I love a good massage. It is in some ways the ultimate pampering experience. The first time I had one was in California in the early nineties. I was so hooked on it that I would have one with some regularity even though it was expensive. Spending $80 for a forty minute massage every couple of months was a bit of self-indulgence but it was at a time when I was making more money than I knew what to do with. After I retired, in 1994, massages were a less frequent occurrence. By the time we moved to Virginia, I’d tell my kids and others to give me a gift certificate for a massage for birthdays and Christmas since there was usually nothing else I really wanted.
Once we began to travel, I would indulge in massages with greater frequency. I got them in Thailand, Cambodia, China and in India. They were of varying standards – the ones in Cambodia and China were pretty good. The one in Thailand was just so so – they seemed focused on selling other “services”! But the one that was really quite an experience in more ways than one were the ayurvedic massages I got in Kerala, India. Keep in mind that Kerala is known for the ayurvedic massage which really is more a therapy than a massage.
So what brings me to this subject? Well, it is a combination of factors: first I saw a very funny episode of Seinfeld yesterday in which George Constanza gets a massage from a good looking masseur – he was not comfortable with the idea of a guy giving him a massage but reluctantly went with it providing the set-up for a few laughs!
I also happened to read about the experience of an American tourist who got an ayurvedic massage in Kerala which brought back memories of my own massage!
Two years ago I went to an ayurvedic hospital in a fairly remote location in Kerala – a place known for the “real thing” as opposed to the so called ayurvedic massages that are sold to tourists. This was a very highly regarded ayurvedic hospital and most of the patients were people who had serious medical ailments. I was probably one of the few who was in relatively good health. Once the doctor who interviewed me realized I was not suffering from any particular ailment, he evaluated me as someone who was there for what he classified as “rejuvenation”. There were quite a few patients from the US, including several who had suffered strokes and a couple of Westerners from Germany – relatively young women one of whom had some sort of creeping arthritis which was not responding to conventional treatment.
The only “treatment” I received other than a fairly controlled diet was a daily ayurvedic massage. It was an experience I will not forget because it was so different from any massage I ever had until then.
The first day, at the appointed time, I went to the massage room and was met by the masseur – a slim, young man. Now I knew that in Kerala it is masseurs that provide massage to guys and women, in turn, are massaged by a masseuse! So that was no surprise – irrespective what happens in other parts of the world.
He told me in Malayalam to strip completely – and I double-checked with him whether that was what I was supposed to do or whether I had misunderstood him. He then left for a few minutes.
Tags: ayurvedic massage, George Costanza's massage in Seinfeld episode, Kerala famed for ayurvedic massages, kuzhambu massage oil, Seinfeld episode about massage
The heading for this post is a well-known saying about how numbers can bolster a weak argument depending on how they are interpreted. Add to the mix the use of anecdotal information that can be cited to bolster a point of view and we get to a couple of issues that I have been involved in several cyber-exchanges.
Someone sent an email providing the chart below showing the income distribution in the US by religion.
It shows that Hindus and Jews earn substantially more than do people of other faiths. The survey was conducted by Pew Research – a reputable polling organization – and I have no doubt that it is accurate. But the conclusions to be derived therefrom are what I found problematical. They ranged from suggestions that it is the values found in those faiths that accounted for the achievements of people of those faiths to even more blatant assertions of the superiority of the faiths in producing such results.
Tags: Danny Williams, Dr. Joseph Lamelas, hypocrisy of politicians, income of Hindus in the US, income of Jews in the US, Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, Pew Research study on income by religion, Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Williams gets heart procedure in the US
A couple of people have asked me how I select the subjects for my blog. I told them the catalyst is usually something I read or information sent to me.
I was recently sent pictures of my high school, Allidina Visram HS, in Mombasa, Kenya (thanks Prem Saint) and it brought back a flood of memories as well as a chance to reflect and ruminate on four critical years I spent there before I left for England to pursue Chartered Accountancy. AVHS looking at the pictures appears to be in remarkably good condition and exactly like I remember it from almost 50 years ago!
AVHS, was probably the premier high school for Asian students in Mombasa. Kenya was still a British colony and education like many other facets of life was racially segregated in practice, if not the law. It was a high school for boys since the sexes were also segregated. The school was built by a philanthropist after whom it was named. The only students allowed admission into AVHS were Indians, Pakistanis and Arabs. There were other schools for Africans (the term used to describe the indigenous people) and for Europeans (the term used to describe anyone who was white). Almost all of the teachers were Asians though there were a few who were British, one Canadian and a couple from Australia. My father, AG Joseph, taught English there from the early fifties until 1961 and my brother, George, taught Economics at AVHS from 1960 to 1966.
One of the striking contrasts in terms of the education at AVHS and the schools in the US are the methodologies used and what was deemed the norm. Teachers were not allowed to paddle students but errant students would be sent to the principal where one was “caned” on the buttocks. The severity of the caning would range from one strike to a maximum of six. There was no need for any parental notification and students who were caned were anxious that their parents knew nothing of it – and if they did, it would probably mean a round of punishment at home as well! Teachers disciplinary methods included making an errant student stand on his chair for all or part of the duration of the class while all the other students were seated! If one were the victim of this punishment, it was not so much a humiliation as much as a feeling of sheepishness and concern about not losing one’s balance while standing!
