Monday, September 29, 2008

Prezidunks, wuhs, economies, elekshuns and bailouts.

There it is again. Elekshun time! When all will be forgiven, and we can start anew, clean slate and all. Or not. Take your pick, the US Prez is the de facto leader of much of the world, sits on top of a good 20% of the world's 64 trillion $ economy and wields control over almost 6000 strategic and tactical thermonuclear weapons. The war in Iraq has killed over 4000 Americans. It is interesting the way we say it.. "the war has killed". As if the responsibility for all those lost lives can be placed on the shoulders of some malign, but ot manifest entity. Oh, and speaking of war deaths, that would be about a hundred thousand Iraqis. Indeed, we live in interesting times. There is, of course the subprime lending crisis, which has blown up in our faces. So what is the crisis about anyway? This comic illustrates. No math, no complicated five syllable words. So I happened to see 'Slacker Uprising', Mike Moore's film about the 2004 election. Watch it free here, on the official site. And then go and read the open letter from Moore to all citizens. There is a lot at stake here. Much of these are catchphrases to be used at dinner table conversations: freedom, equality, health, blah-di-blah. But let us not forget that they do mean something real.

Pradeep Babu's Happy Birthday

Pradeep Babu turned something this year. Just this last week in fact. So, I decided to call the C, the Nandi, the children over to celebrate the birthday, with the Padalas' (Rachna and Pradeep) being the guests of honour. A good time was had by all (methinks) with some nice cooking from the C, the Nandi and the kid. We toasted Pradeep Babu with wine poured thoughtfully by our evening's sommelier, Nandi into.. teacups! That, and Pradeep trying to blow out a lighter (no candles, sorry) were the mildly hilarious points of the evening. Many thanks to the C for das photo.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

School grading systems.

I am a product of a fairly unforgiving Indian system where failure was certainly an option, but not a good one. In recent times I have heard of some Indian systems calling for the abolition of marks based ranking in primary and middle school. This would not prepare the kids for the intense competition that lies waiting just at Class X and beyond. And now read this article about how Pittsburgh schools now are mandating that the minimum a student can score is 50%. Which means that if you do one problem right in a question paper of 10, you still get 50%. Does that make any sense?

The Matador

I have to say this about the moviegoing public. They are absolute phookin' gits. Why, you ask? because The Matador, a 2005 film about an assassin suffering from a terrible midlife crisis bombed. It raked in a paltry 10 mil at the box office. While, our own Michael Bay's videogame turned retard-central movie made more than the GDP of several small European nations. You know which one you watched and which one you didn't give a shite about. What a cryin' shame... this was our man Pierce Brosnan's very finest moment.. with awesome support by Greg Kinnear.

And now for your amusement, I will include a small selection of the best lines from The Matador. Courtesy IMDB, of course!
Julian Noble: I'm as serious as an erection problem.
Julian Noble: [after flirting with some Mexican schoolgirls] I hate these Catholic countries. It's all blushy-blushy and no sucky-fucky.
Julian Noble: I look like a Bangkok hooker on a Sunday morning, after the navy's left town.
Julian Noble: An assassin without confidence is a horrible thing to behold. It's like a relief pitcher who fumbles the ball.
Danny Wright: Please tell me you know you mixed two sports in a metaphor.
Julian Noble: Huh? Yeah, I can't do that.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Financial Intervention and the Government of the day

Warning... I am not trained in finance.. these are merely the opinions of a layman. Let us begin with India. Back in the early 60's, the Government of India (GOI) decided to start a mutual fund company. This was called the Unit Trust of India (UTI), and their major vehicle was a fund called US64. Our economy has always been a troublesome one. By constitutionally describing it as a 'mixed' economy, we have brought upon us the corruption and inefficiency of the worst socialist models, while on the other end we have the unlimited wealth (greed?) of a few lucky individuals and companies who have toadied up to the Sarkar. Anyway, so the sublime ridiculousness of starting a mutual fund in an economy where almost everything was PSU owned was actually subsumed by the fact that 'national wealth', as one might term it was being drawn from the coffers of savings accounts and pumped into industry. Well, it did make sense. From a traditional Indian standpoint(still very much extant): the only true wealth one might have is property and gold. Shares and stocks come later to the aam aadmi. So, the best way to kick start a nascent economy would be to divert money from property/gold and put it into stocks. Or so we thought. Except that in the late 1990s', UTI was in deep shite. They needed a GOI bailout to the tune of perhaps 3,300 crores of Rupees. That would be almost a billion $ at today's exchange rate. UTI staggered along for a while longer and then had to fold US64. This required a much bigger restructuring package from the GOI.

Today we are seeing the same things happen on Wall Street. Bear Stearns, one of the largest finance corporations was taken over by JPM Chase for a song. On the 8th of Sept, two of the largest Mortgage financers, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and Freddie Mac were taken over by the US government. Hardly a week passed before Merrill Lynch was bought up by Bank of America. Then Lehman Brothers went under. And now, AIG which underwrites some of the biggest and potentially most hazardous investments has been given an 88 billion $ bailout by the Fed.

The question is always the same: most of these huge companies are going under because of their incompetence/greed. Remember Enron? The company whose watchword was 'innovation'? They traded in dreams too: and for a while they made it big. But then people started calling their bluffs and they went under. Except of course, when giant corporations go under; the CEO's rarely, if ever suffer. They have awesome golden parachute deals written into their contracts.. so even if they f**k up, they come out of it smelling like roses. Or a couple of hundred million bucks. Take your pick.

