Honor Killing

We read and hear lot of news everyday. But some causes ripples in your thought process and makes them go back and forth inter-mingle them. Here is one such.

I listened this in NPR on my way back from work. An Iraqi guy was narrating with the help of translator.

“Honor is everything in our society. How can our family show our faces to society? After the incident we were humiliated and embarrassed. Though she is beautiful, intelligent and nice, we have no choice but to kill my sister. What else we can do?”

It ripped my heart when I learn that “crime” her sister committed was getting abducted by some unknown kidnappers. She was away one night and released by the kidnappers.

They did not even ask the girl whether she was raped. But they decided merely the act of abducted for a ‘night’ is enough to bring down the Honor of the family. So, they decided to kill her – just to make sure their honor is intact.

Worst part is ‘Honor killing’ is accepted phenomenon and police turns other way.

The guy who killed claims he did this for the family and wouldn’t mind doing it again if required. He sounded very genuine. He also said, if it were a guy they would have celebrated with feast (sacrificing a goat). Instead they sacrificed her.

Leaving the male dominated society issues aside, (which I agree is the problem) I started wondering about how a human mind can think that killing another person (in this case a loving sister) is for good cause. What is the difference between this and a military guy killing others for his country’s good cause?

What a world apart we all live in. I was wondering how can someone believe the above said. But that is exactly the problem around the world isn’t it? People have their own belief system and think everything else as wrong.

I was disturbed, irritated and sad after hearing that. But after an hour I was sitting in front of TV and watching some sitcom and laughing. Somewhere else a guy is pulling a trigger with heavy heart. GOD help us all.

Legal terms that one should know

I am an avid reader of all novels linked to law. I have this collection of Perry Mason novels ( I think I have almost all of them) and find it really interesting the way he handles certain cases. These are some terms that everyone should know unless you have a very good lawyer and lot of money . If you have seen "Practice"( not "Boston Legal") in TV or read any of Perry Mason novels( not "John Grisham's"), you would have heard the term "habeas corpus" quite often. Infact, almost always Mr. Mason files for a habeas corpus as soon as someone comes to him to defend a case. Well, this is what habeas Corpus means.

Habeas Corpus
habeas corpus n. Law A writ issued to bring a party before a court to prevent unlawful restraint. [Source: AHD

The basic premise behind habeas corpus is that you cannot be held against your will without just cause. To put it another way, you cannot be jailed if there are no charges against you. If you are being held, and you demand it, the courts must issue a writ or habeas corpus, which forces those holding you to answer as to why. If there is no good or compelling reason, the court must set you free. It is important to note that of all the civil liberties we take for granted today as a part of the Bill of Rights, the importance of habeas corpus is illustrated by the fact that it was the sole liberty thought important enough to be included in the original text of the Constitution.

Now that we have the most important part covered and you know that you cannot be held without a reason, there is something called the Fifth Amendment. You would have seen people saying," I invoke the fifth amendment" in many of these novels.

Amendment 5 - Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

This would mean you have the right to go on a trial and get a lawyer before anything happens. Ofcourse, you may never see this happening in Indian movies. I am not sure about the Indian constitution anyway. If you see the underlined words in 5 Amendment " be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb" ,it is called "double jeopardy".

Double jeopardy is a term used in law. Double jeopardy is forbidden by the Constitution. Double jeopardy is what would happen is someone were to be charged with a crime and be found innocent, and then be charged with that crime a second time. For example, if you are charged with stealing a car, and a jury finds you innocent, you cannot be charged with stealing the car again.

There is an interesting Perry Mason Novel where he uses this . The brother gets charged with murder of a guy, though he is actually framed . Mason helps him getting acquitted with very good investigation and arguments. Just around the same time, his sister actually kills the guy and the bro takes the rap saying he killed the guy. But, he cannot be tried 'coz he has already been acquitted for the same crime!!!

Archer Fish

I have been doing some reading on how rainbows are formed. If you have time, do some google searches on rainbows, halos and glory. It is just fascinating. In the process, I've been clearing out my basics on optics. Some of the concepts, like snell's laws of reflection and refraction reminded me of the school days when I had unconsciously stuffed in all these materials into my head without understanding its significance or application. Anyway, I read about the behaviour of this interesting species called Archer fish and how it finds its prey.

