arvind says

Blogging - the best social networking platform?

2011-07-28T08:26:00.004-04:00

My friend Dave Bonta recently said (in the wake of the google+ pseudonym fiasco) if blogging wasn't already the best distributed social network out there before all these closed newfangled social networks came up, and it got me to thinking - why not try to use this blog a bit more frequently?

So here's to see if I can use this blog and how much inconvenient it is when compared to posting at a site like facebook or google+

Lifestyle

2011-05-05T11:46:00.003-04:00

Today on Facebook(via Jennifer Ouellette) , I came across this brutally frank piece from 1999 by Meghan Daum (whose financial woes thankfully seem to be behind her, thanks to a successful book). I shared the link on Facebook as usual, and a comment on it by my friend Jill Smith made me think about what my personal lifestyle fantasy would be similar to what Meghan described in her piece.

My comment elaborating on this came out well enough that I wanted to make a blog post of it, because its tone matched the tone with which I try to write on this blog, and it was blog post length comment too.

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I don't have the Manhattan itch per se, nor an itch for big houses, but I do have the itch for a small place (preferably an apartment) in a walkable University campus neighborhood where I can get by without a car. I do have the itch for some of the kinds of artsy things she talks about, but it's more about enjoying them than collecting them. For example, living in the vicinity of museums, theatres, coffeehouses, alternative film screening theatres, jazz clubs etc. would be good enough to satisfy that itch. I do not care for these things being in a big city either. In fact, I prefer them in a small town setting. Much less pollution and much cheaper all around.

The part that most strongly resonated with me was the impulse to not want money for its own sake, and the desire to not want to have to think about money at all in everyday life. I want to work at a day job just enough that I can get the amount of money that would make me not have to think about money too much. I don't care to work any harder. I have too many other interesting things to spend my time on.

There was a time when I bought into the American idea that your profession ought to be what you life should be around, and you should keep looking until you find the thing that you love to do so much that you wake up every morning wanting to go to work. I spent many years wondering what such a thing would be for me. But luckily for me, the South Asian risk-averse impulse that I grew up with was strong enough that I didn't go down any path in the name of pursuing my dreams that would result in such chronic financial difficulties as she described in this piece. Today, I feel like my decision was the right one, because I can always pursue the things I love on my own time. Plus, there is nothing that could kill your love for something quite like having to do it for a living.

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Philosophy

2011-05-03T10:16:00.001-04:00

I've started reading Bertrand Russell's "The History of Western Philosophy", and the Introduction (where I'm still currently at) has some brutally frank and hilarious parts that had the atheist in me laughing out loud with delight. So I thought I'd share a few snippets:

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Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile?

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Why, then, you may ask, waste time on such insoluble problems? To this one may answer as a historian, or as an individual facing the terror of cosmic loneliness.

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Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe.

***************

Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.

***************

Turtle Island

2011-04-29T05:11:00.003-04:00

To take a breather from Gary Snyder's prose, and the extreme reactions (both positive and negative) that it keeps triggering in me, I decided to read some of his poetry instead.

I'm halfway through the book of poems titled "Turtle Island", and thought I'd share some of my favorite snippets:

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How did a great Red-tailed Hawk
come to lie-all stiff and dry-
on the shoulder of
Interstate 5?

(From "The Dead by the Side of the Road")

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I would like to say
Coyote is forever
Inside you.

But it's not true.

(From "The Call of the Wild")

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Manzanita the tips in fruit,
Clusters of hard green berries
The longer you look
The harder they seem

"little apples"

(From "Manzanita")

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It warms my bones
say the stones

(From "The Uses of Light")

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A vast vague white
Draws me out of the night
Says the moth in his flight-

(Also from "The Uses of Light")

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squirrel bones crunched,
tight and dry in scats of
fox.

(From "On San Gabriel Ridges")

***********************

And finally, an entire poem - this funny and delightful one is called "The Wild Mushroom"

Well the sunset rays are shining
Me and Kai have got our tools
A basket and a trowel
And a book with all the rules

Don't ever eat Boletus
If the tube-mouths they are red
Stay away from the Amanitas
Or brother you are dead

Sometimes they're already rotten
Or the stalks are broken off
Where the deer have knocked them over
While turning up the duff

We set out in the forest
To seek the wild mushroom
In shapes diverse and colorful
Shining through the woodland gloom

If you look out under oak trees
Or around an old pine stump
You'll know a mushroom's coming
By the way the leaves are humped

They send out multiple fibers
Through the roots and sod
Some make you mighty sick they say
Or bring you close to God

So here's to the mushroom family
A far-flung friendly clan
For food, for fun, for poison
They are a help to man.

*********************

Slower

2011-04-16T08:05:00.005-04:00

Today, I happened to come here to this (very) dormant blog of mine after a long time, and was surprised by something. It happened when I clicked on the "About" tab to re-read what I had written about myself.

I am normally never happy with anything I wrote in the past. Later re-readings of earlier writings rarely fail to be cringe-inducing. Yet, what I had written about myself sounded surprisingly fresh, succinct, straightforward and honest.

This could be because I haven't yet reached that place where I've done all the things I said I wanted to do, although I've done some of them. Or it could be that since the way I had envisioned this blog was as a quiet place, my not so quiet persona on facebook might have made me long for the quieter side of my personality as described by those words.

Perhaps this is a good sign. Maybe a bit of quiet, and an attempt to cultivate it, might make me write longer pieces. Facebook has a lot going for it in terms of interaction, but I am not the kind of person who can do both short facebook interactions as well as long blog posts at the same time (although many of my blogger friends seem to do this quite easily).

I'm more of a one phase at a time kind of guy, and I feel the onset of a slower, longer kind of phase.

Oven-baked Mutton

2010-07-21T23:09:00.004-04:00

Here's the recipe for the oven-baked mutton we made a couple days back. Minal made up this recipe on the fly. So I just made up the measurements for the ingredients as I went along. I'll give them here as it turned out pretty good, but treat them as approximate and adjust to your taste.

