Hands free

As most of you might or might not know (there, I have covered all options) starting midnight, no driving with a phone to your ear in California!

The rule is simple. You can use the phone to dial out. You just cannot talk while driving, unless you are on speaker phone, or you use a "hands free" device!

Apparently the wise powers that be, in the Great state of California, have decided that this law, is going to make the roads safe, or at least, safer.

Word on the street was that the local electronics stores and Costcos were seeing long lines, with the hands free "bluetooth" devices selling like hot cakes. So, checked out a few options today and bought devices for myself and San. After the purchase and during the drive home, the mind wandered "free", and asked a lot of questions, aided by the various things observed in passing.

1. Why would it be okay to dial a phone (when you are hands and eye free) but not okay to talk?

2. Why would it be okay to drink "Starbucks" coffee and drive with one hand, but not hold a phone and drive? Could it be because promoting hands free devices, forces people to go to the store and buy a product which otherwise would be a novelty? and starbucks has not yet come up with a Handsfree drinking mechanism?

3. Could I come up with say, a hat that has a lining where you pour your starbucks coffee and there is an automatic straw that goes into your mouth for "hands free" sipping?

4. would I make a killing in the stock market if I patent such hat and straw?

5. The girl who just nearly missed the signal, being busy with her makeup and hair brushing (and who also pissed off half a dozen drivers behind her on the left turn only lane) would still be a danger on the road. How can we do "hands free" makeup?

6. Based on an average device making 30% gross margin, with the average device selling for 40 bucks, someone out there is making a lot of money this week?

7. How much did those guys pay, to get this law passed?

8. Why are there so many cops on the road today? Are they practicing for tomorrow?

9. If 1/3rd of the drivers with cell phones are safe, and 1/3rd have purchased the devices and paid their dues, the other 1/3rd will pay the fine to the highway patrol and the state government. How much will the State make?

10. Who the hell makes these rules anyways? We are supposed to work more, be more efficient, multitask to the point that dudes are talking to themselves in restrooms while peeing! No seriously, saw this today where it appeared the guy was talking to his thing.. because he looked down and was talking! Then when he was washing his hands, noticed that he had this earpiece on his right ear (which was not visible to me, when I was standing next to him).

For some reason, he thought it prudent to lower his voice in the restroom, which it made it all the more spooky. Thought he was whispering terms of endearment to his little guy! How then in a world where this happens, are we to stay away from cell phones?

11. Already Brahmin boys have to deal with pulling their "poonal", put it around their ears when they go "pee pee". What would happen to a Tambram boy who is wearing a poonal, spectacles, and a hands free? What if the whole thing gets into one tangled mess around his right ear and it all rips loose on the urinal?

12. Why didn't I buy stock in handsfree device companies a year ago? Why? Why? Why? Could have at least made money there, to compensate for what was spent today!

13. Will they actually collect impartial data over the next month or so and publish it to show if this rule actually reduced accident rates?

14. Will they actually share information, on how much money was made in fines and hands free earpiece sales over the next month?

15. Does the I-phone Junta have some cool out of the world device, that makes the cyborg looking thing I bought, look out of date? Is there an I-Free?

etc. etc. etc.

Came home grumpy, knowing that yet again, the average dude is still an average dude. A person who can only feel powerless against a law making machinery that takes ones tax dollars and finds new ways to screw him.

As soon as I entered the house though, the little one and Jr. cheered me up, with their "hands free" hugging. The little one jumped on me, clung tight like "boots the monkey" and said "Don't hold me daddy. Don't hold me with your hands. Keep walking. I keep huggy-ing you!"

Now that is one hands free, that more than makes up for all those other thoughts.


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Freedom is relative ..

Before you assume that there is some typo in the title and I am trying to talk about any relatives, let me stop you right there!

This post is about "Freedom" and how it is not absolute. It is relative.

