Shanky's Random Notes

George Washington's boyhood home found

2008-07-04T19:06:00.003-04:00

George Washington's boyhood home found. Its believed the Washington family moved to this house in 1738 when George was 6 years old. Later on, he lived at Mount Vernon. Both these sites are in Virginia where George Washington spent most or rather all of his life.

Mount Vernon is a very beautiful historic estate. In case you haven't seen it, stop by at that place the next time you are in DC or Virginia. We visited that place a couple of years back and I remember spending an entire day there. We also loved the Apple Cider that the store at Mount Vernon sells. Its delicious!

While Wall Street goes to bear country, India dances with the bulls

2008-07-02T23:34:00.002-04:00

Today was a bearish day for most of the global stock markets. Read CNN Money's Wall Street: The bear is back or today's Market Overview on Yahoo Finance to get a sense of where Wall Street stands. Contrary to this general trend though, the India Stock Market indicator -- sensex -- rose by 703 points. Read the Rediff News report on the subject. The Indian market lost over 1400 points in the last 3 days and its said today's rise was due to buying spree at low prices. I understand the general support and resistance phenomena and the correction the markets go through every once a while, however, its surprising the Indian market is optimistic when continually rising oil prices are shocking the rest of the world. A lot of the Indian boom story in the last few years has been fueled by the US economy and its favor for outsourcing jobs to India. Do you think the Indian economy will show confident gains even in the face of a depressing US economy?

Gandhi's rare recordings

2008-07-02T23:30:00.003-04:00

Hear Mahatma Gandhi's rare recordings. Here is the link to the Indiatimes media file.

12 million angry bees in Canada

2008-07-02T16:21:00.002-04:00

Reuters Oddly Enough reports some of the most bizarre and arbitrary things. Today it mentions the accident of a truck in New Brunswick, Canada. The truck wasn't any ordinary one but one that was carrying millions of bees. The accident caused the truck to overturn and set 330 crates (12 million) bees free. Operations are on to unload the bees and get things back to normal. They probably have things in place by now. The original story can be accessed at Reuters Oddly Enough.

Yahoo Google deal under the lens

2008-07-02T15:54:00.002-04:00

Yahoo and Google signed a big advertisement deal and Justice department is getting suspicious its violating the US Antitrust Law. The news is all over the web. Here is Washington Post's story on the subject: Google Ad Deal Is Under Scrutiny.

eBay hit with Euro 38.6 fine for selling fake luxury goods

2008-07-01T21:10:00.002-04:00

LVMH has hit eBay with a Euro 38.6 million fine for selling fake luxury goods. LVMH is the company that owns brands like Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior. The Guardian published this story this morning. While I understand LVMH's concern, I am unable to understand why they would not want to crackdown the counterfeiters and worry the middleman so much. Possibly because eBay is a large legal concern and can be hassled, whereas the real counterfeiters are a tuff nut to crack!

Madagascar in real life

2008-07-01T20:47:00.003-04:00

Fifteen camels, two zebras and several llamas and pot-bellied pigs escaped from a circus visiting Amsterdam. The police suspect giraffe kicked open the pen. The animals were caught later and brought back to the circus. The news was published on Reuters.Makes me think the animals were inspired by Madagascar!

Impact of Internet in India

2008-07-01T15:26:00.002-04:00

Watch an interesting episode of Web Wide World to see how the internet is impacting Indians. There are 50 million internet users in India today and its expected to grow to 300 million in the next few years. The internet boom in India supposedly came in the late nineties as the overheated US internet boom was cooling down. However, it collapsed as soon as it started because the user base was small and there wasn't enough traction to say it could one day become a formidable force. Now looking at it 10 years later, the real boom is about to begin.

Everything runs on Oil

2008-07-01T01:35:00.003-04:00

The Motley Fool has an interesting post on Why We Need Oil. The essence of that post is that everything around us is dependent on oil and oil consumption is not all that sensitive to price increase because it is essential to our lives. Unfortunately every bit what the article says is true. Unfortunately we as humans have stopped thinking of the misery we are creating for ourselves. Unfortunately we will not realize till its very late. If you are reading this post and think you want to change this and make a difference, then please be kind enough to do any/all of the following:

1. Walk to a destination that is within a mile from your place. You will also get your muscles some exercise.
2. Order a little less at your next restaurant visit. It will also save you some bucks.
3. Try to use fans instead of AC(s).
4. Take your bag to the grocery store. Avoid taking the plastic bags that you discard as soon as you reach home.

Be your own mentor!

2006-06-23T16:01:00.000-04:00

While it may sound absurd to be your own mentor, that is exactly what Dennis Matthies, a lecturer at Stanford's Center for Teaching and Learning, says is effective in the current time and age. Read the article at -
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/03/mentor.html?partner=rss

I tend to agree that self initiated learning and vicariously gaining from others experiences is certainly more effective than the old school thought of learning through a formal mentoring process.

What do you think?

What is this blog all about?

2006-06-23T01:10:00.000-04:00

Mumbai Metro Rail & Commuter Train Network

2006-06-21T12:03:00.000-04:00

Click on the image to see an enlarged version.

