quanta ...

Life of a birthday

2011-11-21T00:27:00.001-08:00

Birthdays have a life of their own.

Parents celebrate the early one's even though we may well be more content snuggling in our cribs. When we know what they mean, it is a sin to not celebrate. We wait for the day each year for many things: gifts, parties, photos. Our spouses find them to be special occasions for love. Kids make them irrelevant until they grow old enough to buy us gifts (with our own money). Later one's remind us of greying hair and shriveling skin.

There is always that first one without the person whose it is. They are painful and make the void bigger. Every year thereafter, the date lingers for attention even though there is not much to be done. The reminders on a phone, calendar, or whatever else served as a reminder continue with the purposefulness of a sunrise. The day joins many others as leftovers of a life. The feeling is not unlike that of a house which was once home: meant a lot to us when we lived there, but is now a building like any other; except, means (much) more than the rest.

They don't fade at once, but are forgotten in some years. They keep appearing until all the people who remembered it are gone themselves. Long before that though, the day is likely a happy birthday for someone else.

Blogger got a make-over

2011-05-21T00:11:00.001-07:00

The new views are splendid, esp mosaic and sidebar. Nice work guys.

Try mine for taste: http://mini-kp.blogspot.com/view/mosaic and http://mini-kp.blogspot.com/view/sidebar.

in reference to: All about Dynamic Views for Readers - Blogger Help (view on Google Sidewiki)

The biased indian media - exhibit #1

2011-05-14T08:13:00.001-07:00

A google search for "raj rajaratnam" with reporting sources in India produces 62 results. Many of even those don't even deal with the crime he was accused and found guilty of.

I have seen this time and again with Indian news media: they don't cover unpleasant things about Indian expats. On the other hand, if someone of indian origin in the US commits a horrible crime, it gets scant attention from Indian media -- but if the victim is Indian, it is all over your face.

It isn't hard to gather scientific data, but this is what I see based on a casual observer. The rationale is not apparent - what does the indian media gain by reporting only the victories of the indian expat? More disturbingly, why the consistency across the different news organizations? Even in their coverage of news events within India, I see them unnervingly identical.

I've got more to rant on the subject. Coming soon!

in reference to: raj rajaratnam location:india - Google Search (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google Sidewiki entry by Praveen

2011-04-30T08:57:00.001-07:00

Good point, but lacks substantive argument. That TV shows have much to do with the rich not feeling rich is kind of a stretch. There are more serious factors. For one: those who are earning $250,000 may really be five times the avg income in the country, but many of them are also living in areas where property and property taxes are as much or more higher. Add to that, the fact that home owners feel anything but rich when they see the housing market.

in reference to: Culture and economy: Watching rich people on TV | The Economist (view on Google Sidewiki)

bad fb bad fb

2011-02-22T23:45:00.001-08:00

I have concluded that the people that run facebook are evil or stupid: why would they make me click on 50+ checkboxes - I am not exaggerating, it may have been more - to stop getting all email from it?

in reference to: My Account (view on Google Sidewiki)

Electronic banking gone kaput

2010-09-23T09:48:00.001-07:00

If there was ever a place that needed its information organized and universally accessible, it is India. Bank transfers in India need IFS codes - they are like bank routing numbers in the US. For years the only way you could get the IFS code was walk up to the branch and ask a specific person. Things have changed since then, but even now only private banks go to the effort of mapping a bank branch to its IFS code so that we don't have to remember it. Thats not the end of it though.. the mapping is horrendous. If you aren't already confused by IFS codes for a single bank location, cryptic acronyms for names will.

I finally found this page today and it has a much better, and likely authoritative listing of banks in India that participate in electronic funds transfers. Hope it makes someone else's life easier.

in reference to: Reserve Bank of India (view on Google Sidewiki)

progression

2010-09-05T02:10:00.001-07:00

I started listening to World Vision podcasts this week. First of all, the stories are amazing. The reasons kids, especially girls can't go to school are unbelievable. But the most moving stories were those where moms/dads did whatever they could to make their children's lives better even as they remained deprived. That is perhaps the most human of all things.

We have a better life than our parents because they wanted us to do better and spent most of their adult life making that possible. It is now our turn.

in reference to: http://media.worldvision.org/rss/wvus_podcast.xml (view on Google Sidewiki)

Managing email notifications in Facebook sucks

2010-09-03T11:07:00.001-07:00

So I want to shut facebook from sending me emails.

The link in the footer of each email send me to a page which has a single checkbox - checked - enabling all notifications from facebook. Click on it and submit, the page just refreshes with the check box enabled again. Wonderful.

