Thromigal's Blog

Everyone remembers the Matrix movie where the phone is one's connection into the grid and you can hyper-transport to anywhere you want to go. It seems great till you realize that the phone is why the grid has its tentacles into you all the time. The iPhone is the umbilical cord that has insidiously eaten away your freedom. Brothers and Sisters, Big and Small, are always watching. How horrible is that? It gets worse. The cell phone will drive us all to distraction. Of course, driving distracted with a phone is a leading vehicular problem, but more than that, the phone disrupts your life tremendously, and not just when driving. The cell phone is the leading cause of interruption in one's daily routine. Why do we allow it to be so? If a person interrupted you ever so often while you were reading, talking or just trying to get things done, you would consider it rude. Yet we are infinitely forgiving of this inanimate object, showering it with gratitude for making a mess of our day! ...

I have published papers with almost 50 different people, but yesterday, Rajeev Motwani, with whom I published a paper only two years ago, passed away tragically in a swimming pool accident at his home near Stanford University. This is my first co-author to die, and I am reminded now how deep human frailty can be. It is so unfair that death stole Rajeev away when he was in the prime of his life. I have known Rajeev for more than a decade, and I remember the early days when he was just beginning to get his feet wet in the VC business and we sat in his office and I explained to him the basics of option pricing. After that he hardly needed to ask, he was so smart that he figured out all the Finance he needed on his own. Of course, I learnt much more from him than he did from me. His book on Randomized Algorithms taught me everything I needed to know in that field. But he also mentored so many students and taught hundreds more. Many of the famous firms in Silicon Valley were mentored by Ra...