The RevantaSphere

Indian Olympics

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:12:00 +0000

It's surprising that the official Indian Olympics page at http://www.olympic.ind.in/, still has no information on the Athletes qualified for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It's a pretty shoddy website though. Why in the world is the ANOC presenting Kalmadi with an award anyway? More importantly, what can we do to get rid of Kalmadi?

In any case, Wikipedia came to my rescue once again. Here's the listing for Indian Athletes qualified (or in the process of qualifying) for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_at_the_2008_Summer_Olympics

Another series down under

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:11:00 +0000

The boxing day test match has always been the traditional start of the cricket season in Australia. This time around, the match could involve four tearing fast bowlers throwing everything at the solid, yet attacking Indian batsman, in a test that will definitely set the trend for the remainder of the series.

The excitement of watching Lee, Johnson, Clark and Tait bowling with whatever bounce and speed is available at the Melbourne track, against a batting lineup that could include any/all of Sehwag, Yuvraj, Jaffer, Dravid, Ganguly, Tendulkar, Dhoni is almost too much to bear.

However, the fact is that it is up to India's batsmen to make this an exciting series, and up to their spinners to show that variety is of importance at the highest level. By the end of the 2nd day's play on the 27th of December, the world will know whether the Indian team has brought the hunger to back up their skill, in what might be the final series down under for the backbone of their batting line-up. It will also be a chance for Kumble, the bowler, and Kumble, the captain, to add a feather to his personal cap, and to that of Team India.

OrkutWorld

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:23:00 +0000

Orkut has been around a while - and I had dismissed the whole thing as just another social networking site. I finally did accept invitations to join, and found half the planet on there already. Well, atleast half of the planet that I care about. While browsing the statistics on the site, I found it interesting that over 50% of the people on Orkut are from Brazil. I imagined the US being there (in second place), and India is too. These 3 countries account for about 90% of Orkutians. (Orkutites, Orkutwallas ...)

Sathyabama Engineering College

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:43:00 +0000

A self-financed engineering college during my years there from 1994-98 - has a reputation of being a terrible place to get an education. The unnecessarily strict and borderline ridiculous rules making the four (or five if you are in the architecture group) years of school, a journey to hell and back.

It has its own WikiPedia entry now. An entry that I have tried to keep clean - but one that is often vandalised by "former students" that insist on taking the entry away from its primary goal of indicating what the college/institution really is about.

Yes, I got Suspended, stood in the sun for Office Duty, was rebuked for Not Shaving and a lot of the other stuff that people whine about. At the same time I Solved Crossword Puzzles the first two hours of the day, Spoke to Girls without devious spy techniques, had the chance to Visit the Ladies Hostel, even Bunked a few classes, ate some awesome Biryani every now and then, made some Great Friends, picked up a Decent Education, and almost Had a Blast.

I have no clue how things are now, since the college is now part of the Jeppiar University - but I dont think it was anywhere as bad as people make it seem. Do leave a comment on what you remember from your days at the institution if you are a former student, or clean up the Wikipedia entry if you have the time.

Whiners will always be whiners ...

India at the Winter Olympics

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:01:00 +0000

It's not just Shiva Kesavan in the luge this time. There are a total of four Indian athletes including him. Here's the complete list.

"The jury is still out on Evolution"

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 16:23:00 +0000

In a country that has been at the forefront of science for decades, what would be the reason to question something as fundamental as evolution? However, just as any argument goes, there must be two sides - and I am going to attempt to see where the religious right might be coming from on this one.

I am sure that there are still people out there that believe that everything came from the Garden of Eden. The dinosaurs must have been frolicking in the garden as Adam and Eve tended to their apple orchards. To these people, I dont really have much to say because it is difficult for me to laugh and speak at the same time.

So, let us focus on the Evolution doubters that realize that they really do need something "scientific" to back up their statements, and therefore use the scientific term "Intelligent Design" - apparently an alternative "theory" to Evolution.

What is the basis of Intelligent Design? The concept essentially is that the random processes of evolution cannot lead to the complexity and/or physical properties of many species on this planet - and therefore imply that there is an element of intelligence involved in their design. Sounds perfectly reasonable - but when you delve into the definition a little more in detail, all it really is, is the age old answer to questions that are difficult to answer. If the question cannot be answered, lets just say a "superior being" was involved - the argument of ignorance.

What the creationists do not understand here is that the complexity involved in different species is very adequately explained by evolution, and "survival of the fittest". Evolution works by "natural selection", and the fact that worthwhile traits that suit an organisms current living environment are chosen over others that are unable to respond to changing environmental conditions. With time, these can become reasonably complex - as complex as the human brain itself.

