Virtual Water

oxymoron----Enjoy the contradiction

In popular usage, the term oxymoron is sometimes used more loosely, in the sense of a simple contradiction in terms. Often, it is then applied to expressions which, unlike real oxymora, are used in full earnest and without any sense of paradox by many speakers in everyday language. Calling such an expression an oxymoron is sometimes done in order to disparage its use, by drawing attention to a perceived inherent contradiction and thus claiming it to be nonsensical. Often this kind of argument is used in domains of political or ideological dispute, or in order to criticize a perceived non-sensical use of technical terms by lay people who fail to understand their true meaning.

Some are,

anarchy rules
almost exactly
athletic scholarship
constant variable
definite maybe
detailed summary
dry ice
elevated subway
exact estimate
found missing
forced resignation
forever's end
forward lateral
friendly fire
genuine imitation (& genuine replica, etc.)
guest host (and permanent guest host, a rare "triple" oxymoron)
jumbo shrimp
justifiable paranoia
limited omniscience
liquid gas
living dead
local long-distance
loud silence (& deafening silence etc.)
mandatory option
modest magnificence
mournful optimist
only choice
open secret
original copy
plastic silverware
rolling stop (driving)
scatter-hoarder
stopmotion
sweet sorrow
synthetic natural gas
true lies
virtual reality
wireless cable
working vacation

These are not really oxymora; they sound like a contradiction but aren't, often because of multiple possible meanings of one of the words.

Active retirement
Adult children
Advanced BASIC
Agree to disagree
Alone together
Artificial Life
Awfully good
Baby grand (piano)
Barely dressed
Black light
Burning cold
Charm offensive
Civil war
Clearly misunderstood
Cold sweat
Constant change
Creative destruction
Dodge Ram
Drawing a blank
Fine mess
Freezer burn
Fresh Frozen
Full-time hobby
Good Grief
Growing smaller
Hard water
Hopelessly optimistic
Idiot savant
Infinite number
Jumbo shrimp
Lengthy brief
Live recording
Living dead
Minor disaster
Near miss
New and improved
New tradition
Non-dairy creamer
Old news
Original Research
Partial ceasefire
Partially completed
Passive aggressive
Peace force
Poor little rich girl
Pretty ugly
Radio show
Random order
Same difference
Self-help
Seriously funny
Sinfully good
Small crowd
Small fortune
Spectator sport
Standard deviation
Standard options
Static variable
Terribly good
Tight slacks
Totally partial (to something)
Twelve-ounce pound cake
Unbelievably real
Unsalted saltine
Young adult
Intelligently stupid
Open code
Cheerful pesimist

Some more;

50. Act naturally
49. Found missing
48. Resident alien
47. Advanced BASIC
46. Genuine imitation
45. Airline Food
44. Good grief
43. Same difference
42. Almost exactly
41. Government organization
40. Sanitary landfill
39. Alone together
38. Legally drunk
37. Silent scream
36. British fashion
35. Living dead
34. Small crowd
33. Business ethics
32. Soft rock
31. Butt Head
30. Military Intelligence
29. Software documentation
28. New York culture
27. New classic
26. Sweet sorrow
25. Childproof
24. "Now, then..."
23. Synthetic natural gas
22. Christian Scientists
21. Passive aggression
20. Taped live
19. Clearly misunderstood
18. Peace force
17. Extinct Life
16. Temporary tax increase
15. Computer jock
14. Plastic glasses
13. Terribly pleased
12. Computer security
11. Political science
10. Tight slacks
9. Definite maybe
8. Pretty ugly
7. Twelve-ounce pound cake
6. Diet ice cream
5. Rap music
4. Working vacation
3. exact estimate
2. Religious tolerance
1. Microsoft works

C u later

posted by Dhana @ Thursday, June 22, 2006 0 comments

Design Degree Show & Reservation

It's ON..Design Degree Show 2006 in On now. Read the Mail from my Prof.L.K.Das below...also note his opinion on reservation on his style


Dear Friends

You are cordially invited to the Design Show 2006. Perhaps you will be better able to understand about the merit even in the so called reserved category students. We teachers have to bring it out. This is part of pursuing excellence.

You could have you next meeting at the Industrial Design Studio.