To give you a quick tutorial on optics, when light enters from a less dense media to a higher denser media, it undergoes reflection (light emanating outwards) and refraction (light that passes through the denser media). The refracted light has a different degree from the normal when compared to the incident ray. The point is, to a normal eye, because of this refraction thingy, particles on the denser media appear slightly shifted. Explains why a pencil half dipped in water appears broken at the interface.

What does archer fish do? It stays inside the water and squirts a jet stream of water on its prey which hangs onto a grass or some form of vegetation near the surface of the water and knocks it off. Once the prey falls into water, it quickly rushes to the place where the insect fell. Sometimes, the archer fish goes out of water, of upto 20-30 cm and grabs the prey by its jaw. The mystery here is that, for a fish inside the water, the insect should seem to be in a different place (due to refraction) and yet, the archer fish accurately streams the water to the target with greater accuracy. One solution that partly explains the situation is that, by snell's law (ni*sin(theta-i) = nr*sin(theta-r)). So, when theta-i=0, theta-r=0, which means that when the light enters perpendicular to the media, it doesnt shift inside the denser medium. So, if the archer fish is perpendicularly beneath its prey, it can exactly pinpoint where the prey is. However, it has been studied that the archer fish is able to predict the prey correctly even when the prey is at an angle. It is just interesting to know how nature works in mysterious ways....

Spaced Office

In day to day work, I cannot stand people who dont wish to understand what is being conveyed. One category of people genuinely do not understand stuff, which I can agree. But, the other category of people stay by their ideals and do not bother to listen to what the other person has to say. As a caretaker of this free world, it became my moral responsibility to quantify such behaviours..:)

In a professional setup, I categorize people into two groups. One of them is the educated group and the other one is the trained group. Educated group comprises of people who can venture into any given problem and try to find a solution. Their abilities are often not bounded to a specific field. The educated group tries to understand new technology or new software and what not and reason out if it makes sense or not. They do not admit to stereotypical existence. The problem with the educated group is that they may not be greatly specialised in a specific area. On the other hand, the trained group contains people who are extremely specialised at their job function. However, they cannot open up to new technologies. They are very monotonous and if they have come across a technology that worked well for them, they just stick to it and even campaign that it is the best technology around. It is difficult to convince them to do things that dont fit their specialisation, not because the new tasks are different, but it is just that they wouldnt budge to trying out new things.

Personally, I think both of them are key components to running a team. But, the more the educated people get, it is better. This is something that resonates in me when I hear about offshoring. I always hear people saying that we can train people to do things. I completely agree. But, I believe, a trained work force cannot be an innovation incubator. For a growing company, the number of cross-links within the company for each new individual increases exponentially and implementing new methodologies are a necessity. I think, people should be trained to be in the educated group...what an oxymoron ? As individuals of unparalleled potentials and the highest calibre, I think this is something that deserves our attention...:)

Hello HDTV Shoppers...

In the high paced techno world that we live in, we are posed with all sorts of technical jargons everyday. One such thing that has caught up a lot of attention recently is HDTV. Having bought an HDTV myself several months ago, I did some research and thought of collating my thoughts on the topic. My friend Srihari deserves a lot of credit since he already did most of the research and gave me the right insights to buying our TV. One of the fundamental misinterpretation that leads to a great deal of confusion about HDTV is the distinction between display technologies and HDTV transmission standard as such. The display technologies that you will hear most often are LCD, Plasma, DLP and the conventional CRT. It is completely different from the HDTV standard as such. What it means is that, you can watch HDTV channels on any of the aforementioned display media.

As one can guess, HDTV contains more information about a picture and hence needs more bandwidth. In this context, you shouldnt confuse between aspect ratio and pixel information. As most of us know, HDTV has an aspect ratio of 16:9 when compared to 4:3 for a conventional TV. Most people think that, the aspect ratio is the reason why HDTV has better quality, which is blatantly false. Aspect ratio just defines the width to height ratio. It was 1.33:1 (4:3) previously and for HD it is 1.77:1 (16:9). This just means that the screen will be a little wide angled. In a normal TV, the resolution is mentioned in terms of 640x480. This just means that there are 640 pixels in the horizontal column and 480 lines (vertical). You can see that the ratio between 640:480 is 4:3. This could mean that, you can create an HDTV with, say 640:360, it would still obey the aspect ratio rules. Anyway, the standard pixel count for an HDTV is 1920x1080 (around 6.75 times more pixels than a regular TV), and you can see that the number of lines to be scanned has increased from 480 to 1080 as well. There are intermediate points chosen and marketed in the names of EDTV, SDTV etc., Some manufacturers try to take a HD-transmitted data and down convert it to, say 720 lines and market it as HD compatible TVs. When people refer to 480p/480i/1080p/1080i, the p and i mean progressive scan or interlaced scan and the number preceding it denotes the number of lines. EDTV is a nice sweet spot till sometime back since it can provide DVD quality (852x480). When you watch DVD in a HDTV, it just does extrapolation (up-conversion of pixels to fit HD quality) to fill all the pixels. One should also bear in mind that bigger TVs still have the same number of pixels in a row, only bigger. This is the reason why the bigger the TV gets, you should watch it from a distance (8-10x the diagonal size of TV) to have a better quality. Otherwise, you will start distinguishing the pixels.

