Category Archives: General

Atheists are not the skeptics they think they are

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A very interesting critique on atheism and the methods used by atheists to explain their position. The author Edward Tingley, a philosophy professor, bases most of his arguments against the material written by Blaise Pascal on applying the scientific mind to discover the existence of God.

The professor goes on to demonstrate how, in his opinion, it is hypocritical for atheists who profess a scientific approach to disregard the very fundamentals of the scientific temper that they are supposed to defend.

He points out the mindset from where Pascal and other atheists begin their attempts at discovery:

He likes a world in which he can stop thinking about something when the hard evidence for it gives out: That is a beautifully simple world. “If I had to sum up my own atheism, I would have to say that it amounts to this: I have no interest in the supernatural.” Let’s “simply dismiss the whole issue of whether ‘God’ exists as not worth any discussion.” “It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and naturally hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

He attacks the common point raised by atheists about the lack of evidence thus:

We need evidence that God exists. Agreed. What kind? Is there only one kind? Scientific evidence. And what is that: material evidence? Is that how science works? Didn’t the nature of evidence expand as science went deeper into what is? Aren’t there new and unexpected kinds of evidence?

Even scientists don’t quit when the old sort of evidence runs dry. Not quitting—going beyond the established sort of evidence—is a virtue of science.

What would we say to the pre-Darwinian who did not believe that biodiversity could be explained? (“It all had to be put here,” he insisted. “There is no material evidence for a mechanism of biodiversity.”) Was natural selection material evidence?

He sums up atheists or unbelievers thus:

Who, then, is this person? He is not a skeptic at all (someone who, for want of solid reasons, refuses to commit)—he commits. He is not a lover of reason over passion—he chooses the possibilities he cares about because those are the ones he likes. He is not a skeptic who in the absence of evidence withholds belief—he is a believer.

I found the article a bit dense at times but on the whole very well articulated, in fact the best skepticism of atheism that I have read till date. It made me think quite a bit about my belief in atheism. Come to think about it, there are so many things in common between atheists and believers:

  • We think to some extent about our own “faith”, but mostly we rely on either a consensus of what people of our faith believe, or some seers (or great minds) who have done deeper thining for us. We normally don’t go the whole hog ourselves.
  • Both of us don’t have evidence to either prove or disprove each other. But in the absence of an answer, we go ahead with what we are comfortable with and commit to our beliefs, most probably not bothering too much in enquiring further.

I believe professor Tingely has a very important point to offer which I am beginning to agree with, the more I think of it – the correct “faith” for a person who believes in science, logic and rationality, is Agnosticism, not Atheism. For being an atheist is to stop seeking. And whether it is the meaning of life, or God or the medicine for AIDS/Cancer, how can you find conquer new frontiers if you have stopped seeking?

But even after having convincing arguments on a lot of points, it still did not answer one of the questions that I always had – why should one be looking for this answer at all? What is all this frenzy about finding the “one larger being above us all”? Why should one perform such a spiritual quest at all? As in the words of Isaac Asimov -

I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist.

The conclusion to that statement might be debatable, and Edward Tingle has also partially talked about this line of thought, but professor’s article still doesn’t answer my question fully.

(Reference to prof. tingle’s article found here)

Ongoing fraud at various Bangalore petrol stations

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Just saw this reported in our internal company mailing list.

Operators at various petrol bunks in Bangalore (and possibly in other cities), are cheating passengers by breaking up the delivery of petrol in two steps, and distracting them in between the steps. Most of us are conditioned to check only when the meter first starts running, and when it finally ends. If the petrol is given to us in two batches, some of us either miss (or are distracted) at the point when the meter needs to be reset to start the next batch. Operators take this opportunity to make a quick buck at our expense. Here are two such experiences.

http://community.livejournal.com/bangalore/276353.html
http://codecritic.in/blog/index.php/bangalore/great-indian-petrol-pump-fraud/

Public photography under attack

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The incompetency of our police and government in handling our security is often sought to be hidden by fear mongering. Knee jerk reactions like banning liquids in airlines, utterly stupid checks while entering malls, and the topic of this post, actively discouraging photography at all public places. Citizens and private organizations, getting these clues from our public administrators, in turn have made life hell for amateur photography enthusiasts worldwide.