The high school consisted of four grades (to use US parlance) before one graduated. What was amazing, upon reflection, is that each grade had four “streams” (A to D) consisting of about 30 students in each stream. The brightest students were in stream A and the least academically proficient were in stream D! So it was considered to be very much the norm to, in effect, “label” the students as being “bright” or “less than bright” (being polite) from the very start. Once one ended up in a particular stream, it was usually not easy to be “upgraded” because it required someone else to be “down-graded” to maintain class size. Upon reflection, it really was a very retrograde system though we never had a second thought about it. Just as we never had a second thought about the races being segregated.
We were graded on “marks” received out of one hundred. The passing grade was around 40 and anything over 70 was considered to be a “distinction”. Scoring over 70 in any subject other than mathematics was a rarity. If one scored as high as 80 one was considered to be a genius! Very different than the grading in the US! Each month and at the end of each term (semester) the cumulative “marks” obtained in each subject was posted for every student on the notice board in the class and we were all ranked based on those marks from the first to the last! The ranking was something that anyone could view – whether from within the class or from another class! I think part of the thinking was that publicizing the results like this would motivate students by encouraging those who did well and humiliating those who did not so that they would strive harder. Never mind that any such ranking system would inevitably result in someone being ranked first and someone else being ranked last no matter how well the latter fared overall!
The education we received was generally excellent and the culmination was having to sit an exam called the Senior Cambridge which was conducted under the auspices of Cambridge University – the questions were formulated there and the exams were evaluated there as well.
Tags: Allidina Visram High School, Cambrige School Certificate, Crest of the Peacock, Euro-centrism, First Indian War of Indenpendence, Greek influence on music, Hindu influence on music, Indian Mutiny, Karl Paulnack, Kenya, Mombasa, paddling of students, segregation in schools, Senior Cambridge
My cousin, Bobby Abraham, recently sent me a very interesting article called “Coming of Age in the Milky Way”. It made for fascinating reading because it was both educational and also offered some context as to where the earth and life on earth fits into the scheme of things.
In 1967, two scientists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, were working on satellite communications for Bell Laboratories. They encountered what was described as a persistent unfocused, unrelenting hissing noise that made their experimental work impossible. No matter what they did, they could not get rid of the noise. It took a while but they finally realized that they had stumbled on the edge of the universe itself! The persistent hissing noise was caused by photons, the most ancient light in the universe which over vast periods of time and distance had converted into microwaves! It was coming from 90 billion trillion miles away – a number so large in terms of being able to conceptualize it, that it would not make a difference to me if it were hundred times as much or a tenth as much!
It turned out to be one of the greatest discoveries of all times – a “eureka” moment, as Archimedes would have put it or as Isaac Asimov puts it great discoveries are preceded by more of a “That’s funny……..” reaction!
The entire article by Alexander Green makes for fascinating reading but there were a few things that really captured my attention. In 1929, Edwin Hubble, after whom the famous telescope is named, “discovered that the distant fuzzy patches in his telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory were actually other galaxies, each composed of billions of stars. Even more astonishing, these galaxies are rapidly moving away from us – and each other.
“This eventually led to Hubble’s Law: If the galaxies are receding then:
Tomorrow they will be farther from us.
But yesterday they were closer to us.
And last year they were closer still.
At some point in the past, everything was piled together and squeezed into a tiny volume.”
It is believed that the universe as we know it today commenced with a gigantic explosion almost 14 billion years ago in what is today referred to as the “Big Bang”.
Green’s article covers a lot of territory – all of it very readable. It blends science and religion as he discusses the creation of the universe as we now know it. But the part that I found most illuminating was when he shows how long ago the universe was formed. Numbers like 14 billion years ago or a distance of 90 billion trillion miles are so huge that the human mind cannot wrap itself around something so astronomically large. But Green, quoting the astronomer, Carl Sagan, provides an illustration which ordinary mortals can relate to in comprehending the age of the universe.
Sagan calls it a “Cosmic Calendar” and as Green says “it not only enlightens but provides an object lesson in humility”. Here is how Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar works:
“Imagine that the 13.7 billion-year history of the universe is compressed into one calendar year. The Big Bang occurred in the very first second of January 1 and the current moment is the last second of the last minute of December 31. Using this compressed timescale, each month equals a little over 1.1 billion years. Each day represents 40 million years. Each second covers 500 years of history.
“The Milky Way coalesces in March. The sun and planets form in August. The first life – single celled – show up in September, the first multi-cellular organisms in November.
“The first vertebrates appear on December 17. Dinosaurs show up on Christmas Eve. (And become extinct on December 29.)
“Modern humans finally appear at 11:54 p.m. on December 31.
“And all of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of the last minute of the last day of the year. The pyramids were built nine seconds ago. The Roman Empire fell three seconds ago. Columbus discovered America one second ago.”
Pretty stunning isn’t it when our existence is shown relative to when the universe is believed to have come into being? The 13.7 billion years assumes a whole different frame of reference.
I have cited only a small portion of Green’s article. The entire article is well worth reading!
