Rantings of a peeved Phila-delphian...

Four months in this city and I must say I am beginning to like it a lot, warts and all [I mean that literally, cos Philly’s potholes have a huge role to play – harbingers of flashes of excitement and squealing rats, they are ;)]
But since it’s not like me to not have any grievances, here goes....

Please rewind, we seem to have missed our Fall!

Somewhere between enjoying the summer and preparing for the winter we seem to have lost out on playing peek-a-boo with the sun. After two falls with, well, NO fall (the sun is not particularly adept at hiding when you’re 5000 feet above sea level and hence that much closer to it), I was lookin forward to my first northeastern, serene, romantic, autumn in three years. What with falling yellow leaves and wind that carries you for miles on end, sun-soaked pockets on the leeward side of trees alternating with the breeze-ridden windward side...not to mention, being blissfully glove-&-fleece-&-sunscreen-free.... I need it and I am not moving on to cold and formidable winter without having it!!!! Put me to sleep when September ends (with due respect to Greenday, and then some)

[I do feel like a monster cribbing about a lost fall when 20,000 people are lost in the quakes in Pakistan, but I can only echo my oft-repeated plea to Nature --- Go ahead and blow up the entire world. And then somewhere in Tatooine, new life forms will emerge. Just make sure I come back as R2-D2 :)]

Why is Andy Reed killing McNabb?

Last Sunday, he had to came hobbling onto field, when they were down something like 30-10 with no hope of winning against the cowboys. If he has to hand off the ball to Westbrook, surely Detmer can do that much? Hell, I think I can do a running play – locating a 200 pound-plus guy even on a field of 200 pound-plus guys shouldn’t be that big a deal!

I must give it to American footballers though: it’s the game and the team that matter at any given time during the game. Now, off field, it could be an ugly falling out or a sports hernia, it doesn’t affect the game. For instance, they had Ackers literally carried out to kick the winning field goal a couple weeks back, with two minutes to go in the final quarter. And that was by no means a one-off occasion: all of their games this season the Eagles have come roaring back in the second half, with minutes to go...GO Eagles...

I am really digging the American sport and I'm almost beginning to excuse their use of the podiatric prefix needlessly; after all, jus calling it “ball” might have some lewd insinuations :D That’s what half time and JJ are for...

The Phillies suck

I don’t even know why they are a team. Why can’t the phillies EVER get to the playoffs? It’s a wonder they were even hanging on to their wildcard hope for that long, considering how they started off. And if not for Utley and that rookie Howard’s homies, they wouldn’t even have figured anywhere. Their hitters suck (Rollins excepted), their bullpen is beyond repair and their fielding is miserable. The only reason I was lookin out for them was cos my old boss wanted me to swear allegiance to his favorite team when I landed in the land of brotherly love...Turns out, I was wasting my time...

Is it curfew time already?

My biological clock is being discriminated against. It’s hard enough to get used to the idea that the sun will no longer come out everyday and kill your melatonin. It’s worse when the only other known sleep-repressor isn’t readily available. There are about 7 Starbucks within a two-mile radius of my apartment; all of them open at 7, and all of them close at 7. I’m mentally unavailable at the first 7, physically unavailable at the second. [I personally do think any human being that wakes at 7 needs to go to another planet (where you can’t tell time), and if they can manage that, there must be some supernatural force involved that doesn’t need the help of coffee?] A person that has trouble getting out of bed at half past eight does – as far late as midnight. And coming from a town a tenth the size of Philly with ten times the number of coffee shops doesn’t help...The numbers don’t add up. Or maybe I’m just bad at math. Or maybe I am just short of caffeine....

We want more ways than one...

Yeah, whatever happened to the pro-choice mantra of the liberal elite? I don’t care too much for gay or straight, but I need to be able to go both ways on the street! More often than not, I am heading in the diametrically opposite direction from where I am supposed to head; but with the concept of one-ways, I am not only in the wrong direction, I’m also on the wrong street. To make up for one ways, the PA Transportation Dept has come up with the ingenious concept of the massive multi-way, namely, a series of concentric circles around the Art Museum, which ensures that wherever you start, you end up at the exact same point every five minutes. Much as I like the unique architecture of the museum, I’d really rather do the touring inside...with all the circling, I’m not sure I’ll ever get around to doing it...

The Complete Idiot’s guide to thinking like a Scientist

['Complete' here refers to the Idiot. This is by no means a comprehensive guide to mastering the impossible task of thinking like a Scientist.]

Everyone in the department is excited about the new zebra fish facility. As am I. To them, it represents the ultimate system to observe physiological changes in real time. To me, it is the most beautiful floor-to-ceiling aquarium. So, we do agree on the basic premise – it’s fun to have some fish around :)

Now that I have convinced you that I am not qualified to give this lesson, let me go ahead and defend it – well, who better than the idiot to write the idiot’s guide?

Don’t get me wrong – few things fascinate me more than the intricacies and nuances of the ingeniously designed biological system. I have spent many an hour of my twenty-something life explaining to people this theme of simple complexity that Nature has recurringly and successfully employed, right from CAM pathways in plants to glycogen metabolism in human beings. But I have always fallen short of getting my message across, mostly because halfway down the road, I am gushing profusely and effusing wonderment and my voice is coming out all squeaky and unintelligible.

Yeah, if it is possible, I am too fascinated. Too fascinated to even begin to explain in any semblance of order or conceivable pattern this amazing phenomenon. Too fascinated to believe that what I read about Nature’s unique engineering in the textbook can be successfully transposed to the laboratory bench. Too fascinated to think I can change any of it, much less, make it better.

Nature has designed the simplest most complicated system that can do all the wonderful things it so effortlessly does. If we toggle with it, we are either altering its simplicity so it no longer works or its complexity so it can no longer do everything it does.

Years ago, during my first real encounter with bench science, when I was trying to convince myself as much as the world that the little blue blob on the gel was really the protein it was claiming to be, my then scientific guru told me that a frightening fascination with text book science was causing my obvious reluctance to go out there and see for myself if it works on the bench -- paraphrasing -- You like to sit at a desk and philosophize about Nature and her myriad ways. You don’t want to get out there and do it where it matters, where it changes the world.

Sure, I countered, but there is a big assumption there: that it changes the world. On some level, I guess I am a scientist: I am almost always able to interject an assumption behind a perfectly valid statement that successfully weakens it – or even better - negates it ;) That’s what scientists do and that’s why they spend so much time doing what they do.

All said, I don’t want to deny my friend’s assessment. While I sincerely believe (yeah, yeah somewhere deep in the bottom of my heart) that my rantings on religion and politics are going to ring some bell somewhere and enlighten someone and advance another, I quite honestly don’t think that my playing with the micropipette is going to make any real difference to the world or its beings.

And yet I enjoy my fantasies of wayward, far-off things. I think “romancing with Science” is the term I am looking for. I walk into the ES cell culture room and wonder if a Jurassic Park grade experiment can be performed with the mice we have and the frozen woolly mammoth can be brought back to life. Surely, somewhere in the ice-caps of Serbia, some DNA should be buried untouched... And I have spent a good amount of my undergrad years exchanging letters (back when Rowland hill’s system was still the predominant one to exchange ideas in India) on Charles Darwin’s theories with a fellow evolution enthusiast wondering if the chicken came before the egg and if so, how.

I look at protein crystallography and drug discovery with a jaundiced eye. Paper publishing science, is my term for it, and yet, that is the science that might find a cure for AIDS some day. I pick up a paper from a 1970 copy of the journal, Nature and look longingly at creative science done in an age devoid of microarrays and biocomputing, little realizing that these toys are aiding and expediting research that would otherwise take eons.

“We haven’t yet understood the most basic systems of Nature. Why are we already beginning to alter it?” is my oft-repeated question. Because, understanding why the fish lost their gills and developed lungs is not going to change the world, but finding a way to inject DNA encoding insulin is, says a little voice in the back of my head. I ignore it and open Stryer’s Biochemistry to marvel at the magic that is the sodium-potassium pump in the dopaminergic neuron.

Yeah, in the case of Changing world vs. Nature, I am quite unequivocally on the side of the latter.

It’s funny that while I look at most things in life through the left side of my brain, I look at the logical, practical realm of science through the right.

As a researcher I know I should be spending more time thinking about the future of Science, but I’d much rather wonder about the past; my contemplation of the future is restricted to pondering the fate of the Bush presidency or India’s economic standing a decade from now.

And then a few days ago, the funniest thing happened. My co-worker came up to me and said that my mouse had arrived. “Really? The one with the CRE transgene?” I wondered out aloud. She just smiled and pointed to a taped white box in the corner. 'Apple mighty mouse for iBook G-4' the box proclaimed.

Voila! I had done it. After a decade in the field, I had finally begun to think like a scientist. And I hear it’s an irreversible process…

When subtle is no longer subtle...

I found myself at a yoga lesson a couple days ago when my Chinese (and hence, supernaturally lithe) friend talked me into it. I don’t believe in yoga, or anything that is as subtle for that matter. If I need to contend that I am putting my body to a grindstone, I have to, well, put my body to a grindstone. So, lifting weights to a point where your arms cry out in pain or running till your lungs deflate are all good, but stretching your hands up over your head and focusing on your “center” – very dubious.