Some years back, I was almost handed over to the police by some folks in our neighborhood for “suspiciously” taking photographs in streets in the night. The fact was that I had just bought a new camera, and was learning how to take photos in the night(This was the photo that I was trying to shoot).

This is different from being asked not to shoot in private places where the reasons could be of trade secrets(this particular place said they didn’t want their bar to be photographed), etc..

I am talking of instances, like when security at a mall (city centre, mumbai) once asked me not to take photos inside the premises “for security reasons”. What @#$ security reasons are that? Some dumb terrorists openly taking photos, and going back to draw elaborate bombing and shooting patterns? Have they been watching hollywood movies?

This attack on the previously simple artistic pursuit of photography is happening all over the world. Here is a photographer harassed in Britain by police. Here is a flickr thread where this is discussed, and several such incidents reported around the world. There have even been complaints about photo websites like flickr taking unilateral steps against public photography because of some unsubstantiated complaint.

A British police ad warning public about suspicious public photographers
A British police ad warning public about suspicious public photographers

BBC has an excellent article on this growing problem. One of the comments of this article sums up the photographers point of view:

My hobby is walking around cities taking photos of interesting places that never make it on to the postcards. Only last weekend I photographed Postman’s Park and the Gherkin (looking up from the ground). It just struck me that taking those photos could be seen as somehow dodgy – and that’s wrong. Why has an activity that thousands of people do, and take pleasure in, and become good at, become something suspicious because a terrorist took a few snaps? And let’s face it, most terrorist targets are the kind of thing that gets displayed on postcards anyway.

There is currently an online petition to the British government to clarify laws on public photography.

One outcome of these problems to photographers was the establishment of photorights.org, started by the Editorial Photographers UK (EPUK), a photo professionals discussion group, who say that this campaign was started to document and record the actions of those who through lack of comprehension, bone-headed officiousness, vested interest or malice, wish to contain and control photography.

I wonder if this issue is being discussed actively in India. Would love to see some references.

SC blasts insurance players for refusing to cover the elderly

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The state of health care insurance in this country is turning as pathetic as some other countries that we know of. The private health insurance companies being the pests that they are, have already decided that theirs is a no-risks, high gain game. Their business plan is that the people who need the highest medical attention are the ones who should have the biggest problem in getting insurance, if they are given any at all. That is how the private insurance sector works, and we all know that given the lack of regulatory teeth that our government has, this is what privatization of health care insurance would eventually get us to.

But now the PSU insurance companies have also got on the same boat. Citing market conditions, they have forgotten their point of existence in the first place, and started behaving like private companies. Here is a sample:

In the first case, an old man had to undergo angioplasty twice in three years. Though the expenses were reimbursed, the insurance company demanded 300% increase in the premium. When the insured agreed to this and paid the money, the company wanted to exclude heart ailments from his insurance cover.

In the second case, a neurologist, practising since 1961, was also subjected to similar treatment and told that his mediclaim policy would be renewed only if the ailment, which was requiring frequent hospitalization, was excluded from the policy.

In the third case, the policy was abruptly cancelled and the insurer was asked to take a policy from another company.

Thankfully, the supreme court has taken note of this fact, and has asked the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) to lay down guidelines for the insurance companies to check this practice.

This is a matter of absolute concern for all of us who rely on policies like Mediclaim to cover our elders or to cover our chronic ailments. If any of you reading this know of citizen groups who are fighting against such irresponsible practices of health care insurance companies in this country, please let me know.

UPDATE: Saw another article related to this today.

The Supreme Court has ruled that public sector insurance companies cannot refuse to provide medical cover policies to those suffering from pre-existing diseases and said such an action was arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional … “Only because the insured had started suffering from a disease, the same would not mean that the said disease shall be excluded. If the insured had made some claim in each year, the insurance company should not refuse to renew insurance policies only for that reason.,” the bench said in its judgement.

The Microsoft Tax Refund campaign at ILUGD

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ILUGD is presently furiously discussing a legal procedure to get refund for the Microsoft Tax applied to all desktops and laptops that you buy from the branded market in India.

Here is a good definition of Microsoft Tax.

Some relevant snippets for the impatient.

