the brook

Quintessentially Mumbai.

The men in blue have achieved what we never thought possible.

For the team that truly gave it their all, the men who played out of their skins, the boys who made us proud to be Indian, and the players who showed what having a heart truly means - You Rock!

There are a hundred different things going on in my mind - but the only thing that matters is a hope that this moment lasts forever.

Chak de India!

Al Gore, one of the most lucid American political commentators I have read, explains clearly and persuasively why he thinks American democracy is going downhill and is in dire need of a shot in the arm.

His main arguments are - the overwhelming influence of the television media, leading to a sudden decrease in citizen participation (TV is mostly one-way communication); the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few (directly related to media influence as well); and massive abuses of power and unconstitutional actions by the Bush administration which have gone either unchecked or uncorrected by Congress and/or the judiciary but also by the American public.

He gives ample substantiation (though anyone who follows the American democracy or even the Daily Show closely enough should need none). But it was shocking to learn that a huge percentage of Americans believe that the President needn’t follow the orders of a Supreme Court judge - simply because Bush has ignored a few. Gore’s is the most lucid explanation I’ve read yet of why reason and rationality - the tools that are the presumption of a working democratic system are being eroded.

The book is definitely food for thought for Americans. But it has a lot of implications for the rest of us as well. America is the birthplace of real democracy - built from monarchy. They still learn - and care - about what their founding fathers struggled with more than two centuries ago, and how the system of checks and balances works. And so perhaps it’s not as surprising that they (or at least some of them) can see better than the rest of us what plagues the institution of democracy.

As an Indian, I am very proud of being part of the largest democracy in the world. Yet democracy is something we adopted, and now take for granted, something we sort of assume is the best mode of government there can be. We all learned the how of democracy in civics lessons - who elects the national and state legislatures and what the division of powers are and what that parliamentary system means. But the why of it - thats something that we don’t bother about much. We don’t learn too much about why our constitution is the way it is, and what the logic of democracy is.

The problems that Al Gore points out for the US are as applicable to India or may become in the future - mindless sensationalizing of the news media for one; and increasing lack of participation of the educated electorate for another.

At the end of the book, Al Gore suggests that the Internet can play a major role in rekindling the role of citizens in a true democracy. He also makes it quite clear that democracy is no panacea - without a well informed citizenry willing to participate in the process, power will naturally go into the hands of select few who will then have no checks to prevent its abuse.

The only negative - perhaps only for an outsider - is that the middle of the book is a bit rambling about how much Bush has abused his power - some of which may be due to the fact that they’re natural rivals.

Rating: 4 / 5

Robert Jordan, author of the wonderful Wheel of Time series passed away recently. I loved the wheel of time books that I’ve read. More than that, his stories and words and ideas have, and still do, influence me personally. I still remind myself often that “The wheel weaves as the wheel wills.” And the list of other quotes that I think of often are too long to list. What more can one ask of a story?

It’s reported that he was working on book 12 till the very end - and it is hoped that the final book in the series can be completed in a form close to what he would have intended, from his notes and writings. I admire his tenacity to focus on his work in the face of debilitating and terminal illness.

I am not alone in quoting his own words to wish him well.

Goodbye, Robert Jordan. The light shine upon you and the Creator shelter you. The last embrace of the mother welcome you home.

With the Twenty20 world cup well underway, I can’t help but feel just that bit concerned that cricket as I know and love it will remain no more.

Clearly, I’m no fan of this version of the game. Cricket is pulled down to two dimensions - slogging and defensive bowling. It’s quite clear that in Twenty20, a batsman doesn’t have to put as high a price on his wicket, which may be putting it mildly. Even if an innings sees a wicket every three overs, a good score is possible, assuming your top seven or eight batsmen can connect ball to bat while swinging wildly. As for bowling, it’s equally clear that there’s little point in experimenting and varying your bowling in the hope of getting a wicket. Setting a batsman up for that wicket taking ball can easily take an over or two and is not always successful, which means that even if the setting up does work and you do get a wicket eventually, the runs conceded while “making the batsman play” will not be worth it. Bowlers, then, will be best served by bowling defensively and trying to save as many runs as possible.

Neither of these approaches are inherently bad; I enjoy run-fests even in test cricket as much as anyone else, and defensive bowling to save an ODI is an art in itself. What I dislike is that there’s little hope of encountering any other strategy in the game - though I suppose one would say it’s too early, and newer strategies might emerge that we haven’t heard of. But we won’t see many batsmen applying perfect technique to stymie the good balls, nor will we see a Shane Warne of the future say of getting 700 wickets, “you tempt the batsman and hope he tries to hit you for six.”

