Spices and Green Chile

What My Father Taught Me : Mike Rowe

2013-06-05T10:00:00.000-04:00

Interesting article by Mike Rowe, with quotes from Einstein ("People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.") and a Robert Frost poem.

Twitter, the menace

2013-06-03T19:59:00.004-04:00

Turkey's PM Erdagon calls Twitter the worst menace to society.

Jobs in India

2013-05-30T23:01:00.000-04:00

Interesting outsourcing:

At North Shore University Hospital on Long Island, motion sensors, like those used for burglar alarms, go off every time someone enters an intensive care room. The sensor triggers a video camera, which transmits its images halfway around the world to India, where workers are checking to see if doctors and nurses are performing a critical procedure: washing their hands.

That is from here. Interesting to see NYT talking about big-brotherish approaches. This statement is buried deep in the article.

But the incentive to do something is strong: under new federal rules, hospitals will lose Medicare money when patients get preventable infections.

The trade-off is between monitoring workers or losing the medicare money.

Cicada Curry or Cicada Cocktail

2013-05-27T23:48:00.000-04:00

... which one will be more appropriate for eating the loud insects ? May be the spices in the curry will help ? May be just a fry ? How about some green chile ? Stop, do not eat them without talking to your doctor.

The need for sexual revolution in India

2013-05-27T17:50:00.000-04:00

Shika Dalmia of WSJ argues for a sexual revolution in India. Not in the usual way, she wants more freedom to have sex before marriage. The key parts of the argument:

Today the average marriage age in India has risen to 22 for women and 26 for men. Yet virginity and chastity—especially for women, but also men—remain prized virtues.

Unlike rape and sex-selective abortion, which represent a genuine devaluing of women, sexual harassment in India is, I believe, an expression not of the power of Indian men but of their helplessness. It's a pathetic attempt to have a sexual encounter, no matter how meaningless and evanescent. Its real cause is free-floating male libido with no socially acceptable outlet.

What would work? Nothing short of transforming India's puritanical culture and giving men and women more freedom to forge sexually mature relationships outside of marriage.

Very interesting argument. The downside however is the keyword in the last line: "mature". There is no model for this. She touches upon the problem:

But the process will take generations. Given India's starting point in ancient traditions, one can hope that it will result in a balance healthier than what has unfolded in the over-sexualized West.

It will be an interesting study to plot how the incidence of rape relates to average age of marriage.

Metamorphis of a Cicada

2013-05-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

Awesome time lapse video of Cicadas.

Found it here.

RIP : TMS

2013-05-26T11:55:00.003-04:00

T. M. Soundararajan is no more. What is the first song that will come to your mind when thinking about TMS ? To me it is the sound of "Murugaaaa.... ". May be because of being raised in Palani and listening to it almost all the time.

Messing with the Peeing Boy Statue

2013-05-19T21:33:00.002-04:00

Brussels doesn't like people messing with their statue. The quote from the artist who place his own statue before the original peeing boy:

Let's face it. Belgium is a boring little country. And Brussels is a boring city. Filled with boring tourists.

In the center of Brussels there is a horrible little statue. A small pissing boy. Where the tourists gather.

What would happen if we changed the horrible little statue for something beautiful?

Like a statue of Petro. Would the tourists even notice?

58% of public pools have fecal matter in them

2013-05-18T19:39:00.002-04:00

CDC study finds 58% of public pools have fecal matter in them ! $hit !

Sorry State of India

2013-05-17T08:57:00.000-04:00

India is the among least diverse countries and among the worst countries to be a mother. And the focus is on installing a statue for Tamil Annai.

The next step in college education

2013-05-16T00:04:00.002-04:00

Georgia Tech (with Udacity) is offering a $6600 Masters degree in Computer Science. That is cheaper than a Bachelor's degree in a private engineering college in India. Great ! Now the in class degree has to have some differentiation for the $40,000 price tag.

How to cut lines in Disneyland : for the 1%

2013-05-15T23:49:00.001-04:00

Some Manhattan moms and some entrepreneurial people figure out how to exploit the disabled lines. Just to circumvent the infamous Disneyland lines and the speedpass options that takes 45 minutes. Note that it costs $130 an hour.

