Nerdy (Chemistry) joke for the day

Need help?
Source

Feeling depressed? Low self esteem? Freud says ...

That explains my problems then :)

Worst pun of the day :)

Stop (taxpayer) funding of college sports

Perhaps the editor has decided against publishing an opinion piece I had emailed him two weeks ago (that and more is in this piece) in which I wrote:

As much as various college sports provide entertainment throughout the academic year, they do not generate employment and incomes with the kind of economic multipliers that, for instance, an Intel has had, and will continue to have, in the Portland metropolitan area and throughout Oregon as well.

So, that was two weeks ago.

Three days ago, the Oregonian's editorial noted "Intel's thundering footfall"

A report this week shows more than 5 percent of all economic activity in Oregon derives from Intel's work here.

The company in 2009 employed more than 15,150 people at average gross salaries of more than $117,000 each, dwarfing the average Washington County private-sector salary of $52,200 and Oregon salary of about $40,000. That $1.8 billion payroll then filtered into retail consumption and home-buying – and yet even it was dwarfed by $5.4 billion the company spent in the same year on utilities and goods and services furnished in good measure by Oregon businesses. The ripple effect runs deep as well as statewide.

Yet, it is not the creation of the next Intel or a new industry leader that our universities focus on. 

Instead, universities, including the one where I work, have come to believe, it would seem so, that it is in their best interests to collect monies from students and taxpayers in order to keep students and taxpayers entertained.

As we begin to experience tighter and tighter budget situations, one would think that we would then begin to cut the college-athletic-entertainment-industry's expenses.  Not so!

Using the problems in Virginia as the point of departure, this column in Reason argues:

perhaps now is the point at which Virginia leaders should give college athletics a long, hard look. Why? Two reasons: (1) They cost a gawdawful lot of money, and (2) they have nothing to do with the purpose of a university.

Well, hey, I wrote in my opinion piece that has not made it to print:

Successful sports teams could certainly help us forget, at least for a few hours, our individual and collective economic insecurities, but they are not going to help us build a secure and prosperous future in a rapidly changing world.

My doctor treats me with ... flattery! :)

I am not unlike most people in delaying going to the doctor as much as possible.  But, eventually, I do.

It is not that I don't like my doctor--in fact, if it were not for him, I would have delayed the visit even more.  "Dr. H." is an older guy, knows his craft and, more importantly, engages me in conversations like how family medicine doctors of the old days did.

So, there I was in the tiny office and the nurse finished taking my vitals.  (All healthy, thank you very much!)  Dr. H. came in and, like always, extended his hand and asked how I was.

"You are the doctor. You tell me" I replied.  I described to him the annoying reason for the visit.

Even as he was examining me, he asked "what do you think about that guy Fareed Zakaria?"

This is what I mean as he always engages me in conversations.  Not some inane stuff about the weather or, heaven forbid, about the local sports team.

"He is very sharp" I replied.  And then asked him "you ask me this because ....?"

"I watch his program.  He had Tom Friedman as his guest and they were talking about his latest book."

I didn't want to tell him that it has been a while since I gave Friedman any serious thought.  "I don't get cable at home" I replied.

While getting up to leave, he added "the entire discussion about the state of the country and the world was so depressing that I was ready to commit suicide."

He paused and said "I will be right back."

When he returned after about three minutes, a much younger physician came along.  Even before I could begin to worry on the need for a second opinion, Dr. H. said, "this is a medical student and she will be observing."

We introduced ourselves and Dr. H. told the student, "he is a university professor."  He then asked me "do you give pre-med students a hard time?"

We laughed.

Dr. H. wanted the student also to examine the problem that was the reason for all this.  I was so thankful that the problem was not anywhere below the waist!

Meanwhile, Dr. H. was back to Zakaria.

"Yes, he has a Ph.D. from one of those Ivy League schools" I added.  And then for a good measure "he is a good looking fellow as well, which helps with the TV aspect." 