Fuming, I go to the page that manages all notifications, there are a 100 checkboxes for each event in Facebook, and not a single button to enable/disable them at once.

in reference to: Facebook | My Account (view on Google Sidewiki)

Harder than life

2010-06-23T04:43:00.001-07:00

It was truly moving to watch a person decide to end his life consciously. Most people take objection to assisted suicide for religion. Some go as far as to say its "not being brave", as they did in the case of Craig Ewert (see the comments).

While they are entitled to their opinion they are being callous in judging Craig. To me he is braver than anyone else; more than a terminally ill person who chooses to live through the pain. Death leaves deep scars on the living. It is hard enough having to live without someone loved, I cannot imagine how much more harder it would be to have watched them die after prolonged suffering.

I did not hear about this man before today. However, even I am able to appreciate his life because he did not let his death mar its memory.

I am immensely grateful to his family for sharing his story.

in reference to: FRONTLINE: the suicide tourist | PBS (view on Google Sidewiki)

On water

2010-05-21T10:35:00.001-07:00

I have seen first hand the booming market of underground water pumps in Indian cities. Every apartment complex built has its own "bore well" as the underwater pumps are called; indeed in most places they are not used as drinking water even by the locals.

Regulation wouldn't help, since the lack of enforcement would just cultivate a black market.

Education won't do much either: this article points to small successful experiments in villages where crop choices are based on ground-water levels, and food grown is used for local consumption instead of being sold; thats a good direction for villages if there is wider adoption of the model. It would also be a boost for sustained farming which is definitely much needed in India. In cities though, it isn't like people don't know about the state of ground-water levels; they just don't care as much. Water supply infrastructure by local governments being as lamentable as it is, city dwellers have few other choices.

The model that might just work is water recycling and rain-water harvesting. There is really so much "real estate" in urban india where rain water could be collected; if every apartment block had a collection mechanism on its roof top in addition to the omnipresent "over-head water tank", that could create a dent. Water wastage is less of a problem than it is in cities in the developed world.

But these are small solutions for a large problem. We have alternative energy projects now; water unfortunately has no alternative!

in reference to: A special report on water: Making farmers matter | The Economist (view on Google Sidewiki)

Howard Zinn

2010-01-28T12:58:00.001-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/27/howard-zinn-dead-author-o_n_439350.html

Howard Zinn died of a heart attack yesterday at the age of 87. I never saw him in person but he profoundly impacted my view of our times, our world. I may not have agreed with everything he said, but everything he said and wrote made me pause and think.

It is fitting to quote from his speech from 2005 at Spelman College which had fired him back in 1963.

My hope is that whatever you do to make a good life for yourself -- whether you become a teacher, or social worker, or business person, or lawyer, or poet, or scientist -- you will devote part of your life to making this a better world for your children, for all children. My hope is that your generation will demand an end to war, that your generation will do something that has not yet been done in history and wipe out the national boundaries that separate us from other human beings on this earth.

A different take on free markets

2010-01-17T06:31:00.000-08:00

Raj Patel: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy

Raj Patel talks about the west exporting free markets as if "they are the natural houses of liberty ad freedom." He quotes a very interesting thought experiment from Jerry Cohen

Imagine a world where everyone is given little tickets and on those tickets are freedoms or rights; say the right to visit your ailing aunt, drive a red sports car, the right to good health insurance. You don't have to use those tickets, but you cannot exercise a right unless you own a ticket that says it. In the world we live in, Jerry Cohen suggests, those tickets are replaced by dollar bills. In a free market, the more money we have, the more rights we have.

Freedom therefore, is a function of wealth. This is a very astute observation and is indeed the model that the modern day communist party in China has discovered. You can setup a free market and not offer political rights.

Some other interesting points:

If african american women in the United States were a country, their mortality rates would be worse than Uzbekistan.

There are systems of development and models of governance in developing countries that are much more sustainable than those that are advocated by free markets.

We need to recognize that we are not consumers of democracy, but its citizens.

Contractors in US wars

2010-01-14T04:38:00.001-08:00

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=122444062

Nice interview.

The US govt covers the cost of insuring employees of private contractors in war-zones and also reimburses the insurance company if the employee is injured and needs medical attention.

