Why is everything so hard?

Look out, he is an android :)

Hot New Relationship Book Warns Women: 'Wake Up! He's A Shapeshifter'

Why can't we all get along? The India-Pakistan story

The Hindu's Pakistan correspondent has wound up her four-year assignment there, and writes:

saying goodbye to Pakistan was much more difficult than I imagined. Like other Indians who have experienced Pakistan first-hand, I gained a vast number of friends for life and multitudes of warm memories. Against this reality, it seems absurdly unbelievable that these two countries are not even talking properly to each other, that I cannot visit my Pakistani friends easily, that they cannot come and see me.  ...

the first thing that Pakistanis and Indians ask each other is: “We eat the same food, speak the same language, we even look the same, so why can't we be friends?” The short answer to that is that we cannot be friends as long as we continue looking at each other through the narrow prism of our respective states. Pakistanis must locate the Indian within themselves, and Indians must discover their inner Pakistani. It would help understand each other better, and free us from state-manipulated attitudes. In our own interests, it is up to us, the people, to find ways to do this

The first Pakistani I ever met in my life and interacted with was a fellow student at USC--now almost 23 years ago.  I had to come all the way to the other side of the planet to meet one from across the border :)


Siddiqui (I think that is how he spelt it) was a grad student in engineering.  We laughed at the same jokes, and seemed to share a lot of interests.  Those were the days of me beginning to experiment with cooking.  I  invited him over one day, and we remarked how easy it was for an Indian and a Pakistani to get along.    
Later, when I started working part time with the university's computing services, I had extensive interactions with another Pakistani--I forget his name now.  He was a good 10+plus years older than me.  It was only the age and experiences that differed--otherwise, no problems at all.


When I started teaching in California, one student was the daughter of immigrants from Pakistan.  She was a kid when they came over ...  She often talked to me about the "old country's culture" that was placing constraints on her--fully knowing that I am from India, and not a Muslim either.   There was no India-Pak difference ...


Maybe one of these days I will even get to visit Pakistan, I hope.  Maybe I will start with the former East Pakistan ... 


hey, write me a check for the travel expenses, and I will take off right away :)

Aah, for some tasty food: Cheppankizhangu Fry

Out at Edible Garden I spotted this: Cheppankizhangu Fry
Had me drooling, recalling the cheppankizhangu dishes that mom makes.

The last time I was in India, I went to Mysore for a couple of days to cool down--Madras was hot like how Madras is supposed to be in July.
In Mysore, I went to the lunch buffet at--I forget the hotel's name now--primarily because the tour book had recommended it.  The lunch was great--the tour book was on the money.  One of the items was a cheppankizhangu dish. It was not a fry, but had ginger and black pepper .... which was awesome.  I went for seconds and ate a plate full of nothing but this :)

I wish I could recall that hotel's name. (Update: tracked it down: it is the Metropole)

In case you are not aware of this root-tuber (?) well, the photo below shows how it looks before it is all cooked and ready for salivating people like me :)

What happened on March 19, 2003? Iraq War

Here is CNN:

U.S. President George W. Bush has announced that war against Iraq has begun.

So, how is contemporary Iraq?

Seven years after the first bombs in the war to oust Saddam Hussein, Iraqis went about their business yesterday with little observance of the anniversary.

Perhaps more important in the minds of many was the wait for final results of the country’s second nationwide parliamentary election. The milestone will determine who will oversee Iraq as US forces go home, but it could also point the direction the fragile democracy will take down the road: either deeper into the sectarian divide that followed the fall of Hussein or toward a more secular, inclusive rule.

“Now we have democracy and freedom, but the cost was dire, and Iraqis have paid that price,’’ said Raid Abdul-Zahra, 38, a technician in Najaf.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s coalition appears to be ahead in the tight race. With almost 90 percent of the vote counted by yesterday, his coalition was leading in seven of Iraq’s 18 provinces, compared with five provinces for his closest rival, the Iraqiya coalition led by secular Shi’ite Ayad Allawi.

Many, especially among the country’s Sunni minority that dominated Iraq during Hussein’s rule, blame the United States for the sectarian violence that erupted after the invasion.

“Failure is the word that should be linked with the US war,’’ said Mohammed Thabit, a retired teacher from Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit.