Dr. H. explained to me how we were going to address my medical issue.  And the conversation continued. "There was that doctor who was in town--Vargas or something. He is also Indian."

"You mean Abraham Verghese?  Really?  He was in town?" I didn't know.

Dr. H. nodded, and asked the student if she has read Cutting for Stone.  She gave a non-committal answer.

Dr. H. said, "Verghese is a very smart guy."

"Hey, all of us from India are smart" I replied.

"Smart.  And good looking" responded Dr. H.looking at me.

I looked at the medical student and said "see, this is why I come to get checked by Dr. H."

She completed the idea: "Yes, he treats you and flatters you."

I will take such a treatment protocol any day.

Of course, I have to take those tablets as well.  But, first, I need to pick them up from the pharmacy.  I wonder if the pharmacist too will flatter me!

Quote (dream) of the day: on AfPakIndia

I dream of a day, while retaining our respective identities, one can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore, and dinner in Kabul. That is how my forefathers lived. That is how I want our grandchildren to live.

A lovely sentiment, wouldn't you agree?

That was India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, quoted in this talk by Hillary Clinton, when she was at Chennai a while ago. (Hey, I am a tad late to this party!)

Instead, what a colossal destruction of life and property because of the unwillingness to coexist over the years since 1947!

Hillary Clinton has been the best news in the Obama administration.  After their intense primary battles, I wondered how much Clinton would be okay to being the second violinist.  But, boy has she been impressive as a team player, and as a quiet and efficient cabinet official!  Pretty much no gaffes as the Secretary of State.  While we might not agree with her policy perspectives every single time, Clinton has represented the US absolutely as America's diplomat-in-chief.  I might seriously vote for Obama if he ditches Biden and makes Clinton his running mate.

Anyway, back to the Indian context for this entry: the US-India Higher Education Summit here in DC.

This unprecedented event also highlights the importance of education between our two countries. Academic exchange programs provide deep roots for our countries' relationship. Our ties are anchored by the more than 12,000 alumni of U.S. Department of State's public diplomacy programs in India, the 104,897 Indian students studying in the United States in 2010, and the more than 2 million Indian-Americans living in the United States. And the Fulbright Program has laid the foundation for this relationship since its inception in 1950. Today's events are the next step in developing our relationship.

The State Department is actively promoting internships in India for American students:

With more than 100,000 Indian students studying in the United States each year, young people in India tend to know a fair amount about U.S. cities, culture and businesses. But fewer than 3,000 U.S. students study in India annually.

Isn't it a tragic irony that India and the US, two countries literally on the other side of the planet from each other, are able to interact to this level, while even the next door Pakistan and Afghanistan are alien worlds to Indians?  What the fuck is wrong with this world :(

Almost two decades ago, in the dead of the night, the phone at home rang.  Fearing for the worst news from India, I shakily answered it.  It was my old school mate, Srikumar.

The guy had decided to take the land route from the Czech Republic to India, but could not proceed east from Iran because Pakistan would not issue him a visa.  To make things worse, Srikumar was all out of money too.  "Can you get me an air ticket from Tehran to anywhere in India?" was his question in the middle of the night.

I assured him I would.  In the morning, I contacted my friend, Shahab, who was from Iran, who then gave me the phone number of his preferred travel agent.  A day later, Srikumar was out of Iran, over the Pakistani air, and safe in India.

As Robert Kaplan wrote:

Aryans may have infiltrated from the Iranian plateau, and together with the subcontinent’s autochthonous inhabitants were part of a process that consolidated the political organization of the Gangetic Plain in northern India around 1000 B.C. This led to a set of monarchies between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C., culminating with the Nanda Empire which in the fourth century B.C. stretched across northern India and the Gangetic Plain from Punjab to Bengal. In 321 B.C., Chandragupta Maurya dethroned Dhana Nanda and founded the Mauryan Empire, which came to envelop much of the subcontinent except for the deep south, and thus for the first time in history encouraged the idea of India as a political entity conforming with the geography of South Asia.