Reason why, since a mandatory second grade class (at a time I don’t recall having bones or joints that would hinder bending and stretching), my only encounter with the popular eastern discipline has been Crichton’s very elaborate account of how it changed his life. Since I agree with him on a lot of things already – writing science is more fun than doing science, it would be wonderful to have dinos back on the planet, computers are for dreaming, not programming — I thought I’d change my mind about yoga. Also, I was excited about any American additions and subtractions I might find (which in the case of food at least, seem to result in something entirely different and quite often more attractive). It’s hard to be creative with yoga apparently (how many ways and forms can you twist two arms, two legs and a torso into anyway?), because, turns out, except for the outfit and the very plush yoga mat, it hasn’t changed much in two decades and 10000 miles :)

I must admit that it was fun, though having put into it the diligence I put in everything else, I have ended up with a sore back and hip, making my daily two-mile run seem like a joke by comparison. And it has left me wondering just how dangerous subtlety can be (here, I resorted to old faithful: the method of thinking where the stretch-yourself-to-the-limit is purely restricted to the mental).

A high school English reading by the very eloquent G.K. Chesterton comes to mind. In “Worship of the Wealthy”, he describes the power of subtle flattery as opposed to blatant adulation. While flamboyance can easily be determined as false, a mild remark extolling a trait that may exist but is not necessarily as exalted as it is made out to be, can be very credible to the receiver, to the point of being dangerously misconceived.

I first noticed the perils associated with artful discretion when I was a newbie to the “American” way; the subtle manner in which professors divulge to a student that he is wrong particularly intrigued me. The student is left with the right answer, no doubt, but the professor has fallen short of stressing just how wrong his initial understanding was. While I am not a huge fan of the blunt “you’re wrong” I often received in response to my carefully crafted answers in Indian high schools (I stopped trying so hard in college ;)), I do think it allowed me to never make the same conceptual mistake again. On the contrary, this polite and gentle manner of evading criticism makes the student hang on to his belief for a dangerously long time, and usually requires three to four refutations, where one point-blank negation would have done the job. It is all good to have the person at the grocery store tell you how sorry she is that they don’t carry jackets (however stupid your assumption was that they do). But when you are discussing transcription factors that regulate the expression of important genes in the human body, a little black and white is in order. In grad school it could mean a hundred failed experiments, in medical school it could make the difference between life and death.

Religion is a topic very close to my heart because it amuses me a great deal; so let me drive home my point by putting it in the context of that holy realm. Despite the fact that most Indians grow up in pious Hindu families that celebrate many a pooja with pomp and splendor and go on a pilgrimage every few years, the younger generations tend to weed out this “belief system” as they grow older and wiser. I have hardly ever seen that happen with Catholicism, however; if you are born into a devout Christian family that goes to church every Sunday, more often than not, you grow up to be a human being that goes to church every Sunday.

Hindus seem to be able to purge themselves of this deep-rooted belief in religion because, quite simply, it is easy to dismiss stone idols of a hundred odd deities and richly dressed goddesses being bathed in milk and oil (note: this is by no means the essence of bonafide Hinduism, but has come to largely represent the religion in Indian society). Christianity, on the other hand becomes ingrained into the very soul, because it comes with no tangible motif to shrug off, no artless ceremony to look at with a skeptical eye, no ornate piece of decoration without a practical basis. The ratio of fanatical vs. moderate believers in Hinduism vs. Christianity speaks volumes. And I do believe, that had I observed enough muslims in my lifetime, I would have come to a very similar conclusion about the idol lacking Islamic faith.

So the next time you bypass a very obviously grease-laden pizza to go for the surreptitiously ranch-dressed salad, by all means, help yourself, but it might be good to remember that while subtlety may appear innocuous in all its tenderness, it is sometimes doing more damage than its loud and forthright cousin.

A good fendi imitation has to have near-perfect linings and seams to pass off as a bonafide -- the plaid cannot be slightly askew nor the tint a tad glossy.
In the case of the imitation fendi, toning down might help, in real life situations, however, you’re better off with a little extra sheen, because more often than not, they’re easier to scrape off…

Abraca dubya

I came upon this google bomb that calls Bush an asshole and got to wondering how this country has such skillful bush-whacking web-savvy elites, avid and eloquent bloggers that just happen to hate republicans, refreshingly creative and often hilarious out of the box thinkers and then, Sean Hannity :(

At a predominantly American gathering a couple months back, I was discussing the Da Vinci Code and was trying hard to tone down my enthusiasm for the book (as my innate tendency to get carried away about the things I am passionate about often defies the norms of political and ethical correctness), so as not to set off any anti-christian sparks; turns out, I needn't have worried cos the only sparks I was turning on was animated approval on how un-put-down-able the book was.

A little surprising considering the havoc Dan Brown created with the main stream media (not just Fox, even the most objective of networks, NBC had a dateline program disputing all of Dan Brown's "facts") and I have read many a review in the very-liberal NY Times criticizing the book. Perhaps, the fact that this is Philadelphia, falling into the bracket of the little strip of blue liberal elite along the Northeast (and we must remember that the state it belongs to did vote democratic saving Kerry the embarrassment of losing in a landslide) kind of explains it.

But that doesn’t explain how practically every person I knew with a right to vote in the not-so-liberal mountain state of Colorado (not a whole heck of a lot--- but 100% is a significant fraction even if it means 10 out of 10) voted Democratic. You can argue that not many moneyed, insular republicans are going to practice research and try to cure cancer (albeit unsuccessfully) at a poorly funded state university even if it is in one of the most conservative pockets of the country.

And then I received enlightenment high atop the mountains: Bush-Cheney propaganda signs peeped out of backyards of the affluent, conservative homes (complete with stables and horses and white picket fences!) on that beautiful biking trail by the front ranges of the rockies. Yeah, you truly have to live in a fantasy-land far, far away from the real world to be able to vote for Bush and still be at peace with yourself.

So, I am thanking my lucky stars that even if these God-fearing, feverishly christian, gay-rights-opposing, pro-life, gun-carrying, death-penalty applauders are all over the place, at least I don’t SEE them cos of my life-style choices (or lack thereof). And when I do see them they are conveniently encased in a celluloid box, rendered impenetrable bcos of as much the nitrocellulose as my incomparable love for it.

So while you can see Michael Newdow (I spent many an hour applauding the “under God” underdog my first few months in this country) fighting his war and making his case because the NY and LA Times and CNN are talking about it, what you cannot see is that majority of middle American blue-collar workers are worshipping Bush because he wont allow a man to say “I do” to another man. They don’t make news cos they are the norm, not the exception.
I don’t know why Republicans are cursing the liberal-media bias -- they only benefit from it. Of course the media is biased – only the out-of-whack, out of the mainstream “wrong”doing liberals become news; the media might applaud them, but people have a way of deciding for themselves if their actions are good or bad, they just get their facts from the networks.

However, Hurricane Katrina seems to have done what 9-11 couldn’t do --broken the Bush-magic. Of course it might be cos there is no election year remaining. And now, thank God, we’ll never know.

Even republican loyalists, most notably Trent Lott, and quite a few regular Bush-suck-ups among the media like Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan have begun to outcry against the inefficiency of the Bush administration in the Katrina aftermath.

But believe me, they belong to the smarter section of the right-wing. To get the opinion of the truly stupid group of the population, that bestow their faith upon one person and then stick by him no matter what, you turn to Sean Hannity. He’s one of the most genuinely amusing men in America: the blindest of all the blind conservatives I’ve ever seen. I bet if Bush went and jumped in the ocean, he’d follow, no questions asked. In any case, I wasn’t surprised to find that Hannity is still on Dubya’s side. Since he doesn’t have anything to say for him, he’s turned this entire blame game onto the mayor of New Orleans. Limbaugh and Brit Hume have turned on Governor Blanco. And they are all passionately involved in the bickering over whether this is a race thing. Yeah, like that is the issue here. Since they need to turn the focus away from Dubya, they can now turn the flashlight on the African Americans. And they have nicely fallen into the trap, since they never think twice before jumping on the race bandwagon.

And Hannity’s argument is that everyone is politicizing this. The federal government didn’t do its job and Bush sat on his ass at the ranch two days after the hurricane hit. If that is not the most important political issue in history, I don’t know what is. Probably Clinton’s having sex with Lewinsky cos hundreds of people died of shock after that..

But this cannot be explained away by tangible interpretations or logical arguments. Maher is not exaggerating when he says ‘Bush works in mysterious ways’. It must take something akin to a god-devotee relationship for people to still be on Bush’s side --- they probably think he can spout wings and fly or walk on water; I’d sure like to see him do that in New Orleans….

Keeping the eye on the ball (Part 2 of ∞)

I've said before -- incidentally, in a nostalgic post-Pete phase when I hadn’t warmed to Roger yet – that all Federer seems to have to do to play impeccable tennis is to keep his eye on the ball, and since there is no better way of saying it, I will say it again and probably a zillion more times to come.

The first set yesterday was a “perfect” set in many ways. There were very few errors from either player, if at all, and the only reason Roger won it was cos he had the edge on his service games, what with a remarkable first serve percentage and the relentlessness with which he attacked the all-time returner’s returns. Most serve and volley players lose out on getting back at the returner, probably because of the extreme confidence they have in the unreturnability of their serves, and frankly, are visibly baffled when someone like Agassi can smash them right back. But Federer takes no chances, and being the amazing returner he himself is, helps him anticipate that the ball is making a trip back.

That said, if not for Agassi’s bad first serve percentage Roger may not have won this match. Not because Agassi is the better player (by no stretch of the imagination), but Roger seems so flabbergasted when he loses a set that he takes a while to regain composure. I realize he is used to winning in straights (an unbelievable record of losing just two sets now in 23 straight finals) but he should realize that it does fall within the bounds of human credibility that he will occasionally need to take a match to a fourth set.

Of course, he is not quite as invincible on a hard court as he is on grass, but even so he didn’t seem as vulnerable against Andy at the Open last year. Granted, Andy is no Andre. A ton of difference comes with that last syllable. But Roger needs to realize that his opponents have raised their games to match up to his, so he has to have his answers to their answers as well. In the ever-eloquent Chandler’s words, “The messer has become the messee”.

