Great Humour: Ramayan on Facebook

I found this by accident: Ramayan on Facebook:

Great sense of humour-

A sampler:

Ravana is dead
    132,457 people liked this


Vibhishana is king of Lanka
    Ram and 8 other people like this

Please check this: Mostly Pointless

How Clever is this?

DU buried radioactive waste on campus: Prof - India - ibnlive:

"A day after the Delhi University (DU) officials accepted that the recent radiation leak in Delhi's scrap market was caused by gamma irradiator previously belonging to its chemistry department, the infighting within Delhi University over the radiation leak has now emerged.

"A professor of DU now claims 20 kilos of radioactive waste has been lying buried in a 10 feet deep pit near the chemistry department on the campus for more than 20 years."

I think the serving professors and lecturers of the Science Department should all be dismissed, and the pension of the retired professors recovered with interest- they are all unfit to teach anything: they seem to have understood nothing of what they taught.

Spy Software monitors every photo and mail in your Blackberry

It seems a highly impossible ask, but apparently if you have the right spyware, you can view every mail and photo received/ sent from a Blackberry!-

BlackBerry Spy Software Unleashes Email and Photo Monitoring -- JACKSONVILLE, Fla., April 27 /PRNewswire/ --:

"Retina-X Studios, LLC announced today new logging features for their Mobile Spy monitoring software for BlackBerry smartphones. The silent spy program now includes the ability to view every photo captured and every email sent or received. These new abilities help parents and employers track the activities of their monitored phones with greater accuracy."

Here is why you do this: How To Secretly Track BlackBerry Phones
:

"Track cheating spouse: For a spouse who suspects their partner is cheating, using software that enables them to track their partner is a key tool many use to uncovering their partner's infidelity. With a BlackBerry spy app used as a tracking device, spouses not only get to see where their parter is, but they can also dig a bit deeper into their partner's BlackBerry, reading their messages, viewing photos, and even secretly listen in on their partner's surroundings to find out what they are doing.

Track employees. Gone are the days of bulky GPS tracking devices installed in company provided cars. Now employers can easily track their employees via their company issued BlackBerry cell phones. Using BlackBerry tracking software, an employer can not only track their employees movements, but can also track their employees once they leave their cars. This might raise eyebrows, but this could be required for company safety policies, and/or to locate missing employees."

Apart from the ethics of this, and the possibility, does anyone actually feel the need to do snoop?

Sadly, yes, even in a close relationship: "Should You Use Technology to Catch a Cheating Spouse?":-

"Retrevo.com, a consumer electronics shopping and review site, recently polled 1,000 U.S. residents of varying age, gender, income and location to see whether they have ever spied on their significant other's e-mail. The results showed that 38 percent of those under 25 who are in a dating relationship have "snooped." Ten percent of the spies in that age group discovered the other person was unfaithful.

Retrevo's study found that 36 percent of people in committed relationships have spied on a partner's e-mail and call logs. Of those, only 3 percent found incriminating evidence."

 These are the times we live in- every technology brings with it great freedoms, and greater threats with it.

Karma

Makes for some sad reading- no use in blaming the man-

Nithyananda laments loss of face, disciples - dnaindia.com

"“Now that I am in police custody, most of my disciples have left me. The bad publicity and baseless media reports have ruined my reputation. My friends, who were close to me, have been trying to denounce me and are now pushing me over the brink,” he (Swami Nithyananda) reportedly told his interrogators."

Say Goodbye to Hunger

I don't know whether it is possible to survive without water and food, taking only air for nutrition. But apparently, DRDO thinks it is possible, and is willing to spend time and money investigating it:

Now, DRDO lab studies Prahalad Jani ‘mystery’:

"The Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Science (DIPAS) and a panel of specialists in the fields of neurology, nephrology and diabetology have embarked on a new study on Prahalad Jani.

Jani (77), a resident of Ahmedabad, claims to have survived without food and water for more than seven decades."

