I think, therefore i am puzzled

Globalization?

2008-10-19T11:55:00.002-05:00

Interesting article from Tom Friedman. It is hard to predict if he will right. But there is an ounce of truth is the fact that unilateralism is hard when someone else owns your house and banks.

Beyond the Pale-in??

2008-10-05T16:48:00.002-05:00

First this and then that. Are they so desperate that they think insulting people who do not support them will work??

My "Housing" dilemma

2008-10-04T16:02:00.005-05:00

I do not claim to "know" what caused the current financial crisis. I don't think it is a single person or factor. Lack of regulation is cited to be a major reason. But what I do not understand is what is it that was not regulated enough. Was it the ability of small and large banks/credit unions to lend to people who did not qualify for "prime" loans? Or was it the lack of regulation on how banks and credit services lend to each other and trade with each other? Or was it the lack of regulation on how these subprime loans get lumped together and insured? Greed is cited to be another reason. And any of exactly the same set of people as above (home owner, lender, mortgage firm, mortgage trader) can be attributed with greed as well. Stop here for a minute and think. It is easy to talk about regulation or greed of others. But how far are you ready to blame the single parent with one income for wanting to own a house? Maybe regulation at the bottom level, whereby unnecessarily large loans or loans to "risky" individuals would be avoided like the plague, would have avoided this credit mess altogether. But that wouldn't achieve the original intention: get more people access to housing. I believe Bush came up with the idea of an ownership society. It is easy to lampoon Bush and his half thought through schemes. But at its heart, the idea of enabling ownership of houses/land is a good one. Indian history has shown a remarkable correlation between ownership of land; in this case tied to land reform; and economic and social progress (wish I had a link). Moreover, why is it that Grameen Bank gets a Nobel for issuing what are in effect subprime loans while local banks in the US are being scalped for issuing such loans? Could it be the fact that Grameen's "peer-insurance" as opposed to mortgage insurance in the U.S combined with its reliance on donors is a better model to provide loans to those who cannot afford it?
Or who knows...maybe in fact the problem was caused by huge salaries and McMansions? I would love to find out what percent of the bad loans went to low-income subprime lenders and what percent went towards subprime McMansions.

Veterans of domestic wars

2008-10-04T15:18:00.006-05:00

John McCain suggests that he would freeze spending due to the current financial crisis. Except for defense (duh), "critical" sectors (whatever that is) and veterans' care. Fine. I understand. I have eaten noodles out of a cup for lunch when in grad school; belt tightening is a natural corrective instinct. I know John is a veteran and that the U.S is in the middle of a few wars. But why single out veterans of foreign wars or for that matter military veterans alone for benefits? What about the support to veterans of the war against crime or the war against drugs or for that matter the war to leave no children behind. Sure, calling all domestic struggles "wars" is counterproductive. But heh...I didn't invent the terminology or the tactics used in any of the so called wars. I digress. The point being, why is it that the mechanism and the people to conduct foreign wars is more important than those used to conduct domestic ones? How do you expect the domestic wars to succeed if the schools and civil services are left to rot because the economy is "cratering"? Maybe it is time to form a VDW? Not to counter VFW, but to supplement it?

Ctrl+Alt+Delete

2008-10-04T14:53:00.001-05:00

Two year hiatus. LOT has changed in between. New people in my life. Published. Graduated. Moved. From the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest. Another roadtrip...this time up and down the west coast. New set of things to report about. Time to restart.

this blog is for posterity

2007-01-01T19:45:00.000-06:00

i dont know why....but blogging seemed too much work, i stopped. might restart sometime later. but otherwise, this shall remain unchanged, as a lens into my past :)

South Dakota

2006-09-14T14:05:00.000-05:00

The first stop on my road trip. And the first state where it felt like a road trip. A mixture of mindblowing sights and mindnumbing monotony, South Dakota captures the essence of any road trip. Entering from the southeast via 29 and connecting to 90 on the westward journey, the monotony is broken only by ubiquitous billboards announcing the distance to "Wall Drug" and promising free ice water if you make it there. A quintessential American road trip invention, Wall Drug achieved fame through these ads on the various highways in S.Dakota. The brainchild of the owner during the early 30s, it took a life of its own when people started planting these direction/distance boards in foreign countries and places as far as the north pole.

The boredom is shattered quite spectacularly once you close in on the city of Wall, which is the southern tip of the Badlands national park. There are desolate places and then there is the badlands. It is a treat for anyone with any interest in geology. Spectacular colors, winding night-time driving through scary landscapes and the sheer emptiness had me bought at word go. Even though we spent only a few waking hours in the national park, it made its impression. So, if you travel through S.D on 90, plan on pitching a tent in the emptiness of the badlands. Wake up and go drink a cup of ice water at Wall Drug!

(Pictures courtesy: Dr. Vijay Gopalakrishnan, fellow traveler, friend, philosoper..at least by degree, and guide)

3 brown guys, a tent and a rental car

2006-08-18T13:00:00.000-05:00

Actually a lot more...but that summarizes the essential members of my 5000 mile, 10 day roadtrip. Crazy idea, made crazier still by the fact that gas hovered around 3 dollars to the gallon through the trip. It is tough to put in words the sights seen, things done and not done, experiences and discoveries. I wish I had enough pictures to speak the unspoken words..but my camera decided to quit on me a day before the trip and I was left with a point and shoot with a 50 photo limit on battery and memory. Oh well, at least that made me stop and soak in the sights rather than capture them using second rate photography skills! Anyway, here is my meager photo album. I hope to add links to my co-travelers' more considerable albums soon.

The first thing you discover while road tripping through the Midwest and the great plains of the US is the sheer size, beauty and variety of this country. Places you have flown over while coast hopping become real asphalt and scenery experiences. Within a day's drive you go from cornfields to desolate wastelands to evergreen forests. The second thing you discover is how much of an intruder you and I are. It is almost as if man is an aberration in a sea of land, crisscrossing rivers and rivers of concrete that somehow seem to just blend into the mountainsides. If you leave out the small townships that occasionally crop out of nowhere to provide you with gas and food, there is an overpowering feeling of emptiness. Not in a negative way. For, paraphrasing Tolstoy, all populated areas are alike, it is only the empty and desolate ones that differ from each other in their emptiness.

While traveling by interstates and state roads for an extended period, you begin to appreciate a few realities; the importance of having a non T-mobile cell phone, how good a hot shower feels, how good it is to have a large vehicle with enough room to store all your stuff, that there are more stars in the night sky than you can count, that remaining unconnected for a week fills your inbox but frees your mind...

In the coming days, I shall try to add some details of few of the places I visited and what made them unique/interesting.

troubling

2006-07-18T14:36:00.000-05:00

This is strange. What exactly is the point? Going the way of China? Beats me.

Obama watch

2006-07-07T12:36:00.000-05:00

This man amazes me. Read a transcript of his recent speech. I may not agree with quite a bit of what he says, but it is tough to argue against eloquence.

goal!!

2006-06-23T17:22:00.000-05:00

You will be nearer to Heaven through football than through the study of the Bhagavad Gita--Swami Vivekananda

(Disclaimer: Found these pics on yahoo news. In other words, all your pics (and base) are belong to yahoo. just couldn't pass these by!)

Music to my ears

2006-06-20T23:03:00.000-05:00

I normally don't listen to much popular music. I reserve my ears for better stuff like rock, trance, etc etc. But once in a while, there are artists worth a dekko despite being currently popular (complicated oxymoron). Here are two artists with talent, sense of music and the "do your thing" spirit.

If you have been living outside of a cave, you should have heard the new "group" Gnarls Barkley. Well, at least their song "Crazy", which is somewhere close to being the most popular song of the moment. The brain behind this group turns out to be a guy nicknamed "Danger mouse" aka Brian Burton. He shot to fame/notoriety a couple of years back with his out of the box remix titled "The Grey Album". Burton's music in essence cannot be classified into any one slot. That usually means either no one is interested in your music or everyone is. Looks like Burton is slowly getting into the second category. Good for him and good for us listeners.

The other artist currently making waves on both shores of the Atlantic: KT Tunstall. A Brit Chinese-Irish musician with a catchy name and an inexplicable penchant for legwarmers, she has a great voice. At least I think so. I must admit that I have not heard more than 3 songs of hers. But I was intrigued when I first heard an acoustic rock version of her song "Black horse and a cherry tree". It has been a while since I had seen anyone use one of those foot operated loop pedals on stage. She uses this to add to her "alt" music. Try finding her stuff. I have been told quite a lot of her videos are available online for free.

can you hear it

2006-06-12T14:18:00.000-05:00

if you can hear this, you are young of heart. at least young.

The code

2006-05-29T17:53:00.000-05:00

Despite the negative reviews in all major newspapers, I watched the Da Vinci code this weekend. There was no way I was going to pass up a movie with Hanks acting alongside beautiful Audrey Tautou in it. Though I have seen better acting from both, I think it was a decent movie.

While there are a few places where the whole cinema crew seems to have lingered on to admire something that the viewer doesn't see and isn't shown, the overall pace is decent. Cinematically, there are a few scenes that linger in your head after you leave the cinema. Most of Paul Bettany's acting (Silas) is quite arresting. Despite not being the most important scene of the movie, the visual juxtaposition of 18th century London with that of today's while depicting Newton's funeral was pretty close to genius. My biggest gripe: Overall, the movie retains a very third persony feel to it. At no point is the viewer engaged enough to become either Hanks or Audrey and solve the thing in their head. The screenwriting was wobblier than the text of the novel and most of the action sequences don't manage to transport you anywhere out of your seat.

Acting: Paul Bettany was natural. You can imagine a misguided religious nut through him. Thanks to him, Opus Dei is not going to see an increase in their roster anytime soon. Audrey brings intensity to certain scenes. I love her acting and her looks. This was nowhere close to her best (watch "A very long engagement" for comparison). Tom Hanks was a mixed bag. He is very "Terminal" here. Somehow despite being in almost all the scenes, you can't quite remember what his acting contribution was. He is in serious danger of melding too much into the environment with each passing movie. Ian McKellen was good as usual. Funny that he is also in the other big movie released recently (X-3).

Overall: I don't know what the fuss is about. If someone loses their faith because of this movie, they haven't been paying much attention till this point. Religion and religious books contain more lies than Dan Brown could fill in all of his books! So the church should stop whining.

The great wall of Arizona

2006-05-25T14:09:00.000-05:00

Arizona doesn't lack touristy sights. But there is a real chance to add one more, this one for generations to come. The Qin dynasty, after whom China is named, started building a wall to keep the illegal Mongols out. Arizona, Texas and California have the chance to build one to keep the new illegals out. So, while they are at it, why not make it grand. Build it such that it can fit a couple of SUVs going in each direction.

Given how royally future generations are going to get screwed by today's economic and environmental policies, its only fair that we build them a wall. Help them earn some tourism dollars.

1610-1984, 1896-??

2006-05-24T11:58:00.000-05:00

In the year 1610 a scientist named Galileo came to the radical conclusion that the moons of Jupiter are well...the moons of Jupiter, i.e. they go around the planet Jupiter. Sounds lame? In fact, it was the nail in the coffin for the geo-centric model. There was proof that there are atleast a few celestial bodies that don't seem to care too much about us or in fact about the planet that we inhabit. It took till the year 1984 for the most powerful institution of the 1600s to agree that Galileo was right and they were wrong in threatening and bullying him.

It's been 110 years since a Swede named Arrhenius came up with a rather loony idea that maybe the carbon dioxide released by all the coal burning might be heating up the atmosphere. Since that point, numerous scientists contributed to this radical idea that we tiny humans are slowly but surely changing the world that we are living in. In a philosophical reversal, the same humanity that couldn't be convinced that we were inhabitants of an inferior rock mindlessly circling the sun are now steadfastly unwilling to believe that we as a whole are big enough to cause immeasurable harm.

The current high church of humanity, Anglo-America and the free traders that it spawned and continues to cherish and nurture still refuse to buy into the arguments of scientists. Half-hearted agreement with the conclusions have not resulted in any far-reaching steps. It is stunning to think how narrow businesses and governments can be in defining themselves and their interests. Stunning given the fact that large corporations usually are the last people who need to be reminded that their primary aim is to make money and keep making money. What is irreconcilable? The simple fact that every decade since the 1960s, the cost of natural disasters has doubled (source: UK insurance report). Yet, it took the insurance industry till 2003/2004 to wake up to the trouble it was in. The energy industry is happy to behave in a manner similar to the cigarette industry of the 70s. Leave tomorrow's problems to the day after tomorrow. BP and Shell are happy to pay lip service by investing peanuts in greener technology and providing "education" on their websites. And, thank you for driving. A simple redefinition of what their business is or even a re-reading of their own websites can prevent them future headache and help avoid irrelevancy. They are not in the oil business but the energy business. Yet, why don't we see Shell/BP/etc sponsored cleaner fuel technology development? Finally, no one has ever accused any government of thinking too far into the future. But the incapacity to listen to people who are paid to do so verges on the immoral/insane. A very likely scenario in the years to comeby is a couple of Katrinas in one year and the insurace industry hitting the ejector button leaving the government to fly a energy-starved plane from the wingman's seat. Do the governments have a plan? Will they survive 350 years to apologize to all the scientists that they are rubbishing now?

whatever you say

2006-05-10T00:38:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting perspective on populism and how the right and left traditionally differed on populism.

