The Emperor of all Maladies

Cancer has held a perverse fascination for me, for sometime. It may be when a member of my immediate family was diagnosed with one. That she recently succumbed to this disease after at first overcoming, but only to become overcome again, only urged to me know more. I wish i had known more about this dreadful disease, earlier. I bought this book recently, and have just begun reading it.
My first vivid characterization and persona of this disease, was built on the description from the book 'Fever' by Robin Cook. He writes;

"No longer did they listen to the mysterious central control and mature into normal white blood cells. Instead they responded to an unfettered urge to reproduce their altered selves. Although they appeared to be relatively normal within the marrow, they were different from other young white blood cells. They usual surface stickiness was absent, and they absorbed nutrients at an alarmingly selfish rate. They had become parasites within their own house."

The video below is a discussion by Siddhartha Mukherjee, on how this book came about.

My reading of the book so far, has already dispelled a few long held notions about this disease.

Supreme Court Ruling on Aruna Shanbaug

The Supreme Court (SC) yesterday dismissed the Euthanasia Petition (mercy killing) for Ms. Aruna Shanbaug. The full text attached below, shows that the SC has researched this case extensively, like it normally does.

One of the key tenet for dismissing the petition was the status of the petitioner to the patient. It held that Ms. Pinky Virani was not a friend of Ms. Shanbaug, and held that staff of KEM Hospital that was taking care of her is more of a friend to her. While i see the basis for this, i am at loss to understand if they have considered the patient's interest fully. It is true that they have researched that area, and studied the opinion of many including doctors and staff at the hospital.
However, there still seems to be a flaw in all this. The staff of KEM Hospital requires the kudos they rightly deserve. But i cant believe we must allow Aruna to live a life of hell, because they look and take care of her with pride. In all of this, what is lost is, Aruna is still living a life that she cannot perceive or enjoy. I cant imagine that she be allowed to continue to live in this vegetative state. 
I also must note that this is but one case that has been brought to light. India is filled with lots of people are in similar states. Some in hospitals, but probably many more at homes. The ones at home, probably die a lot sooner, because the family simply decides to give up. And that makes the ruling in this case even more pathetic. We are unable as a society to feed the hungry millions, but we are morally superior and so we are able to deny the right to euthanasia, to a person who probably is better off dead than alive.

Supreme Court Ruling EuthanasiaPetition-For-ArunaRamachandraShanbaug

I submit this humbly to this woman, who suffered once. And then suffered again for another 37 years living a life that most alive today, wouldnt want. I also laud the team and staff at KEM Hospital, they could have always just simply given up.

ICICI - Case Study of Banking Web Site - not!

I have been an ICICI Bank customer for the longest time. I do ask myself every now and then why?
Initially it was because they had the most number of ATMs in Chennai. This now stands negated by the longest queues ever outside any ATMs in the city. So the any ATM banking rule by the RBI is a boon for all ICICI customers.
I also had to stick with it, because of a few wire transactions that had been setup, and would have been too problematic to change. The dependency simply kept shifting.

They do have one of the better running banking web sites in the country. But that is also because i have not been exposed to very many out there. I really wish someone did a good job to reviewing this for the customers.

Anyway, let me start with some of my favorite things about the ICICI Bank's website.

The most commonly seen screen:

It supposedly is supported on IE and Firefox. However, it never really works on Firefox. And if you ever get thru' to their customer service, they will blatantly tell you to use IE.

The banking site is so paranoid with security issues, that you have to jump thru' hoops sometimes to get the simplest thing done. You get a feel for it, at the very beginning itself, by their Virtual Keypad. It supposedly reduces the chances of malicious software capturing your key strokes. Good thought, poorly implemented since, most people  are not computer savvy and so are less likely to click and use it. No derived benefit. Wasted effort ?

I found this interesting code snippet, while i was trying to gleam for the name of the company that developed this web site for ICICI. I think it is Infosys (I could be wrong, since ICICI also have their own IT services company). This is supposedly based on their application for banks. Trust us desi's (before someone decides to kill me, i am including myself) to come up with a design that requires multiple levels of approvals (sign-ons) and password protection, session time-outs, disabling right-click, disabling cut/paste etc. Does this reflect on our ability to trust people ? Or rather the lack of it ?

Anyway the code snippet here, possibly shows poor design, where it requires apparent changes to the source code(?), to disable access during system downtime. So what happens, the Sysadmin, or some cowboy programmer goes into the production site and changes the code on the fly, when the servers are planned to go down ? This is based on the comments indicated in the code. Its quite possible these are remnants and have been redesigned differently.



This is just the beginning. The real fun starts upon logging in. Here is another example of wasted process and steps to complete a transaction. A single screen presents this choice to the user. Based on this choice, you are taken to the next screen for further choices and options. Something that could be easily implemented using radio buttons or other methods.


