I’m amazed at the number of my cousins who have “started production” immediately after their wedding – many of them have become parents within ten months of getting married! Interestingly all these cousins aer the types that I would classify as “conservative”. Wonder why the hurry.
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Arsenal’s goalless draw with Porto reminded me of chess. In chess, you have this concept of “grandmaster draws”, where players agree to a draw after just a couple of moves, or in some cases after just one move. This usually happens during the end stages of the tournament. For example, white might need only a draw to win the tournament while the result of the game has absolutely no bearing on Black’s position.
Some black players will be hesitant to offer grandmaster draws in such positions and give “ethics” or “want to try win every match” as the reasons. A lot will want a draw against the winner on his CV so will give it. But yeah, if Black is clearly better off with a draw than with a loss, he will clearly take it. Game theory prevails.
Given the position in group G, it was clear that a draw was the ideal result for both teams – unless Porto wanted to top teh group badly. Unfortunately for them, the rules of football don’t permit you to “agree draws” and you have to play 90 minutes. The only good thing about yesterday’s match is that there were no injuries!
On an unrelated note, I remember some chess tournament I played in some 10-12 years ago where I agreed to a “grandmaster draw” after 15 moves. I had got blasted by the organizers for that, their reasoning being “youngsters should not do such things”. Anyways, two of the organizers decided to continue the game where I had left it and they concluded no other result could’ve been possible. Actually now i’m wondering if it was actually a grandmaster draw, given that 15 moves were already played!
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Liverpool FC is being bought over by a group called DIC (dubai international capital).
At least it’s better than Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran)!!
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AHINDA*
For the last few days, every day the Business Standard publishes a new statistic from the Sachar Report and talks about how screwed up the Muslim commmunity in India is. Most of these seem to have one basic root cause – the education among Muslims sucks. The proportion of school graduates, college graduates, etc. among Muslims is much worse than that for most other communities and that I think underlies most of their misery.
The important difference between Dalit and Muslim leaders is that the former have to face elections. They stand for elections in the reserved constituencies and have to win in order to maintain their base. So they are in a way incentivized to work for their community.
Thing with Muslim leaders is that they are mostly religious and self-appointed. They don’t need to face any elections and the way they can cling to their position is to keep their own community backward. Muslim community in general being backward is actually good for them! And hence they do what they can to keep them backward!!
For a start, there was a report about the syllabus in the Madrasas. “Islamic education” is mostly religiuous and scripture-based and science is not taught. The thing in Deoband apparently still teaches that the sun revolves round the earth! Fantastic. After this kind of education where will the Muslim youth find jobs? Some of them (the lucky few) become clerics. The rest don’t have much of a future. Some of them do get really frustrated and end up joining various terrorist groups which are ever ready to welcome them.
So in a way, even if they don’t teach hatred, the madrasas contribute to terrorism!
What needs to be done is to get the Muslim kids to secular English medium schools which will give them access to decent jobs. it is not an easy task to do, given the stranglehold the clerics have on the community but I don’t think it should be too tough also. Anohter (not very good politically) thing to do would be to derecognize madarsas and force them to offer the syllabus taught in secular schools in return for recognition.
Another couple of related thoughts. When the Christian missionaries opened schools in India, they made sure a certain proportion of the intake was from other communities. While the original intention MIGHT have been (no one knows the actual reason) for conversion, what it did was to integrate the Christian community with the mainstream.
Another thing is that IMHO shias seem much better off than the sunnis. I’m talkign about Bohras/Kutchi memons here. They seem to have developed as a “business community” and because of that realized the value of education and except for unfairly getting mothered in the Gujarat riots are doing pretty well in life.
*AHINDA is a term coined by Peddaramaiah, oops Siddaramaiah (whose political future would’ve been sealed by now). It stands for “alpasankhyaatakaru, hinduLidavaru, dalitaru” which means “minorities, backwards and dalits”. Interesting to note that the bugger doesn’t consider Dalits and Minorities to be backward.
a request and a wish…
So it looks like Deep Purple is going to perform in Bangalore again! This is the second major rock/metal concert in b’lore (after the Jethro Tull thingy on my “home ground” 😀 ) after i started listening to this genre. Anyways I now have two problems –
1. Tickets. Not much info where i can source them. A friend has given me number for some agency which puts home delivey though. Need to try that out.
2. Company – people i like who can accompany me to the concert at their own expense (of course i’ll pay for my ticket. the other people have to pay for theirs!). If you think you fit the bill call me or mail me. You can find both mail id and phone number in my orkut profile.