Tags: age of the universe, Alexander Green, Arno Penzias, Bell Laboratories, Big Bang, Carl Sagan, Coming of age in the Milky Way, Cosmic Calendar, Edwin Hubble, Hubble's Law, Isaac Asimov, origin of the universe, Robert Wilson
My final entry for this year as 2009 draws to an end – and what a year it has been. These are some random thoughts – mostly personal – about the year that will pass into history in just over a couple of hours.
We saw the inauguration of the first African American president of the US and that was something that I did not expect to see in my lifetime. It was a presidency that most of us who voted for him had the highest of hopes and expectations which at this point remains unrealized for the most part.
We came to the brink of a financial cataclysm where the entire world’s financial system was on the verge of collapse with a second great depression as a possible consequence.
Amidst the financial carnage that has affected so many Americans when it comes to their savings, retirement funds or their jobs, I feel greatly blessed that we have come out of it relatively unscathed.
We spent a month in China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau – one of the more memorable vacations we have had and about which I have posted elsewhere on this blog.
Our stay in Hong Kong gave us a chance to become acquainted with my relative Thomas Abraham’s wife – Rebecca – and family, although he was unfortunately in Geneva at the time of our visit. We were also able to renew our association with Shanthan and family – after a break of several years – who hosted us in Beijing where he is on assignment.
Mini, after working part time for several years, retired at the end of last year and seems to be thoroughly enjoying her retirement.
I started this blog earlier this year when we were doing our winter sojourn in Kerala. I have been able to keep the postings to a couple on most weeks. It seems to bear out what several people who know me well have said: namely, that I seem to be more comfortable and communicative when it comes to the net than in person. Not sure that is entirely true but who am I to argue!
We have stayed In relative good health and for that we feel blessed especially given the realization that it has enabled us to stay active and mobile.
My children are doing well both personally and with regard to their respective occupations. What more can any parent ask for when it comes to the welfare of their offspring?
I have been particularly fortunate to have my three children now living close to me with the relocation of Neeta to Virginia from California. Her move was quite unexpected and has worked out well for her – she enjoys the support systems of having family close by. One of the routines that has occurred with Neeta’s move – which started out almost casually – is a weekly lunch that I do with one or both of my daughters.
My grandchildren are a source of joy and pride. I can’t believe how fast they are growing. The notion that my grandson, DJ, is now in the same middle school that Amit was just a few years ago and will be actually testing for entrance into the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is almost difficult to conceive.
I recently posted that Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday of the year. We are now into the Christmas holiday season and I would have to say it ranks low on my list of favored holidays. This is all the more surprising because when I was growing up in Kenya, Christmas was a holiday that I looked forward to and of which I have joyous memories.
Of course, Christmas in Kenya was very different from that in the West and especially in the US. The holiday in Kenya was a family occasion and it was a time for going to church, carol singing, perhaps a nativity play, lots of great food on Christmas day when my mother would cook one of her famous biriyanis and we would invite a few close friends. Gift giving was almost a non-event and only very young children received gifts from “Father Christmas” – the Kenyan/Indian version of Santa Claus. Typically, not long after kids reached an age when they realized that there was no Father Christmas, gift giving at Christmas came to a halt and thereafter the only special occasion when kids would get gifts was on a birthday.
I recall the family receiving lots and lots of Christmas cards and the ones we received and sent had a distinctly religious slant since there was none of today’s politically correct view that Christmas cards should be non-religious – to suit the sensitivities of non-Christian recipients. There were so many cards received that after space on top of cabinets and other such locations was filled, they would then be stuck on a wall! The main rooms in the house would be decorated with streamers which really was the only type of affordable decoration available. There was no Christmas tree – after all, evergreens were not available in Kenya and there was no other tree that could take the place of the conventional Christmas tree in the West. If there were artificial Christmas trees available, I never saw one.
We were in a neighborhood where there were lots of other Indians residing – most of whom were Hindus. We would send food such as fruit cake (referred to as Christmas cake) and other culinary delights to some of the Hindu neighbors and friends – a reciprocation for the many North Indian sweets like ladoos, gulab jamun, jalebi, padas, etc that we received from them at Diwali. The baking of the Christmas cake was itself a family event. It was in the days before we had any mechanical devices to mix the cake batter and so we kids and our mother all took turns to mix the ingredients in a bowl until she decided that it was suitably mixed. It was a long, tedious process but the reward for the kids was being able to lick the batter that remained in the bowl after almost all of it had been put into baking pans!
Attending church on Christmas eve or Christmas day was an imperative and the entire family would attend church together. We went to an Anglican church in Mombasa – the equivalent of the Episcopalian church in the US. Most of the congregation was made up of Europeans – a term in Kenya that was used to describe any white person irrespective of their country of origin. In fact, most of the “Europeans” were, in fact, British since Kenya was then still a colony of the UK.
We dressed up in our finest and my most vivid memory of one of the services was my father – who was totally tone deaf – singing Christmas carols with gusto. He usually did not sing any of the hymns during regular services or if he did it was limited to just a very few hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers” which was a hymn that he liked. But when it came to Christmas carols, he took a very different view …… it had nothing to do with his familiarity with the carols as much as his desire to get into the spirit of Christmas!
I voted for Barack Obama in the presidential election – a vote that was predicated on the policy positions he enunciated as well as his charisma and his life history.
