http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15911952
What does US post office mean to me ?
It means either junk mail (which you should absolutely ignore) and VERY IMPORTANT mail(which you must absolutely not ignore). It's odd that USPS sits so comfortably in this bimodality. To me, it means I have to go through all that junk mail, credit card offers, coupons, random things pretending to be very important, and non-random things completely clueless about their importance in order to spot the "important" mail. I have a large-to-extra-large axe to grind with the "important mail" mailers. Can they make it any harder to notice its importance ? IMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIAL written in unassuming, regular font,regular font size, black typeset really doesn't do much to get my adrenalin flowing. I suggest coloring the envelopes red. Or use glow-in-the-dark material. Or speckle the envelope with tiny hearts. Maybe use a nice texture. Or a citrus fragrance. Special paper ? Something like special currency paper ? Something ? Anything but white envelopes and black fonts.
Jan through April, until I get my W2, I wonder several times if I've missed one of those documents or if I've missed my bills (yes yes... I have heard of autopay and E-bills and I do that meticulously).
But USPS themselves, I think are a fine organization. I say this despite the unfortunate time when my package got lost somewhere in Utah during the snowstorm. USPS very sweetly sent me an "important" mail saying they'd found the cover but not its contents (go figure!) and if I could give them an elaborate description of the contents, they'll try finding it. When I went to USPS however, none of the attendants had even heard of this form. I still strove to send them an elaborate description of the package only to hear that they couldn't find it. I suspect right now, a llama is chewing away at my plaid coat. (Yes. LLama!) The point though, is they bothered to inform me and keep me updated (of course using the very primitive art of envelope camouflage).
They're a fine organization because they're expected to make money solely from selling stamps while the government is off bailing filthy banks (it's hilarious how you can always use that line these days and people will always nod in rage). And so I suppose it is worth pumping money into them and keep them going. I don't mean blogging, reblogging or painting placards (in BOLD RED writing) and parading about Capitol Hill. Just buy their stamps. Some of them are even amusing.
http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2009/pr09_118.htm
(I especially like the sunday funnies stamp panel).
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
world wide waste
A neuroscience professor once told me that the brain is a wonderful thing in that it cleverly managed to ignore much riff raff. And it was important that it did that. Paying attention to too much, storing all the information all the time is a ridiculously inefficient strategy since most information is worthless to the immediate goals of finding food and avoiding predator and the slightly more long term goals of procreating and possibly parenting. Retrieving information within the brain's memory stores then, is worse, much worse, than looking for a needle in a haystack. And the brain smartly decided to only store information that it tended to need, and pay no heed to anything else.
A few apes, a couple of tools, some fire, language, written scripts, a somewhat clumsy wheel, agriculture, animal husbandry, an abacus, an apple, a whirring machine, another apple and etc etc etc later, poof! we get the internet! And suddenly the brain's relieved of its duties to memorize anything. And humans immediately become thirsty and hungry not just for valuable information, but to dwell on any set of words and/or numbers that supposedly form a thought, the thought's coherence notwithstanding.
We've come a long way from Gutenberg's press haven't we ? From having to painstakingly distribute information to those that needed it, we're at a point where we painstakingly plough through the internet, concentrating really hard to ignore alphanumeric sentences that we do not need. Clearly, somewhere in between is a diabetes-worthy sweet spot, and clearly we're too mesmerized to bother finding and holding steadfastly to this sweet spot.
The internet is getting ahead of me way too quickly. It is with almost tearful eyes that I recall the days when I was aware of google and the rest of the world was yet to find out. But now, I barely survived the transition from orkut to facebook. Each time facebook changes its layout I can hear a few more of my neurons committing suicide. I feel unmotivated to open my twitter page despite having an account. And I find it oddly disturbing that weird sounding names are wasting their time following my account, which has no hopes of ever updating a status message. We're now pursuing 0 bytes of information with the same level of gusto that we pursue everything else ?
Each day, I sigh loudly when I realize that there's no way I can keep track of all the stories and blogs and news and gibberish out there. Reddit, digg, delicious, stumbleupon, tumblr just give me internal hemorrhage. A few hours before writing this blog, I sat down to figure all of that out, mistakenly assuming that it would make life easier. Few hours later, I'm moaning and groaning with the realization that all these people are probably doing nothing to nudge humanity forward. We're wasting our time, I, the sour fox, that cannot obtain the sweet grapes, have decided. There's an article somewhere that employees of the SEC are to be blamed for the recession because they spent too much time watching porn. What the rest of the internet-addicted world is doing is hardly more admirable.
