Brown Motion

The past three years has seen the use of words describing departures or take offs in mind numbing cadence. First came the bail outs. In so many words its the idea of leaving bad debts in a book and giving fresh capital to businesses that would otherwise have collapsed under their bad debts. This came at the expense of the same American taxpayers who are otherwise greedily trying to make money off of deadbeat investments or spending like the dollar has gone out of fashion. Then came the string of European domino collapse with every country of that tentative union declaring bad debts that would bury them faster than the Icelandic volcano (which was all the rage a couple years ago) could only dream of doing. This led to a whole new vocabulary describing possibilities of these individual sovereigns leaving... example Grexit for Greece and Spexit for Spain. I know they are waiting to see the Germ Exit too. Then Facebook happened in the US - the Initial Offering that is. Then came th...

In modern society with food a plenty it seems every quack is trying to pitch his remedy to keep us healthy. Frankly we are all in a big experiment and the ones that fall off are the weak ones. Lets just accept this and move on. Eat what you like or enjoy and can afford. Do not mind all the banter about what would or could kill you. Its gonna happen if you eat it or not. All this mumbo jumbo about veggies and fiber is getting so out of hand even the presidential office has got involved. I mean once we all die with this amount of fiber in us we could be recycled to make moving boxes. But alas many will prefer to be buried and wasted - biodegradale quality after all is good. Slogans like 'Don't eat Red Meat' are all the rage. Hmm, so should I eat meat that looks green? Or moldy? Or black? I think not. I prefer that the meat I eat was red. I will cook it but definitely not go for any other colored meat. As far as sugar consumption it has been labeled in some cir...

The buzz is about social. This is a ridiculous fad of describing what is happening in Silicon Alley these days. Every Tom, Dick or Mark is coming up with notions of what would make people connect socially while getting more disconnected in real personal interaction. Now some of these ideas have clearly not taken off along with a bunch of mobility enabling devices so the new lingo that might appear in the headlines would look like - Facebook did a Faceplant RIMM is GRIM Pinterest has piqued interest among some (for now) Foursquare is not quite getting round to connecting anyone with anything Twitter will chirp itself out of existence Tablets have not cured any aches but added to more carpal in the carpool lanes All in all totally socially unacceptable outputs from the wizards of technology I say.

Cars racing each other at high speeds? People arriving to watch cars race at high speed. People spending money to watch other people race cars at high speed? People spending money on popcorn and beers while watching other people race cars at high speeds? Then there is the car crashes. Certainly they must be coming for the crashes. Live and in high definition color (except if you are color blind) rather than having Hollywood film a pretend car crash. That I can pay money to watch. Its fun to see flames and screams and hear the noise of grinding metal and rubber and pavement. Ideally a man on fire taking off - gives a whole new meaning to 'hit the ground running'. Otherwise its stupid to watch cars go round and round on a track like a big toy race. What about watching a bunch of people swimming? Why would you watch that? That too swimming in the same tank. Not even going on a swim on a raging river. At least the scenery would change no? Some people would get injure...

We need less of everything. Social sites, news channels, cars, people and especially warnings. Have you seen how the western civilization has decided to warn people about every little thing that a person can think of doing as soon as he gets up till he retires to bed? First comes the morning ablutions. Well the dentist community has taken it to heart to warn those yokels that if they are not flossing 5 minutes around their dental framework then they are going to face the music .. the wind between the teeth (due to collapsing of the enamel etc) sooner than desired. If not flossing the warning continues you need to use an electric motorized brushing gadget so that all the detritus from previous encounters with excessive food can be cleaned out. Until its time for the next batch of calories. If not then look forward to massive dental fees to get it professionally waxed and polished. I mean the tribals used wood sticks they pulled off the local bark. They managed but we idiotic ci...

