition to the trial, the book illustrates attitudes and actions in the small town, lies and hypocrisy amongst the school board, the conservative movement using social issues as a wedge to retain power, and parents and teachers' resolve to stand up for truth, science and the US constitution. Throughout the narration, the author intertwines her own personal conflict of faith with her father. It is a gripping book and I could not put it down.

Here, a couple of quotes. Mr Callahan's testifying how much he cares about the US constitution:

[PLAINTIFF COUNSEL]: [...] Mr. Callahan, do you feel that, as a Plaintiff in this case, you've been harmed by the actions of the Dover Area School District [...]

[PLAINTIFF]: Yes.

[PLAINTIFF COUNSEL]: And can you tell us how you've been harmed?

[PLAINTIFF]: I think it goes to the heart of the complaint. It's a constitutional issue. I'm a tax payer in Dover. I'm a citizen of Dover. I'm a citizen of this country. [...]

And, you know, I've been -- there have been letters written about the Plaintiffs. We've been called atheists, which we're not. I don't think that matters to the Court, but we're not. We're said to be intolerant of other views.

Well, what am I supposed to tolerate? A small encroachment on my First Amendment rights? Well, I'm not going to. I think this is clear what these people have done. And it outrages me.

The best line was from Judge Jones to conclude the trial:

[DEFENCE COUNSEL]: Your Honor, I have one question, and that's this: By my reckoning, this is the 40th day since the trial began and tonight will be the 40th night, and I would like to know if you did that on purpose.

THE COURT: Mr. Gillen, that is an interesting coincidence, but it was not by design.

My friends know I was clearly excited on the day the votes in India's parliamentary elections were counted. I was very nervous that voters might return a fractured verdict. Voters proved all the pundits wrong by voting for stability with a clear preference for the leading coalitions UPA and NDA and rejecting the "parking lots." and showed how smart they were. Rural voters thrashing NDA's India Shining campaign is still fresh in memory. India's voters have come of age. This is a great time for India's democracy. It makes me so proud to be an Indian.

We just have to look at our neighbors to understand how lucky we are --- Burma, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. I was watching Fareed Zakaria interviewing Pervez Musharraf on CNN and startled to hear this exchange.

ZAKARIA: Do you believe that the Pakistani military is a professional military, in control of the nuclear weapons, dedicated to fighting the Taliban? Or is there a need for some transition? Is there a need for a strategic mind shift?

MUSHARRAF: Five hundred percent, there is no need of any mind shift. These aspersions are caused by those who want to weaken Pakistan. Pakistan's strength is its army. And anyone who wants to weaken Pakistan attacks the Pakistan army and the ISI. And unfortunately, I...

ZAKARIA: And you stand by both, the ISI and the army?

MUSHARRAF: Yes, yes. Yes, indeed. So, I personally think that there is some vicious campaign going on against Pakistan. Because if anyone wants to weaken Pakistan, attack these two institutions ...

Musharraf is indeed correct. Pakistan's strength is its army. I feel bad for our neighbors. And I feel so fortunate to be able to say my country's strength is its democracy.

Great job India. In the land of elephants and cell phones, India's Election Commission has done an outstanding job conducting fair elections and with prompt results (I'm looking at you Minnesota).

Overall result I wanted a clear mandate and I was not too concerned which party won. I favored the UPA over NDA. Glad that they won. Surprised at the resounding positive verdict in favor of UPA.

The left's rout has been the sweetest part of this elections. I view them pretty much like Republicans in the US now. In the latter part of the previous Lok Sabha, all they did was oppose. Their policies hurt the poor people they claim to stand for. Dead because of their brain-dead opposition to the nuclear deal and their screw up in Nandigram. Good riddance.

Hindutva seems to have been kept at bay, at least for now. The BJP ran stupid personal attacks against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Did you know that building a temple at Ayodhya was a part of their manifesto? And throw in Varun Gandhi. Thank Lord Rama, they failed.

Nice tweet by thecomicproject

@b50 I believe in pulling out all stops to win, but BJP whined..and whined. I guess a country wants winners not whiners.

The incumbents won. Looks like India is rewarding NREGA, farmer loan waiver, "inclusive growth", and a clean leader in Dr. Singh. I like the clear message from India. Congress by itself has 200 seats, the highest by any single party since 1991.

Karunanidhi has come out on top yet again. This man is shrewd. Some thanks should go to Captain Vijayakanth for taking votes from AIADMK. PMK is fully routed. Sweet :)

3 for the price of 4 Laloo Prasad Yadav offered Congress only three seats as part of its seat-sharing. Congress went alone in Bihar. Laloo's RJD now has only 4 seats in all. And, two of these are won by Laloo himself. He has to give up one. "3 for the price of 4" heard on NDTV.

ECI's website is down on this day :(

Here's a small moment of fame. My tweet and EliLake's reply are mentioned in Glenn Greenwald's blog.

Glenn Greenwald wrote an article pointing out the US mainstream media's silence in covering US arrests of journalists while covering similar behavior on the part of Iran. It is in his usual style --- long, well-researched with lots of pointers, presenting his arguments in a way that would convinces most rational thinkers. The article also showed screenshot of a tweet by Eli Lake. I was amused at this comment and asked Eli Lake' what his response was. His response,

@mssnlayam Apples and oranges. Roxanne Saberi wasn't using her press card as cover for terror. Also it's moral idiocy to equate US and Iran

I tweeted back deconstructing his argument:

@EliLake Implying journalists mentioned in the story to have been jailed by the US (and released w/o charge) are terrorists? Any evidence?

and

@EliLake "moral idiocy to equate US and Iran" No one did. I see US the leading light for freedom. I also recognize hypocrisy when I see it.