Lalit Kumar Das
Coordinator
M. Des. Industrial Design Program

posted by Dhana @ Tuesday, June 20, 2006 0 comments

Jokes

Jokes ... 1. Sardar comes back 2 his car & finds a note saying "Parking Fine" He writes a note and sticks it 2 pole "Thanks 4 d complement"
2 .How do you recognize a Sardar in School? He is the one who erases the notes from the book when the teacher erases the board.
3. Once a Sardar was walking and had a glove on one hand and not on other so the man asked him why did he do so? He replied that the weather forecast announced that on one hand it would be cold and on the other hand it would be hot.
4. Sardarji bought a brand new Maruti and decided to drive down from Amritsar , where he lived, to Jalandar to meet his friend. He reached there in a few hours. After spending a few days there, he decided to return, and called up his mother to expect him in the evening. But he didn't reach in the evening and not the next day either. When he finally reached home on the third day, his distraught mother ran and asked him " Arre Puttar, ki hoya?" The Sardarji got out, obviously very tired from a long journey, and said, "Oy, ye Marutti wale pagal hain, agge jaane waaste chaar gear banaate hain, aur pichche jaane waaste sirf ik?" 5. Teacher: Can you tell me something about Raja Ram Mohan Roy? Saradji: They were 4 best friends..!
6. Sardar to Shopkeeper: - Mujhe India Ka Flag Dikhao, Shopkeeper ne Flag Dikhaya, Sardar: - Isme aur Colour Dikhao.
7. How can a Sardar Kill a Lion? Sardarji thinks N thinks hard & comes to a conclusion: I'll drink poison n let lion eat me. O' bolo ta ra ra.
9. Sardar : Sitting on The Top of the Mountain and Studying.... When a Person asked what he was doing.... He replied... Oye!! Higher Studies Yaar...!!!
10. Sardar with a new mobile called everyone from his Phone Book & said "My MobileNo. has changed Earlier it was Nokia 3310 Now it is 6610"
11. Sardar falls in Love with Nurse. He writes a Love letter to her, " I LOVE U SISTER."
12. What is Common between: Krishna , Ram, Gandhi ji & Jesus..? Sardar ji Replied: All are born on Government Holidays.
13. Santa : That Cow is a Lovely Colour , Farmer : Yes, it's a Jersey Santa: Oh, I thought it was its Skin...!!!
14. Sardar Son: O God! Please make New York the capital of Punjab . Sardar: Why are you praying for that? Sardar Son: That is what I have written in my exam.

posted by Dhana @ Thursday, June 01, 2006 0 comments

Reservation

OBC Reservations: View of Prof. M. Balakrishnan, IIT Delhi



Nearly six decades after independence, this country is planning to announce that majority of its population is backward and does not have equal opportunity to pursue education and employment. Along with this, it is going to open up a Pandora's Box by various caste groups to be classified as "backward". What an interesting way to begin the 21st century when finally India was beginning to emerge as a serious player in the new knowledge economy! The major carrot that is being doled out is the seats in the elite medical, engineering and management Institutes. What bothers me is no one is interested in even consulting the people who have built these Institutions and brought them to this stature. I have strong views on efficacy of reservations in general but here I would confine myself to the issues concerning IITs. At least here with my three decade long association, I can claim to know something. Many of these arguments may be applicable to the other elite Institutions in medical and management disciplines as well.

Today IITs are considered excellent educational institutions. There is a countrywide scramble to get into these with many students spending the best part of their teen years in preparing for its entrance examinations. This should not be confused with ranking of universities where just a couple of IITs make it in the top 500. These rankings deal primarily with the research output and not with the quality of undergraduate education. I can confidently say that any ranking of quality of undergraduate engineers produced would put IITs in the top 20 worldwide if not in the top 10. And it is this achievement that is going to be hard to maintain with the proposed reservations policy. Before we go any further, it would be best to examine how this excellence has been achieved.

The fundamental contribution that the Central Government has made to these institutions is in generous funding (by Indian, not global standards) combined with unmatched autonomy. The main point of engagement between the Government and these Institutions has been through the appointment of Directors. Except for a brief period during the last administration, the Governments had refrained from any major politicking in these appointments. They have by and large appointed the best available applicant Professor from the same or another IIT for the job. These venerable people had themselves a great pride in these Institutions and have ran the Institutes with the best of their abilities (maybe not always efficiently but always fairly) without major vested interest.

For someone outside IITs to understand the power of this position is not easy. The Director virtually appoints the complete senior administration including the deputy directors and deans, chairs all the faculty selections including that for the Professors, is the chairman of the senate and thus the academic head, is the financial head and also the administrative head. For most people living in the campus, which includes 90% of faculty and students, he is also the chairman of the local municipality (all major complaints on water, electricity, sewage etc. would reach him). This ensures that the buck almost always stops with him and thus decision making is unavoidable. This autonomy that has been the hallmark of these institutions is being eroded. There were attempts in the last Government (fortunately not vigorously pursued) to tell IITs what to teach. The present decision would strike at the fundamentals of IITs as the Government no longer feels whom to teach and how many to teach is best decided by these Institutions themselves. This in my opinion is the most dangerous fallout as it strikes at the very core of the success of these Institutions. Once the lines of control gets blurred, there would be no stopping, as today's political functioning is clearly not dictated by long term vision. Soon we could have reservations in faculty and create a caste based patronage system which has destroyed many of the once excellent state universities.