The problem with wrapping the creationist "theory" and sticking the "Intelligent Design" label on it, is that it is still nowhere close to a real science. Science requires theories to be tested and proven by experiment in some form. This is certainly not possible with ID. Further, how does one really define this Intelligence in the first place other than the typical, "You will know it when you see it" definition.

Going back to my point on explaining everything in terms of a superior being, where unexpected and unexplainable complexities are explained away by using the Design expertise of an intelligent architect. It appears that all that is being done is that the complexity is being taken from the living species, and moved up one level to this Designer - thereby making the Intelligent Designer incredibly complex. So, taking the argument back to the proponents of ID - how does one explain the irreducible complexity of the designer? Is the jury still out on that one?

The Ashes

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 01:43:00 +0000

As I write this, the last session of the series has just begin, with England about 230 runs ahead with 3 wickets in hand, and 47 odd overs to be bowled. If you include a couple of overs for the change of innings, things are already looking dicey for Australia.

Australia were the overwhelming favourites when they landed up in England, but it's quite amazing how things have changed in the past month or so. Names like Jones, Flintoff and Pietersen are bound to become legends in England atleast, and tied with this Ashes series forever. I certainly expected England to take back the Ashes someday, but I did not expect it to happen this year, in this series.

Australia will still continue to be the leading nation in Test cricket, but I wonder what this means for the super series that is to be played later this year. If this is really the beginning of the end, it opens a place for the other teams to reach the top. England, of course, are the front runners to take over the top spot, but India are not too far behind in Test cricket.

Exciting times for Test cricket ahead. (The less I speak of one-day cricket and the Indian team, the better).

The First Invaders of South Asia?

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 17:03:00 +0000

This post is related to my earlier post on the Aryan-Dravidian controversy.

Were we really invaded by the Aryans at all? The Aryans were supposedly a tribe of horse-riding nomads from Eurasia that spoke a proto Indo-European language and invaded India about 1700BC, destroying a significantly advanced native, urban Indus Valley civilization. This basic premise was then used by the German archaeologist Gustafo Kossina to deduce that the Aryans were a master race of Indo-Europeans with very Nordic features, and direct ancestors of the Germans as well. It is of course of great importance, that Herr. Kossina was highly favoured by Hitler. The word Aryan is really based on the Sanskrit word Arya meaning pure or good. In the Vedas, the good people were called Aryans, and there was no mention of them being a different, and superior race. What reasons do we have to question this Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT)?

It has been proved that the Vedas and other manuscripts of the Vedic civilization that was supposedly established by the Aryans in about 1200BC are actually much older, and dated closer to 3000BC and the time of the Indus Valley Civilization. If this is indeed the case, there is no mention in the Vedic literature of any invasion or upheaval of any kind.
If the Aryans really did invade, one would have expected mention of a homeland, or a land of the forefathers - but there is no such mention in Vedic literature of any kind. The vedic literature only mention a few rivers and mountains, specifically the Sarasvati as the homeland, which gives a sense that the true homeland of these peoples was in the Indus Valley.
Recent archaelogical evidence has indicated that the Indus Valley Civilization was brought to an end due to a combination of drought and devastating floods rather than a violent confontation of any kind.

Personally, I tend to support the theory that there really was no Aryan Invasion. I am however, at a loss to explain the foundations of these ancient civilizations in South Asia, and India in particular. Archaeological finds are still few and far between on the subcontinent, but additional linguistic and physical evidence, coupled with DNA data should provide answers in the near future.

Aryans and Dravidians

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 05:44:00 +0000

The Aryan and Dravidian races have always been at the foundation of a history of India. I have always been curious as to the real existence, history, and migration patterns of these supposedly different groups of people. Reading the history book that I mention in my post here only left me with more questions than answers.

The general idea in that book was that the Indian populace is composed of a mix of the Negrito, Mongoloid and Caucasian population. However, it leaves open to debate the question of who founded the Indus Valley civilization. I have found, while reading various articles on the internet that there appears to be a recent tendency to lean towards the Aryans as the original founders of the civilization - with the assumption that the Dravidians were a proto-Negrito race that did not have the cultural and technological advancement to found such an advanced civilization.

I also find a tendency to label the four southern Indian states (namely Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and TamilNadu), as predominantly containing Dravidian populations. The reasoning behind this line of thinking being, that these were the original Dravidian populations that were pushed to the South of India by the invading Aryan foreigners. In some aspects this could be true, considering the fact that Tamil is one of the few (if not only) Indian languages that has so few words borrowed from Sanskrit, and therefore lays its claim to be an older language than Sanskrit. Sanskrit itself is said to be the basis for the majority of other Indian languages. However, other sources have revealed that there appears to be a link between the Dravidian languages and those of Eastern Europe, bordering the Black Sea. This might indicate that this was the origin of the Dravidian population, or perhaps points to an exodus of the population westwards at the time of the Aryan invasion.

