Festival Of Sound?

I have phonophobia. It is a phobia that is not widely known, and it is basically a fear of very loud sounds. When I was a child, I would run away from the kitchen, stuffing my fingers in my ears every time my mother broke a coconut or turned on the mixer. 

Deepavali, as I'm sure you have guessed by now, was not a pleasant experience for me. Unlike dogs, I did not lie cowering under a bed, but I did lie in bed, cotton plugs crammed into my ears, two pillows on either side, trying to sleep away the unbearable stress, wishing desperately that I could run away to another country, where they didn't celebrate Deepavali, or where firecrackers were banned.

My phobia was so bad, it never allowed me to enjoy the other aspects of the festival - new clothes, the endless flow of sweets, the streets alive through the night with lights of every shade and hue. It was only after I did move to other countries - first to the UAE and then to the US - that I was able to focus my mind on these things, and the fascinating mythologies from Northern and Southern India that form the basis for Deepavali. 

After many, many years of struggling with my phobia, and with some help from my mother (who took me a little more seriously than other relatives and neither laughed nor scolded me about it), I have managed to overcome some part of the problem. I am not afraid of breaking coconuts or turning on blenders anymore; I have even managed to keep my hands relatively steadily by my side when phuljadis are set alight on the streets. I am far from fully cured, but it's a small step.

My experience at this time of year, every year, for all my life has made the festival very uniquely special to me. On nights when I lay in bed, the stress and blocked ears making me come down with a fever, cursing my fear, hating every person who was out there lighting "bombs," I would lull myself to sleep thinking how lucky I really am. I could hear the noises, painful as they were, just as well as I could hear music (which, for some reason, never bothered me, even if I was standing next to a thudding speaker on a dance floor). I could gaze out into the night through my window and see the colourful lamps as well as the flashes of light from the crackers exploding. The morning after Deepavali, I would want to campaign to ban firecrackers from the country, but I wanted more than that to learn sign language, and make a small donation to some worthy cause for the hearing impaired.

I did that today - to Voice for the Deaf, a charitable organization based in Hyderabad and Secunderabad that provides care for hearing-impaired children. 

I'm glad I could do it, and I hope everyone who celebrates this festival can use their own experiences to contribute to a cause they believe in as well.

Here's wishing you all a very Happy Deepavali!

Makeovers, Travel And The Election

Here's hoping my readers like the new look of my blog.

I will be doing some traveling in the next couple of weeks - we will be in Washington D.C., from Oct. 25th to Nov. 1st, for the SDR Forum. Then on Nov. 3rd, we leave for Raleigh, NC, where SenSys2008 is taking place. Looks like I will be watching the election and results as they come in from the hotel in Raleigh, so I'm asking my friends to virtually hold hands with me so that I don't chew my nails all the way down to my fingers :-)

Looks like early voting has begun in full swing in many states. It's pretty scary that the same voting problems that plagued the elections in 2000 and 2004 continue to cause trouble even now - machine breakdowns, insufficient paper ballot backup and so on. I hope history does not repeat itself on Nov. 4th.

Which brings me to another issue - why the hell would these people hold elections on a working day?! As if the economy isn't bad enough already! It may not deter enthusiastic voters, and in fact, young voters might not mind skiving off classes or whatever to go vote, versus having to crawl out of bed on a weekend, but one day? Just one day? And a working day?

Fingers crossed.

Your Double Helix Or Mine?

Of all the geeky things in the world that fascinate me, I think I've found the one that takes the top spot...right after my husband. It's called the Personal Genome Project, and I think it is long overdue. It seems simple enough - publish the complete genomes and medical records of several volunteers, in order to enable research into personalized medicine - and its effectiveness may come to bear only decades from now. However, I think asking people to participate in something like this will help medicine break free from the sort of stagnation that has plagued it for so long, and move forward Watson and Crick's vision for humanity.

Wired Magazine published an article that takes a look at the project, and its founder George Church. Here's a small excerpt from the article:

If your genome is the blueprint of your genetic potential written across 6 billion base pairs of DNA, your phenome is the resulting edifice, how you actually turn out after the environment has had its say, influencing which genes get expressed and which traits repressed. Imagine that we could collect complete sets of data — genotype and phenotype — for a whole population. You would very quickly begin to see meaningful and powerful correlations between particular genetic sequences and particular physical characteristics, from height and hair color to disease risk and personality.

...

