Life Morsels

Chavez calls Bush a devil...

2006-09-21T00:19:00.000+05:30

Musing Minds » Blog Archive » Chavez Recommends Chomsky - Calls Bush ‘The devil’

"I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States because their threat is in their own house. The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself is right in the house. And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here. (crosses himself) Right here. And it smells of sulfer still today. This table that I am now standing in front of, yesterday ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as 'the devil' came here talking as if he owned the world. Truly as the owner of the world. I think we can call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the President of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism he came to share his nostrums. To try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title, 'The Devil's Recipe'.

As Chomsky says here clearly and in depth, the American Empire is doing all it can to consolidate its hegemonistic system of domination and we can not allow them to do that. We can not allow a world dictatorship to be consolidated."

Read Musing Minds. Quite a showman, Mr. Chavez ....

Dell MP3 afficinados - take heed...

2006-08-23T23:05:00.000+05:30

"Dell Learns The Difference Between A Fad And A Failure
Just a couple years ago, Dell's Kevin Rollins claimed that the iPod was "just a fad", despite the fact that Dell's own efforts in the space hadn't been too successful. A year ago, the company apparently decided it was a fad worth copying, as they came out with yet another iPod copycat device. Less than a year later? That device is dead. Fad or not, it would seem that Apple has won this particular round. "

Seems ironic but about a year ago, my cousin and I had an argument on the relative merits of iPod vs. whatever-Dell-was-calling-it MP3 player. Dell's was at the time touted to be of better "value" (although what the calculation was for it I don't know) and that it was well, Dell as opposed to Apple which did nothing to the entire platform except hype.

Now theres an age difference I have with my cousin and I do like him engaging in "devils advocate"-ish views - sort of expands the mind both ways. So I engaged him for a while in what I knew at the offset was a lost cause to explain the entire 360 degree appliance-service concept. Eventually, I gave up when I realized he was arguing for the sake of arguing not because he believed in either viewpoint one way or the other since he had neither of this MP3 players.

Interesting will be the conversation I have with him in a few days. Maybe I'll get him an iPod nano and wrap it in a Dell-Grey silicone cover. Hee hee...

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He Returns...

2006-08-21T08:58:00.000+05:30

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

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So much for "Secure"Works...

2006-08-20T16:45:00.000+05:30

SecureWorks admits to falsifying MacBook wireless hack - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

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Response to Ignorance

2006-07-25T10:35:00.000+05:30

A response to a particular post from a college sophomore in GMU. Maan, the education system in the US needs an overhaul. Read his tirade against India here (he has not permalinked his blog posts but just look for the "India's Problems Contd").. Juxtapose this with the fact that he is a first generation India American. Both his parents and all of their relatives come from India. I guess the view of the Indian abroad as the educated type only extends to those emigrating and not to their heir...

It's quite unfortunate that the author's opinion on India is so...uninformed. Lets tease out the elements of his argument:

1. 2/3 of the population lives in villages...

So what . This is not to say that the only sure form of development or comfort is to ultimately live in an urban mega polis. Almost 78% of the villages in North India has electricity and over 90% has water distributed since the Green Revolution drive in the 70's. Villages have better access to potable water than some sections of the bigger cities do.

Agricultural income is subsidized by the Indian Govt. and is under the tax net. What this means is that their output is bought at market rate sans sales tax but no income tax is levied on them.

Kerala fishermen coordinate via mobile phone on which part of the coast to bring in their catch to garner the best price for their catch.
Living in villages is not an imposition in India. Everyday 1000's of villager who wish to do so come to the urban megalopolises to do live, work, trade or be entertained. Some of them leave. Others stay. Some don't venture out at all.

Life ought not to be viewed from a single lens. Each persons view of contentment is different. Yours might be a killer car and a "crib" in the Watergate, others are content with the birth of their child or the marriage of their nephews or nieces celebrated around a village square.

Before one comments on the "woeful" fate of "these people" - I would ask how many time the author has visited a village in Haryana, Punjab, Jharkand, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Not a town he mistook for a village because of the absence of a "Gap" or "Nordstrom" and a six laned highway.