Its funny. Everywhere you look someone is blaming the other one. Facebook caused its own fiasco to add to the fun since stateside we were getting bored with the republican - democrat match - it was getting to be a five setter with Nadal and Federer after a while. Being Gay has again become a wedge issue. I am not sure what it means but its in the news so must be newsworthy? Now though post FB IPO its turned into a People vs. Morgans match. Mark sure added some excitement. One is called JP and the other has Stanley in its last name. Damn the morgans. Meantime the Zuck is off to a honeymoon assuming his newest trick was real - that of getting married. You could pretend to do anything anyway with an online identity these days. So who knows. Wonder if he has posted his moon shots on line? Europe has of course been doing its part to keep the sundry entertained with their version of musical chairs and blame the newest idiot. A while ago the faces were a bit different but now t...

I had the opportunity to sit in on a day long series of panel discussions hosted by the Latin American diaspora showcasing the successes of many in their tribe - men and women in Silicon Valley and beyond. First point of distinction one of my audience colleagues pointed out was that a Latino or person of Latin origin was someone that linked their heritage to the Americas (specifically central or southern American continent) as opposed to the Hispanic people who claim their lineage to the European nation of Spain. Perhaps the former has more to do with the language that was spoken by certain European natives who eventually migrated to the South American continent in search of new land and opportunity. Although both speak Spanish as their first language from first hand experience I can vouch for the fact that the spoken Spanish in Spain is vastly different from the one that the muchachos south of the border communicate with. Within Spain alone there were four distinct types of langua...

Sita from the Ramayana. Could things have worked out different in the history if they all had iphones and facebook? This monumental question haunts me after watching the FB IPO fizzle. What if they did? Well for starters Rama would not have been gallivanting away without full and complete knowledge about what Sita was doing in the hut. Then she would have tweeted the arrival of the doe outside the hut. Rama would have asked for a quick live stream of the intruding mammal. If they had 3G or even Edge network or some sort of wi fi she would have been able to share her find in real time. Whereupon Rama would have texted Laxman who was doing his own updates to get with the program and head home rapido. Something not right with the deer ... he explained on the way. Later as Sita kept updating her facebook site with the arrival of the deer - Ravana also got an update on his wall. He had dudes hacking into the Rama compound all day after all. Talk about Trojans. Viral kind. As h...

I have mostly commented in earlier blogs about how the silly people of the planet have magnetically attached themselves to the latest fad called Facebook. To the point that the American media had nothing else to yammer pre IPO this morning. Every channel that thought themselves to be a reliable news provider blabbed about the next big thing - the hoodie clad CEO ringing the bell over the heads of clueless citizenry about to take his company public. Then came the moment of truth. The big Initial Stock Offering to the devotees. Many in the stock trading world including big institutions and retail customers lined up to trade. All hoped that the stock will rocket. Far from it. What happened was amazing. Not because the stock did not do anything but percisely because it did not. It basically flattened out at the initial list price. Now one day does not a story make but I am surely hoping that people actually saw what a joke the whole valuation business is and specifically how a c...

In many high profile departures from large companies the reporters of the story try to apparently reach out to the protagonist of the moment - the departee - to seek a comment. I have never actually seen one. Comment that is. I mean think about it. If this person has been dumped for cause and he or she knows it what sort of comment are they going to make. Moreover do you think they have the following thoughts as soon as they actually leave - let me call all the reporters back that have left these nice voice mail messages asking me to call them back. Thusly the comment about - he or she could not be reached for comment - seems inherently moronic. If the dude had anything to say he has already said it and that too to the ones that would matter. Journalists do not. Besides if that dude actually really did want to comment - would there be an audience for it? Who wants to listen to this - e.g. dumped dude that was found having sexual intercourse in his office with a young staffer?...