This is such an impossible claim, almost a superhuman physiological feat, I am surprised that a neurologist would give credence to it-

"Addressing mediapersons, Dr Sudhir Shah, Ahmedabad-based neurologist said: “The observation from this study may throw light on human survival without food and water. It may help in working out strategies for survival during natural calamities, extreme stressful conditions and extra-terrestrial explorations like future missions to the Moon and the Mars.” "

This could be the quickest and the easiest way to abolish hunger from this planet.

The Great Hedge of India- Wikipedia

How extraordinary a reading this makes:

Great Hedge of India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"Presently Mr. Joyce remarked how much lighter it seemed on the left side of the road than on the right. As there was no moon the appearance puzzled me, as it did also our men to whom I pointed it out. We were speculating on the cause, when we came to the track which would lead us, over some fields and the great parade ground, to the back of the station. We passed through the avenue which bordered the road, and perceived the cause of the light. For miles and miles all along the horizon there stretched a line of fire; in some places it was burning brightly, elsewhere emitting only a dull glow. The spectacle was so beautiful and so singular that with one accord we pulled up to admire it. Our admiration was mingled with other feelings not so agreeable. The line of fire we conjectured to be the burning Customs' hedge, which was a bank of thorny bushes, lately erected by the Government along the Customs' frontier to prevent the smuggling of salt and opium."

Apparently, these two gentlemen were travelling along The Great Hedge of India-

"A customs line was established, which stretched across the whole of India, which in 1869 extended from the Indus to the Mahanadi in Madras, a distance of 2,300 miles; and it was guarded by nearly 12,000 men and petty officers... it consisted principally of an immense impenetrable hedge of thorny trees and bushes, supplemented by stone wall and ditches, across which no human being or beast of burden or vehicle could pass without being subject to detention or search"

I don't know how true this is: is there any reference to it in our regional languages? It seems to have existed as recently as 1869- an impenetrable barrier that almost cut India into two- it is not possible that there is no record of it in our vernacular.

A review of the book,  "The Great Hedge of India." by Roy Moxham is at India Environmental Portal: the review discusses the book in great detail, and is quite informative.

Memorable moments of 2010 IPL

Chennai has won the IPL this year, and all credit goes to Dhoni's astute leadership.

The memorable moments this year:

Bollinger, who announced his arrival with a stupendous effort. His catch was the breakthrough moment for Chennai: it was the turning point in Chennai's game, and his bowling transformed a team that looked very much ordinary and hopeless into a sprightly unit.

Ashwin. I remember Dhoni saying that Chennai's weakness was that it lacked a local pace bowler. It was a desperate move on  part of the captain to bring Ashwin to bowl the opening spell, and what a revelation he was. Gilchrist went on record that he felt Ashwin was a dangerous player to take on in the opening overs, and had to change his gameplan, not with much success.

Raina. He was everywhere, and could do anything: he was the man to turn to when Chennai needed to be bailed out of trouble. In my team, he will replace Yuvraj Singh in every game.

Tendulkar. What I'll say here is likely to be unpopular, but why not? God does have clay feet: in the semi-finals, he claimed Dravid's catch on the bounce, and rightly, Dravid refused to go. And then in the final, he edged a catch to Dhoni, and showed no reaction when the appeal was made and the umpire turned it down.

What is the big deal, you'd say, every cricketer has the right to stand his ground, but then, when you are an elder statesman of the game, you are expected to play fair. May be Sachin is an exception, because I don't remember anyone writing anything about this: think how horrified we would all be, and how acerbic we would sound, if Ponting, as the captain of Australia, had done this.Sangakkara, very much a lightweight when compared with Sachin, walks. Not to mention of Gilchrist. Or Lara.

Delhi. On paper, they were the best team (Mumbai and Bangaluru were equally good, but with a batting that boasted of Sehwag, Gambhir, Warner, Dilshan, AB Devilliers, Collingwood, Karthick, Maharoof and more- they should have won the cup. But 20-20, contrary to expectations, did not live upto its tag as a batsman's game.

