Everyday NASA

I came across this interesting article on how many of the inventions of NASA have gone on to become everyday appliances. You’d never see these items in the same way as before.

1. CAT scanner: this cancer-detecting technology was first used to find imperfections in space components.

2. Computer microchip: modern microchips descend from integrated circuits used in the Apollo Guidance Computer.

3. Cordless tools: power drills and vacuum cleaners use technology designed to drill for moon samples.

4. Ear thermometer: a camera-like lens that detects infrared energy we feel as heat was originally used to monitor the birth of stars.

5. Freeze-dried food: this reduces food weight and increases shelf life without sacrificing nutritional value.

6. Insulation: home insulation uses reflective material that protects spacecraft from radiation.

7. Invisible braces: teeth-straightening is less embarrassing thanks to transparent ceramic brace brackets made from spacecraft materials.

8. Joystick: this computer gaming device was first used on the Apollo Lunar Rover.

9. Memory foam: created for aircraft seats to soften landing, this foam, which returns to its original shape, is found in mattresses and shock absorbing helmets.

10. Satellite television: technology used to fix errors in spacecraft signals helps reduce scrambled pictures and sound in satellite television signals.

11. Scratch resistant lenses: astronaut helmet visor coating makes our spectacles ten times more scratch resistant.

12. Shoe insoles: athletic shoe companies adapted space boot designs to lessen impact by adding spring and ventilation.

13. Smoke detector: Nasa invented the first adjustable smoke detector with sensitivity levels to prevent false alarms.

14. Swimsuit: Nasa used the same principles that reduce drag in space to help create the world’s fastest swimsuit for Speedo, rejected by some professionals for giving an unfair advantage.

15. Water filter: domestic versions borrow a technique Nasa pioneered to kill bacteria in water taken into space.

The Kite Runner

The movie ‘The Kite Runner’ premiered on HBO yesterday evening. I made it a point to reach home on time to see it. I found the book to be very intense and real when I had read it many years back. Khaled Hosseini did an incredible job for his first novel. According to me, this is one of the modern literary classics and I compare it with Shantaram.

I found the movie very good, but still vouch for the book. The description in the book goes partly unnoticed and that is exactly what is wonderful about the book. Khaled’s language flows smoothly as honey. The story highlights emotions of unquestionable trust of Hassan and fear, cowardice, fear and redemption of Amir, in the backdrop of a beautiful land ravaged by war and terror.

Some gems from the book include Baba saying ‘there is only one crime – theft, all other crimes are variations of theft’, Hassan saying ‘for you, a thousand times over’ and Rahim Khan saying ‘there is a way to be good again’. If you haven’t read the book, do read it. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, read the book before you see the movie.

My favourite portion of the book was the last chapter when Amir gets Sohrab back with him, takes him to fly a kite, and when he sees the frozen emotions of Sohrab thaw, slowly but surely. There could be no better description of the word ‘thaw’ than this.

Solving the wrong problem

I’m a fan of Dilbert, though I must admit I don’t understand some of his strips. Here is one I consider one of his best.

Dilbert to Boss: Why are you sending ME to teach COBOL to the Elbonians? Wally is the one who knows COBOL, not me!

Boss: Wally said he’s busy that day.

Dilbert: Can’t you re-schedule the class?

Boss: OK. Does tomorrow work for you?

Dilbert: YOU”RE SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEM !!!!!

Jamie Dimon, an inpiring personality

JPMorgan Chase chairman Jamie Dimon’s life could be straight out of a Jeffrey Archer novel—he was hired out of Harvard B-school by a billionaire who became like a father to him before they parted ways; he went from being heir-apparent at the world’s largest financial services company to working at a smaller, struggling bank; a few years later, he returned from Chicago to New York in a blaze of glory and now heads America’s largest and most influential bank (with assets of about $2.3 trillion). Today, he is arguably the world’s most powerful banker (at least in the private sector). It’s an empowering tale in an era of job losses.

Dimon’s dramatic falling out with Sandy Weill has passed into financial folklore. The two men had worked closely together for about 15 years before they took over Citigroup. Dimon was widely seen as Weill’s successor at Citi, but in 1998, Weill fired Dimon (speculation has it that Dimon passed Weill’s daughter over for a promotion). ‘‘Sandy told me you have to resign. So, I said ‘OK’. I called my wife and told her, ‘I have to tell you something, it isn’t a joke.’ I was concerned about my three daughters, who were then 12, 10 and 8. I didn’t want them to hear about it in school, or read it in the papers. I sat them down and said, ‘Girls, I want you to know I resigned…I was fired.’

‘‘The youngest one said, ‘Dad, will we have to sleep on the streets now?’ The middle one asked, ‘Can I still go to college?’ And the eldest said, ‘Can I have your cellphone now, because you won’t be needing it’.’’

After we’d finished laughing, Dimon turned philosophical. ‘‘It was my net worth that was involved there, not my self-worth. I remained the same person that I was the minute before, and I was determined that my values and behaviour wouldn’t change. Of course, there were times when I was depressed. I would walk into a room and people would treat me like a leper. But often, while jogging in Central Park, I’d be asked, ‘Are you Jamie Dimon?’ and when I said yes, they’d pat me on my back and say ‘Yeah!’ as if I was Robin Hood.

‘‘Everyone has their ups and downs. Tell me one person you admire, not just in business, but in life, and you’ll find they had their share. Nelson Mandela walked out of prison after 27 years, magnanimous to his captors. You have to get up, brush yourself and move on.’’

