Blog of Parag

Sex: Everywhere we look

These days, it is so difficult to raise kids in a clean environment. We try to keep sex and violence out of the house by not watching much TV. We never put on Fox news, CNN, E!, Discovery or National Geographic channels while the kids are around. But, it seems like the world is hell bent on teaching them about birds and bees. Here are just a couple of examples...

On Saturday, we went to the zoo. It was Adit's first visit. The first ever zoo exhibit that he saw was of "African Wild Dogs". The mommy and daddy wild dogs promptly demonstrated their process of making baby wild dogs.

In Ashwini's Butterfly garden, the caterpillars turned into cocoons and finally metamorphosed into butterflies last Friday. Since yesterday, they have been showing us how to make eggs to make new caterpillars.

Wonder what we will witness next...

Crocs

Crocs: You gotta love 'em
We have two happy users in our house

Acura MDX

My impressions after driving first 1000 miles...

• It is a bloody gas-guzzler. After driving a compact sedan for 10 years, every time I fill up gas is a shock. High gas prices are adding to that. 17 to 19 mpg in the city and 22 mpg on one long mainly highway trip. That is quite pathetic considering what I was used to: 25 in city and 30 on highway. But, I knew what I was getting into when I bought an SUV. No use crying over it.
• I love all the gadgetry, especially the navigation system. It is very cool and an essential tool for every driver. Every car should include this as standard equipment.
• Bose sound system is quite good. In-dash 6 CD changer is very handy. I am also planning to get the dealer to install a iPod link to the sound system. The car came with 3 month subscription to XM satellite radio. I don't plan to extend that. Wasn't impressed by the music channels. Only ones I liked were Deep Tracks (Rock), Public Radio and BBC news. Considering the little amount of time I spend in the car, the monthly subscription is not worth it.
• Built-in bluetooth hands-free phone system rocks.
• The best part of all is that everything in the car works with voice commands: from controlling the A/C to sound system to navigation system. Just talk to the car and ask what you want done. It has some problem with my accent, but I am getting used to saying certain things a certain way for the car to understand. If it fails, I just ask Ashwini to say it, then the car understands. :)
• It runs fairly smoothly. The V6 engine with 253 hp and 5 speed automatic transmission is very quiet and powerful enough for the car. There is some road noise at high speeds, but it is nothing compared to what I was used to with the Jetta.
• I am not very pleased with the aesthetics of the car. The zebra wood accents are just horrendous. Don't know why people like these laminated wood pieces in the cars. To me, they are just unnecessarily expensive and look ugly, just like Paris Hilton. Even the leather interior doesn't look like the same quality as our other cars: VW Jetta and Volvo V70.
• The body doesn't seem as solid as our other cars. The doors are very light comparatively. Hope they have enough strength to withstand a crash.

Overall, I am very impressed with all the electronic gadgetry, engine and the ride. The body and interior is alright, but not great. Hopefully, I'll get used to it in a few months.

Mel

Mel Gibson is such a certifiable asshole.

Face recognition

Followed a link from Urmila's post and used the face recognition software. Used this photo as input and here are the results...

Adit looks like:
Diego Maradona
Hugh Hefner
Forrest Whitaker
Tom Jones

I look like:
Ricky Martin
Guy Pearce
Clark Gable
Sean Bean
Mark Wahlberg
Jon Stewart
Bing Crosby

Conclusion: The face recognition software at this website is a piece of crap.

QOTD

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

--Bertrand Russell

Retirement comes near

1996 VW Jetta GLX: turned over 150,000 miles (240,000 Km) today.

Step-parents

No matter how many times I have heard it, whenever someone refers to "my dad's wife" or "my mom's husband", it takes me a second to figure out what they are saying.

Fortune cookie and Pythagoras

This is what it said at lunch time today:

The future is in your hands. Turn your fate into destiny.

What is the difference between fate and destiny?

Heard on a PBS program last week: Pythagoras, the father of numbers, ran a school to teach mathematics and philosphy. He was very strict about his students' diet. They had to be vegetarian and were not allowed to eat any beans. He believed that whenever someone farts, a part of their soul escapes.

OOPS! Thanks to the chinese food, I just lost some of my soul.

Know your colors

Learnt something new while watching Blue's clues with Ashwini.

