Better World Books, Carbon Credits, Literacy efforts, A book sends me email, C++, Just plain funny

So I just bought a book from Better World Books, and paid $0.05 for Carbon Neutral Shipping. They said they were going to buy Carbon Credits to offset the carbon cost of shipping. So far, so good, right?

But these guys had some sense of humor. And some ambition. I quote...

Until Willie Nelson's Biodiesel bus does deliveries, we've got no choice but to send your book on normal planes, trains and automobiles. They all deliver your book considerably faster than we could on our bikes, but they belch carbon dioxide into the air the whole time. In case Al Gore hasn't stopped by your house, sat you down, and given you his slideshow yet, we've got some news for you. These carbon dioxide emissions are overheating our planet, causing a "climate crisis". Carbon Offsets are a way that we can "offset" these emissions through the purchase of clean energy credits and reversing deforestation. It is only a few pennies per book, but when thousands of people do it every day it adds up.

We looked at our shipments and used Carbonfund.org’s Carbonfree™ Shipping application to estimate the average offset needed for our packages and we always round up. 100% of the funds charged as Carbon Offsets WILL be used to purchase carbon offsets. Once Better World Books is 100% carbon neutral, we'll start to offset the carbon emissions of our non-profit partners. After that, we'll offset Exxon's emissions. They'll never know what hit 'em.

We work with Carbonfund.org to make this possible. If you like it, demand Carbonfree™ Shipping wherever you shop online.

Offsetting Exxon's emissions indeed... :)

And here's more... the book that I bought sent me an email just before being shipped:

Hello Karthik,

(Your book(s) asked to write you a personal note - it seemed unusual, but who are we to say no?)

Holy canasta! It's me... it's me! I can't believe it is actually me! You could have picked any of over 2 million books but you picked me! I've got to get packed! How is the weather where you live? Will I need a dust jacket? I can't believe I'm leaving Mishawaka, Indiana already - the friendly people, the Hummer plant, the Linebacker Lounge - so many memories. I don't have much time to say goodbye to everyone, but it's time to see the world!

I can't wait to meet you! You sound like such a well read person. Although, I have to say, it sure has taken you a while! I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but how would you like to spend five months sandwiched between Hamlet (bipolar) and Fundamentals of Thermodynamics (pyromaniac)? At least Hamlet was an upgrade from that stupid book on brewing beer. How many times did the ol' brewmaster have one too many and topple off our shelf at 2am?

I know the trip to meet you will be long and fraught with peril, but after the close calls I've had, I'm ready for anything (besides, some of my best friends are suspense novels). Just five months ago, I thought I was a goner. My owner was moving and couldn't take me with her. I was sure I was landfill bait until I ended up in a Better World Books book drive bin. Thanks to your socially conscious book shopping, I've found a new home. Even better, your book buying dollars are helping kids read from Brazil to Botswana.

But hey, enough about me, I've been asked to brief you on a few things:
You chose Standard shipping.
You can expect your order to arrive in 4-14 business days.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email my friend Jesse and his team at help@betterworld.com. If you could please include your order number (#######) that would be very helpful.

Eagerly awaiting our meeting,

Effective C++: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Design (2nd Edition)



Sometimes, humor crops up in the most unexpected of places. This was refreshing.

And these guys do seem serious about their mission. They donate to Literacy causes around the world. They ship Carbon Neutral. And their prices are quite reasonable too.

So there... check out BetterWorld.com the next time you're about to buy books.

The Exodus

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan echoes my sentiment in this article. Will miss you guys. And along with it, a part of my life :) Three cheers to Dada, and Jumbo.

Losing my religion, on Cricinfo

Anil Kumble is one of a kind. When asked why he doesn't spin the ball over by more than an inch, when people like Shane Warne turned a yard away, his reply was short: "The distance between the middle of the bat and the edge is one inch."

Dada was a great batsmen, especially against the spinners. But I will always remember Dada as the guy who gave Indian cricket its spine.

Do you run?

This seems to be the first question folks from Austin ask.

And they are not necessarily talking about reasonable distances like 200 m. They start from half-marathons (13 miles and change), and go on to full marathons (26.2 miles) and ultra marathons (a hundred miles through hilly terrain?). I'm impressed. But I have to think for a while. I like my knees. :)

Most Austin folks run as if their life depended on it. I've been spending a lot of time with the folks who volunteer for AID and ASHA. I have to say that they are a very very cool bunch of folks. And I've gotten introduced to some very very nice efforts that are underway in India both in the infrastructure development and the educational outreach areas. Last Friday for example, there was this lady from India, Kanchi Kohli who works with this NGO in Delhi called Kalp Vriksh. She gave a talk on how major initiatives in India go through without a good idea of the impact they would have on the environment. And the impact they end up having is usually quite disastrous. Google her up. I'm sure the Google God will bring up more on her than I can hope to express in this column.

Notes from Austin

Every new place brings with it its own charm.

Austin is nice. Austin is probably the only place one would want to be in, if one had to stay in Texas.

Texas is, in some ways, like Punjab. And Texans are, in many ways, like Punjabi folk. They mean well. I think. They just lack polish.

Anyways, folks in Austin are urban. And the amount of culture in this town has to be seen to be believed. Wikipedia calls Austin the live music capital of the world. And if what I see around me is anything to go by, that might be true.

I haven't had chance to walk in and stay for any performance around town so far. I'm hoping I can correct that this weekend.

The synagogue

So now its hello from Austin, Texas.

No I'm not going back in time. From a political point of view, Austin is still blue. It is, however, a teeny tiny blue dot in a huge red sea that is Texas. And yes, people here say you'll. But seem nice and educated in general. And they don't ride horses to work. No.

So I went to a synagogue yesterday. A new Rabbi was being installed. A colleague was gracious enough to invite me to the event. And I have to say it was fun.

