Stoops to conquer dept...

I do not know what to make of this piece of news...

McCain supporters, claiming they rescued 12,000 miniature American flags from the site of Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech last Thursday, redistributed the orphan flags to audience members ahead of a McCain rally in Colorado Springs on Saturday.

The move was an overt swipe at Obama from a campaign whose motto has been “country first.” But Democratic convention organizers claimed the flags were going to be reused — but instead were snatched from the site of Obama’s historic address to carry out a “cheap political stunt.”.

Now they are picking through trash... From here...

Skies this evening

Weather watch: Drill, baby, drill!

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it - attributed to Mark Twain (1835–1910)

Just last week Gustav slammed the Gulf coast - luckily, we dodged a Katrina. This morning, I heard that other named storms like Hanna (heading fast for the Carolinas), Ike (a category 3 storm) and Josephine are coming up fast from the mid Atlantic. A new study finds that the strongest of hurricanes and typhoons have become even stronger over the last two and a half decades. Today, the Canadian Ice Service has declared as navigable the northerly, deep-water route of the Northwest Passage. It is only the second time in recorded history -- and the second year in a row -- the corridor opened enough to let regular ships safely through the Arctic Ocean. Last week, a chunk of ice nearly the size of Manhattan broke away from Ellesmere Island in Canada.

Admist all of this din, one hears a steady drumbeat of Drill, baby, drill! And drill now! - for more oil. We have been hearing it almost daily from both campaigns. It sure is confusing, but it is clear that climate warming is a real and present danger, regardless of what people might say... and more drilling is definitely not going to help.

Comment

Sarah Palin's speech last night was a mixture of hard hitting soundbites and the usual rhetoric. Needless to say, she has great potential for her party. It also looks like she may eclipse McCain very soon. Of course, parading her special needs baby around the floor like it were a trophy on reality television was not really required - but it is all part of the show - I guess.

Poem

Here the Birds’ Journey Ends by Mahmoud Darwish (1941 - 2008)

Here the birds’ journey ends, our journey, the journey of words,
and after us there will be a horizon for the new birds.
We are the ones who forge the sky’s copper, the sky that will carve roads
after us and make amends with our names above the distant cloud slopes.
Soon we will descend the widow’s descent in the memory fields
and raise our tent to the final winds: blow, for the poem to live, and blow
on the poem’s road. After us, the plants will grow and grow
over roads only we have walked and our obstinate steps inaugurated.
And we will etch on the final rocks, “Long live life, long live life,”
and fall into ourselves. And after us there’ll be a horizon for the new birds.

(Published in the Aug 25 08' edition of the New Yorker and translated, from the Arabic, by Fady Joudah.)

Onionesque moments

A modified Theory of Osmosis is gaining ground in the 2008 Presidential election. It seems that we can suddenly muster the strength to be an expert on just about anything under the sun. It is just within oneself and of course, dependant on where you live.

From here:
"Alaskan territory is also along the trajectory of ballistic missiles launched eastward out of Stalinist North Korea. ... As Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin would know more by osmosis – if nothing else – about the necessity for U.S. anti-missile systems"

A Dailykos contributor from Maine has additional interpretations of what this might entail for the rest of us...

- Maine borders Canada, so I'm a foreign policy expert.
- The Atlantic Ocean laps at the Maine coast, so I'm now a marine biologist and a Coast Guard Admiral.
- I live next to a Burger King, so I'm a Chef de Cuisine.
- I live next to the Dollar Store, so I'm qualified to chair the Federal Reserve.
- An old lady lives next door, so I'm president of the AARP.
- I live "next to" the moon, so I'm a NASA rocket scientist and an astronaut.

Painting Post

Sunil, 'Irrawaddy', 82" X 70", Oil on unstretched canvas, 2008

It has been a while since I have done an oil painting. The long weekend over Labor day offered me an opportunity to finish a painting that I was planning over the last couple of months. This painting is representative of tribals from the Lower Irrawady delta that was recently flooded.

