Blog of Parag

Happy New Year!

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year. Best wishes for Gudhi Padva / Ugadhi.

Photochallenge winner

My photo received the most votes and was the winner of Photochallenge #158. Yay!

Customer service

My last two phone calls for customer service were extremely pleasant. Didn't have to go through a maze of voice-prompts, wasn't put on hold for long, the person took care of my concern without any hesitation and I was done in 3 minutes from the time I started dialing the phone.

Wish it works like this every time for every thing.

Quest for a cure

Ever wondered ...
- how a drug is discovered?
- how much research ends in failures before one drug is discovered?
- how much money is spent in bringing a drug to market?

BBC reporter Peter Day followed research and development of a HIV/AIDS drug for several years to make this story. This drug, Maraviroc, a CCR5 inhibitor, is very close to being approved for use. It was discovered that people with a mutated form of CCR5 don't get infected with HIV and develop AIDS. That led to an idea to target this chemokine receptor for HIV therapy. It is a very interesting story.

Quest for a cure is being presented in 3 parts, each 30 minutes long. Here is a link to the first episode that was brodcasted last Monday. This post will be updated to include links to the future audio programs.

Eating an apple

After eating so many apples over so many years, it took someone to point out the following obvious fact...

The best part of an apple is the end farthest away from the stem. It is the sweetest and the most flavorful part.

After reading this, you'll notice this next time you chomp into an apple and wonder how you missed it before.

Nothing new

In the last test match againast England, India did what it knows best.... crumble under pressure. Nothing new about it.

Don't mess with ecology

It is very common to introduce a certain species of plant or animal to control the problem of overgrowth of another species. Sometimes, it backfires badly. Here is an example of such incident.

The invasive weed Centaurea maculosa (spotted knapweed) has become widespread in North America. Gall flies (Urophora spp.) have been introduced in an attempt at biological control of the plant. The gall flies lay their eggs in the flower heads, where the larvae induce the formation of galls in which they overwinter. The presence of the galls ultimately results in the plants producing fewer seeds. Although the flies have successfully dispersed throughout populations of the invasive weed, they have not proved to be effective control agents, and the weed continues to spread, particularly in areas disturbed by human activity.

Pearson and Callaway have discovered that therein lies a deeper threat. The fly grubs have proved to be an attractive food source for Peromyscus (deer) mice and bolster mouse populations during otherwise lean winter months. This genus of mice are reservoir hosts for the human pathogenic hantavirus, Sin Nombre, and, worryingly, the authors found that the abundance of Hantavirus-seropositive mice is elevated in zones of high abundance of weed and flies. Deer mice also act as reservoir hosts for Lyme disease and potentially for plague and other zoonotic pathogens.

Ref: Ecol. Lett. 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.00896.x (2006)

Maybe, it is better to leave it to the environment and nature to take care of itself.

Options trading

My first foray into options trading. I had selected Kohl's (KSS) for investing after doing some research on 'retail-stores' sector. The prospects for Kohl's look good for the next 12-18 months. Instead of buying stock, I decided to give a try to options investing. You can get a bigger bang for your buck (better % return) with options. The details of this can be found on various options websites around the net.

In February, I bought a call option (OSSAJ.X) for strike price of $50 expiring in Jan 2007. It was priced at $4.50 and now it is $6.70. That is 44% up in just over 1 month after commissions. I'll probably sell it in the early 4th quarter of 2006, hopefully, for even better profit. After this positive experience (at least till today) I definitely will look for other opportunities to trade options in the future.

Salaam - Namaste

Our first movie of the year was Salaam - Namaste. I was at home sick with flu-like symptoms. So, while working on taxes, we decided to watch the movie. The subject matter was quite interesting and the main story was presented quite alright. It was a good change from usual movies with no parental involvment for both leading characters. Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta acted pretty well without any overacting.