Bollinger and Steyn bowled some destructive spells, Bond was a disappointment, Mumbai's pace trio of Zaheer, Malinga and Fernando were tight-fisted, but it was the spinners- Kumble, Ojha, Mishra, Ashwin and Harbhajan-that sent shivers down the spine of batsmen.

The much vaunted Mangoose bat was displayed in two big innings, but Gilchrist and Hayden, who used it, went off the boil soon, and I am sure we won't see much of it for some time to come.

And finally, Pollard, he turned the match on its head, didn't he? He nearly did: may be if Rayudu had come one down (how daft to send Harbhajan up from where he belongs), or may be if Pollard hadn't run Rayudu out.

There were some great games, and several extraordinary performances- but they was all overshadowed by what happened off the field. One got the impression, looking at the news channels, that the final to watch was not on Sunday, but the showdown slated for Monday.

Facebook Like Button- make better use of it

This is old news: Facebook has added a Like button. I have a hunch that you'll find it everywhere soon, and we'll use it more often. There might be a few readers of this blog who are not aware of this, so I am posting what essentially are a couple of links.

If you want to add Facebook like button to your blog, Digital Inspiration shows you how.

And you'll find some blogs and websites don't have the Facebook Like button. There is a handy bookmarklet that you can keep on your browser- Like-o-matic. Just drag this to your browser and click it when you like any post or page: the Facebook Like icon will load and if you are logged into your Facebook account, you can share it with your Facebook friends by clicking the Like icon. The Bookmarklet is here, made by Kyle Bragger.

Note: In Blogger, the like button is likely to be hidden by the Blogger sidebar that is above the header of your blog (somewhere around the searchbox on top left of the Blogger Bar)

Lalit Modi Steps Down?

Lalit Modi agrees to step down as IPL commissioner - Moneycontrol.com -:

"Chairman and Commissioner of the Indian Premier League Lalit Modi has agreed to step down from his post in the IPL, reports CNBC-TV18, quoting Network 18. Further it has also been learnt from Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) sources that Ravi Shatri's name is now doing the rounds as next IPL chief.

This news might warm the hearts of some of us, but it fails to find any such response in ours. We are more or less certain that Lalit Modi is a dubious character presiding over what must be the most extraordinary league of extraordinary gentlemen who were ever trusted with a till- even that of a small tea-shop in the corner of a deserted street, where  public transporters hesitate to stop for want of passengers. Let that be as it may.

Thought: If Lalit Modi offered to start such a league in Football or Athletics, and asked for the same amount, percentage or whatever that he might have got  from cricket legitimately and illegitimately- would we find him worth it? And how about  honest Tharoor's girl friend, is she worth any sweat money to bring a buyer in?

Of Cats and Wolves

Ever since I came across this meme, I couldn't get it out of my head: every time I look at someone with an interesting gait, I can't stop wondering- but, you can't be sure, can you? Unless you are a Certified Discerning Observer-

"The discerning observer may infer women's experience of vaginal orgasm from a gait that comprises fluidity, energy, sensuality, freedom, and absence of both flaccid and locked muscles"
-NCBI ROFL: Friday flashback: A woman’s history of vaginal orgasm is discernible from her  walk. | Discoblog

On Slavery

George Orwell wrote a withering passage about money, adapting I Corinthians xiii in Keep the Aspidistra Flying:

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money. "

I am reminded of this when I read this article by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in the NYT, where he discusses the role of African kings in the commercial activity of slavery: they sold Africans to European merchants- and when the issue of giving them freedom and sending them back home came up, Frederick Douglass wrote,

“The savage chiefs of the western coasts of Africa, who for ages have been accustomed to selling their captives into bondage and pocketing the ready cash for them, will not more readily accept our moral and economical ideas than the slave traders of Maryland and Virginia. We are, therefore, less inclined to go to Africa to work against the slave trade than to stay here to work against it.”

 It is a sorry story, with no winners in terms of race and colour.

