consultitis

My marathon results - forgot to post them earlier

2009-01-01T17:03:00.001-08:00

Finished it in 4:41...Finished the first 10 miles in 1 and a half hours, which is a pretty good speed. Then the lack of training kicked in (somewhere after the 15 mile mark) and I limped to the finish line.

Danny Boyle & Darren Aronofsky talk Slumdog and writing - awesome conversation between 2 of my favorite directors

2009-01-01T16:52:00.000-08:00

Imagine the guys who made Trainspotting and Requiem for a dream together...now imagine them discussing indian movies...the awesomeness boggles the mind till it can't boggle any more...
watch, and weep for not being so awesome (BTW Darren is dating Rachel Weisz, the hottest woman in the world after Kate Winslet...Please stand by while I shoot my pitiful, puny brains to smithereens)
'Isnt Shahrukh Khan married to the bond girl?'
'Thats another one...theres a good lot of them'
Hilarious...

Tire Swing - My fav song from Juno

2009-01-01T16:34:00.000-08:00

I took the Polaroid down in my room
I'm pretty sure you have a new girlfriend
It's not as if I don't like you
It just makes me sad whenever I see it
'cause I like to be gone most of the time
And you like to be home most of the time
If I stay in one place I lose my mind
I'm a pretty impossible lady to be with

Joey never met a bike that he didn't wanna ride
And I never met a Toby that I didn't like
Scotty liked all of the books that I recommended
Even if he didn't I wouldn't be offended

I had a dream that I had to drive to Madison
To deliver a painting for some silly reason
I took a wrong turn and ended up in Michigan
Paul Baribeau took me to the giant tire swing
Gave me a push and he started singing
I sang along while I was swinging
The sound of our voices made us forget everything
That had ever hurt our feelings

Joey never met a bike that he didn't wanna ride
And I never met a Toby that I didn't like
Scotty liked all of the books that I recommended
Even if he didn't I wouldn't be offended
'€¦wouldn't be offended

Now I'm home for less than twenty-four hours
That's hardly time to take a shower
Hug my family and take your picture off the wall
Check my email write a song and make a few phone calls
Before it's time to leave again
I've got one hand on the steering wheel
One waving out the window
If I'm a spinster for the rest of my life
My arms will keep me warm on cold and lonely nights

Joey never met a bike that he didn't wanna ride
And I never met a Toby that I didn't like
Scotty liked all of the books that I recommended
Even if he didn't I wouldn't be offended.

The middle east conflict - the why and the what

2009-01-01T15:59:00.000-08:00

With Israel bombing away at Gaza and Bush fiddling in his ranch in Texas while Gaza burns, one person is surely smiling and licking his lips in anticipation - Osama Bin Laden. Every father who has lost his son, every husband who has lost his wife, every son who saw his parents die in front of his eyes, is a potential militant. When will we learn that you cannot solve anything by taking up arms and fighting? That peace is not 'Kumbaya' but in fact good public policy? That the reason Obama won overwhelmingly was because he trumped the virtues of 'jaw-jaw' over war-war?

Does Israel really think that it can destroy Hamas with its latest strike? The last time Israel decided to get medieval on Hamas' ass was in 2002, and it succeeded beyond expectations. It managed to kill the Hamas founder and leader, and his successor within a short span of time. Did Hamas roll over and play dead? No. It came back stronger than ever, and in fact unseated Fatah as the head of the Palestinian state. And reports are coming in right now (BTW, Jerusalem Post is the best way to minute by minute updates on the strike) that they have manged to kill 'one of the group's top five leaders, Sheikh Nizar Rayyan'. So is this operation a success? Not even close. Everyone is going to go back to what they were doing before, Hamas will regroup and recruit the aforesaid innocents and strike again.
Anyways, I found this excellent article on the net about the history of the mid east conflict. It gives the why and the what of the conflict in very concise and decently objective terms. Its written by R. Jerry Adams, Ph.D., Evaluation and Development Institute. You can read the original article here - http://www.awesomelibrary.org/MiddleEastConflict.html
(as before, all copyrights tand, I do not claim any ownership. )
Parable of the Family with an Orphan
A large family takes in an orphan. The house is already crowded so the orphan must share an attic room with a child too weak to protest the intrusion. The parents give each of the two children half of the room but ask each child to share a beautiful cabinet, treasured by both. The parents take a long trip, leaving their strongest son in charge.

When the parents leave, other children in the family attack the orphan and try to get him to leave. The weakest child, in particular, fights unfairly. He waits for the orphan to sleep and then attacks him. The orphan wakes up each time and hurts the weak child; he also takes over more of the room, including the beautiful cabinet.

As the orphan continues to take over more of the room, the weak child continues to take revenge. The strongest son tries to bring peace and sometimes succeeds for short periods. The basic problem, however, is that each child believes that he should have the entire attic room to himself.

Finally, the parents return. They realize that they made a mistake by leaving home while there was such a difficult situation in the attic. They don't just ask the two children to stop fighting, however. Instead, they take immediate action.

The parents decide that the boys need temporary separation, something constructive to keep them busy, and careful supervision. The parents work with the two boys to build shelves and cabinets down the middle of the room, with private storage space for each boy on each side. They install plumbing so each side of the room has plenty of fresh water. Finally, when the crisis is over, the parents set up a way for the boys to share the beautiful cabinet.

The parents do more than just provide better space, however. They provide the love, kindness, and supervision that each child needs to do well. They also make sure that the other children support the solution.

Each boy reverts to his old behavior a few times, but the parents remove his privileges each time and the old behaviors stop. Besides, each boy becomes too busy pursuing his own goals to be distracted by fighting.

They lived happily ever after...with a few disagreements here and there.

The "large family" is the United Nations. The "orphan" is Israel. The "other children" are the Arab states. The "weakest son" is the Palestinian people. Attacking the orphan unfairly means "terrorist attacks." The "attic room" is the territory of Palestine before the United Nations carved Israel into it. The "beautiful cabinet" is Jerusalem.

The "strongest son" is the United States. Alas, there are no wise parents to supervise the boys. The UN Security Council has not been able to perform this essential role.

The "strongest son," therefore, must work with the "other children" to implement peace. If the "strongest son" and the "other children" work together effectively, then peace will spread throughout the entire family.

Recently, this has not happened. Instead, extremist Palestinians have engaged in bombings when Israelis agreed to work on peace. Extremist Israelis have engaged in assassinations or other acts of aggression when Palestinians agreed to work on peace. Israelis are swiftly completing a wall between Israel and Palestinian territory, but the wall is not on the 1967 border. Rather, it snakes into Palestinian territory to unlawfully take land and water rights from 200,000 Palestinians. Extremists from both sides have destroyed the peace process.

The Palestinian people are allowing extremists to lead them. The Israeli people are allowing extremists to lead them. As the violence keeps increasing, wisdom from any quarter would be welcome.

A Short History of Israeli and Palestinian Conflict
After World War II, the United Nations gave land to the Jewish people of the world so they could live together in peace. This land, Israel, includes holy places for the Jewish religion and is surrounded by Muslim countries. Palestinian Muslims lived on the land at the time that the United Nations gave it to the Jewish people.

Portions of the land given to the Jewish people, or taken over by them when they won wars against Arab states, are also holy for Muslims. Certain portions of Jerusalem controlled by Israel, called "East Jerusalem," are very important to Muslims. For religious reasons, Palestinian Muslims believe that they must gain control of East Jerusalem as part of any lasting peace settlement.

Further, Palestinians view themselves as living in an occupied nation, where invaders (Israelis) have placed them under military rule. To fight back, Palestinians have built a terrorist network to attack innocent Israeli civilians. Israelis feel they must continue to control Palestinians with military force to protect themselves against more terrorist attacks.

Palestinian View
Palestinians feel that they are not a free people because Israeli soldiers stop them at checkpoints between cities. Many Palestinians, therefore, must get Israeli approval each day to go to work, return home, go to the hospital, get groceries, or visit their own families. After a terrorist attack, soldiers sometimes refuse to let Palestinians through the checkpoints to get to work or other essential places, infuriating Palestinians even more. Further, Israelis control much of the Palestinian water supply and give Palestinians less access to water than they need. Palestinians feel humiliated and abused by the Israelis.

Another issue causing Palestinians great anger is that Israelis have continued to build settlements in Palestinian territory, illegally converting even more Palestinian territory into Israeli territory. Palestinians see the settlements as a sign that Israelis do not want peace.

In March and April of 2002, Israeli soldiers attempted to destroy Palestinian terrorist networks and attacked several of the largest Palestinian cities. In addition to attacking the terrorists, the Israeli soldiers destroyed much of the Palestinian government, including records, equipment, buildings, electricity supplies, water supplies, roads, and more. Palestinians see the attack as an Israeli attempt to keep them from ever having an independent state. In addition, representatives of international relief agencies, as well as Palestinians, accuse Israel of committing war crimes during this attack.

Palestinian Demands
Palestinians want Israel to comply with international law and retreat to the borders that existed in 1967.

Palestinians express this demand as four key conditions for peace, including:
A separate Palestinian state (with the same borders as were in 1967),
Palestinian control of East Jerusaleum,
Ending Israeli occupation of Palestinian terroritory, and
Freedom of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.
Isralis have occasionally discussed supporting a separate Palestinian state, but insist that it must be in the distant future. In addition, Israelis may not be willing to give up actual control of Palestinian territory for security reasons, even if Palestinian territory is eventually called an "independent state." Meanwhile, Israelis have continued to place Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, expanding Israeli territory at Palestinian expense. Palestinians no longer regard Israel as sincere in its negotiations for a separate state.