“The Americans brought people to power, but those people are specialized in reprisals, blackmail, inflaming sectarianism, and robbing.’’

And contemporary America?

It was a day like any other day — except that it was the seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And, for the most part, that was forgotten.

"Honestly, with everything that's going on in my personal life, it slipped my mind," said Chris Skidmore, 39, as he sipped a drink on the artificial lawn at Raleigh's North Hills Mall. "I've been out of work since August of last year."

It's not that the average American isn't aware that we still have tens of thousands or troops in Iraq, or that nearly 4,400 U.S. military personnel have died there since the war began. Scattered demonstrations were scheduled around the country to call for the troops' swift return.

But with so much else going on — a torpid economy, a climactic debate over health care reform, a mounting conflict in Afghanistan — it's easy to lose sight of the fact that Americans are still fighting and dying in Iraq.

Well, it was March 20th in Iraq when the war began.  Iraq is in the Middle East, and my brother was not too far away from Iraq at that time--he was in Dubai.  Why is my brother relevant in this?  March 20th is is birthday--happy birthday!

BTW, in Iraq, how do they refer to the Iraq War?  Do they call it the "America War" ....?

The sorry state of discussions in America :(

It is one thing if illogical and uncivilized remarks are made on Faux News.  But, the following from a banking professional executive is pathetic:

HERE'S something ridiculous:

Morgan Stanley Asia Chairman Stephen Roach said that Paul Krugman’s call to push China to allow a stronger yuan is “very bad” advice and that increased Chinese spending is a better way of reducing trade imbalances.

“We should take out the baseball bat on Paul Krugman -- I mean I think that the advice is completely wrong,” Roach said in an Bloomberg Television interview in Beijing when asked about Krugman’s call, characterized as akin to taking a baseball bat to China. “We’re lashing out at China rather than tending to our own business,” which is raising U.S. savings, Roach said.

Two points. First, Mr Krugman's advice to China isn't wrong; it's right. China's currency is undervalued, and I think everyone (including the Chinese, but evidently excluding Mr Roach), thinks that an orderly appreciation of the renminbi would be a net benefit to China. Where I disagree with Mr Krugman is in his advice to America. The currency issue isn't a big enough problem to be worth the risks associated with an aggressive American push to get China to revalue.

Secondly, I think it's very inappropriate to wish violence on anyone, and particularly on a very good economist who is just arguing for what he believes. That's a poor way to conduct discourse, though it's probably a good way to get invited back on a television show.

Ok, one more on Facebook :)

I am sure Tunku Varadarajan read this piece in the NY Times as well ... about how people use FB to vent, particularly those in relationships! :)

Whether through nagging wall posts or antagonistic changes to their “relationship status,” the social networking site is proving to be as good for broadcasting marital discord as it is for sharing vacation photos. At 400 million members and growing, Facebook might just replace restaurants as the go-to place for couples to cause a scene.
As score-settling on Facebook has grown commonplace, sites like Lamebook have begun documenting the worst spats (which also happen to be the most humorous). On Facebook itself, people can join several groups with names like “I Dislike People/Couples Who Argue Publicly on Facebook.”
For most couples, the temptation to publicly slander each other is overpowered by the instinct to prove to their friends how happy they are, reality notwithstanding. But for others, arguing in front of others comes as naturally as slamming doors.

Wait a minute; Lamebook? The name itself is hilarious!!! I got distracted while reading that in the NY Times and checked Lamebook, where I found this neat little joke:

Why was Saddam Hussein afraid to have sex with a girl?  Because when he opens her he will see Bush

Aah, the future is just about beginning to unfold .... can't wait for the next exciting development.  The ultimate will be pizza delivery right there on the Web :)

More on Wal-Mart doing good things ....

Of course, Wal-Mart, like most businesses, is a mix of good and bad. But, the company is beginning to understand that maybe the critics have a point and, as noted in earlier posts, is exploring the ways in which its business can address those criticisms. 
And, when it makes money sense, well, why not use its market-muscle-power, right?  Which is what it is up to now with check-cashing/payday loan.  What is payday lending, you ask?

Cheque-cashing and payday lending businesses are very common in poor neighbourhoods around the country. They provide the most basic financial services to unbanked customers, at what are typically described as usurious rates of interest—often 400% APR or more.