To make my point, take a healthy young lion living in a simple 20 square meter zoo cage. It probably feels oppressesed, trapped, etc. etc. and has definitely lost its freedom (in this case freedom of movement). Take the same lion and move it to the middle of a 20 acre park which has a simulated savannah and a fake lake with a few Gazelles which it can hunt every now and then. It probably feels free. It would not bother the lion that the 20 acre perimeter has electrified fences or other mechanisms which would endanger its life, far more than the boundaries of the cage, because as far as its eyes can see, it is "free to move"! It might feel trapped when it gets near the perimeter!

Now, who am I and what have I done to Sundar? Nothing really. While driving back from work today, my thought process, which is prone to wandering in the absence of enough caffeine, sugar or starch for a whole afternoon, went to explore the meaning of freedom. This thought was triggered (as many others in the past), by the public radio news report in the background which said that the President of the USA has asked the White House Counsel, Harriet Miers to ignore a subpoena and not show up for questioning! by a committee investigating the selective firing of Judiciary folks!

My sugar starved brain asked myself a few questions in the following order:

Is the President of the US above the Law ?
Can he actually tell who can and cannot show up when summoned by the Judiciary branch?
Is this because he IS the Law of the land?
Oh wait, wasn't that answer to that question "the constitution" ?
Did I not read my Citizenship test material right about the various branches of government?
Did we not hang a dude in another country in the name of bringing a former head of state to Justice and say things like "no one is above the law! and the laws of that country (which were practically rewritten by the USA) are holding that dude accountable for his actions" etc. etc. ?
Can any leader of any country be above the law of that land and not answer to the people or the law governing that land?

Well, the answer to the last question at least, is a big NO! We all saw how Saddam was brought to "Justice"!. Before you flame me and say "are you supporting Saddam ?" , "he was a dictator who deserved death", "he tortured and killed so many people" etc. etc. I will make it very very clear. This is not about Saddam's death being deserved or not, this is not a pro or anti Saddam Hussein point I am trying to make here (for the record, he deserved what was dished out by his own people!). It is purely to elucidate the fact he was held accountable for his actions by people in his country with their laws (at least according to the world media) with a lot of publicity for "no one is above the law in a democratic land! See what the power of demoscary.. er..democracy can do!".

What definitely strikes me as odd is that we in the USA are supposed to live in a :
Democracy,
Free Country,
Country ruled by the people,
etc. etc.

all of which are supposedly lacking in dictatorial, theocratic, third world nations, which is feeding the demand for "the democratizers" (think of them as Ghostbusters, except they look like ordinary military dudes without any cool gadgets, well.. they are ordinary military dudes!) aka "liberators", "peacekeepers", "nation rebuilders", etc. etc.

This freedom is very weak and definitely "relative". It is more a perception of freedom than freedom itself, much like the case of the lion in a fake safari! When pushed to the boundaries, this freedom is as fickle as the freedom in those third world countries. How else can you explain what is happening today? A majority of the populace is struggling to implement a plan to end an occupation in a foreign land, but is really impotent as long as one man has enough power to just do what he feels like doing?

I do not know! I am still new to this constituion thing and I know I have a lot of catching up to do! Sometimes when I think that a big part of my salary which goes in taxes is directly being spent on buying one way tickets to the middle east for American kids who do not have any other options after high school, or kill Iraqi innocents in the name of liberating them, I have difficulty sleeping.

So what is the freedom that I still have? I have the Freedom of the Mouse and Keyboard! I could still write this post and put it on the internet! I can tell the Gallup poll guy (who always calls me in the evening exactly when I am asking god, why he gave me only two hands and not four to handle two kids) that I do not support the war and I want the American troops back!

I can voice my opinion that instead of sending those kids who joined the services because of a lack of other choices, to die in Iraq, give them interest free loans to get college degrees or better give them a free higher education! As for those kids that really went to the Armed services because that was their calling, instead of rebuilding Iraq, ask them to support rebuilding of all those ghost towns in the USA which have lost their local economy to international competition and start securing this country at its own borders. There are plenty of people still sneaking across all borders who could be a threat to national security (if we are to believe the same world media).

Now that I have written this, I can stop thinking of myself as a toothless lion and go run around in my fake grassland.

Give me a F
Give me a R
Give me some E's..

Gooooooooooooooo FREE country!!


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