Regarding control of East Jerusalem, Ehud Barak, former leader of Israel, offered to negotiate the control of East Jerusaleum. This is something no other Israeli leader had offered and something the Israeli people did not want offered. In fact, Barak was removed from power partly because of the offer and was replaced by Ariel Sharon. Although Barak had offered to negotiate control of East Jerusalem and make other concessions, Palestinians were angry that all of the key conditions they considered essential for lasting peace had not been offered. Israelis were angry because they were told that most of the key conditions for peace had been offered and that Arafat had refused to negotiate.

Regarding the third Palestinian condition for peace, ending occupation of Palestinian territory, Israelis seem willing to do this--as long as Palestinian borders are redefined so that Israel can continue to control Palestinian movements through checkpoints between cities and other means. In other words, Israelis are willing to end the appearance of occupation but they are not willing to reduce their control over the Palestinians.

Barak may have offered real independence to Palestinians, but Israelis and Palestinians disagree about what Barak actually offered. The specific offer of restoration of Palestinian land has remained secret, so it is difficult to determine which side is correct. Palestinians claim that Barak's offer to return Palestinian land was not sincere and would have continued Israeli control of land between major Palestinian cities. Israelis claim that the Barak offer did not break up the Palestinian land and that Arafat's refusal to negotiate the offer means that he will never accept peace. Much of the current conflict rests with the different views of what was offered. Additional information on the offer and disagreements is provided here.

At about the same time as Barak's offer, Sharon deliberately provoked Palestinians by an act viewed by Muslims as extreme disrespect to their religion. Terrorist attacks by the Palestinians started in large measure in response to Sharon's actions. Israelis were then angry by Arafat's refusal to negotiate in good faith and by the resumption of terrorist attacks.

In short, Israelis believe that Barak offered Palestinians their land back and that Palestinians then responded with extreme violence. Palestinians believe that Barak offered no real freedom and that Israelis deliberately insulted their religion (Sharon's visit) and killed Palestinian protesters during negotiations.

The fourth demand of the Palestinians, for Palestinian refugees to have their land back, has not been solvable. If all of the Palestinians who lost their homes to the Israelis were allowed to return, then Israel would have more Palestinians than Israelis--ending Israel as a Jewish state. Israelis have not been willing to consider this as an option. Some Palestinians, however, vow to continue fighting until all Palestinian refugees can return to their former homeland. Negotiators have proposed that Israel allow Palestinian refugees to return to the West Bank and Gaza, but not to Israel. According to international law, the West Bank and Gaza are Palestinian territories and should be under the control of the Palestinians, not the Israelis.

Palestinian Compromise
If Israel retreats to 1967 borders and provides Palestinians with complete independence, will Palestinians stop terrorist attacks? As of March of 2006, the answer is "probably not." Although many Palestinians simply want an independent nation, others, such as the powerful Hamas organization, consider all of the territory called "Israel" to be part of Palestine. Hamas leaders have vowed to continue their terrorist campaign until their demands are met, including the destruction of Israel. Further, when Arafat failed to accept Barak's offer of a separate Palestinian state, many Israelis concluded that Arafat did not want peace. Arafat did not make a serious effort to stop Palestinian terrorism against Israelis.

International law is on the side of those who advocate for two independent states sharing the land that was called "Palestine" before 1948. However, recent violence against each side has been so vicious that the majority of people may be more interested in revenge than negotiations.

Israeli View
Israelis view Palestinian militants as terrorists who will not compromise to gain peace. Palestinian extremists have, in fact, engaged in terrorist acts against Israeli civilians when peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians seemed (to the Israelis) to be moving forward fairly. Because Palestinian terrorists attacked at key times, moderate Israeli leaders have been replaced by more extreme Israeli leaders who do not want to compromise. Israeli leaders do not trust Palestinian leaders to negotiate peace. Israelis do not feel safe enough to reduce their control of Palestinian territories.

Israeli Demands
Israelis want the Palestinians to stop the terrorist attacks.

Israelis have four key conditions for peace, including:
Palestinian borders that ensure continuing Israeli security from Palestinian attacks, not the 1967 borders,

Israeli control of all of Jerusalem,
Enough Israeli control within Palestinian territories to allow Israel to destroy terrorist networks, and
Prevention of Palestinian refugees from returning to their homelands
By comparing the Israeli demands with the Palestinian demands, one can see that the two sides are unlikely to find peace--the demands are completely contradictory. In addition, many Israelis believe that Israel is entitled to all of the Palestinian territories. Every time a compromise is reached, Israeli and Palestinian extremists work against it--often with violence.

Israeli Compromise
If Palestinians stop their terrorist attacks on Israelis, will Israelis retreat to 1967 borders and allow Palestinians complete independence? As of March of 2006, the answer is "definitely not." Although a majority of Israelis are willing to have their military leave the Palestinian territories, a powerful minority consider all of the territory currently called "Palestinian" to be part of Israel. They do not want to compromise or pull back. Instead, they want to keep expanding Israeli settlements into Palestinian territories.

Sharon, before entering a coma, began reducing the settlements. However, when Sharon talked about an independent state of Palestine, he meant a Palestinian state that is still under the control of Israel. Past proposals have, in fact, allowed Israel to maintain control over a new Palestinian state. Palestinians have not found such Israeli offers of "independence" acceptable. Now that Hamas won the last Palestinian election, Palestinians may be even less likely to compromise.

A Road to Peace
With hate so intense on both sides, and demands of each side so completely incompatible, peace will require very powerful outside intervention. The United States and Arab Nations, especially Saudi Arabia, need to join forces. Perhaps an international group, with the United States and Saudi Arabia as leaders, needs to negotiate where to put borders to ensure Israeli security and also Palestinian land integrity. Left to themselves, neither Israelis nor Palestinians can make a lasting agreement on borders. If an international group negotiates the borders, it will also need to determine how to separate the two sides. International forces will probably need to stand between Palestinians and Israelis for a long, long time. Israelis and Palestinians may even need a physical wall to separate them.

Israelis have destroyed much of the government and infrastructure of the Palestinians. The Palestinians will need a great deal of outside support to rebuild themselves into a separate nation. Without such support, the world will be facing "another Afghanistan" where anarchy will again breed terrorism.

Muslim nations will need to play a strong role in helping to build a new Palestine without terrorism. Muslim nations will need to help mentor new Palestinian leaders who do not support terrorism. Palestinians will need another type of leadership, other than Hamas, to build a new strategy for long-term peace.

The United States will need to use its influence to help Israel shape a new strategy also. Israel has had to mobilize for war, justifiably, since its beginning. It has had little peace. However, Israel elected a leader, Sharon, who was associated with a massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon. Electing a man known for brutality does not say much for the peace strategy of the Israeli people. If an international group insures Israel's security, Israel will need a different kind of leadership, as well as a new strategy for long-term peace. Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmer is following Sharon's path and Sharon is unlikely to return to leadership.

An outside group will also have to determine how to allocate water rights fairly between the Palestinians and Israelis. Without outside intervention, water wars are likely to erupt, even if the land borders are settled peacefully.

What ideas do you have to move us toward a lasting peace? It is very important to realize that the Muslim religion teaches peace and tolerance, not terrorism and war. In fact, the Muslim religion does not allow a person to commit suicide or hurt innocent people, even during war.

Methods of Fighting
The Palestinian people, led by Yasser Arafat until his death in 2004, are outraged by Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. The Israeli leadership is continuing to use military force against protesters. Israel has one of the most advanced military forces in the world and the Palestinians have a very limited military capability. Most of those dying in the conflict have been Palestinians.

The method of fighting for each side is quite different. The Palestinians have no army and have used bombs against civilian men, women, and children to try to make the Israelis afraid for their personal safety. They expect the Iraelis to respond to the bombings by attacking the Palestinian people. When Israel does this, Palestinians hope that other countries will then help the Palestinian people and protect them from the Israelis.

The Palestinian bombers almost always die in the attacks, so the Israeli military then kills Palestinians suspected of planning the attacks. The Israeli military has killed or seriously injured many Palestinian civilians while pursuing terrorists. In addition, Israelis have damaged a great deal of Palestinian property during chases.

In short, each side is responding to the other by killing civilians--men, women, and children who are not part of the military. Each side is killing for revenge, as well as to meet its own goals. Each side is trying to convince the rest of the world that it is acting with high morality. Each side is creating a climate of violence and terror for their own children and grandchildren.

This is not a matter of two nations at war, however, since the Palestinians do not yet have a separate state. Israelis have the ability to kill or drive away most of the Palestinians, while the Palestinians do not have that power against the Israelis. This unequal contest may turn out badly for all of us unless the USA and others intervene effectively. If Palestinians continue to use terrorism to try to achieve their goals, and if Israel continues to use military force against the Palestinian people to combat terrorism, many other nations may find themselves involved against each other regarding the conflict.

The Water Issue
A concern of the Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab nations in the region is the water issue. Mikhail Gorbachev (former Premier of the Soviet Union) and Shimon Peres (former Prime Minister of Israel) noted that "More than anywhere else, the Middle East exemplifies the perils and possibilities created by the water crisis."

"In the past 10 years the various states in the Middle East have spent billions to acquire arms instead of building water pipelines or finding ways to conserve, clean and use water more efficiently on a shared, regional basis."

