[1] Married types ask, ‘How SJ can you make do without sex’? Answer: The same as you! Only difference is I cope better knowing that it is purely my choice

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“… ideas matter. Ideas are primary. Ideas are the ultimate public good in that they are totally non-rival: my use of an idea does not diminish your capacity to use it as well. Ideas can pass from one mind to another and set up a chain reaction that has the power to transform the world. Everything that you see around you – the good, the bad, the ugly – everything was just an idea …”

But be careful folks for there are ideas and then there are dangerous killer ideas -

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You lucky, lucky bastard! Probably the little jailies’ pet, aren’t we? You must have slipt him a few shekels, eh? Oh, ohoh, what wouldn’t I give to be spat at in the face? I sometimes hang awake at night, dreaming of being spat at in the face. Manacles! Ohuuhoh… what idea of reaving; is to be allowed to put in manacles, just for a few hours. They must think a sun shines out your arse, sonny! You’ve had a hard time!? I’ve been here five years, they only hung me the right way up yesterday! So don’t you come ’round… They must think you’re lord God Almighty. Oh, you’ll probably get away with crucifixion. Yeah. First offense. Best thing the Romans ever did for us. Oh, yeah. If we didn’t have crucifixion, this country’d be in a right bloody mess. Nail ‘em up I say! Nail some sense into ‘em! Hah! Ptui! [Spit] Oh! Look at that! Bloody favouritism! Now take my case. They hang me up here five years ago. Every night they take me down for twenty minutes, then they hang me up again. Which I guard as very fair, in view of what I’ve done. And if nothing else, it has taught me to respect the Romans, and it has taught me that you’ll never get anywhere in this life, unless you are prepared to do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s… Oh haha! Nice one, centurion! Like it. Terrific race, Romans! Terrific.

Yep! Terrific politicans, businessmen and police we have too. Truly blessed.

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… eight-armed Seer will dominate our lives and politics. In fact, soon we may see baby octopuses contesting elections – if the squirmy baba-log are related to the Ashtabhuj Baba they are fit to govern us, of course. And I have no doubt that they will make brilliant politicians.
For one, an octopus has no spine – it can mould itself any which way. Then, it is a master of camouflage. It can rapidly change colour, even its skin-texture, to fit its surroundings. Besides, it has excellent eyesight and a shrewd brain. Many believe octopus has nine brains, because each of its arms genuinely has a mind of its own. It would be a great help in a system where one arm doesn’t know what another is doing. When in tight spot, octopus can squeeze itself into any loophole and escape. And most importantly, it specialises in spraying ink to cloud your vision and play debauchery tricks …

Yup. octopi would be perfect politicians indeed. With Spain volunteering to provide security to such molluscs, it is a bonus and would be light on exchequer too.

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There are a number of issues here. First and foremost is very publication of an advertisement by ministry to justify a decision it took without any regard to previous commissions and opposition. Second, the accuracy of the advertisement has been called into question and there is no one exploring. Where is the so-called hawkish factual rigour in reporting that people are giving and getting awards for? (which seems to be all the time). Is anyone looking deeper if the prices published are normalized to cylinder volumes and currency? I certainly do not hear any newsbytes. Third, comparing prices of other washed-out hopeless countries that surround this pathetic excuse of a nation is just giving excuses and betting on sadistic catharsis in the misfortune of others. So, some poor sod in Bangladesh is paying more for LPG and Kerosene. This proves what exactly? Why some stupid government in some idiot country charges what for some commodity is a matter of some policy and some arrangements they have with some oil producing nations and some oil company. What does that have to do with prices in India? But wait dear reader, the main analysis of my gut feeling and discomfiture is that the whole premise of the advertisement is wrong because it was designed to mislead people into thinking that the government is still doing a better job than the governments of genocidial poverty-ridden violent terrorist failed states. Is this the company we want to compare ourselves with? Why is the comparision not made to fuel prices of the USA where petrol costs half than what we pay at the bunk? The use of media and the English language is just an icing on the cake to prove that we live in a very controlled and suggestive society. The only people who can read and understand this silly advertisement in the first place are the urban middle-class who have some swing and make noises. By satisfying this no-good rubric, the ministry has a free pass.

