Brown Motion

Or a sound bite or a quotable quote to steal one from Readers Digest. There are several that one comes across during their time on earth and I think the best ones for me have been the ones that poke fun at our own shortcomings (or longgoings for that matter). So here are some that can be attributed to anyone from Voltaire to Twain to Rooney to Carlin to Rock and that I can remember - Religion was born when the first scoundrel met the first fool A second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience Rugs made in Iran are called "Persian" because they sell better than rugs called "Iranian". My friends think I am cheap; I am just careful with money In this country you are guilty until proven wealthy Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that Have you ever noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? I put a dollar in a change machine. Nothing changed. Why do we need self help books?  If we need...

Watched a rom com as in romantic comedy that plays more like a documentary cum autobiography of a desi born in the USA.  The movie is called 'Meet the Patels'.  The last name Patel is common to a large section of society native to the Western Indian state of Gujarat. India's current Prime Minister is himself a Gujarathi, although not a Patel.  The Gandhi also hailed from the same state. The film stars the entire Patel family as in the elder mom and dad along with their son Ravi (real and film name) and their daughter (Geeta) who spends most of the time behind the camera doing shaky filming. Now having grown up in India and interacting with several Patels in real life, I could relate to a lot of the comedy in the movie about how a conservative first generation couple would interfere in the life of their only son (the daughter stays behind the lens providing a running question and answer session through the film) who in their lexicon has reached 'marriage age' ...

Bollywood is the largest film making ecosystem in the world in terms of gross tonnage it outputs.  Most of it is not fit for any consumption. A lot of it relies on overly used cliches and meaningless dialog never seen in real life.  Here are my chosen few - Excessive use of the word 'janab' to signify a male - nobody I know calls out to another male using this moniker Use of badly tuned violins - this psychotic music accompanies so called emotional dialog between two moronic actors, usually belaboring a heartbreak or loss of life situation Maa used in an overly emotional way - nobody I know uses it if at all as people have moved on to calling their mother as Mom, Mama, Mummy, Hey, Yaar, or maaji where they cling to some ideological frame of reference of respecting their elders  Hey Bhagvaan - as in the call to the lord almighty - really?  This is another of those idiotic calls made by a variety of actors spanning a variety of age groups but with no cle...

This spring has been good in terms of getting to watch some good film-making.  We watched 'Room'; 'Bridge of Spies'; and then this latest one called 'Spotlight'. Spotlight is titled after an investigation and research team that works inside the Boston Globe, a 150 plus year old newspaper (today owned by a private wealthy investor).   This bunch of veteran journalists in Boston broke the story on the Sex Abuse Scandal that has infected the global Catholic Church system. This major news item was published on the front pages in 2002 after a couple years of hard investigative journalism.  While the screenplay is representative of the reality and the number of investigators it took to uncover these sad truths about child abuse and molestation of the nth degree by god's chosen few, it does shine the spotlight on the hypocrisy that we live in. While the Boston natives were themselves stunned to learn of the evil lurking in their place of worship, and the var...

Am reading this book in no particular order.  Written by a 90 year old food critic, or more appropriately food lover, Mimi Sheraton is one lucky lady. She has had this enviable job for the past 60 years and so in her travels she has managed to eat her way through a lot. She professes to eating out half the time during the week which is at least seven meals even at this age.  She eats whatever she wants and honestly if she can say that on public TV to a serious journalist then I want to believe it. Apparently eating in moderation has kept her healthy and lovely.  She can still climb three stories of her multi level home in NY without any aid or implements other than her own wheels. This book was first published in 2015 and covers a vast geography in terms of food origins and their national appeal.  The best places to forage are also listed along side the recipe.  Food name origins and other etymological tidbits make for an interesting read. Personally ...

Not the mysetrious white liquid that you might add to your cup of caffiene in the morning.  But an acknowledgement of being around on a planet that today (for most of us) will see equal parts day and night.  As in 12 hours of Day Time vs. 12 hours of Night.  It is sort of academic on what it really means or how one calculates it to be so precise but suffice to say that twice each year the sun passes over the equator in its celestial journey and rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west. Thusly today marks the Spring Equinox.  That is because I live in the northern hemisphere and as imagined by cartographers and geographers millenia ago, the equator divides our planet in two imaginary hemis.  For those that find themselves in the southern part of this oblate it is the Autumnal Equinox or marks the arrival of Autumn or Fall. So what of it? Well I got to dwelling on how the word equinox came to be and what it could morph into or be interpre...

Work has its benefits.  Sometimes it results in chance meetings.  Like the one last night when I met a CEO of what might become a game changer business.  The CEO was from Estonia. My first contact with the Baltic Rim.  Made of small states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (all former R's in the USSR) line the Baltic Sea, a small body of water stuck south of Scandinavia and forming the western shore of the former USSR.  The closest Russian city is St. Petersburg. So this meeting happened through a mutual connection of ours who left the states and went to work for this CEO a few months ago.  The entire interview process he tells me was conducted by Skype, which as the CEO told me is how this relatively young independent state conducts its business. In keeping with the whole Women's History Month theme I must point out that this CEO is a young woman and a mother of two, who has held other important positions in her career prior to embarking on this new pro...

