America's Best Idea

We are in the beginning of a 11 day trip through four national parks in California - Death Valley, Kings Canyon, Sequoia and Yosemite. The trip is inspired partly by our upcoming US departure, and partly by this PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea.

The six episode series relays the rich history of the parks and the people who helped create them. The park system was created after many fights, and required much effort by park administrators and Washington insiders. Definitely worth watching. You might not want to watch the full series because it is slow at times, but you can watch the coverage on parks that interest you.

Other great resources include the National Park System and the GORP websites.

How to Write Badly Well

A brilliant new blog that tells you how to write well, by writing badly. Very funny, very British.

This "lesson" definitely applies to my writing -

Describe every character in minute detail, taking no account of narrative pacing

Terrence Handley shifted his weight, the weight that had been steadily increasing for the last ten years and showed no sign of diminishing, at least while his wife Marie continued to excel as she did at the design and production of delectable gourmet meat pies, and shuffled his feet restively as he waited. His feet had always been a source of irritation for him, imbued as they were with a mysterious capacity to ache seemingly independently of circumstances. This had been the case since the age of about ten, when he first noticed that his feet had a reluctance to settle in one position (or he supposed, two positions nearby one another) for any length of time before sending signals up the nerves that ran through his legs informing his brain that, if it was all very well, they’d rather not be set in the aforementioned position for too much longer. At last, the door opened.

If you are interested, there is a call-out to submit the worst writing you can muster.

JFK

Some rules in life should not be broken, and flying through JFK is one of them.

Only break the rule i) if you are willing to stand one and half hours in a check-in queue only to be told that you are in the wrong line because Dakar flights have a special check-in counter across the street, and ii) if you want to wait for 2 hours and 45 minutes in the immigration line.

In the last two years, I've spent on average two hours in immigration every time I enter the US. That's because I need to go through secondary screening due to the current stage of my green card process. Its frustrating especially since I've lived here for more than twelve years. That's a long time, almost half my life, but not long enough to legitimize my stay.

Most other passengers who were waiting with me were entering the US for the first time. They were consoled by the immigration officers that next time things would be faster. Unfortunately, they couldn't say the same for me.

The Obama scorecard

The head of the Nobel committee said that the peace prize was awarded based on who had done the the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world.

It seems the prize was more pf a strike against Bush's policies than an award for Obama's accomplishments. Watch this brilliant Saturday Night Live clip on Obama's scorecard. But then, he did win the prize for diplomacy, and diplomacy takes time.

Archie

It's confirmed - Archie's to marry Betty

I haven't read an Archie comic in years, but, in many ways it was my introduction to America. My brother and I used to borrow stacks from Shemaroo (the local library). Sweet Valley High, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys followed, but Archie was the first.

If you missed the wedding saga, check out the slide show.

The Sundarbans

I've been reading Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide and have learnt a lot about the Sundarbans and dolphins. The book superbly explores environmental and political issues through a combination of fact and fiction. It's my favorite Amitav Ghosh novel thus far, and I've really liked the others I've read. And, the Sundarbans have been added to my list of places-to-visit-before-destroyed.

Reading the book got me thinking about a comment made by a Bangladeshi friend on how Bangladesh experiences at least one natural disaster every year. Bangladesh is, in fact, considered the country most susceptible to climate change. Its feared that one third of its current land mass, supporting 20 million people, could go under water. Here is a rather depressing article on the full extent of the effects of climate change.

What is behavioral economics?

Warning: Blatant self-propaganda

Here is an article I co-wrote on behavioral economics and what it means poor households and how they manage their finances.

Game of Thrones

A quick shout-out for my favorite fantasy series thus far - A Song of Ice and Fire. It's a seven book series, four of which have been published - Game of Thrones, Clash of Kings, Storm of Swords, and Feast of Crows. I'm on the third one book right now and haven't been able to put them down since I started (maybe getting the Kindle was not such a smart thing after all).

The books are special because of the way they are written. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a character, so you see the shades within each character. There are no heroes or villains and you will start loving characters that you previously hated. The plot surprises you constantly. The storyline is unpredictable and complex, but totally believable once it's revealed.

HBO is planning a TV series with one season per book. The first season should start next year depending on how the pilot goes.