According to FCC, all TV transmissions should eventually become HD in the next 4-5 years. This deadline has always been a moving target. However, with better display technologies and lower cost, people are already switching in large numbers to HDTV. Needless to say that one of the key thing to be considered before buying an HDTV is its cost to performance ratio. You can get the best performance with LCD/Plasma (L/P) displays since they are light, thin and have better quality. Plasma TVs have historical issues of burn-in (a condition where parts of display which gets used more often and displays worse over time). Plasma display makers are making conscious efforts to get over that problem. LCDs are equally good. However, cost for L/P televisions are fairly higher (around 2 to 3K even for a 42" TV). Dont be caught by LCD projection TVs. Projection TVs are a completely different beast. Basically, it is about projecting a smaller picture through a lens (transmitive or reflective) onto a bigger screen. The main advantage of a projection TV is that it costs considerably less than its L/P counterparts. DLP (Digital Light Processing) is a technology from Texas Instruments which uses micro-mirrors to do image projection. It has no perceptible quality difference compared to L/P with no burn-in issues, no pixel level issues and the cost is almost 50% lesser than L/P (46" DLP costs ~$1300). However, it is not as thin as the L/P TVs. Also, the quality is determined by the spacing between micro-mirrors in a chip, which is of the order of 1 um now. 1um is a large enough space to dilute the resolution of the TV. Not perceptible to naked eye unless you have very good eyes..:) Finally, you will have a choice between HD-ready-TV and HDTV. In the case of HD-ready, you will not have a built-in HD tuner. Its not a big deal. Most of the cable receivers, dish-network receivers have an HD tuner inside. So, you dont need it unless you want to watch things through OTA (off-the-air) antenna, though dish-network HD-receivers have an antenna input as well. You can always buy an HD tuner seperately and hook it on to your antenna output.

To sum it up, be prepared for the following questions when you buy an HDTV. Size? The bigger the better. For anything above 35", CRT shouldnt even be considered. It is just massive and gets very heavy. Between 40"-45", L/P and DLP all fit into the domain and it is a personal choice, given the money to performance aspect. If it is anything above 45", projection TVs are the best option. You can choose between DLP and LCD-Projection TVs. We have a Samsung HLP5685 (56" DLP) and it absolutely amazing. It is probably a good idea to buy the warranty for atleast 2-3 years for these TVs. I havent touched upon the different cable standards that connect the HDTVs, but then, I hope you will figure it out pretty easily when you buy these TVs. Above all, the experience of watching HD-quality cant be explained in words. It just needs to be experienced. So, go for the best !! Happy Shopping !!!

REALITY CHECK

I AM ALIVE
I can SEE,HEAR,TALK
I can WALK
I can SMELL,TASTE
I can THINK
I can SLEEP

Some of the things that we take for granted in life including LIFE. Be thankful that you can do all these things . There are millions around the world for who this is not a simple task . I remember the days when my sister always used to scold me for not finishing my dinner and wasting food,chiding me with" Do you know there are millions who starve without dinner?". My thoughts used to be "Yeah...blah..blah.., whatever". Next time, when you complain about a head ache, think about others who get migraine head aches and suffer for days together. Next time, when you complain about walking a few steps to get something, thing about disabled people who would love to just walk around whenever possible, if they can. These are just the basic necessities in life you take for granted. Of course, we can extend it to money etc.... and lot more.

Above all, the next time when you have a bad day and wonder why life is treating you so bad, think about millions who are fighting for their every day survival and be THANKFUL that you are ALIVE !! . The most volatile thing in this world is LIFE.

Must we commit to something?