</head scratching fact>

Why we'll never see the end of it

2010-01-10T11:18:00.001-08:00

Look closely at the picture of this 23 year old who's now sitting in a prison somewhere in Detroit. It is tough, but stop thinking for a moment what he tried to do which would have ruined 100's of families had he succeeded. Instead, think about him and any other kid in Detroit or any other place in this country, where a 23 year old got caught up in drugs, became part of an armed robbery, or worse, went into a school with a gun on a shooting spree. It just takes a couple of such incidents for us to start blaming the neighborhoods, schools, internet, or whatever else it is in the society that is causing young people to go astray. No one says, "hey lets bomb the living daylights out of the neighborhood where this guy grew up", or lets get rid of the mayor of the city, the governor of the state, or government of the country.

No one pauses and wonders about the enormity or the roots of a problem that can skew the basic sense of right and wrong in every impressionable 23-year-old to such an extent. He has done this, therefore he is evil, and so is every other person who comes from where he came from or looks like him.

It is a social problem when someone amongst us harms us, it is terrorism when someone from another country harms us. Hence by definition, we will never think of a social remedy for the problem we call terrorism. Which may really be the only way to look at it if it ever can be solved.

On NYE

2009-12-31T23:54:00.001-08:00

The thing about new years eve parties is, you see one, you've seen them all.

"The polar bears will do just fine"

2009-12-19T01:25:00.000-08:00

I didn't say that. But a colleague did while predicting doom for environmental activism, given climategate.

Why I hate Comcast

2009-12-19T00:43:00.001-08:00

First off they pissed me off early this year when they repeatedly cut service because I was paying to my old account number. They had graciously changed the account number when we moved. It didn't matter that I was making payments on time every month; they took all of 4 months to get all the money I had paid them from my old account to my new account; in the mean time they cut me off every month from their service. Here was the sequence of events.

- Account due date approaches

- I just pay what is due for the current month

- They cut off service

- I call them only to be told that I had not paid 3 months of dues

- I ask the moron on the other end to check my previous account.

- This is followed by, "oh hmm.. gee sorry about that", we have now restored your service

- I get the next months bill in which there's an "account reactivation fees"!

- I call them back and shake my fist at which point they tell me they have revoked the fees

- Repeat all of the above for the next month

For all the grief that they caused me, I cannot find another service provider in my area because the a-holes on capitol hill think it is perfectly fine for an entire industry to be made up of 3 companies that split up the country amongst themselves. Thinking of this is one of the moments in my day where I would gladly rip a senator or congressman or woman to shreds.

Today I realized comcast took the liberty of showing me search results from yahoo for an invalid url entry - after making me wait for about 10 seconds! No points for guessing whether they asked me the permission to do that. It took me, a reasonably tekky guy, about 10 minutes to figure out how to disable the @^#%^!@*$&@ feature.

Some day, some day, I am going to stop paying those bastards for giving me so much pain.

The feel good channel

2009-08-23T02:46:00.001-07:00

If you can get past the fact that I am watching Oxygen on cable at 3am in the morning,... I can't help wonder how much of a feel good channel it is.

First you have a movie called Serendipity (I found out the name after the movie was done while writing this) about two ppl who meet each other for a few minutes and are thinking of each other for the next several years coming together again hours after calling off their own weddings. The setting is Christmas in New York City and its snowing.

Add to this the commercials that are about cuddly pets, sunny mornings in white washed homes with kids running around breakfast tables.

Given that most TV is anti-reality these days, I hate to imagine the lives of the people who are up watching this.

Oh!

a midsummer afternoon never to come again

2009-05-10T02:04:00.001-07:00

Jerry sent this photo to our email group a while back. It is probably from the early 90's. It was likely when the schools were closed and we hung out in either pandey's or one of the other guys' homes. We probably ventured out in the afternoon and someone likely thought a photo was warranted. We are all sitting in the middle of what was called "approach road" that led to our homes in the sprawling vizag steel plant.. reddy, pandey, nanda, myself, kutri, jerry, and pk. There should have been others, but I don't remember why they weren't there.

We barely talk to each other anymore, let alone meet.

I once asked my dad when I was old enough to know to ask such questions, but young enough for him to talk to me about such things - if he ever had close friends like I had. He was on the our bed playing solitaire like he did most of the time when he was home - the two other things he did was listen to the radio or read the newspaper. He said he did have very close friends. I asked why we didn't know any of them, why he didn't keep in touch. He thought for a few moments, almost pausing his game but not quite; he said, well we all just drifted apart -- everyone got married and started living their own lives.

It was unfathomable to me at that time.

Now, I get it.

Milestones

2009-04-23T22:38:00.001-07:00

1991

1997

1998

1999

2000

2002

2004

2006

2007

2008

What was that I wanted to write?

