Flightplan hits as well as misses

Filed in Uncategorized, October 22, 2005, 4:41 pm by

Flightplan manages to keep the suspense 2/3rds of the way and manages to keep you at the edge of your seat. Jodie Foster, as the mother looking for her child, absorbs you into her role as always. I thought the last part of the movie was pretty good as well. Priya Raju did not like that part. So I guess this is a mixed bag.

Drinking the Kool Aid

Filed in General Interest, October 20, 2005, 10:28 pm by

Ever wonder how this phrase came about?  Apparently, it is drawn from the “Jonestown Massacre” where people drank flavor-aid laced with potassium cyanide at the behest of the leader of the group Jim Jones. Flavor-aid was later replaced by the more familiar kool aid giving rise to the famous phrase. This and some more fascinating details on Kool Aid at the Wikipedia.

Visible and Invisible India

Filed in General Interest, October 19, 2005, 11:00 pm by

An eye-opening post by Madhukar. A must read. (Via Scian Melt #11 by Soumya of Shallow Thoughts. Her compilation includes links to other interesting posts as well). 

Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps

Filed in Uncategorized, October 18, 2005, 5:00 am by

The book “Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps” by Allan and Barbara Pease makes for a good read in that it has
some interesting factoids like how men (peak in their early 20s) and women (peak in their late 30s) achieve their sexual peaks at different points in their life and how it affects marital sex. The book loses it when it starts giving example after example on
how men and women are conditioned to do things they do due to their different brain wirings. All of these examples are supported by several scientific studies which support the authors’s views! (We all know how long-standing study results typically are). It seems as though most of the book has been devoted to providing justification upon justification for how men and women behave in western society. It does not talk about other cultures except for a brief mention of Tunisian men and women. Another big problem is that the authors try to explain every aspect
of man-woman behavior as a hold-over from our lives as hunter-gatherers living in caves. It as if we have not learnt anything in the 100,000 years that have elapsed since. The authors seem to suggest that we do what we do because of how we are wired and we should accept that and deal with it. I am not able to accept this notion because, we as human beings have a highly evolved learning capability and we need to continuously learn and become better. I am afraid that if we go by what the authors day, we will fall further behind in achieving gender equality. I don’t have to explain how much damage gender inequality has done to humanity or for that matter the damage
any kind of systemic inequality has wrought on us. References
1. Another unfavorable review.
2. Psychology Today seems to like it. I am amazed.

iPod/iTunes Video download needs Bittorrent support

Filed in Uncategorized, October 17, 2005, 1:00 am by

iPod Video has been released. David Pogue of NYTimes appreciates the  iPod Video business model. But Richard Siklos of NYTimes thinks that iPod Video is not ready for primetime. As for me, I shook my head, when Steve Jobs mentioned that one needs upto 20 min to download a single episode of  “Lost”.  Who is going to wait that long. Anyways, I started thinking, why doesn’t Apple start supporting BitTorrent by setting up a legitimate BitTorrent server and building the BitTorrent client into the iTunes client.  Given the installed base of the iTunes client, it would dramatically reduce the download time atleast for the popular episodes. Also, iTunes can become a  real rival to broadcast networks for distributing content. References:
1. Bob Cringely said a while back that Bit Torrent enabled downloading can replace broadcasting.
2.  Stinner wants BitTorrent support in iTunes but for podcasts.
3.  Make sure to read about the brilliant Bram Cohen – the creator of Bit Torrent.