Primary colors: Red, Yellow and Blue

red + yellow = orange
red + blue = purple
yellow + blue = green

I knew my colors til this point. Now, here is the new knowledge:

purple + blue = violet
purple + red = magenta
orange + red = vermillion
orange + yellow = marigold
green + yellow = chartreuse
green + blue = aquamarine

Happy New Year!

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

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.

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.

A.Word.A.Day

Today's word from AWAD website:

adit (AD-it) noun

1. Access; entrance; admission.

2. A nearly horizontal passage leading into a mine.

[From Latin aditus (approach, entrance), from adire (to approach), from ire (to go). Ultimately from Indo-European root ei- (to go) that is also the ancestor of words such as exit, transit, circuit, itinerary, and obituary.]

Meaning of Adit

I didn't think 'Adit' was an uncommon name, but have received several queries about its meaning.

Adit: pronounced as ädit, and means
1. The first


2. The Sun

The second meaning is the same as the longer version, Aditya. According to my mother, Adit is the prakrit version of Aditya which is a sanskrit word. We liked the shorter version better.

rare or well-done?

Edible panties: How do you like yours? rare or well-done?

via The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns

Happy Diwali and Halloween

Happy Halloween

Wish you all a very Happy Diwali and a Prosperous New Year!!!

Breast Cancer Awareness

October is "Breast Cancer Awareness Month".

October 21st is "National Mammography Day". Schedule to get a mammogram for yourself or remind your mother, wife, sister, girlfriend, or daughter to do so.

Bonuses for Delphi execs

Delphi Corp., a major car part supplier announced bankruptcy last week. The CEO announced that they want to emerge as a lean and mean company after going through bankruptcy process. On top of massive job cuts and factory closures, they propose to cut the salaries for hourly workers by half and benefits will be cut, too.

At the same time, top 486 executives will receive bonuses (30%-250% of their salary depending on their place in the organisation) amounting to almost $88 million. President Rodney O'Neal would get a total cash bonus of $2.75 million, based on a $1.15 million average salary.

These are the same executives/managers, through their decision-making brought the company to bankruptcy. Does the company really need the same bunch of bozos to run it again?

On the other hand, don't they feel obligated to stay on and get the company through tough time? Where is their integrity and sense of responsibility? Why is any incentive required to keep them around?

In this kind of (greedy) corporate environment, one has to appreciate people like Steve Jobs. When he came back to Apple, the company was in trouble. He salary as CEO was $1 per year. He had a boatload of options, but, they would have been worthless, if he hadn't engineered a turn-around for the company.

The greedy execs of Delphi want to get paid for the mess they created and want to get paid even more for cleaning it up. Such is corporate America.

All the factual information is taken from this article.

Welcome Sujit!

My brother, Sujit has decided to join as another author on this blog. Please welcome him. Here is his first post.

caterpillar -> cocoon -> butterfly

It would have been nice to have a photo accompanying this post, but, unfortunately I don't have any.

A few weeks ago, I had made a post about spotting a very hungry caterpillar in our garden. I was planning to catch one and keep it in a box, but, all I found was a cocoon, a few days later. I put that in a box with some mulch. Placed the box in a cool, moist and dark place. Ashwini and I kept checking the box periodically to check the status of the cocoon. Yesterday, we found that the cocoon was broken and a huge moth with beautiful design on its body sitting in the box. Surprisingly, its wings were quite plain. It wasn't moving and I thought that I killed it. But, when Ashwini and I touched its wings, it started to move. By the time, I could run and grab the camera, it started to flutter and flew away.

The very hungry caterpillar is Ashwini's one of the most favorite books. I was very happy that she got to see the transformation described in the book, in real life. Ashwini was very excited to see the moth fly away. Then, she started making up her own story.

The butterfly came out of the cocoon, flied away... went in the woods to find some friends... they had a chat, ate dinner, played with toys, read books and went to bed.

Disclaimers

Last night, while watching NFL, I saw an ad for CIALIS, one of the erectile dysfunction drugs. They had following disclaimers at the end of the ad:

CIALIS is for those who are healthy enough to have sexual activity. CIALIS does not protect a man or his partner from sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.

Saw the same STD-related disclaimer for the contraceptive pill, too. Are these really needed? Don't people have any common sense? The only reason for these statements to be in the advertisement is those DAMNED LAWYERS.

Why don't they listen?