The monochrome painting was done in burnt umber. Please note that I took the liberty of digitally adjusted the image in the middle to darken splotches where the camera flash distorted the actual dark brown color underneath. Which also brings to mind that one of these days, I need to take up all of these canvases and have them photographed in natural light. Not too sure when that is going to happen. As is usual, I completed the painting by tying ends of a 6 ft X 8 ft unstretched canvas to overhead rafters in the basement using the concrete retaining walls as a vertical ‘easel’ support. Crude, but it works under the circumstances. As always, I used paint directly from the tube without any intervening linseed oil.

Lighter note

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2008 Results here. The prize is given to the person who creates the worst opening sentence to an imaginary novel.

I prize:
Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J. - Garrison Spik, Washington, D.C.

Notable others:
The KGB agent known only as the Spider, milk solids oozing from his mouth and nose, surveyed the spreading wound in his abdomen caused by the crushing blow of the low but deadly hassock and begged of his attacker to explain why she gone to the trouble of feeding him tainted milk products before effecting his assassination with such an inferior object as this ottoman, only to hear in his dying moments an escaping Miss Muffet of the MI-5 whisper, "it is my whey." - David Potter, Nagoya, Japan

The dual-headed Zhiltoids from Beta Quadrant in the Crab Nebula, who lived entirely on a diet of steaming hot asphalt, thought they had died and gone to heaven upon landing in the Midtown Mall of Fresno, California on the planet Earth during the month they called 'July' - Gregory Homer, Sacramento

Ted feared that the line between his jobs as plastic surgeon and butcher was blurring when he found himself injecting Botox into a rump roast he was preparing for his wife and mother-in-law, who was a decent person except for the hideous wart on her nose that begged to be removed -- a simple task for his boning knife. - Wayne Carmichael, Tyler, TX

Watching Felicia walk into the bar was like watching two fat Rottweilers in yellow spandex and spike heels that had treed a scrawny bleach blond cat at the top of a skinny flagpole that for some reason had decided to sprout casaba melons. - Melissa Alliston, Coraopolis, PA

Jan Svenson, having changed his fortune in the annual "Scandinavian King of the Beach" in Santa Cruz with a bottle of black hair coloring and thus standing out in a sea of fair-haired rivals to win the coveted title, realized the ironic truth of the old adage "That in the kingdom of the blonde, the one dyed man is king." - Matthew Chambers, Parsons, WV

Weekend Pictures

Weather watch

Quiet Labor day weekend, mostly soaking in whatever warmth there is left in the waning months of August. The leaves will soon give up their bright greens slowly losing their sprightly resilience and in a couple of months will fall away to the earth. The cold will set in and the long dreary winter slog will start. While Hurricane Gustav is barreling down the Caribbean and heading for the Louisiana shores, a hitherto unheard of storm, Palin seems to be pounding us down from Alaska. While the former will only have short term consequences, the latter could dig in deeper with unknown results. I sincerely hope both storms just blow away peacefully with zero national damage.

Commute pictures

You go Girl! - Quote for today.

“The women of America aren’t finished yet… We can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all!”. Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin and the presumptive republican veep nominee on Friday August 29th, 2008.

On the Iraq war: "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq" on the 1st of March 07.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending out U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

On a $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wanted built in the state of Alaska. "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that"

If this is the way we are planning on breaking that glass ceiling, it is indeed pathetic.

From Gail Collins of the Times...

Whether you liked her or not, Hillary Clinton convinced the nation that women could be qualified to both run the country and be commander in chief. That was an enormous breakthrough, and Palin’s nomination feels, in comparison, like a step back. If she’s only on the ticket to try to get disaffected Clinton supporters to cross over, it’s a bad choice.

Obama's speech tonight was spot on. Just right. This man has a plan for pulling the country forward. If we don't we seize this opportunity now (at this juncture), we never will.

Dumbing down? - Lament

Yesterday my wife and I went to a 'meet the new teacher' gathering at our children’s day care. On the momentous occasion of our children transitioning from their current class to their next, we were given an opportunity to learn the new teacher’s backgrounds, their credentials and personality. We found them great and justly so - it does cost a bit. At the end of the session, it was mentioned that our elder son would be starting his letter writing soon and the head teacher mentioned that they would start with the letter C. As soon as they master writing C, they will proceed to O. I sat there a little flummoxed on the newly discovered order of the English alphabets. As if reading my mind, an audience member behind us piped up with the question du jour; What about starting with A? Then B, C, D etc. like the rest of us learned...

