With the Sula Vineyards producing five lakh bottles a year, and Chateau Indage producing three million litres, one of my major concerns about going back to India seems to be alleviated ! ;-) Check the news here.

The future is litered with wine?!?

Update:
A Wine Spectator article gives a pretty good review to Samant's efforts, although it does not expressly taste the wines! Incidentally, I got four issues of Wine Spectator last semester, for free!

Do I drink so much wine that everybody knows? ;-)

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Fun~ ~India~ ~Money~
Edited on: Monday, December 01, 2003 4:15 PM
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That the most serious roadblocks on the Golden Quadrilateral are in Bihar and Jharkhand was underlined once again when a senior engineer of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) who had complained against allegedly corrupt contractors was shot dead by unidentified assailants early this morning at Gaya.

Read the news here and here.

Poll: Is arming yourself with guns a solution against such attack?

Found this website advocating the right to bear arms. Yesteday, I would have said YES for complete gun control. Not so sure anymore.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~India~
Edited on: Sunday, November 30, 2003 2:27 PM
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Was listening to Pink Floyd's "The Wall"

Hey you, out there in the cold
Getting lonely getting old
Can you feel me?
Hey you standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles
Can you feel me?
Hey you dont help them to bury the light
Don't give in without a fight.

Hey you out there on your own
Sitting naked by the phone
Would you touch me?
Hey you with you ear against the wall
Waiting for someone to call out
Would you touch me?
Hey you, would you help me to carry the stone?
Open your heart, I'm coming home.

But it was only fantasy.
The wall was too high,
As you can see.
No matter how he tried,
He could not break free.
And the worms ate into his brain.

Hey you, standing in the road
always doing what you're told,
Can you help me?
Hey you, out there beyond the wall,
Breaking bottles in the hall,
Can you help me?
Hey you, don't tell me there's no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall.

Meanwhile, completely unreleated, does anyone else think the packaging of Camel cigarettes is rather beautiful? I think I'm going to collect all the different boxes. [The website does not show much product information. Result of the great smoking litigation I suppose... - the text of the Master Settlement Agreement]

Disclaimer! :- I do not smoke, and I do not intend to smoke, ever. In fact, I think smoking is about the most foolish thing someone can do.

Hilarious: Truth in Cigarette Advertising website

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Fun~
Edited on: Saturday, November 29, 2003 4:13 PM
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Free: Advice to young scientists
Subscription req:

• Tree of Indo European Languages and related news article - [the determined] range appears to be several millennia too early to support a prominent theory that the proto-language was disseminated by nomadic Kurgan horsemen from the steppes of Asia, beginning about 6,000 years ago. But the dates fit well with the notion that Indo-European originated among nascent farming communities in Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey, some 2,000–4,000 years before that.
• A roundup of worldwide funding in Nanotech

Extra: Check out the Hasselblad website - esp the Masters. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much should I write in praise of all the photos there!

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Science~
Edited on: Wednesday, November 26, 2003 6:06 PM
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Much to the chagrin of my regular and loyal readership [the same numbering around 3], the blog has been silent for a week and a day now, so this is the time to put things right. As you might have noticed, I was busy stirring a storm in a few e-cups for the past week. After that, I suppose I was just plain lazy.
Don't have much to write even now, since I spend most of my time looking at F828 on sony's website [not sure the link will work, they prbably have session ID], and dreaming about the moment when I will first hold it in my hand ;-).
But in any case, I'm back, and will post more or less regularly henceforth. Meanwhile, I've just added one more short paragraph to the story.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Me~ ~Photo~ ~ThisBlog~
Edited on: Sunday, January 11, 2004 9:05 PM
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I was reading the news related to the fake Stamp Scam once in a while, but had not understood the full extent of it - 230 billion rupees - till now! However, a recent conversation led me to explore the news once again. The whole thing is deeply disturbing. This Telgi fellow - #$%#$^ him - has been at it for about ten years now, and five of those years he's been carrying out his dastardly deeds even though he's been charged - all with 'blessings' of top cops and politicians! Here's some news you can read - a rediff.com search for stamp scam. A search in Indian Express and Times of India also gives similar news.
What's extremely unsettling is that this money is bound to end up in the wrong hands - namely terrorists - and the politicians and police officers cannot see that, gazing as they are at their own fattening navels. ! It's time we tackle the issue of corruption as the top priority for national security.

Meanwhile, check out this report by BBC on a journey across Russia. Interesting similarities with Indian people... e.g. Next stop... was Omsk University. There we met some students of English. We chatted about politics. Most of them said they weren't interested in next month's parliamentary election. They didn't believe it would change their lives.
...and...
"What really amazed us" Yevgeny said, "was that everyone in your country [England] obeys the law. And your policemen are superb."
Hmmmm...

In Passing [and also disturbing]: Two articles in the NYTimes - The first one, on science reporting and the impact of on public opinion and policy making - "Science has reached greater heights of sophistication and productivity," Mr. Yankelovich wrote in his summer paper, but scientists' influence in public debates is actually shrinking. As a result, he said, "the gap between science and public life has grown ever larger and more dangerous, to an extent that now poses a serious threat to our future."
and the second, much more fundamental - Does Science Matter? !!!

- Chinmay

Categories - ~India~ ~Science~ ~World~
Edited on: Monday, November 17, 2003 5:59 PM
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Watched Kill Bill* yesterday. An AMAZING movie! Absolutely fantastic! To be sure, the plot is trivial - angry woman takes revenge - but the scenes are so beautifully done, and the acting is so fantastic, that even with the outrageous storytelling style - simultaniously realistic and fantastic - you can't help but LOVE the movie...

