Omkumar's blog

This is a very interesting article on how China is becoming a rare-earth metal monopoly. "Deng Xiaoping's comment in 1997, where he said that China would be for rare earth metals what the Middle East was to oil, has become a very stark reality." I have a strong belief that China will emerge as a super power in a decade or so. I will continue to follow news articles that talk about China - both sides of the coins and collect them under the label "China".

This snippet is from The Hindu - an interview with Prabhakaran in 1986 about his movement. This is very gruelling... …Could you give us an idea of your personal heroes in revolutionary struggles or liberation movements or in any sphere of life..... people and experiences that have inspired you? And perhaps thereby give us some insight into your own political evolution from the time you were a schoolboy? From my boyhood, the struggle that attracted me most was the Indian freedom struggle. The role of Netaji attracted me very much. I was brought up in an environment of strict discipline from childhood. I was not permitted to mingle freely with outsiders. I used to feel shy of girls. Great store was laid by personal rectitude and discipline. My father set an example through his own personal conduct: He would not even chew betel leaves. I modelled my conduct on his..... he was a government officer, a district land officer. A very straightforward man. People say in our area: “When he walks,...

Are you serious? I came across this website Wolfram Alpha which was lauched officially today . It is a computational knowledge engine, claims the website. True. It can compute: math (any equation worded in anyway easily interpretable - do you remember your algebra involving imaginary numbers?) comparisons (between gdps of different countries, temperatures of different cities, usage of two words........ i mean the limit of comparison is sky-bound) plain search (search for a name say, "andrew" and see what you get). locations (like try to find where the International Space Station is) The owner Stephan Wolfram claims this is just the beginning. Do listen to Stephan's introduction about Wolfram Alpha. It is not just a search engine. It is a computation engine. To me it not only searches and gives you results, but also gives you all the relevant search results in a good group of categories. Type a word and it will give you the meaning, usage statistics, etymology and a speci...

After watching Dan Brown's novel Angels & Demons on theater, me and my friend got off on a movie spree. We heard many talk about this movie, Taken . Earlier, we tried twice at a nearest Red box machine and couldn't get the DVD. Finally on Saturday night, we went to try again and much to our luck a guy was standing in front of us on a line (Can you believe? Yes there is a line now to get Red box movies. Few months ago people wouldn't even notice) waiting to return the movie. I starting bugging this guy and asked him whether he liked it. Though he looked like he was not interested at all for a social chat at 9pm on Saturday night, he just said "It was OK". As much as I cared about his comment, I really wanted him to return the DVD so I can get it. All the copies were taken crazily over the weekend. If Red box has a "Most watched Over the weekend" poll, "Taken" would have taken the spot for this past weekend. Just when the guy in front of us r...

I had a chance to go the theater on Saturday while my daughter was taking a nap and my wife taking some quiet time. My friend came over from Marlborough, MA and we planned to go for Saturday matinee show. Since this was the opening weekend, I was under the hype that the theater would be crowded and we wouldn't be able to get tickets. So I booked the tickets online and went off for a 3pm show. First, we were surprised that the theater was almost empty. Second, the lemonade and orange soda that we ordered tasted like plain water mixed with sugar. All things aside, both of us being a great fan of the book and the author Dan Brown, we picked the best back row center seats and waited for the extraordinary novel unravel in front of us on the white giant screen. The movie started off just as it was on the novel. Though yapping is not allowed, we were quietly sharing our experiences about reading that part of the book while the movie went on. I liked all the actors. Ewan McGreggor , is a p...

Last Friday I came across this article . Will Bilderberg Group sink the global economy? That was the first time I ever came to know about this group. I was gasped by the level of conspiracy involved in this matter. Can such a group exist at all? If they had done all that happened in history, then do they have the power to "sink our global economy"? It is alarming to know that key figures like the current President of the US, its Vice President (who was a candidate selected by the group), Warren Buffett and many other big businessmen are all part of this invitational group. North American Union Wikipedia has an article about this group and also reveals some pictures about the first Bilderberg group conference. According to both the articles, the 2009 conference took place in Athens, Greece. In the movie "End game", radio host Alex Jones claims that the Group is planning to dissolve United States and other countries in the American region to form a more supra-nationa...

