While I personally don’t care too much about the US elections, there are times when a little attention cannot be avoided. For instance, when you idly open the Digg homepage and notice that half the stories are about Presidential candidates, you can’t help but start reading some of them.

My first observation is this: every news site or forum discussing the election belongs to exactly one of the two camps. A forum that belongs to camp ‘A’ will post wonderful stories about candidate ‘A’ and try its best in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to mock, deride and expose the mendacity of the other camp. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

And here’s my next observation: a supporter of candidate ‘A’ will inevitably drift towards a forum that supports his candidate. There, he will praise his idol and curse the opponent, and he will nod and murmur in agreement when others do the same. What is interesting is that not many of these people venture into the enemy camp to contradict their opponents lies, or clarify their own position. Why? Maybe because they know that few would be willing to change their opinions when provided with better information — and so they sit with their mates and bask in the warm, fuzzy feeling they get when everyone agrees with them.

What is the point of an election in which a majority of the people stubbornly cling to their opinions without weighing the facts and coming to a conclusion rationally? Perhaps the best solution would be to disenfranchise everyone having a fixed opinion, and ask the rest to vote.…

Saturday seems much less of a working day in the US than it does in India. I consider this to be a rather good thing, because it gives me a lot of free time to relax, and get ready for the next week. One day, in my opinion, is too little to recharge.

Also, two days in a row is often long enough to take a short trip somewhere, either as a holiday or a visit to a friend’s place. But you need a car for that.

Cars in the US are built differently. The gears are simplified — see automatic transmission — which means that there is no need to change gears as the car speeds up or slows down. This also affects the way people drive their cars. For instance, when a red light turns green, a car in India would start moving gradually, the gear would be changed and then the vehicle would speed up. In contrast, a person driving a car in the US would simply press down on the accelerator and it would be off as quickly as possible. It is as if there were a perfectly functioning system of speeding vehicles that the driver wanted to join in the smallest possible time so as to become a part of the mainstream.

One of the strange things for an Indian going to New York is the way vehicles stop and give way to pedestrians. Where there are zebra-crossings, cars slow down to let people pass. At the same time, it is almost assumed that pedestrians will not attempt to cross the street at any other place. I think this phenomenon is tied up to the technology involved — cars can afford to stop frequently because they speed up very easily afterward.