"We all know that deserts create poverty, and that poverty often leads to war -- especially when everyone is armed to the teeth. But missiles in an armed desert can't carry water any more than minefields can stop pollution from crossing borders."

"The alternative to another round of conflict, this time over water instead of land, is cooperation. Desalinization or joint management is cheaper than launching wars for rivers."

A recommendation by Jad Isaac of the Applied Research Institute, Jerusalem, includes a confidence building measure by the Israelis. He emphasizes that Gaza and West Bank Palestinians do not have sufficient access to water now and suggests that negotiations for peace include Israel making sufficient water available to the two areas.

Role of the USA
What is the role of the USA in this? Palestinians claim that the fighting has expanded partly because the USA has not influenced the Israeli government to use more restraint. The Israelis claim that the conflict has expanded because Palestinian leadership has not stopped the terrorism.

A plan was developed by a group of experts, led by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, to find a path to peace. The leaders of the Israelis, Palestinians, and the United States accepted the plan. The plan requires for each side to stop attacking the other side and for each side to try to help the other side achieve what it wants most, one step at a time. However, both the Palestinians and Israelis have continued the fighting instead of actually following the plan.

Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia then proposed a plan in April (2002) that has the support of neighboring Arab states and is consistent with the Mitchell plan. It has the interest of the United States, Israel, and the Palestinians. It includes full normalization of relationships with Israel by all Arab states and recognition of Israel as a state by all Arab states. In return, Israel must pull out of Palestinian territories, back to 1967 borders. It allows for compromise and negotiation on return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland.

Both Israelis and Palestinians have asked the USA to help broker a peace process. Intervention by the USA did seem essential to gain a lasting peace, but now that the conflict has escalated, much more than the USA may be needed for an effective intervention.

The Bush administration is focused on combating terrorism, a method of fighting associated with Arafat. Arafat has not been very convincing in trying to stop terrorism. Evidence suggests that instead trying to stop it, he may have supported terrorism.

To complicate the situation even more, Israel has been accused of committing war crimes against Palestinians and will not let the United Nations investigate to see if the accusations are true. Allegations against Israel are being made by international humanitarian agencies who tried to render aid to wounded Palestinians.

Consensus seems to be growing that a slow, step by step process, such as recommended by the Mitchell plan, will no longer work. Trust between the Israelis and Palestinians has been destroyed and the Mitchell plan requires trust by both sides. Something quite different may be needed. See "A Road to Peace" above.

Why Do Palestinians Fight This Way?
Why are Palestinians killing civilian Israeli men, women, and children when the Qur'an specifically prohibits killing noncombatants? Why are they doing this when they know that such deaths harden the hearts of the Israeli people and will make it unlikely for Palestinian children or grandchildren to ever have peace? Why are Palestinians planting the seeds of suffering for their own children and grandchildren?

The short answer is that the Palestinians are exhausted, desperate, and very angry because of the Israeli occupation of their land. They also lack a leader who is focused on long-term peace.

Why Do Israelis Fight This Way?
Why are Israelis supporting military actions against civilians and occupying land that is not theirs? Why are Israelis allowing their armies to do this when they know that such actions harden the hearts of the Palestinian people and will make it unlikely for Israeli children or grandchildren to ever have peace?

The short answer is that the Israelis are exhausted, desperate, and very angry because of the terrorist attacks. They also lack a leader who is focused on long-term peace.

Copyright © 1996-2005 EDI and Dr. R. Jerry Adams

New Years resolution

2009-01-01T15:58:00.000-08:00

This new year, I promise to use my superpowers for the good of mankind

Restoring confidence in the banking system

2008-10-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

A mile a day...takes you far from home...;-)

2008-07-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

Ran 6 miles today, at an avg speed of 5.5 miles per hr, and an incline of around 35 degrees (4 %, where 5% is 45%). Feel pretty good about myself, tho' muscles I did not know even existed are aching.

After the 1 hour run, I tried running without an incline on the treadmill. To my surprise, I could run comfortably at 9 miles per hr, for 2 minutes. Am planning to attempt a 7.5 minute mile this week...

Of marathons and midlife crises

2008-07-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

Writing a post after a long time...could say I was too busy, but honestly, did not feel like writing anything...

I just registered online for the Hartford, CT marathon online...Its on October 11 2008. So that gives me around 10 weeks of prep time.
My goal is to finish it in less than 4 hours.
I ran around 5 miles today. Will update this space regularly with my time and training details.

Why its insane to count calories in food

2008-03-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

We know some foods are good, and some are bad. How good, or how bad, though? Thats where we get into the tricky business of calories and the billion-dollar diet industry. I got this interesting article about counting calories off the net...go through it, it provides the much-needed link between the physics and nutrition

Counting Calories
by Paul Doherty

From Exploring Food Magazine Vol. 14 #4 1990

In my undergraduate biophysics physics course at MIT, Professor George Benedek burned a peanut. That may not sound impressive, but it was. Professor Benedek stood in the front of a small 50 seat lecture hall. He was a middle age man who had the build of a swimmer under a tweed suit, and he always wore white socks. He held the peanut in a loop of wire made from a bent paper clip and held the bent paper clip in a pair of pliers. He positioned the peanut under a test tube which contained ten grams of water.

Beneath the peanut was a large pan filled with water. A very large fire extinguisher stood on the floor nearby. I thought the fire extinguisher was excessive for a single peanut. For that matter, so was the pan of water.

Then professor Benedek set the peanut on fire. The peanut burned, and burned, and burned, and then burned some more. Drops of flaming oil oozed from the nut and dripped into the pan of water. The water in the test tube started to boil. When the peanut finally burned out, there were only eight grams of water left. Not only had the peanut heated the water from room temperature to 100 degrees Celsius, it had also boiled away two grams of water.

Heat flowed from that burning peanut as combustion converted the hidden chemical energy stored in the nut into the easily measured energy of heat flow. When you eat a peanut, your body does the same sort of thing: it converts the energy stored in the peanut into the energy it needs to keep running. As professor Benedek's demonstration showed, a little bit of food stores a great deal of energy in its chemical bonds.

More energy than a stick of Dynamite

Physicists and dieters are both concerned with the energy contained in food. And they both count calories.

Physicists measure the energy content of food by burning the food. To a physicist, a calorie is the heat flow needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. After burning that peanut, professor Benedek turned to the blackboard and calculated the calories that the peanut had produced. The burning peanut warmed ten grams of water from tap water temperature, 20 degrees Celsius, to boiling, 100 degrees Celsius&emdash; a temperature increase of 80 degrees Celsius. This temperature increase required 800 calories of heat flow. The heat flowing from the peanut then boiled away two grams of water, which took 1080 calories more, since 540 calories are needed to boil a gram. All in all, one burning peanut delivered 1880 calories to the test tube of water.

A single peanut contains 1880 calories? Those of you who know about food calories may be shocked by this figure. After all, an entire lunch doesn't contain 1800 food Calories. The explanation lies in the capital C. One food Calorie, spelled with a capital C, is 1000 times larger than one physicist's calorie, spelled with a small c. A peanut actually contains 1.8 food Calories.

Having the same name for two different units that differ in size by a thousand is one of the less logical parts of the language of science. From now on, when I talk about Calories, or calories, watch for that capital C.

To measure the Calorie content of food accurately, scientists use a bomb. A bomb calorimeter to be precise. The food sample to be measured is dried and ground into a powder. Then it is placed into the bomb calorimeter, a strong metal container surrounded by a water bath. The metal container is pumped full of pure oxygen at 30 atmospheres pressure and the food is ignited. The resulting energy release is fast and violent &emdash; just like a bomb. The steel container holds in the explosion. In air, not all of the peanut burns, but this isn't a problem in the bomb. Pure oxygen promotes combustion, and high-pressure oxygen greatly enhances combustion. All of the burnable parts of a dried and powdered peanut will burn in a calorimeter, leaving just a touch of ash. The calorimeter turns the energy stored in the peanut into heat flow. The temperature increase of the water and metal of the calorimeter reveals how many calories the food contained.

Since food energy and heat flow are both forms of energy, they can be measured in the same unit: the calorie. In the metric system, however, the unit of energy is neither the calorie nor the Calorie; it is the joule. For a physicist, the benefit of converting calories to joules is that work and all other forms of energy are also measured in joules. When food energy is measured in joules, we can estimate immediately how much work can be extracted from the food. Or conversely, we can estimate how much work it takes to burn off the food energy.

For example, one food Calorie can be converted into enough work to lift an adult human two stories into the air. Professor Benedek would have calculated this as follows: one Calorie equals 1000 calories, which converts to 4200 joules. One joule of energy will lift a tenth of a kilogram, (a quarter pound, though my professors never used pounds) one meter in the air. So one Calorie or 4200 joules will lift a 70 kilogram (155 pound) person six meters into the air. To work off the 1.8 Calories from one peanut a dieter will have to climb to the top of a four-story high building.

Calorimetry reveals that a Milky Way® candy bar contains more energy than a stick of dynamite. The candy bar contains 200 food Calories. That's 200,000 physicist calories or about 840,000 joules! Nearly a megajoule! A megajoule of energy from a candybar can perform enough work to lift an average 70-kilogram human being 1200 meters in the air. That's higher than the cliff face of Yosemite's El Capitan. No stick of dynamite can do that! In fact,an ounce of dynamite produces only one-quarter as many calories when it explodes as an ounce of sugar does when it burns.