I have often been told that commitments are important and once you say you will do something, it must be done. I wanted to explore this line of reasoning. The dictionary defines commitment as an agreement or pledge to doing something in the future, an act of committing to a charge or trust. But does everything we say qualify to be a commitment? The answer is, perhaps not. Could we say (speak) something that we do not commit to? Sure, why not?

Let us assume everybody said something without intentions to do it, or, everybody said something and intended to do it, but just changed his/her intentions over time. How chaotic would the world be? The airline agent would say, “I’ll block your tickets for the cheapest rate” and rightfully forget to do so. The father could say he would be at the daughter’s wedding, but could rush to work because he preferred that. At any point in time, one must wonder or predict whether the speaker would really do what they said they would do.

I believe it is a much better world, where people intend to do what they say they will do and further do what they said, where people are committed to delivering on their words. However you might not agree with, “Do unto your neighbor as you would have them do unto you.” Lets assume you really did not care about others not committing or not keeping their commitments. Do you still have to keep commitments? I definitely believe it is favorable to do so.

A person’s credibility is based on the ability of a person to commit to something and to deliver upon it. If a person repeatedly commits and fails to deliver, people’s reliance on him/her will reduce drastically. People would start taking the slacker less seriously and trust would decline on his/her ability to keep commitments.

For techies, I’d like to present another analogy. We all know about how commitment control is implemented in transaction processing. What would happen if the database did not commit transactions? This could have serious and unpleasant consequences in real-world businesses. We know its implication and as software developers we take up the task of using commitment control seriously whenever we code OLTP systems. Software that has no commitment control or improper commitment control is termed as unreliable, useless, buggy, and inconsistent. The goal of commitment control is consistency and integrity. This can be extended to humans. Without it we are unreliable, our integrity is questionable and we cannot be trusted.

Commitments do not have to be written or carved in stone. Commitments could be verbal or even a thought in one’s mind. Commitments could be towards yourself, towards your future, towards financial or governmental institutions, towards your family. The important thing is to think twice before committing to something, but when you do, make sure you make your best attempt to deliver whatever it is you committed to.

Black Hole

As part of my physical existence in this virtual world forced me to think about what it means when we talk about memories....moments... I read somewhere out on the ether that things that you learn or undergo early on in life stays with you. I think it is absolutely true. As we grow, I think we weave strands on top of what is already construed as a dubious underlay, or rather use that as our foundation. Unwinding all those strands back is as if, we are trying to break our foundation. I dont know if that is possible. I dont know even if one should attempt such a thing.

The biggest problem with our unconscious mind is that, it is always original in its thinking and it is pure in terms of what it wants to do. Is it what people term as conscience? I always have a secondary shadow around me telling me about things that I ought to do. I mostly go against it, and later feel that, may be I shouldnt. Is the shadow my real self? Am I just trying to fool myself by not accepting the norms of my shadow-me? I've heard people saying that, one should follow their instincts. I keep wondering... Does brain apply its cumulative knowledge of ours to come up with a right way and yet, based on the physical contexts of environment comes up with another solution to the same problem? That doesnt make sense. How can there be a conscious and an unconscious based solution to the same problem out of a single brain. May be, its just the way it is designed. One knows that keeping their hand in fire would burn it. But yet, if you are in the middle of a group that you would want to impress, what do you do ? One could rationally argue that both solutions are okay from different perspectives of mind. Coming to think of it, most decisions of ours is just a reflection of how much one wants to overcome the preset ideals into venturing into new things that poses more curiosity, thus fulfilling their fantasy of the unknown. Isnt it always about the fantasy of the unknown that keeps our curiosity ticking. It is not the end result, it is just the means that we are interested in. If we stop following the path that fantasy sets in, may be the world will totally be a different place. I think we will probably be all animals if we dont have fantasies.

I sometimes wonder about the life that an animal passes by. It eats and sleeps and mates with all the possible opposite genders of its own group and eventually dies. Our life is a lot similar from a macroscopic view, except that, as part of our evolution, I think we inherited fantasy. That said, it is a vicious cycle, for we all fall victims to our own fantasy. Sometimes, though we realise that the fantasy is over, we still adhere to it, starting another fuzzy thread. We end up having nested fantasies to the umteenth degree. That keeps life all the more interesting and yet, meaningless. But, who really cares, for when you die, your thoughts in the context of your own self dies as well. If mind doesnt have a physical structure, and if it was really a shadow, wouldnt it continue to exist in ether. It could even keep ridiculing the various path that fantasy took you through. But then, isnt it always about the path rather than the end. No matter how long you travel, if your start and end at the same point , the displacement is zero. Afterall, a human's life is nothing but a vacuous dot. These vacuous dots, however are like black holes. They are infinitesimally small dots with infinite density in an immeasurable universe. Nothing, yet everything...