The criticisms leveled at him by Republicans that he lacked the experience with a resume that was just too thin to be president had merit but after the disastrous presidency of George W Bush and a Republican controlled Congress that went along with all of W’s hare-brained ideas, I felt that anything would be better than what we had gone through for the prior eight years. It was a point of view that gathered additional reinforcement after John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his nominee for vice president – someone singularly unqualified to be president – although I liked McCain himself and felt that he could have been a good president.
Fast forward one year and I will admit to my mounting disappointment at Obama’s performance. As I look back at his accomplishments over the past year I must say that he has accomplished remarkably little. His greatest accomplishment has been in reversing the hostility with which the US was regarded in much of the world under Bush with his bullying tactics and his “my way or the highway” attitude.
Obama recently, in an interview with Oprah, gave himself a solid B+ in terms of his performance during his first year in office. I think he is being overly generous – I would give him an “I” or “incomplete”. Most of his major initiatives have been either stuck in Congress or have been compromised to a point where it bears no resemblance to what Obama said that he wanted to accomplish. This holds true whether it is climate/global warming, reform of the financial system and now with healthcare reform. I am not even going to cite the economy and the jobless rate given that Obama inherited a gargantuan mess with a financial system that was in a state of near meltdown and he has had only one year to undo the damage that he inherited.
Well, we are back from our 12 night cruise during which we visited St Thomas, St Croix, St Kitts, Antigua and San Maarten. It was wonderful, relaxing and met all of our expectations, for the most part.
A few months ago, I wrote about having experienced a mzee moment in Singapore. Once again, the term “mzee” is a Swahili term that literally means “old man” but is used as much as a term of respect as a reference to chronological age. Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, was universally referred to as “mzee” – a term of affection and respect associated with his age and wisdom, since the acquisition of wisdom is associated with age in Kenya as in much of the East!
Well, on this cruise, there were no “mzee”moments – in fact compared to most of the passengers, we felt positively young! Over half the passengers were in their 70s’ and 80s’ and there were a sprinkling of passengers in their 90s’! The rest of the passengers were in their 60s’ and 50s’ and then there were an assortment in their 40s’ and 30s’ – and very few any younger! A reflection of the timing of the cruise when schools were closed and so the people cruising were retirees or vacationers.
I have never seen so many people in wheel chairs and using walking sticks. It was positive in the sense that despite limitations on mobility, these were people who still were able to go out and enjoy themselves as opposed to being home-bound. A big difference with India and many other countries, where being disabled would severely limit one’s mobility. The staff were very attentive to the needs of these passengers and went out of their way to make them comfortable.
We met a number of interesting and very nice people on the cruise – and a few not so nice people. Most of the passengers were Americans with a few Brits and Europeans. There was only one other Indian couple from Virginia who seemed reluctant to socialize with us for whatever reason. Among the Americans, the only time we felt less than welcome was with the much older people who I suspect had limited involvement with minority Americans and were therefore perhaps inhibited in dealing with us. But those who had any degree of interaction with a more diverse group were quite warm and friendly.
I tried to stay away from political discussions such as with the older lady from Western Pennsylvania who told me that she did not trust Obama right from the start even when he was running for office – and her suspicions were now confirmed since Obama had appointed all these “radicals” within his administration. Pennsylvania is viewed as leaning Democratic in most elections but one needs to remember that western and central Pennsylvania are very conservative – after all, Pennsylvania has been referred to as being Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the West and Alabama in the middle when it comes to its political make-up! I have been told that there are people in Western Pennsylvania who still have confederate flags as bumper stickers on their trucks together with gun racks! She must have gathered that I was not in agreement since I changed the subject and moved on to other areas less controversial – like which cruise lines she liked!
We are off on a 12 night Caribbean cruise starting tomorrow so this will likely be the last entry on this blog until our return.
We both love cruises and now that we are retired we have the flexibility, within reason, to go for one as and when we please. This flexibility gives us the opportunity to take advantage of pricing which is usually a lot less during certain times of the year.
People either love cruises or they just don’t like them. We obviously fall in the first group and find cruises to be relaxing, love the ocean around us, enjoy the usually excellent food, the entertainment that is available after dinner, the flexibility to either laze around or to be involved in various activities and the opportunity to go to different places with the minimum of effort. One occasionally meets interesting people – and if one is fortunate enough to have some interesting company at the table one is assigned for dinner then it adds yet another dimension to the cruising experience. What cruises don’t offer is the chance to do some in depth exploration at ports of call since one is typically at each port for just one day.
We thought that we were experienced cruisers having been on ten prior cruises but veteran cruisers have been on dozens of them. In fact, on a cruise that we went on about two years ago we ran into a couple who had been on 97 cruises as of that time! As they put it, where can one have all accommodation, gourmet meals, room service, entertainment and transportation included at the fraction of the price it would entail if one were to try and do the same thing on land!
Our last two cruises have been with my brother, Peter and his wife, Shiny – and the one earlier this year included his children and our son, Amit. So that made for a lot of company and a lot of fun. So this will be a more subdued affair in comparison.
Thanksgiving is, without a doubt, my favorite holiday of the year. It has all of the elements that I find most desirable – a time to gather with family and extended family, lots of good food and fun. Most importantly from my standpoint, it has not been commercialized the way Christmas has in much of the West with the focus being on gift-giving and shopping. In the case of Thanksgiving the only shopping that one does is buying groceries for the dinner.