In IITs, the faculty selected and promoted solely based on merit has maintained a high standard of ethical behavior, have taken their teaching and research seriously, refrained from politicking themselves and supported the Institute in many ways to fulfill its commitments. Who are these faculty members? A large number are our own alumni (undergraduates as well as postgraduates), majority of them have studied or conducted research in the west and almost all of them have had opportunities of pursuing financially much more lucrative careers in India and abroad. Thus each faculty member is here by choice and he/she has exercised that choice with one major attraction - opportunity to teach, interact and work with extremely bright students perhaps unmatched anywhere. It is this attraction that is being tampered with. In a situation where all IITs are short of faculty and desperately trying to innovate to attract faculty under the constraints of the pay commission dictated salaries (while competing with Sensex based salaries), this is not a pleasant development.

IITs have had reservations for SC/STs for decades. Why would this be different? Aren't these students likely to be better prepared than the students admitted under the existing reserved category? Here I would like to share some of the facts with the readers. IITs have been admitting SC/ST students for years under two modes. From the general category, a significantly lower JEE cutoff is decided and reserved category students scoring above this cutoff are admitted directly to the UG programmes. Another still lower cutoff is decided and reserved category students from this set are admitted to a one year preparatory course conducted by IITs themselves. After passing this course, they can join the programmes without having to appear in JEE again. Even this exercise collectively yields less than 15% in IIT Delhi though the quota amounts to nearly 22.5%. Half of the reserved category students manage to clear courses comfortably while the other half struggle on the margins. What would be called a good performance (cumulative grade point average or CGPA of 8 and above) and is achieved by nearly forty percent of general category students, is rare and occurs once in many years among the reserved category students. It is not that all general category students do well. There is nearly a 5% "dropout" rate even among them which is a cause of concern but mainly attributed to the burnout due to JEE preparation phase. The "dropout" students have no effect on teaching as they neither are regular nor make their presence felt in classes. The remaining part of weak students is too small and at present hardly any instructor would pitch his / her course at that level. On the other hand, the present policy may introduce a large band of weak students which no instructor can ignore. This would definitely result in drop in the quality of education. It is the hypocrisy of the highest order that on one hand the reservation for SC/STs is considered a success and quoted for extension to OBCs, and on the other hand, no hard data on the performance of these students is available in the public domain. Some administrators I talked to consider this data as sensitive! Analysis of where the reserved category students go after graduation would be enlightening. I do not have the sensitive data but my experience shows that most of them either go to services like IAS/IES or to the public sector companies. Normally this choice of careers by IIT graduates should be a matter of satisfaction except that both these entries are again using the reservation quota. Is it empowerment or crutches for life?

In this whole episode, the most stunning news for me was when the Hon'ble minister announced increase in intake to compensate for the reservations. This would amount to nearly 56% overall increase in undergraduate intake in the IITs. This showed complete ignorance of what makes IIT undergraduate education tick. There are few Institutions in the world where undergraduate students get to interact one to one and so freely with such high-caliber faculty. Students are advised on courses in small groups, interact over hostel dinners, go on industrial trips and finally carry out a well supervised project. Every undergraduate student does an intensive "novel" project either individually or in groups of two and he/she is effectively "supervised" by a faculty member. Many of them result in publications. This system evolved when the student-faculty ratio was 6:1 and is getting strained at the seams when it has reached 12:1. In some disciplines like Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering where market competition is heavy, it has already gone to 20:1 and above. Though currently producing excellent results, it is a highly non-scalable mechanism. Intake increase on this scale, when effectively faculty strengths in key areas are decreasing could sound a death-knell to one of our few international brand names. I have a poser for Prof. Jayati Ghosh, my well renowned colleague from JNU and a member of the knowledge commission. She has justified reservations in IITs based on the poor ranking of IITs internationally. Her argument is anyway these Institutions are not great, why they should crib about the quality of intake. She nowhere states that any of the 400+ odd Institutions worldwide which are ranked above IITs have achieved their status through reservations. In that case all Tamil Nadu Engineering Colleges with 69% reservation for decades (openly defying the Supreme Court suggested norm of 50%) now should be at the top.

Postscript: Finally, I would like to seek opinion on the composition of our next Olympics team. We have admittedly done much poorer in sports than education. Should our next Olympics team be chosen on caste basis or perhaps with adequate representation to athletes aged 40+ who are at present completely unrepresented? After all we do not have much to lose as we only win one bronze medal in alternate Olympics. I would no longer be surprised if some future Sports Minister considers caste based quotas for our national cricket team. After all that would be worth a few votes and the nation would have been well prepared by then to cheer only for its own caste brethren!

The author is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at IIT Delhi. He has been with IIT Delhi since 1977 except for a three year stint outside India. Currently he is on Sabbatical and working with a startup. The views represented here are completely his own.

M. Balakrishnan (mbala@cse.iitd.ac.in) 5, Taxila Apartments
IIT Delhi Campus,
New Delhi - 110016
http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~mbala/

posted by Dhana @ Thursday, June 01, 2006 0 comments

posted by Dhana @ Thursday, June 01, 2006 0 comments