To govern or not to govern, that is the question. If you answered yes then the next question is - govern what? If you said a country - then the question becomes - what country? Pick one - any one and its a scary portfolio out there. It seems no one is agreeing with anyone on what to govern. Here is a list of countries with no functioning government and most likely no currency to do business with - 1. Greece 2. Libya 3. Sudan 4. Afghanistan 5. Iraq 6. Egypt 7. Maldives and so on. What with many a coup d'etat the whole idea of a coup has lost its glamor. Everyone is just going cuckoo instead. Even the mighty Europeans are confounded with a little colletion of islands down south that threaten the very existence of a political and socioeconomic stability. It seems borrowing is the cause of all evil. Some have done that remarkably well and decided to not pay the lender back. Hence the lenders are furious. They keep coming back with strong arm tactics like a bail bon...

With all the furor in the media around Greece for the past couple of years I thought it would be good to list all things Greek that people use in common parlance - 1. Some of us are familiar with Greek history as being where the world's largest organized scam was born - called the Olympics. At the time this courier delivered a message by running a large number of miles and that got converted into a spectator sport. Nobody thought about what this implied? Fedex does not use any of the marathon runners instead relying on bio diesel trucks so not sure where we went from courier delivery to extracting money for tickets to watch people balance themselves on a pommel horse - which by the way is quite different from a Trojan Horse - 2. which brings me to the next invention from Greek mythology that finds use today - except used in the computer virus arena. This innocuos program is accepted by a computer since it looks friendly only to unleash undesirable effects leading to loss of s...

It is unfortunate and sad to see that once storied brands also fumble. And fumble big. This is not much different than the sops that believe in the notion of role models only to see that these very models among citizen were infidel to their spouse all along or that they had a certain affinity to banned substances or were a pedophile. Most recently America saw two such instances of high visibility but poor execution (I guess we get one juicy bomb a month now a days it seems) with the CEO of Yahoo admitting to something he was not but purported to be. He had an entire degree missing. Oops. Now I remember having to send notarized versions of my qualification for every job I got hired into here in the US but I suppose if you are a citizen and a highly paid exec at that it is assumed that your qualifications are on the up and up. Why would one pretend to be someone they are not? He had to leave the building after four months. Another foot in the mouth involved a large Financial Ins...

Attention Deficit in Americans is driving the state revenue coffers. State of California senator someday passed a law banning the use of cellular telephone while performing the act of driving. Banning leads to fines. Thence the revenue. People being people continued to ignore or evade the new law and do their part to contribute revenue to cover the budgetary shortcomings. After all we want our kids to go to school so they can learn that distracted driving is not good for health and wallet. These schools need money. But the fallacy of such a law is that it tends to single out only one form of distraction and that too allowing the enforcement police to be subjective of what constitutes the use of cell phone. I tend to use mine to scratch my back when driving on occassion and so am not convinced if I should be cited. What about the ones that eat and drink and do other activities while driving? I have never driven in Germany but anecdotal evidence suggests that the Germans are ve...

Just like there are paradoxes about the idea of time travel I think there can be one about being Inept. When you get frustrated about how many inept people have got into positions of apparent responsibility and power and that they seem oblivious to that you fail to recognize the irony. There is an inherent flaw in this line of thinking. That is that the inept are inept to recognize that they are inept. If they were not inept that would make them take notice of their own shortcomings and provide them a long term vision to rectify the short. However since this is not in the cards they continue to dwell and make more inept decisions to the detriment of the non inept. This is a bit like the Yossarian illogic from the famous Catch 22 book. The propogation of the inept crowd also stems from earlier inepts who are responsible for hiring like minded individuals to build an inept society and this breeds like mosquitoes in a swamp. All their buzzing and spreading of ineptitude overwhelms...