Also, the mad commie (also known as
recruitment…
One thing an MBA teaches you is to write a good CV. I’m going to IITM to recruit next week and am currently looking at some CVs for the purpose of shortlisting.
Yeah, it’s the first time these blokes are applying for jobs so you can’t really expect too high a standard from them in terms of quality of writing of CV. Also, most of them are undergrads so it’s a very academic CV. One thing i’m surprised with is that a number of CVs look like they want to apply for a PhD, not really for a job.
I’m also really surprised that not one of the computer science people (except for one grad student) has prepared his/her CV in LATex.
Anyways what takes the cake is this one bugger whose CV ends with this line:
Resumes greater than 2 pages would not be considered
I want to shortlist him just to have a look at this guy. I’m surely going to have a fun time next week.
Update
Yesterday I wrote this post after I had had a look at a bunch of Comp Sci resumes. On my way home, I went through the Civil resumes. Much much more impressive, I must say. Both in terms of content and presentation. And interestingly I could relate better to a lot of projects these guys had done as against the CS projects. The CS guys seem to have written their CVs with an intention of becoming another-brick-in-the-wall developers in yet-another-IT-firm. They are much much mroe capable than this i think. Once upon a time, these blokes were among the top hundred of the country based on one shady exam. And now they are throwing it all away… Sad.
Of course, there is this one civil guy who has written an excellent resume. I mean his profile is really strong. And he has put in a “A little bit about myself” section at the end and has tried to fit in a SOP in there. And also, he has googled up the Sabre logo and put it on his CV. Strong. Anyways, some excepts from his SOP
** I chose the stated subjects at the Intermediate level due to my endless interest in Mathematics and Physics. Myproblem-solving skills have been commendable.
** I got Civil Engineering as my Major as per the IIT-JEE all India rank (AIR). I never regretted having got it as adefault.
** My weakness is that I cannot work without deadlines. I need not be shown a pink-slip daily for that matter, but Ineed deadlines to be most efficient.
Yeah I know that I myself have been fairly immature in a number of interviews, especially when asked ‘culture fit’ questions during the IIMB summer recruitment process. But somehow I can’t help but make fun of these guys. I’m really sorry.
Yet another update
I had to put this here. One guy has written that his objective is: To obtain a challenging position in the chosen field, which will test and utilize my skills while providing an opportunity for continued professional growth.
Haven’t seen something more global than that!
Dada is back!!
On the back of insipid performances by the so-called promising youngsters, Dada has been recalled. Good stuff I must say. Even though he hasn’t exactly covered hhimself in glory in the current domestic season (save one Duleep hundred), the selection committee might have felt that experience might come in handy on the bouncy south african pitches.
In another significant move, Sehwag has been stripped off vice-captaincy and the job has gone to Laxman. This move is significant in the light of Dravid’s broken finger. There is a good chance that he might not play the first test and his deputy will have to stand in. And for some reason the selectors don’t seem to want to hand over test captaincy to Sehwag.
On the flip side, I thought Badrinath deserved a place in the side. The Tamil Nadu captain has done pretty well in domestic cricket and even though he is not too young, he deserves a chance. We don’t need two keepers for a two test series and he could have been taken in place of Dinesh Karthik.
My take on the first team for the first test
1. Jaffer
2. Sehwag
3. Dravid
4. Tendulkar
5. Laxman
6. Ganguly
7. Dhoni
8. Kumble
9. Zaheer
10. Sreesanth
11. Patel
In case Dravid doesn’t recover in time, Gambhir will take his place and open, with Laxman moving to three, Ganguly to five and Sehwag to six.
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Yesterday there was a huge traffic jam on my way home from office because some people were “celebrating Rajyothsava”! The drive home took more than two hours as against the usual one and a quarter!
For heaven’s sake, Rajyotsava was over almost a month ago! Don’t know what these buggers were doing yesterday!
And celebrating doesn’t mean you block the road! Bah
I tell you, processions should be banned. Processions of all kinds. Religious. Political. Celebratory. Whatever.
Rather, we should earmark a “protests and celebrations” area in each city where these buggers can block and sleep and do whatever! And leave us honest tax-paying general public alone
strong article
even if you don’t subscribe to his views, it makes for awesome reading!
warning: despite the entertainment value, leftists and pseudo-secularists are advised to think twice before reading this – their blood pressure may go for a bit of a toss.
baba you rock!