Here is another interesting set of data capture implemented.

The account number is very validated (by ICICI), altho' they do ask you to enter it twice to make sure you havent made a mistake and typos. They have conveniently disabled copy/paste options to this field. I can understand to both, but they could easily allow it for the first entry of account number, which is a 12 digit number with a lot of 0 (zeroes).  And a good data capture will validate this number to make sure it exists. Remind you this for xfer of funds from your account to a payee.

The payee name fields allow only A-Z,a-z and space. Even if the real name of the account holder includes a period (like Ltd. or after initials). The nick name doesnot allow even spaces to be entered. So figure out a way to creatively provide a nickname.

Ok. I'm tired. I had to rant, and so i did. This is really overdoing it. I give up. One last curveball before i stop this. Never, never ever, call their help line. If you can figure you way around the web site, do it. But dont call their help line, which requires a good 3-5 minutes before you get to talk to somebody. They use some outdated IVR/CRM system, because all authentication is lost after the IVR transfers the call to an operator. The operator is usually a small kid, right out of college, who barely knows what (s)he is talking about.
I should really stop bitching and get a new banking relationship started. Well, i only wonder if i am going to be leaving the devil, only to sink in the deep sea.

MMS Scandals

MMS or Manmohan Singh in scandal land ! An economist and otherwise brilliant scholar joins the politics bandwagon, and becomes corrupted by a system that refuses to change.

Do you blame the system? Or do you blame yourself? Or are the people, really the reason for all this?

Texas has its idiot back

Ya. But i guess america is going to miss his bloopers on TV. He kept the people entertained while his government kept running the country into the ground.

Dont even ask me, why i thought of adding this now.

It will take america and the world a long while to fix things. But i guess when people look back in history, they will only probably remember for these funnies.

All food comes from India

All food comes from India.
Never mind if the Indians are starving.... all food comes from India.

Whitey on the Moon

I was first introduced to these words, way back in '98. An Irish friend of mine, had shared the first couple of lines with me. I guess it took me a while to hit upon the full song and its lyrics. The context of this song by Gil Scott-Heron, was based on the moon race, and the white America's preoccupation with everything other than the uplifting the black (read poor). But it doesnt take a lot of IQ, to figure out that the rage behind the song, and the intent (struggle) continues, even today.

Whitey on the Moon
A rat done bit my sister Nell. (with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell. (and Whitey's on the moon)
I can't pay no doctor bill. (but Whitey's on the moon)
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still. (while Whitey's on the moon)
The man jus' upped my rent las' night. ('cause Whitey's on the moon
No hot water, no toilets, no lights. (but Whitey's on the moon)
I wonder why he's uppi' me? ('cause Whitey's on the moon?)
I wuz already payin' 'im fifty a week. (with Whitey on the moon)

Taxes takin' my whole damn check,  Junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up, An' as if all that shit wuzn't enough:

A rat done bit my sister Nell. (with Whitey on the moon)
Her face an' arm began to swell. (but Whitey's on the moon)
Was all that money I made las' year (for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain't no money here? (Hmm! Whitey's on the moon)
Y'know I jus' 'bout had my fill (of Whitey on the moon)
I think I'll sen' these doctor bills, Airmail special (to Whitey on the moon)

No, i am not talking just about America, this is now true of the whole world. Just replace the word whitey and moon, with your choice of epitaph.

Thank you Globalization !

What we call the news

Nothing to add really !! Its all very clear in the video.

Google's Web History

I didnt know about this, until now. Ignorance was bliss. Now that i know, i did the right thing. Turn it off!! I would have appreciated if Google had sought my permission before they choose to save my search history. It is one thing to store it on my computer's cache, but a wholly another thing to make this available online, even if it is accessible only by me. All this only increases my paranoia levels.

Note from Google on privacy: Web History is accessible only by signing in to your Google Account with your username and password. As long as you don't share your username and password, your Web History should remain completely private.

Google Web History tracks (i should say store, but i am paranoid and very pissed), all online searches done thru' google. Lucky me, i still use Yahoo for my searches. Now that i discovered this truth, am need to ferret the same about Yahoo. I do know that when Yahoo introduced search perferences long while ago, this was not one of the options.

Math QnA

Funny!! Not always does a student get to poke fun at the teacher in class. Like a friend of mine (senior from school) who narrated the incident in a biology class.

Shantha maam: tell me the name of an amphibian?
Friend: Frog (after help from behind)
Shantha maam: Give me another one? (knowing how this chappy figured out the answer).
Friend: Another Frog

So i got this in the mail, a while ago. This the response by a smart student, to a tough (well maynot be so tough) math question.

Smart eh?!
Well not if you see how the teacher graded him/her.

Full grades the teacher on this one.

I also recall another one where my Stats professor, help my friend understand that his marks where "not out of 50", but purely "out of pity".