Author: जयकृष्णः | ജയകൃഷ്ണൻ

Building Confidence

One of the pre-requisites for bringing in peace in Jammu and Kashmir would be to talk. One of the pre-requisites for talking is to have peace. This is a chicken and egg problem. So the terrorists found an easy way to break the deadlock.

Muslim militants killed nine Indian troopers in an attack on a paramilitary camp in divided Kashmir, just hours before India and Pakistan, which both claim the region, began a round of peace talks. Wednesday night’s attack on the heavily guarded camp in an upscale residential district of Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir, came just as the soldiers were sitting down to dinner, police said. One militant was killed inside the compound after exchanging sporadic fire with soldiers through the night. The whereabouts of the other rebels was not known. [Reuters]

Also Pakistani Superman Gen. Musharraf came up with an announcement that more Indian soldiers had died in Kagil than Pakistanis.

In a rare reference to Kargil, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has disputed deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s account that more Pakistani soldiers were killed during the conflict than the previous two wars against India, claiming New Delhi suffered more casualties than Islamabad.[Indian Express]

If these steps do not build confidence in the peace talks, then I don’t know what will.

LeapFrog in Afghanistan

Here is an interesting story of how technology and globalization are helping Afghanis learn about basic health. The technology is LeapPad, the point and talk books used by kids to learn to read.

The 42-page interactive books deliver health information through point-and-touch technology and are available in Afghanistan’s two major languages, Dari and Pashto. Users point and touch pictures in the book and the book speaks, incorporating a literacy tool with the health information.

The books, based on Leapfrog’s LeapPad interactive books, deliver information on 19 personal health subjects, including diet, childhood immunization, pregnancy, breast-feeding, sanitation and water-boiling, treatment of injuries and burns, and preventing disease.

Jim Marggraff, LeapFrog’s executive vice president for worldwide content, said the LeapPad uses plain paper as an interface to a computer equipped with a proprietary chip developed by the company. Each book used in a LeapPad comes with a data cartridge, which synchronizes the paper book with the cartridge through a touch-sensitive screen the book is placed on. When a user touches text or pictures on the page, the book “reads” the text through a MIDI interface connected to the cartridge through the computer chip. [Computer World via Gizmodo]

Already due to this evil force known as globalization, many people in Afghanistan have been earning a living.

The Flip Flopper

One of President Bush’s characterization of his opponent Senator John Kerry is as a flip flopper. The Republicans have been repeating it like a mantra in all occasions. So in a world of sound bytes, all that matters is words like “fuzzy math”, or “flip flopper”. Richard Cohen has an article in the Washington Post asking who is the real flip flopper ?

Bush also declared himself a determined unilateralist, kissing off treaties and understandings and even spurning NATO’s help in Afghanistan. Now, though, the unilateralist of old is sending Colin Powell around the world, seeking alms and arms for Iraq. Flip-flop.
Bush would not negotiate with North Korea. He did. Flip-flop.
Bush told the United Nations to butt out of Iraq. Now he wants it in. Flip-flop. [Washington Post]

Moral of the story: If you are a flip flopper, start calling your opponent a flip flopper.

The terrorist factory chugs along

Pakistan, the terrorist factory is real busy. Now they need to supply terrorists to both Afghanistan and India.

The prisoner, who gave his name as Muhammad Sohail, is a 17-year-old from the Pakistani port city of Karachi, held by the Afghan authorities in Kabul. In an interview in late July, in front of several prison guards, he said Pakistan was allowing militant groups to train and organize insurgents to fight in Afghanistan.

It is an open secret in Pakistan that groups supporting separatism in Kashmir have not stopped their activities, despite official declarations, and have continued to train men and infiltrate them into Indian Kashmir. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said during a visit to the region last month that Pakistan had not dismantled all the camps used to train militants for Kashmir. And while he praised Pakistan for its efforts against Al Qaeda, he urged the country to do more to stop Taliban militants carrying out attacks from Pakistan.[New York Times]

But then attacking Americans stationed in Afghanistan is not the same as attacking Indian troops

Afghan troops backed by U.S. warplanes killed as many as 70 guerrillas in a day-long battle near the Pakistani border, military officials said Tuesday… Pilots reported seeing 40 to 50 bodies on the battlefield near the mountainous Pakistani border, Peat said, and several wrecked vehicles were spotted. Nawab put the rebel toll as high as 70, saying the guerrillas had dragged away many dead and wounded as they retreated into Pakistan. Afghan forces recovered only 10 bodies, he said. [Washington Post]

But will this make Pakistan a terrorist nation ? No, as long as an occasional High Value Target is captured or some information is provided, they will remain the most valuable ally in the war on terror.

