Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Rape and sexual repression in India

The entire nation has been rocked by the horrific gang rape and mutilation of a girl in Delhi, who boarded a bus after watching a late show of a movie with a male friend. The incident in all its gory has been detailed across the media and I'll spare you that. There has been an outrage, justifiably so, against the disgusting event and you see a case of people wanting to seethe against something. The anger is all over the place not unlike someone...

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Basquiat - a review

Since the wife is out of town, I've had a lot more time to while away. Add to the fact that its the holiday week and work has been slack, so I've been catching up on a lot of movies on my Netflix Instant queue. The first was an eponymously titled movie based on the life of Jean Michel Basquiat, the famous neo-expressionist and primitivist painter from New York. Honestly, this was my first introduction to Basquiat and I was very intrigued by his...

Friday, December 14, 2012

iPad mini - Why? Just Why? - From Technite

I need to get this out of my system. Ever since Apple launched the iPad mini, it has been irking me and I almost assumed that all reviews would bring this up, but to my surprise no one did. Instead what we get are fawning pieces like this, this and this. No one asked the most important question: Why? What is the raison d'être for this device? Continue reading this post:...

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Mercury dreams

They found ice on Mercury, Maybe they'll find rice on Venus And feed the poor in Africa Without letting the mice have it first Till then, be nice n pass me my drink And chill it with some mercurian i...

Monday, November 26, 2012

The Rising

Shining lights & bright chandeliers The smell of spice from chinatown Beneath the surface, upon my hand Tingling nerves barely hold ground My hips are swaying, I fall down The water rushes o'er my face I cough it out with shell & sand Open my eyes to blazing sun Dead or alive or in some fairy land I know not, I'm without fear We, the kids of yesterday, built of stardust A flicker in the ocean of stars Shine up! Rise ye'all Pick up the slack and grab your oars There's more to life that you thoug...

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Never Let Me Go - Thoughts

We all ponder on the purpose of our lives some point or the other. Why are we born where we were, what are we supposed to do and do we truly control our destinies. Mankind is nothing but a speck in the vast expanses of the universe, the glorious galaxies, the gazillion stars and their planets. We might be nothing but an minor, insignificant, accidental occurrence. Knowing this might very well makes us cynical and nihilistic, but it could also lead...

Monday, November 12, 2012

Holy Cow! Did Romney perform worse than McCain?

Apparently Newt Gingrich was finally coming to terms with the 'shocking' election results. But there was a quote in the article which had me really surprised. The media seems to have missed this amazing statistic. But here's the quote first: "But if you had said to me three weeks ago Mitt Romney would get fewer votes than John McCain and it looks like he'll be 2 million fewer, I would have been dumbfounded." Wait, what? Did Romney get fewer votes...

Saturday, November 3, 2012

NanoWrimo

National november writing month is here again. And I feel so inadequate as every year. Just like the marathon I'm always afraid of signing up for, I'm not sure if I've have it in me to churn out 50,000 words within a month. I've somehow managed to pull the great trick of masking it under bravado. I keep telling myself that I could do anything if I put my heart to it but now is just not the right time. Hell, its never gonna be the right time. There...

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Iphone 5 vs Nexus 4 - from Technite

Google launched their Nexus 4 in a quiet fashion, after their event in NY was cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy. However that doesn't mean, the device is a quiet or an insignificant one. This is the 4th iteration in the Nexus phone family and along with the Nexus 10 that was launched too, Google now has a full range of devices. But the big question is how does it stand up against Apple's iPhone 5 which was launched just a few weeks ago. Lets find...

Sunday, October 14, 2012

1st quarter - status check

In my last post I had talked about embarking on an effort to read at least 52 books over the course of a year. For a while, I thought this was going to end up the route of my other such ambitious proclamations. However, reading is something I genuinely enjoy.  Hence I was a little more optimistic. It helped that my wife is a voracious reader and she has been bringing all sorts of books from the library. I started reading from her collection first and and slowly started accompanying her each time to get my own set of books that I had always...

Monday, August 20, 2012

52 Books In A Year

The other day on NPR there was an interview with an author. Unfortunately the name of the author slips my memory. But the interesting thing was his first book was based on his experiment during which he read the entire '5 foot shelf' in about an year and a half. It instantly sparked an idea, on whether one can pull something off like that in a year along with a day job. I figured something like a book a week would be doable. So one could with...

Friday, August 3, 2012

Payday loan, Activehours, Lendup, Sociogrammics etc

I posted recently a post on Payday loans on my other blog. In that I also talked about startups which are trying to disrupt the industry like Activehours, Lendup and Sociogrammics. If anyone knows about other companies which are doing something in this or banking/finance in general please send me a note. I would like to cover each of these companies in detail.&nb...