Over 6 million commuters use Mumbai's urban rail network daily. 4700 passengers (it is built for a maximum capacity of 1700 pasengers) travel in every 9 train car rake during peak hours. Unfortnately the over-crowding also causes many accidents, leading to 3500 deaths every year. Efforts to upgrade the train network and build newer lines is actively being pursued offlate.

A latest news item talks about the Indian Prime Minister laying the foundation for Mumbai's new metro rail venture.

The mumbai map was obtained from http://urbanrail.net/as/mumb/mumbai.htm
The site urbanrail.net provides information on urban rail transport systems around the world.

Some interesting sites about the mumbai urban rail network:
http://www.geocities.com/mumbairail/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai_suburban_railway
http://www.answers.com/topic/mumbai-suburban-railway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai_Metro

Global Warming

2006-06-15T16:20:00.000-04:00

Is "global warming" real? Certainly, the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans has increased in the last few decades.

Wikipedia has a good description of "global warming" and concepts associated with it. (The image on the left is also from Wikipedia)

Now is it CO2 that is causing it? Don't know for sure. However, Al Gore's movie has generated a lot of excitement for both believers and opposers of the "CO2 causing global warming" theory.

Al Gore in his movie and book - "An inconvenient Truth" presents CO2 and other green house gases to be the primary cause of the climatic changes and warns people that things will get much worse if we don't start taking conscious steps to stop the accumulation of CO2. Read more on http://www.climatecrisis.net/.

On the contrary, some scientists think there is little evidence that CO2 is really causing the climate change. Canada Free Press has an interesting summary of what these scientists are saying. Read more at http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm.

What do you think?

corporate bullshit!

2006-02-28T14:48:00.000-05:00

Check this new book "The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit" out. A good reference to all the nonsensical jargon that floats around in the corporate world.

If looking at this dictionary is rather pedantic and boring, you could engage in some real time bullshit generation at any of the following sites:

Corporate Bullshit Generator - http://members.aol.com/matt999h/bullshit.htm
Bullshit Baffles Brains (BBB) - http://www.pentaclethevbs.com/compilation_4.htm
Dilbert Gobbledygook generator - http://www.strauss.za.com/sla/newspeak.html
DJ Broadsword's Buzzword Bullshit Generator - http://www.virtuadance.co.uk/useless/useless4.html

Once you have enjoyed and mastered the art of bullshit generation it is time for new roles and jobs. Create newer and bullshit enriched job titles by leveraging the resource at
http://www.bullshitjob.com/titles.html

Net Neutrality

2006-02-16T18:45:00.000-05:00

If you are not familiar with the concept read up the wikipedia article on Network Neutrality at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality . If you know about it read on........

So the fight is about network neutrality promoting welfare by providing the same underlying unbiased network infrastructure to competing content, applications and services versus the neutrality damaging the differentiating factors and competitive advantage for network providers. This seems like a paradox because both adopting net neutrality and rejecting it seems to be affecting fair competition.

I support the cause for network neutrality because I believe it preserves the freedom of choice for the customers and creates a level playing ground for all participants. However, it also worries me that the network providing business is then relegated to a commoditized offering. Commoditization of business can affect quality of service as price pressures increase with providers trying to grab larger market shares with similar or same set of offerings. Commoditization provides little enthusiasm for providers to expand or maintain their infrastructure, especially if large capital investment is required for these. Decreasing margins will also drive shareholder and market support away from these providers and render their business unviable in the long run.

Thus, if we don't have any incentives for the privately owned network providers or have government participation in this area, the way we have in our road and ports infrastructure we would be headed towards trouble anyway. We might be able to protect the freedom of choice but there may not be much left to exercise this choice.

Controversy over words?

2005-12-25T02:06:00.000-05:00

Looks like officials in the US are promoting the use of Happy Holidays over other greeting this season in the name of political correctness. Read the following article to get a flavor of this controversy - http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3546005.html

I can understand diversity in belief needs to be recognized and respected but does that imply calling "Christmas" "Holidays" and pretending that Jesus's birth on 25th December and the Holiday season being at the same time is just a strange unrelated coincidence.

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-25T01:31:00.000-05:00

I just came back from the midnight mass at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs at Forest Hills in New York. Must say I was amazed at two things - (1) the large number of people who gathered to celebrate the birth of Jesus and (2) the patience demonstrated by many of the people who had gathered and had to stand through the mass, because of lack of enough seats. This church is well attended at most times but today I saw more people in this church then I had ever seen before. Felt really happy when despite the busy, consumeristic and atheistic philosophy of our daily lives Christmas atleast makes us all get together to reflect and pray. Merry X-mas!

Strike and the City

2005-12-22T00:47:00.000-05:00

The MTA Strike that began on December 20th, 2005 is yet another crippling challenge that New Yorkers are fighting against with determination and resilience. As a daily communter on the subway, I surely am anxiously waiting for this deadlock to end.

Snow Fall in Forest Hills, NY

2005-12-22T00:37:00.000-05:00

First snow fall in the winter of 2005 at our backyard in New York.

Driving into Atlantic City

2005-12-20T20:27:00.000-05:00

Is "Bankrupt Millionaire" really an oxymoron?

Did you know the secrets of bankrupcy making a person a millionaire?

Millionaire Donald Trump's bankrupt casions in Atlantic City !

Read the CBS Story - Should Donald Trump be Fired?