I hope am not being Chomskyish here and shouting some conspiracy because Jayati Ghosh in her editorial today titled, Dripping Economy gives many points to ponder about the very timing and necessity of “freeing” the price of petroleum products in the midst of almost unprecedented food and generalised inflation. I could not believe that Capsicum is 90/- a kilo…

oil is a universal intermediate (which enters directly or indirectly into all other prices) this necessarily means a further rise in inflation. This is a move that is inexplicable from the point of view of general economic policy. Global prices of petroleum products in the past three years have been marked by the most extreme volatility, more than doubling and then falling to nearly half within a period of 18 months. The fluctuations hardly reflect “economic fundamentals” which have not changed much in the past few years; rather they show the impact of global speculative forces on fuel prices

UPA government has been trying for some time to decontrol oil prices, despite the global volatility in these prices and the lack of convincing arguments in favour of such deregulation. The Rangarajan Committee on the pricing and taxation of petroleum products was set up in the hope that it would recommend such a move. But that report did not really point to this conclusion, so the government, not to be thwarted in its desire, set up yet another committee. This time it was an Expert Group chaired by former Planning Commission member Kirit Parikh, with the more or less explicit mandate to recommend wholesale liberalisation of the pricing of petroleum products. The Expert Group duly did just that, and the government has been quick to accept its recommendations

official reason for this move is that it is necessary to stem the “losses” being suffered by the oil marketing companies. But this argument misses the point that all of these companies deliver a range of products and services, the prices of all of which are not controlled. In fact, profits after taxes of the most important oil companies have remained positive and often quite substantially so in the past 10 years. The oil refineries and governement also get a huge pay-off from taxes and levies but they are not willing to budge. Current strategy is one that puts the entire burden of irrational shifts in the international prices of oil on the consumer, even if the burden sharing involved is extremely regressive and unjustified

So, there you have it. The most obvious reason for the deregulation or price hike or whatever you want to call this scum scam, seems to be that the government has chosen to favour the private companies that have been allowed to enter and expand in this sector. This has encouraged the government to take a measure that will cause great harm to most of the population so as to bring in more profits to a few large and powerful companies and of course itself. It also gives people a chance like Andhra Pradesh CM to be a hero by giving statements that the state will buffer the poor from the price increase. This brings to mind popular adage: “Either the government owns the oil companies, or the oil companies own the government.”

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Are we really that sensitive as to go ballistic over a cup of a hazel nut and raspberry duo that costs the earth? Come on, guys! That corny line about entry restricted to ‘international passport holders only’ was exactly that – corny! All passports by definition are international, remember? What’s a “local” passport?? It was obviously the brainchild of an immature copywriter taking a shot at being extra clever. Clearly, the ad agency got it all wrong, and now the excreta has hit the ceiling. Various groups have banded together to scream, “Racism” and demand an apology if not an immediate closure of the Delhi outlet. At the time of writing, public outrage was beginning to snowball into something major. This may change if something juicier diverts media attention, and bloggers discover a new bête noire. But for now, tweets by the nano second are flying around the world mobilising opinion against the brand’s provocative advertising

They say nothing works as brilliantly as publicity that hammers home a message – regardless of what that message is. Repeated often enough, it sinks into our khopdis and there it stays. After a point, not many people remember why they remember it – but the fact remains, they do! Target achieved. So it might be with the Indian consumer and Haagen-Dazs – the ice cream with attitude. We have taken offence (count me in!) at what is seen as a racial slur, a national insult, a crime. Our izzat is at stake and we shall go to any length to protect it. By over-reacting, we have done the brand a huge favour. Jaaney do. The latest controversy has led to a free national awareness campaign that would otherwise have cost the brand a huge amount of money. The ice cream is front-page news and a matter of heated debate across channels at prime time. Indians are bored at the moment. There is very little action to distract our attention.

A stupid ice-cream brand chose to launch during winter and is generating heat.

