Days of the week and colors

Many months ago, may be even more than a year ago, the Yoga Farm had hosted Komilla Sutton for one of their astrology courses.  So that evening, following the meditation and daily chants, she had talked to us in the context of Vedic astrology about several things pertaining to the days of the week including the ruling planet, favorable colors, and auspicious activities for the day.  Somehow that lecture has surfaced in mind, so I thought I'd document the part about the ruling planet and the colors.  So here goes.

• Sunday - Sun - Pink/Maroon.
• Monday - Moon - White.
• Tuesday - Mars - Red.
• Wednesday - Mercury - Green.
• Thursday - Jupiter - Yellow/Beige.
• Friday - Venus - Light Blue/White.
• Saturday - Saturn - Black/Purple.

I wish I could say that I remembered all of this, but I didn't.  I had to google around and found this article which contains all of this and some more.

Planets and days of the week

The western calendar also follows the planets in a similar way.  I found this tidbit lying around in one of my folders from my days in graduate school, about 20 years ago.  I don't know who the author is.

It's Tuesday. But WHY is it Tuesday? Because many moons ago, there was a warlike Norse god called Tiw. His equivalent in Greek mythology was Ares who, in turn, was known as Mars by the Romans. Each of our days of the week have a strong link to the seven traditional "planets."  Monday is a corruption of "Moon-day". Wednesday is Odin's (or Wodin)'s-day.   Odin links up, symbolically with Mercury. Thursday is Thor's day - and Thor equates to Jupiter. Friday is Freia's day. Freia was, to the ancient Norse-folk what Venus is to us today. Saturday is Saturn's day and Sunday... is self-explanatory.

This matches up perfectly with the days of the week in Hindi (Sunday through Saturday) -- Ravivar (Sun), Somwar (Moon), Mangalwar (Mars), Budhwar (Mercury), Guruvar (Jupiter), Shukrawar (Venus), Shanivar (Saturn).

Wikipedia contains a lot of information on this.

Movie at the Yoga Farm: Dirt

Today at the Yoga Farm, following the meditation and daily chants, instead of the usual discourse, in honor of Earth Day there was a screening of the movie Dirt.  It was a documentary about soil and its place in the ecosystem, the ills of modern farming methods such as monoculture, and some inspiring stories of urban gardens and community supported agriculture.  Following the movie, there was a brief discussion led by Mike and Susan Kluk, the teachers of the Earth Day Celebration course.

iPhone stuff

Here's my list of iPhone apps that I think are very useful. I'll keep updating this list as I find new ones.

• Genius Scan

Streaming directions from Apple Maps to your car's speakers

This requires the car to have bluetooth and the phone to be paired with the car.  Then follow the directions in this article to enable HFP prompts.

Testing RF performance

From the iPhone keypad, dial *3001#12345#* and hit “Call”

This will bring up the true signal meter to replace the bars. You can use that to determine just how badly the signal is fluctuating. If you are standing outdoors with the phone on a level surface and not moving, the meter shouldn't change more than 10 db.

iPhone camera specs

This article provides a nice comparison of the cameras in iPhone 4 through iPhone 5s.

Manuals

• Manuals for various versions of iOS are available here.
• User guides for the iPhones currently on sale are available here.

The most versatile device?

Aside from being an extension to my computer for things like email and web browsing, my iPhone has essentially replaced the function of all of the following devices

• Watch
• Calendar/planner
• Music player
• GPS
• Compass
• Alarm clock
• Scanner
• Flashlight
• Calculator

I don't consider at the point yet where is can replace my computer, though, mainly because it's very hard to connect to certain websites and get them to deliver their native pages; many websites only offer a pared-down mobile version once they detect they are connecting to an iOS device.

iPhone camera controls

I took a free 1-hour class at the Apple store on 12/27/15.  I learned a few things about the camera.  Here's what they covered:

• Regular picture, square picture.
• Focus, focus/AE lock (tap and hold), exposure adjust (by sliding finger up and down).
• Changing perspective by rotating the camera because the lens sits differently in each of the 4 positions.
• Burst mode (vary the number of shots by holding the click button), timer mode (displays a count down and the number of shots), live photo mode (captures 1.3 seconds on either side of the shot within the jpg file, use a long touch to view the photo with motion).
• Panorama mode.  
• Can be set to create a panorama shot moving left-to-right or right-to-left.
• Phone must be upright for side-to-side shots.
• Phone must be tilted 90 degrees for top-to-bottom shots.
• Flash settings -- auto, on, off.
• HDR - high dynamic range.  This is useful when taking pictures with a combination of bright and shadows, e.g. during sunset.  HDR and flash are mutually exclusive.
• Video, slow-motion video (120 or 240 fps depending on size 1080 v 720), time-lapse video (compression of long duration events at 1 fps).
• Focus/AE lock works but you cannot change the exposure.
• Digital zoom for photo and video.
• Viewing, editing the album.