Agassi needs a standing ovation for his performance. He played an incredible match for any top-seeded player, but considering the odds stacked against him, he was pure magic. Which makes me wonder if Federer could have beat Agassi in his prime (though some might argue that this is Agassi’s prime — I don’t think he’s ever played better; he’s certainly never returned Pete’s serves as well as he did Federer’s), Sampras notwithstanding. Since Federer seems to be playing a net-rushing game, Federer and Agassi might have been an incredible treat to watch.

Which brings me to my next point — why IS Roger net-rushing so much? Isn’t his biggest advantage that he can play baseline as well as chip’n’charge and while serving and volleying IS the thing to do at the big W, hard courts have always favored players that can stay behind (Pete’s record speaks volumes)? Agassi took advantage and attacked him on all his net points.

In any case, bigger picture: Federer has proved yet again that he can do it again and again and again. When he needed to elevate his game, he did. When you can serve at 75% and get all your first serves in at the most trying moments in a match you have to be a little more than just human. Even the great Pistol Pete offered a few double faults in a tight corner…

That said, I have a tip for Johnny Mac: some times it’s all right to just let it go! Granted, when he is complimenting Federer, his voice is gushing with barely concealed awe, but when he is sounding off and spurting sarcasm, he is doing it in the same unrelenting way that is so becoming of McEnroe. I understand how unforgivable it is to watch the flawlessness that is Roger Federer falter, because I am probably as fanatically obsessed with his shot-making as he is, but harping on every little error (however unbelievable) robs you off some of the pure ecstasy ONLY seeing Roger glide on a tennis court can provide. For instance, glossing over his 75% first serves in (an incredible accomplishment when you are playing in so tight a match against so fearsome an opponent) and going on and on about a backhand slice that went an inch wide took away some of the magic from the beautiful orchestration only two maestros like Roger and Andre can produce (yeah, sometimes you want to see it from both sides of the court!).

That said, Roger really needs to remember that he is not playing at Wimbledon when he slices that backhand like that… The ball is not going to bounce the way it does on grass. Though I must say his backhand returns almost went back to their flawless perfection in the tiebreak, where he won points off them and in the fourth set when he had that awesome backhand crosscourt winner. Tiebreak sealed and leading a comfortable 3-0 in the decider, having regained his composure, and more importantly, McEnroe’s patronage, Federer was back on track :)

The match ended with Johnny Mac (now firmly on the champion’s side) saying, Noone has ever hit a tennis ball as well as Federer. And that is probably the only way to justify Andre’s loss after so laudable a performance. Anyone less would have fallen prey….

[I’ve noticed something about Roger (backhand overheads and versatile forehands apart) --- he never thanks anyone personal in his thank you speeches, except the customary thanks to the organization, sponsors and fans. No girlfriend, no coach, no mother nor father…
Probably cos he depends on no one but himself for his wins…
Can there BE a more invincible human being?]

New Rule!

(Maher Style :))

Yeah, this is my very own US Open Series here….
New Rule: People should quit questioning if Federer is the best tennis player to ever walk the earth. He IS!

The only thing the commentators had against Federer today was that he usually has double the winners as errors and today he didn’t. The moment they start comparing a player to himself you know it’s cos there’s no one else to compare him to.

That said, all credit to Hewitt who played a sensational match today (especially that 9-deuce game which he eventually won) to make a pretty laudable match-up against the grand slam man….

Ok, for all those Federer skeptics still remaining (no more than a very resistant 5%, I bet), Roger offered too many reasons this match to not believe he’s pure genius:

Trying to get out of a break point in the first set where he showcased a volley, a drop, a forehand winner and a backhand slice all in the span of a minute between points… Paraphrasing McEnroe --- Ok, I showed you this shot and this one. Let me now show you this :)

The 21 shot rally when Hewitt had a set point in the second set.. Predictably that ended with Lleyton missing a forehand winner and Federer went on to win that game after saving 3 set points…

He came back from 15-40 at least twice on his serve, incredibly brushing off any whiff of a chance Lleyton had to get back into the match.

An effortless 7-0 in the tiebreak!! And with Hewitt in top form, no less.. Has ANYone ever done that at that stage in a grand slam, between two top seeds?

Mute point. Roger’s done a lot no one has ever done…

The Incredibles!

What an absolutely stunning match between Blake and Agassi !!!!!!!!!!!!
Men's tennis is so full of incredibles....And Agassi so deserves his due for the unbelievable fighter he is, even I am going to give it to him...If he can do to Federer what he did to Blake, we can expect one of the greatest US Open finals in history....
I am hoping that happens after we see another phenomenon between David and Roger tomorrow...Andy's mojo loss is now beginning to make sense...Neither he nor little Lleyton can give Roger anything to worry about...But the 35-year old veteran just might...

Can't wait...

He IS for real !

I did something this weekend that a human being should almost never do. In an irrevocable entwining of fantasy and reality, I went and watched Roger Federer “in flesh and blood” at Flushing meadows.

The good news is I have attained the so-called nirvana that all those old sages got by being one with God, the bad news is, now I know he exists outside of my uncorrupted little silver screen world…



Photograph: Roger: Bring it on! [Courtesy of Vidy, the lens-crafter] They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and quite honestly I’d rather ramble a thousand odd --- reason why I don’t usually post pictures on my blog --- but since Federer has defied every rule ever made in history, I will make the exception :)

Disclaimer: I have never been able to enunciate the supernatural; I still have about five unfinished essays about Sampras in his prime with no hope of ever completing them and my attempt to capture the magic of New York is still wanting in many respects.

But I decided that the only way I can refrain from sighing every time I think back to Sunday or smiling at strangers on the train because I am thinking about Roger’s backhand lob was to put down my thoughts on celluloid even if I only get to convey a third of what I feel, and believe me, that will be a job well done.

Despite the fact that I checked usopen.org and weather.com at the rate of a million hits per minute in the few days preceding D-day, and all but obtained the players’ medical records, I couldn’t believe my eyes when Roger walked onto court. You can hardly blame me; for one, I never believed he was human, and for another, the last two times I attempted to watch infallibility close up, I ended up either conceding to the huge screen on the USTA grounds or glowering at a smug black board that declared the match I had traveled a thousand miles for was a walkover.

My first thoughts:

He is so tiny!
I don’t think this was a result of the seats high-up in the stands (the only ones you can get if you wait till the day they actually announce the schedule so you can be a 100% sure that Roger is going play the session; believe me, the finals is the only round you can positively predict Federer’s presence on court). Roger’s miniscule ---- he’s all of 6-foot-1, but he has a really small frame and I can understand now why he looks so tiny against the likes of the safins and roddicks out there, which goes to show just how much he relies on his mental toughness and mind game. His teeny little figure merely reinforced my picture of Roger -- a guy defying destiny, mortality and the whole world ---- so inexplicably small and alone in his insuperability…

He is so incredibly cute!!
Cute is hardly an adjective one would use to describe a guy that goes about demolishing everything in his way to the crown and with such effortless ease, but Roger Federer is incredibly cute. Right from his mannerisms --- twirling the racket, twiddling with the strings, pushing his head band back --- to giving opponents their due, smiling at Andy’s self-deprecating humor and accepting that he sometimes amazes himself with his own game, he is one of most endearing players on the tour.

It’s a whole lot tougher than it looks.
If you thought that backhand slice he creates from a ball that looks like it’s nowhere near where he is, and assumed the television just made it look impossible, nope! Incredible as it sounds, the television makes it look easier than it is. At the real Arthur Ashe, the sideline is too far in and the net is just too high! Even knowing it was Federer, I had my heart in my mouth for every carefully orchestrated backhand pass and every baseline shot to make it. But knowing Federer, it almost always did…
I think Mark Hodgkinson said it best when he said Roger makes tennis “easy on the eye”. It’s not just that he goes after every point and every ball and gets it, but he makes it look so easy. No bellowing, no puffing, no smashing the racket on the ground, he even moves silently. And you hardly ever see him contesting a call or glowering at the linesman, because, very simply, he can do without that point. He’s got enough to win, and then some.

He is human… He doesn’t look quite as invincible when he is a live Roger. Seeing him in flesh and blood added a dimension of vulnerability to the eventual champion that I wasn’t expecting to see: he can miss shots, he can slip up a little and bang his racket against his leg, and FYI, he breathes.

He’s still as infallible as it gets. Down 1-4 in the tiebreak, he bounced right back and won the next six points, bagging the second set in the way only Federer can. It’s true that tennis legends most often find themselves in tight situations and the mark of a great player is to slowly and surely play his way out of it. But IMO nooone does it with as much versatility as Roger does. He doesn’t just spring up and fire an ace; he seems to have an answer for everything --- amazing return of impossible serves, incredible backhand passes to reach seemingly unreachable shots, forehand and backhand volleys before they become off-center, and everything in between. Nobody says it better than the eloquent Andy Roddick did after Wimbledon, “Maybe I'll just punch him or something.” Quite possibly, that is the only way to ‘beat’ Roger.

[As an objective fan, I do acknowledge that Roger is playing a little below his robot-like precision this Open, and I can’t help but wonder if he has subconsciously lowered the bar to bridge the gap. There were shots he’d usually never miss and unforced errors that are so unlike him. He’s even showing emotion on court and he conceded a set to Kiefer today. And quite honestly, his match-up against the absolutely incredible but sadly under-rated Nalbandian scares me a little. But the fact that in the case of Roger the question only goes so far as wondering whether he is going to lose a set or be broken on his serve, says a lot about the level of his game].

