Thursday, December 18, 2008

Came across a couple of very interesting posts on the anti-terrorist steps India should take by Prof. R. Vaidyanathan of IIMB.
Given that a nuclear war is not at all beneficial to us, screwing the already MASSIVELY screwed economy of Pakistan seems reasonable. Have no money, feed no terrorist will happen.
Here are the links:
8 things India Inc must do.

12 steps to shock and awe the Pak economy.

On a very personal note, I felt like someone got into my own home when those bastards did what they did. I've grown up seeing the very spots they hit and I'm sure anyone who grew up in Mumbai feels the same. I spent a good amount of time thinking of innovative ways to torture the one bastard who got caught. Had a discussion with Aseem on whether terrorists have religion.
His take was that religious sentiments made them do what they did and hence terrorists have religion.
I am no believer, but religion is essentially a human thing, and I refuse to accept terrorists as humans. They should not have any human rights and the bodies of the dead terrorists must be disposed of in the most disrespectful way possible. Also, make a video of the same and pass it to Al Jazeera...that should scare them all right.
India needs a strong anti-terror law, it needs good anti-terror organization and most of all it needs a Guantanamo Bay where to keep the terrorists. Maybe its time to get the Cellular Jail back to its 'infamous' glory.
The message ought to be clear..."You don't attack my home and get away with it."

Saturday, December 06, 2008

I spent seven biblically-lean years in the physics department.
One friend spent ten.We both got out alive.
Some didn't. It wasn't long before we had all heard the legend about
the graduate student who had shot his PhD advisor. Several years ago I
read a New York Times article about two graduate students who committed
suicide while studying in the Harvard laboratory of Nobel Prizewinner
Professor E. J. Corey. In a subsequent letter to the Sunday New
York Times magazine of December 20, 1998, Linda Logdberg of Upper
Nyack, New York, wrote in to comment on life as graduate student:

. . . Perhaps even more now than then, graduate education is an
extended adolescence during which highly intelligent young
people see their world shrink to fit the dimensions of their advisor's laboratory. . . . With their identities bound to the outcome
of the thesis project, graduate students are socialized to view
other options (teaching, industry, even changing to another type
of work altogether) with contempt.Wanting a decent wage and
meaningful work that occupies, say, only 50 hours per week are
considered signs of selling out.

From, 'My Life as a Quant' by Emanuel Derman, PhD (Physics, Columbia) who headed
Goldman Sachs' Quantitative Strategies group.


At IISc, I met a few of ppl who reacted almost violently to the idea of going on to do a mgmt degree and to
the idea of wanting to make more money. I thought I knew what they were thinking and this describes what I thought I saw perfectly.