A long and rich history in this geography.  If only we could soon figure out how to maintain our respective  identities and yet interact in friendly manner--friendly enough to travel the old trading routes and stop at the eateries in Amristar, Lahore, and Kabul.

Drop the gun. Take the, er, jilebi? Rajaratnam drops both!

So, Raj Rajaratnam, a Tamil-speaking immigrant from Sri Lanka, now faces up to 11 years in prison.

The multi-million dollar insider trading scam that Rajaratnam engineered is yet another, and latest, evidence that Indians and South Asians have truly integrated into most aspects of the American mainstream!

With a personal wealth that was once estimated at nearly $2 billion before his arrest and conviction, Rajaratnam was one of the richest people on the planet, and was a success story from the island of Sri Lanka to the island of Manhattan.  However, like the movie character Gordon Gekko who uttered that immortal cinematic line “greed is good,” Rajaratnam too engaged in insider trading to transform his hedge fund, Galleon Group, into one of the best performers. 

He managed to successfully lure many others who had access to valuable inside information, but whose depositions in court sealed the fate of this once high-flying Wall Street tycoon.  A high profile figure in this illustrious rap sheet of co-conspirators was Rajat Gupta, the former chief executive of the global management consulting firm, McKinsey.  Gupta, who was born in India, was one among many other Indian-Americans in the Rajaratnam case—the “Indian mafia,” as they were apparently fondly referred to in their wildly successful days before they fell victims to greed of the illegal kind.

In yet another interesting twist to this immigrant story, the lead prosecutor in the case is of Indian origins as well.  The US Attorney in-charge of the prosecution, Preet Bharara, grew up in the US after his parents emigrated from the northern Indian state of Punjab—diagonally and far away from Rajaratnam’s Sri Lanka.  Bharara, represents the Indian-American stories that draw the envy of many, with an undergraduate at Harvard, followed by law degree from Columbia and a successful professional life since.

Thus, it was an all South Asian immigrant affair in the Manhattan courtroom.  Talk about “all in the family!”

Such white collar crime, is, however, not anything new in our old countries in South Asia.   Corporate and political crimes are everyday events there, and often these two twines intersect too.  

The latest of the large-scale scandals to rock India, for instance, resulted in huge giveaways to the country’s telecommunication businesses at an estimated cost of more than $40 billion of lost revenue to the Indian government.  Forty billion dollars might seem like small change to us here against the background of trillions of dollars of debt over which Washington is now deadlocked.  In India, which is by no means a rich country, $40 billion is only a hair more than its annual defense expenditure!

Old habits die hard, particularly here in the US where immigrant groups engaging in crime is a story that has been re-enacted many times over by those chasing a shorter path to the American Dream.   Rajaratnam and his “Indian Mafia” are the latest installment and certainly will not be the last.  In this particular case, we can then maybe adapt the famous line from The Godfather, to "drop the gun, take the jilebi."

In a way, Rajaratnam’s shady and illegal wheeling and dealing has helped convey to the rest of America that as much as we have spellers and scientists amongst us, Indian-Americans are also regular people who run convenience stores or occasionally indulge in crime.

To paraphrase, a tad, Shakespeare’s Shylock--who too was overcome by greed--we bleed when pricked, laugh when tickled, and get jailed when caught!  Oh well!  I suppose Rajaratnam will now have all the time to catch up on Shakespearean and contemporary literature!