Of course, the body cannot convert all of the energy from one candybar into work. A lot of the energy goes into heat, and some of the work goes into digestion. Overall, less than 20 percent of the energy contained in food can be converted into work. (So don't try to climb El Capitan armed with only one candybar.)

Some countries that use the metric system have completely abandoned the Calorie as a measure of food energy. In Australia, for example, diet soda sports the label "Low joule Cola." In the United States advertisers can claim a can of diet soda has "less than one Calorie." In Australia the equivalent statement just doesn't sound as impressive: "less than 5000 joules." On the other hand, candy advertisements in Australia can say that you'll "get a megajoule jolt from our candybar!"

Burning peanuts in your body

When a peanut or a candybar burns, chemical bonds in their molecules break under the high temperatures of combustion, and then combine with oxygen from the air in a reaction called oxidation. In this reaction, fats and carbohydrates are converted to carbon dioxide( CO2) and water( H2O). The oxygen bonds in these compounds have lower energy than the original bonds holding together the fat and carbohydrate molecules. The difference in energy is released into the air as heat flow.

Your body also oxidizes the peanut to release energy and produce carbon dioxide and water. Your body does not burn the peanut&emdash; although, if the peanut was part of a hot and spicy kung pao dish you might feel like it was flaming away in your stomach. But the peanut releases the same amount of energy when it is oxidized in the body as when it is burned. Your body oxidizes the peanut with a low temperature process which is more complicated than the reactions that occur in a fire.

Consider how a muscle in your body gets the energy it needs to contract. Your body begins by breaking the peanut into chemical components during digestion. Next, these components are reassembled into other chemicals, such as glucose, a simple sugar. The circulatory system carries this glucose to the muscle. The lungs take in the oxygen, and hemoglobin transports it via the circulatory system to the muscle. Finally, the oxygen combines with the glucose, producing energy without a flame. The overall reaction is

glucose (C6H12O6) + 6O2 = 6CO2 + 6H2O + energy.

Part of this energy is released as heat which helps a warm blooded animal stay warm. Most of the rest is used to energize molecules of Adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. The energy released by oxidizing one glucose molecule energizes 36 molecules of ATP. The ATP molecules power your muscles. One ATP molecule is used each time a muscle fiber ratchets one step shorter.

Peanuts, as any dieter could tell you, are high in Calories. To figure out why some foods are so high in calories, you need to look at the chemicals from which they are made. A peanut is 48 percent fat, 26 percent protein, 16 percent digestible carbohydrates, 2 percent indigestible carbohydrates (like cellulose), 6 percent water, and 2 percent ash.

Calorimeter studies show that all dried carbohydrates and proteins produce close to the same amount of energy: about 100 Calories per ounce or 4.2 Calories per gram. So a 2-ounce carbohydrate-loaded candybar contains 200 Calories. Fats, on the other hand, contain a little more than double the number of calories per ounce as carbohydrates and proteins: 220 Calories per ounce or 9.3 Calories per gram. Peanuts are a high calorie food because they are nearly 50 percent fat. For comparison, celery is low in calories; it contains 94 percent water, no fat, 1 percent protein, 4 percent carbohydrate and 1 percent indigestible fiber.

A peanut has a mass of about one gram. Using the above figures we can calculate that a peanut should produce about 6.3 Calories when it is burned. Yet Professor Benedek measured only 1.8 Calories. In the classroom demonstration, a great deal of energy from the burning peanut was lost. This energy would not be lost in a calorimeter.

Of course, there is more to food than just its Calorie content. The body requires a balanced diet. For example, over month long intervals, the body needs a full range of amino acids to build new proteins so the body craves variety in its foods. I found this out on a winter backpacking trip. I wanted to reduce my weight to the minimum, so I decided to carry almost pure fat as food. After all, each ounce of fat contained twice the calories as an ounce of carbohydrates. So I combined butter with a little powdered sugar until it tasted like frosting. Needless to say, after three days of eating buttery frosting on the trail I couldn't face a birthday cake for years.

Dieters often forget that the alcohol in drinks or ethanol (C2H5OH) is a source of food energy. If you burn pure alcohol, it produces about 150 Calories per ounce or 7 calories per gram, about half way between the Calorie content of carbohydrates and fats. A one-ounce shot of 100-proof alcohol is half water, yet it still contains 75 calories, almost as much energy as an ounce of sugar.

The Dieters Law

All of this brings us to one of the most important laws of nature, the law of conservation of energy, also known as the first law of thermodynamics. This is a law that anyone on a diet should know. It says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another. When you eat kung pao peanuts for lunch, the energy of those peanuts will be converted into another form. You can use the food energy to do work, or it can flow out of you as heat. If neither of these things happen, the energy will be added to your body as protein, carbohydrate, or body fat.

Your body stores the fat as an emergency food supply to carry it through times of famine. Once you've stored the energy it's difficult to get rid of the fat. Your body uses its fat reserves only when it is forced to do so, i.e., only after your body has used up its other food stores.

Using up fat reserves is also difficult because fat stores so much energy: 220 Calories per ounce. One pound of body fat will provide a person with 3500 Calories ( nearly 15 megajoules). If you didn't eat anything at all for nearly two days of normal activity, your body could power itself by using up just one pound of stored fat. Losing one pound through exercise requires working hard - playing soccer for 8 hours would burn up only one pound of fat. This is why rapid weight loss, more than 1/2 pound a day, is almost always the result of changes in the water content of the body. That weight can be added back just as fast as you lost it.

The law of conservation of energy raises a question: where did the energy in the peanut come from in the first place? When I was in grade school in the early 1950's, my teacher told me that all of our energy comes from the sun. She was right, mostly. Most of our energy, particularly our food energy, still comes from the sun. Food energy begins its trip up the food chain when light falls on a green plant. The plant stores the energy of sunlight in high-energy chemical bonds. Today, however, some plants are grown under artificial lighting, which is powered in part by nuclear power plants and by geothermal power. Some of the energy stored in the food we eat comes from the nuclear energy stored by exploding supernovas billions of years ago.

Nowadays, I'm a professor myself. If you visit my class when I'm teaching about food energy, you'll see a middle-aged professor with the build of a mountain climber, dressed in comfortable cotton shirt and pants. In my hand there will be a pair of pliers holding a burning peanut.

Scientific Explorations with Paul Doherty
© 2000 19 October 2000

The Great Depression

2008-03-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

Part of the reason I have not been prolific with my blog, is the ensuing depression following my 29th birthday last month. In an age where 25 year old bankers and 24 year old techies are making twice as me, not to mention look all lissome and, well, young, I was pretty much crushed by the prospect of forever bidding youth goodbye...
So, after alternating eating and drinking binges, and a period of missed deadlines at work, I've decided to pull up my socks, and have made a list of things to do before I turn 30. (which will be in about 10 months). I hope this gives me some kind of focus, and will help me keep track of things I really want to do in life. I'll keep you guys posted (and put in pics, wherever possible), if and when I manage to accomplish each of these things -

Things to do before I turn 30 (in no particular order)

1. Backpack through one of these 3 places - Amrika, Europe, India. Try to do all 3 before turning 35.
2. Learn Swimming.
3. Get into a fist fight (already did that), but this time, with someone atleast a head taller, and much broader than me.
4. Write a book. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, a memoir, watever, just write something and submit it to the publishers.
5. Learn a new language (preferably Spanish, French or German)
6. Get a six pack (the real Hritik Roshan/Brad Pitt one, not the fake SRK one), and maintain it for atleast a month.
7. Run a marathon. If possible, do a triathlon.
8. Drive through Route 101/California 1. (might need vikrant's help to do this)
9. Attend atleast one of these events - Mardi Gras, the carnival at Brazil, SXSW, Burning Man, Lollapalooza, the Edinburgh festival, or Glastonbury.
10. Buy a house (or atleast put down the downpayment and sign on for a mortgage)
11. Test myself physically - row through rapids, go bungee jumping, sky-diving, scuba-diving...
12. Visit (atleast) one of these places - Prague, Paris, Buenos Aires, Istanbul.
13. Visit London
14. Gamble, with huge stakes, at Vegas.
15. Try to get atleast one picture with a bonafide movie star.
16. Eat atleast one meal at a world-renowned, 5-star restaurant.
17. Watch a Yankees-Mets game, and a Knicks game (preferably against the Lakers or the Cavs) at MSG.
18. Ride a Harley Davidson (or a BMW).
19. Buy an expensive tailored suit.
20. Organize, and host atleast one private party at a nightclub in New York.

haikus for everyone...

2008-03-11T21:59:00.000-07:00

11:30 on a Monday morning...am neck-deep in work resolving issues, when i get a message from hema - 'Hey, can u send some haikus within the next half hour...I forgot to do my assignment'...I read the message, and do what any conscientious employee would do...immediately bang out some haikus, and also enlist my colleagues' help...the phantom ship one is my colleague's, the nonsensical ones are mine...

spring is (nearly) here,
the green leaves, pretty flowers,
farewell, to the snow

obama inspires,
hill perspires,as does the Mac
do the people care?

drunk, high, at bleeker
and macdougal, with my friends
yet another weekend

Phantom ship moves through
waters hushed in mist. Foghorns
question the darkness.

Standing on the edge
Thinking about life, morose
Sadness surrounds me

I'm running around
the whole day, towards something...
or away from it?

Yet another weekend...