Openly Gay- Archie Comic Shifts Gears

Except for Jughead, I never liked anyone or anything about Archie- too elitist for me. But then, when something as ground breaking as this happens, you have to mention it: Kevin Keller is acomin'.

CBC News - Books - Archie comic to introduce gay character:

 "'Archie's hometown of Riverdale has always been a safe world for everyone. It just makes sense to have an openly gay character in Archie comic books.'

The Sofian Attack

Viswanathan Anand, undeterred by the volcanic cloud of ash, plots his way to Sofia:


View Larger Map

Read all about the saga here:

Good Luck, Vishy!

All Dressed Up...

Liked this nice little peace by Robert Herrick:

928. CLOTHES ARE CONSPIRATORS.

Though from without no foes at all we fear,

We shall be wounded by the clothes we wear.

I am not too particular about my dress, but still, I can understand the sentiment: we are betrayed by the clothes we wear.

"Dear Mr. Thourlby,

Thank you for your wonderful no-nonsense guide, You Are What You Wear. I bought a copy of it in a used book store and it has paid off immensely in increased self-esteem, increased respect, and increased income."

-Vladimir and Mary Hykel review You Are What You Wear at Amazon.com

Another Strike for Social Media.

Conn. mayor donates kidney to Facebook friend - Yahoo! News

"Capone Almon, 35, had more than 1,600 "friends" on Facebook last year when she saw one of them, Carlos Sanchez, post a status update saying his friends and relatives had all been tested and couldn't donate a kidney."

The wonder of it is that Capone Almon is a politician and Carlos Sanchez, her constituent. And they got acquainted through Facebook.

Another strike for Social Media. I shall mail this to my socmedsceptic friend.

Taking it on the chin...

Amazing response to criticism:

"The only unhelpful reaction is the non-reaction, the shrug," he says. "You either want something to be positive or negative. You don't want indifference, because that means you haven't stirred them in any way."

(Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=2936399#ixzz0lq6vB6Gw)

Yann Martel, the author of Life of Pi has received negative criticism from many of the acclaimed critics for his new novel, Beatrice and Virgil ("So dull, so misguided, so pretentious that only the prospect of those millions of Pi fans could secure the interest of major publishers and a multimillion-dollar advance."- Michiko Kakutani) . Yann Martel  has also responded,

""You have to listen. I don't read every single review carefully -- good or bad -- but generally the way a work of art is received is part of the dialogue of art, so that's important. I don't live or die by it."

Nothing can equal Pi

And Twain Shall Meet

Sorry.

Kipling meets Mark Twain. PDF.

Story of the Week: An Interview with Mark Twain

"You are a contemptible lot, over yonder. Some of you are Commissioners, and some Lieutenant-Governors, and some have the V. C., and a few are privileged to walk about the Mall arm in arm with the Viceroy; but I have seen Mark Twain this golden morning, have shaken his hand, and smoked a cigar—no, two cigars—with him, and talked with him for more than two hours! Understand clearly that I do not despise you; indeed, I don’t. I am only very sorry for you, from the Viceroy downward. To soothe your envy and to prove that I still regard you as my equals, I will tell you all about it."

More on Mark Twain, who apparently had the habit of making voluminous marginalia- he fiercely annotated as read on, and some of these books are now in a collection.

New York Times: 

"“Twain could just lacerate a book,” said Kevin Mac Donnell, a collector of rare books in Austin, Tex. who owns more than 150 books once owned by Twain. Badly written books bore the brunt of his annotations, Mr. Mac Donnell said, but the author “would also correct a book if he thought it was a gem.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he corrected the Bible and Shakespeare,” he added. "

Timescapes

Amazing timescape video:


Timescapes: "Death is the Road to Awe" from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

via Daily Grail

The Governmental worries about Data (Google Data)

Techcrunch reports this, "Google Exposes The Countries That Annoy Them The Most About Privacy":

Google has apparently built up a page which gives you information on the names and numbers of governments that request of them data and data deletion: sorry to say this, India ranks fourth on data requests and third on removal requests. But then, given our population and the security situation, may be, there is some justification for it.

