Sumeet's Thoughts

6 Immediate Benefits of a Vegan Diet

I’ve been a vegan for a few weeks now, and I have to say: It’s pretty awesome. I’m sure I’ll undergo more changes as time passes and I stick to a healthy diet, but already my body and mind are changing. Here are 6 positive things I attribute to being a vegan:

1. I’m more energetic than ever. Since switching to a 100% plant-based diet, I’m not longer sluggish after lunch or lazy in the morning. I’ve been jumping out of bed and feeling great.
2. I don’t get zits anymore. Kind of an awkward point, but it’s true. I’m still young enough where I’m rarely seen without a glaring blemish. Since giving up animal foods, I’ve stopped using pimple cream at night and my face is clearer than ever.
3. No more athlete’s foot. I don’t know for sure that I had athlete’s foot, but the soles of my feet were always dry and cracking. I’ve noticed a significant increase in smoothness and the filling in of these cracks since becoming a vegan.
4. I don’t miss meat. Though it’s harder to find variety in the vegetarian sections of most menus, I haven’t noticed a longing to return to the dark side. I see meat differently now. Namely, I see it as unnecessary and harmful.
5. I eat less but more. For some reason, I get hungry more often during the day, but I eat less during each meal. I don’t think I’m eating any less than when I ate animal foods, but I’m spreading it out more. The result is that I don’t been bogged down by heavy meals - especially after dinner, which used to be much bigger.
6. I’m learning tons. There is a mountain of knowledge that has been ignored for a long time by most people. I’m fascinated by learning more and more about the benefits of a plant-based diet.

If you want to know more about a plant-based diet, please don’t hesitate to ask. I probably won’t know the answer, but I’ll appreciate having an opportunity to look up the answer.

12 comments July 12th, 2006

Post-Event Attitudes

A couple days ago, my Mamaji (uncle) and I rented a 2000 PSI pressure washer from Home Depot to clean his driveway and backyard pavement. His neighbor (”Simon”) was going to chip in as well so he could clean his yard, too.

After we finished the driveway, we let Simon have it for a while. I went out for a bit and told my uncle I’d be back later to help finish up. A couple hours later, I got a call from my Mamiji (aunt) telling me there was no need to come back.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because someone stole the pressure washer,” was her reply. Simon had gone inside for a moment, and when he returned, the hose had been cut, and the pressure washer was gone.

I was shocked. For the next couple hours, I thought a lot about how our expectations of people can be so magnificently out of whack.

I wouldn’t have dreamed in a thousand years that someone would be scoping out Simon’s yard for the perfect moment to steal the pressure washer. And those things aren’t light. You need two people to lift it onto a truck bed to haul it away. Or you can wheel it away, but good luck doing that quickly.

I never lock my house’s front door; I leave my windows open; I’ll even leave my car running if I’m parked in the driveway and will be quick. This incident made me think a lot about how our attitudes are so different pre-event versus post-event.

Pre-event, I’m confident in my fellow human that my car will still be on my driveway when I come back out of my house.

Post-event, I’m angered at myself for my initial confidence. I’ll likely experience an increase of distrust.

But what’s the alternative? Can I merely choose to have my post-event attitude all the time? If I’m cautious in the beginning, I’ll never leave my car running or my doors unlocked or my windows open… So I’ll maintain ownership of my belongings, but what have I sacrificed?

1 comment April 28th, 2006

50 Greatest Book to Film Adaptions - Meme

I found a link to the 50 Greatest Book to Film Adaptations yesterday, and today I found that Kottke’s republished the list with a note of if he’s either seen the movie [M] or read the book [B]. Seems like an interesting game to play, so I’m doing the same thing. Feel free to grab the list and do the same. It’s fun to get reminded how few books I read and how many movies I watch… Sigh.

1. [BM] 1984
2. [BM] Alice in Wonderland
3. [M] American Psycho
4. [M] Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5. Brighton Rock
6. Catch 22
7. [M] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. [M] A Clockwork Orange
9. Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. [M] Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [M] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. Doctor Zhivago
15. [M] Empire of the Sun
16. [M] The English Patient
17. [M] Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
19. [M] Get Shorty
20. [M] The Godfather
21. [M] Goldfinger
22. [M] Goodfellas
23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. [M] Jaws
26. [BM] The Jungle Book
27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. [M] LA Confidential
29. Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. Lolita
31. [BM] Lord of the Flies
32. [M] The Maltese Falcon
33. [BM] Oliver Twist
34. [M] One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Orlando
36. [BM] The Outsiders
37. Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. The Railway Children
40. Rebecca
41. The Remains of the Day
42. [M] Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)
43. [M] Sin City
44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. [M] The Talented Mr Ripley
46. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
47. Through a Glass Darkly
48. [BM] To Kill a Mockingbird
49. Trainspotting
50. The Vanishing
51. Watership Down

I’m passing this on to: Beily, Ani, and Tauquil.

