Category: Random Draws

Keeping the US afloat

They say that if you owe the bank $1,000 you cannot repay, you are in trouble; but if you owe the bank $1 billion and you cannot repay, the bank is in trouble.

Think of the rest of the world’s central banks who hold dollar reserves as the bank and the US as the creditor who is in danger of defaulting. It puts the US in a very interesting position — it can take a lot of folks down if it starts to drown. The rest have a very good incentive to keep the US afloat.
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The Large Hadron Collider at CERN

Now for some smashing news. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will be firing up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It will happen at 1 PM (IST) on Wednesday.

The first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC will be made on 10 September at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV). This historical event will be webcast through http://webcast.cern.ch, and distributed through the Eurovision network. See http://www.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam for further details.

[Via Cosmic Variance.]

Watch a documentary on the LHC on the History Channel.

After 40 years of planning and construction, the biggest science experiment in history is ready to be tested. The “Large Hadron Collider” is an experiment created by the greatest minds in physics. It cost $10 billion and its resulting data has the potential to explain why we and the Universe exist. Their idea is to smash protons towards one another at the speed of light, trying to mimic what happened in the milliseconds after The Big Bang. Viewers will go on an amazing journey involving the struggles to plan and build the LHC, how it was constructed and what are its mechanics. Explore the future of what’s possible through the geniuses of today. [The History Channel]

For some absolutely stunning pictures (27 of them), go to boston.com’s The Big Picture.

To get a quick tutorial on how a particle accelerator works, play the LHC game. (Click on English, then click on the green arrow, the click on 1, 2, 3, etc.)

Of product and process innovation

From pillar to post

Michael Palin, of the Monty Python parrot skit fame (remember “he’s probably pining for the fjords”?), went on another of his global tours in 1991, which was broadcast as the BBC travel documentary from Pole to Pole in 1992. Heading south from the North pole (well, whichever way you go from the North pole, you are headed south) along longitude 30 degrees east, he visited the Soviet Union shortly before it all came crumbling down. There are lots of theories about why it collapsed. I am only guessing that there must be since I have not read much in that area. However, that does not stop me from advancing my own theory. Wild conjecture it is not, however. It has to do with something that was illustrated in an encounter that Michael had in Moscow.
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Italy is minding its business

The Acorn says that “Italy should mind its own business.” It appears that the Italian foreign minister intends to lodge a protest with the Indian ambassador to Italy about the recent violence in Orissa — “to demand ‘incisive action’ to prevent further attacks against Christians that have left 11 people dead in India so far.”
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Common Sense

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Thanks to you all who wrote to ask why the hiatus in blogging. I was very busy with reading and thinking. The problem apparently is that I can either write or I can think — but not both at the same time 🙂

Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, is what kept me busy. Reading Paine is an intellectual delight for me because I keep marveling how closely my ideas mirror his. I was hooked from the first line in the introduction to the pamphlet: Continue reading “Common Sense”

Love Letters from Grampa

Thanks to the greatest invention of humankind, I came across the work of one grandpa through his blog “The Zen of Zero,” a couple of months ago. Who is he?
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Earthquake in Pune

This morning around 12:40 AM, I am sure there was an earthquake around Pune — the building shook for about 10 seconds. Having lived for decades in the San Francisco Bay area, on and around dozens of faults (San Andreas, Hayward, etc) and having been through dozens of quakes, including one of the biggest (the Loma Prieta in 1989), a little shake like that does not evoke much of a reaction. It is all ho-hum stuff.

I could find no reference to any earthquake in the news on the web. Perhaps some local Pune paper would. But did find an item in the BBC: Quake rocks Southern California. Good. Magnitude 5.4. What time? Not reported. Or even which date? Nope. The BBC report neglects to mention such minor details. Very disappointing bit of reporting. I wrote to the BBC. Let’s see if they fix it.

In Chennai for a CSR Event

I don’t think that I have ever had a more hassle-free flight ever than the one that I had last night. I left home around 9:45 after dinner. It was drizzling a bit. (Thanks, Raj, for the ride.) At 10:15 I was at the Spicejet counter and got a printout of the e-ticket. Was the flight on time, I asked. “It is before time,” I was told. By 10:25, I had a boarding pass and had gone through security. At 10:30, I was on board the flight. I have never ever gone from the kerb to my seat on a plane in 15 minutes.
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