Not all opinions are equally valid

In the context of any discussion or a debate, it’s essential to remember that not all opinions are equally valid; some of them are based on reason, rationality, empirical evidence and ethics, while others are based on ignorance, pseudoscience, superstition and religion.

The recent Delhi High Court ruling in India which ‘decriminalized’ homosexuality is a landmark civil rights milestone in India’s history which recognizes equality and affirms individual human rights. However, this is not enough. I hope that this judicial ruling is the first step towards eventually legalizing gay marriage, and granting equal civil rights to all citizens, irrespective of their sexual orientation.

However, what is sadly predictable is the reaction of almost every religious group, who readily unite in their moral outrage to condemn this ruling.

“We urge the union and Delhi governments to keep in mind the views of various religious committees while taking a stand on the judgement of the Delhi High Court,” Jain religious leader Acharya Lokesh Muniji told reporters at a press conference of religious leaders in New Delhi on Thursday. “It’s not that we don’t support independence of individuals but this judgment challenges the will of god”

Sharing the platform with Muniji was the president of Jamaat-e-Islaami Hind, Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umari. The Maulana said that according to Islam homosexuality is a crime. “Such behaviour is against the moral values of our nation that is based on cultural and ethical traditions. The government should take our views seriously.”

Agreeing with him was Sardar Tarsem Singh of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee. “Sikh religion doesn’t view homosexuals as criminals but we don’t encourage it.”

Father Dominic Emmanuel, the founder of Sarvadharma Sadbhav (Communal Harmony and Peace), said: “We have no objection or opposition to de-criminalisation of homosexuality because we never considered them (homosexuals) as criminals”. “However, we are also clear that we are against legalising it… because what they do is unnatural and against the design and will of god.”

But wait… Father Dominic is of the opinion that homosexuality is unnatural and is against legalizing it, but has no objection to de-criminalization? WTF? This sort of broken and contradictory thinking is exactly why one should remember that not all opinions are equally valid.

Frankly speaking, the objections against decriminalizing homosexuality are bereft of facts, logic and evidence; against human rights and promote bigotry. Religious groups should ideally have no say whatsoever in this issue, because India is a secular democracy, and we have a rational-legal judicial system, not one based on any religious text. Religious groups have no right whatsoever to impose their moral viewpoints as universal law ¹.

Here’s a nonsensical petition which attempts to reverse the Delhi High Court ruling, filed by SK Kaushal, who happens to be an astrolger ²

The petition filed by Kaushal sought quashing of July 2 verdict of the high court legalising gay sex between consenting adults in private, which was earlier a criminal offence punishable with upto life imprisonment.

The petition contended that homosexual acts, by all standards, were “unnatural” and could not be permitted.

“No one can imagine the consequences of the unnatural acts. Even animals don’t indulge in such activities,” he said in his petition.

He said the high court judgement would result in spread of HIV virus as “it has been amply proven” that the infection was contracted through such sexual acts.

Really?

1. How can it be unnatural if it occurs in nature? Also, the internal combustion engine is unnatural, but that doesn’t mean it should be illegal.
2. ‘Even animals don’t indulge in such activities’ – Hogwash. There’s documented evidence of homosexual behaviour in animals. All he needed to do was google. Also, this is an irrelevant point.
3. “it has been amply proven that the infection was contracted through such sexual acts.” – Gee, doesn’t that imply that we should ban hetrosexuality too? In any case, it’s pathetic that he doesn’t realize that decriminalizing homosexuality would be an immense step in preventing the spread of HIV in that population group.

There are some issues which I wish to address. First, why aren’t such silly petitions dismissed by the SC? Second, it goes to show how poorly we think of politicians, that it comes as no surprise that political parties are not taking an unequivocal stand on an issue of human rights. Then, when politicians, religious groups, or organizations calls for a ‘wider consensus’, it’s important to realize that human rights issues should not decided by popular vote, (ideally) the constitution should guarantee fundamental human rights by law, and the judiciary should ensure this.

Finally, I’m against labelling any opposition to the high court decision decriminalizing homosexuality as worthy of a ‘debate’, as that usually implies that there are two sets of comparable but opposing opinions.

Fact is, if you think that homosexuality should be a criminal offense punishable by law, then you are stupid and ignorant.

Notes
[1] – And yet they attempt to do this all the time, and sometimes manage to pull it off (ex. prop 8, blasphemy laws, etc). Which is one of the reasons I think religion is very damaging.
[2]- *Ahem*

Deepak Chopra is superman!

Deepak Chopra practices levitation with Jackson in deep contemplation

I wonder what MJ was contemplating? Perhaps he thought, “Now that’s off the wall”. Or maybe twas “This guy sure can jump high from a squat!”.

But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t: “Why does the TOI print such drivel?”