2009-04-07T22:34:00.000-07:00

The question is, do we loose our ability to express ourselves with age? I can vividly remember sitting for hours on end and writing about something or the other and the words would just flow out of my mind on to the paper - or the keyboard. Lately though the words keep swirling in a jumble in my head, I know they collectively mean something, but it is next to impossible to discipline them into a structure that can be laid out on a page.

I heard somewhere the other day that the human brain peaks at 27. The power of expression I am afraid appears to reach a crescendo somewhere around there too.

Lok Sabha Elections 2009

2009-04-06T11:06:00.000-07:00

Lok Sabha Elections 2009

This is pretty neat on google's part. There is even an option to search the voter rolls if you are from one of 5 major cities. Pity they couldn't get a handle on nationwide voter rolls. Why such information isn't made more easily accessible by the Indian Govt is pointless question to ask!

Improve freshness using tweets?

2009-03-03T11:31:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! Search Blog » Blog Archive » Q&A with Vik Singh on Yahoo! Search BOSS and Open Web Search

This is a really interesting approach.. quoting the Y! architect featured in the article:

When breaking news happens (like the Mumbai bombing, Hudson River plane crash, or wildfires), it’s difficult for traditional news sources to discover and prioritize all the information in a timely fashion. It can take several minutes or hours for traditional media to converge on the important stories. However, new social media outlets like Twitter are breaking these important stories faster than traditional media. By looking at the number of users chatting about these topics, one can measure the future newsworthiness of a very fresh story despite its potentially minimal traditional news coverage at that moment.

From credit default swaps to a bad case of recession

2009-03-02T19:29:00.000-08:00

Some interesting reads about the current economic,.. ahem.. crisis.

Revenge of the glut
This white paper by a couple of professors at the NYU Stern School of Business
The paradox of thrift in today's Marketplace edition

One thing that is certainly emerging is this: it is not just a bunch of bad mortgages. In the last 20 years, American household debt has increased to around 13 trillion, which is almost the size of the GDP!

Drill baby drill.. uh ho.. float baby float!

2008-09-17T18:01:00.000-07:00

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10034753-54.html?tag=mncol;txt

So all the debate about offshore oil drilling has come to head, and right on cue we have an alternative.. offshore floating data-centers. Great,.. so now states can fight about who gets revenue from those and fight to death about how far out in the sea they should be. Meanwhile, I will gladly take a commute that involves a yacht over a bus ride on a bridge,.. any day.

Floating point computations will then be literally that. And..

I should go back to work.

can't fill em? lose em

2008-09-04T16:34:00.000-07:00

This really tickled me. Apparently an insurance watchdog is reporting a suspicious correlation between rising gas prices and reports of stolen SUV's.

mashups and more with natural language

2008-08-27T15:24:00.001-07:00

Someone at work pointed this out and it is definitely amazing: sort of a clearsilver, but for a browser, but not just to search for and run things, but make them talk to each other.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Meet Emily!

2008-08-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

How far is computer animation from making "Simone" really possible? "Emily" would say, closer than you think!

See this!

TSA pimping businesses

2008-08-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

This is a winner.

The stock markets,.. they are down. Banks are going bust. Consumer confidence and spending is down,.. if only there was a way to make people buy stuff... hmm.. oh yeah, why not make people buy stuff.

In the name of national security, we have already created a color-coded-security-level-indicator, invaded a few countries, wiped out a generation in those lands and ruined the next. Why not use it to boost the economy?

http://www.tsa.gov/press/happenings/simplifying_laptop_bag_procedures.shtm

a couple of interesting talks

2008-08-06T02:17:00.000-07:00

Noam Chomsky was at Google - Boston a few weeks back. It was without doubt one of the most impressive orations -- Dr. Chomsky was at his best with his dry humor and often controversial opinions.

Dr. Chomsky did not present on any particular topic as such. Instead he just had people ask him questions at the outset. Therefore, the entire discourse was characteristically impromptu. Here is a list of questions that were asked,.. just to give you an idea about the range of issues that he addressed:

How have your ideas on universal grammar changed over the years? Are you more or less convinced of the theory now than you were initially?

You are well known for your criticism of our current generation's lack of insight and sense of history. What do you see in the younger generation that you personally find energizing and encouraging? (FF to around 16 mins)

Back after a while

2008-08-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

Yeah its been a while.

There was so much to think about that nothing could be thought.

I remember an interview with Joan Didion on her book, The Year of Magical Thinking on NPR's Fresh Air. I never read the book, but it was about life after a member of the family passes away. I forget how I heard it, but it was probably when I was driving back from work. It just stuck with me.. there was a tremendous amount of sadness in her voice although she had probably thought about it on countless moments and even written a whole book about it.

