The book excerpt begins

Starting today, I begin with the excerpts from Yash's book. Copyright for this blog is still mine since the book has not yet been written and the words are not Yash's (the fact that the book may never get written does not take the exclusivity that this blog enjoys away, does it?)

"The reason I initiated work on this book leads back to that dull, cloudy day in March of 2009, when after a drab day at work, I arrived home to a ticket of $124 for toll violations that I did not know I had committed in Illinois and a bill of ${read the book} from a healthcare provider which had gotten the number wrong for the 6th time.

"Now maybe the toll violation was in line, after all they did have a picture of my car on the ticket. But what I do not get is how a country that can take pictures of people missing tolls, find them and send them tickets cannot send a (formerly) sick person a bill for the right amount. This, after calling them after every wrong bill. I have bills for 6 different amounts, none of them anywhere close to the amount I am supposed to be paying. I guess this is one of the reasons I prefer India, you still get a bill for the wrong amount but atleast you can safely violate a few traffic rules (as can be seend here) and get over your frustration."

Earth day rant

Yesterday, as most of you know, was Earth day when cities across the world switched off their lights from 8:30 to 9:30 pm. Now, I find this a great way to raise awareness on the topic of global warming, a very genuine cause. However, I think that it is time to take action rather than raise awareness.

Let us not kid ourselves here. The problem on hand is huge. We need to put all our collective efforts and thoughts on trying to solve it that raising awareness. Now, do not try to tell me that we did something by switching off the lights for an hour. Switching off the lights for an hour reduced the energy you used but it did not reduce the energy produced by the electric company which was wasted anyways since the electricity cannot be stored. Therefore, the amount of carbon that was released was not any less than what would have been released otherwise. What we need to do is reduce our overall energy expenditure (the part that is wasteful) so that companies reduce the electricity they burn. We need to work towards renewable energy sources. And we need to do it now.

I do realize that there is nothing new in what I am saying, but I do seriously believe that we need to get beyond the farce that is awareness and spend more time in coming up with an innovative solution. Maybe, if we do want to raise awareness, we need to decide that people switch off lights for one hour on the day corresponding to their first name (A=1, B=2.....) in every month. This way, we will reduce the cumulative energy used and maybe call on electric companies to reduce the energy they produce.

Ofcourse, this is not necessarily in the best interest of the economy because less electricity means less jobs. ;)

PS: The reason I am frustrated with awareness is that in our generation, we have been spending more time raising awareness on topics than solving them................look around you there are people walking to raise cancer awareness, switching off lights to raise awareness on global warming and wearing bands to raise AIDS awareness. The previous generation would build a hospital to treat cancer patients because a relative died.............did that help? Maybe not.................but atleast they did something.

Exclusive book excerpts

My room-mate has gotten more and more frustrated with America over the past few days and we are prompting him to write a book based on his experiences and frustrations. To promote this yet unwritten book, I will be carrying exclusive excerpts (or atleast my interpretation of what some paras would be) from the book in this blog over the next few days.

Keep watching!

The question is ............what did YOU do

I read a research paper today that had 7 authors. The authors had reported chemical analysis of juice extracted after different treatments. At the end of the paper, the authors thanked 4 people for, and I quote, "their valuable work in carrying out juice manufacture and chemical analysis". The question I would like to ask the authors is, "What did YOU do?"

My monkey moment

This may be a bit out of context but I was just thinking yesterday about a few childhood memories and remembered my own monkey moment ala the Bhajji-Symonds saga (for non cricket fans more info here).

I forget what standard I was in then but it involves a friend of mine (let us call him Symonds for now). Well, Symonds was the pet student of a teacher with whom I was not on the best of terms. She called him a monkey (bandar was her exact word) in class out of great affection. I made the mistake of calling him the same out of school and discovered that he was not actually a monkey but a rat coz he ratted me out to the Proctor aka the teacher (could not leave out the pun wrt the match refree could I). Next thing I knew, I was getting a long lecture on good behavior and how not to abuse your colleagues which I treasure to this day.

Well, there it is, my very own monkey moment. Though in my defence, Symonds did not consider it a racial offense. On the other hand, I wonder if I would have gotten off lightly by claiming to say "maa ki" instead of monkey.

Is our memory and subconscious color blind

I was watching 'The Practice', a TV show about criminal lawyers today and they showed a witness telling his story as he remembered it and through his eyes, they conveyed what happened. The whole flashback he had was in black and white. Which is when I realized that unless the flashbacks are a major part of the story, most often in movies or on TV, they are shown in black and white and so are dreams. Which brings the question to mind, why? I have no opinions but do have this doubt.

Post script

After posting my blog, I felt guilty about not knowing whom I was quoting so I did what most scientists do when they are unaware of something, I googled his name. There is some information on him but nothing amazing. He taught personal and correspondence courses on self help (ironical isn't it). The most interesting aspect of his life was that he had the energy to write books in his 80s! Interesting character.......and now I know whom I am quoting.

Am I a plagiarist?

I just realized today that I have been plagiarizing for a long time now and most of us are on the same path. My gmail signature has a quote by Frank Tibolt (for the heck of me , I do not know who he is) - "We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action". I have been using this quote for about 2-3 years and have always gave Frank credit for it at the end - ie it was a reference in every mail.

However, the ethics of referencing demand that you put the idea or statement in quotes if you are not paraphrasing it. I had not been doing that. Apologies Mr. Tibolt. After a lot of thought, I have corrected the error (nah, I did not paraphrase it, just put quotes around it).

I write this post to enlighten all other scintists who are making this mistake. Let us all change our signatures.......................lets take a giant step to end plagiarism.