Lebewesen nicht würdig wohnen

One of the most unpalatable quotes of Hitler,meaning 'Living things not worthy of living' applying to many sections of the German society,specifically the Jewish,clearly reflected the willful and obdurate approach he had towards iniquity and hegemony,courtesy his paranoid and beleaguered upbringing. His father,a civil servant was a rigid,disciplinarian who beat him quite frequently which made him abandon his family.His emancipation was unsuccessful and the humongous repression that he endured for it only added to his woes.His only solace was his mother,who gave him some respite from his poignant and petrified life.

His apostasy of his father's wishes became much more prevalent when he wished to be an artist which was a bit uncanny considering the heinous acts he had committed as a supreme commander.What was more intriguing was the rejection of his application for admission in the Academy of Fine Arts on the basis that none of his paintings had living beings and even deemed him incapable.His conscience made him present a different version ,citing the presence of Jewish members in the board as the sole reason for his refusal-sowing the seeds of prejudice.cruelty and injustice which was to afflict the Jewish community with severity.

The dilly-dallying that ensued with him dithering and selling his paintings for subsistence was of particular significance to me.It was the revelation about Hitler with which I could relate.His doldrums were soon ended with inception of World war 1,where he enrolled himself in a regiment and it is alleged that his time spent in the war surviving 50 battles was the most blissful experience he had so far(quite congenial considering his horrendous antics) and made him believe that he had been destined to make an indelible contribution to history.

Hitler's father was a bastard child of a peasant working in a Jewish family and his obsession with the possibility of its corroboration was the provenance of abhorrence for the Jews. But the exorbitant acrimony was totally unwarranted.Although his narcissism and pompous attitude along with the fact that many psychologists have faced a Gordian knot analyzing his case might be amusing for many but his steadfast mindset was the one that stood out for me.

This rhetoric was inspired by a documentary on Hitler and Stalin expounding the similarities in their life but obviously I found the Hitler's part more interesting. With end sems looming in it is only natural for me to indulge in stuff I would never do in much more normal times,like documentaries and previously seen movies,as the end sem preparations always tend to become a tepid and draining experience.

Programming Blues

This week I reached my saturation point.My usual symptoms are apathy,petulance and waywardness whose repercussions were clearly reflected in all events that transpired this week-the alacrity with which I had been trying to read the prolix Frontline magazine all this while plummeted abruptly when I literally threw it out of my room,played Call of Duty's single player campaign again although I have finished it 3 times before,any attempt to start the end sem preparation was thwarted by daily viewing of The Office and I also couldn't last the rituals of of my friend's housewarming event leaving without the dinner which would surely surprise many since the dinner is supposed to be the highlight of these events.This post on programming can be classified as the only productive work that I have done this week.

In retrospection I feel that Programming is unequivocally the only constructive and enlightening thing I have done in my college life so far which can be easily corroborated from the fact that any question along with its various stipulations is being addressed more elaborately and its tenor made more lucid while writing the algorithm.Also,there is an ephemeral feeling of triumph and fuss on creating a program which surpasses all yardsticks as the most efficient and terse.

However there is a caveat,any problem analyzed during coding has adverse effects in the form of the myriad errors encountered which can be a bit discouraging and had aggravated me after I had spent prolonged hours on it.In such cases time spent in clearing errors overshadows the time spent in writing the algorithm leaving you exasperated and despair to test your program's output checking whether it adheres to the specific conditions and assuages the definitions of a robust code.The following message quite simple reflects the feeling people have after consecutive failures.
Although it is advised to prepare an immaculate algorithm after diligent revision and observation of the problem but there is light at the end of the tunnel considering the closure in obscurity on certain unresolved aspects while debugging.

Untoward recklessness

This slogan being put up during a protest is a natural corollary considering the inexorable problems endured by the innocuous tax payers due to the imprudent decisions made by some of the most reliable and unswervingly resilient institutions.The tax payers are the worst to suffer with diminishing job prospects and an increase in taxes.

Balance sheets maintained by banks which equal assets(investments) on one hand and liabilities(depositor's money) plus its own capital on the other started showing gargantuan inconsistencies due to the spree of defaults on a slew of investments especially those risky mortgage investments.Their plight was further exacerbated with the possibility of reduction in value of certain investments during foreclosure in which case they tried to balance the sheet with their own capital and to some extent the depositor's money.Thousands of banks including the big ones are in this situation which is called the condition of being insolvent.

Banks in such dreadful circumstances have no choice but to inveigle their depositors giving them some hope.It is followed by posturing with banks like CITI bank and Bank of America disputing claims that they are insolvent although their total value according to stock market is way below their stated capital.

