Battleship New Jersey

This day is propitious. Or it was, almost six hundred years ago, for the British. For on the 25th of October, 1415, in a recently ploughed, rain muddied field in an entirely undistinguished place in France called Agincourt, the English won a battle. The English monarch, Henry V's inspired leadership and exhortations aside, this battle was won by the English commoner, in the form of the most effective European artillery of the time - the longbowman. And in turn, this battle was lost by the nobility of France, their knights in armour - the very flower of French society and the natural leaders of their state. The event lives in memory through the words of the bard himself. This is where the 'Band of Brothers' speech on St. Crispin's Day comes from. But that is not why we are here. The reason for this extremely complicated start to this discussion is because this battle heralded the end of the age of chivalry and the beginning of a process which I can only describe as the democratization of war itself. Armor would not show itself to be superior on almost any European battleground for more than 500 years, when these two former enemies would join hands at a place called the Somme. But for the moment, Agincourt had shown that heavily armoured knights were easy targets against the massed firepower of poorly paid common archers.

The naval parallel is almost too easy to make. Battleships are as the armoured nobility of the high seas. When these capital ships engage, the engage as did the knights of yore. They move in close and slug it out like heavyweight boxers magnified a billionfold and encased in unbelievably thick armour. Smaller ships, like minnows, get out of the way of these orcas. The art and science of battleship warfare came to its stunning climax off the coast of Jutland in midsummer 1916 where the two greatest fleets in modern history, the British Grand Fleet and the Imperial German High Seas Fleet met, and sought to annihilate each other.

With this engagement, the day of the battleship was over. Unfortunately, no one had mentioned this to many of the naval strategists of the world powers. What few doubts remained about the obsolescence of battleships were put to rest on a Sunday in December 1941 by the Japanese. The future belonged to carriers and now, as we know it to submarines. But battleships continued to be built, if only for the remaining years of WWII. And they continued to be marginally useful as giant gun platforms, but as smaller vessels increased their firepower, even this role was usurped from them. Still, the very word "battleship" evokes a very special feeling - that of awe. With that immense scale, that terrifying firepower, battleships were the last titans of the ocean - when they fought, the heavens stood still and watched.

In the days following the debacle at Pearl, the US Navy scrambled to replace the losses it had suffered. The Iowa class of capital ships formed part of that plan. The USS New Jersey was commissioned in 1943 and saw service throughout WWII in the Pacific. Later it was decommissioned, then recommissioned in time for Vietnam, the mothballed again, then brought back - well you get the picture. Suffce to say that this was one of the longest serving battleships ever and was probably the last such vessel to sail the seas. Today it lies moored quietly off a pier on the Camden waterfront, just across the river from Philly. This was where I spent my Sunday midday with my friend Rudra - and I have a few pictures to show for it. Here goes.

Images, images

The beginning of every interesting piece of art is a canvas. This is especially true in the world of storyboarded cityscapes rendered in hypercontrast as Robert Rodriguez does. There are other ways of going about creating art and putting it down on film though.

Some auteurs have managed to think of every frame as a canvas in itself - and have spent loving hours (sometimes years) in turning such frames into masterworks. Examples? Certainly. Ray's Pather Panchali, Sergio Leone's Once upon a time in the west - remember Harmonica's thousand year old face, enduring and indestructible like the mountains which framed him? And yes, remember also how a camelback rider suddenly appears in the view on the far left of a huge, huge, vista - they called that 'the anvil of the sun', in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia.

The very best of these works have told beautiful stories, and have used fantastic imagery to imprint those stories into our consciousness. But sometimes, the story takes second place to the canvas. A fabulous example of this is Refn's Valhalla Rising. This is a ponderous work, which creaks under its own burden of self importance.

Every frame is created with the utmost care. Vivid nightmares of colour appear, to be washed away by the everpresent mist. There is a long and arduous Rime of the Ancient Mariner chapter, save that there is no albatross, and no redemption. The violence is sporadic, but always threats to break loose. And the soundtrack. Dear Gawd, the soundtrack. The use of harsh guitar tones from an obsessive compulsive strummer you cannot see - mixed in with the sound of a heart beating. This, frankly is baiting. Very skilfully done, effective, even - but not subtle.

There might be a story here. Who knows? Depends on how psychotropic your last indulgence has been. But this will leave you shaken.

A bunch of crazy sites

About tipping http://15percent.tumblr.com/

ABout the best dads in cinema http://www.brobible.com/bronews/advice-cinemas-greatest-bro-dads-supercut

Guest article: Ghosts of Bretton Woods

From today's Statesman, Calcutta edition - no copyright violation intended, its just that you guys do not maintain archives - and this article deserves to be read and re-read.