What you need, and what to do with it:

Mutton (1 lb) [Doesn't have to be mutton. I used New Zealand lamb from Whole Foods, although Indian recipes normally use goat meat and call it mutton.]
1) Cut the mutton into half-inch to one-inch cubes.

To marinate:
Ginger chopped/minced (1 tblspn)
Garlic chopped/minced (1 tblspn)
Cilantro leaves chopped (2 tblspns)
Salt (to taste)
Cumin powder (1/3 tspn)
Coriander powder (1/3 tspn)
Garam masala (1/3 tspn)
Red chilli powder (1/3 tspn)

2) Add all the above ingredients to the cut mutton pieces and marinate for half an hour.

To make the gravy:
Oil (2 tblspns)
Red onion chopped (1 small)
Tomato chopped (1 medium)
Mustard seeds (1/2 tspn)
Cumin seeds (1/2 tspn)
Turmeric (1 pinch)
Salt (to taste)
Garam masala (1/3 tspn)
Red chilli powder (1/3 tspn)
Cilantro leaves unchopped (I took leaves from half the bunch, but it's totally upto you. You can add them with the stems as well)

3) Heat oil in a wok. After it is hot enough to sizzle mustard, add the mustard seeds, quickly followed by cumin seeds, and then the chopped onion.
4) Allow the onion to turn transluscent (minute or two) and add the chopped tomato.
5) Cover and cook until tomato turns mushy (3 to 4 minutes)
6) Add the salt, garam masala, red chilli powder and cilantro. Mix well. Cover and cook for 1 minute.
7) Turn off heat. Set aside the gravy and allow it to cool. Once it is cool enough, use a food processor to blend it to a fine paste. Add a little water if it is too thick. Set aside.

To pre-cook the mutton:
Oil (3 tblspns)

8) Heat the oil in a flat frying pan and add the marinated mutton pieces.
9) Cook on medium-high for 3 minutes, turning the pieces midway through.
10) Cover and cook on low-medium for 7 minutes, turning the pieces midway through.
11) Turn off heat. Add the blended gravy. Mix well. Cover the pan back and set aside.

To bake the mutton:
Red Potato(es) (1 or 2 medium-sized)
Oil (1 tblspn)

12) Peel the potatoes. Cut each potato into half lengthwise. Rest the flat side of each half on cutting board and chop into semicircular cross-sections around 1/2 cm thick (This is the best way of cutting them. Any other shape, and they wouldn't form a good flat base layer. If slices are thinner, they stick
to the baking pan and turn to mush)
13) Preheat the oven to 375 F
14) Add the oil to a baking pan and spread evenly with a basting brush.
15) Add the potato slices as the base layer. Add the pre-cooked mutton and blended gravy mix as the next layer.
16) Seal the baking pan with aluminium foil (or its own cover if it has a cover) and bake in the over for 40 to 45 minutes. There is no need to punch holes for the steam. The aluminium foil won't really be that airtight.
17) Switch off the oven and take the baking pan out (make sure you wear mitts) and cool for 10 to 15 minutes without removing the foil/cover.
18) Remove foil/cover and taste a piece. If any chewiness left (unlikely), cover back, restart oven, and bake for 10 additional minutes. Make sure to again cool it covered for 10 to 15 minutes before opening the cover.

To enjoy the mutton:
19) Grab a fork. Dig in.

Facebook and Privacy

2010-04-30T00:29:00.001-04:00

I just changed my name in my facebook profile so that my real last name is no longer displayed against my account.

In retrospect, maybe I should've started out on facebook that way.

It's not like I really care to keep my online activities hidden from people that know me in my personal life outside of work. I'm hardly shy about my opinions or viewpoints that way.

But at the same time, I don't want random google searches by potential employers or people in other similar positions of authority to grant or deny me any opportunities I seek to be able to see all the things I say and do online.

Which is why this (albeit nearly defunct) blog does not have a reference to my real last name. Nor does my twitter account.

The only reason I went with my real last name on facebook is because facebook has promised me privacy. A trust that they have been slowly and calculatedly eroding.

I've finally come to realize that facebook will keep on making these "public unless you opt out" changes and not everyone would be diligent enough or even care enough to keep opting out.

So in order to keep interacting with my friends on their pages, photos, etc., I've realized that I have to start acting like all those pages would be public just like the rest of the open internet.

The other option is to stop using facebook. I'm not interesting in that. It is a very engaging forum, and I've come to enjoy it. I've managed to reconnect with a lot of old childhood friends, and family too.

So the middle ground is to get back to being quasi-pseudonymous. Even on facebook, just like I am on the rest of the internet. Any old friend searching for me can easily find me via one of my current friends. They really don't need to search for me by my real last name.

Also, finally I can do something I wished I could've done, but didn't so far - create a link to my facebook profile on the sidebar of this blog so that anyone who comes across this blog and wants to connect on facebook can look me up there too.

Quinoa khichadi

2009-08-06T17:52:00.009-04:00

I recently heard about quinoa by reading the awesome Summer Tomato blog run by Darya Pino (make it a must-read if you want in-depth coverage of healthy food and healthy food habits and nutritional discussion).

I had already read about how whole grains are better than crushed or polished grains or flour and was also interesting in having more carbs in my breakfast and steadily reducing them through the rest of the day with all the other meals.

So I thought of making an easy Indian dish called khichadi which is not strictly a breakfast dish in northern India where it is more popular, but is cooked for breakfast sometimes in southern India (where I’m from). The ease of cooking was what I was going for.