Many of these features are covered in this video.

Checking feature availability on carriers

Feature availability on various carriers (e.g. visual voicemail, WiFi calling) can be checked here.

The 40-hour work week

In this day and age where businesses are under pressure to operate at maximum efficiency, managers often think they've done their job if they're successful at keeping their employees working longer and longer hours (for the same pay, of course). I came across an interesting article titled "Bring back the 40-hour work week" that challenges this common wisdom. Here are a couple of excerpts that are relevant to my line of work.

"Robinson writes that he’s seen overworked software teams descend into a negative-progress mode, where they are actually losing ground week over week because they’re so mentally exhausted that they’re making more errors than they can fix." 

"In fact, research shows that knowledge workers actually have fewer good hours in a day than manual laborers do — on average, about six hours, as opposed to eight."

My primary critique of the article would be that it does not acknowledge that people have varied capacities for work. Some people can indeed work very long hours and still be productive, but it is far from the norm, and they are probably not as effective when those extra hours are forced by authority, rather than being self-motivated.

(The same article is available at AlterNet.)

A few months after writing this article, I received an email letting me know about an infographic, unrelated to this article with the same title as the article. It had some interesting statistics, so I thought it would be worthwhile to include it.

Update 9/9/15

I received a link to an article from an IEEE JobSite eNewsletter about how working longer hours increases the risk of stroke.

Update 11/25/15

I came across this article in Business Insider.  I can attest to this having seen several cases first hand in Silicon Valley.

Experiences with Ayurveda

Ayurveda is the holistic medicine from India. I am by no means an expert on the subject, but I have used it with mixed results to address some of my health issues. It has been particularly helpful with aiding my problems with digestion (acidity, heart-burn, bloating, abdominal cramps) and has taught me a whole new way of looking at food. As a result, I decided to write a short article on this subject and provide references that I have found useful.

Introduction

The term Ayurveda is derived from the sanskrit words "Ayus" meaning life, and "veda" meaning knowledge. Thus, Ayurveda literally means "knowledge of life". It is supposedly thousands of years old and was communicated by Rishis who discovered it through meditation. The subject is very deep and I'm not going to attempt to delve into the details, but at a high level, it attempts to treat disease not just looking at physiology, but also at psychology and even spirituality. Diagnosis is typically done by reading the pulse, and by examination of some other body parts such as the tongue, eyes, nails, hair, and skin. There is strong emphasis on using food as medicine, but herbs are often used as well.

For a more detailed introduction to Ayurveda, there are several good books and resources, but to start with I would recommend the introductory articles by the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico.

Ayurveda: Art of Being is a documentary that provides some insights into the power of Ayurveda.  Unfortunately, I think a lot of the power is being lost with the recent increase in commercialization.

How did I found out about Ayurveda?

Growing up in India, I was almost exclusively treated using allopathy, the modern western medicine. I was exposed to the existence of Ayurveda, but because treatment with Ayurveda takes a lot of patience as it is slow, I never actually used it.

Then, in 2003, as I was getting my wisdom teeth extracted, my dentist told me about Ayurveda and referred me to an Ayurvedic practitioner. This was mainly to try and address some of the issues I had been facing with digestion. One of the simple things suggested by the practitioner was to take a tablespoon of sesame oil each morning on an empty stomach. Something as simple as that helped my digestion a bit, but the effect was limited in the sense that it didn't seem to get rid of things like acidity and bloating which were still bothering me. I actually used that for several years, but don't need it anymore.

In 2006, as I started visiting the Yoga Farm, I learnt a lot more about Ayurveda. They conduct many courses during the year and so I got to hear about Ayurveda on my Saturday evening visits. I learned about how spices such as turmeric powder, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, cardamom, etc. help with digestion and assimilation of food. I learned that looking at a conventional nutrition label is meaningless because if the body is not able to digest and absorb the nutrients, then the body isn't going to get the benefit of those nutrients. I learned that certain foods are better for certain body types; e.g. even though conventional wisdom talks about salads being "good for you", there are certain body types that are unable to effectively digest them because the digestive heat is not sufficient; undigested food actually creates toxins in the body and over the long term lead to disease.