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PS: If you are wondering what happened to part-2 of series, well, keep wondering. I did not think it was worth my typing and am famously lazy. You are however free to think of it as a forced workshop on imagining or maybe, Quentin Tarantino stylism

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All right, well if she’s right next to the ratchet set, and I had that ratchet set… I wonder if that would mean that by transitive… I better just buy the ratchet set

Who knew, observational stand-up comedy could be so profound, eh? I have never heard of a beautiful woman ever getting a parking fine or speeding ticket. In fact, I am aware of instances where women try to validate themselves by committing a crime and see if they still have it in them to escape the lonely long hands of male officer enforced law. Apparently, it is not that hard and if so, they can do whatever they want. Flirt a little and a beautiful woman is off the death row. Flash a boob, or two, and a beautiful woman gets free taxi rides. Wars have been fought over women and many a friendship and kinship has been lost because of beauty. Gotta love the fair sex. Or comprehend the stupidity of the primitive male brain. Unfortunately, they are both impossible. Many people have tried and failed. Helen of Troy (not, Diane Kruger, you fools) is famed to have a face that launched a 1000 ships according to Iliad by Homer (not the Simpson, it should be said). Mel Gibson could have been very wrong. Women, not Jews, are responsible for all the foolish acts of men during entire tenure of primate history before and after civilization. That is a considerable amount of time and an extraordinary number of actions happening even now as we speak. There goes another failed attempt at conquest in a bar. Another feeble attempt at office romance. Keep on trying guys. To infinity and beyond and all that.

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A really interesting post from Atanu Dey about sex lives of Indians. See folks, the problem here is those tiny little Indian penises:

Survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indians. Study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms

Australians both enjoy sex and engage in it often. Massive they are.

I wanted to write a comment but could not because the ‘security code’ thing at AC seems to be broken. I saw it as a sign because I don’t believe in leaving comments when I maintain a blog. So, here we are. First of all, the Atanu article was not about penises at all. In fact the title is what one calls a sensationalist attention-grabbing sleight-of-hand bucket of text meant to mislead because the first para reads, “That, dear boys and girls, is clearly not so. First of all, the storks did not deliver the babies that go on to make up the 1.2 billion population. There aren’t that many storks in the world. Clearly Indians do have sex and I am certain that some even like it.” So, the joke is clearly on Mr. Beck of Perth, Australia. I however salute him for the BBC story although it is rather pretty obvious. Indians are small people compared to first world countries because of decades of slavery, exploitation, suffering, and malnutrition. No masters, except USA who bred blacks for their athletic attributes wants to see slaves beefing up under cruel sado-occupational rule. If the condom sizes sync with Africans who are much worse off economically it is because blacks have bigger sticks than other races. Seems like what Indians lack in size, they make up for it in virility, numerosity, frequency and stamina which according to any other research is what really matters. Moving away from size and to the point of liking sex, if there is any truth to Indians not having enough sex then we can see a correlation with culture and marriage which we all know suck the sex drive. No matter what, the joke is yet once again on Mr. Beck of Perth, Australia. I wanted to blast the dripping ignorance, superiority complex and blatant racism but then I realized that well, the big dick (quite literally) seeing the penis size link I suppose in an article which is entirely off-topic and side-footed, is the classic anthropological principle/bias at play here i.e. humans tend to see what they want to see. As for size comparision and flaunting of his Australian sausage (how insecure are we?), when it comes to men individually or as nations, it all about who has biggest dick. (cue: “Six Feet Under”)

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Say what you may about Indian Olympic Association president Suresh Kalmadi, one thing can’t be denied; The 65-year old can make most optimistic amongst us seem like Arthur Schopenhauer. At Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Port-of-Spain, he surprised all present with his proclamation that once India successfully staged next year’s Commonwealth Games in New Delhi the nation could soon launch a bid to host the world’s most popular sporting extravaganza – the FIFA World Cup. Ironically his promulgation was made in Trinidad and Tobago, which in 2006 became the smallest nation to ever qualify for the quadrennial showcase with a population just exceeding one million. The closest India, with a population of over a billion, have come to gracing world football’s biggest stage was in 1950 when it qualified for the World Cup held in Brazil but were eventually unable to compete as the team played barefoot. Cutting to the ground reality, Kalmadi ignored probably the most important element to host a football World Cup – the infrastructure.