What "Occupy Wall Street" people want: Yes, THE list of demands

As gathered by America's Finest News Source, of course:

• Bank of America should be renamed Bank of Jerkmerica
• A simple "We're sorry"
• Corporations should be handing out more free promo items if their profits exceed $1 billion, even if it's just hats or those stupid foam cup-holder things
• Arcade Fire to play one set for them or, if they're unavailable, Spoon
• European-style socialist state so we can enjoy the same economic prosperity they do
• Lower tuition at the private universities in the Northeast they chose to attend instead of in-state public colleges
• Cheaper Odwallas
• Holding senior executives accountable for the massive wealth lost and the millions of families they destroyed and making them feel really, really guilty about it

Fall is here

The eastern sky was beginning to light up
Across was the moon, full and low
The air was crisp and cool and dewy
The darkness was being slowly erased by the rising magic rays
Whose orange and red were matched by the pumpkin patches

Soon, the moon disappeared
And so did the sun
The car ahead of me also vanished
It was fog everywhere
As I paused by a three-car fender-bender.

O'er the bridge to the other side of the river
The fog was gone.

Fall is here.
It is confirmed.

Budget deficits in universities. But, pay raises? Screw the students, eh :(

On Monday, I blogged about the craziness of faculty in the public universities in Oregon crying for pay raises.  It seemed bizarre that such raises were being sought, and were being given, when everybody knows fully well that there is not going to be enough money, and that means we will end up jacking up tuition and fees even more.

So, that was on Monday.

As if I needed more fuel for my angst, earlier today the president emails the campus wherein he notes:

WOU will realize deficits this biennium in excess of $5 million. This is after removing $2 million of costs from the budget

He ends that missive with:

If we are not proactive then change will be forced upon us – we still have much to do and no good idea can be turned away – there are no sacred cows!

So, pay raises are sacred cows then?

It is a mad, mad, mad, and increasingly maddening world.

The tragedy at Ayutthaya. Yet again! And at Ayodhya too :(

As has become my habit, I picked up the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times from the library's newspaper shelves and got myself a comfortable seat by the window and, predictably, I reached for the WSJ first. I was saddened to look at this photo:

It is one giant statue of the Buddha in Ayutthaya (a UNESCO World Heritage site,) sometimes referred to as the reclining posture, while a few others describe this as his enlightened state as he breathed his last.

The floods are making quite a mess of Thailand, with more than 260 dead and quite a bit of destruction to property.  I am able to relate to the area, its peoples, and to this Buddha statue thanks to having been there--the photo below is from my trip a couple of years ago:

I liked this photograph because the humans standing there gives the viewer an idea of the size of the statue.

Now, all these areas are flooded.

Death and destruction at Ayutthaya are, however, not anything new. If at all, humans have caused a lot more destruction, which, ironically, was because of the wars between the Buddhists in Burma and the Buddhists in Thailand!  I was almost teary when I saw a row of Buddha statues--beheaded by the invading Burmese.

Ayutthaya is, yes, named after Ayodhya. It was founded in 1350, and served as the capital for more than 400 years before it fell to the invading Burmese forces. It is a cruel irony that many a devastating wars have featured in the history of these two neighbors, which are home to millions of followers of Buddha, who preached non-violence!

Ayodhya is one of the holiest places in Hinduism. It is located in northern India, not far from the Nepal border, and is believed to be the birth place of the Hindu god Rama—to whom I owe my name!

Like most religious Hindus, my grandmothers immensely valued making a pilgrimage to Ayodhya. Though they were born in villages far away from Ayodhya, my grandmothers made it, unlike their previous generations who could only dream of going there in their lifetimes, but never did because of resource and transport constraints. After all, it is almost a three-thousand mile round trip between their villages and Ayodhya, and travel before the advent of modern transportation would have been extremely challenging.  My grandmothers would have been ecstatic if I had visited Ayodhya—but, visiting Ayutthaya may have been good enough for them, given my atheism :) 

Anyway, after the fall of Ayutthaya, Bangkok has been Thailand's capital since 1782. The king assumed the official title of “Rama I,” thereby further cementing the symbolic association with Ayodhya.

Ayutthaya is about 85 kilometers—about 50 miles for the metric-challenged—from Bangkok. The contrasts are profound. Bangkok is modern, bustling, congested, noisy, dusty, and crowded. Ayutthaya, on the other hand, is everything that Bangkok is not—calm, and with lots of ambulatory space, and feels a tad cooler too. After spending a few hours walking through the ruins, it is not difficult to imagine the life that once flourished in Ayutthaya during its years of glory.