For years now politicians have been blowing hot air about this and, true to their nature, prefer not to do any damn thing.  Wal-Mart is smelling money in this, in ways that could actually clean up the system and make it less onerous for the poor:

WHAT is retail behemoth Wal-Mart up to these days?

Wal-Mart already has “MoneyCenters” in 1,000 of its U.S. stores, and the company said yesterday it plans to to add 400 more by the end of the year. The centers offer services like check cashing and bill pay that are often considered part of the broader “fringe banking” system. [...] Lots of those people go to local check-cashing outfits that often charge high fees. So Wal-Mart, which charges $3 to $6 cash a check, can be a good alternative, said Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini, who works for a New America Foundation program that aims to help low- and middle-income people build wealth.

Pretty neat, eh! 

This just continues to illustrate how interesting Wal-Mart is as a phenomenon and a mirror of American society and culture. Wal-Mart clearly has market power, which it occasionally uses abusively, if not necessarily illegally. But sometimes, it uses its market power to accomplish things government entities are unwilling or unable to accomplish—pressing environmental standards on its suppliers, for instance, or reining in abusive lenders. I just appreciate Wal-Mart's ability to demonstrate the strangely ad hoc way in which American institutions manage to muddle through. Americans should maybe be taking Wal-Mart's market power a little more seriously, but hey, so long as its ability to shift the economics in local markets accomplishes goals a dysfunctional federal government is unable to address, well, it may be better to leave well enough alone.

Why India (Indians) love Facebook

I wonder what my "Indian friends" on Facebook will have to say about this column by Tunku Varadarajan: (BTW, the one good thing that came out of Rupert Murdoch taking over the Wall Street Journal? Varadarajan fled from that publication!)

Social media was invented for Indians, says Sree Sreenivasan, a digital media professor at Columbia and co-founder of SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association. "They take to it naturally and with great passion. It allows them to do two things they love: Tell everyone what they are doing; and stick their noses into other people's business." (The gregarious Prof. Sreenivasan, when last I checked, had 4,995 Facebook friends; he, his wife, and his father—a retired Indian ambassador to the U.N.—are all my Facebook friends. My wife and brother are the professor's friends, too. Q.E.D.)

First, let me get this.  Varadarajan has Tamil Nadu connections.  Sreenivasan could easily be a name from Tamil Nadu, and definitely from southern India.  And me, well, .... :)  aaah, too many opportunities for sidebar comments! 

Anyway, that is an interesting way to look at FB and Indians--how FB fits well into an Indian way of life.  More from Varadarajan:

Prof. Sreenivasan of Columbia, no slouch on Twitter himself, says "I tell folks in the U.S. that you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait till Indians really combine their love of the cellphone with social media. Then, Facebook, Twitter, etc, will really explode.
"Take the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008, for example, when so much fuss was made about how Twitter had 'truly arrived' with the way it was used during the attacks. Back then, Twitter worked in India only via smartphones and Web browsers, of which there was only a small number. Today, there are hundreds of millions of cell \phones. Imagine if they could all easily Facebook and Twitter via text message!"
Is it any wonder, then, that Facebook has gone to India—gone, I'd say again, to the place where it belongs?

For whatever it is worth: Yes, I use Twitter. I blog. I am on Facebook with 38 friends :) ht

Honey trap: spies and sex

Foreign Policy has advice for honey-trappers and honey-trappees (ht).

And, if you are like me (well, too bad for you!) you are wondering why the heck is Foreign Policy discussing honey as if it is a home and garden magazine.

It is because honey-trap means something else in international relations:

MI5 is worried about sex. In a 14-page document distributed last year to hundreds of British banks, businesses, and financial institutions, titled "The Threat from Chinese Espionage," the famed British security service described a wide-ranging Chinese effort to blackmail Western businesspeople over sexual relationships. The document, as the London Times reportedin January, explicitly warns that Chinese intelligence services are trying to cultivate "long-term relationships" and have been known to "exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships ... to pressurise individuals to co-operate with them."...

The trade name for this type of spying is the "honey trap." And it turns out that both men and women are equally adept at setting one -- and equally vulnerable to tumbling in. Spies use sex, intelligence, and the thrill of a secret life as bait. Cleverness, training, character, and patriotism are often no defense against a well-set honey trap. And as in normal life, no planning can take into account that a romance begun in deceit might actually turn into a genuine, passionate affair. In fact, when an East German honey trap was exposed in 1997, one of the women involved refused to believe she had been deceived, even when presented with the evidence. "No, that's not true," she insisted. "He really loved me." 