The whole definition of what is “good cricket” will change. It has already started. Consider this quote from a Cricinfo bulletin on the match where Bangladesh beat WI:

The most impressive aspect of the stand was that it was studded with genuine strokes and not ugly slogs or swipes. Aftab in particular used his bottom hand to good effect, picking deliveries from outside the off stump and swinging across the line to square leg.

While it’s possible to play good shots that involve picking a delivery from outside the offstump and using the bottom hand to swing it across to the legs, that isn’t exactly what comes to mind immediately upon imagining an “innings studded with genuine strokes.”

What I love most about cricket is the sense of story. There is a plot to every game, and following the twists and turns of attack and defense in a good game is what I really enjoy. Of course, one cannot hope for the absorbing joy of a test match in a game that lasts slightly longer than one session of play. But I really wish they had done more to bring balance to the game. Something on the lines of fewer overs with field restrictions, or even limiting the number of batsmen allowed to bat. Anything that actually encourages both bowlers and batsmen to make a real choice and vary their approach depending the demands of the situation.

A hot argument right now for 20/20 is that the games are usually closer and there’s a greater chance of causing upsets. No doubt - and the reason is more randomness in the game. You play cricket by making runs using a dice instead of a batsman hitting the shot, and it’ll be even more likely that Zimbabwe beat Australia. Not many tests and ODIs are closely fought, it’s true; but the ones that are happen only when teams happen to be extremely well matched on that particular day and those matches are feasts. In 20/20 virtually every match can go down to the wire just because there simply isn’t enough play to bring out the full quality possible in cricketers.

There is great clamour for a shorter version of the game. It’s possible that this form of cricket will catch on just because there are far greater boundaries in a far lesser amount of time. Comparisons to football abound, some of them ridiculous. Football involves intense continuous sessions of play, because of which the elements of excitement in sport are fully played out. A telling observation is that a major change to the rules of football - the offside - was introduced because it was too easy to score goals, despite the fact that goals technically make a match more exciting.

One benefit of 20/20 is supposed to be the starting of the domestic and international 20/20 leagues which may add a much needed viable layer of cricket, according to Sambit Bal (via). And that’s what I’m actually afraid of. These leagues are supposedly going to be big, with money and corporate ownership. If 20/20 is the wave of the future, and clearly differing skill sets are required for 20/20 vis-a-vis other forms of the game, the older versions may suffer. Although it is also possible the effect will be opposite and all forms of cricket will benefit if there is an increased focus to game. I certainly hope so.

Entertainment is all very well, but I do hope I’m not denied my art a decade from now.

In a startling discovery made by combining the latest artificial intelligence technology and data mining of health news sources, it has been shown that being charged with possession of assets disproportionate with one’s known sources of income is the leading cause of high blood pressure and coronary problems in India. See here for an example.

A high-level parliamentary committee has been formed to investigate such distressing cases and is widely expected to recommend that CBI teams start having emergency medical training and carrying defibrillators, and offer the accused a stiff drink while reading them their rights which include, ‘You have the right to go to hospital in case jail is a bit too harsh for you.’

That’s me, in case you didn’t already know. While a lifetime of evidence exists, in the interests of brevity, I will only present its latest manifestation. Warning: this is a work-related (read: geeky) rant.

if ( A or B ) // A and B are some valid conditions
{
if ( A ) return x; // x is some valid return value
if ( B ) return y; // y is some valid return value
throw error; // should never reach here, right?
}

There should be absolutely no reason I’d get the error. Yet, I was. And once I got the error, I praised myself for having kept an “open mind” and actually anticipating that the impossible could happen. I enchanted myself with the discovery I was about to make which allowed this execution flow and rewarded myself with a subway cookie.

A while later, after banging my head around trying the complex conditions A and B by hand, I realized that it was impossible for this impossible thing to happen - as any first year undergrad could tell you. I’m doing a PhD and have to keep an open mind and let my brains leak out. That’s my excuse.

What happened was pretty simple. Master Yoda would put it this way: “Putting way too many error messages leads to lost time. Lost time leads to hurrying up your code. Hurrying up your code leads to copying and pasting aforementioned error messages. That leads to confusion about which error message you’re seeing. Confusion leads to suffering. Mmmm?” I sure found that out, after trying for an hour to debug code that was completely and obviously correct.

After this episode, which was actually the least of my worries (ever heard of segmentation faults?), I was wondering why it felt like I’d gone around in a circle a hundred or so times. And that’s when the universe, in a cruel stroke of brilliance, responded through subversion:

$ svn commit
Committed revision 314.

Just one of those days.