Liberty Featured Number "1,000,000,000"

Too bad, I went away from my supposed to be regular post "Featured Number" for too long. But I am back with pretty big number ( they say Back with the Bang isn't it?).

U know IPL ? who doesn't ? are IPL and Modi doing game a favour ? I think its too early to say but Cricket has never seen a salesman of caliber of Lalit Modi. The IPL commissioner had sought a net worth of $1 billion from parties who wanted to bid for the new IPL teams. Yes, a Billion with a Big B. I don't know how successful he will be but certainly he gave me a big number to Blog.

Stem Cell Therapy

All hail Tendlya

I read about Tendulkar’s 200 just before leaving for work. I couldn’t wait to come back home and write something to salute Little Master.

When Sachin first entered the scene at tender age of 16, the world knew him as a child prodigy who just loved to play cricket. Today, after more than two decades he is master of his craft, nightmares for the opponents and god to those whose religion is cricket. At heart he still is the same kid who just loves to play more cricket.

I remember a Q-A from Tendulkar’s interview that I watched last year. He was asked “After all these years and achievement in the cricket field, how successful do u think you are?” . Tendulkar replied “I think I have been reasonably successful”. …. Wow……. Tendulkar, arguably the best batsman after DON replied “reasonably” successful. He could have easily said “My record speaks volume, I am the best ever” with a popular bollywood swagger of unreal heroes and nobody would have mind a bit. By his answer Tendulkar reminded everyone the ages old adage “tree laden with fruits is bended”. The world loves Sachin because he is so easy on eyes, not only he is one of the best stroke players ever but also one of the humblest.

During 90’s Tendulkar carried almost whole Indian batting on this little shoulders. Today this burden might have eased a little, but he still is an important cog in the wheel. Sachin carries a heavy bat and on average one billion plus hopes every time he enters the cricket ground. When Sachin sneezes, whole Indian team catches cold. Moreover, Sachin never had a luxury which most other cricketers have. His performance yardstick is such that even a minor blip in form is unacceptable. In mid 2000 when he suffered a minor form slump, critics all over the world jumped in sync to conclude his best days were behind him. Newspapers printed “Endulkar” for his last name. Ex-cricketers started suggesting him to call it a day. The Cricket world, it seemed for the very first time realized Tendulkar is also mortal and it had troubles accepting it. Never once did he complain but left his batting do the talking. He battled his form, critics and troublesome tennis elbow and remained in the scene and thanks god he did. Cricket would have been poorer had he left the scene early.

Tendulkar has such a glittering career, its hard to come up with something that remains to be achieved. Few years ago Binod Kambli predicted Sachin to cross 20,000 ODI runs. Dhoni won’t rule him out playing in 2014 world cup and Sunil Gavaskar now wants him to set sight on 250 in an ODI innings and 450 in Test innings. All these milestones are quite challenging even for Sachin but one thing we have learned watching cricket is “Never bet against the abilities of Little master”.

In 39 years and 2961 ODIs, Cricket has seen many legends to embrace the game, including Sachin’s hero Sir Viv but I can’t name a name more deserving than Sachin for this feat. Who? If not Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

Virus Scan for Cars?

Toyota brake problem reminded us of the sea change the vehicle has gone through in recent years. Most drivers don’t realize or are unaware of how modern cars have changed from their ancestors. Few years ago Automobiles started following the Airbus’s path to replace direct hydraulic controls with electronics. No more the accelerator or brake pedals are directly connected to the throttle by a physical connector. Electronics acts as intermediary.

I remember one of my friends expressing his frustration for not being able to do small repairs of his new car by himself. “Its all electronics, I don’t know what’s goin’on? I can do nothing” he was saying. Electronics systems and networks to connect them now make up 40% of the vehicle. Its difficult even for the auto mechanics as 40% of the vehicle is Black Box for them and they have to depend upon other Black Boxes to diagnose the problem. The firmware to control all the electronics is becoming increasingly complex too. For example in Prius, the software in the brakes controls the anti-lock braking systems, stability control and a system to convert the energy from braking into power to recharge the batteries.

The stakes are high with firmware design. Small glitches can have damaging effects. Problems with sudden acceleration and momentary lapse of braking are scary, esp in a highway situation. Even scarier thought is vehicles hacking which are very realistic, as we will see more software control of vehicles in future. What if terrorists were able get an insider into supply chain to insert a dormant code into each new vehicle that on a specific date and time would disable braking or cause sudden acceleration? I cannot outlaw a possibility of companies performing Antivirus software scans for vehicles before sending to the market in future.

