Lunch With George!

March 14, 2002 - Samurai Sam's

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Agenda

Tennis
Hunger
Weapons-grade Pianos
Lucifer's Hammer
Show And Tell
A Memorial

Tennis, Anyone?

George and I did not have lunch on March 7th-- he was busy attending a men's professional tennis match at the Franklin-Templeton Tennis Classic in Scottsdale! George and Toni try to go every year. And since you never know who is going to play in a particular match ahead of time, they buy "season tickets" to all the matches. The really good news about this is that they did not use their tickets for Friday night, so I bought a third ticket and took Emily and Hannah.

The seats were great. We had never seen live professional tennis before, but we all were a bit more interested since playing Sega World Tennis 2K2 on our Dreamcast (possibly the coolest video game I've ever played!). And as an added bonus, the match we attended featured one of the players who appears in our game at home: Carlos Moya of Spain!

Even though he had a mightier serve and better name recognition, Rainer Schuettler had something more valuable: a skillful game. Moya lost in three sets. Even so, the girls were thrilled to encounter him sneaking out the back way after the second match had begun, and he cheerfully gave them his autograph. Win or lose, they tell me he's still "so hot!"

Well, as soon as had we driven away from the Princess Resort, Hannah wanted to learn to play tennis. So what did I do? I signed up for tennis lessons for me! George spotted a flyer at the Rose Mofford Sports Complex for tennis lessons offered by the City of Phoenix... and the next thing you know, George, Sandeep, and I are all taking lessons. More as this story develops.

Hunger

I was telling George about another interesting article I read in Science News. First identified in 1999, the hormone ghrelin has already been the topic of over 100 published papers. Ghrelin is a hormone produced by the body whose concentration is observed to rise significantly before meals and drop quickly after meals. Researchers discovered that injecting ghrelin into rodents stimulates feeding!

In a study ibvolving 9 healthy people, they were randomly infused with either ordinary saline or saline with ghrelin. Eating lunch at an open buffet, the individuals receiving ghrelin were voraciously hungry, and consumed 30 percent more food than those without.

Scientists have hoped that ghrelin could be used to help people with "wasting" illnesses such as anorexia nervosa, stimiluating their appetites. To their surprise, they discovered that people with such disorders produce more ghrelin than normal-- and the highest natural concentrations of ghrelin recorded are in people with anorexia. It seems their bodies are yelling at them to eat, but they're not listening.

Similarly, severely overweight people show some of the lowest levels of ghrelin. Even though they are consuming more calories than their bodies need, it is not because ghrelin is making them hungry. In both of these extremes, something else must be at work affecting the eating habits.

Watch Out for that Piano

One of George's old friends had a novel idea for revolutionizing warfare on the battlefield: instead of dropping bombs and mortars on enemy troops, drop pianos! Here's his reasoning:

If you are just dropping bombs, the troops can't really see 'em coming. They just keep doin' their job, and hope one doesn't fall on them.

On the other hand, if you drop a piano and it hits anywhere near someone, it'll make a terrible sound when it strikes the ground. Once the enemy sees one or two come down, they'll be constantly scanning the skies, assuming they just might be able to get out of the way of one if they see it coming!

As a follow-up to this theory, George's friend would remark upon seeing a piano whose better days had come and gone: "There's a weapons-grade piano!"

Lucifer's Hammer

So George has finally finished Niven and Pournelle's novel of Comet-induced Armageddon: Lucifer's Hammer (we originally discussed the book and the fact that George had started reading it on November 15th of last year).

when I asked George how the book was, he said: "Terrible! I threw it away!" He had me going for a minute, until he explained that the physical condition of the book was terrible-- all the pages were falling out. As for the story, he really liked it.

George pointed out that he found it really odd two fairly right-wing science fiction authors would write a book during the height of the cold war whose "good" characters band together into a socialistic society.

I think he should send an e-mail to Jerry Pournelle's web page and ask him! George and I are both subscribers to Chaos Manor Musings, after all.

Show and Tell: RPR

George brought another cool gadget (or is it three dull gadgets?) to lunch this week. It is the Radio Program Recorder! (We discussed it at the February 28th lunch).

It looks just like the picture on the website (and shown above). George mostly uses it to record the Clark Howard show-- a program which is broadcast when George is not in his car. The RPR lets him record Clark Howard and listen to him on the way to and from work.

Never Forget a Good Friend

It has been over six months since two commercial aircraft flown by terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center Towers. I would like to talk about a friend of mine who perished that day, having already arrived at his office on the 97th floor of Tower 1.

I had the great pleasure of knowing and working with Shashikiran L. Kadaba, or Shashi, for almost my entire tenure at American Express. Shashi actually worked for Wipro, Inc., a software development firm which provided Amex with an off-shore development team in Bangalore, India. Shashi acted as both an on-site developer and a coordinator of the offsite people wortking on our team.

Now that he is gone from the Earth, I wish so that I had gotten to know him even better. But here is what I would say about Shashi to someone who did not know him:

Shashi was very kind and considerate.
He loved to play cricket-- whenever he got the chance to visit Los Angeles where many of his friends from India live, they always found time for a game of cricket!
He could always beat me at table tennis.
His smile was infectious.
Once the wait for his driver's license was over, he purchased his prize auto-- a red Mitsubishi Eclipse.
He enjoyed living in America, and left working at American Express rather than return to India (Amex forced the issue by severely reducing the number of on-site contractors).
At the time of the tragic attack, he was living in New York with his roommate Bharat, and his fiance had recently moved to New York to be near him.

Shashi and I had not exchanged e-mails since July, but I always assumed we'd cross paths again. It saddens me so that it will now not happen in this lifetime. My loss is nothing compared to that of the many people who loved and were loved by him, of course. I can only say that my life was richer for knowing him, and I will never forget him.

Last modified 04/04/2002.

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