FIFA sets a minimum requirement of 12 stadiums capable of seating at least 40,000 spectators, while a stadium with a minimum capacity of 80,000 is required for the opening match and the final. At present, India has just one stadium which matches up to AFC criteria, where the minimum allowed capacity is 20,000 – the Gachibowli Stadium in Hyderabad. The national team’s preferred home venue, the Ambedkar Stadium, which has been the sight for many a historic triumph, falls short of matching-up to AFC standards. If that doesn’t bode well, the scenario with the training facilities is even bleaker. India is so woefully short of training facilities that national team is forced to train in high school playgrounds during prestigious tournaments like AFC Challenge Cup and the Nehru Cup and has to routinely travel abroad for national camps as there are no training facilities in the country.

National team coach Bob Houghton, more of a realist than Kalmadi, has more than once stated that before we start dreaming of qualifying for the World Cup, much less dream of hosting it, we should keep in mind that the two biggest and most historic clubs in the country – East Bengal and Mohun Bagan – don’t have their own training grounds even after over 100 years of existence. With the hosts for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups being announced together in 2011, India doesn’t have a chance at making a bid before 2026 and even so, one wonders how successful a bid from a nation which has never qualified for the World Cup would be.

[Tweet - 20091225]: Ultimate irony that India could not compete in 1950 world cup in Brazil is that they played “barefoot” a sport called football – not, bootball. Classic

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In 1776, Adam Smith’s famous and still widely quoted passage in the “Wealth of Nations” noted that ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. More recently, the more famous quotation was probably that of Gordon Gekko, the fictional hero of the 1987 film “Wall Street”, ‘Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind’. The proof is out there for all to see – well, to someone looking. A series of corporate scandals and failures rocked the US economy in 2001 and 2002 – from Enron and WorldCom to Adelphi and even one of the “Big Five” accounting firms, Arthur Andersen. It turned out that much of the much-hyped growth and profits were clearly illusory, based on fraud and data manipulation, or simply put, lies. Two points that emerged then are still relevant today. First, such scams are not new nor unexpected; in fact they are part of capitalism’s normal functioning. Only most naive interpretations of the history of capitalism would leave out the crucial role played by fraud, deceit and open crime in the accumulation of capital and its subsequent use. While many of the financial malpractices continued for several years, they were exposed only when economic slowdown and the stock market bear trend fed into each other. Yet another (policy created) bubble in the US — this time directed to the housing market and financial proliferation — once again diverted attention and brought back the glory days for risk-loving CEOs of large companies, especially financial firms. The period 2002 to 2007 thus became, in the US and globally, a repeat of the earlier 1990s process on an even larger scale. It was the same dance, to just a slightly different tune, and joined by many more economic agents all over the world. Greed and boundless market optimism were back in fashion again. And the current crisis is not over yet. The major imbalances that were at the heart of the crisis still persist: the imbalance between finance and the real economy; the global macroeconomic imbalances; and ecological imbalance resulting from the pattern of growth. This cycle will repeat for eternity.

When Deccan Chronicle asked me to draw up a list of the 10 biggest scams of the past decade, I didn’t realise there were so many over the last two years alone. I gave up counting. A group of bleeding-heart do-gooders by the name of ‘Transparency International’ ranked India at the 85th position out of 179 countries in its annual “corruption perceptions index” in 2008. In fact, India’s score improved dramatically from 2.7 (out of 10) in 2002 to 3.4 in 2008. Does it mean that corruption has become better or that India is more transparent in its corruption today than before? Everybody accepts it as a way of life. Of capitalism and bureaucracy taking its charted path. We draw distinctions between the more corrupt and the less corrupt, the corrupt-but-efficient and the corrupt-and-inefficient – “that fellow accepts bribes but still refuses to do his job”. We are a nicely nuanced lot. But as a majority is so poor, none of this actually affects them. They have their own fish to fry (this is figurative because there aren’t enough fish to feed all the ugly masses). Scams therefore, escape our scrutiny for the same reason. Harshad Mehta, former employee of the New India Assurance Company who became a notorious stockbroker by presiding over a financial scandal involving Rs 4,000 crores. Byrraju Ramalinga Raju, who headed Satyam Computer Services confessed that he cooked the books of account of his flagship firm to the tune of Rs 8,000 crores. Ketan Parekh is a pale shadow of his former cocky self and few remember C.R. Bhansali’s claim to infamy. The IPO scam involving India Bulls and stock-broking firm Karvy is a distant development. And, have you recently heard anything about Abdul Karim Telgi who started life as a fruit and vegetable seller before he decided to bribe his way into the Nashik security printing press and forged wads of stamp paper? Madhu Koda started off as a labourer in a mine and a window-grill fitter before a small-time flunky in the BJP to a big-time beneficiary of the vagaries of coalition politics. He reportedly almost bought up a couple of uranium mines in South Africa before celebrations abruptly ended. But Koda’s shenanigans faded into insignificance before the occurrence of the “biggest” scam in independent India, namely, allotment of electro-magnetic spectrum to a clutch of mobile operator telephone companies at prices that were at least one-seventh their true market value. What was the loss to the nation? Only Rs 50,000 crores! This is India, after all, the world’s greatest democracy, where sibling rivalry can paralyse the working of the government. Imagine a tycoon splurging on front-page advertisements in dozens of newspapers to tell the world how the Union ministry of petroleum and natural gas was depriving the exchequer of huge amounts by favouring a fraternal company by agreeing to pay a higher price for natural gas taken out of the bed of the ocean in the Bay of Bengal. More than 250 aircraft and helicopters valued at not less than Rs 16,000 crores that were imported into the country between May 2007 and July 2008 by more than 70 companies controlled by some of the country’s most prominent industrialists after evading customs duty worth Rs 4,000 crores. Noteworthy that most of these private aircrafts were used not merely by corporate honchos, family members and business associates but also by “politician friends” during their election campaigns.