The Microsoft tax is an unofficial, but commonly used term that refers to the licensing fee that Microsoft charges major suppliers of personal computers for each unit sold and that purchasers thus usually pay for such computers, regardless of whether or not they want or intend to use a Microsoft operating system.

This tax exists because of pressure … Microsoft has been able to exert such pressure because of its monopoly power, and the ability to dictate that nearly all new personal computers come with Microsoft Windows preinstalled has been a major factor in its ability to perpetuate this monopoly.

… Another factor that facilitates extracting this tax is the fact that most purchasers of personal computers are not aware of it, and most of those who are aware of it believe that they have no choice but to pay it.

So if you have ever been concerned that you are buying a laptop/desktop from the market, formatting, installing Linux/BSD on it, and in effect never using the Windows installation that came by default on it … this campaign is relevant to you, and you might get some of the money back that Microsoft has surreptitiously gained at your expense.

The campaign is being currently tracked here: http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Microsoft_Tax_Refund_Quest

The POTA games

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Watching Arun Jaitley’s interview about POTA, and his criticism of the PM’s idea of a federal investigation agency made me recoil with disgust at the games these political parties play.

POTA was created during the NDA rule in 2002 as a replacement for the much maligned TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act) which was allowed to expire in 1995 during the Narsimha Rao government. It was created not after some major event in India, but after 9/11! Some of POTA’s “features” include:

It allowed the detention of a suspect for up to 180 days without the filing of charges in court. It also allowed law enforcement agencies to withhold the identities of witnesses and treats a confession made to the police as an admission of guilt. Under regular Indian law, a person can deny such confessions in court, but not under POTA.

180 days! That is 6 months in jail without the court even looking at your case. And, of course, you can be charged based on what was coaxed out of you by police. This had to be the worst combination of the horrors of Indian judicial system – languishing in overcrowded Indian jails for years because either the law or the courts don’t have time to look at you, and of course, our “exceedingly polite” police force.

In a game of political oneupmanship, the current UPA government repealed the act almost immediately on coming to power. Of course, not too many people remember that that was a publicity stint more than genuine concern. You can read why. And here is the summary:

  • POTA was about to expire anyway about a month after it was repealed! This itself underscores the political game that UPA played at that time
  • From the article – the Congress-led, Left Front-supported government combined the repeal of POTA with amendments to the 1967 Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). These amendments make the repeal of POTA largely cosmetic, since they retain many of the repressive and arbitrary powers POTA granted the state and security forces in the name of fighting terrorism.
  • From the article – Legal experts have warned that the amended UAPA does not even include POTA’s minimal safeguards concerning the interception of telephone calls and electronic communication.
  • Weirdly, the repeal of the act also came with the clause that all those who had been held because of this act will continue to be tried under it. All the organizations banned under it were added to UAPA, so they continued to be banned without review.

Ofcourse, it was not all bad:

The most important substantive changes between POTA and the amended 1967 UAFA are that those arrested must be brought before a magistrate within 24 hours (not 30 days); confessions given to police officers are inadmissible as evidence; and the presumption of innocence is restored.

Predictably, BJP was left smarting by UPA’s move in renouncing this act. They had been touting this act as one of their biggest “gifts” to the country and to show their anti-terror “credentials”. Also, they treat this as their penance against their stellar role in the greatest capitulation to terrorism that this country(or perhaps, any country in the world) has ever done – Kandahar. I have never been able to forgive them for this, and I doubt too many people would. Yes, the people on the plane were important too, but I am sure that the situation could be handled better, at least better than our foreign minister escorting hard core terrorists to be freed. Particularly, terrorists like Maulana Masood Azhar, who have returned to be one of the biggest pain in this country’s butt – Jaish-e-mohammed.

I cannot but help observing the similarity between the tactics of BJP and the republican party represented by George Bush. Both use fear-mongering to push their agendas. Both are megalomaniacs who want acts like POTA and Patriot to give them unchecked power. And both are unrepentant about their failures (Bush about its Iraq “intelligence failure”, and BJP about its Gujarat riots failure).