2. "The lack of charisma...", "...naive and submissive..." and on the personal makeup of the average Indian

No where is the authors almost childish ignorance illustrated better than here. My suggestion - meet more Indians and not just the ones who run spice shops, or work for a techies firms or your own relatives. And leave out ABCD's as well. Come to India if you have the strength of conviction in what you write and I offer to show you 10/50/100 non-celebrities who will inspire you. But then, someone like you does not like to venture out a lot, I imagine. Maybe Daytona or Disney world. A gaping mouth ride through New York City. A suppressed yawn through DC. You sound so bored that even you do not know you are bored. Perhaps then, the comment has some merit if it were written looking into a mirror.

"These people do not possess any ingenuity, nor do they possess management capability." - So pathetic... Were you hopping for comment flames? Do you really believe that?

3. "... having lived in India for many years..."

How many exactly? How old were you at the time? Where did you travel while in India and how? Objective questions all. Would love to know the answers...

4. On economies and infrastructure...

Yes, Infrastructure is a big obstacle in the path of frenetic growth. Yes, India is a ROARING Asian tiger economy. The needs, rewards and promise of the latter will resolve the former. It will only gets better cause in infrastructure as it relates to demand and Development we have hit rock bottom. It may take 5, 10, 20 years. Again, what of it? We have had and have greater problems and have surmounted them. We will do this too and wow the world.

Say, how are those displaced people in New Orleans doing? Katrina, was it? And I hear your veterans are well rewarded too, huh? What's it cost you to fill your prescription? Do you or your parents have to slave away at a job to make sure you guys have insurance? How's that invincible army of yours doing in Afghanistan and Iraq? Have you caught the bastard who bombed your Pentagon with a civilian airliner yet, with your Predator drones and KH-11's? How many channels of your 500 are worth watching, anyway? Does your Public School System really leave no child behind? Their test scores must be through the roof compared to ours, huh?

And this in the most powerful and "richest" nation on earth. Surely, you'll excuse us poorer folks our not-so- world class infrastructure. The author must realize, and he will with maturity, that all nations have their unique sets of problems and overcoming them and not the fact that they have them is what ultimately defenses the character of nations...

5. On health and social ailments...

Yes we have an inordinately large number of AIDS reported. However, the author is seriously misinformed if he believes that the Government is not acting to curb it. 6 million people with HIV/AIDS is not an easy number to deal with but is a quarter of the cumulative incidence rate in Europe. Africa has 3 times the cases of AIDS. So, I'd advise that the author revisit his stats and information on which nation is partnering with the US to distribute drugs at a low cost to Africa...(and where the helpline for the AIDS call center in his own country will lead him to... :) )

If a cure is found it is more likely anywhere than in the US considering the President's religious administration of stem cell law... So hats off to ya for losing the edge on medical research. And our government is being accused of turning a blind eye on dealing with human diseases?!?!

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Intense...

2006-07-24T07:08:00.000+05:30

http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/2006/07/apple_invents_a.html

Feeds deeper into the speculation that the next iPod is going to be a ebook. Potentially, with wifi, it could upend the entire Palm/Treo/iPaq/Windows Mobile marketplace and drive a major transition into giving books in ebook format.

Imagine a million + schoolkids carrying every single textbook they ever used to school every day. The text indexed with Google, enriched through RIA's (Rich Internet Apps - Adobe's term) - the potential is immense in learning, medicine, government (the cop that can download mugshots while he has the car pulled over + every traffic violation you have had from every state - actually that might be a bad idea... ;) ), and of course - entertainment.

Elsewhere, in the rumor-ridden blogosphere, Engadget is reporting that Apple will do ebooks as well lending credibility to the rising amount of posts on it. And the potential design the have is waaaayyyy sweeettt....