No it is not a spelling mistake.  I really felt sick after watching the latest installment of Hollywood's amalgam of our reptilian ancestors with modern humans. I am not sure what made this movie popular since nothing that was compiled in this production made any sense other than several instances of showcasing human idiocy that would highlight our place in the pecking order below the reptilian. It starts with some mindless interaction between members of what constitutes a modern American white family where the parents unload their two kids, older one of which is a loser who owns a headset and maintains a cheesy girl crush, on a vacuous sister that has no clue that her nephews even exist. Why she signs up to host these two remains a mystery that never unravels.  That she has them brought to a one of a kind theme park containing live dinosaurs that she has operational control of and no time to engage in any other activity other than run this giant park is weird.  Ch...

It is titled - Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness, which almost reads Jeffersonian in its ambition. Written by a couple of Chicago based professors, the book is part about brain architecture and part about some empirical observations/guilt trips, that can help us in our day to day. It distinguishes the basic brain performance as being automated (or gut based) and calculated (or more rational).  Many of these ideas are also discussed by other essayists like Malcolm Gladwell in his book 'Blink' and each offers additional anecdotes to message the point. One of the funny ones in this book is about Marriage and Divorce, where it says a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.  It also cites a toy that was developed as an alarm clock that each time you hit snooze would roll off and run away from the bed side thereby making the person who perpetually procrastinated waking up to get up and chase it to shut up. The book discusses a lot of c...

A long lesson in capitalism or a history of Coca Cola, the book by Bartow Elmore, an author from Alabama (formerly from Atlanta where Coke is based) is an interesting read that I am not sure I will finish. The main thesis of this narrative seems to me that every silver coin has a cloudy lining, as in while Coke is a globally recognized brand that in some press seems to be doing right by the environmentalists and being a good corporate citizen it is really a massive machine that has sucked on the teat of large governments and third parties that invest in the actual raw material production and sourcing. Be it Clean Water, Corn for the high fructose sugars, Caffeine for the kick or materials for packaging its wares (plastic, glass or aluminum) it has spread its vast network into various parts of the globe to get what it needs. It has been masterful to let people believe in the power of marketing that consuming the sugar flavored water (mixed with a gas no one in their right mind wo...

Directed by an Irish guy with a lead cast never before seen (at least I was clueless about them) the mother and son drama about being trapped in a shed for five years was an amazing take on the phrase 'paradigm shift'. Protagonists are a mother and her son, introduced to us in the opening sequence, living in a closed box of some sort with their only view of the outside world and sunshine being a skylight in the roof.  There are some parallels to a number of stories in the real world most prominent being a woman in Ohio that was kidnapped and held captive over a decade till she was found. As the movie unfolds we learn that the mother was a teen that got abducted from close to her home by a psycho who has stored her in a shed behind his home.  He is a sick and demented person that has since raped her multiple times. A child is born (we assume in the same confines) that we get to meet as a five year old learning to survive in the only space he knows as real. The woman as d...

I saw a film by the former title and read a book by the latter.  They were both random choices to fill the so called empty time and a much needed respite after trying to figure out what the governments at the federal and state level wanted of me and my spouse by way of tax liabilities. Tax season for Americans is approaching and we like to get the moronic adventure of filing tax returns out of the way the earliest we can but it turns out to be a taxing exercise for some reason. Anyway to further expand on the intersect between these two enjoyable events - the film and book - both engage and  enthrall and  are a study of con men/women in society.  But it's about so much more: trust, belief, and deception at their most basic and human levels. The film directed by Anurag Kashyap, stars a woman (of French heritage who I will call KK - initials of her name in real life) that plays the part of a determined but anguished twenty year old who has left the UK to co...

Autonomous or self driving vehicles are buzzing in the news in Silicon Valley.  As in they are yet not buzzing on the roads of the valley or any other meadow or hill.  Yet.  The pundits are out in force and fantasizing about what the future might hold. One of the things on their pundit scale likely to hit the road soon is an automobile that requires no driver.  No intervention during the course of transportation, whatsoever.  No accidents, no lawsuits, no hospital trips and no policing?  Tap, tap and go.  Snooze, make out, watch a movie and arrive. Now there are a lot of questions surrounding this idea least of them having to do with the actual technology to pull it off but with the regulatory framework the government would need to put in place to allow said form of mobility. The idea is that with more sensors per vehicle than popcorn in a bag the average person is going to be ensconced in a computer on wheels that will never make a mistake and ...

Simple, straightforward tale of bravery and integrity in the face of adversity and possible national disgrace, the lead role played by Tom Hanks is a most welcome movie watching experience.   Spielberg in the director's chair with Hanks and Rylance (a British stage actor I had never heard of who also won the Oscar for supporting role) acting out a Coen brothers written screenplay is good stuff. A story loosely based on some events of the cold war era portrays an insurance lawyer (Hanks) who is asked by the CIA to defend a Russian spy as his government provided counselor against a motivated and air tight case of the prosecution. Hanks defends him, risking his own life and that of his young family, as prescribed by the US constitution affording the Russian every right to a fair trial and even taking on the judge in private to consider all angles of his arguments. When found guilty of all charges Hanks continues to persuade the judge to be lenient on the sentencing for the spy,...