Map of the day ... a puzzle as well

Kidnapped. Raped. Married.

I have followed Johann Hari's' essays for a few years now.  He is simply fantastic--a clear thinker with an equally clear prose.  I think I have even used his essay(s) on Ayaan Hirsi Ali in my classes.  And then there was the strange case of Hari's essay causing a riot in Calcutta Kolkata after it was reprinted in the Statesman.

This time around, Hari has an awfully depressing piece on Ethiopia--on how women are, well, kidnapped, raped, and married, and then abused throughout their married lives. (ht)  Ok, Hari does show that there is work being done on preventing/outlawing this.  A grim reminder of the state of "half the sky" even as we observe women's history month!

Kerala: the "money order economy"

Right from my graduate school days, Kerala, Sri Lanka, and Costa Rica, were classic examples of how social indicators of "development" can be attained even without high levels of per capita incomes.

Sri Lanka then got messier and messier with its civil war.  Costa Rica continues to maintain that shine.

While social indicators in Kerala might make even a few developed countries blush, over the years its economy has started to lag ... a lot. 

It appears that many of the socio-political transformations that made the Kerala miracle possible are pretty much some of the reasons why the state lags behind in economic terms.

The BBC reports:

Many believe that the skewed nature of the economy - it has been called the "money order economy" - is to blame.
Kerala lives off remittances and it lacks a manufacturing base. Economists draw parallels with the Philippines and Sri Lanka, which face similar problems.

The urban-rural gap is the lowest in Kerala

And Kerala has not benefited directly from the rise of its biggest service industry, tourism. Service tax is a federal tax which first goes to Delhi, and is then distributed among different states.
Kerala's biggest advantage - high literacy - has become a strange liability: the vast majority of educated unemployed have to go elsewhere for work.
Economists like KK George, who have spent a lifetime studying the "Kerala conundrum", say the state is facing a "second generation problem" of growth.
"Having fulfilled all millennium development goals, the state has no money left for higher investments. The central government is busy tackling poverty and illiteracy in most states, so doesn't have time or money for Kerala. And successive governments in Kerala have not been able to take it forward," says Dr George.

Yes, they migrate.  The joke, even from my India days, was that when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, he was surprised to see a Kerala tea stall there :) 

More from the BBC:

Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen says Kerala has to "learn from the world". Its famed model of development, which is still touted as the most inclusive one, appears to have hit the buffers.
"The Kerala model is grinding to a halt because the social and political groups having fulfilled their original agenda now have no new agendas. Society has lost its capacity to set collective goals. There are no more big dreams," says Dr George.
"The old change agents like the Christian church and their missionary organisations, social reform movements in various caste groups, trade unions and political parties are acting merely as pressure groups either to defend the status quo or to extract the maximum possible share of a cake that is not increasing in size."
Clearly, Kerala needs a new contract between the state and its people to move ahead and build upon its enviable gains.

Here, Oregon is kind of similar in one respect: up until the 1980s, Oregon seemed to be way ahead of the curve on many critical socioeconomic issues.  And since then, well, as a colleague described the situation yesterday at lunch, "we have it all ass backward now" :(

I now routinely tell my students: "you are screwed."  My hope is that they would wake up to the reality that there are lots of problems in Oregon, particularly for the young and the restless ....

I wonder if somewhere along the road, people and politicians in both these states kind of became a tad too  smug and started believing that the world revolves around them, only to later find out that it now revolves around China. And elsewhere ....

Anyway, if Kerala is the "money order economy," then what might be a catchy phrase to describe Oregon's economy? :)  What says you, ye faithful readers (editor: don't count imaginary chickens!)