Well, what can i say...let them eat cake?

Memories

2006-05-08T13:09:00.000-05:00

It was never to be. That was my reasoning all this time. I had a near relationship experience about two years back. I liked her, she digged me. But neither had the guts to admit that there was more than just the on and off flirting. We were too different. Name any feature; race, nationality, religion, money. We were on other sides of the fence. Then she moved back to her home country. Something that could have been never was. It was in some deep corner of my mind hid by layers of useful and useless memories till today morning. I saw her again. With someone else. We nodded and passed each other as if we were colleagues who had last seen each other a few hours back. And that hurt.

Scale of Economies

2006-04-23T15:45:00.000-05:00

In my quest to quell boredom while flying (did quite a bit in the last 4 months), I read three books. Interestingly, they were all related to macroeconomics. These books and 2 talks, one by noted author and economist C.K. Prahalad and the other by the founder of Gramin bank M. Yunus, that I recently heard have me convinced of one thing. There are quite a few brilliant people deeply worried and spending a lot of think-time pondering about the reasons and solutions to global poverty.

The first book titled "The World is Flat" by NYTimes columnist Tom Friedman, takes the view that the problem of abject poverty can be traced back to the differences in opportunities from one set of people to another. The solution, hence, is the golden age of a "flat" world, where individuals are players in a more or less level playing or flat field. The author's panacea to poverty is the triumvirate of better communications (internet and actual physical communication), financial and social openness in certain developing economies (read India and China) and better educated individuals. The book, very well researched and written, is an optimistic view of how development blooms once the conditions are right. Some of the details listed are quite stunning like how UPS actually repairs Dell computers. That's right, they don't just ship damaged PCs and laptops. They actually collect it, repair it and send it back to the customer. Who knew! Without adding much more, let me just encourage you to read this book if you already haven't.

The second book "End of Poverty" by reknowned economist Jeffrey Sachs is more academic and at the same time emotional literature. Jeffrey Sachs has spent the better half of his life guiding governments like those of Chile, Poland and Russia after the commies, etc. on how to save their economies. In all these cases his main role was to persuade third parties to pump in money and save the day. Now he presents his case why the world should be pumping in money into Africa and other poor countries of the world. He wants to do all this not through the traditional loans or aid with riders (more on that below) but with outright aid with no riders on it. The book presents some interesting facts but can be hard reading because of all the...facts in it! However his main point is taken. Money is needed to kickstart certain essential aspects of any functioning economy; for e.g. financial institutions capable of lending money so that businesses that can potentially employ get started.

The third book "Confessions of an economic hitman" by John Perkins is a book in a different mold. While it is bound to be a favorite among conspiracy theory hacks, quite a bit of it is simply too tough to believe. The basic premise is that John Perkins in his youth was hired by MAIN, a former Boston firm specializing in energy consulting (somewhat like Halliburton) as an economic hit-man. His job: give a rosy outlook for energy consumption in third world countries so that the United States promises aid much in excess of what the country can ever pay back. If you did not know, aid is much more than money handed out. The usual rider is that the money has to be spent on specific projects and the purchasing has to be done from the donor country. So, if a country receives aid for energy projects from the U.S., companies like MAIN got the money not just to do a pre-investment check but also to do the building. Once the project was finished the country usually discovered that it never needed that big a project and of course cannot pay back, leading it to become economically and politically dependent on the donor country. The "beauty" of the system is that money lent to a country is usually collected from financial institutions in the United States and money spent on the projects is handled by the same set of institutions. Despite the money "handed back" to them, they still rightfully demand the principal back and when they cannot pay, the government or the army steps in depending on how deep of a mess the country is in. The author goes on to discuss specific "hits" that he carried out including a laundry list of failed Latin American countries and interestingly Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, according to the author, was a whole different angle from the other hits. Here the idea was to pump in money into a country to modernize it and basically create a huge market in the likeness of an American marketplace and thus integrate it into the American economic system. A foolproof way of preventing a 1970s type oil embargo. Seems to have worked too well!

The common thread running through the three books is the fact that capital is free to move anywhere, except maybe North Korea and a few other godforsaken places. How it flows and to what effect decides our economic future. Ten bucks from your uncle is not the same as ten bucks from Uncle Sam and neither are the same as ten bucks made from selling your skills. That seems to be both the solution and the problem.

Meditations at 40000 feet

2006-04-09T10:47:00.000-05:00

1. Airspace, like Douglas Adams' space, is big. Mind-bogglingly big. Despite that, there is a necessity to employ thousands of gentlemen/(women?) called air traffic controllers, who show a flair for playing a version of quidditch in the sky. But why employ French ones. Bastards went on strike last week, leaving me on the ground inside a heated plane for a couple of hours. Leading to point two.

2. If you are queasy and showing it, people sharing the same row of seats are more worried than you will ever be about your situation.

3. The eastern coast of the Arabian peninsula with its large ports, cities and numerous oilwells makes for mindnumbing night-time gazing. Oil well flares in the middle east sky from 40000 feet. You can see them sucking the juice from down below and belching fire and smoke into the night sky. Mile upon mile of lighted highways feeding and being fed by these infernos.

4. They know where you live. Because you told them. Forgot the I-94 forms, even before boarding the flight to the US, you are supposed to tell them your address. I wonder whether someone is using these addresses for nighttime reading.

5. What are the chances of being assigned the same damn seat 3 out of 4 flights. 52 A...I shall not miss you. So far behind, you land in a different time zone from the pilot.

6. Why do Germans hate vegetarians? Something to do with Hitler being one? Since when did one banana qualify to become breakfast.

7. What you see below you from the windows is atleast 20 to 30 miles away.

random

2006-02-26T20:17:00.000-06:00

Here are a couple of music videos with a difference. The first is a cool video with shots from LOTR and Rammstein music. The second has video from Matrix and music, i believe, from Prodigy. Pretty good stuff.
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Here is an interesting quote i read on Andrew Sullivan's blog "Before entering a mosque, visitors are asked to take off their shoes. This is a sign of respect. If you have a strong objection to walking in your socks, don’t enter the mosque. Before becoming an Australian you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objections to those values, don't come to Australia," - Australian Treasurer, Peter Costello, while commenting about the cartoon wars going on.

As far as I am concerned....show your support for the Danes. Drink Carlsberg

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If you thought liberals were the only ones calling Bush's war a lost cause, you have to read this really insightful editorial in the conservative's version of the NYTimes, National Review. I am waiting to see how exactly the Bush administration chooses to disagree with Buckley and co. at NR. Will they have the guts to call him a liberal (:

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Love blondes? Then, this one is for you

Discovery of India

2006-02-21T22:49:00.000-06:00

One of my memories of Doordarshan TV before private players were allowed into the Indian broadcasting arena was a program that I seldom watched, Bharat ek khoj! A TV adaptation of Nehru's "Discovery of India", I avoided it like the plague while my dad seemed to quite like it. So, naturally it took me a long time to pick up and read this novel. This surprisingly good read spans 550 pages and India's history as viewed by Nehru. My surprise stemmed part from reading what is essentially a politician's treatise and finding him showing his whole deck of cards. Sixty years and gazillions of dirty water under the bridge later, to read a politician reveal all his motivations without spin is a surprise.

The very fact that the author was Prime Minister for 17 years after independence makes this novel an important read. If you wish to understand why we did not become a developed country by adopting capitalism right away, this book can provide good answers. If you wish to understand why we did not end up becoming another Pakistan (a Hindu one), this book once again provides good answers. But most importantly, at many points in the text, you get the feeling that this book is more than Nehru. You get the inescapable feeling that he was talking for a generation of liberal policymakers who oversaw the transfer of a country and its destiny from His Majesty the Emperor of India to the common man and his representatives.

The book starts as a quasi-philosophical treatise written by a man in jail who compares his imprisonment and its debilitating effects on his psyche with that of India's occupation. To paraphrase him, his and India's ability to live in the present had been taken away by their imprisonment. To him, the impossibility of action meant the non-existence of the present. He refuses to be a prophet and talk much about the future. So he is left with the past. So the book continues with a historical analysis of India right from the pre Vedic times upto the Mughal and British period. All this leads into discussions of events then current, including the question of partition.

His stand on many issues including why India should be free, why the Quit India movement was launched and why partition is a wrong recipe are predictable. But what stands apart is Nehru's analysis of these issues and the way he conveys his conviction regarding each. I personally liked the history of the partition movement and how it started and thrived due to the differential rate at which the Hindus and Muslims adapted and interacted with the British and its educational system.

But the reason why I really liked the novel was that I could attempt to answer an age old question of mine. If I had lived in the early part of the previous century as a subject of the British empire in India, where would I have stood on issues facing the land. As a free Indian living today in an Anglophone country, my view of the British empire's legacy is murky at best. Especially given that I was born 33 years after and that today the sun never sets on the Indian call center regime servicing the former Empire and beyond makes it an even tougher question to answer. The circumstances couldn't be more different. The fact that I love British comedy and worship British rock doesn't make it any easier. Would I have lived a servile life or would I have taken up arms, actual or intellectual? I did not learn anything new from this text. I already knew about the massacres and the famines that India went through under the British. I already knew about the railway system and the civil service system that came about under the Raj. I also know that India, the crown jewel of the former Empire, is among the few former colonies that made it and did not go the way of former French colonies or Portuguese colonies. What Nehru and his novel helps one realize was that living in an imprisoned land was impossible to reconcile intellectually even for a moment. An objective analysis of the Empire's legacy using various statistics simply leaves out this intellectual component. There are certain things that one cannot be objective about, freedom being at the top of the spectrum. Though I still don't know the exact answer to my question on what i might have done, I do know that I would have been mighty pissed.

That warm feeling

2006-02-12T21:29:00.000-06:00

It took the Catholic church centuries to agree with Galileo. And it might take centuries for evangelicals in this country to agree with Darwin. So, it was nice to hear that 86 church leaders are siding with science for once and backing an initiative to curb global warming. One of them is the highly successful author of the "purpose driven life" series. Their support stems from the fact that they are in the business of compassion (in lieu of spread of their religion..but that is not the point here). And the poorest regions of the world are being disproportionately affected by natural disasters.
The fact that this came the same week as GWB's statement that America is addicted is interesting, to say the least. It has quite a few Wall Streeters and Cheney conservatives confused and fuming. But the fact remains that the economic right on its own, i.e. without the religious right or the South or some other artificially engineered majority, cannot dream of electing its President. This combined with the insurance industry's awakening (read archives of this blog) suggests that things other than protests and tree hugging might lead to positive action on global warming. At least in the United States. India and China, the upcoming giant spenders of energy are a totally different beast and it is going to take a lot more to convince the governments and peoples of these countries to rein in use of fuels that cause global warming.

eisenhower

2006-01-17T23:22:00.000-06:00

Read this farewell speechby Dwight Eisenhower

Stunning, considering the fact that he was a military guy himself and a two term republican. His comments about the military industrial complex and research are thought provoking. His prediction of the creation of a dependency of free universities on federal money is bang on. Given that none of us know of a different world, one can only wonder what research might have been like otherwise.

Open review

2006-01-15T12:27:00.000-06:00

We live in strange times. I had been a more or less dispassionate observer of the whole Korean cloning scandal. Till today that is. Some Catholic bishop in the United States chided the scientific community for pursuing miracle cures. I did a double take on reading it. Then I paused and did another double take on reading the "miracle" part. For a group whose claim among many others include the miraculous virginity of JC's mom, this was a rather brave statement. And aren't saints supposed to induce miracle cures?

I have faith in Science (not just the journal, but the real thing too). Scientists err once in a while. However other scientists manage to shoot down flying ostriches. So, science doesn't err. It's a methodology and how can a methodology that says "never trust and keep verifying" ever err? Why it took 20 months to shoot down this ostrich? It takes time for absolute outsiders to a project to convince themselves of anything. It takes time for whistle blowers to convince outsiders of anything wrong going on. It takes time for them to form a critical mass and demand that the flying bird lose its wings. What is the way out of this time lag? Some journals have started what is one of the better ways out. Use the power of the web. Have two sets of open reviews. Currently, peer reviews are invariably closed. The authors never know who the reviewer is. Making the reviewers known to the author and other readers induces them to be more vigilant. Also, as a few journals have tried, have a second review process wherein any scientist with a login provided to the journal website can choose to review the pending publication. The power of numbers is sometimes severely underestimated. Remember the Dan Rather 60 minutes scandal? What happened there was a bunch of bloggers took on the role of "open-reviewers" and moved much faster than CBS with its limited number of specialists ever could. In that case, who arrived at the truth first mattered most.

Peer-review is one of the gods of science. This God has lacunae. Given that this is a science God, unlike Nietzsche's God who is dead once he evades reasoning, this God shall evolve.