Add comment April 20th, 2006

The Unconditionality of Love

As my uncle (Masarji) and I were driving up to Hillsborough to pick up their new dining table, we had another interesting talk.

Masarji explained to me that unconditionality was necessary for true love. He believes most relationships aren’t actually based on love in its truest form. For example, two best friends who love each other (not necessarily romantically) can drift apart due to some catastrophe - or even due to some minor thing.

Similarly, Masarji believes most couples don’t truly love each other. If they did, divorce or separation would be an impossibility. But we all know that spouses can commit a handful of action that are deal-breakers in most relationships.

These loves aren’t true, because each requires a degree of decency from the other to sustain their relationship. So, they aren’t unconditional.

Masarji said he hadn’t yet discovered a relationship that is categorically based on true love. The nearest relationship he’d found was that of a parent to a child, and I agree 100%.

Parents exhibit a love for their children that can’t be explained except to say, “Well, they’re parents.” Funnily enough, that explanation usually suffices.

Masarji pointed out that if a child committed a serious crime, he would still be welcome back in his home. His parents could punish him, and they could report him to the authorities, but they wouldn’t do this out of malice, fear, or even respect for the law. They would do this because they felt it was the best thing they could do for their child. If they didn’t belive this, then they would probably shelter the child and hide his crime to the best of their ability. If they did turn him in, though, they would punish themselves for having harmed their child - even though it was for his own good. This is a true reflection of a parent’s love as I have seen it and come to believe it. Of course, there are exceptions to this (hence why this doesn’t fully meet Masarji’s definition of love), but in general I think this is true.

I have to admit that I find it hard to deviate from Masarji’s perpective. “True love” is a term so often used that it’s been canonized to the point where its sanctity blurs its definition. We just assume it means something like, Of or relating to the driving force behind ‘Sleepless In Seattle’. But the mystical quality of true love is not something we can achieve. It’s ascribed to relationships ordained by fate to have it. The real quality of true love is something we can achieve. It’s a state of mind and soul fostered by feelings of good. I like to think that we can control our feelings. It’s just very difficult. That might explain why examples of true love are so hard (or impossible) to find.

This post is dedicated to my Mom.

The discussion is more active at Shoutwire.

8 comments March 28th, 2006

What Is Privacy?

I recently read an article about Facebook by Michael Duffy for Time Magazine. The article is about websites like Facebook and MySpace and the time-vortex they create for millions of teens across America.

The entire article is interesting, but one sentence stopped me mid-read: Generation M: teenagers think their lives are private just so long as their parents aren’t tuning in.

Duffy was talking about Facebook “Walls” (bulletin boards for each user that are accessible by anyone attending their school). These are open to viewing by anyone going to that school. So if you go to a large university, you could have 20 thousand strangers reading this. Duffy brings up an interesting point that teens are totally okay with this. But the second a parent looks at the wall, most teens will cry about privacy. Why is that?

The reason, I think, is because privacy isn’t The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others. - as the “American Heritage Dictionary” would have us believe. It’s not even Freedom from unauthorized intrusion - as “Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law” defines it. In fact, not even the ever-so-prestigious “Free On-line Dictionary of Computing” gets it right: Where only the intended recipients can read a message..

See, teens don’t mind certain “others” from viewing them, so American Heritage is out. But they don’t actually “authorize” those 20 thousand strangers from viewing their Wall, so Merrian and Webster lose, too. And since they don’t know any of the people who will inevitably view their Wall, the On-line Dictionary is false as well.

So what is privacy?

As defined by Sumeet Jain, privacy is Maintaining power over those individuals who you would like to keep in the dark.

This definition strikes at the heart of what privacy really means to people. It’s not about letting only certain people know about you. It’s about making sure certain people don’t know about you.

This is why teens are okay with random college kids viewing their Wall but not okay with their parents viewing it.

And we can extend this to forums greater than college campuses and private homes, too. I’d argue that this is even the reason we want privacy from our government. It’s not that we want to hide information. The fact of the matter is that we want to have something government doesn’t. Most people’s phone records probably don’t have very provactive information in them. And if we willingly turned them in to the Feds, we probably wouldn’t hear back from them because they didn’t find anything of consequence. But despite the insignificance of phone records, we will let loose the dogs of war if Bush and Co. try to take them from us. Why? Because we need that power.

It’s all about power.

Add comment March 21st, 2006