So here’s what you need:

1 cup quinoa: rinsed (this removes residual bitterness) and soaked for 15 mins

½ cup masoor dal(a kind of Indian lentil - you get this at any Indian store) rinsed and soaked for 15 mins

1 cup frozen peas thawed (I microwave them in a bowl of water for a couple of minutes)

1 carrot peeled and chopped either into rings or sticks

1 garlic (chopped finely or crushed)

1/3 tspn cumin seeds

1 pinch turmeric

1 pinch hing (aka asafoetida)

½ tspn cumin powder (you get this at any Indian store)

½ tspn coriander powder (you get this at any Indian store)

Salt and cayenne pepper/paprika/red pepper powder to taste (as per your tolerance)

2 tspn oil

4 and ½ cups of water

Method:

Take a deep vessel that you can boil rice in (not a wok or a flat pan)

Add 2 tspns oil

Once oil is hot, add the garlic

Once garlic starts to brown, add 1/3 tspn cumin seeds, pinch of hing and turmeric

Let cumin seeds sizzle for a few seconds

Immediately add peas (make sure to drain the water after thawing) and sliced carrots

Stir fry for 2 or 3 minutes (upto you…decide how stir-fried versus boiled you want your veggies)

Add 1 cup water

Drain the quinoa of the water it is soaking in and add to the cooking vessel (make sure to drain water as otherwise it will throw off the measure of water)

Drain the masoor dal of the water it is soaking in and add to the cooking vessel

Once both quinoa and masoor dal are added, then add the remaining 3 and ½ cups of water (you can use some of this water to rinse out quinoa or masoor dal stuck to the bowls they were soaking in)

Boil on medium without a cover for 15 to 20 mins (This depends on your vessel shape and size, stove heat levels etc. Makes sure to check frequently - when you dip a stirring ladle in, there should be no water at the bottom of the vessel, but the cooked quinoa should not start sticking to the vessel)

Switch off flame and put a lid on it and let it sit for 5 mins (this will cook it a bit more in the steam, and absorb any residual water)

Done!

And here's how the finished dish is gonna look like:

Coconut Chutney

2009-03-23T15:55:00.006-04:00

My wife and I recently made some coconut chutney to go with the idlis that we made for dinner, and upon tweeting about it, I got a request for the recipe. So here it is.

Ingredients:

Grated coconut (desired quantity)*
Salt (to taste)
Chopped fresh coriander/cilantro (1 or 2 sprigs should suffice)
Black mustard seeds - 1 teaspoon
Urad dal (split, dehusked white lentils raw) - 1 tablespoon
Dry red chillies - 1 or 2 (each broken in half or into 3 pieces)
Hing - 1 pinch
Curry leaves - 5 or 6 leaves (crushed or torn into pieces)
Oil - 2 or 3 tablespoons

*We get frozen packets of grated coconut from the Indian store. We found it to be the next best thing after fresh grated coconut. If you have fresh coconuts and a coconut grater, nothing beats fresh grated coconut!

Directions:

Part I:
- If from frozen packet, thaw chosen size slab of grated coconut in microwave (1 min on high should do it).
- Add the grated coconut and salt into the blender.
- Add a little bit of water in the blender to help liquify into paste (apparently milk+water can also be used, although we never tried it).
- Add chopped coriander into the blender.
- Blend until liquified into a uniform paste.
- Add a bit more water (or milk if using milk) and repeat until satisfied with consistency of the paste.
- Transfer to a serving bowl than can handle addition of hot oil.

Part II:
- In a small wok (the smallest one you can get your hands on), heat the oil
- When oil is hot, add mustard seeds (they should pop immediately - so add a few seeds at a time to gauge heat of oil until oil is hot enough).
- Add urad dal right after. Wait until urad dal starts turning brown before adding next ingredient.
- Add the red chillies, curry leaves and hing (each needs only a few seconds)
- Turn off the heat and empty contents from wok into the coconut paste in the serving bowl (Add near the center of the bowl, but the oil will spread on surface and touch the bowl - make sure bowl won't break under sudden heat).
- Mix the contents with a spoon so that flavor of spices spreads to the entire dish.

Part III:
- Enjoy.

Meetup with Bora in NYC

2009-02-21T22:17:00.011-05:00

Went by to NYC yesterday evening to the Old Town Bar where Bora had planned a meetup. Since I am so bad at blogging (my last post was on Feb 3rd!), I thought I'd jot down a few words about the evening while they're fresh in my memory.

I reached there a bit late (around 8:45 pm) and one person was already getting ready to leave as I approached the group. I didn't get a chance to say hello to her or find out who she was. The group at the table when I introduced myself to them were: Bora, Mrs.Coturnix, Jake Young, Arikia Millikan, Caryn Shechtman, Caryn's boyfriend Nikola Trbovic , Jacqueline Floyd, and Barry Hudson

Bora was exactly the way I imagined him to be from his photographs. Extremely energetic and as prolifically loquacious as he is prolific on blogs, facebook and twitter. He introduced me around as his twitter friend (I'm going to take that as a cue that I need to start blogging more). The surprise, though, was his accent. I didn't expect him to have such a "convent school English" accent. I associate that accent strongly with the way English is spoken by Indians I know who were educated in schools established by the British. If you've ever heard the Indian neuroscientist V.S.Ramachandran speak, you will know what accent I am talking about. I was under the impression Bora would have a strong European accent like a mad scientist from movies like Young Frankenstein or something.

I spoke very briefly with Mrs.Coturnix. She was at the other end of the table, and I didn't get much of a chance to socialize with her. In the brief time that I did speak with her, she struck me as a very smart and funny person. Her first question to me was "Do you blog?" I said "Not much." She went "Do you know the f-word?" In my head I was like wait, what? The others started cracking up. I said "Um...yes, I know the word." She goes "That's all you need to know to have your own blog." I think she likes to give someone new a little bit of a hard time and then get them to feel right at home. I don't know if she talks much normally or not, but whenever I happened to look in her direction, I saw her listening intently to the others talk with her chin on her palm .

Jake struck me as a very supportive kind of guy. Right off the bat, he asked me a couple of questions about what I do and when I said I was not in science his first response was "Hey, don't let that stop you from blogging about science. some of the best support we get is from laypeople with interest in science writing about science for laypeople." He had that mentor-ish vibe where he'd find something positive to say. And also be sincere about it, not just say something positive for the sake of it. I hadn't checked out his blog - pure pedantry - before. I had been a regular reader at scienceblogs from the start (having moved there following PZ from the old pharyngula site). But I had always read only the first crop of them and had not kept up with the additions as scienceblogs ~~exploded~~expanded. I've recently begun to correct this, and Jake's blog is going to get added to the list. His "about" section is pretty hilarious, so I'm guessing he'll be a very entertaining writer. Also, he's in NYRR. As a recent member of NYRR, running (or at least wanting to run in my case)is one other thing about him that I can relate to.