Wikipedia says: “Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival celebrated primarily in Canada and the United States. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general. While perhaps religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday.”
There is really no equivalent holiday in India to Thanksgiving – perhaps, Onam which is a huge holiday in Kerala has some of the spirit of Thanksgiving though the similarities are limited.
We are hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year and will have around 28 people – most are family or extended family and a couple of friends. It is the one function that over the years – when we have hosted it – we have insisted should be done as far as possible in the traditional American way in terms of the cuisine. Yes, there will be the obligatory couple of items which have an Indian flavor but the dominant theme will be American with turkey, stuffing, beans casserole, corn casserole, pumpkin pie, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, etc.
I have to give full credit for the idea of making Thanksgiving traditional occasion to a friend from Chicago where we then lived – Thomas Idichandy, who was then a relatively recent immigrant from India. He was from Kerala and they were a fairly traditional Indian family. We spent our second Thanksgiving in the US – in 1972 – with them and I expected dinner to be Indian fare with a biriyani and other similar items with perhaps the obligatory turkey. I was surprised to find it was nothing like that – and was as traditional as you would find at any American home. Idichandy said the reason that he was insistent on keeping it traditional was primarily for the sake of his two very young children who had just started school. It is usual here for young children to be asked at school as to how they celebrated Thanksgiving and he felt that it would be unfair to his kids to have to listen to other kids talk about the traditional Thanksgiving that they celebrated and feel like the odd ones out in not being able to relate if they were eating Indian cuisine.
We then had one child – Saira – who was then two years old and as time went by, I felt that he had a legitimate point. This was our rationale as well – though as time went by and the kids grew up, it seemed like a good idea, in any event, to follow American tradition with regard to this one holiday. After all, we eat Indian food most of the year – so it makes for a pleasant change! Besides, cooking the traditional Thanksgiving with all of the fixins’ is still a lot less work than preparing Indian food for a similar celebration.
I am personally in charge of the turkey, mashed potatoes and a surprise dish which I have previously cooked and has been well received. It is not typical Thanksgiving fare by any means but it introduces a little variety to the dinner! I recommend this recipe to anyone who wants to try something different. As you can see it has great reviews.
A dinner for 28 people is a huge undertaking but all of those attending are helping out so it becomes manageable.
So have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone – and in the spirit of the season I would urge you to send a card in support of our troops. Irrespective of one’s views about the wisdom of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or US foreign policy, I think we can all agree that our troops – who are, after all, following orders – deserve our support, especially at this time of the year when they are away from their families.
When Sarah Palin was selected by John McCain as his running mate, I was intrigued by the choice. On a personal level, I felt that her decision to give birth to a baby with full knowledge that he had Down’s Syndrome, was an act of grace and courage – and I admired her for it. I still do so. But I became quickly disillusioned as to her preparedness to be president if the circumstances ever warranted it.
As I watched the Sarah Palin appearance on Oprah and other shows it felt, as Yogi Berra would say, “like deja vu all over again”! On the one hand, I am able to understand her appeal to a sizable minority in the US. There is something refreshingly candid and genuine about her – unlike the typical politician’s scripted responses. Having said this, there was little about her responses on the various shows to persuade me that she has grown in the months subsequent to the presidential election and has the knowledge and understanding of complex issues to be president.
In fact, what came across was her tendency to resort to platitudes in her responses to complex issues. It is a source of puzzlement to me that according to a recent Washington Post/ABC poll, 46% of Americans would either definitely support her or would consider voting for Palin to be president. Also 43% have a favorable opinion of her. It is stunning to me after the presidency of George W, who even his supporters would acknowledge lacked intellectual curiosity and depth, would be willing to entrust the country to someone who makes Bush look like an intellectual giant.
I was an admirer of John McCain who I felt was a genuine American hero and a patriot and was someone who did not hold on to positions based purely on ideology. I felt that I could vote for him for president but all of that went up in smoke when he selected Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee. In the first major decision that he made as a presidential candidate he selected a person who he must have known was utterly unqualified to be president – and the fact that McCain was over 70 years old made the selection all the more inexplicable.
In 1994, we were living in Southern California when the Northridge earthquake occurred. It was 6.8 on the Richter scale and took place in the early hours of the morning while we were asleep. Our house literally shook for what seemed an eternity but was actually less than a minute. It felt like King Kong had grabbed hold of the house and was literally shaking it! Our house was probably about 7 miles – as the crow flies – from the epi-center.
Several days later I was in a discussion with an associate at the company where I worked. He was a Californian – born and bred – and I told him that given what we had experienced, I could not imagine what it would be when “the big one” would strike. “The big one”, in the parlance of California, was the quake which seismologists have predicted will hit California sooner or later and would be in the magnitude of somewhere between 8 and 9 on the Richter scale. He told me something that has stuck with me ever since. He dismissed the talk about the so called “big one”, not as to whether it would happen or not but in the context of what it really means. He said that for the people who lived at or near the epi-center of the Northridge earthquake, that quake was “the big one”. It did not matter to those people if a much larger quake were to occur elsewhere several hundred miles away from where they lived – even if that was generally accepted as “the real big one”.
