Protected: Happy 2.5th Birthday, Adit!
June 30th, 2008
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Archive
Archive for June, 2008
Analemma ver 1
June 25th, 2008
Partial Analemma.
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Rising heating fuel costs
June 19th, 2008
Jason Zweig, a columnist from Money magazine was on Nightly Business Review on PBS the other night. He described a strategy for hedging against the rising cost of heating oil that is affecting most of Northeast and the Midwest.
There is a new exchange-traded fund, United Stated Heating Oil Fund (UHN), that tracks and keeps up with percentage change in heating oil prices. He suggested investing the same amount of money that was spent for heating oil for the last year in this fund. If the prices go up, this fund appreciates and you can cash-in the gain for paying the higher oil bill. Of course, there are tax consequences with this transaction but, at least part of increased oil costs can be offset. If the oil price goes down, this investment returns a loss but, your heating oil bill will be less and will offset those losses. Basically, this is not a money-making strategy. It helps with ups and downs of heating oil costs. I am convinced that it is a great plan and will work. Only if I had $2000 to invest in this right now. Maybe, I should cash in my coin jar and search under the couch pillows and my mattress to find some moolah.
For people who heat their houses with Natural gas, same strategy can be used with a similar fund: United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG).
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Protected: Bubble time
June 15th, 2008
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The greatest silence
June 15th, 2008
I watched a documentary on HBO called, “The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo“. It described the horrifying plight of women in Congo that are raped by foreign militia as well as Congolese army that is supposed to protect them. These women are subjected to gang-rapes followed by mutilation with gun barrels or sticks or anything these soldiers can get their hands on. The massive internal injuries make the women incontinent and are unable to get back to normal life without complicated surgery and prolonged rehabilitation. It was very sickening to watch these victims tell their stories. The sad part is that the international community is not doing anything or even talking about this weapon of rape that is destroying the fabric of society in these war-torn countries.
This same issue is the subject of Nicholas Kristof’s Op-ed in the New York Times, today.
former U.N. force commander there, Patrick Cammaert, says it is “more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier.”
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Ol’ turkey buzzard
June 10th, 2008
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As we got out of the house this morning, we spotted this huge turkey vulture sitting on our neighbor’s roof. Its wingspan must have been about 5 to 6 feet. Adit and Ashwini were thrilled to see it at such a close distance. It wasn’t phased by all the noise we were making and just sat there warming its back and wings. It flew away after I brought my camera from inside and took a few photos.
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A New Great Lake–or Dead Sea?
June 10th, 2008
ENGINEERING: A New Great Lake–or Dead Sea? — Stone 320 (5879): 1002 — Science
Read this very interesting article in Science about a large scale canal building project to divert drainage water to a large natural low-lying area in the desert to create a lake to irrigate farms around it. They have built thousands of kilometer long canals to feed this lake just to show-off the government power. The article talks about problems caused by such canals its detrimental effects on the land around them. This reminded me of a similar proposed project in India to connect all the big rivers by canals for conserving and redistributing water. I wonder what happened to that and if a rigorous scientific analysis was conducted to study its effect on the environment.
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Hot hot hot
June 10th, 2008
This Spring we enjoyed just a few nice days. It just seems like it was chilly till last week and over the weekend the furnace of Summer has been turned on. It has been unbearably hot for the last 3 days. Thermometer in my car was showing 101F last evening. Urgh! Didn’t think that I’d start longing for winter this soon. It is still June and the Summer solstice that marks beginning of Summer is still 11 days away.
Forecasters promise a cooler day tomorrow.
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Breaking news
June 9th, 2008
Stop the presses…. Adit just peed in the potty! Another year and we’ll be diaper-free. Yeay!!!
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Two thoughts
June 5th, 2008
- A few years ago, when it took $38 to fill up our Volvo V70, I was furious. Two days ago, it took $74 for the same amount of gas. It may have looked like I was calm, but I was counting 74 curses under my breath for the motherf***ing Bush administration for its non-existent energy policy.
- It is really annoying when people from Chennai, always say Chennai while mentioning their fair city, but insist on using “Bombay” while talking about Mumbai.
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