...or HATE it! No middle path here. Highly likely that I'll go watch it again soon.

Speaking of storytelling, here are some computer animated music videos - in French! - that I chanced upon. Even without understanding the words, nice piece of storytelling there too. [Large files - 20mb or so. Watch 'Respire' first and then 'Yalil', Zazie is skippable...]

*Check out the flash site if you have the bandwidth.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Fun~
Edited on: Saturday, November 15, 2003 3:54 PM
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Even though WiFI bubble[!] burst before it even inflated enough for everyone to know about it, the wireless communication people are still very much chugging along. Here's some news from The Register - CISCO is pusing WiFi saying it will increase productivity! WalMart is going ahead with it's RFID [Radio Frequency identification] for it's merchandise with this trial in Oklahoma. Here's a rather humurous interpretation of what wearable computers with wireless communication can do for you. And in Michigan, two kids were charged with Warparking. Good thing I didn't follow my plan of piggybacking over the many wireless networks floating around my aprtment. Meanwhile, if you have deployed a wireless network or use one, read this document to know about the [non]security - how you can easily hack even an encrypted network AND how to make changes so that your network is less attractive to Wardrivers - as things stand with WiFi, there's hardly any chance of stopping a determined attack.

The Matrix is all around you!

- Chinmay

Categories - ~GeekStuff~
Edited on: Thursday, November 13, 2003 6:31 PM
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Apparently I have too much work to do [e.g. PhD Applications, Exams, Research, Homework...] and too litle time. Expect the next post sometime this weekend....

Meanwhile, here're some links to send to people who send you useless chain mails and scare mails without checking the facts - TruthOrFiction.org, BreakTheChain.org, HoaxBusters and there are a zillion more.. Of course, just googling the operative word from such emails with 'hoax' will usually tell you if the email is a hoax or not. I wonder why people don't do that. For example, today I got an email about Progesterex. Now in itself the mail was certainly something to be concerned about, but googling it gives nothing but hoax info pages. Oh Well...

- Chinmay

Categories - ~GeekStuff~ ~ThisBlog~

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Watched The Matrix Revolutions yesterday. As the Rolling Stone magazine puts succinctly "At the risk of understatement, The Matrix Revolutions sucks." Horrible acting, hackneyed dialogue and banal situations and characters murder an otherwise decent plot, the music comes nowhere near the earsmashing heaven in the original, scene transitions are disconnected and haphazard and the whole result is that the audience groan and guffaws when it's supposed to be thrilled and moved. I don't blame us. To be frank, the most powerful idea of the story was revealed within the first half of the first movie. After that, it could only degenerate. However, if you go in with low [better still, no] expectations, the final [?] episode does have some small surprises, some predictable, some not. One of the perticularly nice ones is the credits track - Neodämmerung. I don't think I should give it away. You can listen to it on the Matrix website here. Do stop to listen to the lyrics. Also check out the cool new desktops.

Good Scenes: Neo at the train station, Trinity watching the sun, most of the scenes where Smith/Bane appears
Bad Scenes: Whenever anyone other than Smith/Bane/Oracle talks.
And what's with the 'big giant head' anyway? They never heard of speakers?

Anyway, I wait for The Return of the King.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~~
Edited on: Thursday, November 06, 2003 12:54 PM
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Very interesting - "The information content of subsensory stimuli is known to be increased by the addition of noise through stochastic resonance" according to Maddox (1991) and Wiesenfeld, K. et. al.(1995). The possible application to improving balance in the elderly by adding extra vibration noise to the insoles of their shoes...

Stochastic resonance is a phenomenon in which a nonlinear system is subjected to a periodic modulated signal so weak as to be normally undetectable, but it becomes detectable due to resonance between the weak deterministic signal and stochastic noise. The earliest definition of stochastic resonance was the maximum of the output signal strength as a function of noise (Bulsara and Gammaitoni 1996). - from Wolfram.com

UPDATE: I thought it's pretty wierd that any signal can resonate with noise. As I understand, noise may or may not have a defined amplitude, but never a defined frequency [or a mix of few freqs]. If it did, it could be treated as a signal! Now I thought sustained resonance can occur only when two signals interact. But apparently not so...

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Science~
Edited on: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 12:26 PM
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Again, articles in Nature about how it's goot to do interdisciplinary research - "The astute scientist recognizes that research is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary" and "Young researchers seek broader horizons for many reasons.... some have been roaming across disciplines from their undergraduate years and cannot imagine doing research any other way" [that would be me!]
Looks like my judgement is not too bad...

In passing: Apparently the first study of short term changes in male testosterone levels after interactions with females - "Boy meets girl. Boy's sex hormone goes through the roof, finds a new study of lab-based flirting" NOW I understand! ;-)

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Science~
Edited on: Monday, November 03, 2003 1:00 PM
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"China believes foreign direct investment is the fastest route to economic development. But India’s reliance on homegrown entrepreneurship may put that country in a position to catch up with, and possibly surpass, its northern neighbor. India, not China, is the rising economic power to watch." That's the conclusion drawn by Yasheng Huang [associate professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT] and Tarun Khanna [professor at Harvard Business School.] In interesting read with a 'Want to know more?' linkie.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~India~ ~Money~

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