Today, the New York Times featured the research project that I worked on while at the University of Michigan. And carried a nice picture of my advisor, Prof. Paul Resnick. It's great to see the research featured in NYTimes, even though the only quote from Paul was "The data are a researcher's playground"!
Online markets are certainly growing in size, and also maturing as they grow. Economic studies of these markets are certainly vital to the field. Do check out the website: Reputations Research Network.
There are several excellent research papers listed at the site. For a gentle introduction, read the Reputation Systems article.
June 24, 2003
June 16, 2003
Laughable Loves
Milan Kundera is a very strange writer. I don't really know what to make of his stories. I like the stories, the characters and the narration. There is a lot of subtle humor. However, I can't really say I enjoyed the book. Its strangely paradoxical just like most of the stories in "Laughable Loves".
This book is truly a collection of short stories. The stories are all built around the same theme, and are in some way connected with each other. The first few stories build up the intensity, while the later seem to focus more deeply on what Kundera wants to convey. They are delightful and at the same time, quite sad. To some extent, the plot seems to be extraneous to the story.
Read it, and you'll probably know!
This book is truly a collection of short stories. The stories are all built around the same theme, and are in some way connected with each other. The first few stories build up the intensity, while the later seem to focus more deeply on what Kundera wants to convey. They are delightful and at the same time, quite sad. To some extent, the plot seems to be extraneous to the story.
Read it, and you'll probably know!
June 11, 2003
Mukhawataa ("The Mask" - in Marathi)
I was looking forward to reading "Mukhawata" by Arun Sadhu for quite some time. Laid my hands on it thanks to the University of Michigan library.
Mukhawata is set in Maharashtra in two time-periods, the 14th century and through the mid-to-late 20th century. It tracks a Brahmin family over the pre-independennce, and post-independence period. The 14th century portion runs as the background story of the family, its particular traditions, and a reference as to how certain rituals come to be. It is a plot device that, while running in the past, connects strongly with the present, and sets up the stage for the goings-on.
The novel is set in rural Maharashtra, in the Vidarbha region. The local references - towns, culture and language are very detailed and wonderfully written. The everyday life in the village- agriculture routines, meals, pooja and the annual Paalakhee - are all wonderfully described. The ritualistic nature of religious practice, devoid of any real connection to a God, and the reality of the surroundings creates questions in the minds of the practitioning Brahmins. This doubt leads the different men, responsible for performing these rituals, in search of truths. Some break the rituals, others try to find its meaning in alcohol, some others see virtue in giving, and some try to find it in the family history and the deep-rooted traditions. Some break all ties with the family, and chose to run away.
While describing a patriarchal society, where the family tree is centered on the Man of the family in that generation, the author actually throws up a contradiction that is novel. He tries to identify the meaning of "family" and shows the real identifiers to be the family traditions, language, food and other issues, most of which take place at home. He notes then that its the women, who are married into the family who are responsible for continuing with and at the same time modifying, modernizing these traditions. Their influence, whichever families they come from, are responsible for the continuation of tradition as well as all changes, small and large, in the way the family lives. It is these women, who adopt the family as their own, and give it meaning.
The novel thus presents a rich new look at the known facts. The caste politics, changing climate of education, rising cities, and redcued dependence on agriculture are all part of the fabric of the story. In the novel's peak moment, which you feel coming all through reading it, the author ties these themes together. The traditional views on caste, education, religion, and human life are thus challenged and layers are peeled off to reveal the richness underlying mundane everyday existence.
Arun Sadhu is one of my favorite novelists. This is undoubtedly one of his best books.
Mukhawata is set in Maharashtra in two time-periods, the 14th century and through the mid-to-late 20th century. It tracks a Brahmin family over the pre-independennce, and post-independence period. The 14th century portion runs as the background story of the family, its particular traditions, and a reference as to how certain rituals come to be. It is a plot device that, while running in the past, connects strongly with the present, and sets up the stage for the goings-on.
The novel is set in rural Maharashtra, in the Vidarbha region. The local references - towns, culture and language are very detailed and wonderfully written. The everyday life in the village- agriculture routines, meals, pooja and the annual Paalakhee - are all wonderfully described. The ritualistic nature of religious practice, devoid of any real connection to a God, and the reality of the surroundings creates questions in the minds of the practitioning Brahmins. This doubt leads the different men, responsible for performing these rituals, in search of truths. Some break the rituals, others try to find its meaning in alcohol, some others see virtue in giving, and some try to find it in the family history and the deep-rooted traditions. Some break all ties with the family, and chose to run away.