I was almost ready to forgive all the stupidity with the Bihari Crocodile Dundee, the Malayalee Radio station-owner and the Bangladeshi restaurant-owner, but the filmmakers just pushed me over the edge with "Ben and Jerry's Dark Belgian Chocolate ice cream". Why don't they do a little bit of research? Don't they know that there is no such ice cream made by Ben&Jerry. I didn't just depend on my vast knowledge of this ice cream brand, but I went to their website and also searched the internet extensively just to make sure.

If they were going to mention it in the movie 20 times, at least they should have made sure that it exists. There are many fine flavors such as "Chunky Monkey", "Coffee Heath Bar Crunch" or "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough", just to name a few, that could have done the trick. But, nooooo. The morons had to piss me off. Now, a fine movie by Bollywood standards, will always be remembered as the movie that got a "Ben and Jerry's" flavor wrong. Idiots!!! Also, Preity Zinta's attempt at reproducing Meg Ryan's restaurant eating scene from "When Harry met Sally" fell flat on its face. Preity needs to study that movie a little more. Or, maybe I was just too upset with the ice cream flavor fiasco at that time to notice Preity's fine performance.

Sarah Vowell

Currently, I am listening to Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot. I first listened to Sarah on the NPR show, This American Life. She has a very peculiar voice and a unique style of talking. Some poeple absolutely hate it, but others like it very much. I am from the second category and I like het writing as well. Here is a passage from the book, which is typical of her writing. This exemplifies why I like her. Some of you'll like it, too. Being a history buff, this is what she thinks when she sees Starbucks Mocha.

The more history I learn, the more the world fills up with stories. Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey caffe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bitter-sweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention and consumerism served with whipped cream on top. No wonder it costs so much. And, thanks to Sophie and Michael Coe's book The True History of Chocolate, I remembered that cacao beans were used as currency at the moment of European contact. When Christopher Columbus's son Ferdinand captured a Mayan canoe in 1503, he noticed that whenever one of the natives dropped a cacao bean, "they all stooped to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen." When you know such trivia, an act as mundane as having an overpriced breakfast drink becomes imbued with meaning, even poetry. Plus, I read a women's magazine article called "5 Fabulous Morning Rituals," and it said that after you "bask in bed" and "walk in nature" you're supposed to "ponder the sins of the conquistadors."

True Friendship: Forwarded email

It is not very often that something good arrives as a forwarded email. This one really made my day.

Click below to read it....

True Friendship

Are you tired of those sissy-ass "friendship" poems that always sound good, but never actually come close to reality? Well, here is a series of promises that actually speak of true friendship:

1. When you are sad -- I will help you get drunk and plot revenge against the sorry bastard who made you sad.

2. When you are blue -- I will try to dislodge whatever is choking you.

3. When you smile -- I will know you finally got laid.

4. When you are scared -- I will rag on you about it every chance I get.

5. When you are worried -- I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be until you quit whining.

6. When you are confused -- I will use little words.

7. When you are sick -- Stay the hell away from me until you are well again. I don't want whatever you have.

8. When you fall - I will point and laugh at your clumsy ass.

Remember......A good friend will help you move.....a REALLY good friend will help you move a body.......let me know if you ever need me to bring a shovel.

Friendship is like peeing your pants, everyone can see it, but only you can feel the true warmth.

Dabhol Power Company

Finally, the white elephant of Dabhol will start to do some work. It will definitely be a second round of economic revival for the whole area of Guhagar and adjoining villages. Excellent!

Ratnagiri to start power generation by May

Saturn in M44

Lately, Saturn has been sitting in the constellation of Cancer. Last night, I took this photo with my 80-300mm zoom lens to capture Saturn and the Beehive cluster, M44 from Cancer. Few days ago, Saturn was even closer to the cluster, but I couldn't view it due to clouds. Because of its retrograde motion, Saturn will come closer to the cluster again later in the year.

Cool UI

The computer user interface seen in the movie "Minority Report" is close to becoming reality. Check out Multi-Touch Interaction Research from NYU. Make sure you watch the video.

Thanks for the link, Mahesh.