Churchill was right

I do not like Winston Churchill. He had the gall to say "India is merely a geographical expression. It is no more a single country than the Equator..". In my opinion, it shows an amazing level of ignorance on what constitutes a nation and how nations are built, broken, and rebuilt over years, decades, and centuries. Is his country, grandly called United Kingdom, a country or merely a geographical expression? Is it no more a single country than the Prime Meridian? In fact, very recently, the people of Scotland were asked the same question. Readers should understand that, this question came after more than two centuries of union, living together, and fighting two World Wars, on the same side!

That said, this is not a rant about Churchill. He was a great man and a even greater wit, even if the witticism ended up piercing the thin skin of this former Indian.

One of his alleged quotes is, "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart.  If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain". I say alleged, since I could not find any reference to his having said it. But it is the type of remark you would expect him to make.

Well I was what you would call a socialist in my younger days. There was not a situation when I could find fault with workers and give any credit to a rich man. Indian movies accentuated this prejudice to a great extent. I have lost track of the number of movies with a handsome but poor youth, with a widowed mother, and maybe a unmarried sister, who falls in love with a rich girl with a disapproving father. Most Indians that grew up in the first 3 decades after independence tended to be socialist. It is not surprising that India with its colonial history, moved away from everything that United Kingdom, and its friend, United States, stood for.

With increasing affluence and a general awareness of how things work, I would now label my political opinions with this common phrase "Fiscally conservative, Socially Liberal". In United States that would put me near the center. Since social issues matter more to me, I tend to be left of Center and reflexively vote Democrats.

Overall, Churchill was correct. I have become more conservative in my opinions, maybe not so much that I would vote for Republicans in their current Avatar.

That said, I do yearn for the mythical Fiscally Conservative Republicans. I say mythical, since it was under a Republican Congress and Republican President that we ran some of the most awful budgets. In fact, I am sure the spending got so bad, dictionary.com changed the meaning of Profligacy to "refer to Bush Presidency Budgets"! But don't worry, however wrong they were, Cheney will defend those decisions. To quote Stephen Colbert from another context - The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man's beliefs never will.

What does the rice plant want?

The biblical view of life is that God created plants and animals with humans in mind. He created the grains so his children (only us, not the other zillion creatures) could eat tasty bread. He created cow and other milking animals so we could drink milk, cheese, butter, and other delicious diary products. Pigs, chicken, cows and other meat producing animals exist to cater to our need for high quality, delicious proteins. He created leafy vegetables and sweet fruits for a healthy balance. The huge bio-diversity that is available in nature is to ensure that we do not get bored eating the same meal!

Really!

Then there is the Theory of Evolution. Here is a para taken from The Wikipedia "Evolution, also known as descent with modification, is the change in heritable phenotype traits of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization, including the level of species, individual organisms, and at the level of molecular evolution". Do you see any reference to a God or his favorite: Man (not woman)?

Nah. The former theory, I mean fantasy, leads to more questions than answers (other than giving cliched responses like, "Just so", "God's will" and others of even lesser value). But if some people like this opiate, good for them. Just don't thrust your drug on me.

A rice plant is way to make rice seeds. And a rice seed is a way to make more rice plants. That is the only purpose of rice. It does not worry if it is tasty or starchy. It does not care if the stalk is short and thick so more grain can grow without the plant bending. It does not care if we, humans, like it more or less. It does not mind if we get diabetes, eating a little more of it or lose weight eating less of it. It does not think.

Its sole purpose is self-propagation. All it wants to do, to paraphrase God in Genesis, is to

Go forth and multiply!

A rant

First a long rant at J, my wife. Sorry honey.

She likes to save the planet and in that attempt has been harping for the past five years, about buying a Prius, installing solar heater, and finally installing solar panels for electricity. The cost of making them do not factor into her equation; after all solar power is expensive since solar panels are expensive; solar panels are expensive since it takes a lot of energy to make solar panels which means that manufacturing process emits more carbon-dioxide. The previous statement is simplified, but in essence what I am saying is; the price of a commodity is proportional to the energy required to manufacture it. And at this point, solar panels have been commoditized (unlike say Rolex watches).

So in essense, the manufacturing of solar panels has emitted huge amounts of green house gases even before they generated a single Joule of energy. Unless sufficient efficiencies are achieved either in making solar panels or in the energy yield of a solar panel, the making of solar panels could produce more green house gases than burning fossil fuel directly to generate the energy that would be generated by solar panels. I found a couple of site; I did not do detailed research whether these sites are truly objective.

Site 1: This site talks about the high energy needs besides additional green house gases emitted during manufacturing process.

Site 2: This link talks about the geographical distribution of solar energy and how it is very good idea in tropical areas but not at all in northern countries.

This is not to imply that burning fossil fuels is the way; in fact I believe that some form of solar energy conversion is the way of the future. What I feel is to look it in logically and not reflexively; the sea levels are rising, so go get solar panels today! Also understand that solar cells cost a lot of money; there just is no free lunch.

My first marathon. MCM 2014

One of my goals for 2014 was to run a half marathon. I was successful in achieving this goal early in May 2014. My stretch goals for 2014 was to run a full Marathon. I had earlier submitted an application to Marine Corp Marathon and to my surprise, I was selected in the lottery. With a looming marathon in October, I decided to look for training resources.