The Murty Classical Library of India

Here's some good news:

Murty family donates $5.2 million to establish library of Indian classical literature

"Harvard University and Harvard University Press (HUP) announced today that the Murty family of Bangalore, India, has established a new publication series, the Murty Classical Library of India, with a generous gift of $5.2 million. The dual-language series aims both to serve the needs of the general reading public and to enhance scholarship in the field. ...

"Under the direction of General Editor Sheldon Pollock, William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Columbia University, and aided by an international editorial board composed of distinguished scholars, translators will provide contemporary English versions of works originally composed in Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Persian, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and other Indian languages. ..."

We need this.

Payback

BCCI to ask Modi to quit on April 26 - India - ibnlive

"IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi is certain to lose his job. Sources tell CNN-IBN the Indian cricket board will ask him to resign from his post on April 26."

One doesn't know how reliable the source is, or what resources Lalit Modi still retains at his command: but I want him to go, if not for the allegations of corruption, but for his exhibition of spinelessness in giving in to threats of terror: first it was Hyderabad, and now it is Bangaluru.

What Modi has done, leaves scarce room for justification in the event of pullout by any other country should anything violent happen here.

Unjustifiable greed.

Beard Points

Here is a conclusion of an interesting study that has a particular relevance to me:

"The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a study in the Journal of Marketing Communications, which found that among bearded and clean-shaven men, the bearded men were generally deemed more credible.

The study showed participants pictures of men endorsing certain products. In some photos, the men were clean-shaven. In others, the same men had beards. Participants thought the men with beards had greater expertise and were significantly more trustworthy when they were endorsing products like cell phones and toothpaste."

via GOOD 

Eyjafjallajoekull is Good for the Environment

There is a beautiful infographic at Information is Beautiful, which illustrates how polluting the airline industry is:

Do subscribe to that blog if you aren't doing that already- it is one of the best when it comes to visualisations.

Goodbye Hayden...

I post this soon after watching Hayden get out, and seeing him wipe tears off his face. Remarkable to see his commitment to cricket, and the way he has taken to our appreciation. His emotions speak louder than any amount of  lyrical waxing. 

I would like someone to look at YouTube, and see his reaction: it happens within the first three balls of the third over. If possible, I will embed the video here.

The Uses of Twitter

A friend of mine is doubtful about the virtues of Twitter, not realised that it is a tool made serviceable by the user- here's someone who makes better use of it-

1. A subgroup N of G is normal if g^{-1}Ng = N for all g in G.about 15 hours ago via HootSuite
2. If 2^p - 1 is prime, 2^{p-1}(2^p - 1) is an even perfect number. Euclid, Prob IX.36.11:30 AM Apr 16th via HootSuite

Algebra Fact (AlgebraFact) on Twitter

The BPL

This sure is not good news: more than one third of Indians live in poverty-

It's official: 37 pc live below poverty line - India - ibnlive

This 37% mark is the lowest one: this Tendulkar committee finding- two other reports have pegged it at 77% and 50% respectively.

There is a bewildering symmetry about all these figures...

The Hindu : Front Page : C.K. Prahalad passes away

The man who put Coimbatore on the world map is no more:

The Hindu : Front Page : C.K. Prahalad passes away

"Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad, 68, Distinguished Professor in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and a world authority on management thought, passed away on Friday in San Diego after a brief illness. He was known for his work specialising in corporate strategy focussing on top management in large, diversified, multinational corporations.

Professor Prahalad's seminal work, alongside Gary Hamel in the 1990s, on the concept of “core competence” of companies won the McKinsey Prize and sold the maximum number of reprints in the entire 80-odd years of history of its publisher, the prestigious Harvard Business Review."

It is an irreparable loss, in the true sense of the word.