Home-2

Banda, as usual has crippled life. Few people don’t care and teenagers who get break from school actually enjoy it, but most people and the country as a whole is suffering. However, some are luckier than others. Those who are affiliated to Maoist are free of Banda related hassles faced by ordinary public. Yesterday, I was travelling to my friend’s house and saw a vehicle with a red banner with Banda Anugaman (Banda Survey) written into it. People all over the country are forced to renounce the vehicle even in emergency situations but these morons needed vehicles to survey their Banda. I read similar stories in daily newspapers. A group of Pro-Maoist lawyers used a bus for their election campaign to travel from Mahendranager to Nepalgunj. All business is on downward slide but shooting of movie Kishaan (Farmer) was allowed to continue without any trouble because its been directed by Pro-Maoist director. Morality has never been an ally for Nepalese Politicians and now Maoists are hitting new low.

On personal side, I am enjoying my stay. Every day is weekend. I wake up when I feel like waking up. Drink few rounds of Tea while reading different newspapers in sun. Spend time with friends and close relatives. Go around town with old mates. It might sound boring as daily routine but its great fun if you do it only for a month in every two years.

Home -1

Guys,

So u thought I was lost? I truly was. I missed blogging all those days but never quite started writing after the break. May be it had to do with “Mental Inertia”. Something special was needed to wake me from my slumber and my travel to home provided exactly that.

Flight so far has been nice. I thought 14 hours flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong would be little tiring but it wasn’t too bad after all. This is my first time in Hong Kong Airport and I like it. After coming here I am online and enjoying noodles, Muffins and Green Tea. I especially liked the green tea. The flavor is quite different from what I used to drink.

I have “The Warren Buffet Way” as my travel companion. I am onto third chapter but I doubt, I will finish it on the way. Its an interesting read. I also watched couple movies onboard. “Transformers 2” may easily be one of the worst movies I have watched in quite some time. Second Movie of the night was “Julie and Julia” and I am glad I chose to watch it. It turned out to be really nice movie. Meryl Streep is always nice, Amy Adams is impressive too. I plan to read The Julie/Julia Project for the rest of the day.

I also tried to get some sleep but to no avail. It didn’t make much difference though; with eyes open or closed I am able to see only one thing – HOME

Can you fire guns in Space?

Most of us will say no. Because from our early school days we know fire needs oxygen to burn. So when you are in the atmosphere less void of space, there is no way to ignite gunpowder to fire a bullet, right? Wrong. The explosion that fires a bullet does require oxygen for combustion, but it doesn’t draw it solely from the air. Rather, some oxygen comes from an ingredient in the gunpowder itself, called saltpeter (Potassium nitrate). The spark produced when the gun’s hammer strikes the cartridge ignites the saltpeter and converts the oxygen in it to its gaseous state. The explosion generates a shock wave that propels the bullet out of the gun. It would certainly help if you pack your cartridges with extra saltpeter to get the same pop in space.

But it won’t be all too easy. Remember the guy named Newton? And his popular third law of motion. The kickback of the gunshot that normally throws your arm backward after you fire a round would instead send your entire body flying backwards.
Are you still going to take a shot?

info: popular science.

Go Devils!!!

Our first game of the indoor intramural soccer tournament (organized by SDSU wellness center) kicked off today @ 8:00 PM. Our team’s name is Red Devils and we did win it by a healthy margin of 4-0.

I reached the wellness center at 7:15 and jogged one mile to loosen up my muscles. By 7:30 everyone from our team had arrived and we had a short team meeting. I was feeling pretty good about the game, I guess we all were feeling pretty good about it. I put on my relatively new indoor soccer shoes and started my second round of warm up with the team followed by some stretching.

The match started on time. We played on 2-2-2 format (its 7 a side) but we stick to our habits, all of us were charging ahead, in and around opponents’ D-area, leaving our golie alone. We don’t have a natural defender in our team except Nabeen and most of us play as striker or in midfield. We dominated the play for the entire first half but just couldn’t score. In a small field and all of us ahead and all of them behind (naturally), we just didn’t have much space to maneuver the ball around and their keeper was excellent. He dived around all the time and frustrated us. I played in midfield and got a good chance near their D. I connected pretty well, beat the keeper , but the ball was deflected away by the defender from the goal line. Hard Luck. The first half ended as 0-0, leaving us still searching for our first breakthrough, even though it was us who possessed the ball and kept shooting most of the time. They barely brought the ball into our half and never had a single shot on target.

We had a short team meeting in the break. We talked about sticking to our position and spreading the field by more passes. We feared they might score and take the game away from us as our golie was a loner in our half. We also felt we have to pass it around to beat their keeper as the goal post was small and their golie was pretty good too.