Reminds me of all the tricks I used to do in the lines to get water, train tickets and rajini movie tickets on Diwali day.

Walking away

2013-05-15T00:07:00.000-04:00

Waking away is not easy. Can you sell Satyam shares when it crashed by 50% on a single day ? Or do you buy more in the hope of averaging ?

Leave Satyam, how about Gold ?

It appears promotion focus will help you walk away. Forget what you lose, think about what you gain.

A Statue for "Mother Tamil"

2013-05-14T21:39:00.001-04:00

Why ? Of all the things one could do why would one would install a statue for "Mother Tamil" ? At least the three awards announced were more meaningful than the statue erecting stuff:

Three new awards – one for translating Tamil literature into other languages; another for lifetime contribution to Tamil and Tamil literature and the third for promotion of Tamil computing – were instituted.

Criminal waste of resources.

Cabe TV pricing

2013-05-11T11:29:00.001-04:00

John McCain wants a la carte cable TV. Pay for the channels that you want. I don't need CNN or Bravo or TBS or AMC. Makes sense, right ?

There was a discussion on why a la carte cable TV doesn't necessarily end up reducing the price for consumers in the link in this post.

Vishwaroopam

2013-05-09T23:51:00.003-04:00

Vamana Avataram.

Wringing out water in space

2013-04-30T02:10:00.001-04:00

What happens if you wring out water from a wet cloth ?

Statements that turned out to be true

2013-04-28T22:02:00.000-04:00

The joke in this post about Westbrook and Durant turned out to be true. Westbrook is out for the season and Durant score 39 points in a quarter. The chances of OKC to overcome the spurs is low now, still I will root for them.

President Bush in the news

2013-04-27T17:46:00.002-04:00

Couple of articles that caught my eyes

President Bush is smarter than you.

President Bush's passion for paintings.

Playoffs !

2013-04-23T09:51:00.001-04:00

Well, the only NBA player who can hold Kevin Durant under 30 points a game is Russell Westbrook. More like that in the link. It is going to be OKC this year !

Iron Lady is gone

2013-04-08T10:57:00.000-04:00

Margaret Thatcher is dead. The most memorable video of her arguing against socialism:

Something that made me read about income gap.

Writing Style : Illegal Immigration

2013-04-04T00:15:00.000-04:00

AP is changing its style book to remove "illegal immigrant" or "illegals". The explanation:

The new section on mental health issues argues for using credibly sourced diagnoses instead of labels. Saying someone was “diagnosed with schizophrenia” instead of schizophrenic, for example.

And that discussion about labeling people, instead of behavior, led us back to “illegal immigrant” again.

We concluded that to be consistent, we needed to change our guidance.

So we have.

May be we can revise judge to be just a verb and use "a person who has the authority to judge" for someone !

Jay Leno's suggested term : "Undocumented democrats" .

John Stuart Mill

2013-04-02T20:00:00.000-04:00

A search for little philosopher lead to reading about a philosopher from a different century - John Stuart Mill. An interesting letter written by him when he was a six year old:

My dear Sir,
Mr. Walker ³ is a very intimate friend of mine, who lives at No. 31 in Berkeley Square. I have engaged him, as he is soon coming here, first to go to your house, and get for me the 3.^d and 4.^th volumes of Hooke’s Roman history.⁴ But I am recapitulating⁵ the 1.^st and 2.^d volumes, having finished them all except a few pages of the 2.^d. I will be glad if you will let him have the 3.^d and 4.^th volumes.

I am yours sincerely

John Stuart Mill.

John Stuart Mill was trained rigorously by his father. Compare that to the little philosopher from Washington suburb, who they say is not trained at all.

New map of the US (based on dollar bills)

2013-04-01T10:50:00.000-04:00

Here is a new map of the US based on dollar bill mobility.

Makes complete sense why I get strange looks when I say I like OKC and not the Mavericks. Still, New Mexico is a loner.

Little Philosopher in Washington

2013-03-30T20:51:00.001-04:00

Perspective of a 9 year old

"I think there are a lot of kids who think about interesting things," Zia says. "It's my guess no one really asks them about it."