Manish Rathi's Blog

[As promised in my new year blog, I was keen in starting up a series which captures my thoughts/2 cents on the weekly take on the list of events/news/observations with some satire thrown in. Here is the first in that series. Look forward to hearing your feedback.]

Sunday, January 17′th -

• Birthday – Mom’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Aai!
• Jyoti Basu – End of an era for the Left-Communist purist! Not many left in the world (other than Fidel Castro, I think) and they don’t make any more of these (phew!). So long, Jyoti Basu! You were one of the kind!

Monday, January 18′th -

• The Next Recession? – I thought we were still to recover from the global recession which was at its peak last year; there is already a talk about the next one. New York Times editorial today talks about more to come after the Dubai fiasco. Greece, Ireland, Mexico also seem to be suffering from a similar flu. I wonder if it has got to do something with Amar Singh. Well, he has invested in housing property in Dubai. Has he invested in the above countries too?
• Talking while Walking – Idea Cellular‘s recent “Walk When You Talk” campaign may no longer be slotted in the “What an idea, Sirji” category. Ohio State University’s recent study has found that in 2008 more than 1000 pedestrians visited emergency room because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while using the cell phone to talk or text. This was double the number in 2007 which itself had doubled from the numbers in 2006. While this study came out – Adam Gazzaley – a neurologist at University of California, San Fransisco has also found in a study that animals never walk into a pole!
• e-Cigarettes – Looks like I had missed out on this one. e-Cigarettes! Electronic Cigarettes. Yup, this is what the electronic gizmo freaks were missing out in their storage shelves. These e-Cigarettes are some kind of plastic tubes, shaped like cigarettes, have a heating element to vaporize a refillable liquid nicotine mixture. How cool! Wait, this gets better! They have electronics to monitor air flow so that when a user inhales, the device delivers a vapor with a taste and feel that the manufacturers say simulates cigarette smoke. Pretty cool! And it comes with free shipping too! Can someone please update me on what is the latest progress on Cancer Research?
• Relationships and Global Warming – For those who are continuously thinking and concerned about external factors which could potentially affect their marriage and/or relationships – here is one more thing to worry about. Clean Tech! New York Times today carries an article on how Therapists have started reporting increase in Green Disputes.
• And Sachin Tendulkar continues to keep getting younger! He scored his number 44′th in Test Cricket today.

Tuesday, January 19′th -

• NBC, Leno, O’Brien, et. all – I am sorry but I am not able to get a grasp on the squabble at NBC between the NBC Executives, Leno, and O’Brien. Here is the way I see it – first the NBC Executives moved Leno from his ratings peak at the Late Night Tonight Show to a different time which directly was in competition with the local news hour time with regional channels. These Executives said that this was a long term view of Tonight show. Leno represented the past and O’Brien was the future. Their future view suddenly got limited to 6 months before O’Brien could realistically get a chance to prove himself. Ratings dipped and regional TV channels complained. Now suddenly Leno is back as their future, O’Brien is being shown the door, and NBC is getting poorer by few measly billion dollars. What am I missing here? Just one thing, I think – is NBC (or their new buyer Comcast) dolling out bonuses this year?
• Up – Pleased to hear that “Up” – a stirring and heartfelt animation movie from Pixar with an old man as the main protagonist along with a 8 year old kid going on a long-held adventure trip – was awarded the Golden Globe yesterday.  I had watched the movie 10000 feet above the land in a bumpy plane ride and hence got the practical experience behind it too. Not too sure if the in-flight entertainment on that particular flight was sponsored by Pixar.

Wednesday, January 20′th -

• Political Inclinations and Professions – “Why are Professors Liberal?” – An interesting working paper report published out on 15′th by Professor Neil Gross and Ph. D. candidate Ethan Fosse at Department of Sociology at University of British Columbia. Talks about why Professors in general tend to be more Liberal in their thinking as compared to being Conservative in their beliefs. While it has taken Professors as the case point – IMO, the same hypothesis probably also stands for many other professions out there. Ever wondered why Jerry Springer is a Democrat?
• Senate Loss at Massachusetts – Ouuch! this should have hurt the Democrats and President Barack Obama. Senate loss in the bluest possible state of Massachusetts! Come on! Even the life-long but life-less Massachustetts Senator John Kerry won the state of Massachusetts when he ran for President.
• Life can be sarcastic and charming at the same time – This is very, very interesting! There were atleast about 165 people who survived the atomic blast in Hiroshima only to land up in Nagasaki when another bomb fell three days later (src – New York Times article). And they still survived! Sorry, I do not think I can have any sarcasm on this particular one! The real sarcasm and/or charm is from life itself.

Thursday, January 21′th -

• ‘Sachin’ and ‘Warne’ as verbs – Yesterday only I thinking about touching base with the mechanic to see if his estimates would be in the ballpark of my budget. And no, I am not a baseball fan! Confused? Read the interesting article which appeared at Cricinfo today – “Sachin, Warne and other such verbs” written by Sue de Groot. While sports terminology being used in regular talks have been a norm for a long time – use of names seems to be the modern thing. I think next time when I have say – “Let us not screw up the project”, I might just say – “Let us not Lalit Modi the project”.
• Environment and those pesky marketeers – You know as a person who strongly believes that our Environment/Earth is under tremendous strain, I am personally not that upset with the recent exaggeration of Al Gore at the Copehagen Environment summit (about artic being ice-free in summers in 5 – 7 years) and now his Nobel Prize colleague Rajendra Pachauri’s recent botch-up about all Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035. IMO they got carried away while marketing a concept or an agenda. An important element of a marketeer’s job is to exaggerate. Come on! You don’t believe this? Ever heard of Cloud Computing?

Friday, January 22′th -

• Joy’ism - Bill Joy (co-founder of Sun Microsystems) had once said “that there are always smart people outside the organization than within” and I would like to add to that “till the time you get those smart people into your organization“.

Thats a wrap for this week. I will be back next week with another one in this series. Until then, have a great week ahead.

Tags: Adam Gazzaley, Al Gore, Amar Singh, Barack Obama, Bill Joy, Clean Tech and disputes, Conan O'Brien, Electronic Cigarettes, Fidel Castro, Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, Idea Cellular, Jay Leno, Jyoti Basu, NBC, Next Recession, Rajendra Pachauri, Sachin Tendulkar, Senator John Kerry, Sue de Groot, Up, Walk When You Talk

This entry was posted on January 24, 2010 at 3:28 am and is filed under Weekly 2 cents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.