Now this was my first first time at a Jewish service. It was quite similar to a Christian service. Recitals. Good Music. Speeches.

No altar.

The podium was called the beema. There was the ark, under which the children gathered. And they were blessed by the community as a whole. The boys were supposed to have lives as rich as Abraham. The girls were supposed to follow in Sarah's footsteps.

Interestingly Abraham makes an appearance in the Islamic tradition as well, as one of the Prophet's ancestors. Abraham == Ibrahim.

And the Rabbi training program is quite similar to grad school, I must say. For starters, they go to school and write a thesis. This particular Rabbi, was a jolly old woman who's thesis was on the holocaust. After school, they do an internship. The end of the internship is when they start interviewing for positions.

These positions are filled by search committees, who interview a few candidates and select one. This person starts out as an assistant Rabbi, moves on to becomes an associate Rabbi, and finally becomes a Rabbi.

And that is a very very academic route. Phew.

Anyways, laters.

Californication

It's the edge of the world
and all of western civilization
The sun may rise in the East
At least it settles in a fun location.

- Red Hot Chili Peppers

A cup of coffee

So I went to this small coffee shop on State Street last week. I had heard good reviews, and was curious.

There was this fairly old gentleman at the counter. That struck me as odd. At a place like Starbucks, you would expect high-schoolers to run the show. Oh, well.

I ask him for a Cappuccino. And there began a series of questions:

Single, double or blah: And he showed me how big each one was going to be. Single, I said. Reasonable question. My mistake for not having been more specific. Shrugs.

I turn around to people watch.

Whole milk, reduced fat milk, or fat free: I look at him like, "I don't care," but say... "Reduced Fat." A pretty girl enters the store.

Regular or Soy Milk: Regular. Annoyed. But irritable people turn away pretty women... or so I've heard. And so I smile.

Decaf or regular: Regular.

Ethiopian, Nigerian or blah: Whatever.

Foam/No Foam: Pretty girl or no. I'm irritated by now. I wouldn't have minded this at another time. But I was on my boss' clock then. I say, "Foam's alright" And manage a smile.

Couple minutes later, I get my Cap. The old gentleman looks at me, and says, "I'm sorry young man! We like to make our coffees exactly the way you want it."

"But," comes the killer closing line, "We're not like Starbucks."

"We don't teach the customer how to order!"

I smile.

Pretty girl smiles.

And the whole room smells like fresh coffee. :)

Nigerian.

This weekend was history in the making as far as Wall Street was concerned. America's fifth largest investment bank, Bear Stearns, collapsed... over a period of 16 days.

On Feb 29, apparently, it was trading at $80 and change. Over the last weekend, JP Morgan bought Bear Stearns at $2 a share. I don't think a company of the size of BSC was ever sold over a weekend, especially at a little over 1 percent its estimated worth.

This is *huge*! If the financial infrastructure goes down, everything else goes down...

The US Fed is trying everything it possibly can to avoid catastrophes. Over the past weekend it stepped in to tackle the Bear Stearns issue, and did something that it hasn't done ever: accept mortgage backed securities as collateral for its loan to JP Morgan.

The next few days will be very very interesting...

The IPL player auctions

I woke up in the middle of the night... and with nothing better to do, ended up at cricinfo.

Now, I've taken it upon myself to follow the fortunes of the Chennai team. Yeah, I'm jingoistic! :P

Looks like the we've landed Murali and Matthew Hayden. Two of my all-time favorites. And surprisingly enough, a $1.5 mill Dhoni. Stephen Fleming. And a bunch of fairly useless players.

I do think Dhoni is a very gutsy player. But $1.5 mill?

Just to get a sense of what else $1.5 mill could have bought us:

Shane Warne (US$ 450,000)
Anil Kumble (US$ 500,000)
Adam Gilchrist (US$ 700,000)
Mahela Jayawardene (US$ 475,000)
Kumar Sangakkara (US$ 700,000)
Ricky Ponting (US$ 400,000) - (If Punter travels to Pakistan, he doesn't get to play at all... that explains this number, somewhat.)
Kamran Akmal (US$ 150,000)

At first glance, I think I like the way most of the other teams look. :( Chennai has three stars, and then some.

Moving on, I think the bidding process itself is quite interesting. Auctions are places where value is decided by what something is worth to the second highest bidder.

This auction becomes somewhat more interesting because there are caps. Every team has a cap on how much it can spend in total. So what they're looking at is to form a good team within that amount. When you already have five batsmen, someone like Shahid Afridi becomes more attractive than Ricky Ponting.

The other objectives are quite obvious too... The amount spent is incomplete without countering in expected payback: Financially and otherwise.

This post is incomplete. I don't think I've completely digested what's happening. But this does seem like fun stuff.

On being sick...

Being sick can be fun... when you're just sick enough.

You remember those times when you can run a marathon if you have couple pills? But you don't, and so you can't lift your grocery bags?

That is what I'm talking about.

No throwing up. No coughing your lungs out. No Sachin Tendulkar fevers. Nothing dirty. Nothing so painful.

Just sick enough... to not show up for work. :)

Knock knock!

Indian writing in English

I was chatting with a friend couple days ago.

Somewhere in conversation, context was set up, and it became necessary to use the word whorehouse.

It wasn't.

My friend preferred "house of illness in reputation."

I couldn't help smiling. The more obvious reason was the need to use a euphemism, and the cleverness of it. Indian sensitivities...

The not so obvious reason was the realization that this is uniquely characteristic of contemporary Indian writing. The kind that we rave about.


PS: I personally don't care for Indian fiction. So I might be wrong to generalize... Please give me license :) Oh, I'm currently reading Dune, by Frank Herbert. I think it is bloody brilliant.