back ....

after another extended hiatus, I'm back and hopefully motivated to continue posting here ... !!

in the meantime, the FIFA world cup is underway ... Ben Rothlisburger is in hospital after a motorcycle accident (hopefully he will recover soon - but really a dumb thing to drive a bike without a helmet!!) ... and India are desperately trying to grab a test win against the West Indies (will they pull it off or shall it be another brilliant save by Lara?) ... and oh I almost forgot to add - Nadal simply overpowered Federer in the French Open final!! hopefully that will not put a dent in his title defense at Wimbledon ...

expect more business and investing related posts. sports related posts will obviously continue ...

The Corps of Discovery ....

Back on the blogging trail after what seems like years. Been busy with other interests, this one took a back seat. But have been plannign a comeback for a few days now ... hopefully this momentum will stay.

Last weekend, I watched the PBS documentary Lewis and Clark: Journey of the Corps of Discovery - thanks to the superb DVD collection at the local public library. Its the fascinating story of the land exploration of the continent aimed at exploring the United States (1804-1806) to the Pacific coast and back, - the expedition led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark, of the US Army. In 1803, then President Thomas Jefferson completed the Louisiana Purchase from the French, more than doubling the size of the USA. Approximately 529,911,681 acres (827,987 mi² or 2,144,476 km²) of land traded hands at a cost of about $15M - barely 3 cents per acre - approximately equivalent of $390 billion in 2003!

A few weeks after the purchase, United States President Thomas Jefferson, an advocate of western expansion, had the U.S. Congress appropriate $2500, "to send intelligent officers with ten or twelve men, to explore even to the western ocean". They were to study the Indian tribes, botany, geology, Western Terrain and wildlife in the region, as well as evaluate the potential interference of British and French-Canadian hunters and trappers who were already well established in the area. [Source: Wikipedia]

The documentary details the route taken by the expedition, the Indian tribes they encountered, the route they took - and brings it to life with some stunning visual imagery of the great plains, the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. The move through the plains and their interaction with the Indian tribes - the Sioux, the Shoshones, the Hidatsas, the Blackfeet and a host of others (some extremely helpful and accepting of the white man's arrival at their lands) brings to mind Dances with Wolves - Kevin Costner's superb epic about a US Cavalry officer's interaction with the Lakota Indians. American economic expansion into the west was positively the begining of the end for the Indians, and was heralded in by the Lewis and Clark expedition. And yet the mapping of the continent while rowing up the Missouri and trekking over the continental divide was certainly one of the greatest human endeavors of all time. The Shoshone woman Sacagawea who joined Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery has her face on the new US 1$ coin - to replace the old Susan B. Anthony dollar. Her reunion with her brother during negotiations with the Shoshone tribe seems to be right out of a Hollywood or Bollywood movie, but it seems like the Lewis and Clark expedition was certainly blessed with some great luck.

The way the Corps of Discovery explored the continent and named the terrain (rivers, creeks, waterfalls, their camp locations etc.) reminds me of the Swiss Family Robinson. I also think the expedition's journey bores a close resemblance to the Fellowship of the Ring from Tolkien's book. The journey that starts out through known terrain and meeting friendly people, soon goes awry and off-track as they head through the pass of Carathras (i.e. the Rocky Mountains in case of Lewis and Clark). The long arduous journey to their destination, but relatively swift and easy journey on the way back certainly has its parallels. I would not be surprised if Tolkien was not inspired by the story of Lewis and Clark when he wrote his magnficient book. The PBS documentary is an excellent way of seeing history unfold. One thought that kept coming back to my mind was a regret to have not seen Indian history in the same way. The Indian freedom struggle would be great to see as a documentary series like the PBS collections. Unfortunately, the only most vivid images of the story of Indian independence were frmo Attenborough's award winingin movie Gandhi. Sure there have been movies made about various episodes (including the recent lousy one on Mangal Pandey). But they have been generally tainted by the need to make a commercially successful film. Public television in India is generally absent, and apart from Doordarshan's Bharat Ek Khoj - i do not recall anything that came even remotely close. Perhaps one day, if I have enough time and money - I will try such an endeavor myself.