Ghosts of Bretton Woods
In A Global Collective Action Trap
andrew sheng
LAST week I attended the second annual meeting of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) in Washington Hotel, nestled in a beautiful snow-capped valley, in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. In 1944, the historic meeting on the international monetary system was held there. The British delegation was led by Lord Keynes, the foremost economic thinker of his day. The US delegation was effectively led by US Treasury adviser, Harry Dexter White. Even though all the Allies attended the meeting, including China and India, it was essentially a debate between the declining superpower, Britain, and the rising superpower, the United States.
Keynes understood full well the problem that Britain faced as the issuer of sterling. Since Britain was running large current account deficits because of the two world wars, she was having a tough time maintaining sterling as the main reserve currency. By the end of the Second World War, the US emerged as the dominant global power, since she ran large current account surpluses by supplying food and raw materials to Europe in exchange for gold. To avoid the Triffin dilemma, Keynes argued for the creation of a new international currency, called Bancor that would not be related to the issue of a national reserve currency.
The Triffin dilemma is the problem that the issuer of the global reserve country had to continually run large current account deficits to meet the liquidity needs of the world. In the short-run, the reserve currency role benefits from an “exorbitant privilege”, since the issuer country could pay for its imports by printing more currency, whereas non-reserve currency countries could only import by paying in foreign currency.
However, Harry Dexter White rejected the idea of the Bancor because he did not like the idea of the issuance of global currency by a global central bank. Instead, the idea of the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) was adopted, where the SDR was a reserve unit of account, which could only be created through the exchange of national currencies with the issuer, the International Monetary Fund. As the dominant IMF shareholder, the US could reject the issuance of SDRs, thus ensuring the US dollar remains the dominant reserve currency.
There is common confusion that the SDR can eventually become a reserve currency to replace the US dollar. It is a unit of account between the IMF and the member-countries, but it cannot be used for international payments. Currently, it is issued to member-countries to increase their foreign exchange reserves. However, when the member-country needs foreign exchange, it must exchange its holdings of SDR with the IMF in four component reserve currencies, namely, the US dollar, the euro, sterling and yen.
Thus, the components of the SDR can change, but the reserve currency role remains national, not global.
Keynes was right. Sixty-seven years later, the US had become the leading global borrower, whereas the net lenders are Japan, China, Germany and the oil producers, creating what is now called the Global Imbalance.
Last year, the Italian central banker, Tomaso Padio-Schioppa gave a speech about the international monetary system, called the ‘The Ghost of Bancor’, because the idea of Bancor was killed in Bretton Woods 67 years ago. Mr Padio-Schioppa, who had a major role in the creation of the euro and became a member of the Board of the European Central Bank, unfortunately died early this year. Interestingly, he equated Bancor with Banquo, the Scottish king who was murdered by Macbeth, in the famous Shakespeare play Macbeth. As is well known, Macbeth met three witches in the forest. They predicted that he would murder his king, Banquo, and become king, but he would be succeeded by Banquo’s successors.
Keynes conceived the idea of Bancor as the steward of the king (gold). But the replacement SDR has yet to emerge as an effective replacement for neither gold nor the US dollar. At the heart of any global currency (issued by one country, a number of countries or the IMF) remains the Triffin dilemma: what is the hard budget constraint to prevent the global currency issuers from printing too much money and, therefore, creating global inflation?
The ghost of Bancor basically says that no national central bank or a global central bank, can resist the temptation of printing too much money.
Currently, the deficit countries blame the surplus countries for saving too much and the surplus countries blame the deficit countries for printing too much money. The reality is that it is the current international monetary system that is flawed. We cannot return to the gold standard, but a fully flexible system of fiat money is also not desirable.
We are in a global collective action trap, where everyone must share a burden of being part of the global game. The difficulty lies in how to allocate that burden in a fair manner.
My humble opinion is that the crisis of fiat money is due to excess consumption financed by excess leverage. That excess consumption is also the fundamental cause of global warming, as natural resources are depleted, while fiat money keeps on increasing. No one likes to use gold because there would be price deflation which would automatically cut down excess consumption. That is too painful, so everyone still keeps on printing money by passing the pain to savers and future generations.
If there is more and more quantitative easing (money printing) and less and less natural resources in a shrinking world, should we be surprised that gold and oil prices keep going up?
Who speaks the truth, the ghost of Bancor or his successors, the current reserve currency issuers? Perhaps it is the witches in the misty forest, the shadow banking system. That story will be revealed in the next article.

Perl grep = fat?

I present for your perusal this webpage which sez summat about ze Perl grep function. Also, it comes with an advert for reducing ze tummy. Why? Implicit assumption that anyone interested in perl will be pasty faced, eating Doritos and fat?

So, about Last.fm and other online players

My laptop has gone kablooey. After 5 years of more or less loyal service (yes, Deep Thought, we shall not speak of that one time. Or that other time. Or the third time, when I had to enlist the assistance of our Godlike SysAd at Ann Arbor). [They hire good people at the U of M. And I have always held that while 'one should never meddle in the affairs of sysads, for they are subtle and quick to anger' - the man we went to was like the White Wizard reborn].

Anyhoo, the dear old Macbook having gone the Vashangshi jeernani way, I have decided to invest in a desktop. Prolly (and yes, do gasp) from Walmart. Apparently they sell nice computer deals - Athlon X2. 5 Gigs DD3. ATI Radeon and also 1TB. Sounds good, no?

But my music collection, as eclectic and awesome as it was has also gone to the great beyond of randomized ones and zeros. Hence, last.fm also this cool project called Bollywood Production (go ahead, Google it.You know you want to). But as clever as Last's algos are - in that it can send from one member of the 27 club to another in 3 steps or less - it more or less screws up with Desi music. Why else would Kishore Kumar radio start playing Bhangra. Yech!

The Cosworth

So, here I was about to start muh car and pull of the lot when I espied a Merc opposite me. It was an old, low slung, rather nondescript looking car, with those straight lines and right angles that so fascinated the misguided designers of the seventies and mid eighties (and I am not just talking about the people who, say designed the Eldorado - this was an affliction that crossed continents as a whole generation of designers forgot how to draw curves. Apparently, Volvo was the last to recover.) Anyway, something, a sixth sense perhaps, told me to take a closer look. I legged it over and spotted a muscular spoiler, almost Evo-esque in its aggressiveness. And then I saw the legend.

190E 2.5-16

And my mouth went slightly dry.

Which was about when this bloke strolled up with a questioning slant to his eyebrow. I asked him if it was his ride. He responded in the affirmative. I then asked, somewhat hesitantly, if it was the Cosworth. His jaw hit the blacktop with a dull thunk.

Now you, worthy reader are prolly familiar with the TopGear episode when the Hamster talks about future classics and rambles on about the Cosworth. No? Ok, here, take a look.

Back to the story. So this bloke is rather tickled that I recognize his Merc for the beaut that it was. He was kind enough to give me a dekko under the bonnet. Aah, the loveliness of it. Just a 2.5 litre straight-4, but what an engine! Remember this was made by Cosworth which made a name for itself making those awesome Formula 1 engines which dominated the entire field. The reason why Merc wanted this car was because they wanted to ace the World Rally Championship. But then, around that time, another game changer came out. This happened to be the Audi Quattro. In its turbocharged shadow, the E190 had to be relegated to track and touring racing, where, of course it took the DTM. This was also the car that brought AMG into the Mercedes fold.

So, long story short, bonded with said bloke over his 190E. And then he tells me that his other car is a Delorean. A bloody Delorean!! I wanted to know if he had ever pushed it to 88 mph. He hasn't. Yet. Well, time to go build him a flux capacitor.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

I have long salivated over stuff that moves fast, turns corners violently and generally looks badarse. For the longest time, this led to a deep fascination with things that fly. Thus, the Supermarine Spitfire. The plane that is frequently, and erroneously, referred to as the plane that won the Battle of Britain. It was not. The plane that did win it, was the much underrated, Hawker Hurricane, and the equally (then) underrated (and in hindsight, unmatched) brilliance of Air Chief Marshal Dowding. But, here, for what it is worth, is the Spitfire. Is it a coincidence that the most beautiful things that fly, created either by the hands of Gawd, or men, are also the most deadly?

Tax cuts and how the media talks about them

I am not an economist. Neither am I a journalist. However, I understand that the perceptions of people are moulded by media. This much, I imagine you will agree with. So when you read an article like this one, you wonder why the coverage appears to be so biased.