One thing I realized though was how resilient we can be. Life does find a way to live on, but everything just feels more ephemeral.

retelling the wonder years with gmaps

2007-04-07T01:36:00.000-07:00

Google released a new feature in its Maps, allowing users to create and share customized maps. At first, I did not realize its versatility,... then I saw some examples... route 66, googleplex, olympic host cities. I decided to take the leap and create my own. It took me a few hours, but I was actually proud of what I created by the end.

the bay bridge

2007-03-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a interesting view from our car east-bound on the bay bridge. The east-bound I-80 runs beneath the west-bound, so one cannot really see the downtown receding; but in my opinion like this picture shows, it has its own charm. I think my digital camera had a relatively long exposure set, enough to give this illusion of speed, although I doubt whether we were traveling more than 50mph.

To the right is the bay bridge with the silhouettes of street-side art on the Embarcadero.

Both of these were captured by Sucheta,... I was merely the driver!

an evening in percussion

2007-02-18T12:48:00.000-08:00

Last night, we went to the opening of the Pan Asian Music Festival at Stanford U. Apparently what started as an experiment by the Stanford Department of Music three years back is now pretty much a 'tradition' in the words of one of the university officials.

This year's performances focus on drums and the opening night featured none other than the renowned Zakir Hussain from India. Apparently, Hussain is teaching a class this spring at Stanford!

The first half of the show featured the classical north Indian dance, Kathak by Hussain's wife, Antonia Minnecola. We were amazed at the grace and eloquence of Antonia as she explained the meaning and subtleties of each piece before she performed it. For almost 45 minutes, she regaled the audience with her steps in sync with Zakir's tabla.

During the second half, Zakir performed solo for about 20-25 minutes. We were all spell-bound as he drummed up amazing tunes and percussions with deceiving ease! Later, he was joined by fellow-percussionists Abbos Kosimov and Vince Delgado. Abbos put on a great show, taking on Zakir head-on with his doira.

After the show, I looked on as Sucheta and her mom Aarati, went backstage to meet the maestro up close and personal! That is when I took this picture; the person behind Zakir is another renowned percussionist Sivamani who is performing today on a sold-out show!

All in all, it was a memorable night for all of us... and I am a new fan of Pt. Zakir Hussain.

notes on a beaten path

2007-01-29T13:42:00.000-08:00

We were driving on Panoramic Highway recently when Sucheta took this picture. I think it do good for BMW ad to show off its off-road capabilities and a catch phrase, "take the unbeaten path" or "defy logic".

There were some really neat bike trials with the panoramic views the area's name promised. We ran into quite a few bikers and they certainly seemed to be having fun. I thought the two anywhere-near-avid-bikers I know, Pohl or Deepak, would have gone crazy for a trial like this. Frankly I wouldn't have minded joining them!

It was almost 4pm by the time we reached Muir Woods and given the time of the year, it was dark and cold. But looking up, I could see the tree tops reaching out for the little sunlight that the mountains allowed. Needless to say, there were more trials in the woods and we ran into some in their full hiking gear. There was one 2 mile hiking-trial that took claimed to reward the adventurer with fantastic views of the pacific at its end. I need to get in shape!

Our final destination was Mt. Tamalpais and it was indeed a place to see for all those who want to look at things from a higher perspective!

Yet another goodbye..

2006-12-18T16:51:00.000-08:00

The famed "approach road" from the rear glass of my car, as I left Vizag yet again on Dec 12, 2006. Probably one or two more trips home, and then township will no longer be home!

the great escape

2006-11-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

"Shatabdi express" runs as fast as trains can run in India. Given that almost all the train tracks are open for people and animals to walk over, it is not too uncommon for nasty accidents -- more often with people than animals I suppose: the latter seem to employ a better sense of judgement. A good example is this video. The couple just had to wait for probably 4-5 seconds, but no, the guy hops over the tracks and girl promptly follows. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

at uds

2006-11-10T22:25:00.000-08:00

I got the chance to volunteer at the ubuntu developers' summit today. It was pretty cool seeing all these guys discuss the future directions of probably the fastest growing linux platform in the recent past. Mark Shuttlewo rth even gave a talk yesterday, which I am sorry I missed. But looks like it was video taped and I am hoping to lay my hands on it soon.

