Posts from — October 2004

I finally managed to find some time to upgrade the WordPress installation on this blog to the latest version, 1.2.1 “Mingus”. The upgrade went quite smoothly, thanks to the excellent instructions that Matt has posted on the WordPress development blog

Upgrading from 1.2 is very easy. Your existing templates and plugins should work just fine; all you need to do is overwrite the WordPress files and folders. To upgrade:

1. Download 1.2.1
2. Unzip
3. Upload the new files to your site, taking care not to overwrite anything you may have modified like index.php

Very straightforward, isn’t it?! I followed each step faithfully! :-)

But I think they forgot to include one last instruction. I really do feel silly to sit here with my fly unzipped!! :-P

The final frontier has finally been conquered. Australia completely outclassed India to realize their dream of achieving a Test-series win in India. Congratulations to them!

It did not help the Indian cause at all that the Indians played some of the worst cricket in recent memory. Getting bowled out under 200 in both the innings is a shame for a team that boasts of batsmen like Tendulkar, Dravid, Sehwag and Laxman. Terrible!!

In case I haven’t told you yet, I am now the owner of a new digital camera. I bought a digital SLR, the Canon EOS 300D.

EOS 300D is the camera that revolutionized the digital SLR market last year when Canon launched it with a sub £1000 price-tag, the first digital SLR to do so! And if the reviews are to be believed, then its performance isn’t too different from the excellent Canon EOS 10D and the only thing that seems to hold the EOS 300D back is its reduced feature set. But come to think of it, this drawback is only a result of firmware crippling and with some tinkering around (only if you know what you’re doing) you can get the EOS 300D purring along like the EOS 10D. In any case, EOS 300D is a sort of a bridge for amateur photography enthusiasts like me to make the leap from the general purpose consumer/prosumer cameras to the big league of SLR cameras!

Of course, Nikon D70 ever-so-slightly edges out EOS300D in terms of performance and features. But with a price thats over 30% lower than the D70, Canon EOS 300D emerges the winner, as far as I’m concerned! So much that I bought the EOS 300D lens kit (the body with EF-S 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 lens), an extra battery (Canon BP-511) and a CF card (Lexar 512 MB). And it cost me much… much less than just the Nikon D70 lens kit!! (And I’m going to buy a Lowepro case for the camera and even then the cost will be over £100 lesser than the D70 lens kit)

I shall, of course, be putting up photos that I click with the EOS 300D, in my photo gallery soon.

After the defeat in the Maharashtra assembly polls, BJP and Shiv Sena have done what they do best after an electoral loss - BJP has gone into an introspective mode as its top leaders started analysing the defeat and Shiv Sena has gone into a defensive mode as its leader has started blaming every Tom, Dick and Harry for their defeat (so far he’s blamed the rebels, the muslims and even the hapless Rajdeep Sardesai!)

I wonder why Thackeray wants to blame the rebels! He did not seem to mind them in the 1995 elections when, being 6 short of a majority, the BJP-Sena combine had accepted the support of 45 independents, majority of whom were rebels dis-satisfied with Sharad Pawar, the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

Actually, Sena’s fall from public favour is its own doing. Shiv Sena has always enjoyed grassroots support among the local middle class Mumbaikars who form the majority of the electorate. Prior to 1995, Sena used to be at the forefront in organizing local events and functions. When it came to supporting box-cricket or kabaddi or wrestling tournaments, it would be the Shiv Sena which would lead the way. Sena would set up stalls selling inexpensive sweets or firecrackers during Diwali. At the start of the academic year, Shiv Sena would set up stalls to sell inexpensive stationery for poorer students. This meant that the Sena leaders, uninhibited by the trappings of power, were always closely in touch with common people, more importantly, the youth. As such, these people formed a loyal vote-bank for the party. Using these people as a springboard, Shiv Sena came to power in BMC and subsequently in the Maharashtra assembly.

Power corrupts. And so… once in power, this grassroots contact was broken. Sena support for local event like the ones mentioned before was not as forthcoming as it used to be. Leaders who would celebrate festivals among the locals, as one of them, started paying token visits to their constituencies. As a result, loyal Sena voters felt disillusioned and gradually started shifting away from the party. The middle-class marathi manoos somehow felt betrayed. This space, vacated by Shiv Sena, was deftly filled by the emergence of Sharad Pawar’s NCP. Slowly but surely, box-cricket tournaments and kabbadi matches started getting organized under the banner bearing the clock (NCP’s symbol). Shiv Sena, looking towards Delhi, had slackened its hold on the only loyal following it ever had. And the results, ever since, have proved that Sena has been sliding down the slope, gathering pace as the time goes on.

So, rather than spread the blame right, left and centre, it would be prudent for Shiv Sena to accept that it has indeed lost ground among its traditional loyalists and probably do something about it.

Of course, this isn’t the only reason for the defeat of the Sena-BJP combine in the polls. Not by a long way. But I do believe that this is one of the key reasons.

While George W. Bush continues to ridicule John Kerry’s flip flopping attitudes on national and international issues, here’s a brilliant photo-essay that takes a tongue-in-cheek look at Bush’s own flip flops over the years, in the form of a shoe catalog.

It’s funny and tastefuly done! And there’s even a download link if you want to send it out to friends as a pdf file.

However, the author of the photo-essay lets us down in the end by putting up a 1778 quote attributed to Alexander Tyler.

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back to bondage.

First of all, the author must be referring to Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Scottish history professor who is supposed to have written the above passage in a book titled, ‘The Fall of the Athenian Republic‘. Now, there is no record of such a book even in the US Library of Congress, which houses over 128 million items. So this quote is, in all probability, an urban legend.

However… it is an interesting quote nonetheless! Can this cycle of democracy be applied to an Indian context? Have we ever gone from abundance to selfishness and ultimately from dependence to bondage? Oh but we have, haven’t we?! Loosely put, the regional kings let British and other traders gain political control of their states in exchange for trade and protection… and in the longer run, India ended up as a British colony.

And then from bondage we went on to spiritual faith (rise of people like Gandhi or Swami Vivekanand or countless others)… and from faith we went to great courage as seen in the freedom struggle… and then ultimately we gained liberty!

As for the transition from liberty to abundance… we haven’t seen that yet in India, have we?! Well… I can put it down to the the libertarian argument of not having enough liberty!

Convenient, eh?! ;-)