All said and done, capitalism works because it is first and foremost a monopoly – only because of a failure (and propagandic annihilation) of other systems to catch on, rather than any strict opposition or fair-play – because our pathetic little brains and genome vessels cannot think beyond self-preservation. During the cold war, the East looked in jealousy at West for the goods they have in their supermarkets. But now, the East which still suffers from poverty inspite of capitalism, looks in despair and hopelessness at the West for the debt-ridden luxury consumption that is the driver of growth more than industry. After all, we are animals who like cuckoos value trinkets like some yellow metal (read, gold) and pressurized rock (read, diamond) in high regard than that of the life of a fellow human and would be willing to commit unspeakable actions to the pursuit of stuff – white solids or black liquids or green paper or blue powder – that has absolutely no real tangible value if one really spends enough time to think and ponder about this madness.
This is getting boring, isn’t it? If one were to start chronicling the stories of human greed, it would take a million lifetimes. The MD of Alcatel-Lucent India, Vivek Mohan spoke, “It is high time for India to move on from ‘Copy the West’ phenomenon and develop innovative, India-specific stuff. I strongly believe that India is home to the best entrepreneurial talent and Indians have innovation in their DNA”. It is so very true. We are innovators in corruption and scams today after successfully imitating the West at a scale that boggles the mind. It is in our blood to be apathetic and suffer. Connection between capitalist greed and scams and the nexus between business and evil politics is neither new nor unique. What’s a few billions among friends, eh? Let’s talk about the weather instead. Oh wait, there is a scam brewing here too. Of railroad engineers, Pachauri and failed Presidential candidates, Gore who could be the first carbon billionaires if not already, which would be even cooler – paradoxically – to cash-in on the haze of mitigating/combating global warming.

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Many collective human activities, including violence, have been shown to exhibit universal patterns*. The size distributions of casualties both in whole wars from 1816 to 1980 and terrorist attacks have separately been shown to follow approximate power-law distributions. However, the possibility of universal patterns# ranging across wars in the size distribution or timing of within-conflict events has barely been explored. Here we show that the sizes and timing of violent events within different insurgent conflicts exhibit remarkable similarities. We propose a unified model of human insurgency that reproduces these commonalities, and explains conflict-specific variations quantitatively in terms of underlying rules of engagement. Our model treats each insurgent population as an ecology of dynamically evolving, self-organized groups following common decision-making processes. Our model is consistent with several recent hypotheses about modern insurgency, is robust to many generalizations, and establishes a quantitative connection between human insurgency, global terrorism and ecology. Its similarity to financial market models provides a surprising link between violent and non-violent forms of human behaviour.