The teacher looked incredulously at us for a split second, resolved to herself that she was speaking to a bunch of parents who really do not know too much about educating their four year olds and slowly proceeded to explain. She told us that starting with the letter C is the easiest as it involves writing the letter in a single pencil stroke whereas starting off with the letter A would involve three discrete strokes to complete the letter. She told us that starting with the letter A will be mentally taxing on the little child. She went onto intone that children will find it emotionally and mentally stimulating to start with an easy letter first and then proceed to the tougher, taxing ones towards the end.

I was not convinced. Somehow, I felt that dumbing down little tasks and making life easy for children in their formative years is necessarily not a good thing. Let me explain.

Our children will live and work in a very different world from what we inhabit. A world more flat, more cohesive and more integrated where global economies intermingle and people, resources and goods cross international boundaries like we drive across states today. In such a world, our children will face competition from the likes of children bought up in countries like Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan and India. In most of these countries children are given a tougher beginning to life, more material to study and a rigorous outlook in general. They are taught to survive the rough and tumbles of a system that they will have to navigate successfully and triumph a couple of decades from whence they start to write their first letters. Mollycoddling them with asinine explanation of 'mentally taxing’ and ‘emotionally and mentally stimulating' will not work in the future global marketplace where skills, tenacity and competitiveness will rule ever more so. Shielding our children from competition and striving to make their already comfortable lives more so will not do us any benefit in the longer run. Of course, I did not mention any of my wayward thoughts to the hapless teacher, but talked long and hard into the night with my wife. We are still working out a plan.

Jose Chavez Morado (Mexican 1909 - 2002), 'Boy', Oil on canvas, 14" X 11", 1945

Quick notes

Michelle Obama’s speech (and Part II here) during the Democratic National Convention yesterday was super. Maybe she should consider a run for president sometime in the future... Great work. Will be interesting to see what Hillary has to say today...

On the Appalachian Trail - 1

The planned hike to cover the Appalachian Trail (AT) in NJ turned out to be a complete disaster. New hiking shoes whose soles separated, a bad knee joint that acted up and an unnaturally humid day that seemed to sap all of our energies plotted to make the hike a non starter.

What originally was planned by my brother and me to be a two day hike over about 70 miles with a sleepover at the midway location of High Point, NJ ended after about 18 miles into the trek on the afternoon of the first day. Well, we tried – and learned.

Raring to get as early as possible to the trailhead, we started off by cajoling the family to drop us off at the start point of the trail – located at the NY/NJ border. Starting at 6 in the morning, we started the hike by taking the 1.5 mile steep section of the blue blazed State Line Trail from the town of Lakeside in West Milford, NJ onto the top of Bearfort Mountain in the Abram S. Hewitt State Park.

The early morning walk up the mountain was especially breathtaking – the sun behind the trees, a bit of that hazy mist that surrounds damp trees in the morning, the birds just waking up and the occasional crack of dry branches in the distance signaling that startled deer. About 45 minutes into that climb, we spotted the white blazed Appalachian Trail at the NY/NJ state line. It was a mixture of emotions – elation at finally having reached the AT and a feeling that this was just the beginning of a long haul.

The trail itself was very well marked, the white blazes leading logically from one to the other with double blazes signifying a change of trail direction. Crossing split log bridges, woody roads, logs over intermittent streams, plank bridges over swamps and moss covered paths, we took in all that nature and the trail had to offer us that morning. We also noticed that the trail was slowly ascending gradually - up the Wawayanda Mountain. Named by the Lenape Indians, it means ‘winding waters’ and it tops off at about 1400 feet. In between, we stopped for a quick bite at Double Kill stream under an 1800's era iron bridge. Beauty. We also managed to get some water here before we resumed climbing the Wawayanda Mountain.