I do not believe that there is any clear delineation between an Aryan and Dravidian race, and the real picture is much more complicated than that. South Asia is a clear stopping point for migrations from Central Asia, the Fertile Crescent, and Eastern Europe. All I think we know for certain is that the proto-Negrito migration to Australasia went through South Asia. This would clearly indicate the existence of the Negrito population in India and South Asia at some point. The Mongoloid influx arrived much later from East/Central Asia since the Himalayas would have formed a natural barrier. However, the questions that remain are

Where did the founders of the Indus Valley civilization come from?
Where and why did they disappear? If they were invaded and/or displaced where did the invaders come from ?
If there really were invaders, are these the Aryans that are spoken about? If so, does that mean that the Indus Valley civilization was a Dravidian civilization?
If the Indus valley civilization was Dravidian, should we be using a language like Tamil to decipher the inscriptions and tablets from the civilization? Has this ever been attempted?

I would love to hear comments, personal opinions and pointers to historical sources on this subject. I get the feeling that people tend to sway this argument towards popular beliefs either for political gain, or reasons of racial superiority. I am also very surprised that we have no clear answer to this problem; though I expect that recent DNA(Y chromosome) and mtRNA(X chromosome) research might point us to clues to these migrations.

Indian discus thrower fails drug test : Surprised?

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:13:00 +0000

This is related to my previous post on the dismal state of Indian Athletics. I wonder how many of these athletes are prone, or easily convinced into taking performance enhancing drugs to become competitive at the international level?

Indian discus thrower Neelam Jaswant Singh is the first athlete to test positive at the World Championships.

Singh tested positive in competition in Helsinki on 7 August for the prohibited stimulant pemoline.

See the full article here, on the BBC website.

Indian Athletics

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:30:00 +0000

I followed the final of the women's long jump competition, and Anju Bobby George's performance from the track and field world championships in Helsinki here. Before I get into the details of her performance, I'm going to take a shot at the pathetic standards of track and field athletes, officials and competition in India. (I'm sure you saw that coming).

The country's population, according to an estimate through July 2005 is 1,080,264,388 (source). The number of currently active, and famous, track and field athletes can be named using just one finger. Here is a complete listing of all track and field athletes that have represented India at the Olympics and won medals.

1900

Paris

Norman Pritchard

Silver in 200m and 200m hurdles

Ok, and just to make you feel better, here is another complete list of those who almost won a medal.

1960	Rome	Milkha Singh	400m, broke the world record, 0.1secs out of 3rd place
1964	Tokyo	Gurbachan Singh Randhawa	110m hurdles, 5th place
1976	Montreal	Sriram Singh	800m, 7th place
1984	Los Angeles	P.T Usha	400m hurdles, 0.01 secs out of 3rd place
1984	Los Angeles	Relay Team	4x400m relay, 7th place
2004	Athens	Anju Bobby George	Long Jump, 6th place
2004	Athens	Relay Team	4x400m relay, 7th place

We have not really had an almost to brag about since P.T Usha's heroics back in '84. Is it really that difficult to find the right athlete, and train them in certain areas so they can excel at a particular event? I have memories of track and field meets back in high school. There are usually a few athletes that appear to be much better than the rest in most schools. So, every now and then, you would find a single athlete from a school doing the 100m, 200m, 110m hurdles, long jump, triple jump, high jump ... you name it. Why? ... because he's the only good athlete anyway. So we might as well burn him out doing all of those events, and not really improve his standing in a single one.

I was lucky that I was in a school that had a good number of athletes and therefore we could focus on specific events. (the long jump and high hurdles being mine). So there I was, skinny as a stick, running up to do the long jump in high school, reaching a best of 6.23m (2o'5" for the "metrically" challenged folks) - and my training for a meet involved a few jumps every evening after school for a week before the meet. Did I have a special diet? Are you kidding? Was anyone in my school approached for serious training at an athletics club? Yes, but the track clubs were just glorified after school activities. How many actually progressed beyond the state level? From the information I have, none. Let me add again, we had our share of exceptional athletes - read Prem, J Ramya, Saifullah ...

South Asians just don't have the right body type did you say? What about those Sri Lankans (read Damayanti Darsha) that have been doing well at the world championships and the olympics. (Sri Lanka population : 20,064,776).

Getting back to Anju George, she must be doing something right. She has had good coaches, follows a strict diet, even though she loves the fried food, and has been able to regularly participate in international competition - paying her own way through until recently. With the help of good training and regular participation in these competitions, she has been quite consistent with her jumps. She does seem to have hit a barrier though, and I dont see her reaching the 7m mark, though that is one of her goals.