India - Call centers

C-Span showed a 3 hour program long ago about development of outsourcing in India and also included a significant portion about how call centers trained their new recruits to change their accent, the speech mannerisms, courtesies, etc. It went further to show how employees were willing to be referred to "Sam" when their actual name was Shanmugavalli! The program itself was unbiased and only reported the facts, not taking any slant at commenting about the practices.

However, in more than one instance I have heard snide remarks about this in my classes, where students are predominantly non-Indian as are the professors. One Professor brought a video clipping so students could be exposed to other countries. It must come as no surprise that the video showed cows on the road, the unimaginably noisy traffic (you know how that goes) and the most poverty ridden-neighbourhoods from our country. Also the Professor narrated her experience of riding the autorickshaw and her terrifying experience when a man was trying to sell her snakes on the street. People laughed. I couldn't see why nobody appreciated the multi-purpose dynamically shifting lanes. People have to go to Six-Flags here (and not to mention pay through their hats for the tickets) to experience what we do when we travel to and from office in India everyday. I somehow attributed the snake-selling story to the fact that the Professor was Chinese..

Another thing to be ridiculed was the fact that many representatives from the call centers change their names, so it will be easy to understand for customers from the US. This snide remark totally offended me. I feel its a significant sacrifice for people to be referred to by a name that is not their own. I wouldn't change my name even when I got married, and I have retained my maiden name. I don't see any reason why that should change. I am sure a number of people feel the same. When reps give up their own name to adopt a new one so the transition of the call to a foreign land remains seamless, I feel its customer service at an extreme end. I don't disagree that there are many experiences that I personally had, when I felt call centers must work more towards enhancing reps' knowledge about the business they are dealing with. There was this rep who was quoting car rental prices and emphasized "unlimited miles" many many times! That is not a real differentiator, everybody offers unlimited miles.

The few of us in class from India made every attempt to nullify the effects of the video to paint a more fair and true picture of our country. I suggested to the Professor (who made the snide remark) that maybe he would like to call me by my full name henceforth (no, not bumblebee) which is considerably longer? The mood was light and their were peels of laughter from the class. The Professor admitted that this was a "politically-charged" issue and he immediately backed of the topic. In the past, I have also been asked if riding an elephant is the preferred transportation method! There are numerous other ridiculous stories and I don't want to recall all. I was wondering what similar experiences others might have had in this regard and woud love to hear some.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall...

It was spectacular! Colors and shiny clothes, prim and proper princes and graceful damsels, elephants, palaces, islands all on ice skates. It is that time of the year again, when Disney on Ice comes to town. For those who are new to this, this is an ice skating extravaganza with Disney's costumed characters.The excitement on every kid's face was enjoyable. Many of them were dressed as fairies and even hadmagic wands. Even adults were almost kid-ish. The whole show was expertly practiced and executed. Nobody slipped on the ice (some did deliberately as a part of the show-especially Cindrella's wicked and clumsy step-sisters).

Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cindrella all came one after the other. I was totally transported to a different world, as were a number of people around me. All the fairy tales we read as kids came back rushing to me. It was amazing to see a little girl screaming "no, Snow White!" when she was about to take a bite of the poisonous apple pie. The girl had tears in her eyes, when Snow White went on to eat the pie and then swooned.


The characters on ice seemed so casual, yet they were impeccable. I wondered how many times they would have rehearsed this. It seemed so hard to believe - especially when I think of the ice skating lessons I took just 3 years ago. Just skating slowly with arms outstretched was difficult enough. I can still remember the number of times I fell. It looks so easy when we see figure skaters on TV. I remember thinking that the trick is to let go. I tried that several times, but only fell on my backside. Ouch! I realized then that you must have some balance. I admit, I was severely challenged in that area!

Many times (every time I fell-make that many, many, many) I questioned why it is I felt this would be easy and why at all I joined those classes. But looking back, I am glad I did. Now, I appreciate those figure skaters all the more and I am glad I had that first hand experience and I would even try it again. It seems every experience brings some new knowledge and new perspectives.