Kerry Leading

Newsweek has a new poll in which John Kerry is leading ahead of George Bush by 7 points.

Coming out of the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Sen. John Kerry now holds a seven-point lead over President George W. Bush (49 percent to 42 percent) in a three-way race with independent Ralph Nader (3 percent), according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll The poll was taken over two nights, both before and after Kerry’s acceptance speech. Respondents who were queried after Kerry’s Thursday night speech gave the Democrat a ten-point lead over Bush. Three weeks ago, Kerry

The iPod Killer ?

After finding that Apple had a huge marketshare in portable music players, Sony, who revolutionized the portable music market 25 years back decided to step in. So they introduced the Sony Network Walkman which got many things right. The Sony device is smaller and has a much better battery life. But they decided to screw up in the most important area, the format of the songs. They decided not to support any of the popular music formats, including MP3.

One major downside of the new Walkman is that it can’t play MP3 files, or any of the other standard formats. It can play back only a proprietary Sony format called ATRAC3, or a variation called ATRAC3plus. This means that, when you transfer your MP3 files to the new Walkman, Sony’s PC software must laboriously convert them first into ATRAC3 files. Sony claims it designed the player this way because ATRAC3 produces superior sound, and because it has features that extend battery life.

For my test, I used a very modest collection of 431 standard MP3 files. SonicStage 2 refused to transfer 15 of the files, posting a nonsensical error message. After that, it took an agonizingly long two hours and 13 minutes to transfer the remaining 416 tracks to the Walkman. By contrast, Apple’s iTunes software transferred all 431 songs to an iPod in about four minutes.

[via WSJ]
Will this kill the iPod ? I don’t think so.

Pictures from Adichanallur

There are “some pictures”:http://www.hindu.com/2004/07/25/stories/2004072500421100.htm from “Adichanallur”:https://varnam.org/archives/000431.html, near Tirunelveli where 2800 years old human skeletons were found in urns.
bq. The series of motifs show a tall, majestic looking woman; a swathe of standing paddy next to her; a crane; a deer; a crocodile and a lizard too. These motifs resemble prehistoric cave paintings found in Erode and Dharmapuri districts of Tamil Nadu. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Chennai Circle, made the discovery this month in one of the six trenches it dug at Adichanallur. The woman who is standing holds what looks like an oval-shaped anklet in her right hand. The deer has long, straight horns and an upturned tail. The crane is perched on some vegetation. The crocodile looks as if it is crouching. It is virtually a pictorial ode. A small, thin rope was obviously used to bring about a serrated effect on the deer’s horns, the sheaf of paddy, etc.
bq. The ASI has also discovered two urns, fully intact, with beautiful decorations on them. One has a garland-like impression running below its rim, created by a thumb impression. Another urn has two necklace-like ornamentation, cutting each other. A flat, thin knob protrudes from one of these decorations. A third broken pot has a leaf-like design running all round its middle.
bq. The “engineering marvel” at the Adichanallur burial site is its three-tier system. The earliest generation buried the dead in urns at a depth of about 10 feet. The next two generations buried them in urns in two tiers above. Urns were inserted by cutting a rocky hillock. Agriculture land was not used. Mr. Thirumoorthy said: “The three-tier system of burial shows their intention, with foresight, to accommodate future burials. Adichanallur shows the importance given to the dead in the early Tamil society in the mode of burial practice, and that society’s socio, economic and religious beliefs.” [“The Hindu”:http://www.hindu.com/2004/07/25/stories/2004072500421100.htm]

Donald Trump did not build Taj Mahal

Indian Archaeologists have found the names of 670 labourers who built the Taj Mahal.
bq. The names, written mostly in Arabic and Persian, are etched on the sandstone used in the wall and other peripheral structures on the northern side of the Taj Mahal, the Asian Age newspaper reported. Some names were also written in Hindi, the report said, quoting D. Dayalan, a senior official at the Archaeological Survey of India. Dayalan and his staff also found tridents, stars, geometrical patterns and flowers carved into some of the sandstone, implying the masons and labourers were drawn from diverse religions. “Since many of them were illiterates, they denoted symbols as a mark of their identity,” Dayalan said. [“CNews”:http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2004/07/06/527091-ap.html]