Needless to say, I caused many a viewer some disconcertion by running down every five minutes to watch him close-up and making sure it was the real deal and was responsible for about half the “Go Roger” screams that rang out in the stadium. Not that he needed any of it. I sometimes wonder what he feels about these lesser mortals whose only taste of the supernatural is to watch one in action and cheer him on because the mere thought of contributing decibels makes them feel part of invincibility in some inexplicable way.

I can’t imagine how it must feel to have his peers say time and time again “I gave it my best but he was just too good for me.”

Or to hit that backhand pass knowing that it is going to sail past an opponent and think, “Well, that’s why I am number one”.

I wonder how it must feel to walk in to a court time and time again, almost knowing that this is just a step in the way of holding up that trophy he is going to eventually carry home.

It was one of the most amazing days of my life, watching Roger from a few thousand yards away; I’m richer by a wonderful experience, a picture of me with an icon (pun unintended) of the greatest tennis player ever and this profound ecstasy that comes only with seeing true genius, that is not going to go away in a long time…

I wish I could have touched him though, if only to make sure he wasn’t made of barbed wire and concrete….

To the God of small things....

Like you know from the past, my weblog is a place where I vent my frustration about the things that don’t matter in life, so as to steal focus from the ones that do ;) So here’s to more whining about the little things in life…

Where in the whole wide world was Max Kellerman?

Why didn’t I know of Max Kellerman’s existence until a few months back?
I was watching the great Max make a case for seat-belt breathalyzers in Volvos and I got to wondering: here’s a guy that’s quick-witted, intelligent, articulate and ---not that I care, but you’ve got to be blind not to notice--- incredibly good looking and yet I hadn’t even heard of him like a few months back. Not to sound pompous, but there are very few newscasters or talk show hosts in America that I haven’t heard or at least heard about. Why do we keep seeing dumb, boring liberals like Alan Colmes and Paul Begala, while the Max Kellermans of the world are hiding behind a boxing glove, quite literally? And then we complain that there are no enterprising liberals out there. On second thoughts, is he liberal? Actually I don’t care, as long as he comes and flaunts his wit and airs his views (or the devil’s as the case may be) and puts the equally lovable Tucker to shame every night :)

To hell with sauces and dressings

Before I landed in this country my greatest fear was that Americans didn’t believe in condiments, and now my greatest fear is that they do!
Tucker Carlson said recently that Fries don’t need ketchup or even salt to be divine…… And I agree (as I do with most of his statements). Americans are such ardent “consumers” that they need to keep adding things to things to make them more attractive. My advice to them: DON’T!
To the food industry --- things I don’t particularly care for:
-- nuts (or strawberries or peanut butter or pretzels, for crying out loud) peeping out ominously from otherwise unadulterated, melt-in-your-mouth, divine chocolate
-- barbecue sauce de-sanctifying the orgasmic effect only medium rare steak can provide
-- marinara soaking EVERYting that dares to be Italian (memo: other than spicy Indian food, tomatoes belong only in salads, so let them just snuggle with the lettuce where they feel at home)


We don’t want fillers!

What’s with these people filling in? I watch Countdown with “Keith Olbermann” for Keith Olbermann! And Meet the Press for Tim Russert. I don’t care for Amy Robach or David Gregory. I know you’re trying to carve a place for yourself in the big league, but showing how NOT to be big league is not the way to do it! And by the way, the program is called the “O’Reilly” Factor for a reason, namely, noone else can claim the title of pompous, self-possessed, know-it-all right winger. It’s not like Dave Barry is asking people to write his columns for him or Bill Maher is employing someone to make us laugh during his summer hiatus. If you’re on vacation, I don’t particularly want to see your show! If you spent some time in front of the screen instead of behind it, you’d know that all news shows talk about the same thing, so I am obviously watching your show cos you are saying it, not cos of what you are saying .. Bottomline: In the singular case that Max Kellerman is filling in for Tucker Carlson, I’ll just wait for you to get back from your vacation, thank you.

If doomsday’s here, we don’t need warnings…

Reminiscent of the US Dept of Homeland Security, Nature’s been raising the threat level --- yellow, orange, red…and the hits just keep on coming. First there was the heat wave in Europe, then the huge tsunami in Asia, the zillion hurricanes in the US and Central America and then of course tornadoes, famines, and wildfires galore. If doomsday is here, whoever is controlling it should just go ahead and blow up the earth, big bang style. Not sit there and give us these innuendoes and hints that keep telling ya, “bring out the hurricane shutters”, “board up the windows“, “don’t venture too close to the sea”, “wear SPF 45 and stay indoors”. If you can’t cope, jus blow up… It wouldn’t be the worst thing for the world, ya know…

India’s kickin’ ass

Don’t get me wrong… though I wouldn’t call myself particularly patriotic (in fact too many Indians would pounce on me if I even tried) I can’t help but feel a certain surge of delight when I see all this focus on our motherland :) In fact, I think most of my criticism of India stems from the fact that I see the Gurcharan Dases and the Vir Sanghvis and I wonder why we bother with the Lalu Yadavs and Mayawatis..Anyway, enough about that – this post is supposed to be about petty things. Now, India’s really making waves! Business Week had this huge double issue asking if India and China were the new world economies; and now, Nature has come up with a review that discusses the great strides in biotechnology in India. *beaming*
Now you’re wondering what my problem is. This: My folks back home have one of those fancy CDMA phones that connects to the pc and acts as a modem ….I live in the richest country in the world and I barely have a phone that can be trusted to record voicemails. And that’s not all: the last time I was in India I waited a couple hours for the google home page to load (google---which is a universal verb now---you cant wait two hours for a verb to happen [think breathe, eat, sleep]). I don’t know if you are as inherently discerning as I am, but it seems like technology is playing a game with me. Not to mention religion. It’s stalking me. I escaped from six years of the BJP and fled to the US – only to have Dubya elected to a second term. I leave India and the Congress promptly – and surprisingly -- rises to the occasion. Why do I miss out on the MM Singhs and Bill Clintons and end up with the W Bushes and Vajpayees of the world :(

Rooting for the wrong dog

Despite the dozens of little coffee shops dotting the streets in quaintly cultured Hoboken or the teeming espresso bars in the rocky town of Fort Collins, I searched out the familiar green circle of Starbucks wherever I went. I paid the extra buck for whipped cream and another three for wireless internet without a thought that a million other places not only didn’t charge you for the perks but also refrained from such allures as exotic looking mugs and coffee makers.

Drinking coffee from a familiar cup is one thing, but when an entire country votes in favor of the candidate they can “relate to” or a huge section of the tennis-loving populace calls an icon like Pete Sampras boring you have problems. You may not identify with a guy that was captain of the debating team at Yale, but you’re not picking a high school buddy, you’re picking someone to sit in the highest office in the nation. As for the supernatural that conceded just one match in 57 matches at Wimbledon in eight straight years, I can think of a hundred adjectives --- and boring is certainly not one of them.

This unconditional devotion to the underdog fascinates me a great deal. I have never rooted for an underdog, except in the case of cricket, where India was long the poorer bet in a match-up against the Aussies or the Windies and patriotism and peer-induced fervor overcame my love of infallibility. My contention is this: we can’t always pick to be winners or losers in real life situations, but we sure can pick our idols :)

Since I believe sport (especially individual sport) is one of the few situations where you can see people’s true personalities in action (somewhat like an unadulterated reality show), I am mainly talking here of sporting underdogs, except for Bush, cos let’s face it, I can never pass up a chance to talk about Dubya; he lends natural fodder for humor even when I am at my funniest worst and if that’s the reason he got elected to a second term, so be it. After all, laughter is an integral part of the American way and Friends, Frasier and Sex and the City signed off earlier that same year leaving people no choice but to turn to politics for humor ;)

Not to be unfair to underdogs, there is of course a very real reason to love players like Andy Roddick who are so incredibly gracious in defeat. The ace-blasting American heartthrob never passes up a chance to shower praise on Federer and has openly declared that Roger is not only the best player ever but also a wonderful human being. In yesterday’s zillionth defeat against Federer, side-stepping his ailing foot (literally), he acknowledged that Roger ‘was already kicking my butt before that’. Lines like 'I threw the kitchen sink at him but he went to the bathroom and got his tub' come easily to Andy and his sense of humor in defeat is sometimes more laudable than Federer’s successes.

But let’s face it, we have also loved the racket-throwing, tear-jerking Ivanisevic, while he took something away from Sampras’ unparalleled victories and cheered for a tantrum-throwing, abuse-hurling McEnroe, in the face of a composed and gracious Borg. Time and time again, the crowds are on the side of the underdog, cheering him on, rooting for every easy point won, every stroke of luck that moves him forward, waging a raucous, albeit, losing battle against the silent invincibility that players like Roger and Pete display.

I was rooting for the Yankees in last year’s playoffs (more because I root for ANYthing New york than any real love for the team; besides, I was fed up of hearing media personnel and politicians alike wonder if this would be the year the ‘curse’ would be lifted). And I noticed increasingly that all of mankind was cheering on the Red Sox against the “evil empire”. Everyone outside of New York, it seemed -- in bars, the work-place and broadcast news -- was unequivocally pro-Sox. Why, I asked a die-hard Red Sox fan. We root for the underdog, it’s un-American not to. That explains the elections, I thought. Of course, some might argue that Kerry was the underdog, the guy trying to overthrow an incumbent and entice a formidable red-state enormity, but once the debates were on, and Bush started his defense with “he forgot Polland” Kerry was the irrefutable topdog. Unfortunately, one that was too smart, too composed and too self-assured for people to “relate” to.