Update: I don't understand why people are flaming me for writing this post. From my own experience, I can say that Grand Canyon is a very beautiful place to visit and the wilderness makes hiking there, very exciting and dangerous if precautions are not taken. If one fails to respect nature either due to ego and arrogance or sheer ignorance, that person pays a price, sometimes it is a very big price. It doesn't matter who that person is or what s/he has done through rest of their life. If this was ignorance, I could understand the lapse in judgement, but, not following advice from an expert is not excusable. I was really surprised that an intelligent individual who was a post-doctoral fellow in Physics at UCLA would committ such an act. I feel sorry for Xxxx's family for their loss which was unnecessary and could have been easily avoided.

Also, some of my friends are planning a trip to GC. This post is supposed to caution them.

---

Why do people have to be so stupid and pay the ultimate price for their stupidity?

Grand Canyon, AZ Date: July 14, 2005 – A 28-year old man collapsed and died on the Bright Angel Trail yesterday at approximately 5:00 p.m. Xxxx Xxxxxxxx from England and a hiking companion started a rim to river to rim hike yesterday at approximately 7:30 a.m. The two started their hike on the South Kaibab Trail and had hiked to Phantom Ranch near the Colorado river. At Phantom Ranch they talked with a National Park Service (NPS) Interpretive danger and were advised not to begin their hike to the rim until later in the evening due to the extreme temperatures. The temperature at Phantom Ranch in the shade yesterday was reported to be 113 degrees.

Despite the advice the two hikers began hiking back to the South Rim on the Bright Angel Trail by mid to late-afternoon yesterday. They were approximately three miles north of Phantom Ranch in an area known as Devil's Corkscrew when Mr. Xxxxx collapsed. His hiking partner then hiked up to Indian Garden, which is located approximately two miles north of where Xxxx collapsed, to report the incident. He arrived at approximately 5:30 p.m.

National Park Service Search and Rescue Rangers arrived on scene at approximately 6:00 p.m. Mr. Xxxxx had already passed away.

His body was recovered and flown to the South Rim this morning and will be transported to the Coconino County Medical Examiner's Office in Flagstaff, Arizona.

via Canyoncat

two day stubble

This has always bugged me.... What do women find attractive in a man with a two day old stubble? I can understand liking a fully grown proper beard or a clean cut smooth face. But, what is it about this I-am-too-lazy-or-too-stupid-to-shave look?

Buy a Ford

If you are in the market for buying a car, please buy a Ford, and express your disgust towards this discriminatory campaign: BoycottFord.com - Sponsored by American Family Association

QOTD

Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.

via kiruba

A draconian move by the Indian government. Usually, I don't like any bans or laws that ban something. If people are stupid enough to do it, they deserve to die. But, this law, I like. It sure would help to deglamourize smoking among illiterates of India. The literates, who continue to smoke even after knowing the hazard, get no sympathy from me. They deserve to suffer and die.

Hope...

Saw this on a roadside sign yesterday:

Man's way leads to hopeless end
God's way leads to endless hope

Make your choice. But, think about it... what good is just hope if it doesn't realize into something real???

Work/Life balance

Over the last two days, I came across two items in the media that talked about work and life balance. Both are diagonally opposite views. Very interesting...

ONE:

TWO:

An op-ed in NYTimes by Matt Miller. Click on the link below if this one doesn't work.
My favorite quote:

Tell your boss you have to deal with a drinking problem and you'll be fine; say you want more time with your family and you're on the endangered species list.

Listen to My Wife

By MATT MILLER
Published: May 25, 2005

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world," wrote George Bernard Shaw. "The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Or maybe on the unreasonable woman. Take my wife.

Jody - and I mean this in a sweet and not a clinical way - has been in a state of perpetual schizophrenia since our daughter was born. She used to run a company, but she loves being a mom. So she's settled on a string of part-time roles that (in my view, at least) call on a fraction of the skills corporate America spent two decades helping her develop.

Maybe you know a woman (or a few million) like her. It's hardly news that the issue vexing talented people is the struggle to balance their professional lives with time for fulfilling lives outside of work. The shock is that after decades of wrestling with these tradeoffs, the obvious answer is the one everyone has been too skeptical or afraid to explore: changing the way top jobs are structured.

In a world where most people are struggling, the search for "balance" in high-powered jobs has to be counted a luxury. Still, there is something telling (if not downright dysfunctional) when a society's most talented people feel they have to sacrifice the meaningful relationships every human craves as the price of exercising their talent.