It is therefore with some modicum of relief that I accept a lifetime of internet ignorance.
A few apes, a couple of tools, some fire, language, written scripts, a somewhat clumsy wheel, agriculture, animal husbandry, an abacus, an apple, a whirring machine, another apple and etc etc etc later, poof! we get the internet! And suddenly the brain's relieved of its duties to memorize anything. And humans immediately become thirsty and hungry not just for valuable information, but to dwell on any set of words and/or numbers that supposedly form a thought, the thought's coherence notwithstanding.
We've come a long way from Gutenberg's press haven't we ? From having to painstakingly distribute information to those that needed it, we're at a point where we painstakingly plough through the internet, concentrating really hard to ignore alphanumeric sentences that we do not need. Clearly, somewhere in between is a diabetes-worthy sweet spot, and clearly we're too mesmerized to bother finding and holding steadfastly to this sweet spot.
The internet is getting ahead of me way too quickly. It is with almost tearful eyes that I recall the days when I was aware of google and the rest of the world was yet to find out. But now, I barely survived the transition from orkut to facebook. Each time facebook changes its layout I can hear a few more of my neurons committing suicide. I feel unmotivated to open my twitter page despite having an account. And I find it oddly disturbing that weird sounding names are wasting their time following my account, which has no hopes of ever updating a status message. We're now pursuing 0 bytes of information with the same level of gusto that we pursue everything else ?
Each day, I sigh loudly when I realize that there's no way I can keep track of all the stories and blogs and news and gibberish out there. Reddit, digg, delicious, stumbleupon, tumblr just give me internal hemorrhage. A few hours before writing this blog, I sat down to figure all of that out, mistakenly assuming that it would make life easier. Few hours later, I'm moaning and groaning with the realization that all these people are probably doing nothing to nudge humanity forward. We're wasting our time, I, the sour fox, that cannot obtain the sweet grapes, have decided. There's an article somewhere that employees of the SEC are to be blamed for the recession because they spent too much time watching porn. What the rest of the internet-addicted world is doing is hardly more admirable.
It is therefore with some modicum of relief that I accept a lifetime of internet ignorance.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Good night and good luck
Have you ever seen a cat as it prepares to go to sleep? Most cats deem the "self" as the only thing worth any respect, and with jolly good reason.
After stretching forwards and backwards fully, she will drop herself onto the napping area with a "plonk" of exquisite precision. If you have any experience with plonking, and I have plenty- with varying degrees of failure, you will know that the act consists of paying no heed to your weight and dropping your body to the ground. At the very last moment, when the ground is seemingly waiting to prevent you from falling off through the other end of the planet, and of course, while that very ground is readying itself to induce a great deal of pain in order to cure you of your insanity, you must make the ground's task easier, by suddenly taking charge of yourself and landing perfectly. You must not waver. You must show no sign of instability. You must not be shocked. It must be as if you had planned it all, till that very last minute. And in order to win a cat's respect, or in fact any acknowledgment of your presence at all, you must do it without exertion and demonstrate a callous grace. It so happens, that it is humanly impossible to "plonk". And that simply settles the matter for all cats.
After having successfully plonked, a cat will proceed to retract all her limbs. She will draw back her paws underneath her belly. And in a splendidly fluid motion will twirl her tail and tuck it in. And in a final flourish, will droop her ear-lobes. The bundle of fur, the cat, having without a doubt earned a good nap and a great deal of vanity will go to sleep.
Of all those moves and frills, it is the drooping of the ears that I envy the most. I have always wondered what people do with their ears when they sleep at night. Unfortunately, I have never been able to ask this question. I cannot imagine any dinner conversation, any idle chatter, where the question "by the way, what happens to your ear lobes at night?", will appear as a seamless part of the rest of the conversation. As a result, this question continues to remain unasked and unanswered and I am left to deal with my ears. For starters, let me disqualify all those people that sleep flat on their backs from offering any suggestion. I do not understand the point in sleeping, if you're not going to bundle up as much as you can. Because, the creators, the followers and the modifiers of the English language all seem to think that the flat-back-sleepers aren't worth spending too much time on, no one has bothered creating a separate word or a separate category for that alternate and unpleasant form of sleeping. My question is directed to what I would call the "true" sleepers- those that try in vain, to bundle up and generally fold themselves up.
