Time for a kill

The world is topsy-turvey these days and it often feels that our lives are out of our control governed by unknown forces beyond our reach. A "Joseph K" feeling if you will. Then you hear of the latest hullabaloo over bonus payments from A.I.G. to the very group within the company that basically destroyed it and cost shareholders about $200 billion. At times like this I really miss some feral, third-world justice. People in the streets, being violant, being human, angry and expressing it. They say it is illegal to NOT give them the bonuses now because it was in the contract. Oh, the stifling respect for law and even more so to order. We don't need no order. We have too much of it. We need good, old  street-style beatings to discourage the execs from claiming bonuses. The answer to 'your money or your life' is such a welcome certainty in these times.

Oh well, we will all just watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and feel superior and move on with our stolid, inert lives.

Only 2 apps can run simultaneously

Windows 7 started edition will allow only two apps to be running on your machine simultaneously. Wow! Microsoft as finally reached a level of insanity that was hitherto reserved for...well, Microsoft!

Yes, the worlds leading favorite company has done it again. While the rest of the world is moving toward running many apps -- maybe in the 10s at times -- Microsoft Windows 7 started edition will allow only 2 apps to be running simultaneously. I cannot even believe this that is why I guess I got to write it twice. Where are we headed? Hopefully to a world without Microsoft.

Pay your taxes already!

So, that makes three people in the Obama administration who've had tax problems so far. Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer withdrew their nominations and Timothy Giethner went on ahead to become our treasury secretary anyway.

Politicians and tax avoidance seems to be go hand-in-hand with Wall St. execs and incompetence (with benefits) and homosexual Republican guy-bashers.

Democrats have had a particularly tough time lately. What with Rangel, Blagovich and now the tax-cheating trio.

From my perspective -- everyone cheats on their taxes. However, if you are going to try to become the treasury secretary or nation's health czar, does it not behoove you to have your minions run a check and confirm that everything is a-ok?

In other words -- it is not the corruption but the incompetence that these people should be punished for.

Oscar Wilde to close

Another casualty of the financial crises they say. No, I am not speaking of the venerable author but the bookstore in New York.

I distinctly remember year ago when I was new to this country I was wandering the steets aimlessly with Puja and we happened to see this tiny bookstore. Those were the days when I was really high on his writings, his aphorisms and mannerisms. I was blown away to see a bookstore in his name. I promptly entered and started looking at the books. It didn't take long before I realized that it wasn't exactly the kind of bookstore I was expecting. No, no clear homage to Oscar Wilde in celebration of his plays or his writings or hosting of other authors in the smililar vein. No. This was a bookstore specializing in guy and lesbian books. Now, I have precious little interest in those topics specially in those days and even now my interest remains spotty, not that there is anything inherently wrong with that genre. I sped out promptly from the store almost feeling cheated. I had gone to see one side of Wilde's personality and was reminded that it was the other side that was really of interest to folks in my new adopted country.

Every day and every trip is a lesson.

Well, just read this in the Times this morning that the bookstore is closing. It cannot survive in the current climate of economic collapse. People have stopped spending money and specially on exotic topics and even more so at exotic bookshops.

The 'closing time' continues...

"...Like riding a tiger..."

It is quite reassuring to note that on a complete collapse of business ethics the United States does not hold a monopoly. Satyam, India's "premium" outsourcing company has shown the world and specially the United States how spectacular corruption can be done that would make the world take notice (made a big-fat headline on WSJ -- I don't remember seeing one on Indian business before). The petty corruption that has plagued India for years and earned it a bad reputation among the industrial ("civilized" world) can finally take a back-seat. Mr. Ramalinga Raju has finally created some sort of competition for Bernard Madoff, who, probably couldn't have come up with a gem like...

It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten.

Very impressive indeed. 

"I want to make money..."

I don't think there is any political, commercial or moral corruption that would surprise me. However, I am still quite surprised (even shocked) by the amazing stupidity that once in a while surrounds corruption. Take the case of the Illinois governor. I mean how stupid do you have to be to sell, of all the seats in the world, the president-elect's seat? And that no -- no ordinary president-elect but the chosen one! Did not occur to him once that the media and the people will be over this replacement anyway? And then you take a hammer and swing it full-force right on to your tiny toe. Very sad -- not the corruption -- but the incompetence. If Mr. Blagojevich expects rewards for his gross incompetence then maybe he should've been heading a Wall St. bank and not a state.

“I’ve got this thing,” Mr. Blagojevich said on one recording, according to the affidavit, “and it’s [expletive] golden. And I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I’m not going to do it. And I can always use it. I can parachute me there.”

Mumbai massacre

There isn't anything that I have to say that probably hasn't been said before. I just want to make a note of an op-ed by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times today. While I am not a great fan of Friedman's often superficial hysteria, I think he gets it this time. He indicates what I think (It is hard to say for sure on these subjects) that fundamentalism is inherently a problem that will have to be solved from inside. No amount of surveillance, counter-violance or wars by outsiders are going to resolve it. People in whose midst terrorists grow -- whether they be the people from Karachi or Columbine -- will have to deal with their own devils.