At least Ayutthaya’s days of battles are over. Ayodhya, on the other hand, continues to be a flashpoint because extremist Hindus claim that there ought not to be a mosque—the Babri Masjid—in the piece of land where, it is believed, a temple for Rama once stood.

The spread of Islam, and the arrival of Central Asian Muslim warriors, who founded the successful Moghul Dynasty, resulted in the destruction of more than a few Hindu temples in India, and some that did not face destruction were converted as mosques. The Babri Masjid is from that era, and its name is in honor of Babur, the first of the Moghuls.

The destruction and alteration of property was not anything unusual—historically, it is something that humans have done pretty much in every culture across the planet. Rare would have been the case when the invading forces did everything possible to preserve the “enemy’s” life and property.

However, and unfortunately centuries later, Hindu extremists launched a holy war to restore the temple of Rama. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), through which the extremist Hindu concerns are politically represented, decided to make the converted mosque a big part of their politics. Thus, despite India’s Supreme Court warning against any vandalism and destruction of Babri Masjid, the fanatics from the BJP ended up destroying the mosque in 1992—a horrific act, that severely escalated religious tensions in the country.

I am confident that my grandmothers would never have supported the destruction of a mosque, despite their devotion to Rama and, therefore, to Ayodhya. It is a tragedy that throughout history we humans have intentionally destroyed our fellow beings and their settlements and, along with that, traditions and cultures. While we might be vaguely familiar with the adage that “Rome was not built in a day”, we do not seem to truly understand that it takes only a short time to destroy that which took years, perhaps even centuries to build.

Hey, what about "Occupy State U.?"

I have blogged about the inaccuracy of "99 percent" and about the atrocious business practice of higher education. Before blogging those, I tweeted a few days ago that:

I don't want students to #OccupyWallStreet,. I want them to occupy college public spaces and protest about how they are getting screwed

So, naturally, it didn't surprise me one bit when I read the following:

The 99 Percenters who fell into the college loan trap are not evil or stupid to want someone to blame when the mantra they’ve heard since kindergarten—get A’s, stay involved, get a degree—ends up being useless (or in the case of those deep in debt with no tangible skills, worse than useless). But where the protestors get it wrong is that they’re occupying Wall Street instead of the real culprit—State U.

The same piece adds:

The sad truth is that a college education is oversold. There are too many graduates with too many degrees chasing too few jobs. More than half of the fastest growing jobs—contrary to popular belief—are not in fields requiring a 4-year degree. And none of the fastest growing sectors require an unspecified degree in liberal studies or the arts—they require specific skills like nursing, engineering, or plumbing.
A college education, just like an investment made by Wall Street stockbrokers, is a risk. Students, like the investors, have a responsibility to themselves ignore the hype and read the fine print before gambling their time or money. And colleges should stop marketing junk bond-level degrees as blue-chip investments.

None of those arguments is new in this blog.  The plight of students saddens me a lot.  I am angry and frustrated to see the system giving them a Hobson's Choice when it comes to college.  I am utterly disappointed that the pursuit of knowledge and intellectual activities have been reduced to such levels of ponzi schemes.

I will end this post with the following lines:

I don't expect the kids to understand basic economics any better than their leftist profs, who are about as well-schooled in economics as the anti-capitalist crazies who have been occupying Cesar Chavez park a couple blocks from my office. These university folks are using our kids as pawns for their greed.

The (atrocious) business of higher education

The Great Recession is causing quite a havoc, and the unemployed millions begin to wonder whether there will be daylight anytime soon. Angry and frustrated people are beginning to protest.  Homes are in foreclosure.  Things are awfully sucky, right?

Against such a background, one would think that university faculty and staff will be happy to simply hold on to their jobs.  Particularly at the public universities.

Not so fast.

