Ever since I moved to Connecticut, I have not had the same kind of leisure hours that I did in California ( a good thing too!). My surfing habit has been the first casualty. Considering the fact that I am now working on retail supply chain, I can no longer give myself the excuse that surfing is in some intangible way adding value to my professional life! As a result, I don't post as many interesting links as I was posting a few months back. Also, I am discursive by nature and my efforts and interests are dispersed in all sorts of direction. But to get where I want to get, I need to be more focused :(. You can probably expect randomNotes to become more focussed and to deal with more offline stuff in future.
She: "I couldn't believe my ears! He said, 'Wow! you look pretty! You looked so fat and unattractive in school. How did you manage this?' And then, and then he asked for my phone number!"
He: "Did you?"
"I sure as hell didn't. I told him, 'YOU still look ugly".
Christopher Hitchen's views on Mother Teresa has been highly controversial. I have not read his arguments against Mother Teresa before now. He raises some very thought provoking questions.
Incidentally, Hitchens is quitting 'The Nation'. The general opinion among lefties seem to be 'good riddance'! (all links via Mefi).
Stayed on my mind:
"When I turn 55 or 60 my children will be grown and I will give up on technology as a pursuit and write only stories and poems, and I will give the time when I am not writing stories and poems to my wife, who will be my first and only wife, thanks, and who will probably have had enough of me by that point - so I'll give the rest of my time to helping poor people however they need."
Paul Ford in ftrain
"how much of your life is actually private when you start maintaing an online Journal and start writing about your day to day events. ?.....I have decided to hang up my gloves. Retire. Stop blogging, atleast for a while now. And before I did that, I wanted to tell you why I am doing it, and also open your eyes to the ramifications of what you might yourself be playfully indulging in."
Theshiva in Immigrant song
".. You'll probably grant that multiculturalism is to some extent a shorthand for the peaceful coexistence of people of different *races* rather than different cultures. A more accurate name would be "multiracialism". ....multiculturalism is predicated on the idea that different races can coexist and communicate, and a prerequisite for cross cultural/racial communication is an acknowledgement that differences exist and can be inquired about..."
"Godlesscapitalist" in a comment on Anil's site
This excellent post about mail order degrees in USA puts into perspective the degree related abuses (In reprospect I still feel bad about the degree related frauds in India).
This particular rant will make sense only to other aggrieved Psion revo owners who have tried synchronizing their PDAs to a Windows 2000 / XP machine. I think Revo is the most undersupported PDA in the history of the universe. I don't envy anyone who is trying to sync a Revo bought in 1999 with a laptop marketed in 2002.
I thank this guy for clueing me in. If you are a fellow Revo owner, I would strongly recommend that you throw away the installation CD that came with your Revo and download PsiWin 2.3.3 from here. It is worth the hassle of deleting PsiWIN files one by one from your windows registry. I wasted 3 hours of my time figuring that out!
This is a worthwhile cause. It is awesome that some people are actually trying to do something about the Verisign rip-offs. Please help spread the word.
recent visual treats:
Shanghai triad. (Better commentary here)
Marc Riboud's "At home and abroad" (This
seems to be a complete list of his books)
Manhattan skyline at night from FDR drive
The lush lush green of South Jersey and its quiet countryside after driving through the industrial ghetto that is New Jersey
In the context of the sad saga of Jack Welch, Rakesh Khurana's op-ed in New York Times makes interesting reading. Here is another incredibly talented person with feet of clay. Deja` vu?
Before last week, I did not even know that the two Indian casinos here (Mohegansun and Foxwood) are the largest tax payers in the state. But now it seems that the state of Connecticut doesn't want any more casinos.I quite agree with them. But I was surprised (since when have the politicians started disliking incoming revenue?) until I was talking about it with a long time resident of Connecticut. She said that unlike the existent reservations, the new proposals for Indian reservations will displace a lot of people living in the land claimed by the native Indians. Votes!
We checked out Mohegunsun over the weekend. It is an impressive place by a beautiful river. It is run very well and like any Las Vegas based Casino has good restuarants, ongoing shows etc. But we make terrible gamblers! So we moved around for a while, eventually got tired of the smoke (people smoke a lot around here!) and came back before midnight. But we had to drag the turbanned one back.
I had a big argument with some friends a few days back. All of us who were arguing are Indians.All except me felt that a benevolent military dictatorship is the way out of the current political morass that India finds itself. I have heard this viewpoint many time amongst the well educated, well off and otherwise conscientious people from India. And every time if shocks me out of my usual stupor. Show me one country were a dictatorship is/was a success (except probably Singapore and Turkey to a lesser extent. Both of these are much smaller countries and very different entities), where a military rule has not ended in tragedy or a disaster. Most third world countries are struggling with the same issues that India has been and most have made a royal mess of it. But the countries that have veered towards dictatorship have lost a great deal more than those that have kept their faith in representational modes of government. I also don't consider China a success. 50 years back, Soviet Union was also considered a great success by its fans outside USSR.
Dan Gillmor blogged bradner's thoughts on the subject.
Will explore later:
Sketchbooks (via Kottke)
I used to check out Caterina.net almost daily at the time I started blogging. I haven't been there for ages. I think it is one of the coolest weblogs out there.
Connecticut is the third smallest state in the United states and has the highest per capita income. The corridor neighbouring Manhattan (Greenwitch-Stamford-Norwalk) is basically commuter country. The affluence is reflected in the name by which these parts are known (gold coast), the upscale malls, the designer wear of the friday evening crowd and most visibly - THE RENT! It is killing.
We thought that one of the good things about the apartment complex where we moved in is the business center that has internet access. So we had decided to forego internet access at home until we know whether we are gonna be here beyond a few months.
We didn't take into account the underage kids playing online games all day or equally bored women chatting on AOL all night. The upshot is that I simply don't have a lot of leisure time on the net these days. Thanks to a firewall, I can't access my personal mailboxes from work either. Those of you who have been writing to me, please bear with me. I would eventually get back.
However, if I can ever forget the price I am paying for the privilage of living here, coastal Connecticut is a great place to live in. Stamford downtown itself is very pretty, colorful and has loads of interesting hangouts. There are old churches (that actually has bells that toll regularly), a huge library, interesting museums (it even has an extension of the Whitney museum) and it kinda extends into the campus of the University of Connecticut. The downtown also has very cool lifelike statues captured doing everyday things at most street corners. unfortunately, this has resulted in my stopping on the road to admire people who look like statues only to see them start moving almost immediately.
There is an interesting lawsuit going on that would test the limits of the 'tresspass to chattel' law. (details here). Unlike EFF, I do think that Intel should have the right to legal recourse to stop Mr. Hamidi from sending those e-mails. But I don't think the application of 'tresspass of chattel' laws here is a hot idea. That statute is already being badly misused. I would try to find some better links later. 'Red Herring' has a good story on the subject on its print edition.