In the midst of cynicism

Ever since my first forays on the information superhighway, I have been indoctrinated with the culture of cynicism and skepticism especially when dealing with 'forwards'. After years of receiving emails with subject lines like "forward this to ten other people", "Prince XYZ wants to give me a million dollars", "Service XYZ is deleting account" etc., I have begun tossing such emails into Trash/spam without even having to think about it.

Naturally when I received an email with a subject-line "Fwd: An appeal", I tossed it straight to Trash after just a cursory look. However it turns out that this time the appeal is probably genuine, since I could trace a chain of people to the family in question (pretty much the same way digital signatures are generally verified).

The appeal is for a seven year old boy in Mumbai named Piyush diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblast Leukemia. His family needs to raise a total of about USD $350K for his treatment (last checked, they had raised about USD $160K). The details for donating money can be found at www.aidmyson.com and Piyush.

One of the aims of this post is to send a word out for Piyush (assuming someone reads this post on a blog with near zero traffic). However it is also a reminder to me that though my skepticism protects me from falling prey to all the scams out there, sometimes genuine issues can be lost in the midst of cynicism.

Winters in these United States

We finally had a week of heavy snowfall in the Twin cities. After the miserable 20 odd days of below 0F temperatures with no snowfall, it has finally begun looking like winter! We had about 6 inches last weekend, which was followed by about 6 more over this week. As a result, driving can now be categorized an adventure sport, it looks enchanting outside and I have my own little snow-hill on my patio (picture on the right) .

Of couse I cannot talk about winter without mentioning Hougton, where I spent my first two winters. With an annual average snowfall of 250 inches, it is easily the most intense snow that I have experienced. The picture on the left shows the pathway leading to my house in Hougton. Believe me, thats how it stayed through most of winter.

I am always amazed with the drastic changes in appearance that occur with the change in seasons. It is almost like a poem describing cycles of optimism, fulfillment and apparent despair; Winter when snow beautifully covers latent potential, Spring when everything is in full bloom and Fall when nature goes out in blazing glory. The irony is that if you think about it Fall could symbolize destruction and despair, but instead it symbolizes hope; nature spectacularly accepts a temporary setback knowing that spring shall come again.

Comic crystal balls ?

I am always amazed how true comics like dilbert and phdcomics can be sometimes....Its almost as if we live in a comic strip. However I dread the day when these become reality .