Interesting interview of Noam Chomsky...

......about his latest book Perilous Power: The Middle East And U.s. Foreign Policy Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, And Justice

The interview is here

Hypocrisy or genuine concern

Ethical implications of eating meat

India-Centric Media

In recent days, there have been a slew of big-name cover pages with India on it. I will add the links when I get the time, but for now here they are:
Economist
Time
Red Herring
HBS Alumni Magazine
Newsweek
On another note, this one takes the cake in visualization:
quoting from Red Herring "India 2.0": Today, stacked end to end, the buses that ferry employees to work at these two companies(Wipro and Infosys) each day in Bangalore would stretch 10 miles

Update:
Foreign Affairs

Being Responsible

First time I am impressed by an insurance company's television ad. Now only if I can find it online, you all would know what I am talking about. btw, it was Liberty Mutual insurance.
update: FOUND IT!!!!
Liberty Mutual

Impending doom

The question that stands before me is whether I take the plunge and give my general exam on June 9th or as planned, three weeks later on June 28th. I could be gutsy/foolish but come out alive feeling I saved three weeks worth of anxiety or invest time and make a water-tight defense of my proposal on the 28th. cant decide which and also have a denver trip coming up this memorial day weekend. hate to back out of that too. things are in flux right now. need some resolution soon before it drives me off the edge.
update: decided to have it on the 28th. Nobody forced my hand, so I held back.

Change in Google Motto

I propose a change in Google Motto.

"Do No Evil........only when it suits you"

Stable enough.....

I think I have stabilized enough mentally to comment about a signpost that passed me by about a week back. I turned 25. Why stabilized you ask? That was a monday, early morning woke up feeling good about myself. As time passed and I rolled into the lab and the day wore on, the question changed to what is so different about today. I had nothing planned beforehand and was thinking of getting dinner with some friends but as time dragged on, it started going downhill. The burning question of the day kept coming back, a quarter of a century gone by and nothing to show for it.

I ended up at QFC @2000 buying myself a 6-pack and TV dinner. This was followed by some snide comments by the cashier about my state of affairs. Reminded me of quite a few scenes from old movies of the caricature of a psycho. I would have fit that to a T. Just after that ran into a good friend of mine, JC who lives like a block away. He gave me a ride and then of all things showed up with a cake he had baked. We just had the tv dinners, downed some beers, ate the cake and watched Lakshya. That was probably the 13th time for me as it is the sole DVD I own. I would say the day ended up on a rise. Also it was my first monday at the new digs. Finally a space I dont have to share with someone else. A week has made me realize that things are not as bad as it seems though it could definitely be better.

Notes on two events

So yesterday I watched "Thank You For Smoking". A thoroughly enjoyable movie that in its attempt to potray the life of a Lobbyist working for one of the Merchants of Death(Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearm) focusses less on the healthy/diseased aspects of smoking of which there is already an overload of in mass media but puts in a movie all what we would have liked to tell the self-righteous preachers if only we could find the right words.
There have been others that I have enjoyed in the recent past, like Lord of War for its depiction of the shady dealings of the gun-running business and what happens when you move up the chain and start playing with the big boys. It excites and depresses at the same time. Personally more of the former for me. Cinematographically, you cant beat Memoirs of a Geisha. The book I had read when I was in high school and was very interested in how well they could adapt that for a movie and I dont say this often but they seem to have done a good job.

On the second note, in my previous post I had mentioned one of the ideas that had popped up in my head. So this week seems like Google idea-bots had been trawling my blog :P for a while and it was a pleasant surprise to see Google Finance. I havent looked around the site and cannot comment on how well what I had envisioned has been taken up by them but its a start.

I know I said two events but cant help exulting about turning in the revised draft of a review I was writing with my advisor. Might even post the link here if it gets published and continuing with the shameless plug, check out Analysis of Variance of CV.