Finally!! Saved sessions in emacs

2006-10-24T14:42:00.001-07:00

For a while I have been bothered by the fact that I have these multitude of buffers with two, three, four, or more windows with specified sizes in emacs and whenever I have to go home and work from there, I have to open up all those files.. so I was wondering if emacs had something like the firefox extension for saved sessions (which I believe I first saw on opera a few years back). Turns out that emacs does have it.. and believe me, its a gift!! Funnily, the GNU Emacs manual for the latest version does not seem to include this,... I had to find the manual for an old version to find out how this works. Anyways, without much further ado, here's the page explaining how it all works.

Leaving Nebraska

2006-10-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

[Looking east on 168th and Pacific (10/22/2006 3:04pm)]

Last weekend was my last as a resident of Nebraska.

I had mixed feelings: can't count the number of times I drove through this intersection hammered. Heck, Vishal even drove me home through this intersection once.

Here's one to all the good times. Glug.

A couple for Lincoln and UNL. Glug Glug.

And here's a few to the riverfront crowd. Glug Glug Glug Glug.....

On our times

2006-10-06T23:34:00.000-07:00

I was on a flight back to Omaha last weekend when I found a copy of the Oct 2 Newsweek in the seatback pocket. As is usual with most news these days, the ongoing wars in the middle east took up most of the space. But what caught my attention were 2 stories.

The first was about the resurgent militancy in Afghanistan and how after 5 years, things were actually getting more serious and nasty. But what really caught my eye was a chart that showed the amount of money being spent on the two wars and everything else surrounding them -- $540 billion. What was more ominous were the bars that signified the amount spent each year, and each bar since 2001 was increasingly higher than the previous. Can anyone count the number of better ways there are to spend $540 billion?

The second, more disturbing story was of two Vietnam war veterans, one of who served as a marine photographer. Both came back from that war with more mental damage than physical, but the marine was declared a 100% victim of post traumatic stress disorder. He came back to his wife and children and spent the next 20 years of his life getting in and out of psychiatric care. Finally, he started to attain a semblance of normalcy during the mid-nineties. But the wars in the middle-east, especially pictures from Iraq, brought his traumatic experiences back to fore and he was back in rehab. One afternoon, he called his old friend to come over and spend a few days together. His friend started off that evening but was tired and stopped at a motel for the night. That night, the marine woke up, hastily awakened his wife, pushed her out of the house, locked the door, and set himself on fire.

These new wars will ensure that there will be more survivors and sadder stories.

I read a lot about censorship in the middle-east, China, and even India. But I think the biggest act of censorship is actually happening right here -- in the US media. How many such stories are told on the 24 hour news channels and the primetime news bulletins? Not that they aren't happening, you just need to look really hard for them and the stories are all there,... sometimes on CSPAN or NPR, but that is it. It is as if people don't want to hear about the sadness that war brings.

People have somehow been sold the idea that the best way to tackle terrorism is by letting thousands die and let tens of thousands of others get maimed.

I was reminded of Howard Zinn quoting someone in Original Zinn -- his conversations with David Barsamian (a book from which I am going to quote extensively and which I really ask everyone to buy and read even if you may not agree with what I write here). He says that we are all just engineers, businessmen, plumbers, and doctors; few of us if any, are really citizens anymore. Citizens, he says, have the responsibility of keeping their governments under check, make sure that their leaders remain accountable to the decisions they have been elected to take, and organize and rebel when bad decisions are made.

What moved me beyond anything was the Afterword. Barsemian included the full text of the speech Zinn gave at Spelman College in May 2005. Zinn was fired from Spelman in 1963, where he was chair of the history department, for "insubordination." He had supported his students with whom he had been active in the movement against racial segregation. In May 2005, he was invited back by Spelman to receive an honorary degree and to give the commencement address.

Here are parts of that speech (I hope will motivate at least some of who read this to buy and read the whole book):

My hope is that whatever you do to make a good life for yourself -- whether you become a teacher, or social worker, or business person, or lawyer, or poet, or scientist -- you will devote part of your life to making this a better world for your children, for all children. My hope is that your generation will demand an end to war, that your generation will do something that has not yet been done in history and wipe out the national boundaries that separate us from other human beings on this earth.

Recently I saw a photo on the front page of the New York Times, which I cannot get out of my mind. It showed ordinary Americans sitting on chairs on the southern border of Arizona, facing Mexico. They were holding guns and they were looking for Mexicans who might be trying to cross the border into the United States. This was horrifying to me -- the realization that in this twenty-first century of what we call civilization we have carved up what we claim is one world into two hundred artificially created entities we call "nations" and are ready to kill anyone who crosses a boundary.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it leads to murder -- one of the greatest evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? ....