Consider this section: "While about three-fourths of Democrats favor raising taxes on the rich, about half of independents and nearly two-thirds of Republicans oppose the idea. Support for cutting everyone's taxes exceeds four in 10 people in every region of the U.S. except the Midwest, where one-third back the proposal. Even among people earning under $50,000 a year — mainstays of the Democratic Party — 43 percent want to continue the tax cuts for all."

Would that not have been better written as
"While about three-fourths of Democrats favor raising taxes on the rich, about half of independents and nearly two-thirds of Republicans oppose the idea. 6 in 10 people in every region of the U.S. favour ending the Bush tax breaks. In the Midwest; 7 in 10 people favour ending them. Among people earning under $50,000 a year — mainstays of the Democratic Party — a majority of 57 percent want to end the Bush tax breaks."

Just a thought.

Visa blues

OPT - visa

quite a quagmire of paperwork and timings. Officialdom (sigh)

The best of Science Fiction

The best of Science Fiction. This is a tall order. Who defines the best? In a field as subjective as literature, who draws arbit margins and delineates the awesome from stuff like Twilight? The answer is, I do. As do you, my dear reader. Anyone has the right of judgment. Of course, I will then judge what you have judged, and probably laugh at your choices, especially in hard SF.

But enough proselytizing.
The Hugo and Nebula awards are considered the two most prestigious awards in SF writing. They are the Nobel prizes of true geekdom. There is a small and very exclusive list of books which have been graced with both awards. Check it out. I am making my way through this list. And being rather impressed with what I am reading here.

The Rain

There was a brief sotto voce rumbling of distant thunder. I looked up to realize that the rains have arrived. Our lab has huge windows, which are usually covered up by these industrial grade pulldown curtains which I have come to loathe. Sometimes, however, in the early evenings you can see the sun go down somewhere just over the horizon; and the sky turns every hue of crimson and red as if the setting sun had told had come up with a particularly risqué joke.

The rain means something special to those people who live or lived between the tropics. For most of us it signifies relief from the killing heat of summer. On a more prosaic note, it means the difference between a good crop and penury for all too many of my countrymen.

But, I do not wish this to turn into a political diatribe. There are enough people spewing vitriol (and oil) at the moment without me having to add to them (I am looking at you Joel Stein).

Rain, as I was saying is special to me. I always view (or have viewed) rain as cha-pakoda-adda weather. Perhaps, I should explain that. Cha is tea. Not the refined milkless-sugarless tea that I usually drink. Cha is a milky, sweet concoction served best in tiny earthenware pots called “bhanrs”. A “pakoda” is a deep fried mixture of onions, chillis and sometimes giant peppers coated in chickpea flour (besan). It tastes of heaven. Adda is what we Bengalis are perhaps forgetting to indulge in (there has to be a correlation between the decline of adda and the rise of heart attack rates and divorces). Ok, adda is a strange mishmash of discussion, mixed with a dash of debate, flavoured with old fashioned gossip and rounded off with some very tall story telling. It is a very Bengali thing. Most other Indian ethnicities are waaaay more hard working than us, and have never discovered the joys of adda. I have been told that apparently there is something approximating adda in the coffee shops hidden away in the bazaars of Istanbul and Cairo. If I ever get to visit these great cities, I will let you know if people there, do indulge in adda.

Our man Nandi refers to this kind of rain as ‘suicide weather’. Hmmmm.

I finished watching this wunnerful fillum called ‘Wake Up Sid’. It has Konkona Sensharma who is, in my humble opinion, one classy lady. Up there with the always delectable Nandita Das. Beautiful performances flesh out this fillum, even from the actors with bit parts. In fact, especially from them. And, of course, the fillum revolves around the rain.

Which brings me to the fact that I am going out to enjoy some of the rain. Bye.

Rajinder Puri on India's internal security problem

From today's Statesman:

Special Article

10 April 2010

The enemy strikes
Invisible War Becomes Visible

By Rajinder Puri

DURING the last half decade this scribe wrote almost two dozen articles related to terrorism. One article in January 2007 was titled “India’s Invisible War”. It started by stating: “India is in the midst of an invisible war. It is an unrecognized war.” Well, the war has become very visible now. Over 70 policemen killed in one Maoist ambush compelled even our media, besotted with sports weddings and Bollywood brand ambassadors, to take note of the attack. Newspaper headlines blared: “This is war!” Stirring words! But is terrorism being recognized for what it really is ~ undeclared war against the Indian state? Do people who lightly toss around the word realize the implications of fighting a war? Wars are fought for conquest or for survival. India is fighting for survival. To triumph it must be prepared to pay whatever price required. For an effective war against terror there are six aspects that should command attention.
First, the government must recognize the enemy. The enemy is not Maoism or jihad or separatism. There is authentic evidence of terrorist groups with avowedly different aims assisting each other. That suggests all groups are branches of the same trunk. One Congress leader reportedly said: “While terrorists are basically sponsored by foreign powers… Naxalites are our own misguided indigenous people.” This is the kind of nonsense to be discarded. ULFA leaders, Kashmiri separatists and Maoists are all indigenous. Both ULFA and Maoist leaders get sanctuary in China. Both are aided by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Now even foreign-funded Hurriyat leaders, acting as the voice of Kashmiri terrorists, are openly seeking China’s help. The Pakistan army is nothing but a clone of the PLA. It has discarded the army culture it shared with the Indian army bequeathed by the British. Pakistan army generals are into big business. They have access to independent funds like their mentors in the PLA. Like the PLA they control politicians, not the other way around. The government does not have to state that China’s PLA is the mastermind directing all wings of terrorism in India. It has merely to recognize this truth. It should ask itself why Chinese hackers accessed secret Indian government documents dealing with Maoists and North-east insurgencies.
Second, there must be law and order reform. Insurgencies in India may propagate different grievances. They all have the same aim. They serve their foreign master by destabilizing India. There may be sincere dupes committed to a cause serving these outfits. They are manipulated by their commanders who serve the PLA. When the enemy has a unified command, can India afford to have split command structures? Parliament and government must immediately establish a central federal agency empowered to fight insurgencies throughout India. This agency must have its own independent intelligence network in all states.
Third, there must be economic reform. Human rights activists mistakenly assume that Maoists fight for economic justice. If the grievances of tribals were removed the Maoists would seek another issue. However legitimate the grievance ~ whether related to identity, language or economic deprivation ~ the insurgency is predetermined. Grievances are not the cause of insurgency, but the excuse. That is why the government must remove all legitimate grievances regardless of insurgency to decrease the nation’s vulnerability. Economic disparity and lack of governance in India are horrendous. Out of 602 districts, 165 are affected by Maoist violence. This is not surprising. The World Bank’s poverty line for India is set at Rs 1400 a month. If this is accepted there are 700 million Indians below the poverty line. There are also 700 million below 35 years of age. The unemployed number 300 million. At present a mere 5 million new jobs are created every year. Over 70 per cent of the population is rural. Less than 30 per cent is urban. The publicized benefits of economic reforms are limited in the main to the English-speaking class in urban India. With or without insurgency, are such conditions tenable? A massive stimulus package for rural employment and infrastructure from resources acquired through disinvestment in cooperation with trade unions is imperative.
Fourth, there must be governance reform. Political parties collude with terrorist outfits in order to garner votes. Terrorist penetration of the government makes nonsense of secrecy in intelligence. In Andhra huge consignments of rockets manufactured in Tamil Nadu were seized. These were meant for Maoists spread across five states. In Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra police stumbled on huge catchments of crude RDX bombs meant for nationwide distribution. Can such factories operate without some official connivance? Can government owned State Bank branches continue to distribute fake currency that facilitates terrorism without official complicity? Can such lax governance fight terrorism? To stem this rot one is led to the fifth aspect.
Fifth, there must be systemic reform. Two basic reforms are vital. The Constitution must be followed as written to allow the President who is above partisanship, who represents Parliament and all assemblies, to exercise due authority assisted by a full-fledged secretariat. The proposed federal agency to fight terrorism, along with various other bodies, should be made accountable to the President. That will eliminate collusion between vote-seeking politicians and terrorist outfits. This will not violate the Constitution but implement it. At the same time genuine Panchayati Raj as directed by the Constitution must be established. To achieve it, a new primary police tier accountable to the assembly of the urban or rural panchayat must be created. Basic law and order and security entrusted to the primary local body will ensure effective monitoring of suspicious activity in each locality. This primary police force could become an invaluable intelligence source for the anti-terrorist federal agency utilizing cyber connectivity.
Sixth, there is need for foreign policy reform. The government must follow the law of reciprocity while dealing with all nations. It must talk bluntly with America, China and Pakistan. This week a hotline was established between New Delhi and Beijing. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao emit positive vibes. That is not enough. Neither of them ever served in China’s army. Are their intentions translated on the ground by the PLA? Are they more effective in dealing with their army than President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani are in dealing with Pakistan’s army? India does not need words but deeds.
The enemy does not aim for revolution in India. Revolutions strengthen nations. The enemy seeks to balkanize India. It is the people of India who should seek revolution as suggested by these reforms. It is not enough to defeat the Dantewada Maoists. The goal must be to secure India against all subversive terrorism fomented from abroad.

The author is a veteran journalist and cartoonist

Union Square pillow fight + veselka + yakitori = awesomeness

I will only use lolspeak from now. So I hope out of the metro at union square, and there is this epic pillow fight going on on saturday. So i wade into the crowde.

With my SLR held high ovah muh head

clickety clickety all the way... i get bopped on the noodle many times with pillows

someone rips their pillow open and suddenly da air is full of fine cotton

oh fuck, mah allergies jus went inna overdrive/

oh noes!

den i sees a bloke with a rolleiflex

epicness

and this bloke rips his shirte off and gets into a bare kunckle fight with people with pillows

imagine bringing your fists to a pillow fight. musta been irish.

den somehow i am smack in da middle of the da fight and i get effin chakravyuhed by a bunch of screamin chicks. with pillows.

i somehow struggle out of there with my glasses askew, but camera intact. my lungs coated with a fine deposit of cotton fibres. And then went into a random bookstore and found a cheap copy of the complete Yes Minister. New York rocks.

Trolled by the cryoscopic effect

Refers to the depression of the freezing point of a solution due to the presence of some solute, or impurity. This does not depend on the nature of the impurity, just on its relative amount w.r.t the solvent. So, this means that the equivalent amount of potassium chloride and sodium chloride will lead to the same depression of the freezing point of water. Which is, of course why the put some salt in the water pipes in North East India, where it is cold. Also why they put ethanol/glycerol as antifreeze in car radiators.

Here is the Wikipedia page. Observe that the cryoscopic constant of water is K=1.86 C/M. Assuming a van't Hoff factor of i=1 for glycerol, for a 20% mass/vol solution, that comes to a comcentration of 2M. So, the maximum freezing point depression should be about 4 C. Which means that the cell stock should have thawed at -4C. And when I grabbed the cells from the -80 C freezer, I should have scraped some off and stuck them back in pronto. Not left them on the benchtop (on ice) for five minutes where they thawed out. I tried blaming the croscopic effect, but the calculation shows that without the depression of freezing point, the stock would have thawed out at 0 C, as such, it did at -4 C. And they should have not thawed out more than, say -70 C.

95% personal stupidity
5% being trolled by the cryoscopic effect.

Where did the 12 Monkeys come from?

I was recently made aware that Terry Guillam's 12 Monkeys is derived from an older work. Of course, the theme of time travel from a post apocalyptic world into the past is not new.. it has been explored in the literature rather extensively. But 12 Monkeys was a rather nice piece of work. Bruce Willis pulls off one of those confused roles which he seems to fit so well in, and Madeline Stowe is quite delectable as the psychotherapist trying to help him. But the cake goes to Brad Pitt, around whom the entire film revolves.. aarrr.. go see it yourself.

So.... 12 Monkeys was inspired by, and gathers a certain part of its compositional aesthetic from an older film, called La Jetée, a 1962 B/W film which was composed almost entirely out of still shots! Some of those shots were undoubtedly painstakingly staged, some others, I am not so sure. But the film is something worth watching. Reminds me of another experiment in cinema which I have spoken about earlier here.

Which camera

Sometime this year, I will be flipping a lot of cash (presumably enough to buy a couple of kidneys on the black market) over for a camera and some associated paraphernalia. I have a few choices. But before that, let me talk about what the dream-wishlist.

1. The Leica M9. Just released. An astonishing 18 MPixels in a full frame 24X36 mm sensor. The legendary Leica M series construction. And of course, the ability to use any number of prime lenses from the Leica Summilux/Summicron/Elmarit series. All the way to the ultrabright 0.95 Noctilux 50 mm lens which goes for a cool 10 thou... This belongs to a type of camera called a rangefinder. The principle of operation is very different from an SLR. No swinging mirrors or anything like that. This leads to a much quieter machine which is discreet. Something that a master of street photography like Cartier Bresson apparently loved. Here is some of his work. One of his most famous photos, the man jumping over a puddle was taken with an M3. But the point remains that Leica's are quite insanely expensive. Not for me.
   