2008-03-09T20:48:00.000-07:00

I'm at a swank, post modernistic Greenwich Village apartment with my friend, I do not know how I got here, and we are staring at this beautiful woman screaming at us to get out...Its Saturday morning 3:30 am, and all i can think of at that time is the Wall Street Journal that we stepped on near her open door (you conservative bitch...)
Let me begin from the beginning, which was Friday evening...
The night started innocently enuff, with me going to the Met at 7:30 with Keith and Anne from work (not their real names, and if u read on, you will know why...). The Met, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of the most famous museums in the world, and is tremendously boring during the day except for the fact that its on Central Park, and theres really no entrance fee to get in (you have to give a donation, but if u can endure the withering looks, u can get by giving a buck). But come evening, and the whole place changes...its as if the damn thing has been swished over by some fairy queen's wand, and has suddenly become sexy and mysterious...part of the charm is the long shadows of the UES buildings over Central Park, but most of it is the tremendous lighting they have and the way the architecture shows up at night. So they have this 'After Dark' series at the Met, where the museum is open till 9 on Fridays and Saturdays, and you can pretend to look at the sculptures (some of which are quite amazing, to tell u the truth), and head to the Balcony Cafe and the Wine Bar, where you have a magnificent view of most of Central Park and most of Manhattan's beautiful maidens with their hedge fund husbands or trust fund boyfriends, having an early Merlot before going and painting the town red (and of course, the well-meaning and extremely beautiful cougars trying to snare one of the afore-mentioned arm-candy).
After a lot of people-watching and a little drinking (all we could afford, considering the ridiculous prices), we took our leave of one museum and dived headlong into another, the Guggenheim at 86th, another famous, slightly more interesting museum because of the fact that they have these avant-garde (yeah, the gratuitous French phrase to burnish my stupid post...) modern art pieces, like the latest from this chinese guy with 3 one-syllable names (he's damn good, tho'), with the centerpiece being 9 cars in different stages of free fall from the ceiling of the central space to the ground (to represent a car bombing, apparently).

Thankfully the lines were pretty short due to it raining heavily (i.e., we were one of the few drenched unfortunates in line). Once we got in, it was magical...the center space has apparently been created by Frank Lloyd Wright, an artist who Ayn Rand proclaimed as coming nearest to Howard Roark in his creations...and the cars hurtling towards apparent destruction almost made me want to turn into one of those annoying 'cultural' types, when thankfully the free appetizers arrived and I came back to frat-boy earth.
After the gang and I feasted on some decadent fried stuff, way too expensive martinis and people with plum lips and high cheekbones (that last was equally provided by both sexes, so Anne had a field day too), we began what my friends had primarily come out that night to do, mingle with the beauties over wine and maybe snare someone interesting for afters...
So while I played the straight man in the conversations, Keith and Anne went to town...within minutes Keith was intently chatting up a foxy co-ed, while Anne was using me to front her flirty conversation with this hulk of a guy from somewhere in the Carribean...(and he had the Bob Marley dreadlocks to prove it), who possessed a big smile and a bigger speech impediment. A sample -
Subbu - 'So, T (dreadlocks guy), is this your first party at the Guggenheim...'
T - grunt...gugga...Central Park...muttering...grunt
Anne - (looking quizzically at me) 'Thats, um, nice...so where are you staying?'
T - (saying something nearly incoherent...), grunt, ...sexy...grunt...
Anne - Thats so sweet, thanks (apprently he had said something abt her hair, which she understood perfectly, leading to my observation that a woman will know a compliment in any language)
Both Anne and T glaring at me - (Anne) We are going to get another drink, do u wanna come (her glaring eyes indicating that any answer in the affirmative would make things unpleasant for me)

so I slunk off, and started talking about the relative merits of spring vs winter with this beautiful European-looking couple. Just when I was getting warmed up and ready for my 'Spring might have the sun, but it will never have Christmas' schtick, Keith came up to me, breathless, and blurted out - dude...I met this chick, she gave me her number, and her address! I have to go see her! This is awesome! Shes hot! I made out with her! I owe the bartender 30 bucks!', all in the space of 5 seconds...
As I struggled to process this barrage of information through my drunken stupor, he continued - 'Come, we have to go...she stays in the Village, I have to go to her place...'
I needed another screwdriver, or 10...Weakly, I took him to the bar and made him close his tab out (not forgetting to get my couple screwdrivers on his card, proving that a drunk desi is every bit as cheap as a sober one).
Fortified, I tried to reason with the bugger But pleas of 'its almost 1', 'you can call her and meet some other time','get the f$%k out, I'm going home', fell on deaf ears. We took one look at Anne, who was having Carribean for dessert, and trooped out of the museum...We took a cab to the west village; once there, I immediately took him to the nearest coffee shop, and tried to get some coffee into his system, and some sense into his brain. Besides, I was feeling pretty far gone myself...
'Right. I agree with you. Lets just go get some beer.' Better words were never spoken. Finally, I had managed to drum some sense into his head. We went to this pub at Macdougal and W4th. After a couple of pints of fine belgian brew (which is pretty strong, BTW...), I settled back to make sense of Keith's ramblings about the girl he made out with earlier...Soon enuff, my attention started to wander, and I started thinking about what I wanted right then, more than anything else in the world...chicken tikka, and some biryani...
I sat up with a jolt...I had fallen asleep...Keith was nowhere to be found...Oh shit. I ran out of the bar, and tried to find Thompson St (he had mentioned that the girl lived somewhere on Thompson, near the park). Luckily, I managed to find the apartment building, and my friend, Keith, sorrowfully sitting nar the front door...'The bell doesnt seem to work, and she is not picking up her phone...'. Thank God...I was about to drag him from there and take a cab, when someone walked by us, opened the door, walked in, and Keith ran inside. Curses. I had to go with him...He ended up reaching the apartment, found the door open, and just walked in...No knocking, ringing the doorbell, nothing...I ran in to stop him, and reached this amazing, duplex house...man, if this is where Caroline stays (her name was Caroline), I would gladly marry her...The living room had all these amazing pieces of furniture, art on the walls, the works...I was admiring the kitchen when I heard a scream...apparently Keith had reached the bedroom upstairs, found Caroline sleeping there, called out her name...only, the woman who got up was not Caroline...She had given Keith some random address, which jus happened to be this woman's home...It was right about then that I noticed the Journal at the door...

Epilogue - Anne called the next day..turns out she came out of the museum with the dreadlocked guy, stopped for a smoke, and ran for her life when he offered her a marijuana cigarette instead...

PS - been super busy, hence no blogs...will try to keep u guys updated with such happenings more regularly...
PPS - I saw Donnie Darko for the 2nd time, and understood it better..Best.Movie.Ever.
A question for the movie geeks (and Rawat, you'ld better stop watching English movies if u dont know the answer to this) - Connect Donnie Darko and Superbad...

Things I hope I remember...(OR, idle gyan 'coz I'm too bored to write a real post)

2007-12-10T07:59:00.000-08:00

Monday morning 9:30 am, I've been here since 7, and already I'm defusing a potentially explosive mistake by IT, by soothing the traders and cajoling IT to clean the mess up asap. Its partly my mistake, too, as I should have questioned the assumptions made during the whole process. In between kissing ass of all concerned and making them work, I thot I should write down things that I keep reminding myself...(also, this counts as a post, and goes towards fulfilling my resolution of atleast 5 posts per week) -

1. Never make any assumptions, if possible. If you absolutely have to make assumptions, validate them, publicise them, and be ready to question them, always.
2. Professional life is the constant struggle between covering your ass and actually getting something done. Sometimes you have to follow the whole process, and cover every eventuality to ensure success, sometimes (especially when time is of the essence), you have to improvise, streamline, speed up the process or abandon process and use your experience and instinct to get the job done. The ability to understand when to do what, is your competence.
3. It doesn't just sound sexy, it also makes professional sense to stand up for what you believe in, as long as you believe it is in the best interests of the firm. If you accept status quo, you are not just dooming your firm to mediocrity, you are also losing a chance to coast into the upper echelons of the firm.
4. There are things that are made by man, there are things that are made by God (or nature, or evolution, or chaos, whatever makes you happy). Examples of the former are religion, plastic, and business processes, while examples of the latter are human nature, trees, and free will. Preserve and deal very carefully with things made by God, question, debate and try to improve everything made by man.
5. Sometimes you screw up, or sometimes things get so out of control that you get angry, frustrated, or you start to panic. In those times, take a deep breath, look out of the window (or if you face skyscrapers, like I do), come out of the office, take a walk or get a breath of fresh air. In my case, I come out and walk till the end of Wall St, which is also the end of Manhattan island, and stand at the pier, by the East River. I can see Brooklyn Bridge on one side, and the Statue of Liberty on the other side. If I turn around, I can see the mass of structures thats Wall St. I think to myself, any screw-up that i do, is it going to kill somebody? Is it going to affect any God-given bounty to mankind? Will the Sun not rise tomorrow? Will the stars stop shining tonight? When I find the answers to these questions is No, I smile and come back to work. Try asking yourself these questions, and you will get a proper perspective on your missteps. (In case the answers to any of those questions is Yes, then you are really screwed, man...)
6. Everyday, try talking to atleast one stranger face-to-face. It could be at work, in the train on your way home, at the supermarket, in the gym or the pub. It could be a simple smile and a comment about the weather, or it could be an interesting conversation lasting hours and several drinks (and a number, if you are so inclined and so lucky). It could be with someone your own age, it could be someone older, or someone younger (though if you look like the typical engineer or IIM grad, I would suggest staying away from kids below 14, however honorable your intentions...). Approach someone without any preset notions, and without any expectations. It will do wonders to your confidence, give you a fresh perspective on life (Point 5 above was suggested to me by a retired Columbia University doorman, a Scot, who I met at a pub), and might improve your chances of getting laid (not necessarily with a retired Columbia University doorman, but hey, whatever makes you happy...).
7. As far as possible, try to look at both sides of a situation before taking a decision, or jumping to conclusions. If you hate Rudy Guiliani (or love Hillary Clinton) because the New York Times hates him (loves her), try to find out what an ideologically opposite paper (Wall st Journal) says about him (or her). If you love slasher movies and extremely violent video games, try watching the Titanic (or DDLJ). You might still not change your view, but it will help you get a more nuanced position.
8. Look sharp. Nothing spectacular, just shave, trim unwanted facial hair in other places, shower, use a deo, get rid of any nasty odors from your mouth (try chewing gum, works for me), wear clean, matching, pressed shirts and trousers, manage your hair (comb it, gel it, whatever), and wear clean socks and polished shoes. You will not only stand a better chance of being taken seriously at work, your wife will stay some more years with you before running away with a younger guy.