The views from the top of the mountain was moderate – nothing spectacular, but marked a little bit by a slight change in the nature of the vegetation around us – giving more ground to shorter and sturdier needle based woods than the sturdy hemlocks, white pines, balsam firs and spruces lower down. We also noticed large solitary rocks, the size of small trucks every once in a while, seemingly left there by a giant hand. These were remnants of the last ice age when glaciers carried these rocks downstream. Their current location must have been determined when certain sections of the retreating glacier melted faster than other portions, leaving large rocky detritus behind like isolated droppings of another age.
If climbing the mountain was difficult, descent was doubly so. The steep nature of the descent and the extremely rocky section of the trail were fairly hard on the knees and progress was very slow. In between, my brand new hiking shoes seemed to come apart at the soles (not too sure how this came to be as I got this from the supposedly venerable ‘Tent and Trails’ store in Manhattan - a store that I will never go to again).

The descent took about an hour, and the view on looking back at the now towering Wawayanda Mountain was especially beautiful. We felt in awe of the fact that we had managed to scale and descend our first peak in under 4 hours. Maybe we should have stopped and rested for a while at this point, but enthusiasm got the better of us and we decided to press on in spite of the complaining knee.

The scene in front of us was postcard perfect, Vernon valley and private farmlands were nestled between the Pochuck mountains upfront and Wawayanda behind. Most of the valley was covered with large wavy switchblade like grass overgrown with ferns, white / red sumac, buttonbush and violets. Along the long gravel path that led from the mountain base, we met a northbound thru-hiker who was on his way to Maine from Georgia. He went by the trail name Kit and said that this was his 105th day on the trail. We exchanged pleasantries and he seemed a bit taken aback that we were attempting the distance we planned in one day.

Vernon valley is basically swampy lowland and most of the trail over this section consists of intermittent wooden boardwalks built about 4 feet off the swamp surface. Years of flooding and vegetative growth along the Wallkill River on its way to join the Hudson created the Pochuck swamp over thousands of years. The floor of the swamp seemed mushy, soft and was covered with a rich, dark, brownish-black soil. The swamp itself was carpeted by a six feet high blanket of violets, yellow bellworts, poinsettias, daisies and a profusion of red flowers whose name I cannot seem to dredge. By this time, the afternoon sun was taking its toll and instead of stopping to rest, we decided to push on. I also remember reading that the boardwalk construction over the Pochuck swamp (also called Pochuck Quagmire) was one of the most expensive construction projects undertaken by the AT conservancy. The highlight of the walk across the swamp was a 14 foot high suspension bridge over the Pochuck Creek, whose foundation is said to float over the bog to make way for the shifting water and vegetation patterns.

It was about 12 noon when we decided to climb the 1100 foot Pochuck Mountain. The mountain was created out of billion year old rock and is scarred with ridges scraped from vestiges of the last ice age. The slope up the mountain was steep, unforgiving and beautiful. In between the climb, we caught sight of a baby deer who seemed to be fearlessly surveying us from behind the dense undergrowth. I also ran into our first rattlesnake along the way – I had decided to rest awhile and had just laid the backpack down on the forest floor when I heard an urgent clearing from the brush – and chanced on a snake about two feet long. We sized up each other for about 30 seconds before it decided to go along its way apparently deciding that I did not mean much harm.

After a little more climbing, we stopped for lunch (bread and meats) halfway up the mountain and I could feel my knee telling me that I will need to exercise better before trying anything of this magnitude in the near future. The rocks digging through the exposed sole of my left foot also was not really helping the situation. I remember cursing the lower Manhattan store multiple times. About this time, I decided that maybe we should call it a day and ask for help from the family in picking us right after we cross this mountain. It did turn out to be a wise decision.

The climb up Pochuck mountain was grueling, but the vistas on the summit was worth the effort. Wawayanda State Park and distant towns were tiny specks in the distance that was essentially covered in a maze of green that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. The distant reservoirs and the occasional lake reflected the brilliant blue of a cloudless bare Saturday sky. By this time, it was clear that we could not proceed any longer with my knee and the slipshod shoe. We asked for the family to come by and 'rescue' us from a designated point at the base of the mountain.