As University of Oregon tenured professors pocket an average $4,800 pay increase this year, faculty at other Oregon campuses want fat raises, too....
The UO pay raises have complicated salary negotiations on some of the seven state campuses, giving faculty leverage to demand more money and putting pressure on administrators to deliver it. ...
WOU's faculty union settled earlier this month for a 6 percent salary increase over the next two years with another 2 percent kicking in as the biennium ends. The faculty recognized Western did not have the tuition reserves to grant pay increases on the scale of UO's and were largely satisfied, Plec said.

So, is there any overflowing coffer from where money will miraculously appear?

Nope.

The state government has been drastically reducing its allocations for years now.  WOU, where faculty (that includes me) "settled" for a six percent salary increase is now forced to abandon its tuition promisebecause it won't be able to balance books otherwise:

declining state appropriations for higher education make continuing it a risk, WOU Interim President Mark Weiss said.
"The Promise was premised on sustained and constant state funding," Weiss said. "In a down economy, it serves as a recipe for financial instability."

Let us recap the situation, shall we?

1. State allocations are decreasing
2. But, salary raises of six percent over two years
3. However, such a raise isn't enough, because over at UO the raises were larger

So, we know how this story will develop, right?  The budget will have to be balanced on the backs of students:

OUS schools may increase tuition rates every year -- and have hiked rates accordingly to compensate. Tuition on other campuses grew between 6.5 percent and 9 percent for 2011-12. Western's increased by 5 percent. And that's only for freshmen or new transfer students.

Meanwhile, WOU is hiring a Director of Athletic Compliance, so that we can make sure that NCAA protocols are being followed.  You want to understand how this came through?  For years, WOU wasn't in Division II.  But, you know the formula--sports are the most important aspects of a college.  So, to Division II we went.
However, playing at Division II level meant WOU is required to provide more scholarships and have better facilities.  Which is how we also ended up constructing the multimillion dollar Taj Mahal.  The university president offered reasons for why such an investment is needed:

Since moving from NAIA to NCAA Division II in 2000, Western Oregon University has been adjusting to the economic realities of competing at a higher level.More money was needed for scholarships, travel and increased investment in facilities, such as the new Health and Wellness Center opening this year, that will relocate the football team from the Old PE Building on campus.

Well, wouldn't it have made economic sense then to have stayed in NAIA and, therefore, not have incurred all these additional expenses?  Taxpayer and tuition monies could have been put to better use if we had stayed back in NAIA, right?

This is simply terrible how students are being screwed.   I feel awful when I see them in the classroom--most of them are there, as one student put it, "to game the system."  They see this as the only way to that promised land of a successful middle class American life. 


Little do they realize that the higher education system, which includes me, is out to suck their blood.

Protesters using an incorrect label of "99 percent"

As much as I appreciate the catchy slogan that is, I am annoyed by the usage "99 percent" to describe the population seriously affected by the ongoing economic crisis.  This is more serious than my irritation with the phrase "buy local" when it ought to be "buy locally."  At least that is a grammar issue, unlike this one which is completely messed up.

We might want to think that it is 99 percent, but if only we stopped to find out where the 99 percent line is. 

American households right at the 99th percentile (that is, the cut-off for the top 1 percent) will earn about $506,553 in cash income this year, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis. 

That is right; by chanting "99 percent" the mob is including in the same category those corporate lawyers and Wall Street investment bankers too, when these are, along with a few others, the very people the "99 percent" chanters oppose and detest.

If the definition is based not on incomes but on wealth, then the story is no easier:

The cutoff for the 99th percentile in net worth was $19,167,600 as of 2007, based on this research.
That means, of course, that the bottom 99 percent of Americans includes an awful lot of millionaires.

Surely the protesters are not fighting for more cakes and wine for the millionaires, are they? 

