1. "Mard ko dard nahin hota..."
2. "Why this kolaveri di?"
3. "Beta soja... Soja nahin to Gabbar Singh aa jayega..."
4. "You were not born yesterday. When will you learn that your parents know what is best for you?"
5. "When I was your age..."

 

 

“My weight has never been an issue, I’ve never hung out with the sort of horrible people who make it an issue.”

- Adele

I respect you for coming out and saying that. I've never heard you sing, but I hear you're really good at it. As a singer, that is all that should matter, right?

A lot of people think of you as a role model. Fine by me.

There is a big bad world of skinny people running around making fun of the very few fat people there are in America. Except that is grossly overstated. 

I've got no issues with someone being happy with the way they look. But what about the health implications, and shame on me, for talking about health.

64% of Americans are overweight or obese and the number has been rising. This is an enormous burden on the healthcare system in this country. 11% of those who are overweight (or obese) are in denial. Only 8% of people consider themselves extremely overweight. Isn't that a health problem? I'm not talking about the way someone looks. Shouldn't being fat be a health issue?

I'm not condoning forcing someone to be unhappy because of they way they look. I'm not saying anorexia isn't a problem. 2% of Americans face some sort of eating disorder and that IS a problem.

But tell me which is a bigger problem in this fat (and excuse me for not saying "overweight") country? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The quote above is translated from a news-story written by Anandabazar Patrika, the largest-selling Bangla newspaper in India. It is but one example from a news-story filled with gross exaggerations, rumormongering, doomsday analysis, and misstatements. For example, it is also stated in the same article that the National Oceanic and Administration was hoping that the hurricane would lose steam and become a Category 2 from a Category 1. (A Category 1 is weaker than a Category 2 but not in the hallowed halls of Anandabazar reportage).

That Anandabazar still is a newspaper my parents, in-laws, and most other relatives back in West Bengal read reflects the lack of a truly reliable vernacular press in the state. The other Bangla papers are not even worth being used as the toilet paper (as opposed to Anandabazar).

My wife and I live on the East Coast of the United States. So, understandably, when my mother read the "news" she thought the worst had happened- that a megahurricane never before seen in the likes of recorded history had rained down on us. She had good cause. In a 290 mile per hour hurricane as reported by the trusted reporters at Anandabazar, we'd all be dead. All structures would be flattened.

As far as I could determine, the most destructive hurricanes are Category 5 hurricanes which reach a maximum speed of 200 miles per hour. But those are very rare events and have never occurred on the East Coast of the United States since there have been records of hurricanes.

Will Anandabazar publish a correction? Have they ever? As a newspaper with a monopolistic hold on the people of a backward state, they can write whatever they want with impunty.

As long as it sells newspapers, what is a leetel distortion of the truth? Goebbels would approve.

____________________________

If you can read Bangla, do read the excerpt below.

আইরিনের গতিবেগ ঘণ্টায় সর্বাধিক ২৯০ মাইল পর্যন্ত হতে পারে বলে প্রাথমিক ভাবে জানিয়েছিল আবহাওয়া দফতর। যদিও কাল রাতে অতলান্তিকে সেটি ঘণ্টায় ৯০ মাইল বেগে অবস্থান করছিল। তবে কেপ লুকআউটে আছড়ে পড়ার পর আইরিন ধীরে ধীরে দুর্বল হচ্ছে বলে আবহবিদেরা জানিয়েছেন। তাঁদের আশা, ‘ক্যাটিগরি ওয়ান’ থেকে ‘ক্যাটিগরি টু’-তে নেমেও আসতে পারে আইরিন। কমতে পারে তার ভয়াবহতা।

চাবি

আমার কাছে এখনো পড়ে আছে

তোমার প্রিয় হারিয়ে যাওয়া চাবি

কেমন করে তোরঙ্গ আজ খোলো?

 

থুৎনি -পরে তিল তো তোমার আছে এখনও?

ও মন, নতুন দেশে যাবি?

চিঠি তোমার হঠাৎ লিখতে হলো...

 

চাবি তোমার পরম যত্নে কাছে

রেখেছিলাম, আজই সময় হলো

"লিখিও উহা ফেরৎ চাহো কিনা"

 

অবান্তর, স্মৃতির ভিতর আছে

তোমার মুখ অশ্রু-ঝলমল

"লিখিও উহা ফিরৎ চাহো কিনা"

- শক্তি চট্টোপাধ্যায়

 

Keys

I still have in my possession

Your precious, lost keys

How do you open that suitcase these days?

 

Do you still have that mole on your chin?

Wandering mind, will you go elsewhere?

I suddenly had to draft a letter...

 

I have kept very good care

Of the keys which you loved. Today I had time

"Kindly intimate whether or not you want returned"

 

Deep within absurd memories

Your tear-soaked face shines through

"Kindly intimate whether or not you want returned"

 

After many years, all of a sudden I remembered this poem by Shakti Chattopadhyay, one of my favorite Bengali poets.  I believe it was written in the early Seventies. The imperfect translation is completely off-the-cuff. My apologies if the feeling isn't appropriately conveyed.