...the PGP will also put Church's expertise in synthetic biology to use, reverse engineering volunteers' skin cells into stem cells that could help diagnose and treat disease. If the convergence comes off as planned, the PGP will bring personal genomics to fruition and our genomes will unfold before us like road maps: We will peruse our DNA like we plan a trip, scanning it for possible detours (a predisposition for disease) or historical markers (a compelling ancestry).

My only worry is that the $1000 fee for registering may greatly narrow the pool of participants to a class of wealthy volunteers from limited races and countries. It could also skew the data they collect in terms of the actual health of those participating one way or another, particularly if they are looking at phenotypes.

There is, of course, enormous political, moral, legal and religious baggage that a project like this would carry for people, the most realistic of them possibly mirroring the situation in the movie Gattaca, where racial or religious discrimination is replaced by genetic discrimination. I am therefore skeptical of this being the panacea for humankind, but if it helps even somewhat, I am in favour of it.

Why I Think My Dad Should Be President

My dad once told me about something that happened at a relative's wedding we were attending. One of the guests he had not met before apparently did a double-take when he was introduced to my dad, who was dressed formally in a suit and tie.

"I'm sorry," said the gentleman, shaking my father's hand and looking a little embarrassed, "for a moment there, I thought you were Ariel Sharon!"

There's one reason right there. He looks presidential. Well...Prime Ministerial, at any rate.

My dad stands a modest 5'3" above the ground, but he has more energy than three Ariel Sharons, two John McCains and one Barack Obama combined. At the age of 60, he continues to work harder than I can ever say I have, and does it all with a positive attitude unsurpassed by anyone in my entire family.

Born on July 29, 1948, the second son of a renowned scientist, engineer and teacher who himself traveled the world, my father spent much of his childhood and adolescence moving. After high school, he went on to study Commerce at St. Xavier's College, Calcutta, despite resistance from my grandfather, who wanted him to be an engineer like him.

My dad learned the art of survival early - as an eight year old, he was perhaps the youngest boy to live in a school hostel; in college, he made his own money, selling advertisements for newspapers to companies; and when working in the highly volatile and competitive steel industry, he walked several tightropes to rise above those with far greater experience than him.

He worked hard, continuing to move frequently in search of better opportunities, but always looking out for my mother and myself. We never lacked anything, except enough time with him. I wouldn't have cared as much if he had been the serious sort of father, immersed in newspapers and uttering monosyllables most of the time. But my dad is the fun sort, the kind who has energy, no matter how gruelling his day has been, to make you laugh. It made his absences all the more painful; but it imbibed in me an unshakable optimism, and a deep love for humour that I am enormously grateful for.

So, he is his own man, has a positive attitude and plenty of energy. He is also young at heart, something that will serve him well in mobilizing the youth. But what about foreign policy experience?

On that front, I'd say he has way more to offer than Obama and Palin put together. To allay any fears "voters" might have, I'd like to mention that my dad has had a passport since he was in his early twenties, and has now traveled to so many countries, they'll have to invent a passport with at least fifty pages if they want to keep pace with his globe-trotting. He has met with presidents, prime ministers and political and business leaders across the globe, negotiating and collaborating with them on urban development, oil sludge removal from the oceans, and business solutions for the countries' problems.

What he lacks in direct military experience, he makes up for with sound judgment - having "palled around" with several folks in the military, he has an informed opinion about war and terrorism, and a variety of ideas on how to deal with them, all of which he will elaborate upon when he wins the parental primaries.

I cannot think of a better forum to unveil our campaign slogan; a simple one that I think will resonate with voters of every age:

Papa for President!

Thank you for your support.

Cutting Through The Clutter

I have to admit, it has been an exhausting election year. First there were the bloody primaries, and now an even bloodier general election. At the end of the day, even though I can't vote, I'll just be glad it's over.

Part of the reason why my mind feels like a wrung sponge is because of the inundating amount of media surrounding the whole affair. It's not entirely the media's fault - they all want to be a part of something so historic, it involves every possible "ism" imaginable, and tries to transcend them all at the same time. There are commentaries, satires, reports, analyses, talk shows and freak shows, and enough YouTube and user-generated content to make even the most voracious viewers want to throw up.