... My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way that our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you. ...

Another of my students at Spelman, Alice Walker, .... wrote in one of her first published poems:

It is true --
I've always loved
the daring
ones
Like the black young
man
Who tried
to crash
All barriers
at once,
wanted to
swim
At a white
beach (in Alabama)
Nude.
I am not suggesting that you go that far, but you can help to break down barriers, of race certainly but also of nationalism; that you do what you can -- you don't have to do something heroic, just something, to join the millions of others who will just do something because all of those somethings, at certain points in history, come together and make the world better.

That marvelous African American writer Zora Neale Hurston, who wouldn't do what white people wanted her to do, who wouldn't;t do what black people wanted her to do, who insisted on being herself, said that her mother advised her: Leap for the sun -- you may not reach it, but at least you will get off the ground.

By being here today, you are already standing on your toes, ready to leap. My hope for you is a good life.

-- Howard Zinn.

what do i do for a living?

2006-09-28T08:01:00.000-07:00

I received an email from a colleague today. It talked about software's annoying characteristic of deteriorating over time, across changes. This, he wrote, was as much a part of the business of creating software as are computers. He then went on to stress the importance of developer testing aka unit testing. He mentioned how developers spend less than 20% of their time writing unit tests according to a recent industrywide survey. He encouraged, in fact, insisted that developers write unit tests that ensure coverage of all changes and additions, and review older unit tests for regression.

The key to being ahead of the competition, he wrote, was being nimble, and that meant having short release cycles. But if software was not well-tested, if developers did not write unit tests, or there were no automated regression tests, developers would be afraid of making changes. Even if they did dare to make changes, those would take longer to get tested, or worse, lead to failures.

How logical! Being a testing freak, I was ecstatic to read someone else speak the same words I have been crying out loud during my whole professional life.

But that was just the cake; here's the icing. The colleague who wrote the email was the vp of engineering & research.

For anyone wondering what I do here, this should quell any doubts about its importance!

View from Vancouver

2006-09-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

I flew back from Vancouver today, having gotten my work visa renewed. It was a breeze. Somehow I have started to really believe in the system -- that if you do everything right, you do end up being given the benefit of doubt inspite of the current xenophobic undercurrents.

This is the second time I was in Vancouver, and this time, the city revealed itself quite a bit more than my previous visit. (Well, I have to admit that it is the other way round -- this time, I actually took the time to explore, unlike the last time, when I was there with Keerat who was preoccupied worrying about getting deported because of I had lost my previous passport!)

Vancouver has its share of shady alleyways, but what was characteristic was that one moment, you are in a thriving business district, the next, in a rundown alley, and then again back into the hustle, all within a few blocks. I actually dared to mark the transitions by retracing my steps for a few blocks, but somehow never figured exactly where they occurred. I should say though that even the roughest parts of the town weren't all that bad; most people seemed to mind their own business and for the most part I think I was invisible. I think I walked close to 15-20 miles in the 3 evenings that I was there -- it may not sound like much to a seasoned traveller, but it was enough for me to start appreciating a bicycle.

What I find most interesting when I visit a new city is pick up the local newspaper and find out what is making the headlines. Splashed across the front pages of a seemingly popular daily was the revelation that the average number of vehicles on the greater Vancouver area has increased by 28,000 per year, every year in the last 5 years. Various local luminaries and gentry alike had something to say about how much more of a pain it was to commute to work everyday. (I have no idea how the former group came to this conclusion.) The average commute time seems to have increased from half an hour 15 years back to 2 hours, which did not suprise me, but the reporter seemed that later piece of revelation with a gasp. Another reason I like to follow the local news is that you end up running into this surprising little facts. How many people knew that Vancouver is hosting the 2010 Olympics? I guess that is hardly a little fact by any measure and secondly, I may be more ignorant of current events than I thought; nevertheless there was a fair amount of literature on the trials and tribulations of the local populace resulting from preparations for that event. The newspaper seemed to ponder extensively, even sounding a tad disappointed, that there was little opposition from environmental, social, and trade-union groups about the adverse impact on the city following an event of such magnitude. Another fact that I did not know, which the reporter seemed to earnestly propose, was that the City of Denver bailed out of hosting the Olympics in the 80's! Anyway, the conclusion of that cover feature was that most of the unions and community welfare groups were "bought" and that everyone was planning to take a vacation during the 4-5 week of expected mayhem.