At this competition, she started off really well with a jump 0f 6.66 that left her at second place after the first jump. However, Tatyana Kotova, and Eunice Barber quickly came into their own taking the lead away and pushing her down to fourth place. A suprising personal best of 6.89 from the US jumper Tianna Madison on her fifth jump gave her the gold, and made things more difficult for Anju. Anju consistently jumped in the 6.50s but could not better her 6.66 in the first round. A consistent showing, but I am sure she would have wanted to do better than 5th place.
I do not think she will be a force to reckon with when the Beijing games come around. I also do not think we would have found anyone to replace her either. (I asked Google to find me the name of any other Indian woman long jumper, and he came up with nothing).

So who are these athletes that we send to the international competitions? Are any of the following names familiar?
Anil Kumar - our best sprinter. PB of about 10.30+. He has stagnated at that mark for a while. Good for SAF games perhaps.
Maha Singh - interesting new long jump prospect, 7.99 (not sure if he's broken 8m yet). He needs to be consistent over 8m, and jump regularly into the 8.30s to really be able to medal. I dont see that happening.
Satbir and Bhupinder Singh - our regular batch of 400m runners that impress at the Asian level, but can do little else.

I would have loved to have a couple of names that I could say were worth watching out for, and would be making names for themselves soon. I have none. I dont understand why I continue to have a passion for Indian track and field sometimes ... perhaps I just like to live a dream.

Game Time

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 13:33:00 +0000

I bought this xbox last winter, that I had to part with for a while. I have just received news that it is on its way back to me. Now, don't take this to mean that I am this avid gamer that is a genius with the controller, and wins every game I play. Far from that ... It does give me something different to do when I get back from work, rather than just reading, watching TV, and taking long walks. (Though, I must add, that the long walks are quite refreshing).

I remember the first time I saw a computer game - one of those Sega machines that you hooked up to a TV for display. It had a single joystick, and my favourite game on it was a car racing game. It had very basic CGI graphics, minimal use of colour, and all I had to do was wiggle the joystick a little every now and then to get the car to follow the moving road. Later, once I got my first computer at home, I found as many simple CGI games I could. Then again, my favourite involved a F1 racing game, but it was more involved, and had me racing against other computer racers. I also remember playing a similar game but with bikes. As VGA and SVGA monitors became more popular, the graphics, length and eventual goals of games began to change. This was the period when I began to play games like Prince of Persia, F-18 figher combat and such.

Since those days, I have tried a few games like the Age of Empires on the computer. They can keep you occupied for hours, and therefore require a significant availability of time. For a while, they began to affect my sleeping patterns.

The xbox changed that for a while. I went back to the simplicity of car racing games like Gotham City racing. Having become accustomed to using the keyboard for such games for the longest time, it took a while to get used to the games controllers. I had gotten better at it, and then had to separate myself from it for various reasons.

It will soon be back (hopefully in working condition), and then we'll have to see how the skills have fared during the same period.

Indian History

noreply@blogger.com (Revanta) — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 13:32:00 +0000

I recently picked up a book titled The Culture and History of the Indian People. Vol I : The Vedic Age. This was an edition from the 1950's, written by, arguably, India's greatest historian, R.C Majumdar. Further research indicated that he had written eleven volumes (nearly 10,000 pages!) in all, with a different perspective and an approach that deviated from traditional, popular methods of carving up Indian history. The traditional approach was to divide Indian History into three equal sections in terms of information - the Hindu period (Ancient - 1000AD), the Muslim period (1000AD - 1600 AD), the British period (1600AD - 1947AD+). His argument (and that of the other authors) was that though this division relatively matches the amount of information that we have for these different periods, it certainly does not do justice to the length of time that they cover. It appears that these books are not as easy to find anymore, and thanks to my good friend Google, I was able to compile the list of titles of this eleven volume series :

The Culture and History of the Indian People : R.C Majumdar et al. (11 vols.)

The Vedic Age (dawn of Hindu civilization)
Age of Imperial Unity (6th century BC, Magadha, Mauryas, South India, Ceylon)
The Classical Age (Guptas, Chalukyas, Pallavas)
The Age of Imperial Kanauj (??)
The Struggle for Empire (1000-1300)
The Delhi Sultanate (1200?-1526)
The Mughal Empire (1526-1707)
The Maratha Supremacy (1707-1818)
British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance Vol I (1818-1905)
British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance Vol II (1818-1905)
Struggle for Freedom (1905-1947)

It is interesting to note that he devotes four and a half, perhaps five full volumes to this Hindu period. The Vedic Age has been a good read so far, at times a little controversial, and I intend to provide my insights and observations into Majumdar's descriptions of this period once I am done with it. Stay tuned.