An open letter to Barack Obama, American Presidential Candidate (Democratic)

2007-11-04T17:20:00.000-08:00

(An actual mail that i sent to Barack Obama, US presidential candiate competing with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. He's a young senator from Chicago, Illinois, who reminds people of John Kennedy, and reminds me of a young Rajiv Gandhi in 1984. I'm a volunteer for his campaign, and hope he wins in 2008)
Hi dude,
I was pretty impressed with your restraint till now. Am nevertheless pleased and intrigued that you have started showing some life and a little bite. A caveat - you are walking a thin line. You will have to publicly massacre Hillary while being beyond reproach yourself. So that means you will have to dig up all the shady stuff that her campaign is doing, like muffling the press at every stage (everyone knows it, no one has the balls to get it out), or keeping billy boy out of the news. Your biggest asset right now is your spouse, you have to turn hillary's spouse her biggest liability. So please tell the team in Washington and New York to dig up all the unflttering things about her, like her support for abortion, her being in bed with the building a bridge to nowhere bill, her total neglect of New York state during her term. Spitzer did more in his first day than she did her entire term. Best of luck, I'll do my bit in Harlem, Manhattan and Brooklyn for you, mate...
Oh, and another thing...play up Iran for all its worth, man...i mean, try to get dialogue going with the Ayotollah..if nothing else, you might just succeed in getting ahmedinejad out of power...as it is the iranians are pissed off with him (i know coz i have a lot of iranian friends in new york)confront hillary directly on iran...and more forcefully...like "Hillary wants America to go to war again...", "Hillary is George Bush Lite", "Stop Hillary now!", "We did not want this war, and we do not want another one now...Hillary are you listening?"Link Iran directly with the Iraq war veterans, and decouple Iran from Ahmedinejad...everyone who's not a retard, or a member of the Bush admin.(or both) knows that Ahmeddy boy doesnt count for shit in Iran, its the Khameini, and he's actually on America's side...

Sex and the Indian polity...

2007-10-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

One of the major problems of blogging part-time is that you are never really able to capture all those interesting nuggets of wisdom that come to you throughout the day. Life happens 24/7, but u can blog about that life only for about 1 hr per day. To remember all those moments when u finally sit down to write is downright impossible. One way out is to carry a small recorder with you always (like a journalist) and speak out your mind when a thot occurs to you.

Ok, now to the topic, lets start with some pictures to whet your appetite (and calculated to increase page hits) ...

Ukranian Prime minister - Yulia Tymoshenko

Argentina's new president - Christina Fernandez Kirchner

(Be still, my beating heart) Segolene Royal - France's opposition leader, my personal favorite

Belinda Stronach - Canada's minister and presidential hopeful (there were hajaar rumors linking her with Billy Clinton...)

Ok, if you are wondering why these pictures are there, and why this post shouldn't be called 'Fantasies of an overworked nerd in his pre-midlife crisis', the answer to both is the same - focus on the captions, all of these women are either heads of state or senior decision makers in their countries...beautiful, sexy, hot, but senior politicians nevertheless...

wait a minute...sexy women, and politicians...now why does that sound like an oxymoron to me...is it because I'm a FREAKING INDIAN, who had to content his puerile fantasies with Brinda Karat's big bindis and menaka gandhi's (once-upon a time) svelte figure when the elders were watching Doordarshan...and who has to now resign himself to looking at Sonia Gandhi and wonder what might have been, if this italian mami had not been reduced to the grieving housewife by Indian politics....

Seriously, what is it with us Indians...why do we abhor anything even hinting on sensuality or sexiness in our politicians...is it the same old explanation of - "We are Indians, we do not like to discuss such issues in public, and hence all our public servants should be completely sexless, and become maas, betis and bahus if they want our votes". Because thats what happens when a confident, sexy, Indian woman wants to serve our country...she either has to cover herself up in uglies and remove any trace of sensuality of her being, or endure being always being on the coattails of the males (witness jaya jeitley and brinda karat, or even jayalalitha).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not being sexist here, I am not being superflous by focusing on looks, I am not even being ageist (all the above women, BTW, are older than Jayalalitha or Mayawati)...

All I am saying is, in a country that is known for placing a premium on looks while judging its women, whether to star in a remix video, or to star as the trophy wife of the NRI, isn't it amazing that we have always liked our women leaders sexless...why cant the indian public stomach the idea of a strong, sexy woman being able to run the country while taking care of her hair and showing off her shape in fitting sleeveless blouses or short kurtis (lets not even talk about jeans and gowns here)...

P.S. - I promised a review of Alan Greenspan's new book, i still haven't finished, my early word is that its damn good, only everytime i read more than 5 pages at a time I promptly fall asleep...though that might be more 'coz of the crazy hours i keep, rather than Papa Greenspan's lack of writing cred...

Some clarifications to the previous post...

2007-09-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

I just realized that some terms in that post might not be understood by the 'cool' guys who are not finance nerds...so i have attempted to explain some of the terms here -

1. mortgage - Americans call a home loan a mortgage. The monthly payment on the home loan is generally called a mortgage payment.

2. Mortgage Lender - The financial institution that gives you the loan. Unlike in India, where most lenders are also banks like ICICI, here you have specialized lenders like Countrywide.

3. Sub-prime Mortgage - Generally mortgages are defined by the interest rate that is charged on the original loan. A Prime rate is the standard bank rate, and denotes a borrower of moderate risk or low risk. A sub-prime mortgage is where the interest rate is higher than the prime rate, to account for the increased risk of some borrowers (people like the guy i explained below, or like me...;-) )

4. mortgage securities - a fantastic invention by a Salomon Brothers guy by means of which the mortgage lender can essentially take the loans that it gives out, put all of them in a big pool, and sell it as bonds to suckers like pension funds and hedge funds. Essentially, the bond payment is the mortgage payment (or the EMI, as they call it in India)

5. Credit Rating Agency - Agencies like Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch. These guys analyze companies, governments and other organizations and rate their bonds ranging from 'investment grade' meaning really, really good organizations with no chance of default (yeah, right...); to 'junk' meaning you might as well buy the lottery (or General Motors stocks)

'Heinlein was wrong - there is such a thing as a free lunch'. Re: the US sub-prime mortgage bailout

2007-09-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

Picture this...you are a 30 yr old renter in a suburb in Midwestern US. You have a family, a new job with a not-so-steady salary, old parents on Medicare (US govt. healthcare for seniors) but with increasingly unmanageable healthcare costs, and you an barely make ends meet. However, you believe in the American dream...you believe that, eventually, you will be able to buy a house.
Enter this nice broker from one of the biggest morgage lenders in the country. She offers you a house (your own!), with no credit check, no income verification, no down payment, and nominal payments for the next year. Never mind that little 'adjustable' clause, where your payments increase exponentially after that. Never mind that a house like this is way beyond what you can afford, never mind if a 3rd grader could tell you that the math doesn't make sense. Hey, prices are going up, you can always sell the house, right?
So you take the mortgage, and enter your own house. The mortgage broker makes a ton of money on commissions, the lender makes a ton of money on fees. As for the money the lender gave you, it just uses a bank and a friendly credit rating agency to package it into investment grade securities (suddenly, Wall St trusts you more than the Govt. of India or Brazil). They sell it to the pension fund that holds your risk-averse neighbor' retirement money. The bank, the agency, the lender all make a ton of money. Everyone's happy, most of all you, right?
Right, till you realize that there are such things are taxes and maintenance costs, which the broker glossed over when she sold you the loan. Suddenly its tough for you to find work, and you can barely manage to pay the low initial interest payments. Just when you think things cant get any worse, the 'adjustable' clause kicks in, and you are left with monthly payments bigger than your current income. You default, and you go to the nearest bar, and the nearest foreclosure lawyer for sustenance. Meanwhile each default of yours is another nail in the coffin of that sexy investment grade security your mortgage had become, and your lender, bank and your neighbour's pension fund are all looking at losses. Things look really bad, right?
Wrong. for here's where the fun begins. Papa Govt., aided by some scathing New York Times editorials, orders a stay on foreclosures, and directs lenders to give you the option of a kinder mortgage rate, which you can pay at your leisure. You can even take your sweet time with the payments, no one will kick you out of your house. Meanwhile, Santa Bernanke decreases interest rates, and allows banks to borrow at a lower rate and keep their crap mortgage securities till the next boom. This way everyone's happy.
Everyone, that is, except that poor pension fund, which invests only in investment grade securities. It cannot unload its securities, the banks will not give it a loan, and its value halves, along with the value of your neighbor's nest egg. So Heinlein was right after all, there IS no such thing as a free lunch for America. Contrary to what the public believes, the greedy get rich and the risk-averse suffer not in a free-market economy, but in a turncoat economy thats capitalist when the goings good and that protects you from any loss when the going's bad.
I guess Indians would get deja vu on reading this, having witnessed countless UTIs and co-operative bank bailouts ourselves...

only in new york...