 

[Sitting in the front passenger seat of a car]

Driver: Sir, we are out of the police checking area. No one checks seatbelt in the front seat here. You can open it now.
Me: OK. I think I'll keep the seatbelt though.
Driver: Arre, I am saying, na? No checking here. No need for seatbelt.
Me: I understand. But I'll keep wearing. I feel safer and you might hit the brake any moment or jump at a speed breaker. I feel better with the seatbelt.

[Long silence]

Driver: Sir, you have lived abroad many years, na? Why wear seatbelt if police will not check?

(with apologies to "The Beach Boys")

There is a lot of angst in India today. Shares of Infosys have fallen nearly 10% as they missed analyst expectations for top-line and bottom-line revenue generation this quarter. There is a management shakeup in the works.

Big deal. Companies miss analyst forecasts all the time. It might be, you could argue, a good opportunity to short-sell for a bit on the technicals and then buy on the fundamentals (if they're sound, I haven't looked).

Remarkably, read an analysis and a tweet in quick succession differing from the general positive consensus regarding the "Infy model".

An excerpt from the Steven Pearlstein column just published in the Washington Post on "what's holding India back from real growth:"

The problem for India is that it may not be able to rely on service-sector exports to sustain its growth. There is no likely scenario in which the demand for reservation agents and programmers — or India’s ability to supply them — can create the million jobs a month needed in a country of 1.2 billion where half the population is under 25. They can’t all work for Infosys.

Quite perceptive. The point here is that no one is picking on Infy as a company, though arguably it is a poster-boy (or bellwether, depending on your point of view) for the Indian IT services sector. The criticism isn't of Infy's business model either, which the numbers show has been wildly successful in a long time-horizon.

The criticism here is broader - the desire to sustain growth by scaling up the Infy model to the entire economy. Services-based growth worked for Singapore and Hong Kong. Can we scale up to India, though?

Food for thought. I'd write more but I have to go to work now. Do read the article and comment.

 

 

As far as I can tell, the order of explosions at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant went something like this: there was an explosion at Reactor Number 1, followed by Number 3, and then Number 2. There was then a blast at Number 4 which lead to a fire. The fire at Number 4 is likely causing spent nuclear fuel to be boiling which may cause further leakage of radioactive materials.

Kyodo reports:

TEPCO [Tokyo Electric Power Company] said the problem could develop into a critical ''meltdown'' situation, in which fuel rods melt and are destroyed, emitting massive radioactive materials in the air.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged people living between 20 and 30 kilometers of the plant to stay indoors, after radiation equivalent to 400 times the level to which people can safely be exposed in one year was detected near the No. 3 reactor in the plant.

Residents within a 20-km radius have already been ordered to vacate the area following Saturday's hydrogen blast at the plant's No. 1 reactor.

Further, despite pouring sea-water into Reactors 1,2, and 3 the fuel rods remain exposed. It is believed that these three reactors have experienced partial meltdown. To add insult to injury, the water temperatures around Reactors 5 and 6 seem to be rising as well. Things don't seem to be looking up at the moment.

Japanese Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, reported on the situation roughly twelve hours ago. Japan Times reports:

At 10:22 a.m., a radioactivity monitoring post near the No. 3 reactor showed 400 millisieverts per hour, 400 times the amount an ordinary person is exposed to in a year.

The figure was 100 millisieverts per hour near the No. 4 reactor and 30 millisieverts per hour between the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.

That brief spike of 400 milisieverts was the highest level reported and is enough to cause physical signs such as vomiting and local burns. To put this into perspective, an dosage of 100 milisieverts (1 mSv which also equals 10 rem) for a short period of time would result in an excess risk of death from cancer of 0.8%. I'm not sure about the statistical significance of this number, but a better rule of thumb is that exposure to 1000 milisieverts would increase the probability of death by cancer of 5%. Of course, no immediate deaths would result from this exposure.

As far away as Tokyo, increases in radiation were observed:

Radiation reached around 20 times normal levels in the capital Tuesday morning, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said, while offering the assurance this reading posed no immediate risk to human health and that the public should remain calm.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission puts all these numbers into perspective:

High radiation doses tend to kill cells, while low doses tend to damage or alter the genetic code (DNA) of irradiated cells. High doses can kill so many cells that tissues and organs are damaged immediately. This in turn may cause a rapid body response often called Acute Radiation Syndrome. The higher the radiation dose, the sooner the effects of radiation will appear, and the higher the probability of death. This syndrome was observed in many atomic bomb survivors in 1945 and emergency workers responding to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. Approximately 134 plant workers and firefighters battling the fire at the Chernobyl power plant received high radiation doses – 80,000 to 1,600,000 mrem (800 to 16,000 mSv) – and suffered from acute radiation sickness. Of these, 28 died within the first three months from their radiation injuries. Two more patients died during the first days as a result of combined injuries from the fire and radiation.