The other thing that I found interesting was ofcourse the nightlife. To be fair, I expected a city like Vancouver to have a respectable amount of activity, but even then I was unprepared for what I saw. I had to catch a flight out early in the morning, so I dozed off at midnight and woke up dizzy and hazy at 3 a.m. To my surprise, the street was as lively as it was during mid afternoon. There were a whole bunch of people milling around, although I suspect most of them didn't know that, and the metro buses were actively ferrying people to and away from downtown. It was surely a world away for someone like me who has until recently called quaint little Omaha, Neb home.

Being the fanatic for Indian food that I am, I found a nice little Punjabi food joint called the "Flavours of India" or something similar; the mom-and-pop restaurant was clean, and the food delicious. I asked for the "spicy" version on my first day there (yes, I went there at least once on all three days) and was myself startled by the the heat! Food was pleasantly good wherever I went, and never had a problem finding a vegetarian meal (yeah yeah, go veggies!) Coffee joints were everywhere and Starbucks was everywhere. There was in fact an intersection on Robson and Thurlow I think, where there were two Starbucks joints! Wasn't sure what to make out of that. I did my best to avoid the big coffee chains; instead, I would highly recommend a Blenz Coffee House that is on Robson and something (south of Thurlow) that has free internet access and freshly brewed coffee into the wee hours. Another reason for my moderate dislike towards Starbucks is that they charge for internet while right next door, a local joint is giving away free wireless internet just so that people could be there: eg., Blue Moutain Cafe on near Howe/Nelson: the young asian hosts were very friendly and the guy actually made me a very nice panini. I think I drank 4 cups of coffee while using the internet there just so that I remained in the good books of the hosts! It was very good coffee though.

Walking in the business district during the daytime was a pleasure. It was very New York like, but a lot more cleaner and cozier. The imposing Museum of Art seemed to be a favorite hang out place. They were in fact unloading a huge mural of sorts when I was walking past, almost the length of an 18 wheeler, and I was surprised to find security personnel in dark suites and ear plugs watching everyone go by -- in fact, I had to make an about turn soon after I crossed the area and sure enough, got an long look from one of the security people who looked very much like the sour old lady who screams a lot in "Austin Powers: The Spy..." movie.

Ofcourse, the waterfront - Canada Bay - is a must see. Sea planes landing and taking off in the bay with steep, green, cloud-covered mountains in the background is a sight to see. However like most cities, you have to be right at the waterfront to get a glimpse of anything, given that most of the prime property at along the shores is crammed with sky-scrapers.

On my last evening, I went into what seemed to be the Canadian version of Barnes and Noble called Chapters. I fully expected to see the same covers on the store front and aisles, but heavens.. was pleasantly suprised! Most US bookstores are filled with endless volumes on the merits of the current wars more often than not and memoirs of anywho filling up the aisles for a day or two. But I thought the Canadians had a healthy appetite for looking at things differently from their next-door cousins. The current affairs section prominently featured several titles on the ongoing wars in the middle east with catch phrases ranging from measured skepticism to outright frustration. What I found especially interesting, and which I decided to buy is "Original Zinn - Conversations on History and Politics" by David Barsamian. I have never read Zinn but heard of him enough to pick up the book and must say that it has been a while since I have felt so drawn to a book that I finish reading half of it in a day. Barsemain's queries such as, would the United States have invaded Iraq if it grew grapefruit and bananas, and Zinn's characterization of the US action in the middle east as the savage wars of peace are questions and responses that are barely seen on US media. The book is peppered with references to similar minded authors that I plan to make a note of and start reading.

Overall, I was just surprised how much difference there was between what the Canadians and the Americans read. Maybe that topic should be for another day.

Bush mashed with u2

2006-09-19T00:24:00.000-07:00

I found this video on google today: thought it was pretty funny!

Anyone see me?

2006-07-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

For some reason, it has taken me a while to embrace the (seeming) blog revolution. The question that pops up is, "who would read about me?" I was listening to NPR or some other radio station the other day and heard someone talk about the dawn of the video tape. They were comparing it to the initial days of the video camera; when anyone with anything to show would tape themselves and try to sell them through some channel (I don't remember how.) Soon after, people just got bored of watching other people publish their idiosyncrasies. Maybe that is how blogs would become!

But then, I also read about how blogs have revolutionized closed but tech savvy societies like China, where there is pretty much a socio-cultural revolution riding on the popularity of blogs.

Wherever we may end up with blogs, it seems safe to say that it is not showing signs of waning any time soon. So here I am jumping on to the web log bandwagon.

Solong..

P.S. Quantum is cool, eh? I guess I am trying to manifest by high school fascination with physics through a web log!!