America and Guns

I read an interesting article in the 23rd April issue of the NewYorker about guns, gun control, and how the political power punch  of the gun lobby may have influenced the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Below is brief extract from the article:

One in three Americans knows someone who has been shot. As long as a candid discussion of guns is impossible, unfettered debate about the causes of violence is unimaginable. Gun-control advocates say the answer to gun violence is fewer guns. Gun-rights advocates say that the answer is more guns: things would have gone better, they suggest, if the faculty at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Chardon High School had been armed. That is the logic of the concealed-carry movement; that is how armed citizens have come to be patrolling the streets. That is not how civilians live. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.

Read more of the article at Battleground America

The Night I Met Einstein

When we think of Albert Einstein we think of Physics or E = mc² . But how about  Einstein and music or Einstein and great teacher?  I came across this article, The Night I met Einstein, in Readers Digest. The article, by Jerome Weidman , (a journalist and author) provides insight into a whole different aspect of Einstein.

“Nonsense!” said Einstein. “It proves everything! Do you remember your first arithmetic lesson in school? Suppose, at your very first contact with numbers, your teacher had ordered you to work out a problem in, say, long division or fractions. Could you have done so?”

“No, of course not.”

“Precisely!” Einstein made a triumphant wave with his pipe stem. “It would have been impossible, and you would have reacted in panic. You would have closed your mind to long division and fractions. As a result, because of that one small mistake by your teacher, it is possible your whole life you would be denied the beauty of long division and fractions.”

The pipe stem went up and out in another wave.

“But on your first day, no teacher would be so foolish. He would start you with elementary things—then, when you had acquired skill with the simplest problems, he would lead you up to long division and to fractions.

“So it is with music.” Einstein picked up the Bing Crosby record. “This simple, charming little song is like simple addition or subtraction. You have mastered it. Now we go on to something more complicated.”

He found another record and set it going. The golden voice of John McCormack singing “The Trumpeter” filled the room. After a few lines, Einstein stopped the record.

“So!” he said. “You will sing that back to me, please?”

I did—with a good deal of self-consciousness but with, for me, a surprising degree of accuracy.

Einstein stared at me with a look on his face that I had seen only once before in my life: on the face of my father as he listened to me deliver the valedictory address at my high school graduation ceremony.

“Excellent!” Einstein remarked when I finished. “Wonderful! Now this!”

“This” turned out to be Caruso in what was to me a completely unrecognizable fragment from Cavalleria Rusticana, a one-act opera. Nevertheless, I managed to reproduce an approximation of the sounds the famous tenor had made. Einstein beamed his approval.

Caruso was followed by at least a dozen others. I could not shake my feeling of awe over the way this great man, into whose company I had been thrown by chance, was completely preoccupied by what we were doing, as though I were his sole concern.

We came at last to recordings of music without words, which I was instructed to reproduce by humming. When I reached for a high note, Einstein’s mouth opened, and his head went back as if to help me attain what seemed unattainable. Evidently I came close enough, for he suddenly turned off the phonograph.

“Now, young man,” he said, putting his arm through mine. “We are ready for Bach!”

Height of Nerdyness

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See more Nerdy bathrooms

Helmet for Tots

I cannot stop laughing at this.  Having helmet for tots so that they don’t get hurt while they are crawling or taking their first steps….

Soon I will be Among the 1%

No I am not one of the 3 winners of the $640 mil Mega-Millions jackpot. But I have a $12.5 mil Check/ATM card waiting for me from the Federal Government of Nigeria. I was informed today by FBI director Robert Mueller about this. I cannot believe that I will be a  millionaire soon and among the  1%.  Dream come true…… Below is the email from the FBI director himself.

Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division
FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

Attn: Beneficiary,

This is to officially inform you that it has come to our notice and we have thoroughly completed an Investigation with the help of our Intelligence Monitoring Network System that you legitimate Fund coming from the Government of Nigeria.