Iraq invasion: the re-writing is in full swing :(

I might not always agree with Glenn Greenwald.  Well, I mostly agree with him, and rarely disagree with his views!  But, there is no denying that he is one sharp thinker, never one to rant but always strong with evidence to back him up ... If I get into trouble, it is someone like Greenwald that I want on my side.
In this piece that he has on how the Iraq invasion is being quickly and easily retold by the likes of Thomas Friedman, Greenwald gets to the issue so easily as that damn warm knife through butter:

It was only a matter of time before American elites abandoned their faux regret over Iraq.  For tribalists and nationalists, America can err in its execution but never in its motives.  There's no question -- as this glorifying, propagandistic Newsweek cover story reflects -- that it's now official dogma that this was the right thing to do, or at least that we produced something great and wonderful for that country, as was our intent all along (leaving aside the what is actually happening in Iraq).  It's nothing short of nauseating to watch those responsible glorify what they did without weighing -- or, in Friedman's case, affirmatively dismissing as irrelevant -- the extreme amounts of death and suffering that they caused, all based on false pretenses.  But this is why Tom Friedman is the favorite propagandist of "Washington insiders"-- because he feeds them the justifications they need to feel good about themselves.  Forget all those innocent dead people and destruction you caused; it all worked out in the end.

Yes, it is quite close to nauseating.

Ethics and Congress: Ne'er the twain shall meet?

The Daily Show at its best:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Crumbums & Fatcats
www.thedailyshow.com
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Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi's continuing limbo status

Over to The Hindu:

The Political Parties Registration Law, enacted by the military junta in Myanmar ahead of general elections to be held later this year, is aimed at keeping the popular leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi out of the electoral process. Only portions of the law have been released and they are outrageous. There cannot be a greater fraud on the electoral process, the sole aim of which is to keep the military junta in power. The international community, led by the United Nations, was hoping against hope that the military rulers would see some reason and make the forthcoming elections an inclusive process. In a slap in their face, the junta has barred anyone convicted of a crime from being a member of a political party. Further, parties that want to register under the new law must expel members who are “not in conformity with the qualification to be members of a party.” This means that Ms Suu Kyi cannot contest the elections, and her National League for Democracy (NLD) must expel her if it is to be eligible to participate in the process.

Teachers, and successful students

In my K-12 years, I had quite a few fantastic teachers.  The fact that years later one of them couldn't even vaguely recall me, but could clearly remember so many of my classmates, was, however, a tad depressing :)  From math (or, maths as it was called in India) to English to science .... they were good awesome.

When I was in graduate school, a professor, Jim Moore, and I were once talking about the teachers we learnt from in K-12, and Jim said that perhaps it was thanks to all the gender discrimination that he lucked out with great teachers.  His logic was that talented and qualified women were not encouraged to go into professions.  The only one that was acceptable was, well, teaching.  The net result, Jim figured, he had these awesome teachers who wanted to make the best of the only opportunity that society would allow them to pursue.

I told Jim that might be my story as well, particularly because we lived in an industrial town where spouses couldn't easily find jobs.  Teaching--and vastly underpaid at that--was all they could find.  Lucky for me, and unlucky for them! 

Since then, teaching has been spoilt by people like me, who give the profession nothing but mashed potatoes :)

Here is the funny thing:systematic research is leading us to the same conclusion:

In the 1950s, smart women, except for truly determined trailblazers, had few professional options beyond teaching. Ditto for blacks and other minorities. If you had a particularly smart and ambitious daughter, people would say, "I bet she grows up to be a teacher!" While many things have happened to public schools over the last 50 years, one of the most important is that this low-cost captive labor pool of extremely talented men and women has evaporated completely—and along with it the respect that was once automatically accorded to those who entered the profession.

In some ways, isn't it an irony that by "professionalizing" the profession we have ended up with an attitude that teaching is merely a career choice?  "Should I become a police officer, or a teacher?" does not have the same weight as teaching as a calling, as something one would want to do whether there is money in it or not ... (there is no money in it, as far as I can see, and looking at the bills I have to pay!)

So:

the question remains: How do we lure more, talented people to the profession and give them—and the many superb teachers who already exist—the support and respect they deserve?

Unlike a politician, I am readily willing to admit that my response to that question is this: I have no idea :(

Crazy (Indian) faculty, we are :)

Over to the Chronicle:

Madhukar Vable, a professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan Technological U., has denounced what he says is his university's neglect of the classroom experience for undergraduates. To protest, he has taken down and returned his teaching awards.
...
Last October, Madhukar Vable said farewell to two teaching prizes that he had won a decade earlier. He packed the plaques in envelopes and shipped them back to the university and state offices that had awarded them.

