Keyword Hunting and web Mining!

Trust Soumen to come up (well - webmine to be frank), with

Claiming "IIT=Cornell+MIT+..." is like demanding that Mumbai local trains are superior to the Paris subway because it's much harder to get into a Mumbai local train.

While, it would be wholly disrespectful and way out of my aukaat to refer to Prof. Soumen Chakrabarti, as a plain Soumen, since it is how he is referred to in student circles, I shall do so & pray that he doesn't come across this.
On an academic note, I am mostly taking the Statistical Foundations of Machine Learning course by him this semester.
Soumen as a person, prof., researcher is an enigma alrite. While, I have always been an ardent fan of his newsgroup postings, never did I realise the extensive amount of general writings that he has come up with in the past few years. Most of them are linked here. He speaks of pollution, lawlessness, and more general topics, in such a simple language and persuasive logic, that it leaves you wondering where has all the common sense gone.
His witty one-liners or clever anagraming, I recently realised is just a part of the story. Clearly, people better equipped at humoring english are abundantly distributed (priori hypothesis) all over the web.
What I believe is unmatched is the through professionalism! He was as good as an IIT student can get. A President's Gold Medalist during his IITKgp days, he went on to UCB and so on...
As a researcher, I guess he is good, because a list of people in DataMining, throws up his name in the same league as Sergey Brin and others.
But what is truly fascinating is the amount of professionalism he brings to class. He has a clear handwriting, even more clear ways of sketching out complex fundaes and diagrams. He overloads you with information and expects you to imbibe it at that rate. You are mentally exhausted and bamboozled after attending his class, yet you know that you want to come back for more.
& if all this, made you picturise a jet-setting Capitalist, he says a lot for cycles, environment, making IITs relevant in the larger picture, and the other India - in general.

Still in the meantime, for those who aren't attending his classes - enjoy his sharings and posts. Watching him, have a go at IITB MB egg heads and Can't read but will applys, is something definitely not to be missed.