Brown Motion

No it is not a new Hindi film name abbreviation. It is the subject line of an email our daughter's school sent.  To us.  The parents. Back to school night.  BTSN.  I stopped going to school a while back as the readers may be aware. .which to sidetrack a bit was 25 years ago based on another mail sent by some enthusiastic alumni wanting to get together. .wonder what that is all about. But I digress as I'm wont to do in my blog. .it's my blog so anything goes. Back to the child's school urging parents to visit with her teachers and see what the offspring might be doing this year on campus. This is a ritual the American k to 12 school districts engage in across the country and it's purpose is two fold.  Allow parents to confirm that said teachers are actually aware of who your child is and what they should look forward to in the upcoming year.   The other critical goal for district is to again ask for money.  They are labeled donations that apparently overco

Most of what I blog is.  But I thought about what I read.  Read read or read.  Makes no difference. I prefer non-fiction because it opens up the world just a bit more in throwing light on an idea, concept, fact or person, an achievement or a relationship,  a root cause or what stems what. Biographies, Business of running a business, Human origins, Human thinking, Psychology or Philosophy, Medicine or Engineering, Architecture or History.  The subjects are varied and the magic is in how the author is able to convey information without sounding pretentious or pedantic. But I do have my share of non fiction favorites.  Genres perhaps.  Thrillers and Mysteries mainly. Comedy or humor as a stand alone (both fictional or not) but very few authors can pull off a 300 page tome just trying to make you laugh. George Carlin could.  Pelham G. Woodhouse had it down with Jeeves and his crummy cast of characters.  Bill Cosby with his Fatherhood and other familial insight stories could. Rec

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it was not unt

Impossible.  Drivel.  Ridiculous.  Many ways one can define the plot of this hilarious Coen Brothers film, that they wrote, edited, produced and directed. The title suggests something top secret which the movie reveals it is not.   Far from it.  It is in fact garbage - well it is the memoir that a low security clearance analyst has started to pen after he quits his job at the CIA.  His director invites him for a sit down and basically fires him citing his drinking problem.  The analyst is played by the amazing John Malkovich who through out the film displays his uncanny sense of being a frustrated and pissed off individual.  He plays that part amazingly well. His wife is screwing George Clooney's character behind his back.  Clooney's character is an ex Marshall who works in Treasury and is paranoid of being followed by operatives who suspect his affairs.  Turns out his wife is spying on him having an affair of her own. So everyone involved in the film is basically an adu

A Tamil American by birth, Aziz is a stand up comedian (I don't know too many successful ones that tell jokes sitting down) who is also a moderately famous actor on television.  With this maiden book he is now also an author. It is a borderline funny but fairly insightful, researched discussion on how the notion of love and romance has changed since our grandparents got together to eventually create us.  Of course the big deal is people did not really think or know how to define things like romance, soul mate, et al but simply figured out a way to procreate to address a functional need.   The book narrates feedback from actual surveys and polls conducted by Aziz and Eric (a doctoral student) along with interviews with some well known psychologists and people who know what they (think) are talking about when it comes to relationships. Sprinkled with one liners and observations from his own life including use or abuse of technology to drive meaning and sense of what someone sa

It is time.  It is time that our fledgling that was just a silly, toothy, yet curious person, one who till few years ago required day care after school is entering a phase where the very identifier has the words 'High' in them marking a sort of apogee of primary learning. It was certainly a different time when my spouse and I on another continent also reached this age but due to the naming standards of the day or the style of schooling we did not do 'High School'.  It was simply a passage through grades ending in 12th grade scores that would determine what if any curriculum we were likely to pursue, in order to chart the course of our lives. Now a different age, an age of internet, an age of pocket sized super computing, ask and you shall receive search capabilities and instant gratification devices and services, our child embarks to seek higher education that will be a key stepping stone to her future. The pricing for said service or schooling has certainly been

This summer the season's big media event (other than the unfortunate and psychotic events in the world) is the Summer Olympics in Brazil. Many a country tries to send their very best to compete in what is labeled as games of skill, stamina and showmanship. Athletes spend sometimes a lifetime chasing this epitome of their chosen sport and prove to themselves that they can in fact be among the competitors the very best;  in the World! Now while I am not a big fan of organized sport of any kind I do know that there are some genuine individuals who have staked everything for the sheer love of a sport or game.  For them their endurance and stamina and perseverance has guided their trajectory to a point where they can bask in the adulation from the crowd; win the medal or not.  Usually only one person gets gold or first place even if there is a photo finish against the person that came second.  Does that make the second place winner or the five setter tennis opponent that lost in

A former NPR correspondent and now author, Eric Weiner a resident of Washington DC, has written this witty but sort of non conclusive body of work around what makes genius grow in certain parts of the world vs. another.  That is if you buy into the notion that genius indeed is geographically concentrated in certain lat long vs. another. His travels take him from Silicon Valley, the mother-ship of all innovation these days, to former great cities that produced masters in art, philosophy, science etc.  From Athens, Greece to Calcutta, India he travels to seek out what genius really was and is.  From some experiments done by an English fella called Galton, he starts his narrative about the Galton Box.  This dude decides to measure everything that can be statistically analyzed, including figuring out which part of England had the most comely of women. He used felt pad and pins to do this activity and came up with a map showing the Londonites were prettiest and Scottish lassies were ug

Our flight back from Indonesia landed in Taipei, Taiwan (aka Republic of China) where we had a day long layover.  We decided we were going to spend it on the island rather than the airport on the island. So armed with our travel documents we ventured out at night (it was around 11 pm) and caught up with the young lady at the immigration desk.   No lines since they have like 10 counters open. She was perky and totally focused on making sure we had the right documents to enter and exit (when the time came).  "Show me ticket"  she sharply cried when we merely gave our passports to her to stamp.  Since our airline took away ongoing boarding passes claiming security issue (was not entirely sure what that was about) I had to resort to pulling out my smart phone and logging into the airport 'free wi fi' and showing her an e-version of the actual ticket the airline had mailed me. That was perfectly acceptable to her.  She peered over her desk and without actually takin

To breakdown the island into numbers seems anti romantic but sometimes it helps to get your arms around it - how romantic. So some you might and some you might not - know - It is one of hundreds of islands that make the Indonesian Republic 8 degrees below the equator It is about 2,220 sq miles which is half that of the Big Island of Hawaii (which if you drive it is a round trip of under five hours) - not so in Bali - one point to another can take a day (roads are narrow and congested) It houses close to 5M people most of which clutter around the eastern part since the western thirds is a national park  Housing and constructed buildings tend to be shorter than the tallest temple in town so nothing over five stories was visible for miles making for tightly packed homes that house more than one family in the compound.   Typically Balinese families stay as joint families.   They have a family temple right on the edge of their home and visible from the road. The kids are num