A Fondness for Beard

I liked this post about Swami Giri Ramananda (I like more or less every post by David Godman)- but the reason I share it here is because, there is a passage which combines my fondness of beards and cricket:-

"Swamiji was very attached to his beard, so it was quite an appropriate nickname for him. To illustrate this I will tell one final story. In the fifty-over World Cricket Cup that took place in the mid-90s, the West Indies team, then one of the strongest in the world, suffered a shock upset at the hands of Kenya, a team that so far beneath them in the rankings, their games were not even classified as official international games. A replay of the game was about to take place on TV when Swamiji was spotted in the garden. Papaji decided to have some fun with him. When he came in, we all had to pretend that the game was live. We then had to coax Swamiji into taking bets on West Indies winning.

Apart from myself, almost everyone else there came from a non-cricketing country. Swamiji initially patiently tried to explain to these poor ignorant people that Kenya had no chance because they weren’t even a recognised cricketing nation. He advised us all to hold onto our cash. Eventually, though, after some persistent cajoling, he was persuaded to part with a large sum of money as a bet on the West Indies. All the money was placed in front of Papaji. Then we all sat back to enjoy his reaction as his team collapsed to one of the most unexpected defeats in cricket history.

Papaji made no monetary bets, but he did ask Swamiji to wager his beard. ‘If you are so confident of West Indies winning,’ he said, ‘promise to shave off your beard if they lose.’

Swamiji had been willing to bet all the cash he had on the result, but he refused to bet his beard as well. That was the one thing he was not willing to part with."

Clever

Clever:

"Iceland's last wish: to have its ashes scattered all over Europe" -- Pedro da Costa
Twitter.

Animal Farm

Animal Farm is one of those books the reading of which can mark you for life: I was eighteen when I first read it, and it created in me an aversion to all totalitarian regimes, whatever their ideology. It is entertaining, and well-written, and in reading it, children and adults, whatever their situation, can by a stretch of imaginative outreach, can find their own dictator portrayed there.

Superb book, and there is a superp appreciation of it at The Guardian: Christopher Hitchens re-reads Animal Farm:

"There is a timeless, even transcendent, quality to this little story. It is caught when Old Major tells his quiet, sad audience of overworked beasts about a time long ago, when creatures knew of the possibility of a world without masters, and when he recalls in a dream the words and the tune of a half-forgotten freedom song. Orwell had a liking for the tradition of the English Protestant revolution, and his favourite line of justification was taken from John Milton, who made his stand 'By the known rules of ancient liberty'. In all minds – perhaps especially in those of children – there is a feeling that life need not always be this way, and those malnourished Ukrainian survivors, responding to the authenticity of the verses and to something 'absolute' in the integrity of the book, were hearing the mighty line of Milton whether they fully understood it or not."

Call Centres and School Enrolment- an unlikely link

This is obvious, that more parents would sent their children to school when chances are that they would find a good job, but is the Indian economy so dependent on outsourcing? Hard to believe, but there is a study which says exactly that:- Indian call centers promote school enrollment:

"Emily Oster and Bryce Millett report:

"...Using school fixed effects, we estimate the impact of introducing a new ITES center in the vicinity of the school on enrollment. We find that introducing a new ITES center results in a 5.7% increase in number of children enrolled; these effects are extremely localized. We argue this result is not driven by pre-trends in enrollment or endogenous center placement, and is not a result of ITES-center induced changes in population or increases in income. The effect is driven entirely by English-language schools, consistent with the claim that the impacts are driven by changes in returns to schooling.""

Is it likely that there would be an increase of school enrolment by as much as 5.7% when a call centre opens in that locality?

Sounds hard to believe, but if true, it asks for a sober reevaluation of our education and employment policies.

Erotica for the Blind

For those who cannot see, erotica in 3-D - thestar.com

"Lisa J. Murphy doesn't make ordinary books. Most books are meant to be looked at, read only with your eyes. Hers are meant to be touched.