This Intel Ad was forwarded to me by one of my colleagues. Very funny and thoughtful. The "Ajay Bhatt" that they show is not the real inventor. See Intel's real Ajay Bhatt who was the co-inventor of USB here . According to NYTimes , Intel decided to pose actors vs. real inventors in their commercial so that there won't be any argument among employees as to who should be featured. The NYTimes article further says that, the Ad agency - Venables Bell & Partners - helped modify Intel's "we are in your everyday life and the world would stop revolving without Intel" motto to "Sponsors of Tomorrow". I think "Sponsors of tomorrow" is more pleasing than what Intel proposed. Hence the agency came up with ads like how Intel is technology oriented and promoting that. There is even going to be a billboard asking people to text msg answers for "What do you hope to see in the future?". The article is a good read as well.

Given the global economic downturn made me think that I should diversify my piggy bank. So I decided to move some of my savings back to India in case there was a run on the bank in the US. After much research two banks stood out State Bank Of India (SBI) and ICICI Bank . SBI, a public sector bank, being the largest bank in India by deposits and the bank in the world to operate the most branches (As of May 2008, the bank had 21 subsidiaries and 10,186 branches). ICICI Bank is the fastest growing commercial bank with a boat load of customer service equally competing with SBI and was the first to offer banking upto 8pm in the night in India. Traditionally banks close by noon in India. I remember when my mom spent most of her first saturday of a month going to various banks making deposits, paying bills etc. SBI was poor at customer service. It still is poor in my hometown (or so my parents say). Nonetheless I decided to open non-resident accounts in both the banks. Then it hit me what i...

BlackRock becomes the go-to firm for Divining Wall Street's Assets First of all, as a risk analyst isn't this too risky to put all eggs in one basket? The reasoning Geithner gave when asked why should we trust BlackRock, is simply, "They come with world class reputation". Well so be it. I guess, and I share Janet's (read the article) comment, that the government should come out with all the details about how the assets were valued and what measures did BlackRock take, even if it is propreitary. We are talking about billions of dollars under government custody now and people's lives and jobs are dependent on these analyses. When asked about transparency of what BlackRock does and who else it works for, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock says he has " to be opaque" about it. Don't we smell a Madoff stink here? When it comes to public tax payer's money being used, one should provide every transparent detail possible. Atleast the government should have...

Very Interesting read... The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England , and English expatriates built the US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. T...

An innovation to embrace or just Wrong timing? Amazon introduces its new Kindle DX - $489, 9.7" screen - easy to read newspapers, magazines and loads of features. If you compare Kindle DX with its currently available Kindle version, Kindle 2, the main differences are screen size and rotating display (just like IPhone or Blackberry Storm). Plus Amazon says it has native PDF support in DX as opposed to conversion method in Kindle 2. I dont know what the difference is here experience-wise. I am yet to see a Kindle. With the world moving towards more digital paper media, both Kindle 2 and Kindle DX are great innovations. I am sure our world going forward will no longer have hard paper copies (the trees can now thank us) and have digital thin boards which will display live videos and magazine articles (just like in sci-fi movies). But at the same time NYTimes is featuring a twitter-like Survival Strategies recommendations from people around the world and one of the most recommended st...

Wow! This is about my city. Following are some of the facts that I didn't know about Stamford. Stamford is also referred as "Wall Street North" UBS built its largest trading floor in North America (I knew this but just adding for pride). RBS did the same starting in 2006 and moved to its headquarters (as far as I can tell, RBS had not occupied this new fancy building yet). General Re (GenRe) corp , which is part of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is based here. Unemployment in March '09 is 7% (about 120,000). This is still lower than national average. There was a plan to build a Ritz-Carlton hotel. But later shelved due to economic crisis. Home of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.) and Comcast's Versus sports channel (formerly OLN, Outdoor Life Network - one of my favs). Check out www.versus.com . Movies being shot include "Rachel Getting Married", "Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2". NBC is planning to move production of "Jerry Springe...