Is it only me who thinks that Rahul Dravid could have rotated the strike better to give run-a-ball-triple-centurian Shewag more of a strike so as to put South Africans under even more pressure? Why is he batting at a strike rate of under 30 36 when the other guy is going great guns?
We get a lot of “training” on doing research — four to six years of PhD followed by an year or two of post doc — but almost none on teaching. I was a TA (teaching assistant) for one course every year of my PhD, and that was it. This experience is not enough and it just doesn’t prepare you for teaching assignments.
A few minutes ago, I had a few students leave my office with their graded homeworks. The one part of teaching I (and I am sure most) dislike is grading. But it needs to be done and I do it, though I complain a lot. And I have a small class: just 17 (most of them post-graduate) students. I don’t know what I will do next semester when I teach a class of 60. (Yes, I know: TAs)
However, the biggest problem I have with is pacing my course. The students just pointed out to me that the current section on Partial Differential Equations has dragged on too long. I planned to teach 4 classes on this; I have already taught 7. Which means that I have that much less time to cover the remaining items I intended to give in this course.
I had spent a week in December preparing the outline for the course and setting the overall objectives. I was then looking at a overall perspective. My mistake was to get too much bogged down with details in this module that I lost the track of the broad aims. A lesson on what to avoid for the future.
[T]he market system is, on balance, a wondrous instrument — when it works. But the free market is just that: an instrument, not a principle.
E. J. Dionne Jr., speaking about Wall Street titans seeking welfare from the state (a.k.a. bailout).
I oppose banning any author or their work. I even oppose banning hate-speech. Freedom of expression is the most basic foundation of any democracy. However, there is one author whose work should be banned in India. And that author is Ayn Rand. 
Of course, I say that jokingly. Still, its my studied opinion that large swathes of student population in India are members of the “The Unlikeliest Cult in History.” I have spoken to a number of our students in the last seven months. Give them an opportunity and they will start spouting words like objectivism, individualism, incentives, and the other paraphernelia. (Hey, I had to look up Wikipedia to know that Rand called her philosophy objectivism.) Ask them to give an example or describe in context what they exactly mean by incentives or individualism and all the sand walls come crumbling down.
For I have questioned the one that must not be questioned, the true leader of the masses and saviour of the world, I can now rot in communist hell.
India Uncut is one of my favourite Indian political blogs. So, it pains me when Amit acts like an InstaIdiot.
For example, he favorably quotes a piece in Weekly Standard titled “The Wit and Wisdom of Barack Obama“. Anyone who even has a cursory interest in American politics will realize why I call this InstaIdiot. As John Cole put it
Is it appropriate for the magazine that has delicately and lovingly fondled George Bush’s scrotum for eight years to ponder about the wit and wisdom of anything other than a tree stump?
In any case, Amit asks:
Should Obama be held to higher standards? I say yes, because those higher standards are an implicit promise of his campaign.
So, (i) candidate A is far better than the other candidates in the field, but (ii) he doesn’t meet all your higher expectations from his candidacy. Does that mean one should choose the other guy? To repeat Patrix’s question:
Barack Obama is a card-carrying civil libertarian. The question is, will our Eminent Blogger warm up to him now?
Update: Some balance from our EB:
The rest of [the Obama speech] was flat-out brilliant. He spoke of race in America with a nuance and subtlety that is rare in political discourse […]
Even if many of his [economic] ideas are wrong, I admire this man immensely. He could have taken the safe way out and “denounced and rejected” Jeremiah Wright. But instead, as the Philadelphia Enquirer put it, he “condemned the sins but embraced the sinner.” That takes courage and conviction, so hats off for that.
Guardian recently published a list of 50 most popular blogs. The following is the list of blogs that I have followed at some point in the last few years. Most of these, in fact, are still on my regular reading list although, Kottke (#4), Dooce (#5), WaiterRant (#44), Sullivan (#40), Crooks and Liars (#37) are the ones I read regularly.
1. The Huffington Post
huffingtonpost.com2. Boing Boing
boingboing.net4. Kottke
kottke.org5. Dooce
dooce.com7. Talking points memo
talkingpointsmemo.com10. Gawker
gawker.com11. The Drudge Report
drudgereport.com16. Engadget
engadget.com24. Girl with a one-track mind
girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com28. Michelle Malkin
http://www.michellemalkin.com/33. Crooked timber
crookedtimber.org37. Crooks and liars
crooksandliars.com39. Samizdata
samizdata.net40. The daily dish
andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com44. Waiter rant
waiterrant.net
Quotes from some of myself and my colleagues (paraphrased from memory)
“We do not want our students to be victims of their own education.”
“You can go to the main gate and see that we are ‘Indian Institute of Technology.’ We are not your employment bureau.”
“You are free to take more management and economics courses. Just don’t expect to get a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering at the end of four years.”
“We are not a training facility, we are an educational institute.”
“Your JEE rank is meaningless from here on. It got you in and thats it.”
“Its tough to think simple. Simple does not imply simplistic.”