The Unusual Suspects

With apologies to the Bryan Singer-directed wonderful film The Usual Suspects..

Catherine (Cate) Blanchett won her first Oscar yesterday for her stunning portrayal of Katharine (Kate) Hepburn in the Martin Scorcese-directed bio-epic "The Aviator". Over the past couple years, I have been viewing many of Katharine Hepburn's movies, and when I saw Cate in that role in The Aviator, I couldn't help but be amazed at the portrayal. Granted, the face was just a tad off, but hey, the mannerisms, the speech style, the delivery, the diction...man (or in her case woman!) she walked the walk and talked the talk of being Hepburn. If you've not had a chance to view any Blanchett movies yet, I recommend you pick up a DVD of The Aviator (and while at it, also enjoy viewing the performance of Leonardo Di Caprio and Alec Baldwin), Elizabeth, and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Also, if you missed it, Cate is Galadriel, the Lady of the Golden Wood, where the Fellowship finds refuge.

Morgan Freeman won his first Oscar (finally, it was about time!) for his portrayal of Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris, a friend and janitor in the gym where the protagonist Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank in a Oscar-winning role) trains with Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood in a nominated turn). Eddie was once a boxer for Frankie, but suffered permanent eye-damage because of a delayed decision by Frankie. Having watched many of his movies and the earnest portrayal of his characters, it started to look like Morgan would be one of those that the Academy would forget to honor during the career but make-up for the mistake with a honorary or post-humous award.

Twice before, (for Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Shawshank Redemption (1994)) his nominations for best actor were part of a rather heavy-weight nomination list, and he ended up losing out to Daniel-Day Lewis' celebral palsy affected Christy Brown of My Left Foot in 1989 and the Tom Hanks-classic The American Soul character Forrest Gump of Forrest Gump in 1994. And he was not nominated for the classic turn as Det. William Somerset in Se7en, not to mention Principal Joe Clark in "Lean On Me".

Though I was a tad disappointed for Johnny Depp not winning Best Actor for Finding Neverland, it is not like Jamie Foxx deserved it any less. Luckily for Freeman, and unluckily for Depp, the competition in the Best Actor category was as heavy-weight as heavyweights came.

FleetCenter - JeterCenter

* FleetCenter owners decide to auction one-day naming rights to the building on eBay

* Kerry Konrad, NYYankee fan, Harvard alum and NY lawyer winds bid for $2325 to name it Derek Jeter Center (the prime cut in the Boston Yankee thingie!) on March 1.

* FleetCenter owners get cold feet. You see, much as it is a noble cause because the winning bid money goes to charity, they messed up in not setting filters for possible name selections.

* Afterall, Jeter is the facade of the evil empire to the south - a la NYYankees

* Wished they would've honored a bid won fair and square. Apparently honoring their word is not as important as not pissing their city off (afterall, who can blame'em, it is business, and they are in it for the money)
Update
* Luckily for them, Jerry Rappaport Jr, BoSox fan, Harvard alum and Boston real-estate developer kicks in an additional $6275, raising it to $8600 in honor of the 86-yr long drought beween BoSox championships.

* In the tenor of all's well that ends well, the so-called "winning bid" will now cause FleetCenter to sport "Jimmy Fund Center". All the more noble cuz the Jimmy Fund is a large cancer charity.

Courtesy the "The Way I See It" program to promote discussion and spark conversation, as initiated by Starbucks.

The following Laurence Shames quote as seen on the sides of a cup.. "Why are we inspired by another person's courage? Maybe because it gives us the sweet and genuine surprise of discovering some trace, at least, of the same courage in ourselves."

New York! New York!

Ah! I may now finally understand why many New Yorkers simply adore their Yankees. In all the madness that transpires in the Gotham-area sports, only the Yankees have shown some return on investment.

When the dust settles on all the trades that transpired in the NBA yesterday, it might seem like New York Knicks are so flush with money, they can afford to be sitting in the cellar of the worst division in the NBA, and yet absorb players with bigger contracts than what they gave up in the trades.

