Brown Motion

An iPhone is coming.  An iPhone is coming.  To a store near you.  Come one and come all.  Line up now.  It is imminent.  This blog included there is still much chatter about an annual version change of a piece of hardware that 10 years in garners droves to tune in to all channels to soak it all in. Some observations of said phenomena include the below - Publishers of some repute making non statements like  - Reportedly Apple is looking to price its next iphone at $1,000...  Who is reporting, looking and pricing?  Anyone but Apple. Yet the click bait works each time.  People are truly agog.  From Guatemala to Guangzhou and Boston to Baku there are kids actually looking up what a $1,000 miracle looks like.  Many are actually researching the meaning of  a thousand dollars.  Earlier many of these folks did not even know what a dollar was let alone count beyond eight. A man started an entire business around the id...

During the recent total solar eclipse the planet saw a series of unusual events - The president saw the face of god in the sun when looked at without protective glasses Birds flew backwards for a period of 2 minutes during totality - exception being a turkey in Hawaii which did not see the eclipse at all and had no way to communicate with its fellow birds of a feather on the mainland to figure out the ins and outs of reverse flight The stock market stopped displaying any price movement for 2 minutes of totality except the price of bitcoin which surged 10,000% for the same period and then promptly went down to 3 dollars as the sun shone All traffic lights in America were stuck on yellow as a show of solidarity against darkness on the yellow sun People in the midwest states witnessed the event and took the darkness as a sign to go back to bed. Water from the great lakes region tasted warmer than usual.  This according to a marine biologist who studies fresh water salmon beh...

Fair Warning  - the below is a controversial piece. But this is my blog. It is my opinion. India - 1.3 Billion people (which is 1,300,000,000) crammed in a land mass about fourth that of the United States.  With over 25 spoken languages and hundreds of dialects, it is a melting pot of various religious beliefs and cultural variations assembled under a parliamentary system which is a holdover from the British days including an elected Prime Minister. For context the US has only 340 Million people.  The US is the largest economy in the world and is also a democratically elected government.  It operates in a federal system where the elected President is the commander in chief of the armed forces but the 50 states that comprise the union are essentially their own republics and set their own laws. Now some other eye openers.  The United Nations conducts surveys of many kinds and one of the 2016 effort was compiled and labeled 'Human Development Report'. ...

There is an eclipse over America as you may have heard.  From a celestial standpoint this will occur Aug 21 where the sun gets obscured by the passing moon so as to cover the star completely.  For an observer at the right latitude in America, at the right time of day, there will be what astronomers define as a 'totality'. It is peculiar in that it appears to be a once in a century event with the last one almost a 100 years ago in 1918 for this part of the world where it was observable by the entire continent from coast to coast.  Coincidentally at the time we were wrapping up the first world war and it was a troubling time for this nation too. Fast forward to 2017 and one might argue that we are again at some historic cross roads with the goings on in this country. Have we come full circle  (pun intended)? Perhaps our strength is eclipsed by our stupidity?  Our compassion is eclipsed by our hate mongering?  Perhaps we just have bad breath? Maybe ...

'Dhanak' as in Rainbow (not sure in which language), is a tug at your heart tale of two precocious kids in Rajasthan (a western frontier state of India) roaming in the desert in search of a unicorn.  Not really but close.  The girl protagonist is an elder sister to a young brother who has gone blind at an early age.  She is on a naively innocent but pure of heart mission to find sight for her sibling before he turns nine years old.  And that too with help from a famous Bollywood movie star.  Or so she dreams. Whilst they have their playful and angry moments in the movie, the kids who have lost their parents in an accident and live with their uncle in the desert of Rajasthan are inseparable.  The older girl actor plays her role with a natural, easy going manner while the younger brother at times looks like he is trying hard.  But overall amazing piece of acting on the big screen at a young age. The director, one Mr. Kukunoor,  is an engineer b...

Indians like any other civilization on earth like to boast about their offspring or close relative being a who's who. One way to attain this boast moksha was to advertise where the recently graduated kid went.  As in a career choice. Here is a compilation of the decades. 70s to 80s - He is in gulf (referred to the scores of southies taking accounting jobs in the now ever popular middle east kingdoms just over the pond aka Arabian gulf) 90s  - He is in computer (as in the kids that made it across the vaster ponds to American shores to shore up the aging IT systems that ran COBOL) 00s to 10s - He is in cloud (as in the shared and distributed computer systems that support all of America's aging infrastructure) Today - He is in startup (not sure if he wakes up on time but he is definitely in some form of start up mode)

I think Eggers (the author) thought of highlighting the negative consequence of a cult like following.  In this case the cult is the Silicon Valley type.  What you say is this stereo?  I mean stereotype?  In this book and the movie adaptation that I watched we look at the 'connect humanity with no privacy' concept being promoted as an extreme. The story essentially takes a jab at any of the large and well known brands that originated in the valley - from Facebook, to Apple to Tesla to the recently controversial Google, showing how the culture converts the fresh guppies (newly indoctrinated staff) into swimming in the kool aid tank.  To the point that 'original thought' is merely a paradigm that gets relegated to theory in an ironic twist where the published motto is oft a variation of 'think different'. The movie has many scenes bordering on nonsense or frankly criminal in today's world but again I think the author (to give him the benefit of doubt) too...

The latest scam to be unveiled on the unsuspecting public is the alleged promise from a brand or company to donate part of your payment to a charity of the owner's choosing.  So from cereal delivery companies to pet food suppliers to shoe makers everyone is jumping on this bandwagon of tickling your giving bone to go buy more of the company's stuff that is otherwise idling in some warehouse getting chewed by rodents. To these latest daylight robbers my message is thanks for the idea.  Let me also start a campaign to blast all my social circle with (not to steal from Costanza) a so called charity.  Yes it is called 'Charity'.  You give me a $100 and I will donate a portion of it to a charity of 'your choosing'.  I have done one better.  I let the donor choose how they want to spend their hard earned cash.  After all they should have a say in that matter not the intermediary. So give - my fellows and my friends - give - give to me.  I will let ...

So what you ask?  Well it is not a cow in the traditional sense of a grilled piece of steak or a burger or a rib.  No sir.  Recent news would suggest that they are literally in a tizzy about not having enough butter to go around. Apparently consumers want the real thing and not margarine or 'I can't believe its not butter' butter.  So Betty is trying to buy some real butter to make the batter better. But Betty is finding prices doubled in the recent months and that makes Betty bitchy.  Turns out the cows are not chewing their cud fast enough to generate enough cow juice aka milk to then transform into butter. So perhaps they might be thinking of not having a cow (on the plate) but to let the heifers roam the pastures for a while longer in the hope that the added milk yield would yield them some butter. The folks east of them (politically called the middle east) are doing one better.  They as in the kings of Qatar are flying in the bovines (literall...

A multi part documentary on the origins and progression of comedy as a form of engagement in America is currently playing on CNN. I have watched a few early episodes that chronologically were not as exciting to watch but did build the curve to the more contemporary genre where situational comedy is king.  The 'Leave it to beaver' and 'Fawlty towers', even 'Cheers' and other sitcoms of yesteryear for which I have no perspective nor empathy were fast forwarded (thanks to DVR tech) till George Carlin made an appearance. To be a successful comic could mean a variety of things - and the show does justice to show those various facets.  Audience measurement, financial success for all involved in the making of the production, studio support to do more than one season are all various KPI that you could use to determine how good or bad an individual performance was. But ultimately some shows and their cast just click with the zeitgeist and make it look easy.  Both ...