.. to be continued

Office suites

I feel the need to express my disappointment at MS Office. The version on the lab iMac is the Office for Macs 2008. The Powerpoint package is somewhat unstable and crashes easily. This has happened to me before, but I was usually running multiple things and Office is something of a resource hog. But this iMac was running almost nothing else, just a Safari window. Strange? Yes.

But that can be dealt with. Coming from the Linux world of OpenOffice, which is nowhere near as snazzy as Office (but gets the work done), I am used to hitting Ctrl-S or Cmd-S every ten seconds. (Back in the day, OO used to crash ALL the effin time). HOWEVER, and this is a huge lifesaver, OO has a file recovery system which kicks in when you restart the suite, and should recover your files from the last autosave. Does MSO not have it? Am I missing something here?

Movies lately

So, I ended up seeing "My Name is Khan" with a couple of labmates a week ago. Our man Kaushik told me that this movie "sucks arse". Not true. It is not horrid, just ambitous, but does not really make it. It was a treat to see Kajol again after a while... she has aged rather well, methinks. Shahrukh Khan is stuck doing his "Kikikikikiki Kiran" act again. I mean, this bloke finished optimizing his acting skills in the mid 90's with Darr and has been putting the same shite out for the public ever since. (sorry Rachna). And for some unknown reason, the Indian movie going audience laps it up and comes back for more. Also, Karan Johar believes in force feeding emotions down your gagging throat, so there is also more of that. But for all its tackiness, this fillum does challenge several important questions today... such as the perception of Muslims in the West, and tries to do a good job of it. But there was too much of Forrest Gump meets the 40 Year Old Virgin there for my liking.

3 Idiots was quite nice. Aamir Khan doing his usual awesome act. This guy is so versatile that all our desi actors should take lessons from him. Mahadevan and Sharman somethingortheother bloke were pretty cool too. But the cake goes to Bomman Irani for another absolutely wunnerful role as the college principal. And the Chamatkar speech is something to enjoi.

For what leetil it is worth

Happy New Year ya'all. 2009 has been an' gone. What do I have to show for it? Well, for one thing, several of my friends moved out of towne. That felt awful. Perhaps that is what happens to everyone. Does it? Tell me, what is worse... missing friends, or not really having any and not knowing the difference? They say that some things you only start appreciating after they aren't there any more. That category certainly includes people.

My last few days in Michigan went by in a blurry. (This is a made up word which is "blur"+"a flurry"). Please cite me whenever you use it. Pradeep babu came by to defend his thesis on the 7th of December. He stayed at my place over the weekend and totally wowed me with his awesome presentation. Here is a picture of both of us not workin'

The day after Pradeep's defense, my boss wanted me to talk to this guest speaker.. who just happens to be one of the world leaders in the field I work in. That was scary. Then it was time for my own defense. Our man Nandi made the following poster... note that he should have been prepping for his own predefense research proposal, which was scheduled for the very next day....

Sara made a FB event for my own shindig. Complete with Nandi's awesome poster. Milan came down from NY to participate in the general fun. Pradeep, of course had stayed back for a couple of days to effect his thesis revisions and chuck rotten tomatoes at me. And then, before I knew it, the big day was upon me. I started out by trying to iron a shirt with the heater set too high and almost set the place on fire. After this early disaster and minor hiccups such as retrieving my committee evaluations from the graduate school half an hour before he scheduled time, and so on.. we were finally there. The talk went (I think) rather well, although I was pretty much in a state of terminal panic just before. I puked all over this bloke taking a shite in the men's room and said 'muh bad'. No, I didn't, I was just channeling 8 Mile. Our man Smith attended in a Three Wolf Moon shirt.

Anyhoo, a whole lotta phrends came down to cheer and much fun was had by all. Thanks. Really. Then the closed doors session began, and the gloves came off. That was effin' brutal, I don't mind tellin' ya'all. But they passed me with minor revisions ( I think the only person who did not get those "minor revisions" was Robert Oppenheimer). And then much merry making happened.


More updates later...

Gautam Chattopadhyay. Always.

Jibonmukhi, about which I may have written earlier is the return to realism movement in Bengali music. Perhaps the best proponent was Suman Chattopadhyay. I am not sure what that eccentric genius is up to these days (some people say politics..?), but it might not be out of turn to describe him as the voice of not a generation (see, no cliches!) but rather as the poet of an age which lived in the portentous shadow of changes which would eventually overwhelm everything familiar. But for the moment, the hand was stayed, and a people walked home together in the late afternoon sun knowing only that the evening would pass, bringing a dawn which they would not recognize. Suman belonged to that age. And you are a wee bit confused. But this is not about Suman, this is about an older musician called Gautam Chattopadhyay. The late seventies was a confused time of riotous colours, bell bottom pants (they came to India somewhat late) and the angry, pathetic, remnants of yet another failed political movement. And in music, for a brief moment, the wonderful romances where the hero and heroine run around trees or sing along in a Shikara on the Dal lake... these romances were also becoming a thing of the past. Soon enough, the Dal lake in Kashmir would echo with the crackling of assault rifles. But this was, just another day. And no one, really no one was holding his breath.

Gautam Chattopadhyay came together with a small group of like minded musicians and wrote Haay Bhalobashi, and suddenly this was different. This bloke wrote about what you felt, not what you were supposed to feel. Mahiner Ghoraguli was the first true Jibonmukhi band, on either side of the border. And people walked out on him. After a few years, he faded into obscurity.

Then, Suman and Tomake Chai happened. The rest, as they say, is history. But for some of us, even if we weren't actually there, Gautam Chattopadhyay's afternoon still lives on.

We had a Halloween party

A Bengali Halloween party. Also known (for slightly confusing reasons) as Bhoot Chaturdoshi. It was rather awesome.

The awesomeness of the new B-school

The B-school has a new building. I was enjoying an afternoon constitutional the other day when I decided to make a slight detour and take a dekko inside the building. Snazzy. Uber snazzy.

More credit card fees?

Apparently, BoA is planning to impose extra fees on people who pay off their credit card loans before the interest period kicks in.