We write to inform you that a Check/ATM card valued at $12,500,000.00 have been issued to your name by the Federal Goverment of Nigeria. You are to contact Mrs. Jane Obi for immediate delivery of your Check/ATM card, be informed that you only need to pay for the delivery fee which is not more than $250 as every other thing have been taken care of by the Nigeria Government. Contact Person: Mrs Jane Obi. Email: obijane@yahoo.cn

Thank you so much for your anticipated co-operation in advance as we earnestly expect you to contact Mrs Jane Obi and finalize this issue with her immediately.

Robert S. Mueller III
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue,
NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001, USA

Free to Choose – Healthcare and the Fight over Freedom

America the  ”Land of the Free”, or so ends the American national anthem. Here you are free to speak your mind, free to practice any religion or even free to choose the need for health insurance to cover healthcare costs (though there is high probability that you may not find coverage when you really need it). This freedom to choose the need for health insurance is at the heart of  the case against the  Affordable Care Act in the US Supreme Court.

But, under the guise of protecting our right to be free, are the opponents of the law going too far and dessimating the values and ideals that this country stands for. In a superb article for Slate magazine, Dahlia Lithwick explains how some peoples vision of freedom is at odds with a sense of community, shared responsibility, and a concern for the less fortunate and needy, ideals that this country has always held dear.

This morning in America’s highest court, freedom seems to be less about the absence of constraint than about the absence of shared responsibility, community, or real concern for those who don’t want anything so much as healthy children, or to be cared for when they are old. Until today, I couldn’t really understand why this case was framed as a discussion of “liberty.” This case isn’t so much about freedom from government-mandated broccoli or gyms. It’s about freedom from our obligations to one another, freedom from the modern world in which we live. It’s about the freedom to ignore the injured, walk away from those in peril, to never pick up the phone or eat food that’s been inspected. It’s about the freedom to be left alone. And now we know the court is worried about freedom: the freedom to live like it’s 1804.

The Anti-Walmart

Its good to know that in today’s world where most companies focus on meeting stock market expectations and quarterly revenue targets, there are companies like Wegmans who are bucking the trend to show that people and profit and dont have to be mutually exclusive.

The Wegmans model is simple. A happy, knowledgeable and superbly trained employee creates a better experience for customers. Extraordinary service builds tremendous loyalty.

Read the entire article at The Anti-Walmart

Media Madness

Gone are the days when you had to wait for a newspaper or a evening news program to get your daily fix of the things happening in the world. In today’s world of hyper-connectivity there is a “breaking news” every moment of every day. Be it covering the birth of a child to some film-star or the trials and tribulations of a child murder case, every thing counts as breaking news. Whether you want it or not, you are bombarded with information (good or bad, relevant or not) from every directions via blogs, twitter, cable news channels etc.

While having access to information real time is a good thing, and serves to level the playing field, it also has some serious drawbacks. In their book That Used to Be Us, Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum write:

The news media have turned news into something that is distributed through many channels, that is updated constantly, and is available everywhere. Because if websites, blogs and  twitter, anybody can be a reporter or a columnist. Because of satellites, digital cameras, and cell phones, anything that happens anywhere that is of interest to anyone can and will be broadcast, instantaneously, around the world. This new media environment reinforces hyper-partisanship in Washington, because the new media generally aim at a smaller audiences than the old. Talk radio and cable television are not trying to attract people from different points on the political spectrum. Instead, they target one end or the other of the spectrum by offering programming that reinforces the opinions that viewers and listeners already hold.

These Are Our Elected Representatives

According to the Times of India, the government in Karnataka on the brink of a crisis because the former Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa, has escorted about 55 MLA’s to a luxury resort demanding that he be reinstated as CM. According to the Times,

As per the plan, the MLAs will stay in the resort until the party high command makes its stand clear on Yeddyurappa’s reinstatement. They will boycott the budget session if the situation demands. “This is a do or die battle,’‘ declared former minister Hartal Halappa.

We the people have elected these people whose one and only concern is to be in a position of power. If this is not a crisis for democracy, then I don’t  know what is.

Holi Hai….

Its Holi today. Wish I could play with colors. But in lieu of it I celebrated holi watching this ever colorful song from the movie Silsila. Happy Holi to all…..