(*) I would think that the ‘why’ of universal patterns in any collective human activities, peaceful or violent, is fairly obvious to an acute observer, not just surreal zoologists such as Desmond Morris. We humans are a young and naive species. Inspite of our pretensions to be sentient and complex and underneath all the make-believe layers of civilization and smoke and mirrors, we are still nothing but animals with barbaric instincts influencing our thought patterns which are focused after all, on the primal need to feed, greed and breed. Everything, with a capital E considered, brain has not really evolved after an initial mutation burst but has only adapted
(#) Let me spare the suspense and list out the universal pattern across conflicts, purely by observation and my study and understanding of history (however little I seem to recall) without me reading the paper (which is gated) or the editors note or news article(s) or Q’n'A session or TED Talk or commentary or books like Naked Ape or Human Zoo or just about any sort of reference research whatsoever -
1) Humans organize themselves into collectives. It is natural
2) Each collective, duh, collects stuff that makes others jealous
3) Conflict ensues and power and control comes into equation
4) Vanquished seek revenge. Conquerors seek more blood
5) Uneasy peace exists but there is in-fighting and ambition
6) Objects of affection evolve from materials to idealisms
7) People just want to kill others brutally and be famous for it
A) Pattern holds for war and insurgency. Rinse and Repeat
There. We do not have to face an ordeal of the propaganda and rack our brains to read paper or any related materials to make sense of the world as seen through lens of war, or to be more precise, increasingly fluid insurgency that mathematically fits collected data. Wrong. I thought so too but my brain disagreed. It is a nasty piece of work and wanted to have a peek. After all, it is a beautifully written paper and only about 4 pages – most of which is justifying data gathering to the point of being apologetic – and a look-see will not take too much time or too much rewiring of the neurons. Or so, it said. As a principle, I dont argue with my brain. It makes me do unspeakable things and hurts me if I dont do its bidding. So, I complied and boy, was I glad I did? It was a page-turner and a well written piece of inquiry. Well done. I have much to say (continued in later posts where I delve into math, commentary from other places, media coverage and of course, cartoons), but for this piece, I will just cite/para-phrase/quote and expose a model schematic from the letter itself…

The political scientist Spirling and others have correctly warned that finding common statistical distributions (for example, power laws) in sociological data is not the same as understanding their origin. Possible political, ideological, cultural, historical and geographical influences make conflict arguably one the ‘messiest’ of all human activities to analyse. Mindful of these challenges, yet inspired by recent studies of human dynamics, we analyse the size and timing of 54,679 violent events reported within nine diverse insurgent conflicts, placing equal emphasis on both finding and modelling common patterns. Such insurgencies typify the future wars and threats faced by society. To our knowledge, our model provides the first unified explanation of high-frequency, intra-conflict data across human insurgencies. Other explanations of human insurgency are possible, though any competing theory would also need to replicate and/or fit the results. Our model’s specific mechanisms challenge traditional ideas of insurgency based on rigid hierarchies and networks, whereas its striking similarity to multi-agent financial market models hints at a possible link between collective human dynamics in violent and non-violent settings.

Taking our empirical findings for event size, and event timings. Our model (described in schematic) provides a quantitative explanation by treating the insurgent population as an ecology of dynamically evolving, decision-making groups, in line with several recent sociological hypotheses. In addition to explaining the ubiquity of approximate power-laws in the event size distribution it explains the conflict-dependent deviations beyond a power-law. Furthermore, the same model framework also explains the common burstiness in the distribution of event timings that we observe across insurgent conflicts. Following our preliminary 2005 results for Iraq and Colombia, we had suggested that other insurgent wars might be clustered around similar findings supporting our hypothesis. By contrast, we find that the Spanish Civil War and the American Civil War – neither of which are considered insurgent – each give distributions where log-normal can not be rejected, and therefore different from conventional wars. This finding provides quantitative support for claims circulating in social science that insurgent wars represent qualitatively different dynamics from traditional wars and can be classified as “open source”, “fourth generation” warfare – for lack of terms.