Arikia looked like she was just out of college. Young and energetic. I learnt she was not an intern anymore and is a full-fledged employee of scienceblogs. And that she also ran her own web design company. Pretty impressive. When Bora introduced me as his twitter friend, I told her that I had found her just that morning on twitter (referring to this tweet). She asked me "So are you following me yet?" I replied "Not yet, but I will as soon as I get back home." Which would not have sounded half as awful or stalker-ish if those bastards at twitter had used a better word than "follow". I had to fight the urge to reassure her that it won't be as bad as it sounded. The one thing I forgot to do was to ask her if I could take a photograph of the shoes she was wearing so that I could post a pic for that shoe nut Dr.Isis, who I'm sure would've enjoyed it.

I didn't speak that much with Caryn except towards the end. She said she had stared blogging at the nature blog network necently and is still getting used to the whole blogging thing. We talked about how we are our own worst critics, and how it is such a surprise when someone else praises what we write because we would have already critiqued it so much in our heads. She had a striking resemblance to an undergraduate student I knew in passing when I was a Teaching Assistant for a course several years ago. I kept getting a feeling of Deja Vu while she was talking.

Nikola was the person I chatted with the most. He was sitting right next to me at the table, and we got a chance to talk at length. He asked me a lot of questions about what I do in the software industry. In turn, I asked him about his area of research. I hadn't heard much about biophysics at all, and it was very fascinating. We also talked a bit about the funding situation, the state of the economy, sports, and a bunch of topics under the sun. He was quite a patient person who would listen at length to what I had to say and would also talk at length when he would elaborate on something. So it ended up being very easy to have a long conversation with him.

I spoke with Jacqueline a bit towards the end of the evening. She had a sharp look that reminded me a little bit of some of the programmers I worked with over the years. The impression I got was that she was the kind of person to whom you wouldn't need to elaborate too much. As soon as I would start talking, I would get the sense that she already got what I'm trying to say. I like interacting with such people because it saves me the effort of elaboration. I've found that such people always have a lot of knowledge on the same topic, and I end up learning quite a bit if I don't keep on talking. We started talking about web technologies and startups. I talked for a little bit about Paul Graham and Y Combinator. She talked about the differences between New York and the Silicon Valley when it comes to new technologies and social media, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the cities, and the startup scene in New York. Bora also changed places to come sit with us as she talked about newer sites like Tumblr (a start-up out of New York City). Bora got excited and started talking about friendfeed, and I kept listening as the two of them discussed pros and cons of different aggregation tools.

Barry and I talked briefly at the very beginning after I had just arrived there. After that, we didn't get too much of a chance to talk again. From his accent, I thought he was from Scotland. I knew a couple of folks from there over the years, and they had this habit of using the word "yeah?" at the end of a sentence instead of "no?" or "isn't it?" Barry also does that. Turns out he is from England, but from up north near the Scotland border. We ended up talking for a little bit about his area of research, about what he thinks of American culture, and somehow the two things got interconnected into a discussion on how science tells us harsh facts about our insignificance in the cosmic scheme of things and the lack of belief in evolution in a large percentage of Americans. The conversation went from there to the Dover trial and Evolution versus Intelligent Design. So although I didn't talk too long with him, the little that I did was pretty interesting.

Overall, I was really happy with the way the meetup turned out. I went there expecting a much larger crowd considering how popular Bora is. And yet, Bora was so gracious that he actually apologized for not being able to spend as much time because it was not a smaller crowd. I didn't know what he was apologizing for since I didn't feel at all like it was such a large crowd. I was also very happy with the quality of the interactions. Instead of just saying a few hellos and pleasantries, the people were actually talking in animated detail amidst drinks and laughter. A great time was had by all.

RU-4

2009-02-03T15:41:00.002-05:00

Last week was pretty good, resolutions-wise. Perhaps it was the process of forcing myself to put down in words how badly I had done the week before that propelled me to do better.

-Running: I ran 5 times in the week. W00t! Ran on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The first three times, I ran for 24 minutes each time - 4 minutes of walking followed by 4 sets of 5 minute runs. Each 5 minute run was a 3 minute jog at 6 mph and a 2 minute walk at 4 mph to catch my breath for the next set. But on Thursday, my feet and calves and shins were hurting so bad that I had to ask myself the question that my friend Atracus asked in a comment on RU-2. Should I really set a pace goal this early on? After all, I was over 200 lbs and now that I'm in my 30s I should be more careful how I push my body. So after resting and giving running a break on Thursday, I ran again on Friday and Saturday. This time I ran for 28 minutes each time - 3 minutes of warmup walk followed by 5 sets of 5 minute runs. Each 5 minute run was a 3 minute jog at 5 mph (which was significantly easier on lungs and legs than the 6 mph pace) followed by a 2 minute walk at 4 mph. This week I want to make it 6 sets of 5 minutes each.

- Weight: I am down to 200 lbs. It was fluctuating between 199 lbs to 201 lbs on Saturday and Sunday. So I'm averaging here. A little progress, but a long way to go.

- Book: Read a couple of chapters. Around 50 pages. Now halfway through chapter 4 - natural selection. I'm gonna consider that progress, although anyone who is into reading books would laugh.

- Textbook: Did not touch it.

- Blog: Have written a post on the Sonoran, but then I had a deadline for it. So it probably doesn't count. I need to work on the ones without a deadline, sitting in draft status. Started a new one on Gandhi coz I was thinking about him on Jan 30th (the day of his assassination) and on how my opinions on him changed over the years.

- Comments: Found a ton of new blogs via carnival of the arid. So task of commenting may become slightly more difficult, although currently it is the easiest of the resolutions.

CotA

2009-02-01T06:38:00.002-05:00

The first Carnival of the Arid is up!!

Read a couple of the drool-worthy entries already. But had to post this shoutout first.

Go check it out already!!