All of the above came to mind in the context of the controversy that has erupted in the US over changes recommended in breast cancer screening for women through the use of mammograms and self-examinations. After years during which it was recommended that women over the age of 40 years should be screened annually for breast cancer through mammograms, a task force has recommended that women over the age of 40 years don’t need to be screened unless they fall into a high-risk group and that the self-examination is not needed. After the age of 50 years, bi-annual mammograms are recommended.
If anyone wants an example of how rationing in health care works, the following excerpt from this article provides it in spades:
“Statistics from the National Cancer Institute show that the risk a woman of 40 will be diagnosed with breast cancer before she turns 50 is relatively low – less than 2 percent. But the false positive rate for those same women is relatively high – 50 percent higher than women in their 50s.
And those women are likely to undergo further, more expensive, procedures — only to find out they are, in fact, healthy.
“Although screening every woman between the ages of 40 and 50 would turn up some breast cancer…the question is what is the cost per diagnosis per relevant harm,” said Marmor.
If that calculus sounds cold, it shouldn’t. That kind of cost-benefit analysis is, in fact, already routine in the health insurance industry.
“The question is going to be, between the ages of 40 and 50, what is the frequency with which you are going to find a true positive cancer finding, how many cases would we miss, how many of those cases would develop into cancer and what is it going to cost to treat them,” said Ian Duncan, president of Solucia, a company that provides actuarial health care analysis for insurers.”
I posted a few weeks ago about North Carolina’s plan to require higher health care premiums from state employees who are obese – a proposal that generated criticism especially from those who felt that reversing obesity was more appropriately done through education.
The “tea-party” crowd and Republicans who are so up in arms about various policies espoused by Barack Obama and the Democrat controlled Congress and especially health care reform should be glad that they don’t live in Japan. I say this because Japan is the only nation that has decided to mandate the waist size for men and women!
In an effort to combat obesity and the corresponding impact on rising health care costs, Japan has legislated that, after the age of 40 years, men must have a waist size of not more than 33.5″ and women must have a waist size of 35.4″. This is all the more remarkable in that Japan has a minimal problem with obesity, as evident in the chart shown below (courtesy of OECD) – only 3% of the population has a BMI greater than 30:
Incidentally, take a look at where the US ranks when it comes to obesity compared to other countries, with over 32% of the population with a BMI over 30!
The program in Japan, which aims to cut down on metabolic syndrome, a leading indicator for heart disease and diabetes, has been controversial and critics feel the thrust of the program is not scientifically well grounded. Some of the supporters say that Japan is being pro-active and addressing the problem before it gets out of hand. Japan like other countries is faced with the problem of rising healthcare costs for the aged – and this is an attempt to address a major factor in wellness care.
Barack Obama has probably appointed more Indian-Americans to positions in his administration than any former president. They range from Kal Penn whose role is as a liason to the Asian-American community to Vivek Kundra who is Federal Chief Information Officer. But there are several others and they are listed in this article in the Hindustan Times.
But the one that caught my attention is Vinay Thummalapally who was appointed to the post of the US ambassador to Belize.
I have to admit that I had never heard of Thummalapally. It turns out that Vinai K. Thummalapally was the President of MAM-A Inc., formerly Mitsui Advanced Media, the nation’s leading manufacturer and distributor of archival recordable optical discs. He is
originally from Hyderabad and moved to the U.S. in 1974 to pursue his engineering studies. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from California State University in 1977 and completed post graduate Business Administration courses at California State University in 1980 and the University of Tennessee in 1995.
What drew my attention to Thummalapally was an article “Nothing better than a plum ambassadorship” by Melvin Durai which appeared in Indolink. It is well written and funny especially to anyone who is familiar with the Indian/US slant. It also shows that some things never change – like how ambassadorships are awarded under different administrations. Here is the article:
“Barack Obama promised to bring change to Washington, but did you see whom he selected as ambassador to Belize? His old college buddy Vinai Thummalapally!
The folks in Belize had better give me a call. For only $9.99, I’ll help them learn how to say “Ambassador Thummalapally.”
Thummalapally, in case you’re wondering, has no experience as a diplomat, but he did pass Obama’s foreign service exam, which consisted of a single question: “How much money did you raise for me, bro?”
Any insurance is, by definition, discriminatory since premiums are based on actuarial determinations of risk. For example, life insurance premiums are higher for men than for women because the life expectancy of the former is less than the latter. People who are engaged in high-risk activities such as mountain climbing are also subject to higher premiums or denial of life insurance coverage. Similarly, teenagers pay considerably more for car insurance than do adults because they are a higher risk group when it comes to accident claims. Someone with prior accidents or moving violations usually pays a higher premium for car insurance than someone who is accident free.
The question that arises is whether there are certain types of “risk” that should not be subjected to higher premiums. When I was a student in England in the sixties, I paid almost double the premium for car insurance because I was an immigrant, from a “developing country” or “under-developed country”, who had no driving experience in the UK – a person born in the UK or an immigrant from a “developed country” would however not be subject to a higher premium. I was told categorically by insurance agents that because immigrants, from “developing countries” are not familiar with road conditions in the UK they are viewed as high risk and so insurance companies either do not insure them or demand a much higher premium! However, the way the policy was structured, essentially it was “people of color” who paid the higher premiums. I was upset at the time though upon reflection, if there was actuarial evidence to show that immigrants were, in fact, prone to more accidents, I guess one could argue that it is a legitimate risk factor to be taken into account in determining a premium.
