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Barack Obama & Vinay Thummalapally
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…
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Should a “fat tax” be part of health care reform?
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…
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Before “Balloon Boy” there was “Lawnchair Larry”
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…
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Repartees, rejoinders and retorts
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,…
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Myriad thoughts on health and aging
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…
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Wombs for rent!
Move over techies – there is a new area in which India is achieving prominence in the area of outsourcing! Now this is not a field of outsourcing that we, as diasporan Indians living in our adopted homelands or those who live in India, would feel that we would want to brag about! But it does show a combination of resourcefulness, economic necessity and old fashioned entrepreneurship! So what is this new field? I don’t know if you will be as surprised as I was but it is in providing surrogacy services! Yes, Indian women are functioning as surrogate mothers for Western couples who want children. Why do they seek…
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Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize & Related Controversies
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…
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How not to resign from a job in the internet age
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…
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Don’t mess with Texas….. and maybe Britain!
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!…
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A military coup in the US?
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…
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A dog is a man’s best friend but……..
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…