Does Professor Vable know that his awards will go well with mashed potatoes? :)

Dickens' Scrooge was a caricature of Malthus. Awesome!

[It] is the height of arrogance for us in the rich world to downplay the importance of our own environmental footprint because future generations of poor people might one day have the temerity to get as rich and destructive as us. How dare we?

I could not have phrased this any better!  I am concerned--worried is more appropriate--about climate change, yes.  But, this whole idea of pointing the fingers at the rapidly growing poorer economies, while we in the rich countries continue to binge is simply not ok and, in fact, comes across as a twisted approach to keeping the poor, well, poor!!!
Anyway, that quote is from Fred Pearce's essay, (ht) where he adds:

Some green activists need to take a long hard look at themselves. We all like to think of ourselves as progressives. But Robert Malthus, the man who first warned 200 years ago that population growth would produce demographic armageddon, was in his time a favourite of capitalist mill owners. He opposed Victorian charities because he said they were only making matters worse for the poor, encouraging them to breed. He said the workhouses were too lenient. Progressives of the day hated him. Charles Dickens attacked him in several books: when Oliver Twist asked for more gruel in the workhouse, for instance, that was a satire on a newly introduced get-tough law on workhouses, known popularly as Malthus’s Law. In Hard Times, the headmaster obsessed with facts, Thomas Gradgrind, had a son called Malthus. In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge was also widely seen at the time as a caricature of Malthus.

Malthus, it should be remembered, spent many years teaching British colonial administrators before they went out to run the empire. They adopted his ideas that famine and disease were the result of overbreeding, so the victims should be allowed to die. It was Malthusian thinking that led to the huge and unnecessary death toll in the Irish potato famine.

We must not follow the lure of Malthus, and blame the world’s poor for the environmental damaged caused overwhelmingly by us: the rich. The truth is that the population bomb is being defused round the world. But the consumption bomb is still primed and ever more dangerous.

Rajneesh's take on Nietzsche's "God is dead"

So, reading one thing and following up on a hyperlink, and jumping from there to another hyperlink led me to this video clip of Rajneesh (aka Osho) talking about what results if god were dead:

I don't know if his talk came first, or the joke that many of us have heard before came first.  If he had lifted the idea from the joke that was circulating around, then I suppose plagiarism is the least of the crimes that Rajneesh and his cohorts committed, eh! :)

How much of the Toyota hysteria is just that?

The Toyota joke that I came up with, which I shared with my students as well, was:

You know why the latest model Prius has problems stopping?
Because, when Toyota upgraded the battery, they used the Energizer batteries and now the Prius keeps on going :)

But, of course, there is a difference between joking around and systematically understanding social issues.  As I posted earlier, I think we are overplaying the Toyota recall issue.  And, as we get more into the data, well, I will use Megan McArdle's words:

[You] don't usually make a profit by killing your customers.  It's too risky, in this age of nosy regulators and angry consumer activists.

Their behavior becomes a bit more explicable when you consider this argument from Ted Frank:

The Los Angeles Times recently did a story detailing all of the NHTSA reports of Toyota "sudden acceleration" fatalities, and, though the Times did not mention it, the ages of the drivers involved were striking. 

In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89--and I'm leaving out the son whose age wasn't identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.

 These "electronic defects" apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. (If computers are going to discriminate against anyone, they should be picking on the young, who are more likely to take up arms against the rise of the machines and future Terminators).

And based on the data, McArdle has the following chart:

I tell you, the story is a lot more complicated than a simple narrative that we might prefer.

The other day, a colleague and I were walking from the parking lot to our offices, and I asked him if his wife was enjoying her retired life.  "Yes" he said, and added that she is recovering from an accident.  What happened?  His wife was walking towards her car with a couple of shopping bags when she was hit by a Lexus.  Nothing major, but nothing minor either. 
I asked him whether it was related to brakes/speeding up problems of Toyota--after all, Lexus is a Toyota product.  He said that the driver apologized profusely because it was her fault, and then he noted that it was quite an old woman who was driving it. 
Why mention this?  Because, McArdle reports that it is not only the age, but also ....

a slight majority of the incidents involved someone either parking, pulling out of a parking space, in stop and go traffic, at a light or stop sign . . . in other words, probably starting up from a complete stop. 

and has the following chart:

So, who you gonna believe? :)