Thesis writing, Shutki machher jhal

Is a very uphill task. You certainly know of a certain Frodo Baggins who started his dissertation under Gandalf the Grey, a wise tenured PI. That story is detailed here. So, I visited the bigsis at Urbana. Did you know that city is the home of Miss America 2003? There, I have improved your day somewhat with that leetil factoid. Also, I made Shutki Machh with dried fish from the Chinese store. Here are a few facts about Shutki Machh.

1. It is made with dried, salted fish.
   
2. The original recipe is Bangaldeshi.
3. I am part Bangladeshi, at least by lineage.
4. The best prep of Shutki is the low-on-gravy-high-on-chilli version. This is also called the 'Jhal'.
5. Shutki machher jhal is usually mind-shatteringly hot and spicy. As in your insides will melt and your read end might think it is a Kilimov RD33 afterburner.
6. Shutki stinks to high heaven. People of a delicate disposition, and of a genteel upbringing have been known to faint whilst walking past a place where they were just drying out Shutki.
7. The same people will fight each other to eat more Shutki. But they cannot make it.
   
8. Trade secret: soak said dried fish in hot water for a while. That will kill some of the stink.
9. Bigger trade secret: the process of cooking will drive your neighbours out of their shantys (Shutki is rarely cooked in American Suburbia or any random Manhattan co-op).
   
10. Shutki is sometimes made with Loitta fish. Here is a recipe. Here is another.
    

I moved

About a month ago to this new place. Packing up was hard, and I had a very Jerome K Jerome moment. Here is a pic to go with it. The only thing missing is, you guessed it - Montmorency!

Busy... busy..

Tail end of my PhD. Working hard. No time to blog.

This is what happens when you have a pissed of crystallographer

Half a million dollars worth of research down the drain, not to say several the possibilities of several PhDs. This woman has a lot to answer for. Details follow:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13108834?nclick_check=1

Reddit on relationships

1. Reddit is full of losers. Read this thread to find out why.
2. I am one of them.

Yes! Prayers can also be outsourced!!

To India, where else?

What meteor shower?

So, I found myself standing out in the parking lot, trying to block out the glare of the halogens with my hands. And then suddenly a meteor streaked by. I legged it upstairs and pulled my camera out. And drove off on Pontiac Trail to find a spot where there would be no pesky ground level lights. And no meteors. None at all. Disappointing. But then, on second thoughts, today meteors, tomorrow Triffids. Perhaps it is better this way.

captcha of the day

10 wildly historically inaccurate movies

(mostly pertinent only to Hollywood)
are here. Observe that our man, Mel Gibson makes it to the list thrice. As SouthPark would have it, it hurts, it hurts!

Lakshya, Dhoom and Dhoom 2.

There are Hindi fillums and there are Hindi fillums. I have often wondered why really good Hindi cinema does not get the attenshun it deserves and why crap floats up to the top and makes so much money. A case in point is Drohkaal, a cinema I have already blogged about. A more recent example is Lakshya, which is based on the 1999 Kargil war.

Briefly, a slacker finds his way into the Indian Army through the proverbial series of unlikely cooincidences. The discipline of the Indian Military Academy proves too much for him to handle and he decides to quit. Except that he just goes AWOL. When he gets back home, he is greeted by (in sequence): relief (his mom), disapproval(his dad) and contempt(his girlfriend). Something inside him goes, quite audibly 'click', and he heads back to the IMA. His CO takes him back, but not before hammering out a very well deserved punishment. They say that the life of a GC (Gentleman Cadet) at the IMA is harsh to the point that after graduating as Second Lieutenants, these young men find life at the LoC(Line of Control in Kashmir) quite relaxing. This is what our protagonist goes through, and after graduating, he is promptly posted to Ladakh (the highest battleground in the world, where the Indian and Paki armies have been facing off for 25 years). His regimental CO is the venerable Amitabh Bachhan who in one of his most masterly understated roles yet, points out to the youngster at the unit welcome dinner that "one billion Indians sleep secure in the knowledge that you and I are awake, and watching over them".

Prophetic words, for shortly afterward, in the spring of 1999, an Indian goatherd spots armed men sneaking across the LoC. Afghan mujahideen, backed by Paki Special Services Group and the Northern Light Infantry had built fortified bunkers on our side of the LoC. The Indian and Paki forward commanders have long had a gentleman's agreement to collectively withdraw from the border in deep winter, a time where both sides lose men to exposure and not bullets. The Pakis, not being gentlemen, decided to use the opportunity over the winter of 1998 to move men and materiel over the LoC. This started the Kargil war, where over 500 Indian officers and men died. The Pakis admit to losing 350 regular Army soldiers. Unofficial estimates put the number of Paki and mujahideen dead at above 3000. Perhaps we shall never know how many people fell in the snow. But what is known and recorded by scribes from the front was the immense bravery of the Indian Army. The Indian officer ethos is summed up in the simple words 'follow me'. The disproportionately high officer casualties suffered in the taking of Tiger Hill and Tololoing came from brave young men leading from the front.

Lakshya means 'goal' or 'objective', and the objective of our hero in the film is an unnamed hill, which is a Paki artillery observation post. Was it Point 5353? It is never mentioned in the film. We share our hero's desperation as he leads his team in an almost sucidal assault up a sheer cliff. Lakshya was a rare film, one that showcased bravery and sacrifice without ever descending to jingoism. And Indian audiences rejected it at the box office.

In return, Bollywood gave us movies like Dhoom and Dhoom 2. Both of which are lame and brain dead. And people loved them. We deserve that shite that is served to us in the name of cinema. Before leaving, check out these clips from Lakshya:
1. IMA graduation
2. The unit welcome
3. The ascent

Drohkaal

The Naxalite movement/revolution/terrorism scourge (take your pick here) has been a major issue in the Indian political stage for several decades. In 1994, Govind Nihilani directed 'Drohkaal', (literally 'The time of revolution'), which is a film about the battle between Naxalites and the police in an unnamed Indian state (Andhra Pradesh..?).

I am not going to delve into the politics of the issue. But the film... dear Gawd. That was brilliant. The way the interrogator, Abhay Singh (Om Puri) sees himself folding to the will of his enemy, Bhadra (played by Aashish Vidyarthi) is nothing less than the best of le Carre. The story hinges around two double agents in Bhadra's terrorist cell. Their controller is DCP Abbas. Then Bhadra is himself taken in a chance encounter at a highway checkpoint. But to the consternation of Abbas and Abhay, Bhadra appears to be pulling strings from inside his cell. Bhadra proves to be totally immune to interrogation, and matters suddenly escalate when he orders a hit on his interrogator's family. Loyalties blur and every other man who wears a khaki uniform could be working for the other side. This is a hauntingly powerful film which does nothing to prevent the feeling of rising hopelessness which we share with Abhay Singh, and to a lesser extent, Abbas (Naseeruddin Shah). A movie to watch and think about.