Then again, there are inevitable winners like Lance Armstrong, that boast of a huge fan following. But here, the allegiance is more because lesser mortals can feel a certain sympathy for him due to his struggle with cancer, probably because it makes him more of a human being. I have never heard more support for Sampras than I did during the Australian open where he broke free of his shackles and cried for his coach and friend who was then battling death.

Right from Shakespeare’s As you like it, where we all loved seeing the david-grade Orlando overthrow the goliath-grade Charles, most of us tend to associate a good-over-evil aspect to a contest and root for the player that can induce a certain amount of compassion, even if he is the least likely of winners.

Is the human being’s natural sympathy for the underdog due to a sadistic tendency that craves to see a success story falter (toppling of icons like Martha Stewart and Dan Rather seem to have an ominous element of deep satisfaction), or is it merely that we want to see a human being up there who can display weakness from time to time and tell us that despite our shortcomings, we could be there some day?

Virtually speaking...

After almost two years of my debut as a blogger (thanks to my steadfast, and more importantly, cyber-competent pal, Atool,) that started with a revelation of the domination of the cyberworld in my life, I decided it was time for part II of my virtual reality deliberation.

I still maintain that the best scene in Disclosure is where Tom Sanders enters the virtual representation of his company’s database, and often wonder how it would be to have that option in real life --- plug in different situations in a computer program and look at cause and effect, or better still, experience a wide array of emotions and actions Matrix-style from a wire-entangled pod.

For a predominantly computer phobic person, I am unusually fascinated by the world of simulations, and AS a computer-phobic person I do think my mind does a better job of it.

Since I left my high school days behind me (where my biggest worry was usually along the lines of “Do I begin with the homework or finish reading ‘Doctors’?”), more often than not, my most promising moment of the day has been draping the comforter around me from anywhere between 12 and 3 am, shutting out the real world and getting lost in ‘the beyond’ of beautiful dreams.

You’re constantly hearing people talk about fulfilling their dreams and translating their fantasies into reality. I, for one, want quite a few of my dreams to stay a dream. Isn’t it more fun to dream a dream than live a dream?

Be it Enid Blyton’s “enchanted land” series, landing the A-6 intruder at New York’s Intrepid museum or “Back to the future” at Universal Studios, I’ve been quite happy in my closeted little world of illusions right from somewhere around age six to two decades later.

When it was time for the monthly family movie outing, my sis always wanted the depressingly real 1947-Earth, I wanted Speed where a bus could jump over freeways or Jurassic Park where dinosaurs could roam the earth. My favorite show on TV is the most feel-good and unrealistic of them all--- six Manhattan residents spending 24 hours a day in a coffee shop and still living in fancy apartments. It may not exactly scream “reality” but let’s face it, I wouldn’t sit in front of a celluloid screen if I just wanted to see day-to-day life on the street. My fire-escape allows an unbiased view :)

I don’t know if I’ll ever go on a treasure hunt through ten different countries and I’m pretty sure I won’t ever sell outrageously priced chocolates on the streets of New York, but I got it all by sitting glued to every wheezing breath in the first season of The Amazing Race and one too many acerbic remarks in The Apprentice.

A lot of times I feel more excited about plopping down on my couch and sitting down for a full hour of Real Time or three of a Wimbledon men’s final than about meeting up with a good friend or calling a long lost pal who would guaranty a few laughs.

Is it because anything could go wrong in an I-am-breathing-the-same-air-you-are relationship while the one on the small screen is protected not only by layers of nitrocellulose, but also from the callousness that destiny seems so eager to impose in real life? Is it less complicated and more rewarding to live lives “through our heads”?

Is it a milder (I hope!) version of multiple personality syndrome, where we constantly try to compartmentalize our lives into the “perfect virtual” ones and the “not-so-perfect real” ones?

Do we just want to keep these two worlds strictly apart, instead of trying to find a compromise that may result from an ineffective transposition? Are dreams just a way of overlooking the trials and tribulations of the harsh world out there?

Can we live our entire lives being happy and satisfied in the pristine uncorrupted world upstairs, never bringing them out into the very tainted real one that threatens to throttle them in infancy?

Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg apart, can the virtual ever be real?

To yell or not to yell..

At the ripe old age of 20, I remember bursting into tears trying to convince a group of likewise twenty-somethings why smoking should be allowed in public; it’s funny that while something as trivial as trying to establish the rights of smokers when I hadn’t so much as touched a cigarette my entire life so easily induced the water works, more real problems like being thrown out of the college dorm didn’t so much as dampen an eyelash.

My arguments --- and I have had plenty of them in 26 odd years--- almost always end in vehement shouting or frustrated tears; in either case, I would usually have had the last word (or shriek as the case may be). For as long as I can remember, I have had this compulsive need to convince people to not only see my point of view but also see it as the ‘only’ one. Pretty ironical for a person that does not believe in a little book of laws that claim to know right from wrong.

Something my old roomie and good pal, Vidy has often said to me comes to mind. Her contention is that I am not the “open minded” soul I claim to be. I might be unfazed by gay people making out in public or anarchists smoking in the non-smoking sections of restaurants, but I am certainly more than just a tad disdainful of those that don’t eat meat because of religious reasons, those that don’t know what NAFTA stands for, painstakingly carb-conscious people, fanatical environmentalists (painstakingly and fanatical being the operative words) and teetotalers. And while I would go all out to applaud the woman that holds her own in an argument, is fairly well-informed about world affairs and puts career before men, I could never for the life of me respect a girl that depends on a guy to earn her daily bread or fix her car. And the list of people I scorn, of course, is endless, leaving me insulated in my own little world of libertarian, agnostic, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-marijuana, fast-car-loving, euthanasia-touting esotericism. Okay, that’s too much evidence for me to wink at; I am close-minded -- only on the opposite side of the spectrum. And the big difference would be that because I don’t advocate that the world be ruled according to my interests, I allow the far-right-extremist as full a life as I allow myself.

I have never been one to shy away from the fact that I can be a formidable human being ----so I admit that the tears and the shouting and the scorn are certainly a thing of character, but I also like to shift blame wherever possible --- and what I am increasingly coming to realize is that it is a “viewpoint” thing as well. In other words a set of human beings that share a certain viewpoint seem to have a very similar way of expressing it.

Yeah, if you’re thinking this is just another one of my million posts about me, me, me, you’re wrong (though you would have been right the rest of the million times minus one). I may look at the world through my little keyhole, but I try to look out at as much as possible through it :)

If you have made a careful observation (or sat in front of broadcast news 24/7 for a week), you would agree with my theory: the person that says a big corporate giant should be protected from needless taxes almost always screams it, while the one that says the poor man on the street should be fed almost always says it quietly. I don’t know if something as outrageous as protecting the rights of the rich, mean, immoral man in the penthouse suite of a skyscraper falls to decibels for conviction and feeding the bedraggled individual on the sidewalk is basic human instinct, but there’s got to be a deeper meaning.

Hawkeyejo, my floating friend in cyberspace gleaned this piece of information from the worldly wise web, which, among other things, notes, “libertoids (are) every bit as closed-minded, zealous, and ideologically blinkered as the religious conservatives whom so many of them dislike”

If you have ever watched a libertarian like Jonathan Hoening on a show like The Cost of Freedom and almost reached out to touch the intensity of his beliefs, you’ll agree with the above assessment. While I belong to that subset of libertoids that go about life airing their inconsequential opinions to anyone that would care to listen, I have noted with some surprise, bordering on awe, that my democratic, liberal friends are usually content to make their point and then grant a benevolent “sure” to my obviously opposing views (and believe me, I need much more than “sure”). Same reason why a left-winger like Alan Colmes sits and quietly takes the mentally deranged Sean Hannity’s cloistered opinions. Or that the democratic camp boasts of a solitary Dean or Moore while the Republican camp is filled with hannities, o’reillies, coulters and limbaughs.

The reason democrats are so incredibly passive as politicians (think Kerry), talk show hosts and human beings is that they are progressive and open to “all points of view” (which unfortunately include such diverse sounds as Ann Coulter’s whining and Bono’s musical lyrics). The republicans on the other hand are meant to be crass and insulated, which in celluloid terms, translates as hanging on to a viewpoint and repeatedly saying, “you are wrong”.

Breaking it down, the Republican’s world-view is a keyhole, the libertarian’s world-view is himself and the democrat’s world-view is the entire world (they are now looking to add Mercury, Venus, Mars and that behemoth, Jupiter). Thus the democrat’s dilemma is not a new phenomenon but the inherent crisis associated with the proverbial cat on the wall.

My two-pence: stick to the black or white and scream your heart out…..venture into the grays and prepare yourself for a lifetime of no yelling….

Uncle Sam’s broken promise

After driving my parents insane with worry for twenty-three years with my impulsive dare-devil antics, I spent my first few months in this country roaming the streets of New york city till long after midnight ---simply because I could!

After four years of trying to understand the nuances and enjoying the benefits of this newfound personal freedom, my mind still does a little jig when the temperature is a soaring 90 degrees and I can walk out in a comfortable pair of shorts and T-shirt without being penalized for my choice of clothes or point out to my boss why he is wrong without having my paycheck delayed. Only now I take it with a pinch of salt, knowing that while the US is a land where you can, for the most part, do whatever the hell you please, it is more because the ACLU can plead your case than because a majority of Americans agree with what you do.

The ACLU and my favorite Real Time host are my two remaining hopes for America to live up to what I saw from my rose-tinted glasses through Warner Brothers and Penguin books in tenth grade and decided that this was the place to be. I think I have mentioned Bill Maher on my blog about 25 times in 2 months. But he’s the only one I can see and hear who seems to be protesting in any effective way, this country’s going to the gutters and the least I can do is “spread the gospel” (with due apologies to the heretic at my choice of words).