Nowhere is there a greater gulf between the frustration people feel over a dilemma central to their lives and their equally powerful sense that there's nothing to be done. As a result, talented people throw up their hands. Women are "opting out" after deciding that professional success isn't worth the price. Ambitious folks of both sexes "do what they have to," sure there is no other way. That's just life.

My unreasonable wife rejects this choice. If the most interesting and powerful jobs are too consuming, Jody says, then why don't we re-engineer these jobs - and the firms and the culture that sustain them - to make possible the blend of love and work that everyone knows is the true gauge of "success"? As scholars have asked, why should we be the only elites in human history that don't set things up to get what we want?

When your wife declaims like this daily for a decade, the effect can be surprising. For years I listened politely but inadequately, to judge from Jody's grumbling. Now, thanks to her persistence and my exhaustion, I've discovered I'm a feminist ("humanist," Jody corrects). They say spouses come to look like each other; maybe their convictions do, too. In any event, now that I've internalized this, I can help other men avoid my agonizing learning curve.

Here's the deal: this isn't a "women's" problem; it's a human problem. Yet for 30 years women have tried to crack this largely on their own, and one thing is clear: if the fight isn't joined by men (like me) who want a life, too, any solutions become "women's" solutions. A broader drive to redesign work will take a union-style consciousness that makes it safe for men who secretly want balance to say so.

Today talented people live in fear of sounding anything less than 24/7. Tell your boss you have to deal with a drinking problem and you'll be fine; say you want more time with your family and you're on the endangered species list. As a result, my wife says, we're being led by a class of people who made choices (because there was no alternative) that are alien to what most of us want.

Some call this "whining." Others like working 24/7. Still others assert that you can never change the nature of work near the top. But our corporate experience persuades us that change is inevitable. In a globalizing world, many senior jobs are already impossibly big. If they need to be restructured anyway (we're working on how), why not do so in ways that give folks the option to have a life? Skeptics should recall that everyone once "knew" that a weekend or a minimum wage would spell economic ruin, too.

The first step in any tough transformation is what A.A. famously teaches: admit that we're powerless and that our lives have become unmanageable. It's time workaholic males took up this cause, because top jobs will never change unless we do. Jody even has an incentive plan.

In Aristophanes' play "Lysistrata," the women withhold their charms until the men agree to stop making war. Jody thinks that's a promising model. Talk about unreasonable.

Long wait to see Pope

Yahoo! News - Mourners Brave Cold Night, Long Wait to See Pope

I don't see the reason why people are doing this. There are many who are flying from US to spend hours in travel, then hours in the line to get in St. Peter's and then 5 seconds with the Pope's remains. Sure, I'll go and pay respects to my relatives in same situation but, I can't imagine doing this for anyone else. Maybe, I am missing something huge, please enlighten me.

Spring is here...

The signs of spring are definitely here. All the snow has melted away. Had first of our spring showers last night and gardner's friends are out in full force. And shoots of our tulips and daffodils are peeking out.

Happy Birthday...

Happy Birthday, Sujit!!!

Wish you many many more, brother....

Don't let the Indian cricket team's poor performance dampen your day. Have a blast!!!

American?

Hmmm... Interesting. Just noticed the names of these two albums in my iTunes library that follow each other...

QOTD

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is.

Well past expirarion date...

In preparation for our annual Thanksgiving gathering, we decided to clean-up around the house. Yesterday, we ventured into our pantry. There was so much stuff in that little room that we could barely stand but not turn around without knocking something down. After going through and combining bags containing multiple vintages of masalas brought from India, canned food, Sam's club size packets of food-stuff and big bags of daals and flours, we made enough room for all the new stuff we are planning to buy for this year's party. We thought that we had done a good job of cleaning and throwing old stuff away when we moved from NJ, a couple of years ago. But, there were various food packets past their expiration date. One packet of Gits 'gulab jamun' mix took the cake. It had expired in 1998. We must have bought that when we lived in an apartment in NJ. Moved it to our house in NJ and then moved it with us to Michigan. Thankfully, it lies in our trash-can now, on its way to a landfill.

Thought of the day

"Not guilty" is not the same as innocent.

