Archive for July, 2004

Kodak Moments

Posted in Commentary | Sunday, July 18th, 2004 | No Comments »


Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Miller works his way down a line of five of eight Corvettes he stopped on July 14 for speeding near Lake Crystal, Minnesota. The drivers were en route to the Black Hills Corvette Classic in South Dakota. Miller had clocked them on Highway 60 going 95 mph in a 65 mph zone.

Cops can be such party-poopers sometimes.


Seth Garcia, 7-months-old, resists tradition as he gets his first haircut at Bob’s Barber Shop on July 13 in Midwest City, Oklahoma. Seth represents the fifth generation in his family to get his hair cut at Bob’s. Bob Cartwright, left, opened his barbershop in 1958.

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Bingo!

Posted in Commentary | Monday, July 12th, 2004 | No Comments »


B K Mahal talks sense
Some excerpts:

“And whenever you see an older Indian on TV, he’s always the extra in EastEnders, sitting alone in a turban in the Queen Vic.” Mahal says she is fed up with seeing the same handful of actors - people such as Om Puri and Parminder Nagra - in almost every drama about Indians. “They’re great actors, but why are they the only ones? It’s as if the industry has found its Asian actors, said: ‘There are your role models’, and left it at that.” “Every single one is like Dallas. There’s still a very large section of the Indian community that isn’t being heard or represented - where are the immigrants who came here in the Fifties? The Asian underclass just doesn’t have a voice.” “Somebody has to talk about these things, because they exist and if you don’t address them, Asian children will feel more alienated.” Mahal remembers that when she was a teenager, she was constantly trying to fit into other people’s moulds. “I felt I didn’t fit in here. I would think: Do I like Britain? Do I like that I am Punjab? But I have realised that you don’t have to belong.”

Some thought provoking quotes:

Does she feel that she belongs now?

“I wouldn’t want to belong. I think it would make me feel very one-dimensional. I don’t think that your identity has to be fixed. You just have to accept that your own way of being British is different from somebody else’s way of being British.”

Personally, I think the Spanish speaking community has done well by successfully launching their own channels in the United States. This provides a great example for others to emulate.

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Individuality and Incompetence

Posted in Commentary | Sunday, July 11th, 2004 | No Comments »

Individuality, in my personal opinion could run into the danger of creating a delusional individual if the conscience takes a nap. There is a need to keep the conscience awake and have the status of ego checked periodically. Once the ego stays in control, your mind is open to more knowledge and that at least leads to analysis if not to a solution.

Here is a great Social Psychology paper that sheds more light on how humans overestimate their abilities in intellectual and social domains. Incompetence when coupled with the demerits of individuality results in a recipe for disaster.

Related:- [Do not cast pearls before a swine]

Cheap Aids pill from India as good as Pricey Brands

Posted in Commentary | Saturday, July 3rd, 2004 | No Comments »

It is Official now, welcome to the brave new world of Indian Pharma. The desi pharmacists are all set to wage a price war.

If you think about it, the states in USA buying prescription drugs from Canada for a lower price would be tempted to buy them from India now. Not everyone in the USA can buy these Canadian drugs even at these relatively low prices. Thats a huge market for Indian Pharma. However we have the South African companies breathing down our neck.

This by no means is a post with a jingoistic flavor but an attempt to draw attention to a huge issue facing the American Population. Most of the people reading this post will themselves will face these healthcare issues in the future.

Huge changes are about to happen in the Health Insurance Industry especially with the high cost of prescription drugs and the deluge of baby boomers loooking to retire within the next decade. Alternatives such as India will only fan the fire.

The justice system in this country has been bastardized, courtesy the lawyers. High malpractice insurance, frivolous lawsuits combined with aging population have forced doctors to leave the profession or migrate to states where the medical malpractice insurance costs are low. This migration is bound to result in loss of expertise in hospitals. It is hard to believe that people have to drive 2 or 3 hours in the United States of all countries to get to a hospital where there are experts to treat certain cases. Call it irony, people in the USA have to eat less to live longer and travel 2 or 3 hours to save their lives.

Health insurance has become too complex for its own good. Too many people need to get paid and too many people exist in between the patient and the treatment. Essentially, the focus is lost. The larger the population in between the doctor and the patient, the larger the costs. As simple as that.

Some activits believe that doctors simply do not want to give up their standard of living. This applies to lawyers too. The cost of education is also to blame for these expenses. As long as medical education is not affordable, the number of sudents who can afford medical education will remain extremely scant and expertise will stay scarce.

I guess we are on an a tangent here but anyway, lets see what happens.

Link: Indian Aids Pill

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