oh india

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

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

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











less said the better about the race itself

monkey business

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

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

article about mumbai

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

error is human, everything else is divine.

nuts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.