Wednesday, February 24, 2010

chinese win world computer science contest while india wins (drum roll)... cricket rankings!

feb 20th, 2010

could there be a more stark contrast between our obsessions and theirs?

the hans are beavering mightily to beat the americans militarily and
their kids are matching wits with the top brains in the computer
science world.

the indians are beavering mightily to be the biggest 22 fools in white
flannels out there on a field all day. and don't tell me indians are
into sport, when the chinese are making waves even in the winter
olympics.

pathetic.

it boils down to one thing: strategic intent. the indians have the
intent (thanks, nehru) of being oh... number 10 or so in the world.
and the officials steal the money that the olympians need even for
uniforms (canadian-indians had to sponsor uniforms for indians at the
winter olympics). the chinese intend to be number 1. their atheletes
go the the olympics to win, in nice uniforms.

i think we should cancel a) the commonwealth games, b) all cricket
events, on the basis of lack of security thanks to pakistani
terrorism. and tell all the cricket fans to go do something
productive.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/technology/19china.html?em

http://www.examiner.com/x-10513-Cricket-Examiner~y2010m2d19-India-retain-number-one-slot-and-how

7 comments:

Harish said...

could not agree more..
cricket is the bane of India..

Shankara said...

Relax guys, the hans need to prove themselves in the computer business and thus they are fighting it. We have done these things. Lets give others the chance.

On a serious note, I agree that India has no strategic intent or forward policy. See how we lost out in Af-Pak discussions, our latest in thousands of failed attempts to be a regional power. Our BHL Cong govt took candles, flowers and bandages to a gun fight and soon got decked up in the same flowers and bandages with the candle up you know where and sent back with a big thank you. Billions of dollars of tax payers money down the drain. B@#tard* could have used it to for our poor folks.

Unknown said...

Rajeev,
While our so-called education and research needs some urgent upgrade, Hans have not exactly been at the forefront of innovation in computers or math. Chinese are excellent in winning competitions (Math Olympiad, ACM Programming Challenge..etc) but in innovation not so much. For example, in this decade Indians (in India) won the Fulkerson prize and the Clay Award but no Chinese anywhere in the list.

Harish said...

i guess we need to make a distinction about some random Indian winning some prestigious prize and the point about strategic intent that Rajeev makes here...

its not as if Chinese are better at computer science than Indians... its about what Chinese (a.k.a Chinese govt)focuses on..

if you do not have strategic intent your country loses irrespective of how many Nobel prize,ACM programming or Fulkerson prize your people may win (sitting in some US univs of course!)...

Indians can sit on top of their so called "soft power" (Bolyywood movies) and their numero uno sports (IPL and cricket) and live in their dream land of imminent superpowerdom.... while Chinese will encircle you, break into your computer system and provoke you ad nauseum...

CVSMurty said...

It is heart warming to know that there are still some people, who hate the socalled-Bollywood and the socalled-sport called cricket.

Unknown said...

Huh,

If we are good and win at cricket, obviously the masses are going to watch it. Do you expect people to watch and corporates to sponsor sports where we get creamed? The government has to take interest and fund other sportsmen like Bhindra till they become famous and are able to draw sponsorship and interest. The government of India is at fault not cricket.

Football and baseball have the same status in the US as cricket in India (the average Yank probably knows Tom Brady better than Michael Phelps). But this has not killed Olympic talent in the US. So this argument of "cricket kills Olympics" is pretty hollow, IMO.

And Harish, I was not comparing individual Indians achievment vs. the Chinese emphasis on R&D. I was just pointing out that while India's record of innovation in math and science is pretty poor, China's record is even worse.

Harish said...

hokiepride,

really we are "good" at cricket is it?...since when?
we watch(slavishly follow) cricket whether India is good or not....thats the truth..
for a larger part of the last 50 years Indians have wallowed at the very bottom and even now a strong(second string) Aussie side can give us a good lesson or two...

same is true of Bollywood movies.. and the associated "soft power".. if you do not have "hard power", this counts for nothing...

but the point is *not* about cricket and/or Bollywood..

if u ever have doubts as to how much ruination is caused by things like our irrational love for "sports" like cricket and bollywood crap go check out videos by Yuri Bezmenov(on youtube) on what it takes to bring down a nation....

and also please dont compare professionally run sports like NFL or NBA to one of the most mismanaged corrupt unprofessionally run "sport" called cricket run by our own BCCI and Lalit Modi..

which brings back to the actual point of the piece.."strategic intent"...

if your idea is to be the very best..we as a nation and the government will strive to be that..this will automatically translate into Olympic golds, Nobel Prizes and infrastructure built on time..
if your idea is to be an "also ran", then what we get is implosion of a civilization like we currently are facing in India...