Brown Motion

One of them anyway.  It was conducted in the late hours of Thanksgiving Day.  A day when per tradition you are supposed to stick your fingers through those belonging to your loved ones and sit around a table or fire or whatever tableau suits your style and give thanks.  Thanks to the provider, purveyor, worker or whatever or whoever you feel thankful for. Instead the new America has converted their age old pastime into a new game.  Shop till you drop or are dropped and be thankful for it.  The latter in the form of someone trouncing you on their way to find the latest sale item in a grossly crowded superstore that can offer anything from an underwear to a computer to a lawnmower and grub killer. As if shopping was an entirely new discovery for mankind thousands descend on variety of big box retailers (as they are affectionately known) across the big nation as early as 6 pm (so when did we close again?) local time, like honey bees coming to mate during peak s...

Saw a wonderful BBC documentary showcasing the life of Richard Feynman.  Theoretical physics can be a very drab subject to appreciate but in watching how this Nobel winning professor went about making it easy for the lay person to understand made him a more wise person IMHO. Understanding is only part of the solution but to put something to good use requires it be narrated or communicated simply.  He knew how to do it.  From working to develop the A Bomb to solving the puzzle of what caused the Challenger Space Shuttle to blow up, he spent his life investigating and exploring and never being tired of being curious. Some of his books like 'Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman' provide a vivid look at his work and personal life of 70 years.  In it he reminisces of his curious habits and encounters that drove people wild but also proved a point beyond dispute. The documentary provided insight into his life from his close friends and family who are all ...

I discuss all sorts of things with a friend that is native to the Golden State and use her as a sounding board for a lot of my blog material. What is good about this colleague is that we chat about anything under the Sun and Jupiter and being from two different civilizations in our past helps posit views that can be reviewed in context. She (another beneficial attribute to add color to the discussion) is a mutt in terms of her genetic background and I could be considered a nut. My upbringing in trying times of sorts with a barely available parent since both went to work long hours was in retrospect blog material. I was left amidst a crumbling creche inside a super crowded condo complex with 10 toilets (with 3.5 in semi working order) for 120 or more individuals with varying degrees of dysentery. The baby - through young adult - sitting came from business savvy but dramatically under equipped team of a lady of advanced age and her woefully underage daught...

A sequel to some earlier Linklater directed movies with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke (a modestly successful writer) this was the only one I actually saw.  Got it for a buck at my local DVD place.  Worth it.  Watched it twice actually - partly because my hearing is going and partly because the banter was enjoyable.  (So it was only 50 cents per viewing.  Even better). That is what this movie's premise is - Banter amongst the protagonists - but also across three generations whose paradigm on the contract called marriage has shifted with time. Set in some corner of land near the Mediterranian  - its supposed to be a Greek island somewhere - the couple has been invited by an expat author who hosts them to spend time with his family.  They arrive with twin daughters from Paris - and engage in interesting discussion on the author's point of view on how life has evolved for him (through his books) and what it might bring in the next half century....

These days everyone it seems wants to be the center of attention.  From yo yos in school to people at work believe that they have the power to steer marketing and manufacturers to cater to their specific whims and therefore be the one to have THE thing on the market.  They all seek exclusivity. Guess what?  Marketers are responding with an ever increasing plethora of goods and services to provide for these ever increasing wants.  End result - every other yo yo now has so called brand goods to wear, drink, yak/text on, drive and be seen with (accessories and sometimes other yo yos too). Which leaves the likes of me who shop at Target with really the truly exclusive stuff on the market - because No One Else Wants It! With shirts that do not display any critter representing a French or Faux European brand (mostly American companies trying to pretend to be someone else but essentially using Asian labor to crank the same crap with different reptiles or avians sown o...

Over the millennia human species has been defined as social.  Now we are redefining social as a channel of communication using technology to aid or so it seems.  In order for this social experiment to succeed it is important to understand that we love content.  Content defined as anything that has provided the needed mental nourishment for the times, be it information or entertainment or both. A recent interview by Charlie Rose with a panel comprising of media folks triggered this thought that    clear trends now indicate the audience now has the power to control what to watch/consume, how and when.  From early times when you could actually decide which cousin to visit to seek out free entertainment, today you can use the power of the internet to achieve more or scale in techno geek. All content is after all data and if it's data it's easy to package it and deliver it to a variety of platforms in terms of  form factors or channels.  Content ca...

Just watched a Mira Nair film called 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist', based on a book written by a Pakistan born author about the changes in American sentiment post 9/11. While a love story, its part political drama laced with sharp acting from an international cast of renowned and some relatively young actors. The theme of the movie revolves around the aspirations of a once well to do Pakistani kid that wants to restore his family and himself to the status they lost to shifts in culture in his native Pakistan. He chooses to find that dream like many migrants in the USA.  As he ascends the corporate ladder with his innate financial acumen, he also is shown reflecting on what he is slowly giving up in intangible terms. Capitalism is a multi faceted temptress and the protagonist is clearly sucked in to its eddies.  He realizes that color of skin after all gets thumped under the bureaucratic weight when it comes to him being typecast as a threat in America.  Human c...

Every year the Silicon Valley hosts a number of galas to rival the Oscars.  These are for geeks.  They are hosted by large successful corporations in America that mint money hand over fist each year and then like a strange historic ritual throw big parties to appease their imported slaves. These corporations by virtue of being based in the Silicon Valley of California tend to be in the software development business.  Some of this software runs back and front office functions for other larger companies while some build portals or websites where millions of people gather to read, be entertained or gather information.  By and large they either build the hardware that makes the guts for microprocessing or the software that runs on these machines.  The machines have varying form factors from large screens that can replace an entire wall to miniature versions like mobile phones or watches that users can wear and be distracted every waking second. After using ...

Age being what it is I cannot exactly place where I came across an article that compared the benefits and disadvantages of having an open mindset vs. being closed off from other ideas and cultures. While America has had a long and capitalism based tradition of inviting the minds from outside its borders to make a home in this country same cannot be said for many nations across the planet.  What makes Switzerland a Switzerland or Japan Japan is fundamentally based on the idea that they are essentially a monocultural and monotheistic walled off society. It is therefore unusual to smell Desi Ghee in Switzerland housing as it will be to hear Bollywood music in Osaka. There is a rare individual who I know that has migrated to the above mentioned countries in the last couple of decades to make a permanent residence (as permanent as permanent gets these days).  Marrying an incumbent citizen is a path to do it but then again its not something I have encountered much of. I...

I shall henceforth direct.  Don't ask what or how but my title shall say it all.  As in Director.  First I thought they existed only in movies but I was proven wrong once I started learning the intricacies of corporations large and small. In order for anything to happen some one has to direct.  Even the police on the street have to direct traffic or else the society can instantly fall in disrepair. I was once a Business Leader and I led but somehow new management thought it was not quite evident what I was leading or whom, thence decided to scrap this nebulous prefix to my name and replace with a title of Director. Now mind you a few years back I already was a Director but then they thought there were too many directions and not enough traffic so it would make sense to simply lead.  Hence I became a leader.  A Business Leader.  Or so it seemed until there were other Heads (Head of Division X, Y and others) that showed up in hierarchical...