Austin Powers and IS

Watched Austin Powers (The Spy Who Shagged Me) today. *Nostalgia*

In other news, it appears that IS has discovered Microsoft Publisher - I found their official magazine online. It's slick, somewhat well copy-edited (e.g., "sites" instead of "cites"), and full of utter stupidity. Islam, IMO, has its issues, but these guys are just plain vermin. The US-led coalition seems to be rather ineffective (seemingly on purpose, with them saying things like "Kobane is not a strategically important town", etc.), but the brave men and women of Kobane have held out so far, in stark contrast to the Iraqi "Army".

The half life of media attention is depressing - whatever happened to Bring back our girls (Boko Haram kidnapping 200 girls), or Russia taking Crimea + poking Ukraine, etc.? Ah well.

In other news:

• Iran says "nuclear deal certain" [link]
• Stocks down. Bad bad.
• IS doing more bad things [link]
• More protests in Ferguson
• Oil prices may stay down [link]
• The Indian Supreme Court angry with CBI w/ Coal Scam investigation [link]

Angry day

Got angry with various things today:

1. Surrogate advertising on Indian TV (mainly alcoholic beverages). This makes me very angry - I am quite close to transforming into a green Rage monster. There's a law against advertising tobacco and alcohol in India. Advertising "Carlsberg Club Glasses" or "McDowell's Sports Gear" is a totally unethical way of getting around this. When my 3 year old nephew sees an ad for "Tuborg non-alcoholic beverage" on TV and mentally associates partying and dancing with "Tuborg", I am not very pleased - I doubt that he's going to ask for/receive a "non-alcoholic beverage" later in life. This is not ok. This is not ok. This is not ok.
2. Geological Survey of India for being totally incompetent - for some reason, I was under the impression that they were pretty good (I wonder why?). I am now enlightened. They suck. I was trying to get some information about the Sarayu river, one of the most historically significant rivers in the country. The information available is confused and contradictory, and the maps unclear. Also, on an unrelated note, some maps on other official Indian govt. pages (e.g., the one on this page: [link]) remove Arunachal Pradesh from India. This is unacceptable.
   On top of this, their website is a nightmare. This is pathetic.
3. The lack of knowledge among Indian and British citizens about the Bengal Holocausts - the one in 1943-44 (which killed 3-4 million people) and the one in 1776 (which killed 10 million), both within a single year - a kill rate Hitler would be jealous of. The 1776 one was made infinitely worse by the British; the 43-44 famine was caused entirely by them [link]. Imagine the situation if German schools conveniently skipped the second world war in history classes - and so did Israel! That is the situation we have today.

In other news, Iran is now playing games. What they're basically saying is this: "Look, you need our help with the ISIS/ISIL stuff in Iraq, so, in return, you're going to look the other way when it comes to our nuclear tech." [link]

Islamic Fundamentalists. Again.

The situation is Iraq is now officially FUBAR [link]. Iran blames the US and the Gulf countries for stoking Sunni militancy in the region in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian government. The claim, sadly, is not without merit - the US has made some very problematic decisions in the area - but, to be fair, there weren't that many options available.

ISIS/ISIL, which is the organization responsible for the current problems in Iraq, left al-Qaeda because the group founded by Osama bin Laden was not considered to be "radical enough". They are extremely well funded by various Sunni groups (other than the Iraq/Iran area, almost all the world's Muslims are Sunni), especially - or so it is said - by the Saudis. This is not a random outlier. This is a symptom of the systematic radicalization of extremely large Muslim populations. Islam is going through a period that reminds me of the dark ages - the crusades, the struggle for Christendom. Unfortunately, it's bringing the rest of the world down with it.

In the meantime, following two attacks on the Karachi airport and subsequent retaliation by the Pakistani army, the Pakistani Taliban have vowed revenge [link].

I've decided to stop calling them terrorists. We are no longer dealing with small groups of brainwashed madmen - we're looking at large groups, armies, of heavily armed and organized militia, fighting a righteous war against anyone and anything that does not bow down to them. They are fighting other Muslims right now - people that the Koran asks them not to kill without good reason. Clearly, their intentions towards other religions are even less honourable, especially the "non-scripture" ones, such as Buddhism and Hinduism.


[to be updated]

Here comes the sun

After yesterday's dreary drizzle, it was a joy to see the sun this morning. It looks like it's going to be another wonderful day in New Haven. I need to do something about my sleeping habits - I keep waking up late (10-11ish). Resolution: Am going to go to bed early tonight. But before that, I have much to do - need to do some research, work on a patent app, make an exam, fix some code..

Speaking of things to do - I'm pretty stoked for the Real-Barca match today. Let's see how it goes! Real won the Real-Barca game today 2-1; things got pretty exciting towards the end - Gareth Bale scored a wonderful goal around 85 to put the score at 2-1, and Neymar's shot rebounded off of the post at the 89th minute. Real (intelligently) wasted the 3 minutes of extra time to deal a 2-1 crusher. The score doesn't really reflect Real's dominance of the match (remember, this is a team that's missing its star player - Cristiano Ronaldo!). Barca's play was pretty lacklustre - it's been a pretty bad week for them: knocked out of the Champion's League by Atletico, reeling from a loss against minnows Granada in La Liga, and now this. Not a good time to be a Barca fan.

Update: Went out this evening with Andrew Sinclair to talk about the financial crisis. In addition to being a great friend, he's a doctoral student advised by Gary Gorton, and is currently studying precisely that topic. I think I have a good handle, and extensive notes, on the basics now (for a layman). Hopefully, I'll be able to turn those notes into a coherent document over the next couple of weeks.

Today's Things:

• South Korean ferry accident - hundreds missing, mostly schoolchildren [link, link]
• I know that saying "things are looking bad in Ukraine" is a bit of an understatement, but whoa! Russian separatists flew the Russian flag on armoured vehicles it had captured from the Ukrainian army's operations against it; pretty humiliating for Kiev [link].
      Furthermore, the manner in which said "capture" occurred is also pretty pathetic - "The Ukrainian troops appear to have been disarmed before being fed by pro-Russian militants at a cafe in Sloviansk and then put on a bus back to their home city of Dnipropetrovsk." [link]
• Lavabit: When asked to hand over their encryption keys, Lavabit obeyed - by printing the keys in tiny size 4 font (this is size 4 font) and sending the resulting 11 page document to the FBI, for which they are now being held in contempt of court [link].
• Another poison gas attack in Syria [link] - this happened a few days ago, but I learnt about it today.
• Iran reduces nuclear weapon capabilities [link]
• Turkey plans to create separate prisons for homosexuals [link]
• NYPD ends its muslim surveillance program [link]

(To be updated throughout the day)