Because radiation affects different people in different ways, it is not possible to indicate what dose is needed to be fatal. However, it is believed that 50% of a population would die within thirty days after receiving a dose of between 350,000 to 500,000 mrem (3500 to 5000 mSv) to the whole body, over a period ranging from a few minutes to a few hours. This would vary depending on the health of the individuals before the exposure and the medical care received after the exposure. These doses expose the whole body to radiation in a very short period of time (minutes to hours). Similar exposure of only parts of the body will likely lead to more localized effects, such as skin burns.

Conversely, low doses – less than 10,000 mrem (100 mSv) – spread out over long periods of time (years) don't cause an immediate problem to any body organ. The effects of low doses of radiation, if any, would occur at the cell level, and thus changes may not be observed for many years (usually 5-20 years) after exposure.

Note that the lowest dose mentioned here for Chernobyl is twice as high as the highest peak value detected at Fukushima.

So, while the situation is serious, it does not warrant panic and will likely not result in any immediate deaths. TEPCO has evacuated all but 50 workers from the near vicinity of the reactors. These 50 will all have protective clothing while they try to cool the overheating reactors and keep the serious situation in check. If the situation deteriorates further and they are exposed to even higher doses they need to be monitored for ailments over decades.

When I last posted, an explosion had already occurred at the Number One reactor of Fukushima Number One plant. Last night, there was an explosion at the Number Three reactor which injured eleven. Both were caused by accumulated hydrogen gas. Now the Tokyo Electric Power Company has mentioned that fuel rods are exposed at the Number Two reactor as it frantically tries to cool that reactor now.

Earlier this morning, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum issued a color-coded chart this morning outlining the state of the various reactors. Nature magazine's Great Beyond blog has some up-to-date information regarding the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) collecting data about possible nuclear fallout which has not been made public.

I leave you with a song I've been listening to on loop for the last hour.

 

"I study nuclear science, I love my classes

I got a crazy teacher, he wears dark glasses

Things are going great, and they're only getting better

I'm doing all right, getting good grades

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades"

                                              - Pat McDonald (Timbuk 3)

 

I don't think I've heard that song in over twenty years. Funny how that works...

Like me you've probably been tuning in to the news for updates on the state of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station which was damaged by the 9.0-scale earthquake which occured just off the coast of Japan yesterday.

Thankfully, there was no major structural damage to the reactors which resulted directly from the earthquake. Furthermore, the reactors were automatically shut-off just as soon as tremors were felt. The problem which happened immediately after the initial earthquake was that power required to cool the reactors was lost. Within minutes back-up power was lost as well triggering fears of a meltdown.

The Japanese have been trying desparately to cool the reactors releasing built-up gases and circulating sea-water. Earlier this morning, there was an explosion at reactor no. 1 due to a build-up of hydrogen gas. At the time of writing, reactors were still on the brink.

Almost all news agencies have covered the situation on the ground, but very few have taken the trouble to explain what exactly a meltdown entails. Based on what I could learn about the design of the reactors and what happened from the NHK World TV broadcast, it seems that at the moment a Three-mile Island type meltdown may be imminent. But more on that in a subsequent post.

What I want to mention here is a hoax which was circulating over the internet this morning which preyed on a lack of common-sense and our worst fears regarding nuclear energy. There were a few thousand hits to this following image which was touted as a Nuclear Fallout Map showing the effect of meltdown and the spread of radiation across the Pacific to North America.

The map looks fishy even from a first glance. It was not issued with any warning, link to a regulatory organization, or press release. It was not vetted by any organization. Instead it contains the logo of "Australian Radiation Services".

A simple search on the internet reveals that this is a small private company in Australia which offers clients services in dealing with legal compliance and radiation monitoring. As fas as I could tell, the handful of employees working here have no expertise in climatology, which would be needed to determine wind strength and other factors necessary to model weather patterns.

Neither would they be expected to have any idea of what state the reactors were in (which was not already a part of the public domain). After all they are not a government regulatory agency!

Lastly, simply googling the numbers would reveal to anyone that they are preposterously high. The total dose per person in a defined area of Europe with closest proximity to the more-serious Chernobyl explosion was predicted to be 0.5 Rads over a period of three weeks of exposure.

The map circulating over the internet showed a ballpark number that was 6,000 times more serious that Chernobyl without any given time-period.

No, what probably happened was some conceited bastard with a lot of time on his hands photoshopped the map from a a screenshot of a Google map and added the Australian Radiation Services logo. All he or she needed to do was to tweet it or post it.

It is probably still out there freaking someone out. Fear always travels faster than rationality.

As usual science is providing answers to questions you were too afraid to ask.

From a press release just published:

When choosing a partner, women believe the lower the man's voice, the more likely he's going to cheat. Conversely, men think a woman with a higher voice is more likely to be unfaithful, researchers have found.

The study, published in the latest edition of the online journal Evolutionary Psychology is the first to examine the link between voice pitch and perceived infidelity and offers insight into the evolution of the human voice and how we choose our mates.

What is the link between voice pitch and infidelity? Males with more testosterone have lower-pitched voices, while females with more estrogen have higher-pitched voices.

 

Now, you draw the conclusions.

The entire research paper [pdf] can be accessed here.