We took our daughter to the San Francisco Asian Art Museum to check out some exhibits showcasing the art forms in sculpture, painting, metal work, ceramic and such from six to ten centuries ago. Being of Asian heritage the art spanned everything from the Ming dynasty to the Buddhist age to the ancient stone work from the Indus region (present day India). It always fascinates me to see people from all walks of life taking in the what appears to be rather crude art in most cases to some of the really fascinating and exotic and intricate detail of glass ware and ceramic design from 500 years ago. Everything is neatly labeled and the museum also provides an audio assistant that you wear and walk around. You can call up a quick audio commentary based on the location of the artifact and learn more. There is definite similarities in the cultural nuances of a continent indicating a limitation of thought migration due to ignorance of other life forms besides what is called Asia. Now this ...

The more you read about global economic chaos it becomes clear that all of it is rooted in basic human greed. Since it is very hard to create excessive return on investment from nothing (something akin to E=mc2) there has to be a flaw in the system somewhere. Recent admission by a large US bank that it lost over $2 Billion in a bad trade underscores the core issue. There is no such thing as Impressive Market Valuation. Its a fallacy created by marketers of various commodities to lure dumb people to part with their money. This impacts the people that are the most susceptible without their active participation. It can happen when a common man's pension fund invests in a derivatives market and the trade goes south. The derivative of this transaction is that the common man gets buried while the make believe world of high finance makes a killing. What is required then is a basic safety net. Governments of the world need to invest in the five core industries and guarantee their ...

More day dreaming... Since most monkeys look alike - to us humans anyway - there will be a new social network that will come into existence but called the Faceless. This is expanding on the idea that pretty soon all monkeys will have access to a new ipad. This network will be developed by a dropout from an African University in the remote corner of Tanzania whose name shall be Dork Suckerberry. He will come out of nowhere and suddenly be the next best thing to Jane Goodall. National Geographic will do endless specials on him and his mission - connecting all simians.. one monkey at a time. No race barrier here - all species of primates are eligible. Pet companies can spend good money to study monkey behavior and offer deals on well behaved animals to their customers. There can be specials on rowdy monkeys since we anticipate less demand for those. Jackets, helmets and other CPG paraphernalia can be and will be branded for this new form of pet. 'Monkey business' will be...

It was a smallish news item this week that caught my eye. It seems certain Orangutans in Florida are being provided with ipads to communicate with their masters - the humans. Now I am not sure if Apple is behind this stunt but it would mean that they are definitely thinking outside the box (or skulls - human anyway). With most of the homo sapiens market now sporting an idevice perhaps its time to look at alternate markets. Alien visits are shrouded in secrecy so that is out of scope for now. Besides who knows what kind of goobledegook language those weirdos use if any. We could not sell them anything. So the next best thing. Find a species with somewhat similar intelligence or lack thereof as the sapiens. Enter the monkeys. I mean there are already large American corporations dedicated to the welfare of non humans in the form of Petco and Petsmart and the like but this would take the bar and set it higher. An entirely new line of devices that suits the taste of other mammals...

Who's smarter? Well I think they both rank up there. One goes for the big moolah by selling badly sketched crayons like the recent Edvard Munch's Scream for millions and take a handsome commission. The other preaches common sense to those that lack it but somehow have a tendency to spend, making money on endorsements and her books that sell well with dummies. I mean the capitalist model supports both these ideas because it inherently assumes there are dumb people all over the world. There is nothing wrong in taking from those that want to give because they would feel insecure in the absence of the transaction. If anyone has to wake up and smell the coffee it is the dummies. What is amazing is that during the course of these transactions there are people that do not realize what they are doing is inherently stupid. I mean why would you pay someone to tell you that your approach to spend more money than you will ever earn is detrimental to your health. I suppose its like...

A recent CBS news headline described a foiled terror attack that would have used an upgraded underwear bomb. Now either the terrorist are one step ahead of us bozos or something but in a single invention they have it would seem combined the best of Victoria's secrets and those of Apple software. I mean whoever heard of an upgraded underwear bomb before today? Perhaps the Fruits of their Looms are designed with a different frame of reference? Cause maximum damage instead of maximum comfort? Is this what our world has come to? A man cannot think of boarding a flight without now walking through a locker room where he is asked to undress and take a shower? Perhaps that may not be a bad idea after all - I mean have you seen how bad today's planes stink?