Apparently the government is supporting the banks.It came up with Treasure Assets Relief Program(TRAP) proposed by treasure secretary Henry Paulson according to which the government will be buying the toxic assets crippling the banking system at significant prices incommensurate with their market prices but enough to keep them solvent.The harsh reality is that this can tend to temporary takeover by government of private banks which has the propensity of a political angle attached to it.On the contrary the government it seems is also giving money to the banks with CITI bank receiving 45 $million.Although the Obama administration is trying to lure as many private investors with incentives and guarantees to buy the toxic assets but many skeptics believe that the banking system can be saved with plummeting of loans by banks.

I still don't get some of the financial jargon related to the crisis but I certainly am wont to the general idea of it.I have nothing more to ramble this week and will end the peroration of this post complementing the discursive and beseechingly quirky character played by Steve Carrel in the mockumentary television series 'The Office'.

Unbridled Population:Scourge or boon??

The week gone by was mostly about the spate of reviews been posted by me on facebook of the movies I had watched recently,except Matrix.Its one of my favorites and I think I may have went into hyperbole for its review but a movie of such calibre had to be extolled in a gaudy manner.The week ended with 2 episodes of The Office which looks promising.But throughout this week I had been pondering over an article I had read on population growth and the adverse effects luxuries have on the environment.

According to a paper published in the journal Environment and Urbanization the places having a surge in population are those in which C02 has been growing at a lethargic pace and vice versa.

Between 1980 and 2005 sub-Saharan Africa produced 18.5% of the world's population and 2.4% of the growth in CO2 incommensurate with the 4% of extra people and 14% of extra emissions in North America.Households in India earning a paltry 3000rs a month use a fifth of electricity per head and one seventh of the transport fuel of households earning 30000rs a month.Even deforestation in poor countries driven mostly by operatons delivering timber, meat and animal feed to rich consumers.The report emphasizes that the total impact equals consumers times affluence times technology.

As a corollary from the outcomes of this report it seems there is a feeble correlation between global warming and population growth and much more cogent and rational correlation between global warming and wealth.This brought me to consider a vital trivia on one of the most garish splurges of the rich-the effervescent yachts,specifically the Wally Power 118 which consumes 3400 litres per hour when traveling at 60 knots,which is nearly a litre per second.Also it is likely to be pernicious to marine life,inflicting more damage to the biosphere in 10 minutes than most Africans do in a lifetime.

But the fact remains that the cavalier rich or the nouveau-riche will continue to be attracted by Wally's opulent and breathtaking interiors and its comfy ambiance.This is an upward going trend which will have consequences requiring strenuous efforts to be overcome.

Well,I guess we should pay some heed to our indigenous,most conservative and conscious section of the society with regards to pollution and wastage of resources,who will never be bogged down

by the scourges like recession,communism,naxalism,environmental degradation and will continue to serve the community till death,our miserable Street Sleepers.

The Unregulated Chain of Events

Well its been a hectic week lately with a plethora of chores which I had been procrastinating for some time.I finally completed How I met your mother season 4,watched two amazing crime thrillers 'Dial M for murder' and 'Following' on the same day and ended the week with a highly unusual emotional drama,'Boy A'.I found 'Following' so impressive and absorbing that I watched it again after a day.In this scheme of things I read 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' which addressed issues of racism and snobbishness observed through infantile protagonists.The most noteworthy deed I did this week was to continue perusing those articles on financial crisis and tried to understand a couple of terms like commercial paper market and Credit Default Swap.

Commercial paper is basically the means for big companies to borrow money.Treasurers issue commercial paper and people who want to loan them money do it through banks on Wall Street.Here the role of money marker managers come to the fore.These managers lend money on commercial paper market with the prospect of a little return, like a company guaranteeing a million in return for 900,000$.

With Lehman Brothers going bankrupt due to those risky mortgages,all the money being lent to them from Reserve Fund came into some serious trouble. Also the fund managers who had bought commercial paper from them incurred losses.To add fuel to the fire AIG nearly collapsed,courtesy the Credit Default Swap,considered to be the financial weapon of mass destruction.

Credit Default Swap(CDS),invented by a physicist,Gregg Berman,is nothing but buying of protection,like the insurance of someone else's house.It is different from normal insurance in terms of the collateral being set aside as means of protection.What is most shocking about CDS is

that its unregulated.It resulted in a horrendous vicious chain where every deal is kept private and no one has any clue about the financial stabiliities of others,exacerbating the situation.

AIG,the biggest insurance company in the world had promised 400 million dollars of credit default swap agreements.Bankers who had got skeptical of their insurance with AIG started increasing their collateral.AIG,then was hit by an onslaught of collateral packages.It was eventually rescued by the government through its bailout package using the tax payer's money.So ultimately it is the tax payer who has to bear the brunt of this crisis.

What made the system even more dangerous and made the AIG case kind of anomalous was the concept of netting.There wasn't much in those articles I read to explain it in detail but I got the basic tenor of it through an example.If a company's future looks bleak and someone had already bought its protection through CDS then he would be able to sell that protection at double its original value merely from the fact that in dire conditions the insurance becomes more expensive.This indeed sounds lucrative.