Descents are much harder than ascends for me and the descend down the especially steep Pochuck mountain was no exception. When one is tired, one does not seem to notice the beauty around the trail anymore – you just want to get to the next stop for whatever might be planned in terms of an end to the adventure. This was our condition on the way down. We however did stop a bit to heroically take a couple of pictures, but it was a feeble effort at maintaining a semblance of normalcy. On the way down, we ran into a 60 year old thru hiker who went by the trail name of Papa Rose. An interesting character, he offered several tips on finding water sources on the way ahead, and even mentioned that the mayor of the next town (Unionsville) was a kindly man who takes in hikers for the night at his home. We told him that this was valuable information, but we were calling it quits for the day.

In retrospect, we chewed off more than we could handle for a day. I also found out that hiking any more than 10-12 miles on the AT in a single day is inviting trouble, burnout and extreme stress on ones knees. Come to think of it, we had hiked about 18 miles in under 9 hours and ascended and descended 2 steep 1000 footers along the way. Nope, not a recommended idea, but at least we have a flavor for what lies in store ahead for future ‘section hikes’ across the trail. The plan still remains - section hike the trail end to end - even if it takes years - completion will happen at some point - cobbling a couple of days off from work every once in a while – cajoling family to pitch in – completing the trail wizened and intelligent.

The best part of the hike happened at the very end when my wife, her sister and my brother-in-law drove for a couple of hours to ‘rescue’ us on a fairly remote road (Lake Wallkill Road near the town of Owens, NJ). On thanking them for the effort mustered at short notice, their only response was ‘Hey, that’s what families are for…”

Catching the first of the white blazes

The NY/NJ state line demarcated by the State Line Trail

Across a wood bridge at the foothills of the Wawayanda Mountain

An intermittent stream blocked by what seemed like a beaver dam

View from the top of Wawayanda Mountain

Looking back at Wawayanda

The trail ahead leading to Pochuck Swamp and Pochuck Mountain in the distance

Vernon Valley

The greens of Vernon Valley

Wooden boardwalk across Pochuck swamp bordered with wildflowers

Wildflowers

Pochuck Swamp

Moss along the trail

Rattlesnake (?) - not sure...

View from the top of Pochuck Mountain

The skies above Wallkill River National Wildlife Refuge

Taking a walk

Will not be posting over the next two-three days as we will be attempting to trek the NJ section of the Appalachian Trail. Meanwhile, a motley collection of pictures taken over the week...

Comment

It indeed shows how out of touch and disconnected an individual can be when the Republican candidate for the President of the United States, Sen. McCain tells people that a rich person would be defined as someone making $5 million or more a year. He further showed his separation from reality when he proclaimed yesterday that he has no idea how many homes he owns. I would brand someone with views such as this 'elitist'.

This comes at a time when a large percentage of U.S. homeowners are fighting to save the only home they own and know from predatory lenders and loan sharks.

It should be noted that of all the households in the nation, fewer than 0.001% had an annual income of $5 million or more.

From the real estate listing of John McCain's home on the market for about $12 million. From here.

Former home of Sen John & Cindy McCain. Situated on over 2.5 acres. Totally remodeled in Old World style complete w/7 bedrooms in main house & 6 bedrooms in guest houses. Hardwood & travertine floors throughout. Master suite has huge walk-in w/private cantera stone patio w/spa and fplc. Gourmet kitchen has travertine floors, granite counters, comercial SS apliances w/large catering room/butlers pantry off kitchen. 2 guest houses. His/her dressing cabana. Finest entertaining backyard in the Valley - 3 ramadas (2 w/full bar set-up), BBQ, play house, cantera stone decking, pavillion, spa and large lap/play pool. 7 car detached garage...

Photo

'Happy in her own world', Color photo, Abhijit Nandi, Ripped from here.

A picture of an Indian paddy field worker coming home after a full day at the paddy fields won the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management’s environmental photography competition.

Complete list of images here.

Chinese Furs

PETA posted a video today documenting the bloody violence prevalent in the Chinese fur industry. Caution - the video is too violent and too graphic. I stopped watching a minute into the video.

In a tangential reference, scientists have shown that magpies have demonstrated abilities in self-recognition and self-awareness - once considered the exclusive domain of humans.