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Gates and the OSX programmers

2006-07-24T00:11:00.000+05:30

http://secretdiaryofstevejobs.blogspot.com/2006/07/one-more-thing-re-microshizzle.html

"I mentioned in my previous post that Gates has been trying to poach away our OS X programmers. This started a few years ago, I guess when they first realized that Vista was in trouble. Natch our guys just laughed when they got the calls. I mean, they're working in heaven. You think they're gonna go shovel pigshit in Redmond? Plus, uh, even with backdating, you might have noticed that Microsoft options aren't exactly the road to wealth anymore. But anyhoo. Gates kept trying. You gotta hand that to him, he's a persistent little frigger. So finally I said, What the hell, let's frig with these guys. So we let two of our guys go to Microsoft, just to find out what's going on. We made a big deal like we didn't want them to go, threatened to sue Microsoft, just to make it look real. But secretly we kept them on our payroll and told them, Just stay there for a year or whatever and find out what they're doing. So they report back and tell us that Gates sat them down on day one and told them he wanted them to steal our IP from OS X and put it into Vista cause they know Vista is never gonna work, it's too tangled up, too complicated, whatever. So they go, Sure, Bill, we'll gladly steal from Apple and give all of its code to you, sure, whatever. But instead they go in there and start planting friggin bombs everywhere. I mean these are really smart guys and the poor clueless Microsoft dudes can't figure out what's going wrong with their stupid OS and why it keeps crashing. And whenever they ask, Our guys go, Hey, that's Unix, that's how it's supposed to work, you gotta break some eggs to make an omelet or whatever. Ha! Brilliant! ..."

This is hilarious. Must read the entire article and RSS the blog as well.... :)

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Web 2.0

2006-07-21T10:10:00.000+05:30

This is an article that has lived in my favorites since it was published. Doing some "Favorites" cleaning and decided to post it here for all to read.

About Web 2.0 from the horses mouth as it were...

Web 1.0		Web 2.0
DoubleClick	-->	Google AdSense
Ofoto	-->	Flickr
Akamai	-->	BitTorrent
mp3.com	-->	Napster
Britannica Online	-->	Wikipedia
personal websites	-->	blogging
evite	-->	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	-->	search engine optimization
page views	-->	cost per click
screen scraping	-->	web services
publishing	-->	participation
content management systems	-->	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	-->	tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness	-->	syndication

Read the rest of the O'reilly article here...

And the continuing buzz about open source here...

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Another Reason...

2006-07-21T07:26:00.000+05:30

...why censorship in its old form is dead or dying in India.

I love the V for Vendetta Line - "People should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of its people"

Bravo, NASCOM for having so succinctly put the matter at hand.

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Smart Mobs

2006-07-21T00:30:00.000+05:30

Very Interesting Blog to watch and written based on a book by the same name. Would recommend this as a must have on your blog roll if you are in any way linked to business/tech/new economy...

Here is the link - http://www.smartmobs.com/

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English Official...

2006-07-21T00:07:00.000+05:30

You know, declaring that everyone should speak English does nothing to strip people of any of their culture. Rather it provides a means though which to spread it beyond those who belong to a single ethnicity or geography.

I think that the immigration and its offspring language debate is a crock of shit brought forth to polarize the American people on Election eve - Nov'06. I mean what do a bunch of stuffy WASP give a crap about Hindi, Mexican, Malayalam, Mandarinn or the many hundreds of languages and dialects spoken in the USA today anyway.

And the fact that its speakers speak English to everyone else and their own language amongst themselves does not make them any less the American of "x" descent that they are.

Language ought to be a unifying force not a divisive one and the liberals + Spanish speaking people ought to just give it up for their own sakes.

Make Spanish the offficial language and try doing business in China or India.... good luck. You have just marginalized your minority business from potentially your two largest suppliers/customers and labor pool nations in the next 20 years and beyond. And try ordering your Chinese food or calling a call center when darn near anything in your home breaks down.

By agreeing on a lingua franca (look that up Spanish PACs), its french... one assures that you save your home from becoming a babel. Plus, you have the upside that words and cultural aspects specific to your geo-socio-politico-ethno-city will enter the general lexicon and cultural practice.

Isolate and perish...

Here's a prime example of a political nutcase trying to convince us of the nuttiness of other political nutcases on this issue... http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/20/navarrette/index.html

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Ban on Blogs in India To Be Lifted Soon � Digital Inspiration

2006-07-20T22:20:00.000+05:30

Ban on Blogs in India To Be Lifted Soon � Digital Inspiration

Interesting outcome of something that has been raising a lot of ruckus of late.