2007-09-23T18:00:00.000-07:00

On a lazy Sunday morning after a mad booze and puke-filled party the night before, Hema dragged me (along with Samcho and Vikrant, who were crashing at my place) to Union Square as she had an appointment with the hair stylist. While waiting for her, we guys were browsing through the Sale section of the Strand at 12th and Broadway. Most of the books were for a buck, and I was looking at some good ones on american history (have been trying to understand what exactly makes this country so much richer than India, its certainly not the intellect...), when i noticed this handwritten note inside one of the books. Untitled and unsigned, it was likely written by some couple trying to start a family, or could be just a bored co-ed, there was no way of knowing. It was pretty sweet, though. I've reproduced it below, go through it, its a nice read -

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there lived a happy couple called Sandra and Eddie. 'Yes', they said, 'we are very happy', 'But', declared Sandra, 'If we had a baby then we would be the happiest people in the world', and Eddie agreed.
So they set out to get a baby. They wished upon the stars - can you please give us a baby, but they only smiled and twinkled back, 'we are too far away to give you a baby', 'perhaps you can try someone else.'
They followed a rainbow and found a leprechaun sitting on a crock of gold. 'Mr. Lep, can you give us a baby', asked Sandra and Eddie. 'A baby?!' said the leprechaun gruffly, 'I can't give you a baby - I can give you this crock of gold, perhaps you can try the Easter bunny.' But that is not what Sandra and Eddie wanted, a crock of gold is not a baby. So off they went and asked the Easter bunny 'Mr. Easter bunny can you please give us a baby'. 'A Baby?', said the Easter bunny twitching its nose, 'I can't give you a baby - I can give an Easter egg perhaps you can try the stork.'
So off went Sandra and Eddie and asked the stork, 'Mr Stork can you give us a baby?'. 'A baby', said the stork peering down his glasses, 'I can't give you a baby, its thanksgiving and I am on my way to Florida, its far too cold here. Perhaps when I get back I can give you a baby'. 'But we want one this year', cried Sandra and Eddie.
Poor poor Sandra and Eddie, they were so sad. 'Now what do we do?' asked Sandra, 'Its almost Christmas and we have no baby.' Then Eddie had an idea, 'I know, lets write a letter to Santa Claus...

And there it ended, evidently incomplete. Extremely cheesy, but it struck a chord with my dehydrated, hungover, post-pukescent brain... I showed it to Samcho, he liked it too. I gave the parchment to Vikrant to read, he glanced over it, murmured something inaudible and went back to a book on automobiles that he had unearthed from the junk...Just then the missus came out with no apparent change in hair length or texture (in fact, it seemed as if her hair had magically grown longer), and asked, 'hows my hair?' After the obligatory comments on how they make her look thin, smart, sexy, young, successful and so 'New York', I eagerly gave her the piece of paper to read...'See what I found!' She took it from my hands, went through it slowly, and as always, had the last word...'But why didn't they just have sex?'...

veni, vidi...and i'm back for more

2007-09-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

So here I am, back at the drawing board, trying to make sense of my life in the big, bad city of New York. A lot of things have happened in the interim. I started my new job as a business analyst at the Prime Brokerage/Securities Lending arm of a major bank at Wall St (for the uninitiated, thats the division where banks trde and borrow stocks for hedge funds). The hours are definitely crazier, what with me having to reach office at 7:30 am, and staying till atleast 6/7 pm. Hence the delay in putting down any random gyan in the old blog...

Meanwhile, life goes on...Another government learns (again!) that give a man a loan, and you get a global sub-prime mortgage crisis. The average citizen, meanwhile, learns (again!) that greed is good, as long as a large enough number of people are greedy. You always have the govt. to bail you out during those annoying foreclosures. In the middle of all this, Wall St, of course, sells crap with an investment grade rating and gets another 50 basis points off the fed funds rate by Santa Bernanke. (Read this article for more - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119016992710232040.html?mod=googlenews_wsj )
Alan Greenspan starts speaking to people who have not paid 50 grand to hear him, once again, and this time, somebody actually manages to translate him into English and bring out the most eagerly awaited book of the year (read the review http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book17sep17,0,3146931.story?coll=la-home-center )
A couple in delhi manufacture (don't ask how) babies from 12 yr old girls that they kidnap, then sell the babies. (see http://www.ibnlive.com/news/impact-police-arrests-delhis-baby-traders/47977-3.html)
Ram Gopal Verma manages to commit sacrilege all over again by daring to reinvent what is arguably the best hindi movie of all time, while the Big B indulges in his late life crisis....
Oprah cosies up to Obama (sorry Bill, my heart might beat for you but my purse opens for my fellow Chicagoan). SRK gets abs while Britney loses hers (along with her mind, and maybe her kids)...A beauty queen in North Carolina presents her credentials to become the next president of the United States, Vikram flatters to deceive in Bheema, while he just might redeem himself in Kandasamy ( this last re:tam movies, for everyone else)
Yep, life as know it, goes on...faster than I can even muse about it...but I'm gonna try, by God...and this time, a bit more regularly. So for the few stoned slackers who actually read my bilge (Jon Stewart, love u man)... heres the scoop...I'm back, and I'm worse than before...

Advice to Young Men from an Old Man (Excerpted from a former Marine’s post in Best of Craigslist)

2007-07-25T14:23:00.000-07:00

See the original article in http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/279126743.html
1. Don’t pick on the weak. It’s immoral. Don’t antagonize the strong without cause, its stupid.
2. Don’t hate women. It’s a waste of time
3. Invest in yourself. Material things come to those that have self actualized.
4. Get in a fistfight, even if you are going to lose.
5. As a former Marine, take it from me. Don’t join the military, unless you want to risk getting your balls blown off to secure other people’s economic or political interests.
6. If something has a direct benefit to an individual or a class of people, and a theoretical, abstract, or amorphous benefit to everybody else, realize that the proponent’s intentions are to benefit the former, not the latter, no matter what bullshit they try to feed you.
7. Don’t take proffered advice without a critical analysis. 90% of all advice is intended to benefit the proponent, not the recipient. Actually, the number is probably closer to 97%, but I don’t want to come off as cynical.
8. You’ll spend your entire life listening to people tell you how much you owe them. You don’t owe the vast majority of people shit.
9. Don’t undermine your fellow young men. Mentor the young men that come after you. Society recognizes that you have the potential to be the most power force in society. It scares them. Society does not find young men sympathetic. They are afraid of you, both individually and collectively. Law enforcement’s primary purpose is to suppress you.
10. Young men provide the genius and muscle by which our society thrives. Look at the Silicon Valley. By and large, it was not old men that created the revolution we live. Realize that society steals your contributions, secures it with our intellectual property laws, and then takes credit and the rewards where none is due.
11. Know that few people have your best interests at heart. Your mother does. Your father probably does (if he stuck around). Your siblings are on your side. Everybody else worries about themselves.
12. Don’t be afraid to tell people to “Fuck off” when need be. It is an important skill to acquire. As they say, speak your piece, even if your voice shakes.
13. Acquire empathy, good interpersonal skills, and confidence. Learn to read body language and non-verbal communication. Don’t just concentrate on your vocational or technical skills, or you’ll find your wife fucking somebody else.
14. Keep fit.
15. Don’t speak ill of your wife/girlfriend. Back her up against the world, even if she’s wrong. She should know that you have her back. When she needs your help, give it. She should know that you’ll take her part.
16. Don’t cheat on your wife/girlfriend. If you must cheat, don’t humiliate her. Don’t risk having your transgressions come back to her or her friends. Don’t do it where you live. Don’t do it with people in your social circle. Don’t shit in your own back yard.
17. If your girlfriend doesn’t make you feel good about yourself and bring joy to your life, fire her. That’s what girlfriends are for.
18. Don’t bother with “emotional affairs.” They are just a vehicle for women to flirt and have someone make them feel good about themselves. That’s the part of a relationship they want. For you it is a lot of work and investment in time. If they are having an emotional affair with you, they’re probably fucking someone else.
19. Becoming a woman’s friend and confidant is not going to get you into an intimate relationship. If you haven’t gotten the girl within a reasonably short period of time, chances are you won’t ever get her. She’ll end up confiding to you about the sexual adventures she’s having with someone else.
20. Have and nurture friendships with women.
21. Realize that love is a numbers game. Guys fall in love easily. You’re going to see some girl and feel like you’ll die if you don’t get her. If she rejects you, move on to the next one. It’s her loss.
22. Don’t be an internet troll. Got out and live life. There is not a cadre of beautiful women advertising on Craigslist to have NSA sex with you. Beautiful women don’t need to advertise. The websites that advertise with attractive women’s photos and claims of loneliness are baloney. All they want is your money and your personal information so that they can market to you. The posts on Craigslist by young “women” seeking NSA sex, and asking for a picture are just a bunch of gay troll pic collectors. This is especially true if the post uses common gay lexicon like “hole” as in “fuck my hole” or seeks “masculine” men, or uses the word cock (except in the context of “Don’t send a cock shot.”) There are women on Craigslist. They are easily recognizable by their 2-5 paragraph postings. Most are in their 30's or older.
23. Don’t gay bash. Don’t mentally or physically abuse people because of who they are, or how they present themselves. It’s none of your business to try to intimidate people into conformity.
24. If you’re gay, admit it to yourself, your parents, your friends and society at large. Be prepared to get harassed. If someone threatens you or assaults you, call the cops. Have them arrested. You have no obligation to self sacrifice because of who you are. As a gay person, you’ll have more social freedom than straight men. Use it to protect yourself. Be prepared to get out of Dodge if your orientation makes your life unbearable. Move to San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, or New Orleans. You’ll find a welcoming community there.
25. Don’t be a poser. Avoid being one of those dudes who puts a surfboard on top of their car, but never surfs, or a dude with a powder coated fixed gear bike and a messenger bag, but was never a messenger. Live the life. Earn your bona fides.
26. Remember, 97% of all advice is worthless. Take what you can use, and trash the rest.