Short glass shot glass

2005-12-22T21:21:00.000-06:00

Among the major contributions from the University of Illinois are the transistor, superconductivity, LED and the internet (ok..just mosaic...but you get the idea). Its alum have gone on to start many pathbreaking firms (playboy..Hugh hefner) and run countries (Taiwan's veep). Continuing that storied tradition of innovation, 198 students of the university were recruited to perform an extremely important study. Do short and wide glasses increase the amount of booze consumed? The answer turned out to be yes (:

Why a Cornell professor recruited U of I students, I don't know. And given the tendency here in UIUC to get plastered and get others even more drunk (esp of the opposite sex), I don't think I believe the study!!

Watched a couple of movies recently. Recommend both of them. Went retro with the first one. Blade runner.

This movie, which can walk into a bar and legally buy a drink, still manages a cult following. Despite the fact that movies like matrix are basically Blade runner on steroids (and with CG), it is still revered as one of the most technically plausible sci-fi movies (except for the stupid flying cars). So, intrigued, I watched this semi-noir, semi-punkish sc-fi movie about clones (called replicants). It tries to answer what it is to be humans, just like in the movie I, Robot (which I won't recommend). There are many different versions floating around (there is a version with voiceover..a la Sin city). So, get yourself a copy and watch it if you still haven't and like sci-fi. An interesting fact about the movie: This was made around the time when Japan was beating America black and blue in the industrial sector...so this movie set in the future has a huge Japanese influence and presence in it. Its funny that most of the companies advertised in the movie are dead!

Second movie, Goodbye Lenin.

Rammstein is one of the main reasons for my current interest in the German language. That combined with the fact that this German movie is the most rented intl. movie in my local free library made me check it out. It is a well made movie that takes a nostalgic view of East Germany through the eyes of a son trying the save his mother's life. She went into a 8 month coma around the time the wall came down. Basically the world had changed around her. Trying to prevent her from being shocked, the son recreates the east in his bedroom and with the help of a friend's video skills on his television set. Overall pretty nice. Doesn't overwhelm you with brilliance, but a nice and easy way to understand how the wall fell and who it fell on.

The war on Christmas

2005-12-18T19:07:00.000-06:00

Christmas drives me insane. Nothing to do with shopping or the crowds, just the cheesy tunes you hear for more than a month. The soundbites this year got nonsensical with Mr. O'Reilly singing his carol. If you have been living in a hole in the frozen ground, good ol' Bill wants to put the Christ back in Christmas and has declared war on the PC crowd who wish Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas (why isn't it Merry Diwali or Ramzan, I shall never know. But that is not the point here). Nicholas Kristof (columnist, NY Times) started this new round by saying that maybe the commentrators should focus on saving Christians dying in Darfur (Kristof is deeply invovled journalistically and emotionally to Darfur). Bill O'Reilly responded with some crap calling him a leftwing idiot or something to that effect. Kristof responded in this article. He has upped the ante by titling the article "Challenge to O'Reilly".

Perhaps I'm particularly sensitive to religious hypocrites because I've spent a chunk of time abroad watching Muslim versions of Mr. O'Reilly - demagogic table-thumpers who exploit public religiosity as a cynical ploy to gain attention and money. And I always tell moderate Muslims that they need to stand up to blustery blowhards - so today, I'm taking my own advice.

So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.

This insane state of affairs makes me wish for a Silent Night...pun fully intended.

The greenest of them all

2005-12-10T21:13:00.000-06:00

“To me, proving that earth’s climate is changing from human actions—namely global warming—is like statistically ‘proving’ the pavement exists after you have jumped out a 30-story building. After each floor, your analysis would say, ‘so far, so good,’ and then, at the pavement, all uncertainty is removed.”

Wanna guess who said this?? You will be excused for thinking it must be some leftie or some well meaning scientist. It's actually an industry guy; an insurance industry CEO. In a unique and predictable twist, insurance industry leaders are realising that the house always wins only when the house is still standing. Extraordinary changes in the playing field can lead to a losing streak. So major insurance industry giants like Swiss Re are actively considering premium changes and educating its customers about global warming. This has obviously lead to extremely critical statements in Wall Street and other traditionally climate sceptic communities. But when an industry that is 3 times the size and power of the oil industry (insurance worldwide is a 3 to 5 trillion dollar business) crunches its numbers and makes its move, it is very tough to argue against it. Like a good casino owner, Swiss Re is basing its policy not on emotion but the cold fact that the number of recent natural disasters is well beyond what any of its models predict.

The American insurance industry joined the European camp when AIG decided after Katrina to start investing in industries that have active greenhouse mitigating technology or related research. However the key difference is that the Europeans are educating people quite openly about what is happening, and how it might affect reinsurance rates. Swiss Re for example has an openly declared 250 Million Euro warchest just for investing in green technologies. An early result of this policy is a documentary series they financed called The Great Warming. I found it funny that this documentary aired in 2004 had the following lines in it : And the city of New Orleans - already well below sea level and sandwiched between the Mississippi and the sea - is certain to be a victim. Tarot reader John Williamson reads the future, and it's grim.!! The American insurance industry on the other hand is expected to make small efforts to cover its losses and improve its future without openly going against the mainstream industry. It is a more wait and watch policy because in America, unlike in Europe, they can pass the buck to consumers. As already reported widely, consumers in Hurricane Central can expect to pay more to live there with insurance.

To me, personally, the interest shown by the insurance industry is heartening. Not because i think they are turning a new leaf; i could care less about that. But because the underlying principle of the free market has been proven right. Everyone and everything has a price. When the price is too high, change shall occur on its own; in its substantial but at the same time unjudging and uncritical way. Sure, it might be change at what used to called a Hindu rate of change, but change due to economic reasons have a much higher longevity and chance of success than change because some few million tree huggers like me wanted it that way.

when the chinese go farming and the latin go trading

2005-12-08T22:18:00.000-06:00

Time was when video games used to mean Mario Bros; when i would rather break the damn thing than hand it over to my sister...or some chinese farmer dude.

Time was when sweatshop workers meant young kids working and making your jeans when they actually should have been playing games. Unlike today when it means chinese youth getting paid 56 cents an hour to collect gold in WoWarcraft

Check these series of articles from NYTimes about video game farming: the booming industry where people collect and sell "gold" and other gaming previleges. I am sure that these morons could use a 12 step program!!
Nytimes article 1

Article 2

On another more positive note, I discovered Mercora, Latin for trade, the newest P2P kid on the block. Started by a McAffe exec along with others, this uses a neat loophole in the DMCA (digital copyrights act) to bring us P2P radio/webcast with the option of recording the song. Perfectly legal and free till a certain point (i think it is 1 hour per day, but not so sure). Anyways, i am hooked. Listened to Rosenrot, Rammstein's new album; release date in the U.S. unknown.

La Battaglia di Algeri

2005-11-22T13:58:00.000-06:00

The story is of a country being born, the actors are its people and the set is the city of Algiers itself. A totally unbiased rendering of the Algerian war for independence, it ranks as one of the most interesting movies I have seen. The film tracks the initial armed rebellion against the French colonizers in the city of Algiers. (1956-57). The story is set before the mass uprisings of 1961-63 which pushed the French out. But given the overtly bloody nature of the initial struggle, there are eerie parallels between what is depicted here and what undoubtedly happens throughout the world in places like Iraq, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, former Punjab etc. Some of the dialogues could be used to understand the psyche of both "occupier" and "occupied" almost anywhere in the world. Therein lies the sign of a good script.

"Give me your bombers and you can have our baskets" --Rebel leader Ben M'Hidi answering a French reporter's question stating the cowardice of Algerian women placing bombs in baskets.

"The real quesion is should we remain in Algeria? If you answer "yes," then you must accept all the necessary consequences. " --French Col. Mathieu when asked whether the French paratroopers torture.

The entire movie has a grainy documentary style feel to it. I quite didn't understand the disclaimer at the beginning "None of the shots in the movie are from newsreels" till i saw the whole movie. It is hard to believe that this is a work of fiction based on true events. It is interesting that all shots are on location and quite a few roles are played by non-professionals.

The movie doesn't romanticize the armed rebels. It shows them as what they are, killers who believe that they are killing for a reason. There are scenes in the movie where you almost side with them, but the next second they are planting a bomb in a cafe` and you cringe.

The French paratroopers are shown as extremely effective and as torturers. But the movie's brilliance lies in not villainizing individuals among the French. It shifts the blame squarely to the disconnect between political will and military reality. Military occupations by their nature are messy because the overarching theme is to kill before you get killed. Col.Mathieu rues the fact that he gets only 24 hours to make a rebel speak as the Algerians have a practice of changing plans within 24 hours if someone in the info chain is caught. So his character is adamant that once you send your men to fight, don't expect them to follow your civilian niceties. It's of no use for left-wing newsmen to write criticisms of particular operations after the men have been sent to war.

It is obvious that many people see a parallel between this movie and what is happening in Iraq today. The desire of the American people to change Iraq for the better juxtaposed with the desire to not have torture. This movie and Col.Mathieu argue that the only way to end torture or the necessity of torture is to not be there in the first place.

Orlando

2005-11-13T16:36:00.000-06:00

Yet another conference, yet another trip to the same place. Orlando. I can't believe that all my conferences happen either within 100 miles of Champaign or in Orlando. I am growing tired of Disney. Anyways...here are a few pics of the awesome resort I stayed in. Talk of lavishness! BTW...did you know that Orlando was almost entirely a swamp till Walt Disney imagined this place up while flying over it?

The lynch mob aka the raving righties

2005-10-27T22:31:00.000-05:00

So, Miers is out. She was both nominated and booted out the wrong way and for entirely wrong reasons. An utterly out of touch Pres. nominated her and the lynch mob, i.e. the raving righties, got her out. I can't help feeling some pity for Harriet. But you can't give the keys to the US constitution to every nice person. If I were a law student, I wouldn't have someone with that thin a resume as my advisor. Sorry.

There are many conspiracy theories going around right now. That she was a stalking horse for an ultra conservative waiting in the wings is one of them. Since I blog, I guess I have the power to start my own conspiracy theory. She is a single woman with no kids. That takes you far with Bush (Rice despite botching up Iraq got a step up this term). That doesn't take you very far with the raving righties. Not much color to the theory, but entirely possible given Bush's and the right of Taliban conservatives' records.

I am curious who the next nominee is going to be. Another woman? Gonsalves (that would be machine gunning oneself in the foot)? I don't think so. It's most possibly going to be some moron who will get the lefties screaming bloody murder. Will keep the news interesting for some more time. More fodder for my idle brain.

In other news, here is a link to an excellent radio interview about India's caste system. The interviewee is N.Jahdav, famous author and economist with Reserve Bank of India, India's version of the Federal Reserve. His dad was someone who broke the stone ceiling of India's caste system and educated his kids. His book is a story of his parents' life.

Chicago public radio

Johnny depp as shantaram

2005-10-26T01:48:00.000-05:00

Did the title surprise you. i got a shock reading a similar title in Reuters. Actually its the story (real life) of an Australian prison escapee who found his way to Bombay and adopted the name shantaram. He lived in the slums, set up a clinic where he masquerades as a doctor and eventually became a gun runner for the Bombay underworld and drug gangs. The gun running and drug trade led him to Afghanistan and fighting Russians . Caught, transformed by love he settled down as a writer.
Shantaram, Gregory Roberts in real life, wrote the novel Shantaram based on his life. Now they are making a movie out of it. Johnny Depp is Shantaram. And ya, the movie is in English AND Marathi!!! I can't wait to hear Marathi gaalis and Bombay slang in a Hollywood movie. Imagine Johnny Depp swearing in Marathi (: I am pretty sure this movie will teach Bollywood a lesson or two about making gangster movies.

Two movies, a book, and a coffee machine

2005-10-20T21:28:00.000-05:00

What do you get when you add lots of coffee to one book and two movies?

It turns out that you keep awake, watch more movies, read more books (hopefully work more in between) and drink even more coffee. A week of trying to meet a self imposed deadline resulted in hyperkafemia (word play on hyperkalemia...my own contribution to the world of medicine). As is usual with me, I take breaks from work with books or movies. This time, the movies were Star Wars IV (I think I have watched it more number of times than seven samurai by now) and the newly released Serenity (if you haven't seen it yet, you should...where else can you watch a psychic girl kick ass with style). The book was the Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakharia. The book is a nice read if you like somewhat weighty stuff. It does a good job of talking about the role of constitution in democracy and it documents the rise of illiberal democracy.

The book starts with an interesting historical note about the separation of church and state. Apparently the first time that concept came about was when the holy Roman Emperor left Rome for Constantinople (moved his entire capital) leaving only one guy behind: the Bishop of Rome or the Pope. This physical separation was the first impetus for the two to get out of each other's way and grow separately for many centuries. Then it goes on to differentiate between the romantic French equality, fraternity etc type of democracy and the initially elitist Anglo/American keep the government out of my hair democracy. Fareed makes a valid point that the French system invariably failed (France got its first real democracy after Hitler was driven out and its former colonies, except Pondicherry, are still mired in shit) while the British system which relied on the equally abstract but more enforceable concept of fairness and legality succeeded not only in England but also in its colonies (US and India being prime examples though for entirely different reasons). Other arguments about the relationship between per capita income and the chances of a successful democracy seem plausible.

