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.