20 years ago…

Tank Man

Doubleplusungood draft of IT amendment act

From the TOI,

Govt gearing up to gag news websites

Under the draft rules framed under section 69A of the IT amendment Act, every state or Central government department will be empowered to decide whether a certain news item, article, blog or advertisement relating to its jurisdiction is safe to remain on the Net.

Once somebody sends a “complaint” against any information displayed on the Net, the department concerned will take a call on whether the matter in question affects any of the six concerns mentioned in section 69A: interest of sovereignty or integrity of India, defence of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order or incitement to commit any cognizable offence relating to the other five reasons.

If it is satisfied about the need to pull the challenged information out of the public domain, the department concerned will send a “request” in the prescribed form to the “designated officer” at the Centre chosen by the secretary of the IT department. An inter-ministerial committee headed by the designated officer will recommend whether the request to censor the web site should be accepted or not.

If the IT secretary approves the committee’s recommendation to take action, the designated officer will direct the intermediary or web host to block the offending information within the stipulated time. In the event of non-compliance, the designated officer can initiate criminal proceedings under section 69A, which imposes a maximum sentence of seven years on the web host.

(emphasis mine)

Scary stuff. Censorship laws are very rarely a good thing and it’s ridiculously easy to picture situations where this act can be used by the Goverment to censor unfavorable articles, criticism of government policy, perceived insults to a particular community/religion or even suppression of information. I’ve said it before, but the freedom to state one’s opinions without fear of reprimand is one of the hallmarks of a functioning democracy, and one of the most important rights of a citizen.

Homeopathy is dangerous

This is an example of the harm that can happen when alternative ‘medicine’ is tolerated as an acceptable treatment by society. In fact, I think that the whole label of ‘alternative medicine’ is silly. There’s medicine which is shown to work in controlled studies, and there’s garbage like homeopathy.

P.S Have I already told you that India has a national department which ’studies’ homeopathy?

Congressman Joe Barton supposedly “baffles” Dr. Steven Chu?

Transcript:

Barton: Dr Chu, I don’t want to leave you out. You’re our scientist. I have one simple question for you in the last six seconds. How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean?

Chu: (Laughs) This is a complicated story, but oil and gas is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geology and in that time also the plates have moved around. And so, it’s a combination of where the sources of the oil and gas…

Barton: Isn’t it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole? It wasn’t a big pipeline that we’ve created from Texas and shipped it up there and put it under ground so we can now pump it up?

Chu: No, there are continental plates that have been drifting around throughout the geological ages.

Barton: So it just drifted up there.

Chu: Uh…That’s certainly what happened. It’s a result of things like that.

Chairman: The gentleman’s time has expired.

And from his twitter page, Joe Barton boasts,

I seemed to have baffled the Energy Sec with basic question – Where does oil come from?

The sad part is, he probably doesn’t bother to listen to the explanation the Prof. Chu provided in the limited time, or follow up and try to learn the actual science.

QOTD

From the BBC,

Punjab disability ‘uranium link’

Tests on children with cerebral palsy or mental disabilities in the Indian state of Punjab have revealed high levels of uranium.

A charity based in Faridkot city said chemical analyses of hair specimens collected from 149 children in its care showed “unexpected amounts” of toxins.

The result has baffled the authorities as there are no known sources of uranium in Punjab.

Here’s the Punjab health minister Lakshmi Kanta Chawla on the issue

“This is not a health subject. We don’t know how children are showing such high concentrations of uranium”, Punjab health minister Lakshmi Kanta Chawla said.

“It is for the central government in Delhi to deal with the problem.”

A prime example of why politicians are redundant. It’s because they exist only to deflect any sort of responsibility up the hierarchy, before it gets lost in the singularity at the top.

My experiment with GATE

If you’re an undergraduate engineering/science student in India, and you plan to do your Master’s degree in some of India’s premier institutes of higher education (like the IITs or IISc), then you’ll have to write the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE).

The test is similar to the subject GRE. It consists of 60 multiple choice questions over a duration of 3 hours. The first 20 questions are worth 1 point, while the last 40 are worth 2 points for a total of 100 points with negative marks for incorrect answers. The engineeering test contains two sections. There’s a general engineering mathematics section as well as the specialized engineering subject.

In the summer of 2008, I had a wonderful experience participating in an undergraduate research project at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. As a result, while I had applied towards a number of graduate schools in the US, I was also looking at the possibility of doing a ME degree at IISc. This meant that I had to register for and write the GATE in 2009.

The “online” registration process is actually a bit of a misnomer. I had to download the documents from the webpage, and fill in the relevant details and submit the printed documents at the GATE office. For details of the admission procedure and the structure of the test, visit the GATE website.

A couple of months after I had registered for the test, but before the actual examination date, I received an offer of admission towards a PhD at a well-recognized graduate program in the US which I plan to accept. So, I decided to write the GATE anyway for fun without any preparation. After all, what better way to test the conceptual knowledge that one is expected to acquire in four years of undergraduate education?