Sonoran

2009-01-29T15:17:00.002-05:00

The first time I set foot in a desert in my life was in April 2004 when I went to Tucson. I remember the first feeling the landscape evoked. It was a feeling of sadness at how desolate it looked. I had only lived in regions of India and the US that would be called lush.

It was not like the reaction was a total surprise to me. I had seen deserts before in photographs and movies, whether it be the Thar desert or deserts of the middle east in Indian movies, or the deserts of the American southwest in cowboy movies. Each time, I remember having a milder version of the same reaction. The reaction was just much stronger in intensity when I was finally staring at a desert in real life. How could an area become so sandy, dusty and bereft of the kind of lush greenery that makes the human heart happy? How could the people who call such a region home not do something to make it better?

I know that my perception is a pretty common one that would probably be expressed by a large majority of people who look at the desert. However, the other thing I know today is that the only reason for this state is that ignorance is also a pretty common trait in a large majority of people. In my ignorance, I was looking at the landscape from a completely human-centric view. The only reason humans find lush topography more appealing is because of our arboreal roots. There is nothing intrinsically "better" about a tropical landscape when human preference is taken out of the equation. The mistake I think we humans make is that we think of the desert the same way we think of a concrete jungle. They both lack the kind of greenery that appeals to most humans. So we assume they are both barren areas, lacking the kind of diverse biological life that could be found in thick forests or woods.

It takes a closer look to realize that the desert is nothing like a concrete jungle. The desert is literally buzzing and teeming with life. I was fortunate enough in my life to have come to this realization. Yes, the scarcity of water may have driven this life to evolve in a direction that we humans need to take a second look to notice. But once you see it, it is everywhere. Saguaros, prickly pears, creosote bush, pinyon pines, cactii, agaves, palms, mesquites, cottontails, jackrabbits, bighorn sheep, rock squirrels, lizards, tortoises, rattlesnakes, spiders, scorpions, wrens, ravens, swallowtails, the list is endless.

It is the Sonoran desert that I need to thank for my realization. It happened very quietly and very slowly. In my several visits to Arizona, my eyes opened gradually to the beauty of the landscape. I can't even remember when it was that the rugged majesty of it all finally sunk in fully. Between April 2004 to December 2006, I flew to Tucson somewhere between 15 to 20 times. Two of those visits were monthlong vacations. I drove around a bit during all those visits, not just in the Sonoran desert in and around Tucson, but also around Arizona. I visited places like the Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest. I took a detour through scenic Sedona rather than take the interstate to Flagstaff. I've come to love the geography of the entire state so much that it has become one of my favorite regions of the world.

Would I want to live there? I don't know. It is a very harsh environment for humans. We humans got very used to technology, and wouldn't survive too long in the wild. In case the technological infrastructure breaks down, the desert would be one of the least forgiving of the wild environs out there. There is also a second reason I hesitate. The tenacity displayed by life adapted to the desert may give one the false impression that the desert is a very resilient environment. In fact, deserts are very fragile ecosystems. Life does thrive in them amidst unbelievable odds, but it takes very little effort by humans to change that from unbelievable to insurmountable.
Not that humans can't do this or aren't doing this in other places. We do have the tenacity and will to destroy life wherever we find it. We would just have to work that much harder to destroy a rainforest, is all.

Also, the rainforests and the pandas of the world have a slight advantage when it comes to appealing to the human heart. Deserts, like reptiles or arachnids, are the ugly stepchildren. The people who look at the desert and see nothing but empty wasteland are everywhere. Just turn on the TV and have a look at any extreme sports channels. There may be some human powered options like snowboarding or skateboarding, but pretty soon you'll come across folks in heavily modified motorized vehicles either trying to set some speed record or careen down impossible grades. The most common places for such activities are either playas or canyonsides. Desert races like the Baja 1000 consider their courses to be relatively barren terrain. Barren? The desert?

This disdain for the desert has a long history that precedes the recent ORV craze. Most governments conduct their nuclear weapons testing and other military operations in deserts. Got a shitload of radioactive waste to dispose of? Why, there's all that desert! I am ashamed to think that at one point in my life, I have shared this view.

Not anymore. Today, I cannot see a desert in the world and not think it is beautiful. Yes, even Antarctica. I recently happened to watch some video footage of Rajasthan after a long time. I saw the dusty Thar desert against the Aravalli mountains in the background, and was struck by how stunningly beautiful it looked. An old friend who went to BITS Pilani for his undergraduate degree used to rave about the beauty of the Thar desert. I used to think he was a nut. Turns out I was right. It takes a special kind of nut to love the desert. But it feels good to be one.

2009-01-27T13:13:00.002-05:00

RU-3

This week is either the nadir after which things will look up, or my resolutions will just peter away and there won't even be an update next week. Work continues to peak sporadically throwing a wrench in any attempt at a schedule. But I hope that writing this update down every week, however bad it looks, may actually help me.

- Running: Again, I ran just once in the middle of the week. I tried the alternating approach and ran for a total of 20 minutes, but the time I ran at 6 mph only ended up being 8 minutes! But it left me much less winded this way, So maybe I can push myself more easily next time and make it to 30 or 40 minutes first and then try to expand on the interval of time I run at the faster speed.

- Weight: Has gone up to 203.5 lbs. I have never crossed 201 lbs. This is a new high (low) for me! Death to munchies!!

- Book and textbook: Didn't touch either. I just have to make a start here. I know it is just a case of starting trouble. If I convince myself not to watch the Australian open or something or the other on TV after dinner, I will be able to do this!! Alternately, if the workload reduces in the coming weeks, I will be able to take advantage of the lull between meetings at work to get in some reading instead of surfing the internet. Just one hour a day. Baby steps. Don't know why this is even difficult. Reading books is something I enjoy. I blame the internet, although I love the internet. Damn you internet.