While describing a patriarchal society, where the family tree is centered on the Man of the family in that generation, the author actually throws up a contradiction that is novel. He tries to identify the meaning of "family" and shows the real identifiers to be the family traditions, language, food and other issues, most of which take place at home. He notes then that its the women, who are married into the family who are responsible for continuing with and at the same time modifying, modernizing these traditions. Their influence, whichever families they come from, are responsible for the continuation of tradition as well as all changes, small and large, in the way the family lives. It is these women, who adopt the family as their own, and give it meaning.
The novel thus presents a rich new look at the known facts. The caste politics, changing climate of education, rising cities, and redcued dependence on agriculture are all part of the fabric of the story. In the novel's peak moment, which you feel coming all through reading it, the author ties these themes together. The traditional views on caste, education, religion, and human life are thus challenged and layers are peeled off to reveal the richness underlying mundane everyday existence.
Arun Sadhu is one of my favorite novelists. This is undoubtedly one of his best books.
March 17, 2003
Bend It Like Beckham
And while we are on the subject, of strong women characters in movies, here's another one! This one is wildly entertaining and fun film!
Last year, Bend It.. was so popular back home in India, I watched it thrice in two months! And I have never seen so many girls in a movie theater, shouting, whistling, and generally having a great time!!
Last year, Bend It.. was so popular back home in India, I watched it thrice in two months! And I have never seen so many girls in a movie theater, shouting, whistling, and generally having a great time!!
March 12, 2003
The Pianist
Came back a couple hours ago from watching this film.. based on a true story of a jewish pianist (Wladyslaw Szpilman) caught in World War II Poland.. Adrien Brody is excellent in the title role, showing the varying degrees of extreme emotions nicely.. rest of the cast is also very good, as are all the crowd scenes, war scenes and locations.. since its based on a true story, there are not that many "cinematic" moments, but the film still had a lot of impact..
There were too many cuts jumping the screenplay from one time to the next, and the storyline was harder to make out.. I was not "moved" by the film in the same way as I was by "Life is Beautiful" or "Schindler's List".. It was a very good film nonetheless, especially in the currently emerging "war" scenario...
Other similarly themed movies I liked:
World War II: Life is Beautiful| Schindler's List
Ethnic/ religious disputes: Ulysses' Gaze| 1947-Earth
War-themed: No Man's Land
There were too many cuts jumping the screenplay from one time to the next, and the storyline was harder to make out.. I was not "moved" by the film in the same way as I was by "Life is Beautiful" or "Schindler's List".. It was a very good film nonetheless, especially in the currently emerging "war" scenario...
Other similarly themed movies I liked:
World War II: Life is Beautiful| Schindler's List
Ethnic/ religious disputes: Ulysses' Gaze| 1947-Earth
War-themed: No Man's Land
March 03, 2003
Sad Shaun: So near and yet so far
 |
"Tied matches and rain: the ghosts of World Cup past converged on South Africa in the most warped manner imaginable."
Heartbreak | Pollock: We Miscalculated | South Africa have only themselves to blame
February 28, 2003
MusicBrainz
Imagine a thousand MP3 (or wma or other digital music) files which are either missing ID3 tags completely, or have incorrect tags. Absence of metadata such as album name, artist information, release year, genre and others makes it really difficult to organize a digital music collection. Complex directories-and sub-directories organized by album/artist do not really do justice to the variety of ways in which one listens to music. By genre, by artist, by album, by mood, by year and a thousand other idiosyncratic ways.
This is a notorious problem, even with legal copies of CDs, since most "free" MP3 encoding software tools do not have the capabilities to retrieve track info from online databases and write it while encoding the file. Also, many non-english language albums, and those on little-known labels do not even provide their data to CDDB or other online databases. Add to this mix the songs that you download from peer-to-peer file sharing services. What you have is a digital music collection, with highly unreliable/absent metadata.