The thing about Maher is you end up admiring him for his views, his philosophy, his guts and yet the reason you love him is cos he makes you laugh so uproariously while putting them “out there”. The man can talk continuously for an hour and a half---without a commercial break--- make you laugh for about 99% of the time and still convey more wisdom than anyone else ever has on television.

While I was on the verge of insanity with Bill being on his awfully long hiatus, he came up with his HBO special. I am swiss, is what he called it; it’s so Bill, cos God forbid, he doesn’t belong here in this land of religiously fanatical people who spend hours lamenting about a piece of stone outside the Alabama State Judicial building, a couple words in the pledge of allegiance or voters who decide elections based on “men kissing men” as Bill himself puts it.

But thank my lucky stars he is. Thanks to him, I know at least a tiny little part of America is what I expected it to be, what I dreamed it to be, what I fantasized it to be. No offense, I love this country and I know I get more here than I could ever dream of in India or in any other country in the world; it’s just that I am only getting half of what I had bargained for. My life is unaffected; I am as yet neither gay nor in need of an abortion or suffering from a life threatening illness that would need stem cell research at its heights, but even looking at all of it from the outside makes me really, really mad.

Hearing Bill talk about all the things that bug him about this country and its policies struck a kind of familiar chord in the back of my mind. Naah, I am not trying to weasel into that league up, up above where Maher belongs, where I have as yet not been able to admit any other human being.

But I have sat at a bar, at a round table or on a couch with a half dozen Indians time and time again and tried to tell them what I think is wrong with India and its belief system and been treated to looks of absolute incredulity and open-mouthed shock. I am an out and out liberal at heart; I don’t have a problem with gay marriage, I don’t believe in religion (of any kind) and I certainly don’t believe that some kid should be brought into this world and made to suffer because you thought it was a crime to kill it when it was in the womb. I would even go as far as legislating marijuana, euthanasia and suicide if I were given a choice. I really, in the true sense of the word do not believe in a right or wrong, and I think that ANYthing in this world can be justified as long as you want it enough and it does not “physically” affect anyone else. Yeah, I don’t understand the concept of laws being made based on “emotional” damage because they can’t be measured. If you’re writing it on paper and putting it in a file folder that can be touched, make sure what goes in it is tangible as well. This emotional garbage is the root of problems like capital punishment and the fight against euthanasia. Besides, anything can cause emotional damage---from playing the music too loudly to statutory rape. What I cannot understand is that after nearly four million years of evolution, I am still in the minority. How long is it going to take the most powerful country in the world to believe that a chemical reaction that can be reproduced in a test tube is more convincing than an unknown entity building the sun, the moon, the earth and Adam and Eve in seven magical days?

While Americans still battle with the idea of gay marriage it has been happening in at least five countries without inhibition and while you can lose a job here for smoking marijuana, in the Netherlands it might well be soda. In the land of the free, presidents would not get impeached for having extramarital affairs and players would not be penalized for trying to build up their muscles.

So when Bill says emphatically “don’t legislate your tastes” or that “religion is a neurological disorder” it is tempting to speculate how different this country could have been if it were not tainted by the lofty, impractical ideals that religion imposes. Let’s face it, as wonderfully as only Maher can put it, America is being ruled by a book that says man lived up to 400 years and that you are to be put to death if you worked on a Sunday.

Since all the other ingredients are already in place, would it be too hard to put religion on a back seat and rule the country on the principles of reason rather than faith, thus putting me back on track with the “Kane and Abel” and “All the president’s men” that I idolized as a teenager?

[I HAVE to mention this ---I’m tempted to pledge allegiance to Switzerland since my two biggest living heros are now Swiss---Bill of course, and the only other human being I have mentioned more times on my weblog :)---and oh, the chocolates and cheese wouldn't hurt...]

When the remote becomes remote….

Over the past few weeks, I have been coming to terms with a very frightening fact, namely, in the world of HBO there is no place for a remote control.

The shock wasn’t so much that I had to keep my hands off the remote as much as that I couldn’t do it. The last time I had to watch TV without commercials was a decade and a half ago. As a fifth grader with an attention span of 4500 hours and with desi doordarshan the only thing on TV, it didn’t pose much of a problem. Plus there was always someone around to hand me the bag of chips.

Didn’t the people at HBO study the human psyche at all? Didn’t they think about insatiable human obsessions ---chocolate, Pepsi, Bill O’Reilly, the telephone and the internet that sometimes --- just sometimes--- rank a tad higher than the show you’re watching?

The task(?) of watching TV is inherently designed so as not to expend too much energy. At any given time there is only one ideal configuration to sit in and watch the idiot box. This is decided by several parameters---your eyesight, hearing, the angle of your couch towards the TV, the distance of your couch from the TV and the glare from the window. And once you have settled in, there is very little reason to move a muscle---well, other than the ones you use to laugh while watching Friends or frown while tuned to Fox news. And the less your options, the less the permutations and combinations for changing your position (physically of course, not in the Fox news kind of way). Considering I have one chair, a TV that sits on a weather-beaten suitcase, a fan that only seems to dispense air in one direction and a processor that serves as the other piece of furniture in the room, I have even less reason to move than most.

And while your body is enjoying this state of sedentary bliss (whoever said we are constantly moving towards inertia certainly knew what he was talking about), the remote control is trying its dandiest best to counter it.
And your treacherous index finger gladly obliges, surfing channels and playing with the volume control, in the process, pandering to your low attention span (or the incompetence of TV shows as the case may be)..
And for those of you who think my worries are frivolous, here are a few things you take for granted with commercial breaks:

Run into the kitchen to grab a bag of chips, thus doing eternal justice to the term “couch potato”.

Be courteous enough to take a call from a friend and tell him/her that you’ll call right back (which usually means ‘at the top of the hour’).

Call your best friend and shriek, “I am soooooo in love with Bill Maher” only to hang up and go back to Bill.

Google ‘McCarthysm’ before the History channel program threatens to go way over your head.

Answer nature’s call because you have an over active bladder, what with the Pepsi and all…

Flip to Fox News to hear that ridiculously stupid viewpoint that only Sean Hannity can provide.

Tucker Carlson moves his show to the 11 pm slot pushing the three programs you watch religiously (you watch the rest non-religiously) to one half hour of divine television. Though watching snippets of Stewart and Tucker and Chandler all in half an hour doesn’t appeal to my digestive system, I would certainly like to have the choice….

My Favorite Libertarians

While the rest of mankind seems to have evolved to forks and knifes over 4 million odd years, I still eat my steak by tearing it up with my fingers. So it must come as no surprise that the libertarian party---the party of no government--- is the only one that makes any sense to me.

So while Democrats and Republicans with their respective love for large government and small government exist on a stalemate in Capitol Hill (and on all news networks except Fox, where GOP is the clear winner), I propose the “libertarian” party as the default party of the world.

Why then, you might ask, have the libertarians failed in a more than humiliating fashion the few times they have had representation in federal elections. For this, you need to understand the concept of political quagmires (and who better to learn it from than a specialist in quagmires, be it in real life or on the TV). The inherent dilemma of the libertarian party--- the party of individualism---is that they can’t have a leader. After all, when you say I am my own president, you can’t elect one (and Ralph Nader merely ensures that by representing them).

Anyway, I decided to defy the fundamental idea of libertarianism --- the shunning of a theoretical orthodoxy --- and do what I do best --- wax eloquent about a subset of very few people that are (un)fortunate enough to fall in my “favorites” list. Here’s my pitch for a libertarian party candidate in ’08…
Counting down:

5. Tucker Carlson

He calls himself a “paleo” conservative, but since I have always liked this bow-tie wearing sloppy-haired right-winger of Crossfire fame, I am going to let him run for the libertarians. Plus, with The Situation, he’s risen to a whole new level. While on Crossfire he was just another screeching conservative, on his own talk show he’s a surprisingly smart and tolerant analyst. And his libertarian views sure make it to the surface a whole lot better when he is not fulfilling duty as Bush’s infallible advocate----with dubya pushed to the back of his mind he apparently finds the time to do more useful things—like oppose affirmative action and push for life-enhancing drugs and smoking in public places. And if he can pick a running mate as well as he can pick talk show guests, he’s well on the road to victory (Max Kellerman and Rachel Maddow absolutely rock :))

Favorite Carlson quotes: On his new show, “Is it too good-natured? Is it not nasty enough? It’s just not unpleasant enough. It’s one of our major problems.”

On 9-11, “... The attacks initially made me sorry I voted for him….My family sat unprotected a few miles from the scene of a terrorist attack; Bush hid in a bunker on some faraway military base”.

4. Dave Barry

It’s obvious that Dave doesn’t like the government. Hilarious as his digs at politicians, the IRS tax code and government-mandated low flush toilets are, I didn’t translate it into being “libertarian” till long after becoming addicted to his columns ;) He not only makes a point, he does it while letting you laugh away your Monday morning blues. He won’t need a speech-writer---that’s for sure… And he’ll inspire laughs without having to say “nucular”

That apart, if Barry makes president, you can be sure of a few things:
There’d be none of those annoying stickers on fruits
Telemarketers will be banned from getting within fifty feet of a telephone
People (or food packagaing) will stop reminding you that the cheese you’re eating contains fat
We sure need to get some of those shackles off.

Favorite Barry quote: “….I began to think about all the government people I knew ... who were theoretically for the common good. Then I realized not one of them was [for the common good]." That led him to his ultimate insight about government: "It's stupid."