WTF Iowa?

The world's most pointless city

Is Dubai. This city, not Manhattan or London is the cruel face of unfettered modern greed. But first, a bit of history. Several hundreds of millions of years ago, gigatonnes of zooplankton and algae were buried under a settling sea and underwent endothermic reactions to create what we know as petroleum in that region of the world we call the Middle East. In the last couple of millenia, a band of feckless nomads wandered into that desert and claimed it for their own. Said nomads then spent the next few centuries plundering each other's tents. Early in the twentieth century, that most intrepid and rapacious of all the European colonialists, the British found a use for them. They decided to turn these camel riders into a weapon against what was probably the longest lived Muslim nation ever: the Ottomans. The war ended, and the British left.. well sort of. They came back when they found oil. And that began the greatest historical example of an entire people becoming parasites. It is merely the value of oil, and the epic coincidence of those nomads wandering on this particular piece of soil that makes the Mid East the battleground and the promised land that is is. But for the machinery of extracting oil (not even refining it), there is scarcely an ounce of industry there. By industry, I mean both the noun and the verb...

What passes for society there is a collection of xenophobic and misogynistic laws that some apologists call 'culture'. And wealth. Wealth beyond measure, wealth beyond imagination, but only for a select few. And the former nomads love to show off their wealth. They have constructed the world's most luxurious hotels, indoor skiing ranges in the middle of the desert and countless other temples to greed. Sadly, Universities, research centres, schools of engineering and other such trivialities have been somewhat ignored. Who needs PhDs and patent offices when you can have indoor skiing ranges, right? Just as long as suburban soccer moms keep insisting on driving their Escalades and Explorers to malls, petrodollars will keep flowing, and with it, this bubble of prosperity that Dubai stands on will keep expanding.

The dirty underbelly of this colossal construction business is what happens to the migrant workers who actually build skyscrapers. These people are poor workers from India, China and many other parts of South/South East Asia. They are the subhuman detritus left by the expanding bubble Arab hubris. What keeps them there? Certainly, China and India are not 'forgiving' economies. Making a living in modern India is not easy if you are not a software engineer. But for all our considerable demerits, we have just voted a passably decent government into power and we have the most egalitarian Constitution ever written. In a brief conversation with a Kuwaiti kid who goes to school in the town I live in, certain matters of perception become apparent. He thought I had studied at some posh 'English school', as he put it. When I told him that I went to a government school which charged my folks a pittance (and does not charge girl students anything at all), he was taken aback. My point is that India and Indians, for all that we have going against us, try! Emiratis are perfectly happy to sit on their bloated arses and have essentially slave labour working their streets and Caucasian engineers keeping their power plants running. That is not a sustainable economy, neither is it a sustainable country. And when the bubble collapses, as it inevitably will, this arrogance will be remembered.

Article: Sordid reality behind Dubai's gilded facade

Cambridge

Kalyan and I were hopping around Harvard Square, looking for a suitable pub. It was drizzling with that half-hearted melancholia that I have always associated with North American rain. The hour was half past six, and the summer residents of Cambridge, graduate students and other bums were making their way wearily home. We found this tiny pub which actually had some garden seating. The equally tiny waitress was nice enough to clean up a table for us. We sat back and the pils gradually brought in this blissful feeling of well being. The first three songs played (off the tiny waitress' iPod) were a Metallica, a Queen and an Eminem. This piqued my curiosity. I ambled over to the bar and demanded to know if she had flicked my playlist. We struck up a conversation about the relative merits of Eminem and why Kanye West is awful... and then I felt that abandoning Kalyan to his beer was not nice, so I headed back. Then, the next thing I know, this bloke is at our table and wants to know where I am from. 'Michigan', I reply. 'Michigan? Fuck Michigan!' says he.... to which I raise an interrogative eyebrow. He lets me know that he is from Connecticut, and I should know that people from the Constitution State have issues. (I did not know this for a fact). Anyhoo, our friend (turns out to be a local pastry chef) hands me his iPod in a spirit of cross-broder cameraderie and insists that I listen to Eminem's latest album, which, I have to confess is not that good.

Just another reason why I like Cambridge. Oh, and that tiny waitress with tha rad playlist is Nepali. Practically Indian, except for a few mountains.

Cussin' takes the pain away

I fuckin' knew it. Now the BBC has backed me up.

Economic reality and the decline of machismo

One of my friends posted this article on FB today, which I think you should give a read. The main thrust is that the declining economics of today will herald an age where traditional 'manual labour' jobs will decline drastically, leading to massive societal upheaval. The model of the male breadwinner is going, fast. Will this lead to better equality for the genders? Or will this create a backlash which will only worsen things where they are already bad. Read on.

What happens to a society where the gender balance is disturbed? Some of those questions are addressed here, and here. India is particularly vulnerable to this. The gender ratio is 0.97 (ie. 970 females for 1000 males), which is disturbingly low. Further, India is split by a gender divide, where the Northern states have a shockingly low ratio of females to men. This does not correlate to education or prosperity, as some of our most prosperous states, such as Punjab and Gujrat are the worst offenders. But the implications are scary. Female abortions are the norm in modern India where a male child will bring 'happiness' to the family. We are heading for massive trouble.

Awesome women, chapter 1: Hedy Lamarr

This should become a recurring post.. about the most awesome wimmen who have ever lived. Yeah, the list is long and will have everyone from Enid Blyton to Rani Laxmibai to Marie Curie. But lets start off with Hedy Lamarr, possibly the only person ever to be described as a scientist-actress. Hedy was an actress who was not afraid to take up risque roles, very daring for someone of her Jewish Austro-Hungarian lineage. And then she co-invented the first form of frequency hopping, which was intended for homing torpedos, and is today seen in in most forms of radar guided interceptors. Pretty awesome, nein? Here, look at some pictures of her.

Need band members

We are looking for a couple of guitarists and a percussionist. The band is a spectroscopy themed band. Experience in spin physics is required. We welcome solution and solid state spectroscopists with open arms. Ability to write NMR themed songs is a plus. A few possible names for the band are below. Please contribute suggestions:

1. The Hard Pulse
2. The Hartmann Hahn Condition
3. Fermi's Golden rule
   

Drones for the PAF?

Such a bad idea!