Insurgent population comprises of N people, weapons, resources, money etc. distributed into groups with diverse strengths at each time-step t. This distribution changes over time as groups join and break-up. Dark shadows indicate strength of numbers and fire-power, and hence severity of casualties that can be inflicted in an event involving that group.
Our model framework incorporates two key features: (1) ongoing group dynamics within the insurgent population (for example, as a result of internal interactions and/or the presence of an opposing entity such as a state army); (2) group decision-making about when to attack based on competition for media attention. Mechanism (1) is consistent with recent work on human group dynamics in everyday environments, and with current views of modern insurgencies as fragmented, transient and evolving. Mechanism (2) is consistent with comments by former US Senior Counter insurgency Adviser David Kilcullen (no kidding, this is the real name and is a combination of ‘kill’ and ‘cull’ – how apt), who noted that when insurgents ambush an American convoy in Iraq, “… they’re not doing that because they want to reduce the number of Humvees we have in Iraq by one. They’re doing it because they want spectacular media footage of a burning Humvee …”

If a group launches an attack during a day with many other attacks, its media coverage will in general be reduced. If, instead, it launches an attack on a quiet day, its media coverage will increase. Each group receives daily some common but limited information (for example, public radio or newspaper announcements about previous attacks, opposition troop movements, a specific religious holiday, even a shift in weather patterns). The actual content is unimportant provided it becomes the primary input for the group’s decision-making process (akin to a financial market). Although the groups are heterogeneous in terms of their strategies, they tend to converge towards similar responses when fed the same information. Our model also includes trapdoors allowing us to interpret the increase in non-randomness over time for Iraq and Colombia when insurgent groups in both wars have become less cautious over time about whether to launch attacks providing more fodder to empirical evidence that groups of humans do indeed use such generic decision-based mechanisms. The data for all the 9 conflicts deviates from its ‘random war’ model (randomizing event occurrences within each epoch): the ‘real war’ exhibits an over-abundance of “light days” (that is, days with few attacks) and of “heavy days” (that is, days with many attacks), but a lack of “medium days” compared with the ‘random war’. By considering subsets of days, we have determined that these features are not just an artefact of a variation in attack volume across days of the week (for example, Fridays). Interestingly, this burstiness has become more pronounced over time for the wars in both Iraq and Colombia, suggesting that they have become less random (ergo, more predictable) as they have evolved.

Just some high-level observations. One, this study shows humans are predictable and therefore, their actions, which is predictable on by and itself. Boy, you know, people don’t like to think that their lives can be tracked so accurately, but, uh, human action isn’t very different than any other data, is it? Two, what this letter really achieves is refute/ratify (not fully clear at this point) the mathematics of a fictional character Charlie Eppes in the CBS TV series Numb3rs Season 2, Episode 16 “Protest” where Charlie blurts that terrorists/insurgents/soldiers/fighters behave on the lines of a social network. They are after all, only human and like all other humans form social networks from bridge clubs and church groups to university staff and federal agencies to jihadi extremists. Mathematically, we can analyze these organizational structures to reveal who the leaders are. Now, these various insurgents or terrorists or freedom-fighters or even, anti-war anarchists (depends on which glasses one wears) are also social networks an analysis of which can reveal which members of groups got along, and which didn’t, and who linked up with people in other groups quantifying relationships. It reveals sub-structures in networks, like cliques, romances, even secret alliances with other groups. Now, using bipartite network analysis, one can identify who the true connectors are and bomb the crap out of them through unmanned predator strikes which will kill more innocent people prompting their loved kith and kin to take up arms against the marauding invaders who had no reason to be there in the first place. Three, there are people who are actually collecting the data which all made the headlines and getting international press right down to the international section in a local newspaper in rural Mongolia whereas the mission to Mars, or its postponement has become a footnote in history. Four, the authors are not really expounding any new theory. They say that current theories being explored by other people are somewhat true or false – it depends on the theory – based on quantitative analysis of public domain data on insurgent attacks. Five, perhaps, they need not have done this research at all. But since they did, they would have been better off explaining their work by just showing “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”, especially ‘Judean People Front’ vs. ‘People Front of Judea’ vs. ‘Judean Popular People Front’ vs. ‘Popular Front of Judea’ scene, “Romans Go Home” graffiti scene and kidnapping planning/execution scene where two groups land at the same time and scuffle that they thought of it first. Just a fun touch. Finally, the irony is if one has to verify if this model and/or the theory behind it holds any water using the scientific method i.e. conduct more experiments to see if it fits to new streams of data, we need more violence, more bombings, more killings and more attacks. The constant quandary of such analyses. To get more data, you need more wars in spirit of curiosity.

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