Predatory lending - home equity loans to 401(k) debit cards

A sampling of some financial ads from a recent Times article:

'There’s got to be at least $25,000 hidden in your house. We can help you find it.' - Citibank
'Is your mortgage squeezing your wallet? Squeeze back.' - Bank of America
'The smartest place to borrow? Your place.' - Fleet Bank
'Make Dreams Happen: Need Cash? Use Your Home'. - Banco Popular
'You’ve put a lot of work into your home. Isn’t it time for your home to return the favor?' - Citigroup

The past few years have seen American banks pull off one of the biggest frauds in our history. They managed to spin unsavory terms like 'borrowing money' and ‘getting deeper into debt' into such tasty morsels like 'home equity loans', 'equity access', adjustable rates , 'piggybacking first and second mortgages' and 'Equity Source Accounts'. Along the way, accumulating bad debts that one may not be able to pay off was spun off as indulging in a smart move that involved cashing into the equity supposedly 'inherent' in their homes.

In this process, the returns to these banks that had managed to hoodwink gullible public on fixed-rate home equity loans and lines of credit were 25 percent to 50 percent higher than returns on consumer loans over all...

At the same time, the borrower (owing to the fact that s(he) was never in a position to sustain the repayment of these loans) now faced the prospect of falling behind on home payments, defaulting on their mortgages, foreclosing their homes and ultimately finding themselves with blue skies over their heads...

An Ameriquest ad sometime back said “Don’t Judge Too Quickly, We Won’t” and told customers who had essentially bad credit records that their credit records were euphemistically 'less than perfect' and they could tap into money hiding in still unpaid homes. When Ameriquest (now bankrupt) pulled that, they were perpetuating a scam on homeowners who typically did not think through some of the arcane financial details (running into fast easy cash typically stunts the neurons of paupers as well as professors).

Now, prudent thinking might say that this scheme of bilking and hoodwinking might have come to an end with the collapse of the housing market. Not to worry, the bankers have found a new avenue out to make sure that their money spigots are flowing.

Think 401(k). That last resort nest egg stored away by people to count on a normal life after retirement. Well, the enterprising bankers have come out with a new money suction device - the 401(k) debit card, a new form of plastic that lets plan participants borrow directly from their 401(k) with every swipe they make at the store, supermarket or that car dealership.

From a sample advert for a company that hawks 401(k) debit cards:

ReservePlus delivers the most convenient 401(k) loan solution available today. In addition to providing a solution that encourages plan participation, increased contributions and decreased borrowing, this unique, loan servicing product improves efficiencies for record keepers, plan sponsors and plan participants through superior, patented automation

Next time you see a Bank ad, think twice and then run the other way...

Ran into an interesting statistic this morning

I know members of our close family and other acquaintances with advanced degrees waiting in line to obtain working visas so that they could come and work here in the United States. These visas are called H-1B visas and are typically given to professions that require a large amount of technical skill and degrees in engineering, medicine, arts and law. Usually the visas are granted with a reason explaining why the person was hired. The problem is that the government has a cap of about 65,000 visas issued each year resulting in a lot of missed opportunities, deadlines and dreams. The following factoid that I came across in the latest issue of Harpers from their monthly column ‘Harper's index’ struck me as something combining satire, circumlocution and euphemism:

"Number of H-1B visas, for workers with a 'body of highly specialized knowledge' granted to fashion models last year: 349"

Lydia Venieri's ‘War Games’ at the Stefan Stux Gallery (Sept – Oct 07)

In (cardboard boxed) vino veritas

I have always felt that the poor cousin to ‘wine in bottles’, those 3 liter ‘wine in card box' should have some advantages... At a minimum, I have felt that the pouches in those boxes at least keep the wine fresh for a lot longer than wine from an opened bottle of wine. Finally today, I ran into an interesting op-ed piece in the Times that proclaims the advantages of switching to cardboard boxed wine. It is not just freshness, cardboard boxed wine actually helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions...

A standard wine bottle holds 750 milliliters of wine and generates about 5.2 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions when it travels from a vineyard in California to a store in New York. A 3-liter box generates about half the emissions per 750 milliliters. Switching to wine in a box for the 97 percent of wines that are made to be consumed within a year would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about two million tons, or the equivalent of retiring 400,000 cars.