With Conroy and Audrey

I was referred to First Time Marathon (FTM) by someone that had run marathons in the past. I applied to join this training group by writing to the coordinators, Conroy and Audrey and they accepted me in their training group. The first run for this training program was a short distance run of 7 miles! No kidding. I had to get in shape just to complete my training run!

The 12:30 Pace group

Training started in earnest on the first Sunday of May at Ken Gar Park. A lot of the folks including me saw how unfit they were. In my defense, I did try. From early April onwards, I started running 4-5 miles 3 times a week with a goal of running at least 15 miles a week. I guess it was not enough.

We were segregated into groups of varying speeds with the fastest group around 9minutes-per-mile and the slowest 13minutes-per-mile. I fell into the second slowest group 12minutes-30seconds-per-mile. Our pace group coaches were Omar and Judith. Here is a picture of the group on a trail during one of our long runs.

The training was hard with slow and steady increase in both Sunday long runs and weekly total mileage. The Wednesday speed training became a nightmare especially in August with temperatures and humidity hovering around 90. During those times, we tended to question our sanity. Instead of simply asking "Why am I running", I took to asking a simple existential question "Why".

During the training, I took part in two half marathons. I ran my first half early in May at the Delaware Marathon. The second one was a Road Runners Club sponsored run called the Parks Half. I found it very hard to run the Delaware, but the Parks Half was a walk in the (I am sorry) park.

We persevered and our long distance runs inched up to 20 miles; nearly a full marathon! As the season changed to fall, the weather slowly cooled to a point where it was now cold! We would have highs in the 30s during some of the Sunday runs in early October. No complaints; the cold was little more easier to handle than heat.

The big day dawned. J and M also came along. The run was an amazing experience. Group of marines parachuted down to the start line. Because we were with the FTM program, we started with the early crowd. And it was crowd of 20000 runners! People could barely move their elbows! With several folks in our pace group running along with me, I was never alone. I did not feel tired. I was on a high just being there. I can barely remember much of the details during the early phases.

As we were running

After a few miles, I found myself running with Kara, Na Alia, Prasanna, and Laura. Kara is good natural pacer. She maintained a steady speed and I stayed behind as I had a tendency to speed up a little more than I should. It helped me later when I grew tired. We all were wearing our FTM shirts and one of the other runners observed this and actually asked me, if I was a virgin! I kid you not.

Around 15 miles, only 3 of us were left in our group, Kara, Na Alia, and myself. Na Alia dropped behind around 17 and I stayed with Kara till mile 21 when I had to stop running. I walked a bit, ran a bit and kept this up till mile 24 when I fell in with Sridhar from the 12minutes-per-mile pace group. I  could see that he also was struggling a bit. We ran the last 2 miles together encouraging each other.  The last 100 yeards was uphill but it was a great feeling crossing the line high-fiving all the marines lined along the path.

Sri And I at the end

My time was 5 hours and 39 minutes. I had three goals for the marathon

Complete it - Done
Complete it under 6 hours - Done
Complete it under 5 hours and 30 minutes - Never mind, 2 out of three ain't so bad.

I was happy.

The Trinity Live in Brookeville

Most Hindu children are aware that the Hindu mythology includes The Trinity. This includes Brahma the creator, Vishnu the presever, and Shiva the destroyer.

I am sure it comes as a surprise that they live in our residence in Brookeville, Maryland!

Jannavi is a great cook. She is a great person to plan events with. In fact Maalini's birthday party is an event adults enjoy as much as the children. One particular one involved live reptiles include a 20 feet Boa Constrictor! Another one involved children digging for fossils in dirt that was brought from the Chesapeake Bay! Yet another one involved a lecture on various types of rocks followed by children breaking a Geode and finding an assortment of beautiful, colored crystals. She is the Brahma in our household.

Now all this planning and creativity leaves loose ends. The house is usually in a mess. To the rescue comes yours truly. I like cleaning the kitchen after folks have had their meals. I like the process of loading a dishwasher and seeing the sink all clean. I like sweeping the floor of crumbs after a meal. I also like to ensure that bad plans do not take shape. I make sure that expensive plans are vetoed before they become a reality. In short I represent the Vishnu of my household.

This leads to a short para on how all stories end in our house. Once upon a time there was an IPod. It was nice, It worked well. It was well used by J, D, and I. It attracted the attention of Maalini. She took it. The end! The end of the IPod!

As you can see, M represents the Shiva of our household. She has to come near something for that to stop working or worse, break. And she always says "but it was an accident"!

The Hindu mythology includes the most powerful goddess Shakti that literally means power. She is so powerful; the mythology speaks of her being all of the above, creator as mother, Preserver, and Destroyer as Kali. And that is my older daughter, Devi, which everyone knows means Goddess!

Resolutions for 2015

Achievable goals

1. Learn Sanskrit.
2. Learn JavaScript (is this a work goal?).
3. Run a Srinivasan Family Relay Marathon in May 2015, in Delaware.
4. Get below 170lb
5. Stay Tobacco free
6. Drink on an average no more than 1 glass of wine a day, and no more than 2 on any given day!

Stretch Goal

1. Learn Tamil
2. Speak German fluently