This is my version of the farmers almanac. 1. Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD will rapidly become the curse of the modern society so infatuated with their mobile gadgets and twitting on their facebooks, that they would lose all sense of what time it is and who they are; 2. Carpal muscle digititus - or finger pain - will also consume the so called modern society due to the very same textomania (most waking moments); 3. Deafness - loud incoherent music secreted in to the ears over years; 4. Obesity - Due to obvious reasons - being captivated to the mobile device for twitting will lead to less physical movement other than the digititis mentioned above. This ailment now the exclusive turf of the USA will go global; 5. Coherent thought absentia - outside of superficial minutae detailing the eating, sleeping and date preferences of many involved the ability to conduct rational thinking will erode away leading to brain function decay and ultimately the formation of smaller headed...

If you look at headlines populating all the major news organizations past few days there were three major events that stole all real estate. These headlines but headline one indisputable fact - the world has gone nuts. Loco. Kaput. Bonkers. I suspect its not a recent occurrence yet amplifies the message yet again to those listening. Newsworthy items included - 1. Greece is going to freak out - they cannot handle the stress - they have no money. 2. Spain is next - then France - they also have no money - they are all waiting to fall. Elections not withstanding (which means to fall). Damn no one saw this fall coming after the Berlin wall. 3. Facebook is likely to raise 100B dollares from the same idiots who see these countries failing due to lack of money. Ever wonder where the money went? To gab on facebook? To put ads on facebook? I mean if a company designed to woo the opposite sex for date night is able to raise $100B market cap then can the combined economies of Gree...

Another episode of how today's media and journalists use unnecessary adjectives and verbs to describe a common or uncommon event. During times of war which seems to be an every day occurence these days there is always the headline of how many died. This is further expanded by describing the elimination of the terror inducing count followed by 'amongst the dead were 20 innocent bystanders'. Now first of all how is it that these bogus journalists figured that they had an exact count of the bystanders? Did they count them in person? Second, more importantly who told them they were innocent? Frankly I am appalled by this rampant branding of individuals with no prior knowledge. In that same report they continue to say that the identities of the dead were not known and will not be revealed till investigations are complete. I mean duh? If you don't know who died how do you know of their innocence. Frankly a sociopathic serial killer who happened to be taking in the a...

Today more than ever people are mobile. Also ideas and goods and services travel rapidly from one part of the planet to another. What might have been impossible 100 years ago - very insignificant in geological time - has become amazingly simplified today. What this all leads to is the idea that one is not bound to their roots so to speak. In fact the whole notion of dwelling on the roots (no pun) seems outmoded. One does not have to be bound. To bound or not is upto the boundee. This is where I will introduce the concept of 'Loyalty'. I mean a fancy way of describing any affiliation and longer term interest is the act of being loyal. You can imagine a situation where one is loyal to their family, friends, country of birth, alma mater et al. At the same time that notion has become inherently weakened by the availability of choices and the ability to parse through reams of information to determine the most optimal situation for any person by the minute. Short term le...

And maybe transportation. Those are the core industries where mankind needs to spend time improvising and gaining efficiencies. Do that diligently and we as a species have a long shot at surviving any talk of doomsday or other apocalyptic prophecies. I guess I would add good teachers to teach (about food, health and shelter) the next generation as another one. I got thinking when I saw that there are entire corporations (global multinationals et al) that have made a fortune dishing out the most insane concepts. Example is a talking sponge (shaped like a square) that has been the livelihood of thousands of people that work for this enterprise and the value chain that delivers the drivel into homes. Not to mention that associated paraphernalia that goes with the collateral marketing in the form of shirts, pants, hats, cups, mugs and other accouterments - too many to name here. I mean it is appalling to think that since the dawn of human civilization we have discovered new ways to ...