However, one senses Fareed trying to romanticize the kind of democracy and society prevalent in the 1950s or 1960s with limited democracy (meaning no primaries and most governmental bodies like political parties not being democratic in themselves). He repeatedly cites the increasing "democracy" of society and social institutions as reasons for public ills (e.g. Fareed moans the disappearance of elites/experts in various fields and the reliance on people participation). Its easy to agree with his viewpoint in this age of FEMA being led by a non-expert and "Brownie, you are doing a heck of a job". But it must be remembered that Bush is a whole different level of incompetence. Instead of accepting larger citizen participation as a gift and recommending how such interest can be channeled for overall better governance, Mr.Zakharia falls into the trap of finding fault with the democratizing of everyday institutions.

Too much coffee also made me think of a weird connection between the book and the two movies. In all three, the democratic forces (Senate in Star Wars, the parliament in Serenity and American society and its ever expanding quest to ask the people what they want in Future of freedom) are the bad guys. Given how easy (and correct?) it was to support Luke and Leia in Star Wars and Malcolm, River Tam and company in Serenity, it wont be surprising if Fareed finds lots of support for his cause of making democracy safe for this world by lowering our appetite for democracy.

rebels without a pause

2005-10-09T16:29:00.000-05:00

I had the opportunity to watch Noam Chomsky on DVD and hear Sandeep Pandey (more on him later in the text) speak live this past weekend. A weekend on the left end of thinking if you might.

I am pretty uncomfortable with the anti-corporate types who offer no solutions other than protesting against everything under the sun. So i have diligently kept myself away from the left wing type propaganda bs (fyi...irrespective of what limbaugh and other loons say, i dont consider New York Times or Washington Post to be left wing but to be centrists with left wing social sensibilites). However i was familiar with Noam Chomsky's name and picked up a DVD on him as i had nothing better to do on Friday night (it was that or go around town getting smashed or hooking up with people more smashed than me).

I have seen brilliant people on and off screen, but Noam Chomsky conveys a sense of intelligence on a very different level. If i might, he is to rebellious thought what Richard Feynman is to QED, optics and college level physics. Noam Chomsky's opinions on the role of fear and free media in society are especially worth noting. For example, he makes a very valid point about privatization and how it might acutally defeat the forces that bind us all together as one society. Paraphrasing, just imagine that the social security network is privataized and is fueled mainly by stock options. For you to have enough money when you grow old, your stocks will have to be valuable enough and they can be valuable enough if and only if the companies are doing well which in many cases is tied to lower wages to.....you and your kids. Such a privatization also leads to a situation where you are less likely to care about the old woman on the other side of town as the private pocket of yours is an investment and not a debt towards a common future in a common society.

Interestingly, this DVD was shot in the lead to the Iraq war. I believe the DVD was not released in the US till recently, but i might be wrong. In any case, Noam Chomsky is not particuarly well recieved in the US but is a rock star in Canada and Europe. Noam Chomsky coolly asserts that an insurgency will rise in Iraq. He says this not out of experience of the middle east but a simple analysis of human history towards aggression or perceived aggression on sovereignty. His views on 9/11 are harder to digest for most Americans which he basically views as the first time western style aggression was wrought on the West. So, if your local video store is not a junk video shop and actually stocks sensible titles, watch it. If nothing else, you will learn critical thinking 101.

The other talk i was talking about: Sandeep Pandey. A colorful personality with lots of passion but not an intellectual of Chomsky's caliber. When a grad student at Berkeley, he co-founded Asha for education, a pretty successful charity for education in India. He returned to india as a professor at IIT Kanpur where he stayed for a full 3 semesters before being kicked out for multiple reasons. He organized relief for Babri Masjid riot victims, refused to hold exams for his classes and wanted the students to take the test again and again till they felt satisfied with their performance, rallied behind the univ workers in a wage dispute, refused to work on a Govt of India project on defense related issues, etc. He is now a full time pain in the butt for Coca Cola, BJP and other communal parties and other perceived enemies of the people. He recieved the Magsaysay award a few years back for all his people organization and has been to Indian jails around 51 times for various civil disobedience issues. Despite the number of times he has gone to jail, he is an official part of the government of India. He serves on the Central Advisory Board for Education (CABE) which includes luminaries like Prof.Yashpal, Anil Sadgopal etc.

His talk was on education (CABE) and the anti-coke movement in India. I went to the talk expecting lots of vitriol. However i was pleasantly surprised to see a person who believes in government and its ability to get things done. He just believes that a social movement to act as a royal pain in the neck of the government is necessary to get things moving and not letting things stray. He also believes that it is also necessary to not lose ground to communal forces and becoming an illiberal democracy (i.e. a democracy where the electorate sides with religious nuts or other people who reduce liberty). Though i couldn't agree with half of what he said, it was interesting to see brilliant people give up their "careers" and put time into non-political social work.

Tengoku to jigoku (High and Low)

2005-09-05T15:35:00.000-05:00

I am a big Kurosawa fan and by almost automatic extension a Toshiro Mifune fan. I watched Shichinin no samurai back to back the first time i watched it. I have been hooked onto Kurosawa movies in general and his samurai movies ever since. So, when i picked up High and Low I was sure i was going to watch a nice movie, but didn't quite know what to expect of a script based on a 37th Precinct kidnapping/police procedural novel.

The movie was made in 1963, based in Japan. A rich industrialist about to make a hostile takeover of his shoe company, after mortgaging all he has, recieves a phone call that his son has been kidnapped and is demanded a 30 million yen ransom. Despite the horribly low value of the post war yen, we are told in the movie that it is an awesomely huge amount with the prior ransom record being 1 million. And more pertinently, it is roughly the same amount needed by Gondo (the industrialist) to make his takeover. The twist is that the boy kidnapped turns out to be his driver's son who is Gondo's son's playmate. The rest of the movie is a combination of some of the best police procedural i have seen along with the expected psychological drama.

The first third of the movie shows the high..i.e. the life of a businessman making deals in corporate post-war japan. Most of it takes place in a single room of a hilltop-house with large beautiful windows looking down on the low life; shantytowns and small apartment blocks, chimney stacks etc. The next part immediately after the kidnapping gets the cops into the picture. Instead of individual heroes, we have teams of cops. Very believable and brilliant procedural drama as they trace the kid and the kidnapper while talking to him all the time on the phone. Law and Order and other two a penny TV dramas should take a leaf out of these pages. The scenes where Gondo agrees to give the money if he can see the boy alive are very nicely shot. *spoiler alert--next line* It happens on a bullet train and he is forced to throw the money out of a bathroom window. The speed at which the whole scene is shot is unbelievably realistic and gets this movie into an all-time cinematic best list.

Once the kid is found, the focus is on the lone kidnapper who not only is shown as evil but also without remorse. The way they retrace his steps is very interesting. It is this part of the movie that has a feel very similar to "Sin city" with it's very discernible noir movie feel. Or maybe it's just the fact that the villian has a few scars on him and wears shades most of time that made me feel that way. (elijah wood style). Anyways..once again, very well shot.

And here is a general comment about watching Kurosawa movies: get the Criterion collection version. They have the original soundtrack with very good english subtitles. I have suffered through some horrible translations on non Criterion versions.

BTW...I am still searching for "Battle of Algiers". My local video store lost it within their store. Apparently, ever since the Iraq war started going wrong, it has been a very highly watched movie in this store and they are trying to get another copy.

Blake Block

2005-09-04T14:31:00.000-05:00

James Blake--I am rooting for this guy. If you don't know who he is: he is basically the Lance of Tennis. Down and almost out last year, he is back in style. He defeated Nadal to reach the fourth round. I really do hope he goes far. After all, we share something in common. About the same time last year we both got the same health problem: shingles with bells palsy. The difference being that my case was much less severe.

Btw...whats wrong with Bush's transmitter these days. He has given way too many godawful speeches. Imagine him talking of gas prices or partying hard in NYC on the WTC rubble. He basically did that after Katrina. God save us all.

canceling an AOL account

2005-08-28T20:50:00.000-05:00

Here is an actual conversation between a customer who just couldnt convince AOL to cancel his account and an AOL rep:

"Hello. Thank you for calling AOL customer service. My name is James. How can I help to make your online experience a magical one this morning?"

"Well, James, I would like to cancel my magical online account."

"Heh. O.K. Let me just pull up your information. ... Can I have your reason for canceling service with AOL this morning?"

"I'm giving up the Internet. ... I'm moving to a commune in Minnesota, and they don't have access there. ..."

"Wow! That's a first for me. That's a ... really? A commune? Wow! ... Why don't they have access?"

"Well, it just kind of runs counter to the whole belief system."

"And, so, what's the belief system?"

"Oh, you know, getting back to nature, Thoreau, eating lots of dairy. Except the vegans, obviously."

"Right. Right. Right. ... Look, are you sure about this commune?"

"Oh, yes. ..."

"O.K. O.K. There's no checkbox for this in my 'Reason for Cancellation' section. ... Just, O.K. Well, I have your cancellation number ready. And look, if you change your mind, you can always reactivate your account, O.K.?"

"Sure, thanks. ..."

"You know, I'm not going to even bother asking if you want to try our new phone news service."

"That's probably best."

April 20, 2003

sheehan the rosa parks?

2005-08-18T22:40:00.000-05:00

if you have watched any news, you will know cindy sheehan and her vigil outside white house west in Texas. she has been called everything from a nutjob to the rosa parks of the peace movement. she has even been compared to the mom in Jaws who slaps the sheriff because a shark ate her kid. bad comparison, for here the sheriff is the shark.
anyways news came in today that cindy had to leave texas to attend to her ill mother who is suffering from a stroke. if this news is true, whom do i get pissed off at. God? for letting W off the hook again? man, i am beginning to believe....

Francais, Sil Vous Plait

2005-08-06T13:51:00.000-05:00

Watched two French movies in the last 2 weeks. The French at times can be well...French. The first one I watched was The swimming pool. It is the story of an English best selling author (played by Charlotte Rampling) who moves to a small village in France to work on her book. This supposed respite from everyday life starts going awry with the unannounced arrival of her boss's slutty daughter (Ludivine Sagnier). The movie has its beautiful parts, like the French countryside, the background music, Ludivine Sagnier's breasts, etc. But the ending makes you tear your hair and cry over your lost hours (minus the gratuitous skin show) . No, it's not one of those lame endings, but one of those endings that change the entire storyline. You suddenly realize that the movie doesn't believe in time going forward. You also realize that parts of the movie happened only in Charlotte Rampling's head. The more you think about it, you aren't even sure whether Ludivine Sagnier's character even existed outside Charlotte's head. Or for that matter anything including the trip to France. Why the movie is called Swimming pool is unclear except the fact that it allows for some really nice cinematography. Here's my advice to French moviemakers. You have some awesome cinematography skills. Get your story straight like the next movie I watched...."A very long engagement". Before dwelling into that, one line from The Swimming Pool was worth a laugh...Awards are like hemorrhoids. Sooner or later every asshole gets one.

Un long dimanche de fiançailles or A very long engagement.
This is one movie worth the DVD rental cost. Set in the France of early 1920s, it follows Audrey Tautou's (Of Amelie fame) search for her lost, presumed dead, fiancee. The movie at times reminds one of Amelie given Audrey and that the director is the same. And it has some sex scenes (including one of Jodie Foster) shot in the Amelie style.
But the movie is like...well...a combination of war epics like Rashomon and Saving Private Ryan with a hopelessly romantic movie like Love Story and for added flavor an old-style detective movie. The movie switches from the horrors and absolute ridiculousness of WWI trench warfare at the Somme to the unbelievably beautiful French country around Breton, to the savvy French capital of the swinging 20s with finesse. I haven't seen such beauty and such violence coexist in the same movie before this. Not even in classics like Rashomon, from which BTW, this movie borrows one useful and well-used concept. The same war zone scene is repeated twice or thrice from different perspectives/angles. I was impressed and floored by this movie and it erased my ambivalence about watching French movies after the Swimming pool experience. Audrey delivers once again and is one actress whom I intend to watch more of. She apparently speaks very good English and is part of the upcoming film version of the Da Vince code. But before that, I need to watch another French movie, "La Battaglia di Algeri" or "Battle of Algiers", which according to many is the most unbiased movie ever made about France's involvement in Algeria.

War of the words and whats in a name

2005-08-03T22:24:00.000-05:00

Is it the W on T or is it G SAVE? or in other words, is it the war on terror or the global struggle against violent extremism. This is the current debate in washington. I didn't make up the names or the abbreviations. which makes it worse. some asshole got paid for making this shit up. Pick a name you bastards and find us the bearded c**t who started this shit.

For a diffent answer to whats in a name, ask the Patels of Georgia. This shit is wrong and troubling. Best reaction would be shut down each and every dunkin donunts/7-11 in the country for one day and enjoy watching people suffer sugar/caffeine withdrawals (-:

Urbs Prima, Urbs Maximus

2005-07-26T11:25:00.000-05:00

Recently read this book by Suketu Mehta. I read it in 2 or 3 sittings. Not because it is well written, but because it is about Urbs Prima in Indus, Urbs Maximus: Bom baia, Bombay, Mumbai. Call it what you want, it shall accept you as its own.