I watched the “balloon boy” live and was glued to the TV, like many others, while the balloon that the world thought was carrying an endangered six year old drifted several thousand feet in the air. The balloon floated around Colorado, at a height of up to 7000 feet, for over two hours and finally landed on a field ………. but there was no kid. Since then we know that it was a hoax and “balloon boy’s” parents were just trying to generate publicity with the goal of getting their own reality show.
What I did not realize was that 17 years ago in 1982 we had another incident in which “Lawnchair Larry” actually “took off” using helium ballloons – and what he did was no hoax. The far-fetched but true story came about because Larry Walters, a California truck driver, had this dream of ascending above ground in a contraption of his own making using helium balloons. What transpired was something that went well beyond his wildest imagination and was to become a legend of sorts!
The contraption that Larry used was to hold him in position while the balloons took him up was a lawn chair! Larry’s intention was to ascend to a modest height of about 40 feet – but the best laid plans sometimes go wrong and he ascended to a height of 16,000 feet! In the process, he caused consternation as he floated into the air corridors of Los Angeles Airport!
Larry had apparently dreamed of flying but his poor eyesight prevented him from joining the Air Force as a pilot. So Larry did the next best thing – he tied himself to a lawn chair and with the aid of helium balloons took off!
One of the most effective ways to deal with an adversary or to make a point, is with a quick-witted response or come-back. Some people are exceptionally talented when it comes to such rejoinders or retorts. The best of these involve brevity and pointedness and it is this combination that makes for their effectiveness. Here are a few that I found on the net as I prepared this post. Some I was familiar with and others were new to me:
John Montagu, also known as the Earl of Sandwich, and the reformist politician, John Wilkes had a long-standing rivalry. During a heated argument, Montagu scowled at Wilkes and said derisively, “Upon my soul, Wilkes, I don’t know whether you’ll die upon the gallows, or of syphilis”. Unfazed, Wilkes came back with what many regard as the greatest retort of all time: “That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles, or your mistress.”
Winston Churchill & Lady Astor were constantly feuding: One one occasion she said, “If you were my husband I’d give you poison.” He said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
Lewis Morris, a poet, complained to Oscar Wilde: “It is a conspiracy of silence against me – a conspiracy of silence. What should I do?” Oscar Wilde who was not overly impressed with Morris’ poetry said: “Join it.”
George Bernard Shaw sent a message to Winston Churchill: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend – if you have one.” Churchill responded “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend second – if there is one.”
Tags: ashton kutcher, astor, demi moore, gandhi, george bernard shaw, John XXIII, mae west, marc connelly, montagu, oscar wilde, rejoinders, retorts, truman capote, wc fields, wilkes, winston churchill
I was talking to a couple of people this week and the subject came up about aging and how the topics of our conversation changes as we get older. We seem to emphasize certain areas that were never a subject for discussion in years gone by.
One conversation was with my sister, Fifi, who lives in Australia. We asked each other about our well-being as far as it concerns our health. She remarked about how when she conversed with our older sibling, the conversation invariably seemed to veer into issues pertaining to health even though neither has any health issues of major consequence. I realized that I tend to do the same with others of my generation. Now this is not to convey the impression that this is all that we talk about but there is no question that health issues and how we can stay well does seem to feature in our conversations.
I wonder whether this is merely a function of aging or whether it has to do with the fact that those of us who live in the West are particularly conscious of health issues given the culture that exists here of emphasizing wellness and how one can stay healthy.
Now there are some interesting variations that arise as a result of this tendency to talk about age and health issues.
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Let me start by saying that I voted for Barack Obama but I feel the Nobel Peace prize award to President Obama was premature. He has not done enough during his nine months in office to justify the award. Sure, he has proclaimed some noble goals and has made a concerted attempt to integrate the US into the world community after the eight years under Bush when the attitude was “my way or the highway” – to use an American expression.
But what is unseemly to the point of being totally bizarre is the spectacle of right-wing wackos in the US condemning the award to an AMERICAN president! This comes on top of the scenes of cheering by right-wingers when the International Olympic Committee announced that Chicago had been eliminated as a potential venue in 2016 in the first round. Imagine Americans cheering the decision that the Olympics were not going to take place in the US!
Much of this vitriol is directed against Obama who made a pitch for the games to be held in Chicago – his hometown. A loss for Obama is now viewed as more desirable than a victory for the US by the right-wing nuts. Equally offensive is the notion that the award of the Peace prize to Obama is considered so repugnant to this fringe group within the Republican party, that condemnation of the award takes precedence over any sense of pride that an American won the award!
Previous recipients of the Peace prize have occasionally been controversial and it has not always been based on true accomplishments. Consider the award made to Arafat, Peres and Rabin – it was an award based on hope more than real accomplishments. Henry Kissinger and Lee Duc Tho were awarded the prize based on a peace agreement between the US, South Vietnam and North Vietnam -even though it turned out to be a very tentative peace since the North over-ran the South subsequently – not to mention the involvement of Kissinger in other highly controversial policies with regard to Cambodia and Argentina. Menachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel, shared the award with Anwar Sadat, although Begin was the head of Irgun – a Zionist terrorist group – that was responsible for the bombing of King David hotel in which many civilians were killed.