What do you do with your earlobes ?
Here's what happens to me. The ear lobe is this strangely convoluted flap that is very good at directing vibrating air into your ear so that you may make sense of all that sound around you. What it is despicably bad at is getting out of the way, when it is not at all required. At night, therefore, when I place my head onto the pillow, my ear-lobes are annoyingly stuck in between. Often, they will fold further, so that, when I get up in the morning, they're really hurting. At the place where they've folded, I will often find a largish red zone. I have tried several cures. For instance, I have tried the obvious- not to lay my head in such a way that them lobes fold. But between my conscious act of lying down to the unconscious act of sleep, clearly, my ear-lobes are managing to dance to the tunes of absolutely nothing, folding and meandering through the depths of darkness, through the silence of the night. So you will not be surprised when I admire, with much pain and heartbreak, the look at a cat, perfectly happy with its drooped ears, and the drooped ears perfectly happy with the way they have gotten themselves out of the way.
Now of course, I have entertained the possibility that we humans have found a way around this. In fact, that big piece of flesh that we call the brain, is right between the ears. They ought to communicate rather well about these kinds of imminent problems. Except, I don't know, and for the aforementioned reasons, cannot ask and not be thought of as a thoroughbred lunatic.
And so, if you please, you can tell me the answer right here.
And perhaps relieve me of my miseries.
After stretching forwards and backwards fully, she will drop herself onto the napping area with a "plonk" of exquisite precision. If you have any experience with plonking, and I have plenty- with varying degrees of failure, you will know that the act consists of paying no heed to your weight and dropping your body to the ground. At the very last moment, when the ground is seemingly waiting to prevent you from falling off through the other end of the planet, and of course, while that very ground is readying itself to induce a great deal of pain in order to cure you of your insanity, you must make the ground's task easier, by suddenly taking charge of yourself and landing perfectly. You must not waver. You must show no sign of instability. You must not be shocked. It must be as if you had planned it all, till that very last minute. And in order to win a cat's respect, or in fact any acknowledgment of your presence at all, you must do it without exertion and demonstrate a callous grace. It so happens, that it is humanly impossible to "plonk". And that simply settles the matter for all cats.
After having successfully plonked, a cat will proceed to retract all her limbs. She will draw back her paws underneath her belly. And in a splendidly fluid motion will twirl her tail and tuck it in. And in a final flourish, will droop her ear-lobes. The bundle of fur, the cat, having without a doubt earned a good nap and a great deal of vanity will go to sleep.
Of all those moves and frills, it is the drooping of the ears that I envy the most. I have always wondered what people do with their ears when they sleep at night. Unfortunately, I have never been able to ask this question. I cannot imagine any dinner conversation, any idle chatter, where the question "by the way, what happens to your ear lobes at night?", will appear as a seamless part of the rest of the conversation. As a result, this question continues to remain unasked and unanswered and I am left to deal with my ears. For starters, let me disqualify all those people that sleep flat on their backs from offering any suggestion. I do not understand the point in sleeping, if you're not going to bundle up as much as you can. Because, the creators, the followers and the modifiers of the English language all seem to think that the flat-back-sleepers aren't worth spending too much time on, no one has bothered creating a separate word or a separate category for that alternate and unpleasant form of sleeping. My question is directed to what I would call the "true" sleepers- those that try in vain, to bundle up and generally fold themselves up.
What do you do with your earlobes ?
Here's what happens to me. The ear lobe is this strangely convoluted flap that is very good at directing vibrating air into your ear so that you may make sense of all that sound around you. What it is despicably bad at is getting out of the way, when it is not at all required. At night, therefore, when I place my head onto the pillow, my ear-lobes are annoyingly stuck in between. Often, they will fold further, so that, when I get up in the morning, they're really hurting. At the place where they've folded, I will often find a largish red zone. I have tried several cures. For instance, I have tried the obvious- not to lay my head in such a way that them lobes fold. But between my conscious act of lying down to the unconscious act of sleep, clearly, my ear-lobes are managing to dance to the tunes of absolutely nothing, folding and meandering through the depths of darkness, through the silence of the night. So you will not be surprised when I admire, with much pain and heartbreak, the look at a cat, perfectly happy with its drooped ears, and the drooped ears perfectly happy with the way they have gotten themselves out of the way.
