Blog of Parag

Spring is here...

Signs of spring have been around for quite some time. But, it took 2 days of almost 80F heat to coax these redbud buds to finally bloom. We planted this tree last year after Ashwini's birth. It is good to see that it survived the winter successfully and growing as well as Ashwini is. The redbud flowers are so pink and delicious, but, unfortunately, they don't have any fragrance.

Goodbye, Bob Edwards :(

I hope all of you NPR fans listened to "Morning Edition" this morning. Today was Bob Edwards' last day on the show. Here is a nice article in the Washington Post about him moving on with life after "Morning Edition". I sure will miss Bob, who has been a part of my mornings for a long time. Hopefully, this doesn't drive me to listening to Howard Stern every morning. ;)

In automotive world, today marks the end of an icon. Last Oldsmobile ever will be rolled off the assembly line today.

Guess what this is...

This is Venus from last night. Being an internal planet, we can see a cresent of Venus just like the Moon.

Here are some pictures I took in the same session. A closeup of Moon.

Jupiter with two of its Galilean moons.

A pot of gold

Saw this pot of gold in the backyard this morning. It disappeared by the time I got out to pick it up.

What went wrong in Iraq?

A quick and short analysis by Paul Krugman of The New York Times.

the administration handed out contracts without
competitive bidding or even minimal oversight. It also
systematically blocked proposals to have Congressional
auditors oversee spending, or to impose severe penalties
for fraud.

Here is the full text of the interesting article...

What Went Wrong?

April 23, 2004
By PAUL KRUGMAN

On April 11 of last year, just after U.S. forces took
Baghdad, I warned that the Bush administration had a
"pattern of conquest followed by malign neglect," and that
the same was likely to happen in Iraq. I'm sorry to say
those worries proved justified.

It's now widely accepted that the administration "failed
dismally to prepare for the security and nation-building
missions in Iraq," to quote Anthony Cordesman of the Center
for Strategic and International Studies - not heretofore
known as a Bush basher. Just as experts on peacekeeping
predicted before the war, the invading force was grossly
inadequate to maintain postwar security. And this problem
was compounded by a chain of blunders: doing nothing to
stop the postwar looting, disbanding the Iraqi Army,
canceling local elections, appointing an interim council
dominated by exiles with no political base and excluding
important domestic groups.

The lesson of the last few weeks is that the occupation has
never recovered from those early errors. The insurgency,
which began during those early months of chaos, has spread.
Iraqi security forces have walked off their jobs, or turned
against us. Attacks on convoys have multiplied, major roads
have been closed, and reconstruction has slowed where it
hasn't stopped. Deteriorating security prevents progress,
lack of progress feeds popular disillusionment, and
disillusionment feeds the insurgency.

Why was it predictable that Iraq would go wrong? The
squandered victory in Afghanistan was an obvious precedent.
But the character flaws in the Bush administration that led
to the present crisis were fully visible in the months that
followed 9/11.

It quickly became apparent that President Bush, while
willing to spend vast sums on the military, wasn't willing
to spend enough on security. And 9/11 didn't shake the
administration's fanatical commitment to privatization and
outsourcing, in which free-market ideology is inextricably
mixed with eagerness to protect and reward corporate
friends.

Sure enough, the administration was unprepared for
predictable security problems in Iraq, but moved quickly -
in violation of international law - to impose its economic
vision. Last month Jay Garner, the first U.S. administrator
of Iraq, told the BBC that he was sacked in part because he
wanted to hold quick elections. His superiors wanted to
privatize Iraqi industries first - as part of a plan that,
according to Mr. Garner, was drawn up in late 2001.

Meanwhile, the administration handed out contracts without
competitive bidding or even minimal oversight. It also
systematically blocked proposals to have Congressional
auditors oversee spending, or to impose severe penalties
for fraud.

Cronyism and corruption are major factors in Iraq's
downward spiral. This week the public radio program
"Marketplace" is running a series titled "The Spoils of
War," which documents a level of corruption in Iraq worse
than even harsh critics had suspected. The waste of money,
though it may run into the billions, is arguably the least
of it - though military expenses are now $4.7 billion a
month. The administration, true to form, is trying to hide
the need for more money until after the election; Mr.
Cordesman predicts that Iraq will need "in excess of $50-70
billion a year for probably two fiscal years."

More important, the "Marketplace" report confirms what is
being widely reported: that the common view in Iraq is that
members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council are using
their positions to enrich themselves, and that U.S.
companies are doing the same. President Bush's idealistic
language may be persuasive to Americans, but many Iraqis
see U.S. forces as there to back a corrupt regime, not
democracy.

Now what? There's a growing sense of foreboding, even
panic, about Iraq among national security experts. "This is
an extremely uncertain struggle," says Mr. Cordesman, who,
to his credit, also says the unsayable: we may not be able
to "stay the course." But yesterday Condoleezza Rice gave
Republican lawmakers what Senator Rick Santorum called "a
very upbeat report."

That's very bad news. The mess in Iraq was created by
officials who believed what they wanted to believe, and
ignored awkward facts. It seems they have learned
nothing.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

Violet

Proper punctuation, please!

Update:Started reading it yesterday. It is hillarious. A must read for everyone.

Heard on NPR:

Lynne Truss, writer, journalist and advocate of proper punctuation, has come to rescue us from the misplaced comma. In her book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Truss shows how an improper punctuation mark can make all the difference. Unearthing examples of bizarre and careless errors through the ages, this narrative history also shares witty teasers and ambiguous phrases, all entirely dependent on the punctuation.

I couldn't catch her whole interview, but, this example about missing apostrophes was quite funny. She mentioned that people are losing proper writing skills due to overusage of emails. Here is what happens if you drop an apostrophe:

Those old things over there are my husband(')s.