I cannot even begin to imagine how tiring it must be for the candidates themselves, who plan and act upon this sort of thing over a period of three to five years. If someone had told me that I had to give the same speech, day after day, week after grueling week, for the duration of a primary and then an election (or maybe even before all of that), I would have told them they can keep the blessed presidency. On this one thing, I must say I admire McCain greatly, since the man, despite his years, health and previous losses continues to fight on as resiliently as he did when he was a young POW. But thirty-six years in the senate is a long record to look at, and to squeeze all of that into a year and half or so seems like a highly onerous task. To the laziest of voters, it's probably easier to choose Obama instead.

Animesh, in his most recent blog post pointed out that at least some staunch right-wing republicans have the guts to say, if capitalism is a failed experiment, those involved must be willing to accept the consequences of that failure, and not go bleating to the government to take them back into the fold as if they were prodigal sons. I concur wholeheartedly; with the exception of the media, where I think PBS should rule the world. With twenty days to go to the election, it was refreshing to see a Frontline documentary that went back to the question of who the candidates really are, cutting through the clutter imposed by the rest of the media giants, and by the candidates themselves.

It was an interesting program, one that threw into perspective the real reason why this is such an extraordinary election. The two men engaged in the fight are truly exceptional, not just because of who they are, where they come from, or what they have done, but because they embody leadership unlike anything seen in recent times. It explains why the two are, for all practical purposes, still neck-to-neck in the race and above all, why the choice is so important at this crucial juncture in time.

I would recommend the program to those, who, like me, think they would rather drink Mother Dairy (Operation Flood) or Heritage milk and be done with it, instead of agonizing over rows and rows of Alta Dena, Berkeley Farms, Lucerne, Horizon low fat, non-fat, whole, organic, flavoured, gallon, half-gallon, pint, half-pint milk ad nauseum, every time they go to the local supermarket.

A Wednesday - Be Not Afraid

My husband and I went to watch A Wednesday on Sunday afternoon, a Hindi movie starring veteran thespians Anupam Kher and Naseruddin Shah. It's a very well executed thriller, and it kept both of us on the edge of our seats, while giving us an insider's view on how things are set in motion by the powers that be when there are bomb scares in India.

The film prompted a very engaging discussion between my husband and I, about moral ambiguity, crime and punishment and the burgeoning, growing question of whether the legal system as it exists in democratic societies today is adequate to deal with the most dangerous, mutant form of crime - terrorism. 

Here were some of our key points (some taken from the film - these aren't spoilers, but they do lay the foundation for the film's philosophy):

First, history breaks down in the wake of terrorism. Historically, no matter what form of governance has existed, crime led to punishment at varying levels of imprisonment and torture, with the ultimate punishment of course, being death. However, even if the most gruesome execution methods of the past were to be reinstated (like say, drawing and quartering), the inherent philosophy of martyrdom induces no fear among those who have been trained to die for a cause.

This is where things get murky and grey. To maintain the law, the process of a trial, the pronouncement of judgment, potentially culminating in an execution must be followed, even when there is an admission on the part of the accused. But how do you punish someone who considers himself a martyr, and who fears nothing, not even death? And how do you deal with someone who is so invested in something as abstract as religion or the mere idea of heaven? 

I am sure I am not the only one who believes it is time laws were revised and rewritten to deal with this unprecedented threat. I just wonder how it can be done when we are so entrenched in a certain set of values that stem from those laws. How can a tree change its roots? Are we ready for that kind of an evolutionary transformation (so to speak)? As an ordinary person with no experience or knowledge of the law, it is really hard for me to imagine or envision a new system of law that would genuinely work to dissuade people from taking to terrorism. 

I also wonder, as an ordinary person, if I am doomed to helplessness. Having delegated the law and the tools and rights to uphold the law to others, am I completely reliant on the system for my defense? Must that change in some way? If so, how? When I have no personal enmity with the individual or organization, and my only crime is that I belong to a different country or religion and subscribe to a differen ideology, how do I even begin to outline my expectations for safety?

What I am most curious to learn about is whether slowly, silently, the wheels of the process are indeed turning towards bringing a new legal system into the world. I do not believe, and I don't think anyone believes it begins and ends with the Patriot Act or other forms of stealth governance. There must be something else at work here; something that is approaching ever so slowly, to prove my optimism and faith right.

Chrome de la Chrome

Everyone knows that Google is no great shakes when it comes to new applications. They're neat, relatively simple, easy to use for the really average user; but I'm sure they cause more than enough frustration to developers,  tech savvy folk who want to be able to take stuff apart, see how it works and make it work for them in their own way. Which is why, when Google introduced Chrome, the browser to compete with its long-term friend Firefox, but more so with its long-term enemy, Microsoft, I downloaded it with fewer expectations than my more eager techie friends.