Its funny that I lived all my life in cities and towns surrounding Bombay (Thane, Vashi, Dombivli) , studied in Bombay and yet have never read any book written about this magnificent piece of land.

The book is written in a journalistic approach and meant to give the reader a voyeur's eye view into the lives of the shiv sena, the mumbai police, gangs, socialites, bar dancers, prostitutes, film stars and directors, slum dwellers, the upper middle class. Apart from the usual artistic error of not covering the absolutely ordinary folk inhabiting the city, the book suffers from poor editing. It is as a reader on Amazon called it a 300 page book masquerading as a 500 page book.

Despite all this, the book is a rewarding read for its insight into the various movers and shakers of the city. The parts dealing with the 1992-93 riots and subsequent bomb blasts are well written and well researched. It is interesting to know how the perpetrators and victims still live close to each other and in fact conduct business with each other as if nothing has happened. For example, it was interesting to learn that 5% of Muslims voted shiv sena in 1995, just 2 years after the riots. Its like giving the sheep pen key to the wolf.

The book does a good job of giving an idea of scales. That the population of Bombay and environs is the same as that of the entire continent of Australia. That the population of Savoy, a town neighboring uiuc and housing its airport is approximately the same as the number of people in a 12 car train during peak hours. That 17500 people live every square mile. That a city so huge in its effect and destiny is controlled by people so small in stature and thinking.

The book is especially transparent and stinging about the shiv sena and its supremo, bal thackeray as well as the gangland bosses like chota shakeel and abu salem. The fact that the Srikrishna commission report , possibly India's best conducted survey on the reasons and outcomes of any communal riot CAN never get implemented due to it non judicial nature is stunning. Equally stunning is the impunity with which the gang bosses actually dictate who can and who cannot leave the country. Its funny to read that the Abu Salem gang actually refused permission to Hrithik Roshan to visit the US. And that too weeks after his dad was shot thrice by the same gang!!

The book does a decent service of capturing the fact that Mumbai is both a city of dreams and last resorts. And how in fact it can be both to the same set of people. Though the author lived in Bombay in the 70s till emigrating with his parents to NY and then again in the late 90s, he doesn't try to answer what Bombay is all about and whether there is anything common between someone living in the "town" and someone living in Mira road. He, like me, calls the vada pav the only unifying factor. It is a city of vada pav eaters.

If you has ever lived in or around this city, or have been fascinated as to how 20 million people live in such a small area, do read it. If you are looking for a travel guide, skip it and read a lonely planet guide instead.

tamils and Vikings

2005-07-24T23:18:00.000-05:00

Patronymics. It connects Tams with Vikings. It is the naming ritual that has caused me infinite misery and my father to have research papers credited to his name in refrigeration and MEMS optical property measurement apart from his own field of organic chemistry. Ja, I am talking about kids having their father's first name as their last name. Vikings followed that system. The Danish government outlawed it for more than a century (for reasons I don't know, but I think it was the terrible confusion). It did what I am thinking of doing. Freezing the last name at some stage and passing it onwards to your kids and grandkids.

I am seriously thinking of making chandrasekharan my family name for ever. It is long enough to confer it the seriousness of a last name (am not sure if ramesh can or will have the same effect). And it has enough alphabets in it to ensure that any kid I have will win the spelling bee before spelling their own last name right.

In the case of the Danes, it screwed up their naming as most kids in the 1820s had names Jensen, Hansen or Rasmussen with the curious byproduct that many successive heads of state totally unrelated to each other have had the same last name. Makes it easy for President Bush to remember the Danish head of state.

In my case, it will prevent any kids I might have from having to explain at age 6 to any dumbass teacher/government clerk/culturally insensitive moron that they do have a father (and know him) but they won't fill the "father's name" as that name is the same as the last name.My father never used a last name. He used his first name alone with a initial J for Jayaraman. I was to do the same. But I was bullied by a nice old Catholic teacher (she was the nicest teacher I had in all other respects) to fill something in my "last name". So at age 6, I did cave in and it has caused me the misery of never having papers credited to my name but to R. Chandrasekharan. So i have decided to end the chain of misery. The only thing i transfer down to future generations is the last name and my Y chromosome.

as if i needed this

2005-07-17T23:28:00.000-05:00

check this out
Penguin classics

initially they had a mailing fee of 3.99 USD. they realised the meaninglessness of it and its now free (-:

rain rain

2005-07-11T15:26:00.000-05:00

its going to pour here for sometime. thanks dennis.

rain rain come again
i dont have to wash the damn car again

the onion

2005-07-11T09:40:00.000-05:00

here is an article from the Jan 18 2001 issue of the Onion. (satirical newspaper). Read on and you shall be amazed (-:

WASHINGTON, DC—Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."

Bush swore to do "everything in [his] power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnationby implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.

Wall Street responded strongly to the Bush speech, with the Dow Jones industrial fluctuating wildly before closing at an 18-month low. The NASDAQ composite index, rattled by a gloomy outlook for tech stocks in 2001, also fell sharply, losing 4.4 percent of its total value between 3 p.m. and the closing bell.

Asked for comment about the cooling technology sector, Bush said: "That's hardly my area of expertise."

Turning to the subject of the environment, Bush said he will do whatever it takes to undo the tremendous damage not done by the Clinton Administration to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He assured citizens that he will follow through on his campaign promise to open the 1.5 million acre refuge's coastal plain to oil drilling. As a sign of his commitment to bringing about a change in the environment, he pointed to his choice of Gale Norton for Secretary of the Interior. Norton, Bush noted, has "extensive experience" fighting environmental causes, working as a lobbyist for lead-paint manufacturers and as an attorney for loggers and miners, in addition to suing the EPA to overturn clean-air standards.

Bush had equally high praise for Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft, whom he praised as "a tireless champion in the battle to protect a woman's right to give birth."

"Soon, with John Ashcroft's help, we will move out of the Dark Ages and into a more enlightened time when a woman will be free to think long and hard before trying to fight her way past throngs of protesters blocking her entrance to an abortion clinic," Bush said. "We as a nation can look forward to lots and lots of babies."

Continued Bush: "John Ashcroft will be invaluable in healing the terrible wedge President Clinton drove between church and state."

The speech was met with overwhelming approval from Republican leaders.

"Finally, the horrific misrule of the Democrats has been brought to a close," House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert (R-IL) told reporters. "Under Bush, we can all look forward to military aggression, deregulation of dangerous, greedy industries, and the defunding of vital domestic social-service programs upon which millions depend. Mercifully, we can now say goodbye to the awful nightmare that was Clinton's America."

"For years, I tirelessly preached the message that Clinton must be stopped," conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said. "And yet, in 1996, the American public failed to heed my urgent warnings, re-electing Clinton despite the fact that the nation was prosperous and at peace under his regime. But now, thank God, that's all done with. Once again, we will enjoy mounting debt, jingoism, nuclear paranoia, mass deficit, and a massive military build-up."

An overwhelming 49.9 percent of Americans responded enthusiastically to the Bush speech.

"After eight years of relatively sane fiscal policy under the Democrats, we have reached a point where, just a few weeks ago, President Clinton said that the national debt could be paid off by as early as 2012," Rahway, NJ, machinist and father of three Bud Crandall said. "That's not the kind of world I want my children to grow up in."

"You have no idea what it's like to be black and enfranchised," said Marlon Hastings, one of thousands of Miami-Dade County residents whose votes were not counted in the 2000 presidential election. "George W. Bush understands the pain of enfranchisement, and ever since Election Day, he has fought tirelessly to make sure it never happens to my people again."

Bush concluded his speech on a note of healing and redemption.

"We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two," Bush said. "Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there's much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it."

"The insanity is over," Bush said. "After a long, dark night of peace and stability, the sun is finally rising again over America. We look forward to a bright new dawn not seen since the glory days of my dad."

watch this space

2005-07-08T22:09:00.000-05:00

I started a new hobby. taking pics. not ordinary digital snaps, but pics with filters attached to the camera.
I start off with an IR filter. This hoya R-72 filter cuts out light below 700nm. Thus the pic is majorly due to near IR reflecting off various objects. Note that this is not the same as thermal imaging. Digital camera CCDs are nowhere near that sensitive. The effect is eerie with green foliage appearing as an almost fluorescent white while other objects appearing in various shades of darkness. The awesome thing is that the air around us does not absorb much in the IR, so these snaps appear clearer than ordinary pics. Anyways...here goes


 IR pics

that sinking feeling

2005-07-07T22:37:00.000-05:00

i rarely watch the news in the morning. i should have stuck to that pattern today. but my roommate whose sister lives in the UK was glued to the tv set. got that same sinking feeling of watching a trainwreck unfold in front of your eyes. sorry london.

oh india

2005-06-29T21:20:00.000-05:00

i am a volunteer at the local Asha for education chapter. i joined it in the first year out of curiosity/boredom on that particular weekend and have been actively involved in various fund raising events ever since. beyond that i dont know why i joined. i notice that many indian students in the united states are part of such organizations (Asha, AID, etc.) Interesting given that very few of us did any social volunteering while in india. not that i or others did not have time while in india. anyone saying that would be bsing through their mouths. is it some kind of guilt complex? i dont know.
anyway....Asha was rated as the top charity organisation by a neutral body called charity navigator. so in case you have a chapter around you...join it. or at least give your money (-:

one thing that struck me while reading the charity navigator website was the fact that two indian charities are in the top 5. both are entirely volunteer run and have no paid employees. and both have extremely high standards and excellent "returns on investment". they both have budgets of around a million (roughly). the american charities listed there have ceos, excellent quality and budgets of 100s of millions of dollars!

so, despite all this progress , or is it talk of progress?, india is still a few orders of mangitude lower in development indices. heres one that shocked me when i first heard it. the number of domestic airline tickets sold from march 2004 to march 2005 in india grew 10 odd percent over the prior fiscal to 16 million tickets. thats the number of tickets sold in the united states in 5 days!!

obit

2005-06-23T14:22:00.000-05:00

Jack Kilby, university of illinois, ECE, 1947, inventor of ICs died this week. His Ge based device was the model for future Si based devices.
Charles Keeling, University of Illinois 1948, first person to point out global warming died yesterday. He was a legend in experimental circles for his anal behavior and resulting accuracy of his data. Even the Bushies and industry hacks could never dispute his data or methodology.

the race that wasnt

2005-06-20T16:07:00.000-05:00

a few snaps from the indy trip and my new used car.

less said the better about the race itself

monkey business

2005-06-05T13:34:00.000-05:00

Do read this week's new york times sunday magazine. its about money, economics and monkeys. A group of researchers at yale trained monkeys to use money to buy food. the money was silver colored discs and they could exchange it for jellos and other sweet foods. within some time of getting trained to use money, the monkeys did two things normally associated with humans: a bank heist and prostitution!! stealing is something to be expected from monkeys, but the actual use of an inedible thing to get sex disturbed the researchers. to prevent turning the lab into a brothel, they have modified the experiment (-: another stunning find was that the monkeys are optimists. they are ready to take risks and believe that they can make a good gamble. the actual statistics of the monkeys taking optimisitic gambles matched that of stock market humans.

all you classical music fans

2005-06-04T14:11:00.000-05:00

check this out. this promises to be some fun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/beethoven/downloads.shtml

article about mumbai

2005-05-17T17:53:00.000-05:00

if u ever lived in bombay, you will understand what this article is about.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/international/asia/17mumbai.html?8hpib

and ya...if you are a gamer....the new xbox 360 has one terflop computing power (-:

how true

2005-05-08T15:35:00.000-05:00

error is human, everything else is divine.

nuts

2005-05-05T22:14:00.000-05:00

today is the day science and thinking died in the united states. 050505 (555). shave a religious nut's head and you shall find 555 tattoed. for today, kansas started hearings on evolution. They actually have a "hearing" where PhDs are being asked to defend their stands on evolution and darwin himself. Whether it is a sound enough theory to be included in school texts. Questions asked of the best and brightest included " Dr. XYZ...how old do you think the planet is or life is?"
They want to know why "intelligent creation" shouldnt be taught. and evolution omitted. here's a clue...if the creator were intelligent, he wouldnt have made kansas. so maybe it is stupid creation? any buyers?