Why we travel

NYT's new photo exhibition asks readers to post their favorite summer travel pictures. Check out this gallery

This would be my addition. It's not as glamorous as the others, but this was the highlight from our summer travels.

The picture is of Gimmelwald. It's a 700 year old, car-free village located in the Lauterbrunnen valley in Switzerland. The village was able to escape development because a school-teacher got it declared as an avalanche zone. You can "tour" the village in 20 minutes by foot. You'll see a line of houses with drying laundry, tricycles and piles of firewood outside (See Rick Steves' article here).

We hiked the 2.5 hour distance to Murren, a more developed car-free village. The hike was picture-perfect with a background soundtrack coming from cow bells.

Switzerland has tons of tourists, but the real Switzerland is only a 20 minute train, car or cable car ride away.

How smart is your right foot?

Try this. I know some of you will get a "kick" out of it.

1. Without anyone watching you and while sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles with it.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand... Your foot will change direction!

Mine did and there was nothing I could do about it.

Apparently, one trick is to say "6" every time you draw "6". Even that didn't work for me.

Natural history

I enjoy museums because they always help me gain a fresh (or forgotten) perspective. Below are highlights from my trip to the American Museum of Natural History.

- The brown bear is probably the largest carnivorous mammal alive. A grown bear can get up to 1,600 pounds. I thought this was impressive, until I came across the walrus. 140 pounds at birth, adult males can go to 2,600 pounds. Ridiculous!

- Less than 5 percent of the ocean has been explored. Who knows what we don't know.

- I wonder how long it will take for the African mammals exhibit to look like the North American one. While the African exhibits showed dioramas from all across the continent, the North American exhibits were concentrated in Alaska and parts of Canada. Even the African exhibits that compared present prevalence to past terrains, showed the spread of animals shrinking. Many countries are protecting natural habitats, but how do you protect against climate change?

Potato, it's enough

From Chris Blattman's blog (dedicated to VK)

From 1000 to 1900 the world's population grew from 300 million to 1.6 billion. Urbanization more than quadrupled.

The culprit? According to a new paper by Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian: the potato.

...Old World regions that were suitable for potato cultivation experienced disproportionately faster population and urbanization growth after the introduction of potatoes.

...our baseline estimates suggest that the potato accounts for 12% of the increase in population, 22% of the increase in population growth, 47% of the increase in urbanization, and 50% of the increase in urbanization growth.

The more traditional view credits modern medicine and public sanitation in the late 19th century for the population boom. Nunn and Qian argue the population boom came much earlier. As the potato spread from the NewWorld to the Old World, it carried a huge increase in calories and nutrients.

Something I didn't know:

Humans can subsist healthily on a diet of potatoes, supplemented with only milk or butter, which contain the two vitamins not provided for by potatoes, vitamins A and D. ...This, in fact, was the typical Irish diet, which although monotonous, was able to provide sufficient amounts of all vitamins and nutrients.

Seems my grandmother had it right all along...

Poverty, hunger, and numbers

Three pieces that are worth reading -

How many Indians are Poor?

Drawing a Line Under Poverty in India

How to tackle India's hunger

Its clear that we have a long way to go. The question is whether we are heading in the right direction.

Bing

I'm a fan of anything Google - gmail, G1, google reader, blogger. So when I read this NYT column on Bing, Microsoft's latest challenge to Google, I was skeptical. Still, some features seemed useful. On Bing, you can point to a search result and see a pop-up balloon that shows the first few paragraphs on text on the page. Saves you the trouble of clicking back and forth.

As the author notes -

People won’t start dumping Google en masse; Google is a habit. Everyone already knows how to work it, and it may be built right into your Web browser. But if you value your time, you should give Bing a fling.

Have you used Bing?

MJ

Over the weekend, we were talking about MJ and how he is probably the world's most recognized super star (the other MJ comes close). For many of us growing up in India, MJ was our introduction to Pop music. My guess is that Thriller or Bad was amongst the first five albums you bought, if not the first one. Mine was Billy Joel's Storm Front, but that's only because my brother already had all the MJ albums.

Read this terrific MJ tribute written by a friend. What's your favorite MJ track?