- Blog: I somehow convinced myself that writing a draft and modifying it over time is a good way to write good blog posts. I know there are people who do this. I know there are advantages to putting something away and looking at it with fresh eyes the next day. It is just not working for me, and I was wrong to think that I should try this. For me, it is out-of-sight out-of-mind. Moreover, there is a human tendency to get jaded by repeated exposure. What looks like a great line on first reading looks hackneyed on the third reading. This tendency may be what makes good art critics good at their work, but it totally sucks when reviewing your own work. I should stick to my own way of doing things. Hammering something out in a single sitting and letting it stay that way. I may look back and cringe later, but at least I got something out. Proofreading should be the extent of revision.

- Comments: I am getting better at this. Earlier, when I started commenting, I would have an obsessive desire to check back on the comments to see if anyone responded. Or when I post something on this blog, to check back to see if anyone commented. I have consciously let this habit go, and I can see it has helped. The last couple of comments others posted on this blog had been sitting in moderation for a few days. I had just not checked for comments every day. I have also stopped checking back on blog posts where I have made comments. The urge is just not there anymore to see if anyone responded, or to continue the comment discussion. This frees up some much needed time to actually compose a new post (although there is an unrelated problem of inertia and musal absence that complicates things a bit). When I set up this blog, I made a similar decision to not make the blog about traffic or comments. I did not set up any page visit counters or other analytics because I didn't want to obsess over them. I also set up the commenting scheme such that it is not easy to have a continous discussion between commentors on a single blog post. The only reason I have comments is so that others could comment here to correct any egregious errors in my post, and thus reduce the chance of any stray reader being misled by my faulty reasoning. It's not that comments are unwelcome, but I don't want to either actively seek them, or write stuff that makes it easier to get them.

Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance - Song Shuffle Question Meme

2009-01-25T13:44:00.003-05:00

Got this one from Rana. Sounds like my kind of silliness.

1. Put your iPod or i tunes library, or MP3 player etc... on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write that song name down as the answer no matter how silly it sounds. (The silliness is rather the point.)
4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing this as well as the person you got this from.

I'm also going to skip the tagging part. Feel free to participate if you wish. I've also skipped the foreign language songs.

This is from the meager list of around 300 songs on my iTunes. I uploaded the CDs I owned to iTunes a couple of years back, but I had stopped buying CDs around 5 years back due to my nomadic career arc, and had started using public libraries for audio CDs. So this list makes me sound like much more of a metalhead than I really am today.

************************************************
IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
Planet Caravan (Black Sabbath)

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Take It As It Comes (The Doors)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Hey You (Pink Floyd)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
1 stp Klosr (Linkin Park)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Someone In London (Godsmack)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Trilogy: The Sunlit Path/La Mer de La Mer/Tomorrow's Story Not the Same (Mahavishnu Orchestra)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Hit The Lights (Metallica)

WHAT IS 2+2?
Russian Intermezzo (The Odessa Balalaikas)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Mother People (Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
A Rush Of Blood To The Head (Coldplay)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
No Remorse (Metallica)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Moon Baby (Godsmack)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Talkin' Bout A Revolution (Tracy Chapman)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Hand Of Doom (Black Sabbath)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Confusion (Alice In Chains)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
I Remember (Hamza El Din)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Back On The Train (Phish)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
What Is The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? (Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Smooth (Santana)

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Situation (Godsmack)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Love Walks In (Van Halen)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Goodbye To Romance (Ozzy Osbourne)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Twist (Phish)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
The Battle Of Evermore (Led Zeppelin)

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Money (Pink Floyd)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Paranoid (Black Sabbath)

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Dimples (John Lee Hooker)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
I Don't Know (Ozzy Osbourne)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
What Is And What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance (Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention)

RU-2

2009-01-20T14:16:00.004-05:00

The resolution update at the end of week 2:

I was doing so bad, even the update is delayed by 2 days! Work was so hectic last week that everything went to hell. This week, I'm getting more used to being overworked, and still managing to do some other stuff.

- Running: I've run only once last week. I couldn't even manage 13 minutes this time. I took 4 mins to warm up at 4 mph and then increased the speed to 6 mph - and could only run for 10 minutes at 6 mph. Maybe I should try a strategy of alternating 6 mph and 4 mph runs and try to push the total time run at 6 mph first. Then I could try to reduce the 4 mph intervals gradually until I am running at 6 mph for the entire duration.

- Weight: Has gone up from 199 to 201 lbs. This always happens to me. I gain and lose weight faster than I am apparently supposed to. When I start losing weight, it is not as a result of something drastic. I just cut down on some of the junk food and I start dropping a few lbs each week. But when I get down to around 190 lbs, I get stuck there. The same holds for weight gain. Last week I was working late into the night a few times, and munching on chips and salsa a lot more than usual while also guzzling coke, and the pounds just added on.

- Book: Have completed the first chapter on variation under domestication, and am now on to variation in the natural environment. I loved how thorough and methodical Darwin's thinking is. But the verbosity is something I am having to plough through and endure. Also, there is something about Victorian obsequiousness that I find incredibly irritating. It may have something to do with the role excessive deference plays in ossifying classism. I also had to cringe at every use of the word "Savages", and am bracing myself for more references to "Savage" races. My wife pointed out John Whitfield's blog to me over the weekend. I remember reading about it on Bora's blog post on the topic, but hadn't checked out John's blog earlier. Good thing, coz I don't think I would've been able to keep up with the pace being set. But I do agree with John's suggestion on modernizing the language. In fact, if I was a biology major, this would've been an extremely fun project to do!

- Textbook: Did not touch it.

- Blog: Have not made any progress on the ones I had drafts for. But I really do want to put a post together for the Carnival of the Arid. I realize that it is already the 20th and I have less than 10 days to do that. I also realize that I need to do it this week if Chris is to have enough time to add my entry to the carnival. The way I am used to doing things, the only way I may get this done is if I sit and hammer it out in one stretch.

- Comments: Still doing good on this front. But this is probably the easiest one to keep.

RU-1

2009-01-10T20:23:00.002-05:00

I want to jot down an update of this year's resolutions at the end of each week. Seeing how badly I'm doing will probably shame me into keeping up. At least, that's the hope.