On the morning of February 8th 2009, I was off to write the test at the Santhom Hr. Sec. School, comforted with the knowledge that it didn’t matter one bit even if I completely messed it up. The location was pretty decent, and there was drinking water available, although the desks had less legroom than a typical Indian Airlines flight.

The engineering mathematics part of the test was pretty straight forward. Many of the questions were on multi-variable calculus and complex numbers. Since I don’t remember signing a non-disclosure form, I’ll reproduce some of the questions below.

• The direction of largest increase of the function at the point (1,1) is ?
• The value of the limit as of
• Using the residue theorem, the value of the integral around a circle with center at z=0, and radius=8 is?
• Use the Gauss divergence theorem to evaluate over a sphere of radius=3 centered at the origin

I was confident that I’d got most, if not all, of the math questions right, and was pretty pleased with my progress. That is, until I hit the chemical engineering section.

• How does the power number vary with the Reynolds Number in a mixing tank operating in the laminar regime?
• The active component of catalysts used in the steam reforming of methane to produce synthesis gas?
• What is the Thiele modulus?
• How does the frictional pressure drop across a packed bed vary with the superficial velocity in fully turbulent conditions?
• How does the mass transfer coefficient vary with the diffusion coefficient in the penetration theory of mass transfer?

Embarrassingly, I had also forgotten which way the Biot number was defined (ie, convective/conductive or the other way?). I guess that since most of my exams in undergrad were open notes/open book, there wasn’t a need to actually commit definitions and formulae to memory, and my lack of preparation was very evident in this section.

However, further into the test, there were numerous standard “homework” problems which you could immediately identify if you’d done the relevant courses on heat transfer, transport phenomena, reaction engineering and process control, such as calculating the outlet temperatures of streams in heat exchangers, number of stages in distillation columns, mean residence time calculations, stability of control systems, etc.

Overall, I though that the test was set pretty well.

However, I get the feeling that the GATE doesn’t test the innate analytical skills of the student, as much as it tests a particular method of undergraduate education (the problem solving/number crunching method, which many students may not be exposed to). In my highly subjective opinion, I don’t think that the GATE should be required for admission to a graduate program. If there is a need for a “leveler test” to attempt to compare applicants between the multitude of universities in India, I think a test which focuses on basic analytical and verbal skills (like the GRE) is preferable.

Anyway, I was able to obtain my results yesterday.

GATE Score: 576
GATE Percentile Score: 98.09
All India Rank: 79
Marks Obtained: 54.33 Out of 100

Abstruse Goose Puzzle

You might have come across Abstruse Goose before. It’s simply a wonderful webcomic, along the lines of xkcd, but much more technical. Each comic strip usually contains an allusion to some physical or mathematical concept and ends with a humorous punchline.

Today’s comic had a simple puzzle. And, as I was curious about where it was leading, and had time to kill, I took a shot at it.

And how does one go solving this? It is fairly easy. In fact, all you need is to know is the first n digits of e and after that, it’s simply string manipulation and prime number checking.

I’ve embedded the C++ code which I used to solve the puzzle at the end of the post, below the fold.

It’s easier to find the first 100,000 digits of e using a quick search in google than to generate it. Once you have the string, you just need to check if every set of 10 consecutive digits is prime. Turns out, that the first 10 digit prime number found in consecutive digits of e is 7427466391.

That’s Clue #1 done. Proceeding to the url, we get Clue #2:

Again, very easy, and all that’s needed now is the first n digits of pi instead of e. The first 10 digit prime number found in consecutive digits of pi turns out to be 5926535897 (occurs very early!), leading to the final Clue #3.

I’ll leave you to do this one, and appreciate the punchline.

Code below the fold

Declaration of war?

While I was walking back to the lab after lunch today, one of my friends informed of the terror attacks against the Sri Lankan cricket team. It’s terrible that six police officers were killed in this incident, although it might have been much worse.

However, words cannot sufficiently express the deep loathing at the pit of the stomach that I feel when reading the comments of the Pakistani Minister of State for Shipping, Sardar Nabil Ahmed Gabol.

“The evidence which we have got shows that these terrorists entered from across the border from India,” Sardar Nabil Ahmed Gabol, Minister of State for Shipping, told private Geo television. “This was a conspiracy to defame Pakistan internationally.”

“This incident took place in reaction to 26/11,” he said referring to the Mumbai attacks in November in which at least 170 people were killed. “It is a declaration of open war on Pakistan by India,”

Politicians like him are opportunistic parasites, who eagerly jump with glee at any human tragedy to attempt to gain political mileage. Even if you ignore his claim to have evidence of the geographic origin of the terrorists within hours of the attack (without even hinting at the actual evidence), and the obligatory conspiracy theory angle, to call this a “declaration of open war on Pakistan by India” is irresponsible garbage.