In other news...Korea, the northern cousin that is, is preparing to test a nuke. and american officials are saying it could just be an ruse to trick american spy satellites into thinking that they are testing. Here's a clue on what might unfold: in 2003, n. korea said...enough is enough, i am dismantling reactors, taking the fuel and making it into bombs. it was wished away as an empty threat. cut to 2005. they do have the damn bombs. maybe, just maybe, the fuckers are telling the truth. all along.

nice saying

2005-04-28T10:30:00.000-05:00

in all these years of reading fortune cookies in chinese restaurants and meaningless astrological columns in newspapers, here is the best one i have ever read:

" create like god, command like a king, work like a slave".

mental hotfoots

2005-04-17T17:05:00.000-05:00

here are some mental hotfoots; things that you can do to wake people out of their daydreams and give them something to discuss all day or all their lives! (note...some of these are mine and some are....not)
1. ask a german whether "chow mein ist mein chow" (food) qualifies as spoken german or is it just meaningless bullshit.
2. find some evangelical selling christianity. ask him/her whether he/she has found jesus. if they answer yes, shout out loud looking skyward "2000 years ......at last...now your turn". before starting to find a hiding place, dont forget to tell the roving soul converters to say hi to jesus from you if they find him again. this will not only wake them up but chances are you will be wide awake after the righteous anger on display. (no offense to the believers...if the jerk on my campus stops me again and warns me that i am going to hell ....i plan to try this or something similar on him)
3. go to starbucks and ask for coffee flavored coffee. i am pretty sure they wont have any clue. grande assholes.
4. walk into a subway with mirror finish (literally) shoes. watch the ladies clear the way. wait for a short but very high speed travel through thin smelly air usually found in subway tunnels.
5. paint your car white with red bumpers. for added effect, attach white and red canes to your fender. drive with your darkest sunglasses on and hold the wheel supertight. you shall be king of the road.
6. call up everyone in the directory who share your last name. say you cant remember your address or phone number and are eliminating possibilities. this works best at 2am on a saturday morning. doesnt work with a name like mine. i ended up calling my dad.
8. call AAA, report some trouble. insist that you have a 1985 peice of shit. if further pressed for year and make, say 1985 POS, turd coupe. (u really must be sick and bored to death to try this one)
7. if you are ever pulled over, dont wait for the cop to walk over. get out and run. chances are you will be shot dead. fbi, cia and all three alphabets in the english language will spend a fortune trying to find a motive. you shall live on in history and conspiracy theories. forever.

spring is here

2005-04-11T01:02:00.000-05:00

it was a beautiful day here in urbana. fell in love all over again with the neighborhood that i live in. it gets dark and cold during winter. spring gets the life back into the birds, flowers and trees. i cant remember when was the last time i literally stopped and smelled the flowers!
before posting this, i just checked my last post. my heart sank one more time:it was about uiuc's bball team. it took me a good 2 days to get out of the depressed and hollow feeling after our loss on monday to Sean May and NC. we played well...but couldnt stop one guy. well...i better not get started. the sadness might be below the surface now, but still hurts. Luckily, before manic monday we did have super saturday when we beat the hell out of louiville. it was one wild party on the streets of this town after we won. will try to post some pics soon.
saw sin city yesterday. i cant get the movie out of my head! keep remembering some or the other absolutely stunning or sickening scene. or remebering jessica alba or brittany murphy [;)]
it is the beginning of a new genre for sure. it sure is not for the weak hearted or those with a weak stomach for violence and gross stuff. but if you can bear the violence and other assorted insanities, watch it.

go illini

2005-03-27T13:32:00.000-06:00

WE DID IT!!!!
the fighting illini basketball team made it to the Final 4. And boy, did we make it in style. we wiped out a 15 point disadvantage in the last 4 minutes to take the game into overtime. At the end of the game, we proved why we ARE number 1.
Here is an article about what illinois has achieved in one game
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/sports/ncaabasketball/27rhoden.html

As we say in illinois: GO ILLINI!!!

sweet

2005-03-26T01:25:00.000-06:00

Life is brief.
Fall in love, maidens,
before the crimson bloom fades from your lips,
before the tides of passion cool within you,
for those of you who know no tomorrow.

Life is brief.
Fall in love, maidens,
before your raven tresses begin to fade,
before the flames in your hearts flicker and die,
for those to whom today will never return

--Ikiru (To Live) --a japanese poem

craigslist in space

2005-03-23T14:19:00.000-06:00

the well known apartment hunting service craigslist is being beamed into space. awesome. Here is my take on it
As soon as this message was intercepted, residents of the giant planet circling the death star put off plans to invade earth. "A 1-bedroom apartment in NY costs more than 1200 bucks. holy shit. we can do much better on a larger planet" said one of its 700 foot tall residents. so they have decided to invade jupiter instead. never mind that its all gas. or the fact that it is shit cold most of the time.

seriously, we as a species need better things to do. maybe we should start building mad killer robots. we can wage war against them and not even feel guilty about zapping a few. two problems solved in one stroke: no more boredom and no more guilt over war.

richard clarke visits uiuc

2005-03-12T17:38:00.000-06:00

I attended a lecture by richard clarke, the author of "against all enemies" and more importantly, the counterterrorism expert during sept 11. I found him to be a very effective and analytical speaker. I have never heard a social scientist (i dont know how else to classify him) speak in a manner similar to engineers. The crux of his argument: we are fighting terrorists and bush is botching things up royally (or presidentially....i guess royally is an unfair and incorrect adjective in a democracy).
The part that i liked the best: his answer to why he named his book "against all enemies". Apparently, when the president takes the oath to office (which, btw is almost the same oath, plus or minus a few lines, as the one taken by new american citizens), s/he promises to protect the constitution against all enemies. I find this stunningly different from india's pledge, which I and many other kids used to mouth every morning before class. In India, you pledge to protect the freedom and integrity of the country (whatever that means), to protect the people of the country and affirm that in their well being and happiness lies your prosperity. The beauty of the circular logic employed in the american oath is by making the constitution supreme, you make people fight for their own rights. Afterall, the constitution is nothing but a bunch of rights and thou shalt nots.

obit: Hans Bethe

2005-03-08T13:56:00.000-06:00

Hans Bethe, one of the biggest names in theoretical physics died this week at 98. If you havent heard about him or know his story, try reading it up. I admired him along with Robert Oppenheimer for steadfastly standing up against Edward Teller and his plan for developing the hydrogen bomb--the most senseless weapon of all time.
Hans was a german emigre who was part of the Manhattan project. After the war he worked on how to enable warheads to re-enter the atmosphere without detonating its payload (for the interested--this is called ablation theory and has found interesting applcations in many areas). Hans staked his career to stand up against using the a-bomb on civilians (he was part of a team of scientists who wanted a demonstration over the skies of tokyo instead of on civilian population). Later he stood up against the blind development of thousands of warheads and also against the crazy ass loons in the Reagen administration who wanted star wars. He also was a voice advocating moving away from oil to nuclear energy as a source of energy. Other than all this, he was a consummate scientist and research advisor, presenting his last major paper at the age of 91.
Hope there are more like him, especially now, when morality is being decided by religious nuts instead of humanists and scientists.

reise reise

2005-02-24T00:30:00.000-06:00

listening to this album now. by rammstein. pretty good stuff. loved dalai lama. its a really dark song about the fear of flying (dalai lama has it...so the name!!). Check this site out http://herzeleid.com/
It has really good translated lyrics for all rammstein songs. It helps appreciating the depth of darkness to which these guys descend to. who could have guessed that the cheerleader type song 'moskau' from this album actually compares the city to a whore who reveals her beauty only if you pay (-:
also learnt that rammstein got their name from the town Ramstein which is a US airforce base in (former) west germany. what caught the fancy of these morons from the former east: it was the site of a horrible airshow disaster involving the US airforce leading to 80 deaths. i should have guessed as much.
in other news: the pope has called gay marriage evil. isnt he the same guy who "declared" in the 90s that the earth does indeed appear to suck. wait a minute...they just said they were wrong to punish galileo, not that they are wrong. helped me decide which side of the fence i am in.

2005-02-18T23:22:00.000-06:00

a few links
1. Ever skipped a webpage just because they ask you to register? help's here. http://www.bugmenot.com/

2. thebreakthrough.org/images/ Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf This is a hardhitting article on today's environmentalism and how it misses the big issues and thus dooms itself.

3. http://www.econot.com/index.html Read "Death by environmentalism" and the author's manifesto. Do this if you want to know the arguments used against environmentalism. a good website written by someone who seems to have a brain (unlike those who want to keep to SUVs and just mouth off against environmentalism).

4. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1487741,00.html
News article about how some guys working at London's intl petroleum exchange used their fists on protestors from greenpeace (-: found it funny for some unknown reason.

we talk

2005-02-16T23:27:00.000-06:00

was in orlando for a conference. ASHRAE to be specific. stayed in a nice hotel inside Disney downtown on taxpayer money. sweet.
the conference was a multi-session one. meaning there are more than one session going on at the same time. so you pick and choose what you want to hear and attend. Talks that are about 15 minutes long summarizing years of work (-:
I got into this discussion with one other attendee (student) about the volume of research presented and who if anyone benefits from getting so many speakers together in one place. Its sad but true that most people speak/write/perform without anyone listening/reading/watching. Take this blog for example. Or any blog for that matter. What is the idea behind blogging. Something for me to read and remember 20/30/50 years from now? Or is it communication to people whom i know? I dont know. I do it cause its a good thing to do. Or so says the evil empire and its minions. There has to be a better way to communicate than one-sided speaking/writing. or is there? I dont know and i am dead tired. I go and dutifully hit the sack in 2 minutes.

mounds of shit, exit polls, staff 2001

2005-01-28T13:48:00.000-06:00

if the world is a freak show and we all are patrons, americans and those living here have the front seat. here is a chronicle of what american newspapers carried today morning

1. there is a 2000 ton pile of cowdung that is smoldering somewhere in the great middle of this country. its been smoking for a month or two and lots of fire stations have given up trying to tame this beast (or beast poop if you might). how does so much get in 1 place? there are these large feeding farms where cattlemen send their animals to fatten before you know what. so each of these farms produces 54 tons of shit each day. do the math. these guys need gobar gas plants big time.

2. here's a witty line carried by some offbeat newspaper. "Exit polls in Iraq are most likely to be invalid because the voters will be running too fast"

3. Cheney. Ya the one with a lesbian daughter. He attended the Auschwitz-Birkenau liberation anniversary. He managed to get controversial even there. He turned up dressed in something even a grad student wont wear on a date. He wears a parka (with his name embroidered on it of course) , hiking boots and a monkey cap with Staff 2001 printed on it. Everyone else was in formal suits and boots. I dont blame the bastard (-:

And finally, go to ifilm.com. The top rated video now is a clip from inaugration day Fox News. Some newscaster flips when here guest questions the correctness of having a lavish inaugration.

NY times article by William Safire

2005-01-24T21:56:00.000-06:00

William Safire is one of the most celebrated op-ed columnist from New York Times. He wrote his last op-ed column(s) today. He will still continue writing his other column on language. I personally couldnt agree with most of his columns, but found his writing style tough to ignore. Anyways i am reproducing one article from January 11 of this year. According to NY Times, it drew more response than any other article ever written by a nytimes columnist. In case this is a copyright violation.......go f@&* yourself.

In the aftermath of a cataclysm, with pictures of parents sobbing over dead infants driven into human consciousness around the globe, faith-shaking questions arise: Where was God? What did these people do to deserve such suffering?

After a similar natural disaster wiped out tens of thousands of lives in Lisbon, Portugal, in the 18th century, the philosopher Voltaire wrote "Candide," savagely satirizing optimists who still found comfort and hope in God.

After last month's Indian Ocean tsunami, the same anguished questioning is in the minds of millions of religious believers. Turn to the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible. It was written by a poet-priest some 2,500 years ago during what must have been a crisis of faith.

The covenant with Abraham - worship the one God, and his people would be protected - didn't seem to be working. The good died young, the wicked prospered; where was the promised justice?

The first point the Book of Job made was that suffering is not evidence of sin. When Job's friends said he must have done something awful to deserve such misery, the reader knows that is false.

Job's suffering was a test of his faith: Even as he grew angry with God for being unjust, he never abandoned his belief.

And did this righteous Gentile get furious: "Damn the day I was born!" Forget the so-called patience of Job; that legend is blown away by the shockingly irreverent biblical narrative.

Job's famous expression of meek acceptance in the 1611 King James Version - "though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" - was a blatant misreading by nervous translators.

Modern scholarship offers a much different translation: "He may slay me, I'll not quaver."

The point of Job's gutsy defiance of God's injustice - right there in the Bible - is that it is not blasphemous to challenge the highest authority when it inflicts a moral wrong. (I titled a book on this "The First Dissident.") Indeed, Job's demand that his unseen adversary show up at a trial with a written indictment gets an unexpected reaction: In a thunderous theophany, God appears before the startled man with the longest and most beautifully poetic speech attributed directly to him in Scripture.

Frankly, God's voice "out of the whirlwind" carries a message not all that satisfying to those wondering about moral mismanagement. Virginia Woolf wrote in her journal, "I read the Book of Job last night - I don't think God comes well out of it."

The powerful voice demands of puny Man: "Where were you when I laid the Earth's foundations?" Summoning an image of the mythic sea-monster symbolizing Chaos, God asks, "Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook?"

The poet-priest's point, I think, is that God is occupied bringing light to darkness and imposing physical order on chaos, and he leaves his human creations free to work out moral justice on their own.

Job's moral outrage caused God to appear, thereby demonstrating that the sufferer who believes is never alone. Job abruptly stops complaining, and - in a prosaic happy ending that strikes me as tacked on by other sages so as to get the troublesome book accepted in the Hebrew canon - he is rewarded. (Christianity promises to rectify earthly injustice in an afterlife.)

Job's lessons for today:

(1) Victims of this cataclysm in no way "deserved" a fate inflicted by the Leviathanic force of nature.

(2) Questioning God's inscrutable ways has its exemplar in the Bible and need not undermine faith.

