The Fight Within

I have been wondering why we take medicines to control fever. Intuitively it seems to me that a mild fever is one of our body's defense mechanisms to fight off the invading micro-organisms. And this seems to be corroborated with a quick online search. A quick excerpt :

Why do we have fevers? The most likely answer is that fever represents part of the body's immune response to infections and that it is somehow involved in controlling the infection. The details of this are not fully understood. The point is that the fever is generally not harmful in itself, unless it's very high.

Of course if the fever runs too high it, might cause brain damage which becomes a real threat around 105 degrees IIRC. That makes sense. But why do we run for those pills if the mercury fluctuates even a teeny bit north from normal? Are we second guessing the body's defense mechanism, suspecting it is confused about what it is doing? Or is the notion that we want to avoid any discomfort caused by the fever at the cost of sabotaging the defense mechanism?

Surely there must be a convincing answer since most of us have used fever controlling medication in our adult lives at one time or another. And big pharmas surely invest (and gain) billions of dollars from the global antipyretic drug market alongwith advertising and educating the public about it?

What is a dollar to YOU?

I was reading market news online and of all the things, I came across this story of a 52 year old woman plunging from the middle class to near poverty: I make $6.50 an hour. Am I poor?. Just for context, I am going through my third major flu this season and under such circumstances, I find myself deeply introspective, maybe even a little meditative to some extent. Probably its because of the extra time I have on my mind since otherwise I am always trying to be "productive" at any given time of the day, and sometimes even at night. Couple that with my natural tendency to ponder endlessly on every thought under the sun and we are in business.

What struck me about the article was not how Karen is poor, there are millions like her, but the fact that she wouldnt let go of her pride, wouldnt be ashamed of being poor and to quote herself:

I no longer define myself by what I do for a living. On the flip side, I won't base my identity on my income.

and

For Thanksgiving, I helped cook dinner at the home of the same couple I've shared the holiday with for five years. I looked at their kitchenware and wished I still had my own. Then I realized I was feeling sorry for myself.

When work at the restaurant is slow and I have time to feel the pain in my back, arms, feet and hands, I try not to think about what will happen if health problems mean I can't work. There's no sense in indulging such worries.

I dont mean to be dramatic, but one cant help contrasting this with ones own lifestyle and also this consumerist nightmare aka holiday season in progress. I happened to visit a mall the other day and was literally nauseated after a while thanks to the cornucopia of products screaming all around and the mass psychological frenzy revelling in it.

My last months credit card statement balance, and this is just on one of the cards, is well above 1k. I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to pay such an amount in full every month. Most of the expenses are "lifestyle related", expensive service of my overpriced car, expensive beer/wine in microbreweries and such, a lot of expensive dine outs, expenses related to a baby shower we organized where half the food was thrown away and some needless shopping at the mall, just to accessorize myself better (its the holiday season after all!).

Well I certainly don't intend a waldenesque lifestyle or socialism for that matter, but still I feel shallow today. Crazy world, this.

Kabul Express

The plot: Couple of Indian journalists go to Afghanishthan to try and get some photographs/interviews of a "Talib". They hire a local Afghani guide and also meet a female American journalist on their sojourn.

I had seen the trailer of this while seeing Omkara earlier. It had caught my eye then since it looked like a untypical bollywood production. My guess was not too incorrect.

Note that here I am not reviewing the movie on its absolute merits but more so relative to bollywood standards. (For an excellent Afghanisthan war movie, and in general a great war movie, check out The Beast of War ).

So on to the goods (note again for good measure, this is relative to Bollywood):

The movie is pretty non-judgemental as far as Bollywood movies go. Pakistan of course gets some flak but its not as bad as I would have expected and after all the Talib himself is an ex Paki and you are actually made to sympathize with the guy so go figure. US, everybody's favourite whipping target gets some of it though not excessive which is good.

Including an attractive female character is forgivable (after all you want to sell this in Bollywoodland dont you?), though her roaming around in war torn Afghanisthan on her own is slightly hard to digest but well, nevermind. The important thing to note is that a totally unnecessary and awkward romance is not forced down out throats between the characters.

The shooting captures the stark beauty of the Afghanisthani terrain rather well and its appreciable that folks from B-town braved out the instability and turmoil hovering over that land.

Acting wise, Arshad Warsi is good as usual, plays his stereotypical comic sidekick role very well. Though I think its a waste of talent to not explore him in other kinds of roles.

You can tell that a movie industry is maturing when some of the dialogue and nuances of the movie is left as an exercise for the user. The viewer is not patronized by spelling out each and every thought running through the characters minds, as is normally done in our movies. For example when planning to send the female lead to the Talib's sister, the characters just look at her and then in the next scene she is heading out to the village, albiet bitching about it, which is fair enough. Not a very strong example but you get the picture.

And lack of item numbers - priceless!

Allright, the bads: John Abraham is pretty replacable. As far as the plot is concerned, I thought bringing the ensemble closer together through cricket, bollywood songs and filial love was rather flimsy and filmy but you can get away a little by claiming that the movie only aspires to be a comedy and not much more. Political shades of the various personalities are just skimmed upon, pardonable again for the same reason.

All in all 7 out of 10. I would have been much harsher if it wasnt a bwood thing.

Risks and Strains

Think mutual fund managers are always stinking rich and "enjoy" life to the fullest? Maybe it takes a closer look. It does appear a very glamorous job with a lot of perks, contacts and moolah, but it might not be a very enjoyable position if you are managing millions and markets are at their deceptive best.

Check out this article from WSJ comparing two mutual fund managers, one of them being under "strain" and adding running, basketball and swimming to his routine partly to relieve stress, on top of the fishing and golf he long has favored.

Seems like a tough way to make a living.

Dollar and Macroeconomics - Part I

Is the dollar heading for a fall in the future? Depend on whom you talk to. Even economic gurus never always get it right, the legendary Keynes himself got almost wiped out in the crash of 1929. More recently, LTCM with its array of Nobel prize winning economists made some wrong bets leading to the global crash in 1998. Their idea of converging government bonds was essentially correct, but what they didn't realize was what Keynes had said earlier: "although markets do tend toward rational positions in the long run, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Well whatever.

Warrent Buffett and William H. Gross, managing director of PIMCO are betting against the dollar.

Niall Ferguson, has some interesting analysis where he talks about china financing the twin American deficits on its budget and current account.

Jim Jubak of MSNBC fame talks about how speculative excesses had built up due to low interest rates (cheap money) the world over and how the rising bond prices point to a slowing economy.

On the contrary, a motley collection of foreign observers point out the optimistic side for the US economy here.

All this is good reading not just from a personal investment perspective, but from a globalization perspective as well. Its really exciting how the world is coming together due to vastly improved technology and fiscal infrastructure.

More about this and maybe also about the housing bubble in the coming posts.

Lessons from the Ostrich.

The ostrich thinks it can duck disagreeable situations by burying its head in the sand. Borrowing from the wise bird (dont luagh, afterall all those yoga poses are derived from animals!), I sometimes close my eyes on roller coasters hoping that my downward decent into hell will cease to exist that way (hush! its just between you and me!). I am now using this "technique" with the stock market so that I dont have to watch my red-painted, gravity-embracing portfolio ... sigh .. sob.

Why Caps ?

"Case-sensitive" is a term you can not hide from if you do software. Having taken this for granted for 25-26 years of my existence, just wondering today what might have the wise English folks been thinking when they decided to have upper case and lower case? Would'nt the world be simpler with just one case? Like as in Hindi (devnagari to be preicse). Maybe some linguist would know better.