Now of course, I have entertained the possibility that we humans have found a way around this. In fact, that big piece of flesh that we call the brain, is right between the ears. They ought to communicate rather well about these kinds of imminent problems. Except, I don't know, and for the aforementioned reasons, cannot ask and not be thought of as a thoroughbred lunatic.
And so, if you please, you can tell me the answer right here.
And perhaps relieve me of my miseries.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Google Care
I slipped and twisted my ankle recently. In 24 years, I’ve never twisted my ankle. I’ve wantonly inserted my ankle into the spokes of my mom’s kinetic Honda once (I was just curious to know what would happen!!!), but never have I ever twisted my ankle. I should have realized the day I started training for the marathon, that an ankle twist was not too far away. As it turns out, I was trying to catch the bus. There was way too much snow everywhere. In my bag, I carried a gallon of milk, some instant coffee powder and a mug. I was going to take all of this, in an ever-continuing attempt to make myself feel at home in my lab, to beat the need to leave the lab when the clock strikes 5 (regardless of how much work I’d gotten done). In my hands, I also had a package that I needed to return. I’m one of those people who orders several things online and returns most of them. I am also one of the few people, whose packages get lost in snow blizzards in Utah, while I’m away in India vacationing in Lakshadweep at a resort with no internet (and therefore cannot track my package). When the bus came, I ran for life, slipped fell, and it hurt like hell. But I will not write about my love-hate relationship with the dead Mr Murphy. Nor do I think I need to groan about the effects of gravity and how it makes you fall down and twist your ankle instead of flying away like a bird and busting no-more than a few feathers. What I do need to groan about is health care.
Getting to a doctor is rather easy in India. There’s usually a nursing home, a clinic or two and several pharmacies every 2 lanes in India. And you could tell by the look of the place whether you should go there to get some cold medicine, some fever medication, to get your sprain looked at or something even more serious. The point is, you could always get to one. There would typically be a pharmacy next door to the clinic and the chap at the pharmacy always has the unique talent of being able to read the doctor’s indecipherable handwriting ( I am told that doctors have bad handwriting because they have to write a lot during the several exams they take at med-school). He will also explain what each medicine is for in layman's terms. A doctor will use obscure terminology to prove to their clients that he in fact did study hard to spell terms at the cost of beautiful penmanship. Such was the luxury that I was accustomed to in my developing, snake-charming, country.
A few months after I moved to Pittsburgh I got blisters on my skin. They’d erupt overnight and itch like hell in the morning. I didn’t know what to do. I did know though, that getting a doctor would not be easy. I did not know who my primary-care-physician was. And I knew that that drug-stores had aisles of medication for all sorts of ailments, almost all of which will contain moisturizers. I do not understand the obsession with moisturizers but I will not be surprised if breakfast cereal came with moisturizers so as to not scratch your tongue. So I went to google images, searched for blisters, and spotted images that looked like mine. Quickly enough, I realized they were bed bug bites. And a few hours later, I knew what bed bugs looked like, what you should and should not do and also that doctors will typically not confirm that it was bed-bug bites unless you could find evidence of bed-bugs. I also learnt that finding bed-bugs was not easy. I was adviced to use anti-histamines to reduce the itching, and wash all your clothes and sheets with really hot water.
Due to what I suspect as being a paranoia-induced-suppression-of-mental-ability, I made my way through the health care system. I made phone call after phone call to primary care physicians whose calendars were blocked for months; to dermatologists who only saw new patients on Fridays and weren’t free for 3 months and to those that only specialized in skin-cancer related blisters, and one that even asked me if the following wednesday would suit me for a skin graft; to family physicians that do not accept new patients, until finally, someone was willing to see me. Right away, I distrusted them because if they were good then they too should’ve been booked. But I had to go see a doctor. On the day of my appointment, I was asked to strip and weigh myself, my temperature was taken, my blood pressure was taken, and I sat there clueless not knowing how any of this related to my “skin condition”. When the doctor did come, he told me nothing conclusive and confirmed nothing. He generally seemed to think that I was right to have applied anti-histamines. Almost the only thing he was sure of was that I should come back if symptoms persisted. I never went back. Google told me everything I needed to know. It charged me no fee, and I am now happily blister- free.
