That’s what they call American’s of Asian origins. Just like ABCD is supposed to stand for American Born Confused Desi. Banana stands for our Asian bethren who were raised in this land of milk and honey.
Now why BANANA? Is this a smart acronym? No it is even more racist than you would think. BANANA yellow on the outside white on the inside.
A couple of weeks ago I went with Alex to a gun range in Santa Clara. Alex (my boss) is a huge gun fan and a hardcore libertarian. He has a nice collection of revolvers ( a nice Ruger for beginners, a Smith and Wesson, and a Colt when u really want to get serious). We went to the alley got our targets and started shooting at them. I think I am pretty accurate from about 20 yards. This is one of the cool things about being in the US. I do not think I would have had an oppurtunity to shoot pistols back home in India
If you are in the Bay Area and thinking about a hike which is not strenous then Mission Peak is the place to go. I was there on Saturday and here is a picture to prove I made it to the top
This is a great Channel 4 documentary presented by Richard Dawkins. He looks at religion (although he concentrates only on monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christainity and Islam) and points out the great harm such delusional beleifs cause mankind. Some are often surprised by the confrontational tone he takes and the anger he displays at the ridiculous statements made by different religious leaders. But I think Dawkins is right. For too long has the moderation in religion been tolerated. Today when we see acts such as 9/11 and the picketing of Planned Parenthood offices a more stringent anti religion actions need to be taken. From a classification point of view all religious books should be moved into the fiction sections of book stores and libraries. If religious leaders demand that evolution be taught as just a theory (one of the many viewpoints about how human beings came about) then all religious education should also be pointed out as just delusional beleifs. Children should be taught that all concepts such as heaven, hell and after life are fragments of imagination without any basis in reality. Infact just as children are not allowed to learn certain things till they reach a mature age they should be sheilded from religion till they are capable of self determination.
Torrent links
There is a great list of quotes from Steven Weinberg here
This is the one I liked the most
Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things — that takes religion.
– Steven Weinberg
The problem with religion is that people are brought up right from childhood to think that there is something good about beleiving because you have been told to beleive rather than beleiving because you have looked at the evidence
Great movie. Writing anything more about this movie is simply superflous. The movie grips you from the first minute and is extremely realisitic. At no point do you need to suspend disbeleif. The lead character Catalina Sandino Moreno is without doubt one of the best actresses to light up the screen ever. (Ofcourse I do not know if she was briliantly cast as Maria, to find out if she is really good I guess I will have to watch more movies starring her). Maria is just about the most graceful 17 year old potrayed in movie. From her confrontation with her boyfriend who fathers her child but does not love her to demanding her wages from drug dealers in New York she never seems to lose it. The way her character is built up all that she does seems extremely natural. I really liked the end of the movie where she decides to stay in the US and raise her child my herself instead of running home to be surrounded by loving family members.
All in all a brilliantly scripted, well directed excellent movie.
Thomas Edison’s first invention was an automatic vote-counting machine. But he found he couldn’t sell it, so he vowed only to make inventions people would buy.
Like all software development companies my workplace out sources some part of the development. The grapevine says you cannot get funded today unless you show how you are cutting costs using outsourcing.
My component interacts with a component that was out sourced. Today was spent banging my head against the following error thrown by the out sourced component
“External Error”
The operation was successful
I wanted to write the developer of the component an email and ask him if he found successful operations so rare that he flagged them as errors
In my usuall ramblings across the internet I sometimes come on gems such as this one
Here is my favorite part of the essay
Finally, and always, there is love. By this, I don’t mean that economic bargain that often passes for love these days. I don’t mean that I will love you if you get good grades, or that I will love you if you’ll sleep with me, or that I will love you if anything. I mean what I mean when I say, “I love you.” Period. Without expectation, condition, term limit, codicil, or obligation. To say that – and to mean it in that way – makes me happy.
What makes me happiest of all is when someone says “I love you” to me – meaning it as unconditionally as I intend to mean it – and I simply accept it. Learning to accept unconditional love has been the most demanding part of my education. It requires me to love myself as much as I am loved, which is not easy, since I like to pretend that my loathsome short-comings are invisible to all but me.