Windows Media Player (and a lot of other players nowadays) let you overcome the organization problems through intelligent use of song metadata, allowing creation of such
playlists as "music from the 70s only", "1968 Beatles tracks only", or "hindi only" without resorting to complex directory structures in storing songs on the hard drive.
An elegant, free, open-source solution is provided by MusicBrainz. It provides a tool that analyses a music file on your hard drive, identifies it, fetches album and artist information from its database and corrects the tags in your file. In case of the song being absent in its database, it lets you identify the song yourself, and attempts to fetch data from FreeDB. Nice!
Contribute by supplying information about albums/ artists absent in their database, providing corrections for existing database entries, and approving other people's suggestions. Its free, its open source, and its distributed. I love this.
Money for MusicBrainz? An interesting "public goods" problem.
This is a notorious problem, even with legal copies of CDs, since most "free" MP3 encoding software tools do not have the capabilities to retrieve track info from online databases and write it while encoding the file. Also, many non-english language albums, and those on little-known labels do not even provide their data to CDDB or other online databases. Add to this mix the songs that you download from peer-to-peer file sharing services. What you have is a digital music collection, with highly unreliable/absent metadata.
Windows Media Player (and a lot of other players nowadays) let you overcome the organization problems through intelligent use of song metadata, allowing creation of such
playlists as "music from the 70s only", "1968 Beatles tracks only", or "hindi only" without resorting to complex directory structures in storing songs on the hard drive.
An elegant, free, open-source solution is provided by MusicBrainz. It provides a tool that analyses a music file on your hard drive, identifies it, fetches album and artist information from its database and corrects the tags in your file. In case of the song being absent in its database, it lets you identify the song yourself, and attempts to fetch data from FreeDB. Nice!
Contribute by supplying information about albums/ artists absent in their database, providing corrections for existing database entries, and approving other people's suggestions. Its free, its open source, and its distributed. I love this.
Money for MusicBrainz? An interesting "public goods" problem.
February 25, 2003
The Life of David Gale
Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslet - a very interesting lead pair (which is not really a pair!), an inmate on death row- an unusual plot. I picked this movie after finding out that the theater supposedly showing "The Pianist" was not showing it (or any movie) at all!
Turned out to be a decent choice. Kevin Spacey was excellent as "David Gale", a philosophy professor turned murder convict. Spacey lecturing philosophy in the classroom is a perfect fit, though his exaggerated swagger after a few whiskies, and quoting Socrates in streets in his drunken state is probably taking it a bit too far. Controlled, but a bit over the top I felt.
Kate Winslet is likeable, in the role of the prototypical "reporter". All others, except the murder victim (Laura Linney portraying Spacey's colleague at DeathWatch), do not have a significant role.
The basic theme concerns the volatile issue of the "death penalty" that is the common penalty for convicted murderers in several US states. The protagonist, Spacey, leads a group opposed to the death penalty on moral grounds. Set in orthodox Texas, that's a difficult liberal view to hold. The chief argument is that a wrongful conviction will lead to murder in a state which issues the death penalty. How David Gale's life becomes entwined with the beliefs he fights for is the movie in short.
An up-and-down film most of the time. It builds interest and suspense in some sequences (most notably, the murder scene, and the videotapes). The mysterious truck following the reporter around from day one is too simplistic though.
Turned out to be a decent choice. Kevin Spacey was excellent as "David Gale", a philosophy professor turned murder convict. Spacey lecturing philosophy in the classroom is a perfect fit, though his exaggerated swagger after a few whiskies, and quoting Socrates in streets in his drunken state is probably taking it a bit too far. Controlled, but a bit over the top I felt.
Kate Winslet is likeable, in the role of the prototypical "reporter". All others, except the murder victim (Laura Linney portraying Spacey's colleague at DeathWatch), do not have a significant role.
The basic theme concerns the volatile issue of the "death penalty" that is the common penalty for convicted murderers in several US states. The protagonist, Spacey, leads a group opposed to the death penalty on moral grounds. Set in orthodox Texas, that's a difficult liberal view to hold. The chief argument is that a wrongful conviction will lead to murder in a state which issues the death penalty. How David Gale's life becomes entwined with the beliefs he fights for is the movie in short.
An up-and-down film most of the time. It builds interest and suspense in some sequences (most notably, the murder scene, and the videotapes). The mysterious truck following the reporter around from day one is too simplistic though.
February 20, 2003
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