My take on all this, is that politicians continue to play their games while we citizens suffer. The need of the hour is not for newer and more draconian laws, or newer agencies who trample on each others’ toes. What we need is major investment into the police system of this country. More pay to the abysmal salary that many of these policemen get(one of the biggest reasons behind small time corruption), saner working conditions, more on-the-job education, and most importantly more people into the force. Thanks to central government funds, Delhi police is quite well off(though it can get much better, of course). But just cross the border of the city, and you can see the marked difference in police force of the neighboring cities. And in the towns and cities outside NCR, police presence is even worse.

Getting Twitter and Google hosted domains to talk over Gtalk

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I was quite irritated to find out recently that if you have a Google hosted domain and use that to login to Gtalk, you cannot communicate with Twitter without jumping through a few hoops, and even then, only under certain conditions. My first thought was that “these sort of things” should just work ™. Turns out I was really wrong …

Kavinda explains in detail how to get this setup the right way.

Here is the executive summary:

Unlike what is probably thought by some (like me earlier)Twitter is not logged into Gtalk to talk to you. It uses XMPP/Jabber to talk to you. If you have logged into gtalk with your own domain name, how do you think twitter knows that it needs to send the message to gtalk’s servers? As Joe Beda explains, it is almost like SMTP. So instead of MX records, Twitter looks up your SRV records from DNS. So to talk to Twitter (and other such apps that will be using this mechanism in the future), you need to setup SRV records for your domain. And that means you need to have complete control over your domain’s DNS records.

Unfortunately, that leaves me out of the Twitter-via-IM scene. I use a managed DNS service from ResellerClub, which uses the otherwise wonderful Logicboxes interface. However Logicboxes doesn’t allow you to edit SRV records for your domain yet. :( I hope someone high up in Directi sees my plight and makes this one of the highest business priorities in Logicboxes. Not likely. :P

Sigh!

Celebrity blogs

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I was looking around tonight to check out some celebrity blogs out there. It seems to be a fad nowadays – celebrities blogging is now almost a statement!

Here are some that I found, and I will be adding more to this list when I find more:

  • Aamir Khan: Aamir’s controversial blog which keeps making headlines. No blogging software used. The code looks like generated from some offline data. No comments on the blog page. No feeds. Some nice guy has tried to create feed for the blog by scraping it, but it seems a bit outdated. Interesting thing about the hosting of the blog. www.aamirkhan.com is hosted on a freebsd machine. However, the blog content is picked up from a CentOS linux machine elsewhere. Another weird thing – I can’t see any comments on the blog (I use firefox). But the page source shows comments by users.
  • Amitabh Bachchan: Blog on bigadda.com. I hate blogs which insist on showing excerpts (i.e. not full-content blogs), and require you to click on them to read the whole story. This is one. The blog is structured like a diary with some kind of chronological post titles. Each post is about things which happened on that day. So this is more like a traditional diary rather than specific topics. Unless one is interested in knowing intimate details about the person, it might get tedious therefore. However, it is quite insightful about the man’s thinking. He doesn’t hold back on his thoughts about relevant happenings in the country (ramadoss being his latest monkey). One post even had a graph of popularity comparisons between his TV shows and Shah Rukh’s. And yes, hundreds of comments in each post. Mostly of people virtually genuflecting before him and gushing about how much they are crazy about him. The snob part within me keeps wanting to lump all such people into the category of “typical idol-loving Indians”. Amitabh writes extensively, and in a heartfelt manner. So I quite like this blog even though I might not always agree with his views.
  • Kiran Bedi: The blog is appropriately named Crane Bedi. Probably abandoned, last post being dated November 25, 2006. She writes well, and her blog was quite interesting – one post was about how she imagined Gandhi to be a police chief, another showed the FIR of his assassination, one talked graphically about a domestic violence case. I wish she continued.
  • RK Misra: The Lead India winner. Not too many posts. But detailed thoughts on problems plaguing India. No updates for the last three months though.

That is all for today. I will keep adding more to this list as I keep finding them. Would love references by others too.

  • The gorgeous Gul Panag: I quite liked this blog, even though it doesn’t feature new posts too often. Gul writes very coherently and sincerely. She responds to stories about her in the papers (she has a long post responding to the media allegations that she is turning anorexic). The number and quality of comments in her posts are decent. The best thing I liked is that she responded severals times in the comments section itself to others’ comments. Wish she wrote more often! (Thanks for the reference, Thejesh!)