Second half started and they got a free kick right away inside our half near the center line. Their golie came forward to take the kick, and good lord he almost scored. His shot was accurate from the distance but our golie did well to punch it over the top. Shortly we started dictating the play. We played to our plan and did spread the field by good passes. I passed the ball from the center to my right to Bryan and lunged forward for support; Bryan beat the lone defender easily and prepared to take a shot. I kept going forward to capitalize if just in case the ball is deflected by keeper or from the goal post. But it wasn’t required as Bryan took a perfect shot and the ball crashed into the left corner of the net beating the diving keeper. We all were jubilant and our plan had paid off. We kept playing the same game and David scored our second goal after little while. Two nil up and less than 10 minutes for final whistle, we started to sense a win. Now they got new golie and their previous golie came forward. We soon scored a third one and another one just before the whistle. They too had some moments in second half but never got an easy chance. The match ended with 4-0 score line.

We certainly deserved to win this game and it was satisfying to get the favorable result. We shook hands with our opponents and referees before assembling for our final analysis of the game. Before leaving we all joined our hands, brought it down and shouted “RED DEVILS” as our hands went up.

Competent in Incompetence ?

Before mid 2007 almost all political pundits had declared Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani the nominees of the two major parties for the president of United states for Nov 2008 elections. Political rookie Barack Obama didn't stand any chance against the clinton machine and John McCain's political future was already dead. By this date, the same pundits have already authored books and talked thousand hours on-air , on how John McCain revived his campaign and how Barack Obama actually manage to beat the clinton machine and eventually became the 44th US president.

Who are these experts, anyway ? Some have spend their whole adult life in politics and may have predicted couple incidents correctly, and those couple incidents are enough proof of their expertise. These guys are similar to weather forecasters, they are not held responsible for going awry. These are the jobs where people make money either way, being right or wrong. There are many group of people who can be kept in the same column. In these days how can I miss a certain group: “Economists”.

Economists, during summer of 08, were describing how serious the recession was going to be and now they are drawing comparison with the great depression. How will this economic mess effect USA and the rest of the world in long term ? How long will this crunch last ? They are competing with each other to provide us the most articulate answer. Half of them seem to believe in the stimulus package and other half think it will severe the problem. Both of them sound equally right and equally confusing to general public, is their any science behind their claim or they are just supporting their parties ? And should we believe these guys ? because majority of them never had a hint of this crash until it happened. When Hank Paulson came up with 700 billion bailout package last year when one after the other bank tanked, nobody knew why its exactly 700 billion ? They just supposed they need a big number for rescue and came up with a supposedly big number. Inept people like me consider economics as a branch of science even though we don't understand it but what do these experts think ?

If these economists swap their job with weather guys or with political pundits will the outcome be any different ? I doubt it.

Globalization is both way traffic

Recently a friend of mine shared a story on his encounter with a local old lady. The story like goes this.When my friend introduced himself as a foreigner, her response was “Oh you are not one of those guys, who earns dollars here and send it back to your country right? Because that really pisses me off. Thats why our economy is in tank” . It certainly wasn't particularly a nice way to talk to strangers. After hearing this story I went into contemplation which forced me to write this blog.

In summary the lady was blaming globalization for America's current hardship. People do have short memories and it seems it gets shorter in time of crisis. In the 90's American consumers and businesses regarded globalization and free trade as net positives when integration of China and former soviet bloc into the trading system lowered inflation, opened new markets and brought billions of workers into the labor force. Globalization was good when US got all the upside of it. May people then considered globalization as one way traffic, where they thought they were the only ones who where going to be the beneficiaries. Now probably America is getting some downside of it. You got to consider globalization as two way traffic, where you will gain some and lose some. It can be net positive or net negative all depending upon how you manage your trade policies, regulate your companies and how often do you find a way to distribute gains from the markets that are benefiting. [ I hope I won't be called communist for saying this]. I believe globalization is net plus for USA.

Yes, its true that jobs have been moved en masse recently to developing world, whether its IT jobs or Auto jobs but don't forget globalization has also created lots of jobs in U.S. for engineers, nurses, professors, computer programmers, accountants, bankers etc etc. People now shout loud about outsourced software jobs to India and China but forgot they already made billions by selling computers to those countries. Do you really want to sell them millions of personal computers but hope they remain ignorant ?

As I mentioned earlier globalization has both pros and cons and they are applicable to both small and big players of global economy. Its not that developing countries are always benefiting. For example, in India's PC market HCL (India's own leading company) is the big loser. The company introduced notebooks three years back but is not being able to compete with the American giants Lenovo, Dell and HP. Currently the U.S. economy crisis has shaken the whole world. Globalization enabled the U.S. to infect the rest of the world with its toxic mortgages.

The global economy is still the similar game but has welcomed lot many influential players. U.S. is still the most powerful player but can no longer determine the direction of global economy singlehandedly. The competition is tougher than before and will grow more fierce with the inclusion of stronger and ever improving opponents. U.S.A too will have to keep improving to win this game and I believe they will win gold if they can maintain their innovative edge against all its competitors.