Why should the people of India pay through their taxes for the mismanagement of UTI? And why should US citizens pay.. what was it 29 billion $ for the Merrill Lynch deal and a colossal 88 billion $ for the AIG bailout? The point has been reached at which these companies know that they are now TBTF. That stands for Too Big To Fail. These people cannot be allowed to play fast and loose with other people's money and then yell for Fed help when they get their noses bloodied. If Government intervention is asked for, then the whole industry should submit to Government oversight, if not actual regulation. That is the bottom line.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

LHC particle physics rap...

Yeah, this is an awesome rap song which apparently walked out of CERN and has been wandering around the Net.. shite it gave me a review of my particle physics class in 4ish minutes!!

Links to mp3, lyrics and more awesome shite is here.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Electronic Voting Machines: India vs US

Link available here to an article discussing Electronic Voting Machines used in India and the Diebold machines used in the US. Anyone feel like outsourcing this as well?

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

More webcomics and crazy shite!

Link here to yet another webcomic called Apathy Adventures!
Meanterwhilste, the Awesome Planet link is right here.. and anytime you want to see 15 funny signs, enter here.

Lets get this straight about the LHC.

Ok, bloody HUGE particle collider. But it will not, repeat, NOT change the way we view our Universe the moment it is switched on. That gentle process will take some time. Why? Because, dear reader, there will be reams and reams of data to analyze. There will be many, many confounded PIs and their equally mystified graduate students who will run thousands and thousands of lines of code to interpret the volcanic size burst of data on their hands. And a few years, several hundred PRLs and equally many theory theses later, something MIGHT go ping, and some graduate student very, very late at night MIGHT say 'behenchod! Did I just see the Higgs' boson?'. But, no the world will not change fundamentally this weekend.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Safecracker in shorts


So we legged it up the crooked steps into the hotel lobby. Or what looked like a lobby. We, I may point out is the esteemed big sis, henceforth referred to as S and yours truly. We carried between us, a backpack, a camera bag and a fookin' huge Samsonite suitcase with a combination lock. I lugged the suitcase through the confusion of Frankfurt's Hahn airport, through the greater confusion of Rome's Ciampiano airport and down a shady side alley where the cobblestones were pockmarked with small treacherous craters. Fookin' cobblestones!! Now I should really explain my resentment at them cobblestones.... back in India, which is home for me, one never drags one's suitcase along the road. You get a rickshaw or something which helps.. and is never super expensive. In the US, on the other hand due to the pervasive strength of the ADA, you can drag anything with wheels. Anywhere!

Add to that the minor complication that one day before flying out from Detroit, I had taken a tumble down the stairs at home and had a badly sprained ankle. More fun!! Anyway, we found ourselves in the hotel lobby and face to face with .. a pheun. Very surreal. One might even suspect that the Wachowski brothers had something to do with this. I pick up the pheun and after some time am directed by this disembodied voice to get my arse up to the fourth floor. Well, as S and me are hauling our gear into the tiny contraption that passes for a lift, this bloke with long graying hair squeezes his arse into the lift. I glare. He smiles back.

We finally make it, via much creaking and clanking of fairly ancient machinery to the fourth floor, where as it happens, said long hair is our night manager. Having signed in and collected our keys, we get to the dorm and prepare to doss down. The loo (unisex) is, thankfully clean; and also thankfully populated by a couple of fairly good-looking birds, who, less thankfully are of the giggling persuasion. Sod.

I lock up my passport, money and stuff in the suitcase and crash for the night, my camera bag snug against my feet. In the morning I am woken up by the big sis and grab a quick cuppa from a conveniently located vending machine. And then promptly discover that somehow the combination lock refuses to budge. Sod. 999 combinations to run through… but the lock has the proverbial steely glint where it would have eyes, had it been human. This was not planning to open up. After ranting and WTFing around in my shorts for a while, I realize the desperation of the situation. All my money, my passport, my fookin’ toothbrush, for crying out loud, kept from me by a couple of centimeters of thermopolymer and steel! And my clothes. Bereft clothes, a man has no dignity. I mentally see myself explaining myself to a cop or a Samsonite repairman in what is basically my undies’ and I shudder. Big sis, quite sensibly has kept a change of clothing handy and is not in the quagmire I find myself in.

Finally, I decide to leg it up to the fourth floor where the somewhat bleary eyed night manager is negotiating with some random blonde. And I ask, very politely for a crowbar. The night manager gives me the once over. Bleary eyed, unshaven, bloke in his undies. Asking for a crowbar. With commendable restraint; he enquires as to the purpose. With equal restraint, aplomb even, I explain. Brief silence. Finally something falls into place and he recognizes me as the bloke from last night. And recognizes further, the desperation not quite hidden away behind the aplomb. In undies, I might add. And offers me the biggest fookin’ screwdriver and what looks like a Grenadier’s entrenching tool. I thank him from the bottom of my heart and return.

Now begins the process of safecracking. I imagine Richard (Feynman) would have a lot to say about my lack of expertise. But I got it, finally.. I managed to jimmy the damn lock open. This event was recorded for posterity by the sis. The lock, of course refused to work any further. So we decided to grab all the valuables and keep them on our persons. Anyone interested in sniffing old socks was welcome to. And then, we went to see the Colosseum.