3. Trey Parker

When most people want to express a point of view, they do it by screeching on a talk show or writing a blog. Not Trey Parker. When Trey Parker wants to express an opinion, he crafts the most ingeniously colorful (pun unintended) animation, not only getting the point across but also depositing it in a very memorable part of your brain. I never watched cartoons (Simpsons doesn’t count) till I started getting used to watching four foul-mouthed little Colorado boys sounding off on everything from Mel Gibson to Walmart, while waiting for Jon Stewart to come on air. (Aside: Stewart sometimes seems reverent by comparison!) And for once in my life, waiting actually became fun.

Favorite Parker quote: “What we're sick of — and it's getting even worse — is: You either like Michael Moore or you wanna fuckin' go overseas and shoot Iraqis. There can't be a middle ground. Basically, if you think Michael Moore's full of shit, then you are a super-Christian right-wing whatever”.

2. P.J. O’Rourke

He loves fast cars and advocates drugs. In other words, the guy has no restraint : )

Describing O’Rourke as only he can, paraphrasing: He has no ideology, no agenda, no catechism, no dialectic, no plan for humanity. All he has is a belief that people should do what people want to do, unless it causes harm to other people. And that had better be ‘clear and provable’ harm. No nonsense about second-hand smoke or hurtful, insensitive language. He doesn’t know what's good for you. You don't know what's good for him. He doesn’t know what's good for mankind. And he doesn’t want to tell all the people in the world what to do. This is because he believes in freedom.

Favorite O’Rourke quote: “I really think cigar smoking does make you smarter. Or maybe it just makes you sit still long enough to be smart. Or maybe it creates such a big stink that nobody comes around to bother you while you're trying to be smart. Anyway, it works”.

1.Bill Maher

He’ll never make any nomination in this country---he’s too self-assured, too self-confident and far too intelligent….. He’s the Galileo of the day telling people the earth is round, but people are either too stupid or too scared to believe it.
But he’s my top-contender.

Anti-religion, anti-marriage and utterly agnostic, Bill is AS libertarian as can get. Fearlessly pushing political hot-button issues (to the point of getting fired for them) may translate as being iconoclastic to Jesus-loving, bible-ruled Americans; to me he represents the ultimate in political, journalistic and vocal freedom. And if you don’t like what he says on-screen, his life makes a statement for itself—a guy that apathetically does away with feel-good factors like God or a life-partner is most completely his own man!

Favorite Maher Quotes: "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

`I'm single and middle-aged, which of course is against the law in America. It means you're evil and wrong and commitment-phobic''

Is humor in the testosterone?

What happens when two of the smartest, wittiest men in the world get together to discuss world issues?
You get Fareed Zakaria and Jon Stewart Leibovitz in the Daily Show studios in New York.
Besides the witty banter (that invariably happens everytime Zakaria is a guest on the show---three, to be precise), I can't help but smile at the irony of the situation.
A third generation American jew and a first generation American muslim sit down to crack the Islamic terrorism problem. The jew makes a joke about the fatwa and the muslim makes a joke about the kosher and all seems to be well with the world.

But my question is not about jews or muslims or religion, but the other big equal opportunity concern: Why is it always the men? Why cant two women sit and discuss religious fanaticism and be funny? Hell, they can discuss Charlie Brown and not be funny. Is humor in the testosterone?

Why are the people that make you roll on the floor with laughter at midnight always a Bill Maher or a Jon Stewart or a Jay Leno? Why does Conan O'Brien merely have to toss his head and do a jig or mimic Dubya to make your sides split uncontrollably?

With all due respect to women, Ellen Degeneres is just not funny. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did great as Weekend Update anchors but that’s contrived. You can't put Fey in Bill Maher’s chair for instance and expect her to be insanely funny with a guest that’s as boring as Alec Baldwin or as unpredictable as O’Reilly. In fact the one time Fey was on the Daily Show, she was barely funny. Even someone like Stewart is out of the running trying to instigate the funny side of his women guests (Sandra Bullock excepted). Not that his show needs any help in the humor department ---a four man one woman team is pretty self-sufficient (point to be noted: Samantha B never instigates the kind of raving applause that Steve Colbert or Rob Cordury are invariably greeted with, and for good reason).

And it’s not just restricted to the real world:

Would we find it so hilariously witty and endearingly philosophical if Calvin were Calvina? Hell, even Hobbes is male! So are Bart and Homer, Dennis the Menace and Jughead Jones. Susie Derkins is smart and earnest and Lisa Simpson is brainy and righteous---just never funny.

Chandler and Ross are funny, old Woody is hilarious, Frasier is witty, Jerry Seinfeld is a natural comedian, Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy are the most hilarious characters that ever walked the earth ---they all have just one thing in common… they are all men….

Is it just my inherent bias or is humor in the testosterone?

It’s all about the colors!

Well, Squawkbox bailed on me, taking with it the most entertaining part of my blog—the comments section :(
And it was then that I realized that I was the only moron still using squawkbox in the entire blogosphere. I’ve always been slow with technology; I like to think its cos of my razor-sharp brain that doesn't need any 21st century help ;)

So I had to revamp my template (the blog's I mean; mine is beyond repair), and I decided that while I’m at it, might as well add a backdrop of color. I had stuck to my dull white one as long as I did so as not to distract from the important message my posts usually convey ;). Today I decided that my words were bright enough to stand out against any splash of color. And if they don’t, certainly my caricature here will :D (which by the way, I went through a lot of pains to downscale from its original lifesize---yeah I have a huuuuuge head).

And besides, if Jon Stewart himself had to redesign his studio, my blog was certainly in need of a facelift. I have spent a good hour doin this (including half during my nightly date with Stewart) so someone better acknowledge it.

Music Musing

I have been music-tagged by Mitokondrion !!!!
And since I believe in always doing my byt(e) for the cyber-community (like I haven’t done enough already), here goes….

Disclaimer: I am relatively tone deaf --- I think it happened when I sang “Wouldn’t it be loverly” at the top of my lungs during a high school play --- it bode well for me as an actress that Eliza Doolittle was supposed to sing off-key. So, music veterans, forgive me if the following sounds more like a biography than a list of musical favorites----in my defense, that’s why my weblog is christened thus and there’s more to music than music!

The last CD I bought: Coldplay’s X&Y
Song playing right now: Blvd of Broken Dreams (in my head)

Songs/artists that mean a lot to me, that I absolutely love, in no particular order:

Nothing at all, Ronan Keating: I have been maniacal about this song since long before I started appreciating music. At the time, I only listened to music while driving (that should successfully explain my incompetence in both areas) and I heard Keating’s gem when a pal loaned me one of her CDs. I don’t know if just about anything sounds good after hearing Rush Limbaugh scream on NPR, but post-Limbaugh, I am still in love with this song. I promptly got my then music guru to send me all possible songs by Ronan Keating; seeking the opportunity, he sent me a ton of others I never listened to cos “Nothing at all” was on Repeat for about two months ;).

Blvd of Broken Dreams, Greenday: The reason I even heard this song was cos of Tower music records--- the only shop that stays open till midnight in Philly----and my haven for the short time I was TV-less and daunted by the idea of walking into an apartment that didn’t scream, “there are other people living on earth”. So I walked into the store and randomly began pickin up CDs to listen to (random here meaning the names I’d heard my die-hard music-loving pal Vidy throw out casually during many an intensely musical conversation not involving me --- except for political insights like “Wasn’t Springstein campaigning for Kerry?” that were blatantly ignored). Happily, Greenday’s was one of the CDs I picked---I am now irrevocably in love with the band. And when they played the song to signify Federer at Wimbledon, I knew for a fact that this had to be MY song.

Dancing queen, Abba: Fell in love with it after Abba played the score for Mama Mia (that was the time I didn’t like a song for a song but rather for what I remembered it by). One of the best musicals I have ever been to---I still smile when I re-play it in my head, two years hence. And more importantly, it prompted me into getting my first music CD ever.

Ain’t no mountain high enough: I love Stepmom for a lot of reasons (Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon and the cutest li’l boy on earth) but this song was DEFINITELY one of them.

Big Yellow Taxi, Counting Crews: As far as I am concerned this is the most-played song on FM and I heard it about ten times a day in the lab during grad skool. It successfully drowned out my co-workers’ chatter on bad days and made the bugs behave better on good days! I don’t know if the song just grew on me, but with skool far behind me, I continue to listen to it….

A horse with no name, America: I am not sure where I first heard this but I think it was in Atool’s car (correct me if I am wrong; that way I can figure out the answer to the all important Q: does anyone read my blog before going to the comments section?). I remember thinking it complemented the mountains but it also sounded out of the world within the confines of my best pal’s apartment a couple months later. That was my first real attempt to listen to music actively (the muted TV or google.com always seemed more active by comparison) and I still absolutely adored it.

America, Simon and Garfunkel: I heard it in Borders after a friend recommended it and realized for the first time that corporate giants don’t let you hear the 4-minute tracks on their CDs completely while you can read a 1000 page book to the very end. Talk of double standards. But it works for me—I’d choose a book with coffee while relaxing in a chair any day over struggling with fitting the headphones with one hand and clutching my coffee cup in the other, while resting precariously on my bipeds. Yeah, that was reassurance that music was not my cup of coffee. But if I put up with the incredibly uncomfortable posture anyway, I must like this song a lot.

Indian favorites:
Pooh Pookum aasai, Minsara Kanavu
Sa re ga ma, Boys
Mere khwabon mein, DDLJ
Snehithane, Alaipayuthey
Mein koi aisa geet gaun, Yes Boss
Abhi alvida mat kaho (as an Indian hi-schooler you’ve heard this in a farewell party every year and you still never tire of it---that says something!)