This site has a list of some of the more controversial prior winnners.
One of the most glaring omissions in the award of the prize was as it pertained to Mahatma Gandhi.
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Anyone who has been unhappy in a job and then resigned has probably wondered just how candid one should be in that final parting communication. Usually one decides to hold back on being too honest about the frustrations encountered while working at a company if for no other reason than not burning one’s bridges. After all, one might need a reference in a future job and so discretion is the better part of valor when it comes to that final missive!
At the same time one can understand the frustration of Cian Kelliher, who worked at the Dublin office of the Ernst & Young and felt the need to unload before he finally left. He never realized that his email sent to his colleagues outlining his grievances about his supervisors and colleagues would become known throughout the world thanks to the internet. It was so widespread that under pressure from E&Y, Kelliher did a mea culpa of sorts though it appears less than convincing. His original communication, however, clearly smacks of a certain level of genuine frustration during his tenure with his employer.
So what did Kelliher’s email contain that would cause such consternation? Well, here is it is verbatim:
I first heard of “The Big Texan” when I first arrived in the US and was working for Blue Cross/ Blue Shield in Chicago. I was 25 years old and one of the “old-timers” told me of a restaurant in Texas which served a humongous steak – and the best part of it was that it was FREE if one could eat it in an hour with the usual trimmings! At the time I had an appetite which was impressive by almost any standard and I was confident I could accomplish it – but Texas seemed a long way to go for a free steak no matter what the size!
I know that I could not do it today – age and other factors have taken its toll on my capacity to eat. Today I share an entree and appetizer with Mini and it satisfies both our appetites! So you young ‘uns take full advantage of your capacity to eat because I assure you, it will not last!
But I digress – the steak is still being served at “The Big Texan” in Amarillo, Texas. If you can eat a 72 ounce steak, plus a shrimp cocktail, baked potato, salad and dinner roll in an hour, it is free! You have to pay for the meal in advance – $70 – and it is refunded to you if you can actually accomplish the feat. When the restaurant first opened in the 60s’ the steak was less than $10!
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It was Euripedes who said: “Those whom the Gods seek to destroy they first make mad.”
It is a quotation that seems appropo as one sees the far right-wing in the US getting increasingly unhinged. Having lived in the US for almost 38 years, I have never come across a time when things were as polarized as they are today. Even during the sixties and early seventies when the country was undergoing massive social and political upheavals as a result of the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam culminating in the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, there seemed to be a greater semblance of sanity than exists today.
Gun sales in the US have gone through the roof – a result of the belief that Obama will seek to limit the ownership of guns and the conviction by fringe groups that the country is reaching a point when there will be an armed insurrection and citizens will need to be armed to protect themselves and the US as they knew it. Not only have gun sales reached record levels but apparently sales of ammunition are so huge that ammo is actually difficult to acquire because shops don’t have adequate inventories!
Then we have gold – the investment of last resort – at close to record prices with spot gold at over $1000 per ounce. What is more is that it is now difficult to actually acquire gold coins and if one is able to get them it is necessary to pay a premium of over $100 per ounce over the spot price. Again, the reason for the demand for gold is related to the belief that the economic system in the US and around the world is reaching a point of collapse where all paper money – including the dollar – will be worthless and inflation will be rampant making the the US currency analogous to that of the Weimar Republic or even Zimbabwe.
Some of these extreme reactions are the result of Barack Obama, an African-American, being elected president. We also have animosity resulting from a decisive victory by the Democrats resulting in the presidency, the Senate and the House being controlled by the Democrats. There was a similar hostility to Bill Clinton during the 90s’ when he was president with relentless attacks on him.
But what is different this go around, is the intensity of the opposition to Obama and the various conspiracy theories that are making the rounds which essentially claim that the US constitution is being subverted and what is being substituted is everything ranging from socialism or Marxism to the institution of a world government. These are claims by fringe right-wing groups – but the distressing thing is that the mainstream Republican leadership are not willing to take on these wackos and dissociate themselves from these outlandish claims and allegations.
Now we have a reached a new low: a right-wing publication, NewsMax, actually published an online column by John Perry suggesting that a bloodless military coup could be on the cards in the US to overthrow the Obama administration!
Max is our 2 1/2 year old German Shepherd dog – we have had him since he was a puppy. We also have Kaya – another GSD. Kaya belongs to Richard & Saira but we have been taking care of her since May when we returned from our sojourn in India & Asia. We have, what Saira describes as, a “joint custody arrangement” since for about four months of the year Max & Kaya reside with them while we are out of the country and when we return to the US, we assume “custody” unless we are out of town town. We try and keep them together because we feel that it would be cruel to separate them.
I have always liked animals – after all, I wanted to be a vet when I was a child. Dogs are for me the ultimate embodiment of an animal that provides unconditional love and loyalty. Dogs are almost universally loved in the West. I remember when I first went to England from Kenya I felt that, at times, the average Britisher seemed more concerned about animals, and dogs in particular, than their fellow-humans.
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