Greenwald himself has a detailed response on his blog.

Eli Lake finally had this to say:

To all the lefties rushing to Greenwald's defense. Yes our government is more lawful, civilized and humane than Iran's. I stand by that.

I find it funny how people totally move away from the pertinent discussion and talk about something totall unrelated. Instead of commenting on the actual cases of journalists arrested (and later released without charge) that Greenwald has pointed out, Lake goes on a tangent babbling on what he likes about the US. Nice strategy: set up a strawman (Greenwald and lefties), pretend that they claim Iran is more lawful, civilized, and humane than the US, and beat down the strawman.

I understand Twitter is not suited for talking about complex issues, but not points for totally evading the question. I am really curious to see if Lake has a coherent response.

In the past I have effused on how much I liked Ron Paul. He is one (probably the only) politician who is consistent, honest and speaks his mind. More importantly, he is smart and rational. Though I don't always agree with him, I have had no difficulty understanding why he comes to a particular policy position.

Few will disagree that Ron Paul is an idealist. He focuses not on nitty-gritty practical details but on broad philosophical issues. It is however a problem when he tries to argue on the practical implications of his policy positions. Like most people, he observes what happens around him and highlights instances that affirm his ideology. Which is fine except that sometimes he tries to have it both ways. For instance, his comments on Hurricane Katrina and the recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak to present is limited government philosophy.

According to Ron Paul, big government is bad. A big federal government is unconstitutional (I am not capable of reasoning whether or not something is unconstitutional, so I will not get into that discussion.) A bloated federal government cannot well serve its people.

Here are his arguments (paraphrased):

• Hurricane Katrina was a fiasco because people expected the federal government to act. And oh, have I not already said that the federal government is inept?
• The Obama Administration is blowing out of proportion the possibility of the swine flu pandemic. They want to accumulate more power by making use of this opportunity.

This bugs me. He can't blame the government for both acting and not acting (in different situations). Imagine if swine flu really becomes a pandemic with consequences much worse than Katrina? And Ron Paul, if alive, will then be claiming "I told you so. Federal government inaction caused this pandemic." He can't have it both ways.

By making such naive reflexive arguments, Ron Paul risks sounding more and more like the other morons on the right.

PS: I still like him.

I have been working really hard the past few months. I slowed down a bit last week to cool down, recharge and become active again. In this post, I will write how I morphed from an procrastinating grad student to a productive one.

I know from my conversations with my friends that grad students waste a lot of time. They usually operate in bursts --- they scramble the month before a paper deadline, but otherwise spend a lot of time being idle. They spend a lot of time consuming blogs on various topics. Want to find an expert on the torture memos, the stimulus package, NFL draft prospects, the Indian Premier League, or fivethirtyeight.com's poll numbers? Ask around for grad students and you are sure to find intelligent grad students well-versed in these various topics.

On top of this, they usually live in a persistent state of guilt, because they do not do what they are supposed to. They cannot allocate a Saturday to read a book they badly want to. Why? Because they do not want to feel guilty of not working on a Saturday. Instead they will choose to spend the entire day idle doing nothing.

I was one such student. I could be easily distracted away from my work. I used to procrastinate a lot. I wanted to break free, focus on work, and work hard at that. I have say, I succeeded and here is how it happened.

Economist article on why people procrastinate

I read an article in the Economist that was kind of stating the obvious, but it had a profound impact on me. The crux of the article is that people procrastinate when they are tasked with huge abstract tasks. The problems that I am trying to solve in grad school are vast open-ended problems with no end in sight. It is easy to get bogged down thinking about accomplishing an enormous task and make no progress as a result. The key is to understand this, split your problem into small concrete sub-tasks, and device a course of action that you can evaluate every couple of days.

For instance, we are beginning to work on an idea for PLDI submission (due in November). We have absolutely now clue how it will pan out nor what we need to do to get there. Nevertheless, we have a rough roadmap, and I have an immediate task at hand that should take me two to three days. I can evaluate at the end of three days where I am, but during that time I can think just about this task and not be saddled by the big picture.

Scrum for research

Early last Fall, our research group starting using "Scrum for Research" as suggested by our friend over at Maryland. Our group meets thrice a week, MWF. Each meeting that lasts about 15-20 minutes. Each person gets to speak for two minutes on what they did in the two days prior to the meeting and their plan for the next two days. While this can seem like a very demanding environment to work in, we really like it. Trying to come up with tangible goals that we can reach in two days makes us efficient and productive. If you are doing systems research, you should try to incorporate scrum into your research workflow.

Aftermath

I have become very organized outside of work as well. I pursue my other interests without feeling guilty, have great weekends and eagerly look forward to going to school early on Mondays.

It is election time in India. There are so many parties and factions and coming up with whom I would endorse has been an intense though experiment. I have finally found a winner. My support goes to the Samajwadi Party (SP) led by Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Parties promise free electricity for farmers, free rice and so on. No party has managed to match SP's vision. SP promises to invent a time machine and will take us all to a future time where things will be dramatically different. People will no longer be divided on the basis of religion or caste. They will no longer die of old age. There will be no more unemployment. Every one will be employed in hunting and gathering.

More from the party manifesto:

The Samajwadi Party has vowed to work against the use of English in education. [...] Wherever work can be done by hand, computers would be abolished. [...] The SP has also come out against mechanized farming [...]