Flu vaccine

Everyone knows about the massive shortage of flu vaccine in US, this season. Shutting down a plant owned by Chiron in UK was the main reason for this shortage. This has given rise to some interesting responses from the state and local authorities. In Oregon and California, the health care workers found to administer flu vaccine to someone who does not meet the criteria to be on the approved list, could face fines and/or jail. Pretty soon, senior citizen standing in line to get a flu shot is going to be a common sight across US.

Thankfully, Ashwini already received her flu shot last week. Anyway, she is on the approved list (6-24 mo. old).

Jaai / Jui / Chameli / Jasmine

The forecasters were right. It was indeed cold this morning. 25F or -4C. I grudgingly got out of bed and somehow managed to brush my teeth. Then, my eyes were opened wide when I was greeted by a sweet smell as I climbed down the stairs on my way to the kitchen. The delicate white flowers looked so beautiful in the moonlight. Call it by whatever name you want, this is one of my most favorite flowers. I am glad that after seeing the weather forecast, all our tropical plants were brought inside on Sunday evening. This morning would have been brutal for them.

Ravi Shankar

Just came back from a live concert by the sitar maestro, Pt. Ravi Shankar. It was awesome. It was a great experience to listen to him play live and be in the presence of such a legendary genius. The venue was Hill Auditorium on the University of Michigan campus - supposedly an acoustically perfect auditorium. He played three compositions. The first one was 'Jansammohini' which we listened to in the foyer. It was followed by Raag Maarubihag. After the intermission, he played Raag Maj-khamaj that was mixed with many other Raags (my untrained ear could pick Raag Megh and Raag Yaman in the medley) and folk tunes. He experimented with different taals in that composition too. It was very well done. He plays with such fluency. Doesn't seem like he is even thinking about what he is playing, it just flows. I couldn't believe that he was playing that for over an hour. Time seemed to just fly away. The whole concert without counting the intermission was more than 2 hours and 15 minutes. He seemed very fit for a 84 year old man. Many of us can't even sit in one position for more than 2 hours.

By the time we got Ashwini settled with her babysitter, battled with traffic and found parking, we were late by 15 minutes. The organisers had stopped latecomers from entering the auditorium and we had to wait outside till the first Raag was completed. I think that is a very good idea. People arriving late always disturb the performer as well as the audience. This policy should be implemented everywhere. I know they do it at most classical music concerts in US. Ashwini was asleep by the time we came home. She was happy with the babysitter; there were no problems. We should do this more often.

Dead birds

We have this huge window above the front door of the house. Birds often mistake it as open space and fly into it with their head first. I have been confronted with at least one dead bird on our doorstep every summer.

Capriati beats Serena Williams

Capriati moved into the semi-finals of the US Open Tennis tournament. It was a great 3 set match with ups and downs for both players. But, 4 calls went against Serena in the last set. All of those were clear mistakes by the linespersons and the chair judge. I am sure Serena is going to fume about it in the press.

Interesting names

Today we had a visitor at work from England. His name is Alex A. Alex. Wonder what his middle initial stands for. Should have asked him. Have met a professor from Princeton University whose name is Warren Warren. This is like Major Major Major from Catch-22.

Reminds me of an article that had an interesting list of authors...

A. Bax, D. Max and D. Zax: Measurement of multiple-bond 13C-13C J couplings in a 20-kDa protein-peptide complex. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 114, 6923-6925 (1992).

I know the first author Ad Bax, who is very proud of this paper and refers to it as Bax, Max and Zax in JACS.

By the way, Ad Bax is the most cited currently active author in the world. His publications are referred in more than 20,000 articles when I last checked the Citation Index about 3 years ago.

Tour de France 2004

Lance Armstrong, the 5-time champion goes in for a record. No one has ever won the Tour de France 6 times. The race started on July 4th. This photo was taken on Monday, the second day of the tour. The number on the sign reminds the riders of the distance (in kms) that they must travel to finish the race. Quite encouraging, eh?!

More Tour de France coverage...

Detroit Pistons win the NBA championship

Pistons are beating the crap out of Lakers. With 6 minutes left in the last quarter, they are leading by 25 points. Pistons will become the NBA champions after a gap of 14 years. I feel sorry for Karl Malone and Gary Payton who came to Lakers for the last chance to get the ring before retiring. They will have to retire without a ring afterall.