Her book Tactile Mind, which she hand-crafted herself, is meant to be felt up, to be precise. It is an erotic book for the blind and visually impaired, though it can be enjoyed by the sighted as well."-  thestar.com

I wonder why no one came up with this idea earlier. We might argue that this is so unnecessary, given the kind of porn that is freely available- just a push away with our Bluetooth phones. But then, the blind need their erotica, don't they?

And then again, when it comes to sex, even the expert of us with all our functioning senses, we are all blind: who is to say we won't enjoy erotica in 3-D?

As John Donne so beautifully put it (I could never get it out of my head)-

"...Licence my roving hands, and let them go

Before, behind, between, above, below.
O, my America, my Newfoundland, ...

- Elegy XX

We need this.

Digested Classics

Digested classic: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy | Books | guardian.co.uk

Some of us here hate Arundhati Roy with almost pathologic passion, and don't know why: as for me, I hate her for the incessant verbal diarrhoea that would brook at no opposition: unintimidated, she drones on and on: that is neither here nor there.

But I found this delightful Digest (via Blog of a Bookslut) of her "God of Small Things," by John Crace: brilliant-

"It was a skyblue day in 1969 when Rahel found herself in a fictive time-slip. She gasped in amazement as the skyblue Plymouth pulled up and her uncle Chacko got out and talked about how Pappachi started drinking after a moth wasn't named after him and used to beat up Mammachi until he warned him off, how he had been a Rhodes scholar, had married Margaret and had a child, Sophie Mol, how she had left him, how he had returned to Kerala to run Mammachi's Paradise Pickles and Preserves factories, how he was a supporter of the Keralan Communist Party run by Comrade Pilla, how ...

"Stop, Uncle," Rahel said. "There are too many names, too many things going on. I can't keep up."

"That's the whole point," Chacko replied. "This is India, a land of sensory and poetic overload, a land where small boats bob in rippling water of green silk, a land teeming with literary prizes for those who can find the right imagery to win them. But these are small things."

"Is there a God of Small Things?"

"There must be if I won the Booker,""...

India has more cell phones than toilets: UN

India has more cell phones than toilets: UN:

This headline speaks for itself, right?

Steven Seagal Accused of Keeping a Harem

Now it is the turn of Steven Seagal, the reincarnation (tulku) of the treasure revealer Chungdrag Dorje to give Buddhism a bad name:

"Steven Seagal is accused of hiring young women as personal attendants whose real job was to serve his strange and sometimes violent sexual desires, according to a civil lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles by a 23-year-old former model who describes her experience in harrowing detail. "

- Steven Seagal sued for allegedly keeping sex slaves

It is remarkable to note what Buddhism ("Monks, All is Aflame"!) has been able to inspire in Tiger Woods, and now Seagal, who, apparently suffers a unique physiological reaction when sexually aroused. Keeping in mind what we have heard of our own Nityananda, may be it is time we think of religion as an alternative form of therapy to raise libido, or whatever.

Nine Year Old Entrepreneur Sells Short Story To... | Gather

Nine Year Old Entrepreneur Sells Short Story To Pay For Own Heart Surgery
Gather:

"I keep on striding down the road, and a nice little house steps into my view. There is a closed window, and a small candle glows inside. I hear a voice: “Goodnight, Katie.” A small voice replies: “Goodnight, mommy.”

I think to myself, “I think I’ll take a peek.” I jump toward the window, trying to get their attention. As soon as I smack against the window, I black out."

Nine year old Malkolm Poyer, who needed money for his heart surgery, wrote a short story, "Luna" and put it on Ebay. He has sold 550 copies of the short story $10 each.

The money is not much, but the idea is- and the headline.

Gandhi Goes Berserk

This seems such an easy solution, and some might aver that it is more justifiably a Gandhian practice than what Arundhati Roy would have:-

"Maoist insurrection has as its root cause the inability of human beings to share land and resources; it is a problem of demography and geography. One way of solving this problem would be to cull human populations to the point where everyone could share resources to the satisfaction of all." 
- Elephant Wars.