I am TAGGING Sid...He needs to do something worthwhile….

The healing power of water

And I don't mean that in the "Aqua Fina" sort of way, cos God knows that the sound of fizzling, golden-brown Pepsi cascading over a heap of crushed ice would sooner heal my colds than a gallon of pure water.

What I mean here is the healing power that comes from senses other than taste: the sights, sounds and touch of water [and in the case of some insane human beings---“feel”---yeah, those members of our very own species that actually bask in the feeling of hair bunched over their brows or water dripping off their ponchos].

I've been thinking about this "healing prowess" a lot lately and I must say that while the internet and the microchip are all good, the lesser known, less-hyped evolution of human beings that we don’t talk about in PC World is in developing innovative ways to seek panaceas for all evil.

The most popular, of course, is this higher force called "God". I don’t have a problem with God, except that, as I see it, he seems as helpless as I am at preventing the unforeseen, the unexpected and certainly unwanted miseries of life. Nevertheless, to my heretical statements, there is often intense opposition. “He can’t control everything,” people say quite vehemently, protecting the credibility of an entity that may or may not exist and that quite certainly they have never seen. Take it from me: if the attorneys for God functioned in a normal court of law, prison cells would be empty.

And if you don't turn to God, you turn to Nature and this I don't mean in a Darwinian sense (no offense to old Charles; I am a huge fan of his theory, only this is neither the time nor place---and God help you if I decide to make it). Reason why people escape to a park or a stream or for those lucky hillbillies, the mountains to be one with nature during difficult times.
For me (I have discerned after 26 years) this is the simple sight of water ---whether it lashed from the distant horizon while I contemplated trivial high-school troubles on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, shimmered in its reassuring closeness along the banks of the Hudson while I battled with more complicated feelings than the inability to be teacher's pet in many a disheartening Jersey moment or the little lake in a tiny Colorado town I crossed mountains to get to during painful graduation hurdles, water has made washing away my worries just a little easier. What can be better testimony to this than the sheer elation I felt on discovering the Schuylkill River a few short blocks from my apartment a few weeks ago…..I have certainly been a happier person since, though I am quite sure Roger Federer had something to do with it as well. But since he falls under the category of the Gods I have already discussed, I’ll leave it at that. (Isn’t it wonderful to see the sheer invincibility that allows him to make shot after creative shot, putting away with effortless ease every hurdle in his path to the crown? If only we could battle Fate with a racket and quite so supernaturally at that).

In all fairness, the idiot box deserves some credit for my newfound happiness as well. That brings me to my next contender: Nature’s hegemony at delivering solace is fast being threatened by man’s own creations ---- the towering skyscrapers in New York City have oft given me more strength than Nature's concrete counterparts along the Eastern Ghats or the Rockies. Probably comes from the sense that My own species built this mammoth: I must be stronger than I think I am!

And whilst man is deeply involved in figuring out his own ways of dealing with misery, Destiny is deeply involved in figuring out more versatile ways of doling them out. The less vulnerable he is, the more ruthless she seems.
And so the cycle of life continues....

Counting down to the big W

A little late in the day to be counting down to Wimbledon but since the players that matter (to me) are still on the tour, the delay ain’t going to harm anything (yeah, like what I say on my little blog here is going to alter the ultimate outcome of Roger winning his third W title!)

That said, I can’t say I wasn’t a tad worried after Federer's loss to Safin at the Oz open and then him getting as far as the semis in the French and losing to the new-born, Nadal (though God knows a world # 1 of his caliber getting as far as the semis at Rolland Garros involved a magic act-the authorities at the French open have vowed that anyone that wins there ought to satisfy one criterion, and one criterion alone---be unknown to the world before he steps on their very-clay turf).

Now that both Roger's most recent ousters are out (I couldn't resist a little jig after I heard Marat lost in straight sets to a relative unknown :)---I don't forget easily!), I entitle myself to a huge sigh of relief......

Pheeeeeewwwwwww!!!

In other Wimbledon ranting (before I willingly and passionately jump right back to Roger and ramble on to a point where it kills anyone that is kind enough to get that far), it's hard to believe that Justine isn’t making the come back all of us (read: me and a few Belgians who care about hitting a ball with a wire-strung racket) are hoping she would. She really is -- or was (adopting the past tense is a neat way to quell your overflowing emotions when you are as absorbed with inconsequential far-off things as I am) -- the only thing that women's tennis has to be proud of. I don't believe in transients like Sharapova and the Williams sisters are quite necessarily out of their game. Not that I care much about women's tennis---but its more productive to contemplate an area that has probabilities rather than certainities.

Getting back to the certainity that is Roger Federer, let me dwell on some of the so-called-certainities that didn't happen (It’s nice to do this with wayward things---takes a little pressure off the ones that seem to exemplify my life ;)).

For one, I was hoping old Tim (still the most graceful serve and volleyer and an absolute pleasure to watch on grass) would make it to the semis as usual before losing to a high-powered Roddick or Safin or even get as far as the finals and face Roger. But Henmania had to be sadly curbed before it reached the fever pitch it does in the second week.

And despite my biases, I was giving Nadal and Safin a fair chance to get to the third week (yeah, I am quite the tennis advocate on my own little domain here).

So, clearly, seeing that Hewitt is in Federer's draw, I can put my money on watching a Roger vs Andy Wimbledon final ----quite literally, cos I sure as hell have to get a TV to do that.

And if your eyes are not going to be single-mindedly following Federer like mine (whether he's awaiting his turn to get to court, sitting out the grim rain or in the stands watching someone else play), there are still others to look out for:

The chocolate boy, Mario Ancic might face Lleyton in the quarters----an amazing match that should be with Ancic's powerful serve and volleying versus little Lleyton's behind-the-baseline play. That is, if Hewitt gets past the hardest-hitter on the tour---Taylor Dent. A few years back, when both of them were relative unknowns, I watched them play here at Wimbledon and quite naturally found myself on the side of the heavy-hitter. With that kinda serve I thought he'd make a Sampras some day, but Dent is the best testimony there is that you can’t just thunder your way to a slam trophy --- a big serve can be a liability if you can’t mix it up with a fairly all-round game (all you Pete-critics listen up, Dent has a 140-mph serve and he can get as many cheap points as he wants, but he's never made it past the fourth round here).

Another one I am looking forward to is a possible fourth round match-up between David Nalbandian and the big server Max Myrnii. Nalbandian is a treat to watch on any surface against any player but the way he tackles the serve and volleyers on their friendly turf with his impeccable groundstrokes from far behind the baseline is the kind of quality tennis you watch and say, "Trophies are meaningless. This is what tennis is about." I think David is one player who can rewrite tennis books without actually breaking a record or ever lifting a trophy. Though I’m all for him winning a trophy if fortune favors. But till Roger Federer is around, that is going to be a tall order for anyone….

SoS Dubya!

I had decided to shut my trap about Bush's SS plan bcos for one, I am not the advocate on economy or savings by any stretch of the imagination (my bank balance or rather, the lack of it could speak volumes) and for another, I find myself (not surprisingly) on the minority.

Anyway, not knowing about an issue has never deterred me from talking in the past. And when I heard Maher say something a tad favorably about it (another brownie point for Bill M is that as much as he is an out-and-out liberal, he's going to accept what Bush has done right --- his is not political parody for parody sake), I decided I was in as elite a company as I can garner, and so might as well air my not-so-qualified views about it in this land of civil liberties ;) Meaning, I can actually talk favorably about the president of the country and get away with it.

[Aside: Why does googling Bush return a ton more sites that are Bush-whacking than Bush-lauding, and in that case, why is he still the president for the fifth straight year? Is Google merely left-wing or is the media-and-blogger world subsisting on its fancy niches in cyberspace, blissfully unaware of the real world around it (far-off Washington and the local polling booth, inclusive)?]

Coming to my question on Social Security: why is a private account such a bad thing? Isn't it obvious that this country has grown in a way unimaginable by the forefathers who created social security and that some amends need to be brought into the system? Just because social security has been taken for granted all these years, you can’t just sit there and say you are going to keep getting it cos you were getting it all along... (you have been taking a lot of things for granted that seem to be no longer around: civil liberties and gas at a dollar odd per gallon, to mention just a few).

Moreover, I think this is the next logical step toward personal economic freedom; sure, if you bungle up your investing you could lose some money, but by the same token, if you invest wisely, you could end up with more money than the government would have for you.....While the current social security would leave you at or below the poverty line, investing in your own account might leave you a millionaire----that's what the experts say (and it makes sense too!). And the good thing is this would be in addition to what you have in the general trust fund; so there is not a chance that you retire with almost nothing (insert here: feigned financial advisor half-smile).

In other words, averting just part of your social security taxes to a savings account that you can control seems a much more logical way of preparing for retirement than sitting back and letting the government either hike up taxes or reduce benefits.

If the question is, "What would you rather have: a tax increase, a benefit cut or a private account?", the resounding answer seems to be: "Something for which I can’t be blamed." For a country that takes huge risks (skiing downhill at 30 mph and electing dubya to a second term comes easily enough) it seems surprisingly cautious with long-term monetary investment. And if you're one of the few people that don’t ski or bungee-jump and that voted for Kerry, how about investing in the relatively risk-free bonds (in other words, do whatever you want, just don’t ask me to explain this!)? In either case, it will earn you more than what SS promises today, according to the same experts I mentioned a while ago.

The feather-in-the-cap is that middle class and low income workers now get to have a stake in the economy--what can be better for a predominantly capitalist country like the US, than every citizen forced to feel happy about the economy doing well, and hence motivated to do well themselves? While the rich get richer, the poor can get richer too. True ownership society is just around the corner----and beaming!