When Detroit won the Eastern conference championship, it was being said that they have won the rights to lose to Lakers. It was a general consensus that Lakers will win with big stars like Shaq, Kobe, Karl Malone and Gary Payton. I can only imagine the amount of gambling money that exchanged hands due to this unexpected result and some very happy risk-takers who chose Pistons over the Lakers.

Horrible tragedy

In the house next to us lives a typical American family: husband, wife, two daughters, a dog and a cat. Yesterday, they were struck by a horrible tragedy. It was one of the hottest days of this summer. Due to miscommunication, one of the daughters and her mom forgot to let their dog out of the car after they came home in the afternoon. The poor dog was left in the car for a couple of hours and died because of heat. Our neighbourhood is always so quiet, there probably wasn't anyone around to notice if the dog was struggling and barking inside the car.

I was playing with Ashwini in the yard when they found the dog in the car. She was with the family for years; almost their third child. The lady was devastated. She started crying so loudly that I thought her daughter or herself got hurt. I ran over to help and found out what had happened. It was just so sad. I still can't erase the picture of that dead dog in her arms.

My plans of getting a dog are postponed indefinitely. Should concentrate on taking care of Ashwini before thinking about taking on responsibility for another living being that would depend on me for its care and safety.

Strange weather

Update: We learnt about the real storm when we got home around 7:30 pm. It seems that we had 95 MPH wind gusts in our area and a lot of hail. One of our neighbor's trees came down. It was a big tree and it took down a couple more on its way down. The roads were all littered with leaves and branches. The hail litterally made holes in all the leaves of the trees. They really look sad with drooping leaves. There was so much hail that all of it didn't melt in 3-4 hours after the storm. Thankfully, no TORNADO. The dead tree near our house was still standing. Should get it cut soon.

2:00pm Friday, May 21st: Something strange with the weather. We have big thunderstorms moving through. At 2pm, the clouds are so thick that it almost feels like sun has set already. The wind is blowing fiercely and the sky looks green. I have never seen this color. Hope it is not a Tornado.

QOTD

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)

So true....

A big change in the morning routine

Bob Edwards dumped as host of NPR's 'Morning Edition'

This will be a big change in the mornings of many people. Although this may sound weird and my wife wouldn't agree, I'll definitely miss waking up to the rich baritone voice of Bob Edwards.

"Morning Edition," which is broadcast live from 5 to 7 a.m. and is rebroadcast throughout the morning, is the most listened-to morning radio program in the country, with 13 million listeners weekly

More choices at Starbucks

Do you know that there are about 19000 different ways of ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks? Recently, they announced one more option: Extra Hot: the beverage will be hotter by about 30F compared to usual. This will increase the total number at least by 1.5 times considering some of the combinations are for iced coffees.

Ikea and Diwali

I don't think Ikea has an operation in India yet, but, they have started targeting the population of Indian origin in USA. My favorite home furnishing store scores a few more brownie points. Check out the special section in their catalog during Diwali time.

A bit of color

Changed stylesheet of the blog. Added a bit of color to my original boring grey color-scheme.

Be careful, Janet!

If anyone missed the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake 'performance' during the halftime show of SuperBowl XXXVIII, here is a peak...

via Sujit

Oil spill in Spain

In November 2002, this news made a small blip in the US media on the background of the impending Iraq war. But, people from about 350 miles coastline of Galicia region in Northern Spain suffered for 6 months through this disaster. Last night, Frontline-World on PBS featured this story called 'The Lawless Sea'.

This was one of the worst oil spills in the world that could have been avoided, but nothing was done to prevent this from happening again today. 'Prestige' was an aging, rusting, single hull oil tanker carrying a full load of the most toxic fuel oil, crude oil number 4. It was owned by a Greek shipping giant through a front company in Liberia to minimize taxes and liability. It was carrying oil from Russia for a buyer in Singapore. The tanker encountered a winter storm as it was passing through the heavily trafficked shipping lane along Spain's Costa del Muerte (Coast of death). 20 foot waves ripped through the rusting steel hull of the ship and tore a big 50 foot hole in its side. The ship's engines shut down and it started to take on water. Government of Spain ordered to take the ship out to the sea rather than taking it to a safe harbor. After several days of sailing, it couldn't go too far in the deep sea and it broke into 2 pieces about 130 miles off the spanish coast.