So far, I have been mostly satisfied. It isn't a huge step from going to a browser to a search page, but searching within the browser toolbar is surprisingly addictive. It's also nice to see clickable thumbnails of sites most recently visited, and have a bookmarking feature similar to the star system in gmail. 

Chrome is not without its problems of course. Personally, I haven't experienced the security issues that seem to have been the common complaint among most Chrome users. Shockwave Plug-ins frequently cause the browser to crash though, and the fact that many of my favourite music and videos don't play when I use Chrome is a little disappointing. I suppose it'll be some time before Chrome gains credibility (and hence, compatibility) with those media formats. 

Chrome's resemblance to the new version of Firefox is thrown into sharp relief every time the browser asks if I want to restore a previously active session, or when I download a new file. I am no fan of Internet Explorer, but I'm not fiercely loyal to either Firefox or Chrome. I guess I'm waiting for something a little bigger than this from Google.

Palintology And The Well Above Average Joe

Amy Poehler, at the end of the SNL skit on the Palin-Couric interview, asked "Forgive me, Mrs. Palin, but it appears that when cornered, you become increasingly adorable. Is that fair to say?'

Oh doggone it, you betcha.

Tonight's VP debate proved just that, and Sarah didn't even need to be really cornered. Right down from talking about soccer moms and even winking in a "hey you" kind of way at the camera, Barbie all but asked Gwen Ifill and Joe Biden to join her at the Hometown Buffet for some moose steaks.

For all the heavy prepping at John McCain's pristine estate, it's odd that her handlers could only come up with such a small set of canned responses, no matter what the question. Every answer could be flagged with words that seemed like markers - "maverick," "energy," "mayor" and "darn it" being the chief among them.

Listening to her prattle incoherently about Iran and Pakistan, or whine about Biden looking backward and not forwards, I was struck by an odd thought - having been on the west coast for all the time I have been in this country, I always assumed that the Pacific coast tended to be filled with somewhat liberal, relatively more informed folk than those in say, Kentucky. And if Russia or Japan were a stone's throw away from California, I'd expect the people (and most certainly the leadership) of the state to know a thing or two about foreign policy, and how to handle a national guard beyond knowing how to fire a shotgun at them. But for a state so far up north and with two international borders, as Barbie states, they seem more steeped in southern values than McCain's Arizonian junta.

This works very well for the GOP ticket of course, and as CNN's John King mentioned today, McCain's choice has helped swing Alaska decidedly in his favor, while earlier it was locked in a dead heat between him and Obama.

Tonight's debate was a clincher for Biden, as anyone could see. He seemed restrained, almost quiet at the beginning of the debate; and then slowly, without touching a hair on Palin's attractive head, he peeled off the layers to expose her as the desperate crutch on whom McCain is leaning, just to win the election. He hammered away at his old colleague, showed vast knowledge about the economy, foreign policy and even Palin's favorite - energy; and showed that he was more of a family person than she could hope to be, almost breaking down at the memory of his dead wife and daughter. It made Palin's reference to her youngest child (who suffers from Down's syndrome) in vague "special needs" terms look like a tactic.

To be fair, it took guts for Palin to stand at that podium for an hour and a half and try to act as naturally as she possibly could. Her face could have revealed the strain, she could have gabbled incoherently as she has done in past interviews; instead, she managed to look straight into the camera and defender her running mate with more dignity and aplomb than even he could have managed on his own. All of which would have worked very well if she were running for the office of McCain's youth spokesperson-cum-energy-consultant.

But for someone who has to advise the president on major issues affecting a nation and the entire world, or take his place if something terrible happens, she still falls woefully short. She is simply not qualified. Still, her performance in this debate may have been the best thing to happen to a faltering campaign impeded further by McCain's annoying political dances around the $700 billion bailout.

Biden, on the other hand, did so well, he overshadowed Obama's performance during last week's debate. The sincerity he reflected only served to put a check mark against the question of whether Obama made the right choice in his running mate. If he stretched the truth a little bit here, or tweaked facts somewhere, it did not tarnish his image as one, above all, who can help lead the nation.

With 5 weeks to go, and two more presidential debates in the offing, things could go any which way for either candidate; but they have both found in their second-in-commands, very loyal individuals who have done tremendously well in helping them.