All this because we fail to grasp what income distribution means, and how steep that distribution is at the higher end:

And because we don't get a handle on this--emotionally and rationally--we then walk around with mistaken notions of where we are along this economic continuum:

Poor people consistently overestimated their rank, and rich people consistently underestimated their rank:

 

The authors suggest that this misperception may be related to the types of people respondents interact with, and therefore use as a reference point. If you’re mostly exposed to people earning about as much as you, you’re likely to think your earnings are average.

Now, this is within the United States.  What about our individual standing in the world?

The Global Rich List can help you out: at this site, you can type in your annual income and it will tell you where you rank in the world.  For all the awfully low salary I earn as a college professor at Podunk U., it turns out that I am in the richest 0.9 percent of the world!

Meanwhile, there is this poster going around to describe this global 99 percent perspective:

Even more crappy is this poster--as if Africa is nothing but a continent of starving toddlers.

So, what is my point?  Drop the damn slogans and discuss the problems.  The biggest problem of all, here in the US, is the nasty level of unemployment, with seemingly no end in sight.

Who is ready for some football?

Good ol' Charlie Brown:

And the devilish Calvin :)

It is raining. And it is a Monday. So, time for ...

... Karen Carpenter



Oh, the forecast?
Sunny days are ahead :)
And, in preparation for that ...:

"It peed on me" ...

Two kids, both about eight to ten years old, and perhaps brother and sister, slowly passed me on their bikes as the boy yelled out shaking his hand, "it peed on me."

His yell startled me from my thoughts in which I was I was quite lost while walking by the river.

It was a glorious sunny midday after a few morning sprinkles and apparently quite a few others had the same idea to take advantage of the break in the rains.

I almost burst out laughing, but checked myself from that act, lest I confirm to passers by that I am indeed a nutcase!  I watched the brother and sister park their bikes, and the brother yelled again, "I swear, it peed on me."

By now, I was utterly curious.  What was that "it?"

I was now about to pass them when I saw what the girl had in her hand--a woolly bear caterpillar.

I assumed that the boy too had picked up one, but when it showed its displeasure/panic at having been abruptly removed from its crawl, well, it peed/excreted on him :)

The crawling caterpillar is yet another evidence that the season has changed.  It is as if we live in a Truman Show kind of settings, and the Ed Harris equivalent decided that the story needed a change and flipped a couple of switches.

The warmth of the fabulous summer is long gone.  When I wake up in the morning, I need to turn on the lights first because of how dark it now is at 5:30 in the morning.  The sky is often overcast, and it has started raining.  After almost ten years here, I know all too well that the rains have merely begun, and rainy days will outnumber sunny ones all the way until Memorial Day.

With the changing seasons, our daily activities begin to change.  We begin to stay indoors more and more.  We begin to bake dishes in the ovens.  All of a sudden, soups and hot tea become so appealing.  The home heaters is already on. 

As it darkens even more, we will begin our complaints about the weather.  About how damp it always is.  How we can't seem to shake off the coldness.  And then we will compare our conditions with the blizzards from Montana to Maine and thank heavens we live here.  But then we will look at Southern Californians having a good time by the Pacific, and we will wonder why our coasts have to be so windy and cold all the time.

Slowly spring will make its appearance.  We will get excited on seeing those crocuses and daffodils and tulips.  The days will once again start getting longer.  We won't be able to wait for the real summer, and will wonder and worry when it will be summer.

When summer arrives, we would have forgotten all the miseries of the cold and the rain and the damp and the darkness.  And we will not be ready for the summer to end. But it will.

And then I will see the woolly bears crawling again.

Life.

What is the difference between a religion and a cult?

About two hundred years!

That was the punchline that a friend in California had whenever he asked that question. And he did ask that question a lot, given his zealous atheist beliefs :)

His other favorite:

In a library, where would you find copies of the religious books?
In the science fiction category, of course!

Was reminded of these with NPR reporting on the brouhaha over Mormons being called a cult, at a gathering of the GOP "faithful."

This flap is evidence, yet again, that to true believers, those who follow religions other than theirs are in a way atheists too.  This is a line of argument that Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have explored all too well.