I tend to believe that this is indeed a case of ISP's screwing up. The Indian polity is largely not "blogosphere"-aware for the censor authorities to actually be worried about "negative" press.

Besides, corruption and other familiar political intrigue rarely gets a raise out of cynical Indians. They live it on a daily basis.

Anyhoo, alls well that ends well, I guess.

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, Aged 51 1/2

2006-07-20T12:24:00.000+05:30

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, Aged 51 1/2

This is supposed to be his "secret" diary.... :) The writer is good. Funny.

Life feels like this...

2006-07-18T07:47:00.000+05:30

marienbad
Originally uploaded by lazyoldsun.

...ever so often and then the feeling goes away....

2006-06-23T14:08:00.000+05:30

World Cup 2006 ARGENTINA vs Serbia Montenegro

This is why I am crazy about football... no not soccer as myAmerican friends like to qualify it but FOOTBALL (notice the feet being employed).

Not that I have anything against the NFL but football it ain't, unless you count the punting and the field goals...

"The Beautiful Game" - as its affectionately called by 2.2 Billion fans is having its quadrinneial tournament in Germany this year. The US, though ranked 5th best at the beginning, flamed out to the Czech Republic and Ghana (last night) to not even make it into the next round. This tagged goal is probably going to make it to the history books. Looks nondescript for the casual watcher but understand that there are 11 men on the field facing off against another 11 moving in utter synchronicity. They dont have time to focus on where the ball is and what the strategy is. The person in control of the ball at any time has to be comletely in control of that ball AND run and avoid and reach and shoot successfully to score a measly point....

All the more reason for that point to be more precious.

What are you passionate about?

2006-03-21T19:43:00.000+05:30

What are you passionate about? No really...

My friend asked me this question over a drink and I was left stumped for an answer. The obvious almost instinctive reaction is to reach for something - even a wisecrack but then you start to think...

I always thought I knew what I was passionate about till I was asked the question. Family, yeah for sure, work - [shrugs] but then what. If I had to go out of a burning house and assuming my family and essential papers et al were safe what would I try to save? Pictures (thank god the most savable among them are on Flickr). Music.... [shrugs] Books...hmmmm.....

But what is my passion really. When we are young it seems so crystal clear - Love, Ambition, Aspiration, Achievement - they all seems so real and well formed. Then comes your first job and the second, endless days and nights of meeting deadlines and dealing with numbskulls, compromises, breakups, makeups, bills that don’t get paid, appliances that break down, houses that don’t stay clean, commutes that seem to stretch on for ever and ever, family get together that constantly redefine "ultimate boredom" and all of a sudden - you are nearing your mid-thirties and wondering - What are you passionate about?

I tell my young cousins - in the US and India to clarify their thoughts, direct their energies and keep focused on their passion (assuming they have identified it and not found it between the legs of a trollop or a screen idol). I watch then with some chagrin (and envy) at their disinterest - the chagrin for having the Curse of Cassandra as all elders have when they talk to the young and envy that they have the luxury to ignore it.... at least for now.

As for my own quest - I am still trying to remember. But it involves people and conversations. I have always been alone in my own mind and remain so in the largest of crowds. The moments that I live are when I am in a conversation with someone. Not necessarily any particular type of person but someone that I connect with at that point of time.

I am also passionate about moods. And pictures these moods invoke. A mist hanging over the hills of rural England. A lone camel and rider on a desert road in the afternoon. A heron breaking the stillness of the water with its idle skipping in a tropical pool in a forest cove. Its here that I retreat to in times of deep melancholy.

So anyway, enough about me - What are you passionate about?

Balcony_Workday.jpg

2006-03-01T08:06:00.000+05:30

Balcony_Workday.jpg
Originally uploaded by sjmohan.

The bars need cleaned.
Need to tell Raja to water the plants regularly.
Are these bougainvillas.
Is the pink in the house same as the one in that Jaipur palace place.
Where's that guy cycling to.
Should go get a chai.
What's Jill up to. I'm hungry.
The tarred road looks good.
Did I lock the car.
Let me take a picture.
Should message Jill about picking up cranberry juice.
This makes a nice picture.
Should get something to clean the lens out....