Since that time, I have visited several Ayurvedic centers and spas for various treatments and have also consulted several practitioners. Because Ayurveda is not regulated in the US, it can be hard to find genuine practitioners.

Ayurveda in India vs Ayurveda in the US

Ayurveda is gaining in popularity in India, but it is practiced quite differently in India vs in the west. In India, Ayurveda is recognized by the government as a legitimate form of medicine and it is possible to obtain a degree in Ayurveda and to be called a "doctor". And it is possible to visit an Ayurvedic doctor to get treated for a specific physical symptom.

In the US however, Ayurveda is not recognized as a legitimate form of medicine and thus the emphasis is more on lifestyle and disease prevention. Also, many of the Ayurvedic herbs in India contain heavy metals, and as a result they are banned in the US. This is probably not a bad thing since, being an unregulated field, it would be hard to do any kind of quality enforcement, and many of the herbs that contain heavy metals must be prepared a certain way for them to be effective.

Ayurveda centers and spas

The following are some centers that offer Ayurvedic treatments. I have been to the ones marked with an asterisk. The others on the list are ones that I have either done some research on, or personally know people that have visited there.

• Arya Vaidya Sala, Kottakkal, Kerala, India
• Ayurvedic Institute, NM, USA*
• Blue Sage Sanctuary, CA, USA*
• California College of Ayurveda, CA, USA*
• Chopra Center, CA, USA*
• Dr. Jay's Ayurveda and Panchakarma Center, Mountain View, CA
• Kayakalpa, CA, USA*
• Malayala Ayurveda Vaidya Sala, Singapore*
• Dr. Pankaj Naram / Jivanshakti
• Rejuvenation Therapies, Grass Valley, CA*
• Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar, Soquel, CA
• The Ayurvedic Center of Vermont, Williston, VT
• The Raj, IA, USA
• Vaidyagrama, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
• Vinayak Ayurveda, NM, USA*

I'll update this list as I find out about or visit any new places.

How corrupt is a country?

(This post was updated on 06/30/2014.)

There's a relatively easy way to find out. Transparency International is an organization that ranks countries using a Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Pre 2012, the index was a number from 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean).  From 2012 onwards, the score goes from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

Here's how the CPI of the US has varied over the years.

Year - CPI - US Ranking - Least corrupt country (CPI)
1995 - 7.79 - 15 - New Zealand (9.55)
1996 - 7.66 - 15 - New Zealand (9.43)
1997 - 7.61 - 16 - Denmark (9.94)
1998 - 7.5 - 17 - Denmark (10)
1999 - 7.5 - 18 - Denmark (10)
2000 - 7.8 - 14 - Finland (10)
2001 - 7.6 - 16 - Finland (9.9)
2002 - 7.7 - 16 - Finland (9.7)
2003 - 7.5 - 18 - Finland (9.7)
2004 - 7.5 - 17 - Finland (9.7)
2005 - 7.6 - 17 - Iceland (9.7)
2006 - 7.3 - 20 - Finland + Iceland + New Zealand (9.6)
2007 - 7.2 - 20 - Denmark + Finland + New Zealand (9.4)
2008 - 7.3 - 18 - Denmark + New Zealand + Sweden (9.3)
2009 - 7.5 - 19 - New Zealand (9.4)
2010 - 7.1 - 22 - Denmark + New Zealand + Singapore (9.3)
2011 - 7.1 - 24 - New Zealand (9.5)
2012 - 73 - 19 - Denmark + Finland + New Zealand (90)
2013 - 73 - 19 - Denmark + New Zealand (91)
2014 - 74 - 17 - Denmark (92)
2015 - 76 - 16 - Denmark + New Zealand (91)
2016 - 74 - 18 - Denmark + New Zealand (90)
2017 - 75 - 16 - New Zealand (89)
2018 - 71 - 22 - Denmark (88)

2019 - 69 - 23 - Denmark + New Zealand (87)

2020 - 67 - 25 - Denmark + New Zealand (88)

The US has gotten more corrupt since the inception of the index but, on the bright side, it's still within a fairly narrow band.

Finding a "safe" bank

With all the news about the economy headed downhill, a natural question that comes up is whether or not one is banking with an institution that is sound (i.e. unlikely to fail). Here are some sites that allow us to check on the health of financial institutions -- banks, thrifts, and credit unions.

• Bauer Financial's star ratings
• The Finance Buff has a post on how to go about finding a local bank.