Dimon moved on to Bank One in Chicago, turned it around, and merged it with JP Morgan in a deal that ended with him becoming chairman and CEO of JP Morgan. Then, in October 2006, he decided to pull out of sub-prime loans even as other banks bet huge amounts on them. The result: JP Morgan was the only bank with enough cash to acquire the ailing Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual when they were on the brink of collapse. Today, JP Morgan has surged far ahead of the crisis-ridden Citigroup. So, is revenge sweet?

‘‘No,’’ he says promptly. ‘‘I still have a lot of friends there and what happened was so hard on people. I could play a sport with you and want to beat the hell out of you. But if you break a leg or have a heart attack, I’ll take you to hospital. I truly want Citi to get better. Citi’s problems are bad for Citi, for the people there, for America, and not good for JP Morgan. Also, it’s a terrible mistake to measure yourself by someone else doing badly. I want us to grow for us. Like Mandela said, ‘If you spend your life on revenge, then you are beholden to the prior people.’ You haven’t moved on, you’re still responding to them.’’

Barack Obama said of him “You know, keep in mind, though. There are a lot of banks that are actually pretty well managed; JP Morgan being a good example. Jamie Dimon, the CEO there; I don’t think he should be punished for doing a pretty good job managing an enormous portfolio.”

Under his leadership, and acquisitions, JPMorganChase is now the leading major U.S. Bank in domestic assets under management, market capitalization value, and publicly traded stock value. JPMorganChase is also the #1 credit card provider in the United States.

Obama and the fly

This is incredible!!! Think of how much time they have…..

PETA wishes Obama hadn’t swatted that fly

The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the flyswatter in chief to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he’s bedeviled by a fly in the White House.

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

“We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals,” PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. “We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals.”

During an interview for CNBC at the White House on Tuesday, a fly intruded on Obama’s conversation with correspondent John Harwood.

“Get out of here,” the president told the pesky insect. When it didn’t, he waited for the fly to settle, put his hand up and then smacked it dead.

“Now, where were we?” Obama asked Harwood. Then he added: “That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? I got the sucker.”

Friedrich said that PETA was pleased with Obama’s voting record in the Senate on behalf of animal rights and noted that he has been outspoken against animal abuses.

Still, “swatting a fly on TV indicates he’s not perfect,” Friedrich said, “and we’re happy to say that we wish he hadn’t.”

Deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said the White House has no comment on the matter.

Check this link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey-JQ8BMWdk

Michael Jackson R.I.P.

The King of Pop is dead!!!

For someone who has been through child abuse by his father, to reaching the pinnacle of pop, to be anointed the ‘King of Pop’, inspite of all that he went through in the child abuse allegations, is remarkable.

My connect with him is on two counts, one that we share the same birth date, and another more important one, that he was the first pop musician we heard, well before the MTVs came along to India. I remember a program on DD Metro then hosted by Javed Jaffrey on Jackson, his Black or White’, ‘Thriller’, ‘Bad’ and ‘We are the world’, his moonwalk. I admire his support to various causes; he is in the Guinness Book for support to most number of charities.

We could speculate forever on whether the absence of a normal childhood caused all of this, but now that he is no more, we could just forget all of that, and remember Michael for his sheer talent, the emotion he poured into his songs and the lives he touched.

R.I.P.

Thomas Macaulay on democracy

A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority will always cast their ballots for the candidates promising most benefits from the public purse with the result that a democracy always collapses from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world’s greatest democratic nations and societies has been 200 years. Each has gone through the following sequence:
from bondage to spiritual faith
from spiritual faith to great courage
from courage to liberty
from liberty to abundance
from abundance to complacency
from complacency to selfishness
from selfishness to apathy
from apathy to dependency
from dependency back again into bondage

Jai Ho English!

The phrase ‘Jai Ho’ is on its way into the English lexicon. Praise the English language that has ensured that it survives, evolves and enriches itself by borrowing from other languages, while other languages have withered and died. The evolution of languages is reflective of how societies and economies develop and move forward. When a new concept achieves prominence without the design of an individual but which reflects the consensus of thousands, economists call it ‘spontaneous order’. Slumdog Millionaire has contributed this new word of the ever-growing language in what can be called an example of spontaneous order.

The legacy lives on!

Rajeev Motwani was born in 1962 in New Delhi, obtained his bachelors’ degree in computer science from IIT Kanpur, his doctorate from University of California, Berkeley and was a professor with Stanford University. He founded Mining Data at Stanford, MIDAS, a group that helped develop data management concepts. He won awards that included the Godel prize, the Okawa Foundation Research Award and the Arthur Sloan Research Fellowship. His research included databases, mining and privacy.

He was found dead in his swimming pool last week. Why is he in the news? Not because he died but because he mentored Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google. What Brin wrote on his blog moved me ‘His legacy and personality live on in the students, projects and companies he has touched. Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev is behind it.’

It’s interesting to note the lives of professors and teachers. Their role is so important in the life of a student because they come at a crucial stage in life. And they kindle in you the spark that is needed throughout your life, it keeps you glowing. But how quickly they recede into the background, fade away into oblivion, while their legacy lives on.

Take up the case!

The number of cases pending at the Supreme Court went over 50,000 for the first time in a decade. Just to compare, 38,70,000 cases are pending in 21 High Courts and 2,60,00,000 cases are pending in trial courts. I could’ve said it in lakhs and crores, but it wouldn’t have the desired effect. So much for speedy justice! Cutting down on frivolous cases is anyway needed and has been much mentioned, but another point is about the length and complexity of judgments. They could be simplified and standardised. Information technology and networking could be used to good effect, to ensure that similar cases are dealt with in much the same manner, thus not only cutting down on time, but also delivering consistent judgments. I can understand the fixation with the complex and romantic process of justice, but this is causing too much harm!