the wife and the parents - aggregate at your own risk

2007-07-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

This June, my parents were visiting the US for the first time. As any son should be, I was happy, and full of plans for them to see this great city, and this great country. As any daughter-in-law should be, my wife was screwed.
But before I begin to explain why, let me tell you something about my family.
Consider this, Friday morning in Manhattan, my mother is planning on what to eat for the day, as both my parents fast that day, and eat strictly vegetarian food. My father is using Google Maps to figure out the best way to go to the Flushing Ganesha temple.
My wife, on the other hand, is getting ready to go to school, and afterwards, she'll come back, sleep for a bit, and get up at 10 pm, and we'll go out to the East Village, where a good time will be had by all. If u see a slim, 5'4'' girl dancing on top of a table in a pub at 3 am, that's my wife.

Now I hope u guys realize that these are two kinds of people that rarely ever mix, and if they do, in the immortal words of Russell Peters - Somebody gonna get hurt (in this case, me). What with the incessant grumbling of my wife over curious non-vegetarian smells coming from the kitchen (my parents eat non-veg except on the 'fasting' days), the subtle comments of my dad about the disorder and immaturity of my life, and my mother's solemn resignation of her fate and the fact that her son suddenly is refusing to eat her rice and sambar (i'm trying not to eat carbs, u see), LIFE, as I knew it, sucked.

However, now that I reflect, there were some good times that we had, when we went out as a family, when we went out to dinner or to a movie, and when my parents managed to strike a conversation with my wife. And ultimately, I guess, a little tension is the price you pay for having 2 generations under one roof.
Also, if any of you have parents, or relatives visiting from your motherland, I can now give you tips on how to handle them, and your spouse...

the generation gap revisited

2007-06-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

Today (well, technically yesterday, its 1:30 am right now), was the day I realized that my generation is the last one to have used - a typewriter, a pager(actually the only generation), a floppy disk, the VCR (again the only generation), and a two-stroke bike (add others if you can think of any). Makes you wonder, as technology grows at such pace, how many of these innovations will really be consistent, rather than being transient, like the pager.
Case in point - the VCR. Its really an incremental way to record and disseminate information. It was the logical step from the tape recorder, for aural information. The analog technology to capture audio/video on magnetic tape was considered revolutionary. and yet, in barely 30 years, the digital disc technology has completely annihilated any market share of tape.
The question is - should the credit go to digital CD technology for being so huge, so disruptive that it finished the VCR (and the boombox)? Or was the VCR simply a transient innovation that was given more than its due when it came out? These are questions that might not be answered for the next 100 years, when hopefully mankind will be able to figure out the perfect A.V. storage technology.

Anyhoo, coming back to the generation gap, I remember a conversation that I had with one of my managers at Kanbay, Sudeep Nadkarni (he's 5 yrs older than me). I consider him (along with Kartik, my other manager at Kanbay) as my mentor, and the point he made was pertinent - 'In these times, the generation gap is no longer the time it takes between generations, (i.e., around 20 years). Its more the information gap between individuals with a difference of not more than 5 years. The world is changing ever so fast, that I (Sudeep) consider myself to be a different generation from you (Subbu), as you would be in a different generation from the fresh engineer who joins Kanbay. '
Indeed, how true...see if you can find one common point of interest in the conversation with any occupant in one of the cafes in Bhandarkar Rd (Pune), Brigade Rd (Bangalore), Kamla Ngr Mkt (N Delhi), Damen (Chicago) or Williamsburg (Brooklyn). BTW, these are the places where the young 'uns congregate.

Is God afraid of women?

2007-05-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

Whats the deal with organized religion and women? Check out any major religion. and the following things are true across the board -
1. The concept of original sin - the woman is supposed to have brought man down from god's pedestal. Hence the religious explanation of menstrual pain and pregnancy.
2. the sanctity of childbirth, the uncleanliness of menstruation, and the underlying paradox - Even today, Chennai in India to Kansas in the USA, women are not supposed to enter a place of worship (church, temple, mosque, u name it) during their menstrual period, notwithstanding the fact that the fluid that the woman casts out every month is the only thing in this world capable of creating another human form.
3. the concept of woman as an object of desire, distraction and evil - any religion you take, the woman is the one who seems to be the cause of distracting man from his purpose, never mind the fact that the bugger had no business getting distracted in the first place.
4. Sex - Do it 'coz you have to, but you cant enjoy it, thats bad - Anyone who is not a virgin would know that in sexual energy and passion, men are woefully inadequate in front of women. Sex, for a man, is but another way of marking a conquest, but its the most enjoyable thing in the world for a woman. No wonder, then, that in any organized religion sex is considered impure except when done for the express intent to produce offspring, and abstaining is considered a path to greatness.
The curious thing is, all the so-called 'pagan' religions, like the adivasi beliefs in india, the aborigine and native-american beliefs, and pre-christian beliefs in Europe, worshipped woman. All their rituals, all processions, and functions were held in praise of the female form. These are the guys who are ridiculed today as being backward and primitive.
My premise is that organized religion, whether its hinduism, christianity, islam, judaism, or the parsis, was created with the express intent to control women, and to curb sexual thought and freedom. And it seems to have worked. worse still, women themselves have bought into it, and are the most strident followers.

I refuse to tiptoe quietly through life only to arrive safely at death

2007-05-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

Should we be on a never ending quest for that perfect job, the perfect relationship, a perfect life? Should a guy (like me) who gets real frustrated with his job real fast, be praised for not settling for less, or reviled for not being stable enough? Is Elizabeth Taylor just a selfish bitch for marrying half of America, or is she a beacon for those who seek true love? When, and how, do you decide, this is what i want from life? and are you a pussy for making that decision and stopping your quest?

Diary of a lost soul

2007-05-25T11:12:00.000-07:00

When life trips you up and grinds your face to the dust, be happy...atleast you will have the getting up to look forward to. Imagine if you never fell, never tasted the dust...but never rose either, just crawled through life with bent back and drooping shoulders, praying that you might have the balls to fall, or the luck to rise, but ending up with neither.Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever felt like chucking it all? Did you ever dare to think that you should actually look forward to your next day at work? Do you actually crawl through life, waiting for the next promotion, next relationship, or next vacation to fool you into thinking that anyone cares a damn about you, that more than 2 people will actually remember you for more than 2 seconds after you die?If yes, then welcome to my world. If no, then you are fooling yourself, and you can always comment here and tell me why i'm wrong...

racist? who, me?

2007-02-18T22:40:00.000-08:00

I'm an indian living and working in New York City, that great melting pot of races...and i wish to clarify what i perceive is a mistaken premise that people of anyther nation/color/race are more racist than Indians - Any indian traveling internationally will tell you that its the indians who are the most racist of all - 1. from the snooty gujju attendants at Heathrow airport who flirt and fawn over any 'gora' while studiously ignoring any indian, and being openly hostile towards any hapless african-american/chinese-american2. to the indian/bangladeshi NYC cabbie who doesnt stop for any non-white passenger3. to the 'upscale' desi nightclubs and restaurants in NYC that allow a native new yorker in sneakers and torn jeans but requires indians to brave the withering look and wear trousers and shoes
we are, quite simply, wired to believe that we are inferior, and our mission in life, is to somehow wash off our skin, and become whiter and be accepted by the whites.
Sadly, we do not understand that its not their skin color that makes the caucasian race (supposedly)superior, but their sense of individuality, discipline, communication skills, initiative and respect for other's rights. Thats why the same indians who spend the whole day trying to court whites go back to their own gujju/tambi/gulti/punju/mallu community apartment blocks, their habits of not cleaning up after them (witness Journal Square in NJ, Devon Street in Chicago, Little India in Singapore, or the indian parts of London), their habits of breaking the line, crowding the subway, and mismanaging body odor.
I'm an indian who has been in the US for only 18 months, and I have learnt that everyone in the world respects talent, diligence, discipline, and cleanliness. I've worked (or know people who work) in the biggest banks to the smallest donut shops in the East Coast and the Midwest in the US, and any south asian will vouch for the fact that the americans respect hard work and forthrightness (and cleanliness).
Its a combination of lack of self-esteem on part of indians and a tendency to band into their own groups instead of integrating into the mainstream that causes perceived racism, not any evil whites.

another one bites the dust

2007-01-31T15:24:00.000-08:00

Finally, after months of procrastination, here i am with a blog of my own...lookie here for news on new york, life, marraige, and married life in new york