Fire – II

Now there are more fires burning. Some fires have combined together and are causing massive destruction. Gray Davis has “declared emergency”:http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/news/102603_AP_r2_cal_fires.html in two counties. There have been atleast 11 deaths so far. Out of that two people died in the car trapped in flames. 500 homes have been destroyed.
We were out doing groceries and the sun was up, but it was burning through the smoke which has filled the sky. So the sun has an orange color, like during sunset.
All local channels are now providing round the clock coverage and that’s the only thing we are watching.

When did Mahabharata happen ?

bq. The eclipses and planetary observations of the Mahabharata should belong to 1493 BC to 1443 BC of Indian history. The war should have taken place in 1478 BC with an error bond of one year, Dr R N Iyengar from the department of civil engineering at Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, said.
This is a “new date”:http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/oct20/n1.asp proposed for the Mahabharata War. Dr. Subhash Kak wrote “an article”:http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305835 on the same issue in Sulekha and his conclusion was
bq. This leaves us with the dates of 1924 BC and 3137 BC. I don’t think we have evidence at this time to pick one of these two as the more likely one. If one gives credence to the Puranic genealogies, then 1924 BC would be the time for the War; if, on the other hand, we go by the astronomical evidence related to the Vedas and the subsequent literature, then 3137 BC remains a plausible date. If the pre-Nanda Puranic lists are not accurate for the regnal periods, then the War will have occurred a few centuries later than 1924 BC.
This is an issue I had investigated deeply. If you want to know the exact date of Mahabharata, then read my article “When Did Mahabharata Happen?”:http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305815
(thanks ashwini for the link)

Fire!

We come back after “our vacation”:https://varnam.org/archives/000259.html and find that it’s “fire all”:http://msnbc.com/news/983543.asp?0cv=CA01 around us.
bq. Since it began Tuesday, the fire in the foothills of San Bernardino County has damaged or destroyed seven homes, said Bill Peters, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry. About 1,700 people had been evacuated, according to county sheriff’s spokeswoman Sandy Fatland.
We live about 40 miles away from San Bernadino and Rancho Cucumonga. The sky is filled with smoke and the sun was not visible during daytime yesterday. Actually while driving back from Las Vegas, we saw this fire on the mountains and did not think much about it. Forest fires are common here during summer. This one seems to be out of control now and houses are being destroyed.

Road Trip

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We are off on a road trip with friends to (1) Grand Canyon (2) Las Vegas and (3) San Diego. The aim of this trip is to visit all the popular tourist spots. Last time I visited Grand Canyon was in 1999. This time I will see if there has been more erosion in the region. Last time I did not make any money in Las Vegas. This time I do not expect miracles. So blogging will resume after a week.

Global Terrorist in Pakistan

“Last Month”:http://ushome.rediff.com/news/2003/sep/24pm2.htm
bq. Asked about gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s presence in Pakistan and whether India will take it up with Interpol, Advani avoided a direct response and said the Central Bureau of Investigation Chief P C Sharma is leaving to attend an Interpol conference.
bq. On Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf repeadtedly denying Dawood’s presence in Pakistan, Advani said: “I know that…we have in fact conveyed to them even the telephone numbers he [Dawood] uses. Sometimes he is in Karachi, sometimes he is in Islamabad.”
bq. About the recent statement of a Pakistani minister confirming the gangster’s presence and business interests in Pakistan, the deputy prime minister said: “It only confirms what we have been conveying to the world all these years. It is an official confirmation or rather official admission of something we have been saying for years and which was till now being denied by Pakistan, including by the head of the state. He [Musharraf] formally denied it to me,” Advani said.
Finally what Pakistan and Musharraf has been denying has hit “them hard”:http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=33578
bq. The US Treasury Department tonight announced that Dawood Ibrahim alias Sheikh Dawood Hassan is a ��specially designated global terrorist�� with a Pak passport and a Karachi address.
bq. In one stroke, not only does this nail Pakistan�s lie and put its President General Pervez Musharraf under pressure to deliver Dawood�one of the 20 most wanted by India�it also puts the terrorist label on the D-company and its network in South-Asia, especially the Mumbai underworld.
Global Terrorists in Pakistan ? Looks like the Uncle asked Musharraf to do something and he did not comply. The pressure tactics come out.

Book Review: Tricky Business

After a long time I finished reading a work of fiction — “Tricky Business”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0425192741/jksobservat-20 by “Dave Barry”:http://davebarry.blogspot.com/. This one was very engrossing, even though it was whacky as usual, and I am sure it will soon be made into a major motion picture, like his previous book “Big Trouble”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587889285/jksobservat-20
This book is the story of a bunch of odd people who get on a ship called Extravaganza of the Seas to go off the Florida Coast to gamble. It is also the story of how this gets messed up with a drug smuggling operation. Then it gets all crazy as people start shooting each other on the stormy night and there are naked people running in between. It is one hell of a ship ride. You have to read it.

Tax Software Woes

During the last Tax season, Turbo Tax decided to treat all their consumers as criminals. They built in many obstacles into their software that prevented even people who bought the software from using it. The software had to be activated to be used on a single machine. This meant that if you used your Home PC to prepare taxes, you could not take a print out on the office computer. And to prevent users from misusing the system, Intuit also installed third party monitoring software on the PCs.
Due to this “Walt Mossberg”:http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20030130.html of Wall Street Journal had said that time
bq. So, this year I emphatically recommend H&R Block’s TaxCut over Intuit’s TurboTax. They both do the job of preparing any straightforward tax return. But Intuit has decided to treat all its TurboTax customers like potential criminals, and to limit the ways that even honest people can use the product. Why subject yourself to that?
I followed his advice and bought TaxCut and found that it does not accept my wife’s ITIN. It allows only people with Social Security Numbers to file taxes. But as per IRS, people who do not have SSN can use their ITIN. It would not even go to the next screen.
But now Intuit is “apologizing”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/tech_intuit_dc for past behavior.
bq. “I want to personally apologize for any frustration you may have experienced due to the restrictions that came with our use of anti-piracy technology,” Tom Allanson, general manager of TurboTax, said Thursday in an open letter to customers. The letter was published in advertisements in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, as well as on the company’s turbotax.com Web site.
Now the activation technology has been removed and the software can be used on multiple PCs.

India – Democracy and Identity

How old is democracy in India ? 56 years ? But from “some inscriptions”:http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=318876 in a temple near Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu, it is atleast 1000 years old.
bq. The village is known for its historic inscription of a written constitution that deals with elections to the village assembly, qualifications required of candidates contesting in elections, circumstances under which a candidate may be disqualified, mode of election, tenure of the elected candidates and the right of the public to recall the elected members when they failed to discharge their duties properly and so on.
And also if an elected person was found to be corrupt, he and his near relatives were debarred from cotesting an election for seven generations.
How old is India as a nation ? Did it ever exist as a nation before or was it just a British creation, an artificial entity. That’s what some westerners and secular Indian historians would like us to believe. Sankrant Sanu lays that theory to rest in this brilliant essay “Why India Is A Nation”:http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305879