(3) Humanity's obligation to ameliorate injustice on Earth is being expressed in a surge of generosity that refutes Voltaire's cynicism.

india chronicles

2005-01-20T22:53:00.000-06:00

spent the best part of the last 3 weeks at home in india. short but nice trip. i promised myself a few things. achieved them
1. kept away from the pc and internet for a whole week and better part of the other two.
2. shied away from arguing with my parents who think me visiting temples is the most important thing to save my soul (-: visited as many as 7 to 8 temples. liked most of them. temples in the south are much more beautiful and larger than the ones in maharashtra.
3. jogged in the morning quite a few times. found some nice spots around my parents home in chennai. RA puram area. did not go to the boat club area. maybe next time.
4. bought a few books from there. Edgar Poe and Terry Pratchet. Terry Pratchet is Douglas Adam reborn. some really witty jokes.

i reached 4 days after the tsunami struck. was apprehensive of what things looked like on the ground. the city of chennai hadnt been terribly struck. the destruction along the ECR (east coast road) which links chennai with cuddalore and beyond is more easily visible. by the time i reached, marina beach in chennai had been cleared, the sand almost relaid. one could see people on the beach. though not as many as before the disaster struck.

If you are like me, this event just reminded me of the inconsequence of humanity and also of its continued vanity. false pride in itself and in its beliefs. the only thing most grown men and women could do was to question how religion and our idea of god could have failed. or state how they have not failed and how the bible (replace with gita koran torah or whatever you fancy) provide answers to why suffering exists. i personally think that rationalizing the destruction caused by any disaster is the worst disservice that we can do to those departed. the best we can do is to listen to the earth and the waves. so that the next time we run and live to run another day.

2005-01-09T21:18:00.000-06:00

long time no post. i am in india right now. chennai to be precise. enjoying the southern sun. did some traveling down south in Tamil Nadu. Saw some really awesome temples including some around Trichy. Liked the one at Srirangam the best. Beautiful architecture and a really cool looking idol. The idol depicts Vishnu resting. Pretty similar to the Buddhas in Thailand.
dont feel like blogging much. if you like metal, check out today's article in newyork times about rammstein. nice article about what i think to be europe's nuttiest and hardest band. part of what is called the "new german hardness" (-: the german equivalent of the "new wave of british heavy metal". must accept the german version is much better sounding. if you are a metalhead that is.

intel

2004-12-20T19:52:00.000-06:00

interesting article. apparently there was this young black dude who came up with the first circuit diagrams for the 4004 (to the uninitiated, this was the father of a computer on a chip or processor as we call it now). below is a link to an interview of his.
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_14374.shtml

watched 2 more kurosawa movies as i promised myself. worth the time and the 5 dollars spent on rentals. watched sanjuro and hidden fortress. the first one is almost a sequel to yojimbo and is a non-subtle kurosawa. hidden fortress is almost an indian movie of the 60s. minus the songs. i recall watching at least 1 or 2 tamil movies with a similar storyline and feel to it.

a friend of mine in penn state told me something interesting. penn state has requested all its students to stop using IE and switch to firefox. the fox is after the microsoft sheep. so go get firefox.

kurosawa

2004-12-17T17:09:00.000-06:00

Saw "yojimbo" by akira kurosawa. AWESOME. if you have seen and liked seven samurai (Shichinin no samurai) then you will like this too. if you havent seen either, you are missing something.
This is a beautifully made western that spawned a whole genre known as the spaghetti western. though in black and white, this movie has some stunning cinematography. Some scenes have directly been used in hollywood movies, most notably fistful of dollars and the horribly made last man standing. another stunning thing about the movie is the lead actor. Toshiro Mifune. This guy truly rocks. he is the cockiest bastard to ever have donned greasepaint. everything from his stride to his swordsmanship and humor have an edge of arrogance. he makes clint eastwood and other assorted hollywood cowboys look like a kids. planning to watch at least 3 more kurosawas over the next week. hope i lay my hands on them.

2004-12-15T21:46:00.000-06:00

check this one out. you have to subscribe to new york times to read it. its free.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/16/garden/16FRID.html

this world is fucking nuts. while the poles melt, we are freezing more in our refrigerators. suv sized refrigerators for suv sized people.

i bled two years (masters research) trying to increase the efficiency of supermarket cooling systems. got a 5 to 10 percent improvement over existing values. nice. what to do with the increased efficiency. build bigger (-: good thing i moved to other things with absolutely no real-life applications!!!

2004-12-09T11:04:00.000-06:00

no blogs for a while. breaking this hiatus to write an obit for 2 people. pantera's lead guitarist darrell abbott aka dimebag. he was shot down yesterday night in a club. may his soul rock heaven and hell. wonder why the good musicians meet an early death?? today is exactly 24 years to the day john lennon died. the real crappy ones live on and on and torture us.

second: donald rumsfeld's brain. " you go to war with the army you have". clap clap clap. wonder why he wasnt kicked in the ass by some GI. anywayz...mr rummy....you go to war against the army they have.

at last....something important

2004-11-22T21:04:00.000-06:00

me and my laptop are now part of something very important.

http://user.tninet.se/~ecf599g/aardasnails/java/Monkey/webpages/

no rest for the wicked

2004-11-21T01:11:00.000-06:00

try this ....

step 1:go to http://www.google.com.my/language_tools?hl=enstep

2:enter the following line into the translate textbox:
Sushmita's mom is nice and cool

3:translate from english to spanish.

step 4:copy the translated text, and translate it back from spanish to
english.

siriusly kidding

2004-11-18T13:34:00.000-06:00

Shock jock Howard Stern distributed free sirius satellite radio sets to crowds in New York while chanting "Death to the FCC". He's got a valid point when he says that commercial radio and by extension the media is too tightly controlled by the government. The government has no business dictating public morality. If the public wants to listen to an aging asshole mouthing off like a sailor, its their choice. if u do not want to ....change the fucking channel.

The media going satellite is like Dems going to Canada after Kerry lost. Solves your problem, but leaves the mainstream at the hands of those you regard to be fucktards. I have a very Orwellian view of this issue. Already there are two americas: fox news america and new york times america. the two meet only if you read the times while watching fox news. Satellite and the blog world will only make this worse. The likes of Wonkette and Stern make news with their blogs and satellite radio. They cater to one section of the population. There will be others catering to the pinkos, the red states etc etc(wonder how pinko is communist and red states are conservative....which fucking moron came up with the nomenclature?) .

according to me a country is not a geographical entity. its a land that shares a common past and works towards a common future. in other words, its a country that tunes into the same 60 channels to get its news and form its views. there is a serious danger that multiple parts of this country will document history differently and consequently work towards totally different futures. just like ptv (pakistan) and doordarshan (india) view the same issues from angles 180 degrees apart, we will have various segments of this country viewing things they want to. ptv and doordarshan belong to different countries. fox and nytimes dont. at least for now that is.

2004-11-12T01:22:00.000-06:00

cant sleep? feeling overconfident about your "physic"al abilities? want to take vengeance on your right hemishphere? try this.
http://www.hep.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/
follow the links at the end of the page. the ones that work are interesting.

found that some of my college buddies are blogging. nari: dercosyst, rohan: appwiz, chinar: chinaclay all at blogspot. will have to to add links to their blogs.

2004-11-10T18:15:00.000-06:00

mental torture of being in grad school. have to bear horrible jokes. blogs allow you to torture others.

1. which is the only animal with any attitude
ans. dog

2. all animals other than this one are listless
ans. dog

reason for 1. apparently dogs always have their heads at an angle. in engineerese...attitude. SHIT

reason for 2. same reason as above. listing to one side.

i want to break something. now

2004-11-10T01:42:00.000-06:00

hmm...another month gone. i have found a direct correlation between the number of times i blog and my mental distress. directly proportional. had a nice month. dont know why it was nice. maybe because i did not work much or maybe because i was reading novel after novel. Dostoevsky rocks. heavy but nice. read brothers karamazov. now reading idiot.
new things in my life: trance music--> paul van dyk, aarmin van buuren, asian dub foundation, karsh kale, and the list goes on. my office mates seem to like it too. so can listen to it on the speaker instead of the headphones.
browser: mozilla. nice. really nice.

search: journal paper: ovid, scifinder scholar. never used ovid before. found lots of cool features on scifinder.
Another awesome find: End Note: helps arrange papers and other literature on ur hard disk and the internet in a very methodical manner.

GOOGLE DESKTOP SEARCH rocks. found a lot of long lost friends on my hard disk. searches within word documents, excel files, ppt files. The day they include pdf files, i pledge allegiance to google and maybe even send them a check for a couple of dollars.

Women: as usual, the end tally leaves me knowing more hot women than the other way round. damn, wonder whether i will ever go black. It will be BLACK BLACK day indeed when that happens.

what the hell is the meaning of
"a friend in need is not a friend, indeed" almost meaningless without the comma. but i guess the meaning is pretty strange with the comma. or is it?

next blog...when time permits: my favorite issue: religion and politics. separation of church and state. i am distressed by both bush and france. one wants the two to marry and the other wants them to lead equal but separate lives. slavery versus segregation according to me.

2004-10-13T22:40:00.000-05:00

list of ways in which nader can become president
1. kerry and bush marry each other. edwards officiates. and dick cheney collapses listening to this news.
2. cant think of any other. well maybe if nader removes a face mask and shows he actually is elvis.

sell me your dreams

2004-10-08T14:03:00.000-05:00

the inspiration for this post is in part one article published aeons ago in the times and in part a talk on mems technology in the ECE department at the university of illinois.

Why are the same VCs and individual investors who imploded along with the dotcom bubble ready to invest in nanotech. Why are they investing in MEMS? Are these fields so full of promise that it really is a different story? Why are so many graduate students ready to risk all and choose topics in these nascent areas for their doctoral thesis? And, why the hell do we have such a rosy picture of technology while having a cheneyesque vision about practically everything else...most of believe that the odds of seeing mutated mushrooms and/or radioactive mushroom clouds in our lifetimes are pretty high. Are we nuts?? The following post addreses these questions. The problem according to me is twofold: human psychology and the power of the new salesmen. BTW, if you are just interested in the answer to the last question, don' t read on. the answer is a firm yes.

From dhoom to doom
The semiconductor revolution started in the 40s and 50s. It was a full 20 to 25 years before anyone made anything tangible and 'saleable out of it. and a longer time before the companies involved turned the corner. But once they turned corner there has been no looking back. This not only changed the landscape of engineering and everyday life but also produced a whole new breed of dream merchants. Unlike the NASA labcoats who sold the moon and stars, these guys sold the public dreams of computing and later connectivity before moving on to MEMS and nanotech. Unlike the moonshot guys, the new salesmen were/are private enterprises and hence need to impress the market. not the electorate. there are big risks in this. a success translates into success for many (remember the nineties when my grandma could have got a job in a dotcom). a failure can push us all to desolation and doom (not doom but something similar to the years 2002-2003 when graduate school applications shot up). Here everyone doesnt have a vote; every dollar has its vote. a paper democracy. If the bosses decide to buy into dreams, the subordinates must work for it. its an economic monarchy which increasingly believes in employing foreign mercenaries for its battles. The only saving grace is that we the people get to choose our fucking country.

A Nation of Salesmen
Ever wondered why a Tide or Ariel detergent ad includes references to some scientific bullshit about deteregent composition or crap like dirt or stain molecules? Science has been and will remain the perfect sales vehicle for products. But what when science, new science is the product? You have to impress people with more experience. People who read journal articles (peers) and the people with the vote (dollar vote that is). The trick is two fold: speak about the current to your peers and speak about the future to the rest. (Unless you are a genius like Richard Feynman you cannot get a publication talking about the future). So we have publications dealing with the sweat and grime, mundane stuff like how to get a carbon nanotube of sizes large enough to be seen with the naked eye. While the news reports concentrate on how nanotubes could one day build elevators to the moon. Forget even that. Attend a technical presentation on nanotechnology and you will be surprised that the relevant length scales of most devices being presented are in the microns. Next time i see an SEM with microns in a talk about nanotech i plan to interrupt. Or maybe i will form a group called nanotechnologists for truth. The issue is not that the scientists and engineers are lying. They are not. In fact they tell the absolute truth to whoever listens. So who is lying. The media? The VCs who are investing money? The truth is i dont know. Maybe no one is.

Why are we buying it?
Human beings tend to overestimate the happiness or sadness that will be caused by a future event. We for example overestimate the happiness to be gained by buying a new car or marrying a hot person (it does feel old within a day or a month). We also overestimate the sadness part. We cannot imagine loosing someone close to us and think life will surely stop. But it does go on. This primary problem in human circuitry causes us to believe that a future technology can surely sell. We are sure that nanotech will solve all problems and are willing to buy into it. we are also sure that nanotech will one day go berserk and form grey goo. both the fear and the hope have absolutely no scientific backing. we buy a car to feel happy, then we get a hot girl to sit in it to feel happy......we overestimate happiness , but do not learn from one experience. We will work our asses off to realise what we think will make us happy. Only to start off again on something different. The happiness/sadness thing is not an adaptive mechanism. Its like life, whether a mistake or something beautiful it just goes on without pausing to ask for directions. The same logic goes as to why we fear things so much. We are ready to buy into the arguments of Cheney and company for the same reason.