Sheets and massive clumps of crude oil, almost twice that of the Exxon Valdez spill, floated to Galician coast contaminating 350 miles of it, while killing millions of fish and birds. The cleanup effort for the next 6 months costed about $2 billion, but the ship's insurance covered only $25 million. Documents found on board, indicate knowledge of problems with the ship and they were ignored. Now, there are plenty of ongoing lawsuits and countersuits between the Spanish government, ship's owners, and ABS, the company that was responsible for the inspection and certification of ship's seaworthyness. Nobody is willing to take any responsiblity for the disaster.

The sad part is there are about 150 aging single hull oil tankers like the Prestige that are operating around the world currently and any one of them could repeat this disaster. The Prestige is at the bottom of about 2mile deep Atlantic ocean, and unsafe, unregulated oil tankers still pass over it along the coast of Spain. Spanish and French robot submarines have sealed the leaks from the Prestige and plan to extract remaining 13,000 tons of oil in the near future.

The world economy relies on transportation with ships and oil tankers. On any day, there are about 80,000 ships sailing the oceans of the world carrying all kinds of goods. The multinational nature of this trade and loopholes in laws around the world shields the shipping companies from taking responsibility for horrendous disasters like this one. The EU has banned single hull tankers from its ports and there is a UN ban on single hull tankers which will become effective in April 2005. Hopefully, there will be more changes in the laws to prevent such environmental disasters in the future.

Expensive time-keepers

During the holiday shopping season of 2003, the highest percentage increase in sales of an item over 2002, was for watches that cost over $10,000. I would be afraid to even touch one of those. But, what is the deal? Do these watches tell better time than any cheap plastic digital one?

Brrrrr!!!

Right now, the temperature is 8F (-14C) with windchill of -11F (-24C). Not the coldest that I have ever seen, but, definitely cold. Probably, the coldest day of this winter season yet.

First Post

Checking out if my MT installation works...

First woman to swim English channel dies in NJ

In 1926, Gertrude Ederle swam the choppy, treacherous stretch under the most adverse conditions, battling rip tides, cross currents, driving rain and mountainous seas, as well as a constant threat of floating debris, poisonous jellyfish and sharks. She left Cape Griz-Nez, France, at 7:05 a.m. and stumbled ashore at Kingsdown, England, 14 hours and 30 minutes later, better timing than the four men who had completed this feat before her. Because of the stormy weather, she had swum 35 miles in crossing the 21-mile-wide channel. Yet her time for the crossing stood for 24 years before it was broken in 1950 by Florence Chadwick, who negotiated 23 miles in 13 hours and 20 minutes. This picture shows Gertrude ready to start her swim. Interestingly, this is probably one of the first instances of a woman wearing a two-piece swimming suit in public. I remember Arati Pradhan from Thane swimming the channel sometime in the 80's. She was one of the youngest women ever to do that. Upon returning home, there were some big ceremonies hosted by the city and the state governments.

122,000 miles

On the way to work today, my car turned over 122,000 miles. Way to go! I hope to see 150,000 on this gal.

Find out where you stand

The Political Compass website has a quiz to figure out political leanings of a person and categorize in one of the 4 bins. Check it out. The answer may surprise you as it did me. Never thought that I'd be a left liberal. I knew about liberal but, not too happy about being on the left. I would call myself liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues. But, when you take an average of all the answers to some 30-40 questions in the quiz, I guess I fall on the left side of the center, although, some of my answers were clearly to the right. Anyway, it is an interesting quiz and a way to characterize people.

Ads for new MS office

Did anyone see these advertisements for the new version of MS Office? They show people jumping around, climbing on tables, cutting down projection screens, etc. What the heck do they want to show? Users like the new version of Office so much that they are delirious with joy? From my own experience (or should I say frustrations) with MS Office, these users seem to have lost their minds after struggling with the new software. ;)

Wonder what is true???

Apple Unveils Music Store for

Apple Unveils Music Store for Windows

This is great. Now, I don't have to wait till I buy an Apple to use this service.

Some interesting numbers that I

Some interesting numbers that I just heard.

Pfizer:
- has 8 billion shares outstanding.
- is the most traded stock on NYSE.
- accounts for $200 billion worth of transactions on NYSE per year.
- stock worth $2 million is traded every minute on NYSE.
- stock accounts to $1 out of every $50 transacted on NYSE.

Thunderstorms

Summer thunderstorms are marching through