Image Credit: Manuel Fernando Rios

Granta Cover

The cover of Granta 110: Pretty Imaginative-

Impossible Science

Another blog I like is this: NCBI ROFL.

It looks at seriously academic research papers published at Pubmed and comes up with seriously hilarious findings:

Some of the recent posts being-

Vacuum cleaner injury to penis: a common urologic problem?

An ecological study of glee in small groups of preschool children.

Ants in your pants? (This is a bizarre one: formicophilia- 'The sexual interest in being crawled upon or nibbled by small insects, such as ants')

Study proves cheating good for marriage.

The pyrophysiology and sexuality of dragons.

Since it is possible that we care more for what is studied than what is found, you might as well follow the blog on Twitter

(Image Credit: Zimage.com via Intersecting Lines)

Out of Place

Will Buckingham has a reasonable piece on why it is wrong to call this universe pitiless or indifferent or chinless or whatever:

“Pitiless”, when we use it in an everyday sense, is not simply saying that something lacks a certain property, the property of “pity”. To describe something as “pitiless”, and to do so interestingly, is to suggest that the thing described should be capable of feeling pity, but that, because it has its own purposes, it chooses not to. To usefully deem something indifferent or pitiless, in other words, we might want it first to have the capacity for partiality or pity. This is perhaps why it would seem fairly odd to say that my toothbrush is pitiless even though, technically, we could argue that it is.

I think the Dawkinsian breed of atheists feel they need to drum about that nature is without pity, and does not care a bit about whether you survive this summer or the next. Because people believe in a God who is in control of the world, and responds to their needs.

The atheists might be right, but they are a bore.

Image Credit: dhtstc100

Either Autism is a rumour or is contagious...

Either Autism is a rumour or is contagious is some way we don't know how.


"Researchers at Columbia University say that a child who lives 250 meters from another child who has been diagnosed with autism has a 42 percent increased chance of being diagnosed himself or herself. Children who live between 250 and 500 meters of another child diagnosed with autism have a 22 percent increased chance of being diagnosed themselves. The researchers based this conclusion on a study of more than 300,000 children in California between 1997 and 2003. Children who live further away from another child diagnosed with autism have a lower risk of being diagnosed themselves."

via The Essential Read 

Image Credit: EdwardPrevost.info 

An Interesting Blog

Found this interesting blog with great links- Barking up the wrong tree.

You find all kinds of interesting, crazy, zany stuff here- all backed up by research findings.

The last few posts being-

 Do candy cigarettes turn kids into smokers?

Why are people cynical? What can be done about it?

  

Do good moods make people less trusting?

  

How to add meaning to your life:

  

For a healthy relationship, should cohabiting couples have more or less sex than married couples?

  

What predicts cheating in a relationship?

I do hope you check the blog: you can spend all day clicking links and reading stuff.

Brilliant.

Linked Pages in Blogger

I started this blog to make use of this particular feature, pages that work as tabs- Blogger now gives you the chance to have your posts displayed in tabs. What this means is that you can now group your posts into categories, and display them as tabs- and, also, provide RSS for each of them.

I wanted this feature, because I post too indiscriminately: and it makes sense to display them in particular categories, and have people reading only what they want to.

I learnt all about setting up tabs here- "How to get Tabs (navigation bar) on new blogger templates". It is incredibly simple.

And then, I should thank Giri for the idea of grouping posts under a particular label, and display them as tabs.

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I had suspended posting in We Belong Here, mainly because it had become too unwieldy after more than seven hundred and fifty posts. There's a blog I have set up in Tamil on Wordpress, ப்ளீஸ், ஒரு நிமிஷம் வெயிட் பண்ணுங்க…, and it had what I needed. I am now happy that I could do the same here in English and in Blogger.

I could have carried on in the old blog, but as I said, that one has become too unwieldy- because my idea is to have categories and people having the chance to choose to read only one or two of them. I could've done it there, but this seems like turning a new page. Let's see how it goes.