- Running: I've run twice since Jan 1st. Both times at the speed of 6 mph. The first time I could run for 10 minutes. The second time 13 minutes. My usual pace is 5 mph, at which speed I can run 15 to 20 minutes. I want to be able to run at least half an hour at the speed of 6 mph. Then I want to increase the speed to 7.5 mph, and learn to maintain that as the pace at which I would run for any length of time.

- Weight: Has gone up to 199 lbs again. Have been cooking really good food recently, and obviously have been eating much more than 2 runs in the last 10 days can do anything about.

- Book: Didn't touch it

- Textbook: Ditto

- Blog: Have 3 posts sitting in draft. One on atheism. One on environmentalism. One on the journey series. I envisioned the journey series to be in 3 parts. Got the outline for all 3 and started fleshing out the first one. I'm halfway through just the first part - and it's already around 1800 words long. I'm clearly living up to the tag line of this blog. It might be a good idea to get the post on atheism finished first instead.

- Comments: Not much of an increase, but started being a little more active on scienceblogs, where I have always spent the largest chunk of my lurking time. Will start commenting at the other regular haunts over time.

Resolutions

2009-01-01T15:27:00.002-05:00

Some of the things I have been planning to do, the declaration of which fits in nicely with this custom we have got of saying them out loud at the beginning of each year.

- Run a half-marathon.
The goal is to run the New York marathon in 2010. One way to get guaranteed entry is to run a set of qualifying races in 2009. The idea is to choose a half-marathon as one of the qualifying runs.

- Lose 25 to 30 pounds.
This is related to the above goal. I have been at a steady 170 lbs in my early 20s when I used to run 3 miles every day. Then I got out of school, started working, my social circle shifted to folks with mostly sedentary habits, I started smoking, and in a quick few years, everything went out of control. It has now been a few years since I quit smoking. Cold turkey. Regulating the bad parts of my diet has been more of a yo-yo. But I'm finally getting somewhere. After a few years of being in the 200 lbs range, my current weight is vacillating between 190 and 195. The idea is to get it to the 165 to 170 lbs range. I'm hoping this can happen just with the added running regimen without too drastic a change to my current diet.

- Read a book each month.
I have really, really, lost the reading habit when it comes to books. There was a time when I would finish a book each day. Those days are long gone. I've had five or six books I bought a year back that have been sitting patiently waiting for me to read them. I've just started the first one. Darwin's Origin of Species. I've only finished reading 30 pages so far. I want to start reading a book for at least a half hour each day.

- Re-read textbooks of basic math and sciences.
I have been reading a university freshman level introductory basic biology textbook for a few months now. "Life: The Science of Biology" by Purves et al. It is an awesome textbook. I have finished reading 6 chapters so far. I wish my basic textbooks in middle school and high school were half as good. Then I would not have focused on math and physics exclusively and ignored other interesting fields of science like chemistry, biology and geology. My childhood textbooks were so crappy, and so solely aimed at giving information geared towards passing exams that except math and physics all other fields of science appeared to be just a series of dry facts. There was no context or narrative of chemical, geological or life processes that were presented as a story within which the dry facts were embedded. Now I am slowly filling in the gaps in my knowledge of all the other fields of science that I have neglected in my childhood. I aim to find really good textbooks that would be a delight to read, and fill my deficits from the ground up. I would also like to find good textbooks of math and physics to brush up on my basics, but this is a lesser priority.

- Comment more often at regular haunts
The last few years, I have been reading a lot of science blogs and liberal blogs, but I rarely used to comment at any of them. This year, I want to change that and become a more vocal member at the various places where I've learnt a lot by mental osmosis all this time without giving anything back. Many of these blogs have so much traffic now that I may actually change my mind on this one and start commenting at newer up and coming blogs instead. Either way, I want to aim for a less silent presence.

- Blog more often
I've had a lot of things to say on my mind, but I have fallen out of the habit of putting my thoughts down in words. As I've finally started commenting a little bit last year, I realized that I could actually start blogging too if I put the same energy towards composing my own posts. But I'm more of a reactive person in that most of my thoughts are a response to something I read. So if I sit down to write a post, I draw a blank. I want to change that situation by jotting down my thoughts somewhere and periodically tying them up into a single post.

- Bridge the gap between online and the outside life
As I've started spending more time online reading interesting stuff, one thing I've noticed is that I find real life socializing much less satisfying in terms of conversational content. There was a point of time a few years back when I couldn't stand the next conversation about some sport, or some home price, or some mundane topic or the other that the entirety of socializing within my age group and immigrant demographic seemed to consist of. So I withdrew away from such groups. But the people whose conversations and thoughts I found interesting were a bunch of pseudonymous online personalities. This seems to be changing a little recently with the increasing use of social tools like facebook where people are interacting online more frequently with their real names and details. I have found some of the blogospheric pseudonymous folks that I knew to actually have a facebook presence with their real details. This is encouraging in the sense that if I stick to the two previous resolutions, it may be possible to transition from online interactions to real world interactions with people with whom I share a lot of interests, both personally and politically.

Nesting

2008-12-17T15:55:00.002-05:00

It is the month of December. I am looking at the first snow of this winter outside my window. A feeling that visited me off and on this whole year keeps coming back. I keep getting this urge to belong to a place, a town, a community, a geographical region that will give me the feeling that I am at home for the next few decades of my life.

I am thirty two. Three more years, and I will reach what may be the halfway point of my life. I am being optimistic. Having great health up until you're seventy may not be that easy. But I'm going to try. Beyond seventy, though, I'd rather go quick than degenerate slow. Not that this prescription is universal. Just personally.

We are low entropy statistical configurations all. Electrons to galaxies. Smeared temporally, to different lengths. Not merely smeared, but each smear just one out of a family of possible. Whether they are all expressed and can't see each other the way I can't see light outside the visible spectrum, or only one is expressed, I don't know. I tend to think the former. The die ontological, the roll epistemic.

I have tried to be detached all my life, to some extent or the other. In my former spiritual life, and current atheistic. To be aware of this fate of all. To not hold too tight, lest I can't bear the inevitable. Besides, it was fun to turn the spotlight inward on emotion. To watch it dissipate like a wisp of smoke. Poor ephemeral ion potential configuration.