UNIX, beer and photography

This last week has been lots of work. As, I have to do, if I am to publish, defend my thesis and graduate before the big crunch. But what if UM becomes creative and gives me more than just a PhD? Yes! Abstruse goose has the answer!!

In the middle of all this work, I have pretty much missed out on the summer festival. Such a phookin' loser. But, I legged it out late yesterday and found an old friend, who has moved on to awesomer things (a real job, a family, etc). So happy for him! And then Smith and Ronnie toddled along, and the evening was spent in some low light photography, the pursuit of beer and knowledge. Allow me to explain the last bit: Smith and I decided to ask people around us if they used UNIX. We got asked if we were engineers. (no). The most hilarious answer was from this huge heavily tattoed bloke... "UNICKS? What's that? I just like pu*sy"

Things to do at your thesis defense

This is the first of what will hopefully turn into a series and bring me the kind of fame which has so far eluded me, in spite of me being a fifty feet tall firebreathing dragon with an elven blade in my right hand, and a Shigemi tube in my left hand. Wearing RayBans. And a three wolf moon tee-shirt.

Anyhoo, the list follows: please add to it as you see fit.

1. Begin every third sentence with the phrase 'according to the prophecy'
2. Respond to questions with a full throated 'you want the truth? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!'
3. Rap out the thesis defence
4. Liberal use of jazz hands
5. Employ a mariachi band to provide accompaniment to the more intricate points of string theory/hard condensed matter/large protein studies
6. Invite Robert De Niro as your 'special friend'. Failing that, Jack Nicholson. NOT EDWARD NORTON. NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
7. Spike the coffee
8. Have a friend dressed in a dark suit sitting near the back of the room taking down the names of people who come to the defense. Start a rumour that he is from Homeland Security/MI5/IB/BfH/Mossad/FSB/whichever security-intelligence agency calls the shots in your part of the world
9. Reward your thesis committee members with candy for asking particularly tough questions
10. Ask Jon Stewart to introduce you
    

Summer festival at Ann Arbor

Website.. find out more!

More travels and travails.

After the Keystone experience, I found myself gallivanting around the NY area last week. Ok, not gallivanting. This was a rather important trip, careerwise, that is.. and I am glad that I was able to pack in some meeting old friends in that time as well. The people who came over to the US at roughly the same time as when I started my PhD are now finishing their postdocs and looking for jobs, any of them back home. But some of the people who stayed at home for their PhDs are now looking to come here for their postdoc work. Which is nice, from my point of view.. the North American continent can sometimes become a lonely place..

Important news vs not so important news.

Michael Jackson copped it last night. Today's CNN webpage looks like this:

Apparently twitter was overwhelmed by MJ's death and people tweeting abt it. Seriously.. wtf? In an alternate world (inhabited by the Onion), things could be like shown here. You tell me... do we have our priorities straight?

VW accounts for female drivers

Explaining the wurlde, one Venn diagram at a time: a Michael Bay film

Egg sketches and photos

Here. Enjoi

Me back

The last two weeks have been very exciting. Two weeks ago, I was at Keystone, Colorado, presenting our lab's research (on behalf of my boss, I should add, who was at a conference in Croatia). Presenting the whole lab's work, and not just my own was rather terrifying. It was very exciting to see that our work was very well received. Keystone itself is a wunnerful place to visit, with beautiful vistas and great hiking. After the morning of the talk, we (I was fortunate enough to become friends with a great group of peers) we drove up to the continental divide, which was at 11990 feet, and then legged it up to the nearest summit. That was lung-bustingly painful, but awesome. Then we drove back, at which point someone pointed out that I should have a poster. I was totally unaware that short talk presenters were also supposed to have posters. Who knew? Anyway, I slammed together something with a giant Post-it and a few marker pens. Which turned out to be quite a hit. The next day was even awesome-er, with more hiking. The conference ended with a party at which there was some dancing and cartwheeling. Yeah...

Life imitates art.. sort of.

The novel USS Seawolf, by Patrick Robertson has as a central plot theme, the USS Seawolf, a nuclear submarine colliding with the towed sonar array of a Chinese Navy (PLAN) destroyer. Today, I read on CNN that a Chinese submarine had collided with the towed array of a US navy destroyer. Hmmm...

Quantum LolCat

Back from Colorado

The conference was awesome. I had the opportunity to interact with some really great researchers, especially with this comp-bio group out of Pittsburgh. We (our lab's work) was very well received, and I got a lot of great personal feedback. The high point of the meeting though was making friends with a bunch of great people who will probably be members of the scientific cognoscenti (read: people who will review my future papers, [massive dose of optimism in that there will be some future papers]). Yeah, great time.

I was especially excited to see that progress in coarse grained modeling and elastic network studies on fairly large proteins. And this one talk on GroEL by Horovitz which blew me away with the coolest FRET experiment I have ever heard described.

Nepotism in America - gasp!

But it happens, apparently.

After the apocalypse

Is there a Malthusian limit to humanity? There might be.. there have been many Mad Max type speculations about a post apocalypse world. It won't take much - the breakdown of structured society will render life somewhat difficult for most of us. Do you wear spectacles? Goner. Contacts? Best of luck. Got cavities? Yeah, not much good for chewing antelope meat.

What, am I grossing you out? Well, go see Terminator Salvation and laugh at what they have managed. This movie sucks and is a waste of time and money. What always bugs me when I see something like this is where do their food supplies come from? I mean, are there these giant stores of canned food that they have tapped? A decade after Judgment Day, there has to be someone farming! Or else, where do they eat from? Unrealistic shite.

I do recommend seeing Children of Men, because it has a much more realistic portrayal of how society might endure, amidst breaking down in the face of an extinction level crisis. It certainly helps that it also works as a great metaphor for our fractured times. And that it was written by P D James and has Clive Owen and Julianne Moore. Speaking of Moore, she also starred in a very weird movie called Blindness, which is about.. .blindness. That is all I will say, because you should see it and form your own opinion. Ciao.

Of people nice and not so nice

There are those bus drivers who will accelerate away from a bus stop while you are wheezing your last 100 m dash to get there. Sometimes they will look at you, and then speed away. Sometimes, they will do this in the dead of Michigan winter. Coming from a mega-urban sprawl in India, I am used to dealing with a not-very-friendly public transport system, but some people deserve to be flogged for being socially evil.

Then, there are other people like the one bloke who was on his last run after midnight and actually went out of his way to drop me off (his was the last bus running, and it didn't quite go near where I lived). Yeah, we ended up chatting about his experiences growing up as a Midwestern farmboy. Nice person. Helps to keep your faith in humanity.