Now fate’s doing a do-over with my ankle. And again, people are asking me if I went to see the doc. I tell them that I won’t see a doc because I doubt he updates his brain as often as google worms and creepy crawls the web. I doubt the doc will tell me anything that google hasn’t already told me. And I have neither the time, the inclination, the energy, or a life threatening skin condition that will convince me to make a million phone calls again only to be told that I can see the orthopaedist sometime after the third coming of Christ.
I hear tell of a rumble in DC about what to do about health-care. I say, let google handle it. They did things in china that DC would have scarce considered. They’re not mired deep in a fiscal deficit. And they, if anyone, know how to organize databases. And while DC has a constitution that no one can understand anymore, Google has a simple credo that everyone does. “Don’t be evil”. Google wants a new business model? I, for one, wouldn’t mind paying a penny or two for every medical page. Maybe the government should simple cure heart disease and HIV. I’d be happy to let google look at my sprain.
Care for google-care anyone ?
Getting to a doctor is rather easy in India. There’s usually a nursing home, a clinic or two and several pharmacies every 2 lanes in India. And you could tell by the look of the place whether you should go there to get some cold medicine, some fever medication, to get your sprain looked at or something even more serious. The point is, you could always get to one. There would typically be a pharmacy next door to the clinic and the chap at the pharmacy always has the unique talent of being able to read the doctor’s indecipherable handwriting ( I am told that doctors have bad handwriting because they have to write a lot during the several exams they take at med-school). He will also explain what each medicine is for in layman's terms. A doctor will use obscure terminology to prove to their clients that he in fact did study hard to spell terms at the cost of beautiful penmanship. Such was the luxury that I was accustomed to in my developing, snake-charming, country.
A few months after I moved to Pittsburgh I got blisters on my skin. They’d erupt overnight and itch like hell in the morning. I didn’t know what to do. I did know though, that getting a doctor would not be easy. I did not know who my primary-care-physician was. And I knew that that drug-stores had aisles of medication for all sorts of ailments, almost all of which will contain moisturizers. I do not understand the obsession with moisturizers but I will not be surprised if breakfast cereal came with moisturizers so as to not scratch your tongue. So I went to google images, searched for blisters, and spotted images that looked like mine. Quickly enough, I realized they were bed bug bites. And a few hours later, I knew what bed bugs looked like, what you should and should not do and also that doctors will typically not confirm that it was bed-bug bites unless you could find evidence of bed-bugs. I also learnt that finding bed-bugs was not easy. I was adviced to use anti-histamines to reduce the itching, and wash all your clothes and sheets with really hot water.
Due to what I suspect as being a paranoia-induced-suppression-of-mental-ability, I made my way through the health care system. I made phone call after phone call to primary care physicians whose calendars were blocked for months; to dermatologists who only saw new patients on Fridays and weren’t free for 3 months and to those that only specialized in skin-cancer related blisters, and one that even asked me if the following wednesday would suit me for a skin graft; to family physicians that do not accept new patients, until finally, someone was willing to see me. Right away, I distrusted them because if they were good then they too should’ve been booked. But I had to go see a doctor. On the day of my appointment, I was asked to strip and weigh myself, my temperature was taken, my blood pressure was taken, and I sat there clueless not knowing how any of this related to my “skin condition”. When the doctor did come, he told me nothing conclusive and confirmed nothing. He generally seemed to think that I was right to have applied anti-histamines. Almost the only thing he was sure of was that I should come back if symptoms persisted. I never went back. Google told me everything I needed to know. It charged me no fee, and I am now happily blister- free.
Now fate’s doing a do-over with my ankle. And again, people are asking me if I went to see the doc. I tell them that I won’t see a doc because I doubt he updates his brain as often as google worms and creepy crawls the web. I doubt the doc will tell me anything that google hasn’t already told me. And I have neither the time, the inclination, the energy, or a life threatening skin condition that will convince me to make a million phone calls again only to be told that I can see the orthopaedist sometime after the third coming of Christ.
I hear tell of a rumble in DC about what to do about health-care. I say, let google handle it. They did things in china that DC would have scarce considered. They’re not mired deep in a fiscal deficit. And they, if anyone, know how to organize databases. And while DC has a constitution that no one can understand anymore, Google has a simple credo that everyone does. “Don’t be evil”. Google wants a new business model? I, for one, wouldn’t mind paying a penny or two for every medical page. Maybe the government should simple cure heart disease and HIV. I’d be happy to let google look at my sprain.
Care for google-care anyone ?
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