You know what? Fuck that. Fuck you Buddha, and the nimble high horse you rode on. I want to feel my feet grow roots.

I am a product of opposing personalities. My mother extremely motivated, my dad extremely laidback. I'm restless when sitting around, eager to give up once I start. I've let these two impulses run their course as they arise, under the belief that I'm letting the dice fall where they may. I've lost count of the times I started afresh, cities I moved to. Enough.

I'm beginning to examine what I really am. More dad than mom, I realize. Much more.

My dad was the happiest person I have known. He perhaps marked the upper limit of happy personhood theoretically possible. Siddhartha would be jealous. My dad passed away two years back. He was only fifty nine. I'm just beginning to understand the source of his happiness.

My dad lacked all ambition. He went to college in a small Indian town. Had the time of his life. Landed a job as a lecturer in the same college. Had the time of his life for the rest of his life. He travelled to every corner of India, yes. But never moved from that town.

He was an extremely active person. Just not ambitious. Active and progressive too. In a deeply patriarchical society, my dad's unconditional support allowed my mom to freely pursue her extremely successful private medical practice. It was unheard of for a woman to earn more than her husband in that town. Unheard of for a man to "tolerate" such an "insult" to his "manliness". Yet my dad laughed at such silliness. He mixed freely with people from other castes, ate meat at their houses. Something that was sacrilege in most Brahmin families.

He was an amateur engineer and gardener. He reused old materials to build stuff around the house. A ramp or walkway in the backyard. Elaborate wooden and metal frames to support growing creepers. Anything and everything would be reused in his projects. Rubber tubing from old bicycle tires, or old ropes used to draw water from the well in the backyard, shredded by use. He was very aware of natural resource use. Every time my brother or I would leave a light on, we would get a firm lecture. At the end of every year, he would take all our notebooks, tear out the empty pages from the back, and bind new notebooks with twine for us because we would grumble at reusing old notebooks.

He was deeply progressive, yet rarely vocal about claiming it to a larger audience.

I am beginning to realize that there are qualities of his, whether genetic or imbibed by observation, that are rearing up inside me with a ferocity I am not used to.

There is a calendar I bought at the beginning of this year. It has a different picture of a wolf for each month. Each time I look at it, I have the urge to have a house with a backyard so that we can finally get a dog. I remember the old German Shepherd we had in our house growing up. It is the month of December. I am at the last wolf picture. I am also at the end of my patience.

I hate it that a bureaucratic bungle screwed up my immigration process. I hate extending my stay each year, not sure if the only country I've lived in since leaving college, the country that has become my second home, would want me or would kick me out. My fate in the hands of some bureaucrat reviewing my appeal.

Even if I manage to get my immigration mess straightened out, I am not sure where I would want to live. My wife and I would both like to live in the south. Some place with no snow. But not a red state. Or at least a blue town in a red state. A college town, probably. But not such a small town either. Maybe some place like San Diego or Austin or Tucson.

On the other hand, my wife is stuck in cash-strapped academia, a short-term dead-end career in its own right, at least for a decade or two after graduation. Add the current economy to that, and I wonder if even hoping for some kind of long term stability is folly at this time. I think of going back to India, but that country got itself into a big hurry. It is now like the silicon valley of the 1970s, or the wild west of the nineteenth century. I don't think I can fit in.

When I was young I wanted to lead a nomadic life. Some kind of romanticizing of the archetype of the monk. Be careful what you wish for, they say.

Comments

2008-12-07T15:26:00.002-05:00

All comments need to be approved. The approval process is completely subjective.

I will try to keep my comments in response to a minimum. If your comment provides correction, clarity, or provokes further thought, I will go through the process of adjusting my opinion, even if I don't explicitly make a comment to that effect.

Journey - 0

2008-12-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

Introduction

I have been trying to sort out my thoughts after the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 11/26 [26/11 for those in India - as in 26 hours a day, 11 days a week]. However, every time I tried to write something down, I felt like each thought was enmeshed within a former set of thoughts that I couldn't unravel it from. Soon, I found that all the things I wanted to say couldn't fit into a single post.

Amit tagged me to participate in a group brainstorming effort, with emphasis on concrete steps that can be taken in the short term for quantifiable benefit. But my thought train was already on the intercity track after two days of turmoil inside, and I couldn't veer it to the local stops. Besides, it looks like a newly resurgent India is already actively engaged in this very discussion. People showed up in Mumbai at 5 pm for a candlelight vigil scheduled for 6 pm. When Indians arrive earlier than the scheduled time, you can assume they really mean business. I missed the boat on this Indian resurgence. I am used to an India where people skip work to watch a cricket match because they know no one can take away their secure government jobs. I left the country before it transformed itself. So I'm going to sit this one out and let these smart, can-do group of my fellow Indians who are in the thick of things figure it out for themselves.

What I'm going to do instead is take a different route that stays true to where I am today and what path I have taken to get here. I will write at length on the path I've taken first, but I'll get to the suggestions too. The suggestions I have in mind would probably sound too theoretical, optimistic, or even naive. I'll try to justify my optimism.

(to be continued...)

About

2008-11-25T17:51:00.000-05:00

Born in India, I moved to the US in my early twenties and have been living here since.

I currently call myself an atheist, science junkie, skeptic, environmentalist, feminist, secular humanist, economic capitalist, political socialist, and civil libertarian, among other things. I will try to jot some thoughts down, as time and enthusiasm permits, on what these labels mean to me.

I like the idea of living a life filled with thoughfulness, compassion, curiosity, and creative energy. I like to read, dabble in the arts, hike, run, sketch, cook, and maybe one day even garden and have my own little workshop when I own a house. I am also itching to get into biking and kayaking.

This blog is a place for me to try and take some snapshots of my mind, whether to declutter, rearrange, or to just look back at a later time, either fondly or with embarrassment.

Sketches

2008-09-02T16:14:00.000-04:00

I've been practicing using this book

como estan, bitches

2008-09-01T10:16:00.000-04:00

welcome to my lair
hang around, grab a chair