Investing - India vs China

In an article titled India vs. China: Where to Invest?, Jeremy Seigel points out the pros and cons of investing in India v/s China. A key point that caught my eye apart from all the Tiger and Dragon references and the usual democracy issues is the value of the stocks. He says

The price-to-earnings ratio on this index has reached 21, while Chinese stocks on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange are selling for only 15 times earnings. Goldman Sachs Asia Pacific Strategy recently indicated that it thinks valuation has turned the tide toward China.

The rate of growth on the BSE Sensex has made a lot of people quite rich, but also has doomsday predictions looming - referring to an impending to an imminent market crash, one that will hurt investors for a long time to come. Yet, I think that its atleast a year away, considering that the influx of foreign capital is not so much on promise (like the dot-com era in the 1990s), but backed up by solid performances by a lot of the companies. So while I am no economist, it seems like this growth will stay for a little bit - for atleast a year, if not more, as more and more FIIs continue to invest in the Indian markets. But Siegelman's points on risk, and diversification across the globe are certainly well taken.

One statement that particularly caught my attention was about corruption in India:

For India, these social networks and corruption are less of a problem. To be sure, dishonesty still exists in government service, but high level corruption is being vigorously rooted out by a free press that is absent in China.

I am not sure how accurate this statement is - while its not completely inaccurate either, there is a big leap of faith involved in making such a generalization. One Tehelka or Operation Duryodhan the basis of such a statement?

But by and large, an interesting quick read for someone thinking of investing in Indian/Chinese markets. And fairly accurate too, for the most part. Check it out

go steelers ...

its more than a week since the superbowl, but after all the posts i had leading up to it, i had to have atleast one celebrating their win in SuperBowl XL (a waste of a game, but the outcome was good!!) ...

does not matter if this post was a week late ... 'One for the thumb' was more 25 years overdue :)

Outstanding contributions

Sunil talks about outstanding research contributions that did not get rewarded with a Nobel Prize. He lists some memorable scientific achievements that were unlucky to miss out on a Nobel - including Einstein's work on relativity, and Pauling's contributions on elucidating the nature of alpha helices in proteins. Considering that only one Nobel prize is awarded per discipline every year, its no surprise that a ton of outstanding contributions got left out of the awards list.

This post reminded me of an article in The Scientist that talked about seven outstanding technological advances that have revolutionized life sciences research. The same issue also gives a popular science description of these technologies, alongwith an excellent chronological listing of major breakthroughs leading to the development and maturation of the technology. These seven big achievements are:

1. The automated DNA sequencer - starting with the first one from Applied Biosystems in 1986 that enabled the success of the Human Genome Project
2. The BLAST algorithm - stands for Basic Local Alignment Search Tool - and remains the workhorse bioinformatics tool for navigating through the immense amount of sequencing data that poured out
3. The DNA microarray - that lead to the formation of Affymetrix, today a $2.5B corporation
4. The yeast two-hybrid assay - for identifying protein-protein interactions.
5. The MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer - to quantify the relative abundance of thousands of proteins in a cell lysate - the foundation for proteomics.
6. The lab-on-a-chip - certainly an area of interest for me these past 3-4 years - microfluidics has allowed the incorporation of analytical methods on microfabricated chips, the resulting miniaturization ushering in a new age of rapid, high throughput analysis of tiny samples.
7. The optical trap – sophisticated optical tweezers to manipulate cells.

These advances in technology have evolved over many years, with key contributions by a number of eminent scientists and engineers, several of whom could have been recipient of Nobel prizes. Yet, in the long run, the legacy of a scientist is not measured by the number of Nobels, but by the impact of his scientific contributions, so I dont think Einstein would have been so upset about not getting the Nobel for his work in relativity .... he would have been satisfied seeing the E=mc2 actually works to generates nuclear energy for this planet