Enough for this post. The last psychology part is in entirety inspired by this wonderful article on happiness in the new york times sometime in 2002 or 2003. the rest of the shit are my brain droppings.

2004-09-25T22:39:00.000-05:00

here's a cool website calabashmusic dot com. if you are into world music/club stuff etc. basically hard to find things, go for it. nice site. charges money though and can be addictive.

2004-09-11T22:00:00.000-05:00

imagine....
what the hell will happen if north korea tests a nuclear device a month before the election?? i can bet my bottom dollar that those bastards will time it devastatingly around the election in case they are interested in testing a device. talk about regime change (-;

2004-08-28T09:11:00.000-05:00

among other things, urbana has a pretty decent public transit system. i sometimes use this to get across campus. was doing just this a couple of days back. Given my sexual orientation, if i ever notice someone its some cute girl sitting beside me or within eye-shot. but for some reason couldnt help notice this young dude. must be around 20. looked 15. the thing that caught my attention was the fact that he was in uniform. military uniform. like other universities, this place has an army and air force ROTC. the place where young men and women are promised a life of honor and bravery and of course free tuition. (The average household income of an undergrad here is ......200 fucking thousand dollars. and this is a midwest public university!!). couldnt help thinking...is he going to be sent abroad to fight a current or some yet unknown war. couldnt help thinking that the rest of us on board this bus will carry on living our hollow lives.
if you know me....this must be a surprise. i am hell bent against the war in iraq. was since the day the good president said eye-rack. but still am not able to understand the difference in lives being lead by a few million versus the rest. the few million who have their lives or the love of their life at stake. sure....i am an indian and i did not ask them to be sent out to die. and i dont even expect gas to cost less than 3 dollars a gallon (current price in bombay 3.4 $ per gallon). but still, i have trouble accepting these man made differences.
While i am here worrying about whether i will ever start liking girls who like me (rather than those who dont), there is a dead man in iraq who was shot by a sniper while he was carting his dead donkey through najaf. who cares who the sniper was. immaterial. hes as dead as his donkey
in the beginning i used to think "how can bush sleep at night". now i am wondering how america can sleep at night while asking young chubby face to grow older so soon. asking young men and women to grow as old as they are ever going to. for you are always old when you die. as old as you will get.

2004-08-27T18:24:00.000-05:00

i passed my qualifiers.

musings

2004-08-05T21:47:00.000-05:00

isnt it true:
"love: all fall down
_____________

whether you fall in love or fail in love, you go down
you fail, you go down alone
you fall, you go down on each other

(-:

another product of a wasted mind: does religion/ thought of god trigger a certain portion of the brain. do other animals even have that part? is that part triggered by anything else? i have a feeling its heavy metal/hard rock. god and metal: two things that mankind invented to feel superior than other things.

other than these stupid thoughts creeping me out , leading the life of a student. i feel like i am back in SPCE with a "study holidays" going on.

2004-07-28T01:41:00.000-05:00

heard obama speak on tv. man...does he captivate an audience. this guy is going to be president one day.

2004-07-26T16:23:00.000-05:00

Is Boston more than a feeling?? Is it going to be anything more than canned anger and canned rhetoric? is it going to signal the beginning of an unimaginative era for the Dems?

catch-22

2004-07-21T17:01:00.000-05:00

if i realise that i am going nuts, i am not.
pause
relief.
pause
so i am not nuts. that means i am.

2004-07-20T00:05:00.000-05:00

i am going nuts. period.

sunrise

2004-07-03T20:38:00.000-05:00

watched the sun rise before i got to sleep last night. i am in one of those stretches (lasts for a few days every year) when i am at my anti-social best. i almost make efforts to keep away from people. especially people who know me and hence expect me to behave some particular way. its intensely relieving if no one around knows you. you are not expected to behave in a particular manner. almost as if you are in disguise. a quasi fresh start!
and amazingly easy to do to. go to a cafe you never been to and sit there. or maybe a part of town you never went to. many options...easier to do i guess if i were back in bombay or chennai.
this is what is happening over the last couple of days to me. and i am enjoying every bit of it. am awake all night. sleep after watching the sun rise. and when i mean watch...i actually mean watch. walk over to some vantage point on campus (none in urbana...so have to settle for open spaces) and watch another meaningless day dawn. another day on the fifth largest piece of rock circling a second grade star with a suspected history of scizhoprenia/multi-personality disorder.

problem with search engines: so apple things tiger can scare bill out of the gates with its new and powerful search feature. you know what these guys dont understand.half the people in trouble usually cannot phrase the proper question. once they do...they get the answer in any case. even if the search engine was made by genghis khan's grandma. its the question you senseless assholes, not the search algo. thats the case everywhere...search engines, research, life. the ones who ask the right question get the answer they want. wont it be nice if google or some wise guy could give 2 or 3 different sets of results (in different windows of course) based on various interpretations?? guys and gals...remember you read this here first.

this and that

2004-06-30T00:25:00.000-05:00

slight change of fortune over the last few days. after almost 2 months, i feel totally like myself and for a change my doc agreed with me. dont have to see him again (-:
was on the floor reeling and laughing and wanting to puke all at the same time. ever heard about weasel coffee? trust me, you dont want to. as the name suggests...its coffee associated with a weasel and according to me coffee at its perfidious best. this coffee is actually made from beans that have been "regurgigated" (in layman's terms..pooed) by weasels in vietnam. its supposed to be a connoiseurs delight. i wonder what the hell they were smoking when they invented this. or maybe some american soldiers denied their daily caffeine during the war... (-:
either way...vietnam is apparently causing a coffee glut and bringing prices down. so dont be surprised to find vietnam coffee and weasel coffee added to the starbucks menu soon.
another thing that made me cry and laugh at the same time: fahrenheit 9/11. people leave the showing hall worried crazy that they are ruled by crazy ass loons and laughing about the whole thing. i guess most cant do much about it. there are times when i am happy that i dont have a vote here...i cannot be held responsible in any way for the mess created.

master of my domain

2004-06-17T22:50:00.000-05:00

ever lived alone? i mean alone alone? i am right now the master of well...a 2 bedroom apartment and without a room mate. have to get through summer this way. first few days, the empty room seemed to tease me. so i threw all my junk in there (robin ...if u are reading...ur rooms trash now..!!!)
then suddenly i realised...i am master of my domain. i cant recollect where the hell i got this catchy phrase from. (someone help). i think i heard this on some show or maybe one of george carlin's gems. either way...i am right now realising the fact that i partially control the destiny of a few square feet of real estate. its another matter that i pay through my nose to do it...but i wont realise it till ...maybe the end of the month, when the nose part comes into play. am making a list of things to do when i am alone: cook in the buff, maybe actually clean this damn dump, redecorate (haha..am losing my mind), invite strangers over, have a party and trash the place,....

heard the audio from the 9/11 commission. brought a chill to the spine. not that i am a very sensitive kind, but hearing a killer talking to his victims when he alone knows the crime to be brought upon them is ...well, fiendish. the first thing i remembered when i heard this tape was strangely thane in india. more specifically a sad bus stop that no longer exists. thats where i was when i heard the news.

wrote this blog over a few hours. kept the window open and typed in it on and off. might do this, much better than trying to cram in a day's memories in a few minutes.

btw...what do u get when you throw a grand piano on a) a army base b) mine
a) flat major b)a flat miner

one month one day

2004-06-10T21:27:00.000-05:00

thats the time since i last blogged. sorry to say this...but it hasnt been an easy ride. i will get back with details soon. in short....i havent been the luckiest guy. fell ill, took some time to recover. not ill enough to be bedridden, but ill enough to suspend activities like blogging.
i am not too sure my lucks gotten better, so wont comment on it right now. will wait till i tide over things and then write an account.
Read lot many books over the last one month. the ones that struck me as being superb:
1. Fahrenheit 451: superb, awesome...if you haven't read this, i take the pleasure of being the one who introduced you to a good book. This one makes a lot of sense today. I feel the message is not against censorship by the government, but rather self-censorship by people in order to be politically correct and so that everyone is happy. share your thoughts.
2. galapagos: pretty good read. liked the satire.
3. life of pi: brilliant...but some parts of it were kind of stretched out. but yann martel does a good job of keeping us glued to the book.

saw quite a few decent movies too: one was catch-22. not as great as the book, but i loved the effect of the opening scene. something that the book couldnt do. another was "y tu mama tambien". HOT. saw the rated version, cant imagine what the unrated one is like. but i liked the presentation. so different from hollywood. an easy narrative style of presenting. liked it.

MOAW

2004-05-09T15:25:00.000-05:00

the mother of all weeks just passed by. two sponsor reports, 2 finals. i survived. just. one final was ok, the other was an exercise in sadism. the instructor's sadism that is.
i seem to be on a campus discovery inititative of late. today, went roaming around the ultra cool Krannert Center for Performing arts here in Urbana. If u dont know what it is, check out their website....www.kcpa.uiuc.edu.
Was given a guided tour of the place. here are some cool things that i never knew about krannert center. before anything...i love this place and have seen some great performances here. one more reason why uiuc can be fun (-:
1. krannert was built at a cost of more than 20 million dollars with money from Krannert. it was designed by a u of i alum who also designed portions of the lincoln center. The place was completed in 1969 (whats with that year anyway....moonshot, krannert, woodstock...hmmm...coincidence or something to do with the number)
2. there are spiral staircases around 10 stories high. climbing them is a pain but worth it. nice dizzying view of the stage from up there.
3. most of the halls here have pits. unlike other places, the stage is really sturdy above the pits because they are on screw lifts instead of the leaky hydraulic lifts.
4. got to use a follow spot. these things can be really nasty to focus. the old ones come with these carbon rods that are intensely bright by burn out in 45 minutes. one good reason to have an intermission!! the newer ones come with electric stuff and can get nasty hot. they have these heavy duty fans to keep them cool
5. the heating and ventilating out here is a massive undertaking. each of the halls has its own heating and coooling subsystem.
6. the roofs: most are plaster based like in other places. but instead of patchworks to improve the acoustics (like at the met), these are continuous and provide one of the best listening experiences.
7. safety: sucks. one of these days someone is going to drop something or themseleves from above the stages and wop.... most of the lighting has to be focused after lowering oneself into a precarious position 3 or 4 storeys above the stage. not nice.
8. rappeling: some spots can and are used for rapeling(-:
9. props, costumes: name it ...they got it
10. steinways: there are loads of pianos. there are 3 concert grand newyork steinways. lots of dough!
thats all i remember. nice trip that lasted at least 2 hours.

2004-05-02T22:35:00.000-05:00

man...have i been busy (this understatement is my excuse to all those who were supposed to hear from me over the weekend but didnt)
i have been in front of my pc enough hours to give me a backache and the computer overheating. the thing just turned itself off last night.
btw...i have become one of those internet radio freeloaders. netscape, yahoo to name 2 threw me out. yahoo said i have listened to as many as i could in a month. netscape...said cool it..enough of led zep for the day. damn. first kazaa..then such restrictions...how the hell are poor indian graduate students like me going to listen to any music.
listening to: led zep, led zep and more led zep. this is month two of my fascination with this kickass group. favs...all their blues songs...levee breaks, gallows pole and their metal sounding numbers. guys...u got to listen to this.
Lastly...isnt ur day made when a cute girl smiles at u. well...she made me survive this rotten rotten weekend.

iraq

2004-04-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

a short digest of news reported today:
1. we turn over power to a former baathist general who marches in his original uniform. just picture this after WWII in germany.
2. the photos of soldiers harrassing prisoners. hmm...this is going to define this war. vietnam had baby killers...this one...lady soldiers making fun of naked iraqis. man...i have a feeling this war was started for and by late nite comedians.
3. macedonia...police here staged a firefight and shot 12 pakistani illegal immigrants. these guys were not just shot by mistake...they were lured into a trap. Why?? well...they wanted to curry favor with Uncle Sam. I wonder whether Macedonia was mentioned by the president as one of his "allies".

Read this and u know why we are where we are. Folks, in this war we have lost their hearts and our minds.

Reading: Paris 1919, Guns of August. WWI books. Coincidence. But the first few pages of Guns of August scared the shit out of me. Reminded me of a few characters currently ruling certain parts of this crazy world. Paris 1919 is more like a textbook, but very detailed and nicely written.

2004-04-29T23:29:00.000-05:00

my masters work might produce 2 papers. at least one got confirmed. good.
phd work: starting to look ominous. too much to know before i start. lets see how it goes

went to the main stacks of the library here. got completely lost till i found an elevator to get me out of there. this place rocks. 11 levels , all deserted. no sense of order anywhere. books lying on the floor. looks more like my apartment than an univ building. best part is the moving space saving shelves. the safety features on these are sketchy and non intuitive. i really believe it is possible for someone to get stuck between these (-:

another cool feature of use: there are small cubicles with doors that lock from the inside on all of these deserted floors. possible to sit here and go unnoticed for ages (-:

and the whole place is creepy. challenging someone to spend the night on one of the upper levels alone with scarce light will be a cool dare!

quote for the day: Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful.--attributed to martin luther