What’s more, boxed wine is superior to glass bottle storage in resolving that age-old problem of not being able to finish a bottle in one sitting. Once open, a box preserves wine for about four weeks compared with only a day or two for a bottle. Boxed wine may be short on charm, but it is long on practicality.

Commercial Mindset Quote

On Michael Phelps winning his historic eighth Olympic gold on Saturday night (from here):

"If he's handled properly over the next four years, he should generate in excess of $40 million," said Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp Ltd., a Chicago-based sports business consulting firm.

"He benefits from a celebrity-driven culture, a need for advertisers to raise themselves out of the clutter and the warm feelings that the American public has for him. His image is a perfect match for companies which want to align their brand with great success."

What is he, some kind of a piece of machinery or something... ?

Our cornfed vehicles

Cultivation, harvesting and cooking grains has been the staple of human existence for millennias. It seems like a slap in the face of nature when we cultivate food to feed the gas tanks on our vehicles. This video (via Andrew Sullivan) explores corn, ethanol and the subsidies.

Black / White or Shades of Grey

Yesterday Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama answered identical questions at the Saddleback Church under an interview format conducted by the church's pastor Rick Warren.

McCain's answers seemed scripted, pandering, straight off the cuff and tended to see issues in black and white. Life begins at conception; marriage is between a man and woman with little leeway for civil unions, the definition of a rich person as one who make more than 5 million a year and making weepy anecdotes combining Christianity and military service at the drop of a hat. Of course, he also drummed in his newfound mantra of drill, drill, drill for oil...

Obama on the other hand seemed analytical, taking time to think through the answers and seemed to not see radical issues in such black and white terms. Abortion was a right that women must enjoy as long as it is not late term and must be legalized, marriage was between a man and a woman but right under civil unions will be respected as much under his presidency, a rich person was one who makes more than 250,000 dollars a year and very little anecdotes pandering to the mostly evangelical white crowd. It is also interesting that he first two people Obama spoke of as important advisers were women.

Even if core issues such as the ones asked yesterday will never have pat answers, it is clear that people are blindly looking for the black and white. Very few seem ready for a deeper analysis that goes to the heart of such issues. People seem to be naturally gravitating towards the pandering, anecdotal, binary beanbag.

Pictures from an Indian summer

Leafing through an album from a couple of years back I ran across these photos...

On the Indian independance day

India is 61 years young today. Amidst hosannas and eloquent McKinsey reports sung to the surging economy and the galloping middle class, some putrid aspects remain below the sheen which will be worked out in the many years to come in the world’s greatest true democracy.

From here:

In every men’s washroom at the Taj is a helper. As you approach the sink, he salutes you. Before you can turn on the tap, he does it for you. Before you can apply soap, he presses the dispenser. Before you can get a towel, he dangles one. As you leave, he salutes you again and mutters: “Right, sir. O.K. sir. Thank you, sir.”

India may be changing at a disorienting pace, but one thing remains stubbornly the same: a tendency to treat the hired help like chattel, to behave as though some humans were born to serve and others to be served.

I sometimes talk to people who have decided to pack up their bags and return to India for good and ask them what it is about India that draws them back home. I have heard a lot of variations, but a common refrain tends to the following ‘well, now that we can afford it, we plan on settling down to a more placid lifestyle and starting up a small business’. On probing further they come out with plans like ‘buy a flat, a couple of cars, hire four or five servants to cook, wash, clean and drive and travel a bit’… I guess the tendency to treat hired help like furniture is instilled deep within us and only time and education will make it go away.

A new movie, Barah Aana coming out later this year explores this subject in greater detail.

In a scene, a security guard, Yadav, discovers that his son is ill and will die if he does not receive treatment costing $150. He goes around his building asking for loans from tenants who think nothing of spending $40 on pizza. The tenants, glued to their televisions, treat him like a puppy to be shooed away. That night, as he sits with friends and fills himself with drink, he contemplates what it would mean to bury a son.

“Why is it,” he wails, “that people can only feel their own pain, not others’?”

The director’s answer is that India has something deeper than a poverty problem. It has, in his view, a “dehumanization” problem. In an interview, he described India’s employers and servants as living as “two different species.”