For no plausible reason, NY-area teams are intent on taking on bigger/bloated contracts of players and add them to teams that are decidedly heading no where. Consider the Knicks of the past couple years, the Mets of Major-League Baseball, Islanders and Rangers of the currently-defunct National Hockey League and you begin to get a picture of ineptitude that has currently seized the executives of the largest television market in the country. I guess that is enough reason in itself - after all, when you are flush with cash from TV contracts, why bother being prudent right? The National Football League, with its strict salary cap, still managed to provide us the spectacle of having to see good-guy-coach Jim Fassel of the East Rutherford Giants being reduced to a lame-duck coach by the players that tuned him out. Even the New Jersey Nets of the NBA were not immune to the lunacy that gripped the area-teams, by letting Kenyon Martin walk away at the beginning of the season. But to their credit, they tried to restore a semblance of order by getting Vince("I play hard when I feel like", "Showboat") Carter.

Strangely though, the biggest spenders of them all - the Yankees - have been relatively unscathed from this ineptitude. Yes, they boast the highest payroll in MLB, but have gotten atleast something to show for it. Namely a few championships, a few championship-round appearences. And oh, of course the biggest collapse ever in the history of Major-League Baseball playoffs (but thats a separate story for another day).

Honestly though, it is good that the sports execs of these teams are doing what they are doing. How else could the rest of the pro-teams get rid of their bad/bloated contracts/payroll?

It Happened One Night

*-ing Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Directed by Frank Capra.

If you've watched the Aamir Khan/Pooja Bhatt starrer "Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin", then you know the story of "It Happened One Night".

The first feature to score the Oscar Grand Slam (Actor, Actress, Director, Movie and Screen Play) (and oh, this grandiose achievement has been done only thrice in the history of the Academy Awards - It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Silence of the Lambs).

Suave, cock-sure, full-of-himself Peter Warne (Gable) runs into rich, spoilt-brat heiress Ellie Andrews (Colbert) in a bus from Miami to New York. He on his way back to NY, and she running away from her dad and toward her husband, who is obviously despised by her dad.

Some memorable dialog exchanges and scenes (scene in the bus with the driver featuring the "Oh Yeah!" exchanges, pretending as a couple to escape from detectives, and the famous/infamous leg-expose to get a hitch) dot the movie. If you've watched the movie you know what I am talking about, else I would strongly suggest you watch this classic.

What makes this movie even more special?
Clark Gable was "demoted" to Columbia Pictures by MGM as punishment for his off-screen behavior, and Claudette Colbert reportedly disliked the film, she almost even missed receiving her own award, reputedly making her acceptance speech in travel clothes. And yet, their chemistry on screen is sparkling and natural.

Capra-esque qualities of this movie include an astute reflection of the Depression-era troubles, class mingling, and people essentially being good samaritans and looking out for each other.

And if you think Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin was nice and cute, I suggest you please watch this movie. When you essentially copy the entire screen play, you are bound to end up with a pretty good product.

Sp*am and HIV?

There may be some use for all the sp*am and the related fighting techniques, beyond computers. Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on a collaboration between Microsoft Research, and bio-med folks in Seattle, Boston and Perth (Australia) to see if spam-defeating techniques could be useful to battle the HIV and AIDS scourge.

Interesting parallel between the mutating HIV and the ever-changing nature of spam.

Evolution and vegetarianism

Chalk one up for the meat-eaters

Do you love the way your smallish jaws complement the outlines of your face? Are you are a vegetarian and yet love those yummy chocolates and yoghurt/ice-cream smoothies? You better thank your meat-eating neighbor and the boat-load of ancestors that have preceded us on this planet earth.

National Geographic News reports that new research - published by scientists
at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Washington, D.C - suggests that eating meat and high fat foods contributed to the evolution of the petit-body small jawed creatures that we are, today. And, the increased cholesterol/fat content of the foods consumed, caused changes in the body that led to better assimilation/processing of these foods.Brought on by survival instincts, meat-eating triggered the evolutionary changes that helped us survive relatively high fat diets, something that would've easily taken out the great apes.

Intelligent folks, our ancestors, what with their evolving tool and fire use - a cooked potato apparently causes about 80% less stress on our teeth.

Apparently though, someone forgot to tell the teeth to shape up and size down, proportionately with respect to our jaws. Our troubles. Dentists fortune.

Hubble's Eye on the Sky

Courtesy space.com comes this sampling of the Hubble telescope's best images.

WTGW?

Courtesy an old forwarded email that I'd failed to delete...
Whats with the good word? In this case wordS?

"I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting evertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications' incomprehensibleness"

Don't ask me for the meaning of the sentence...my head is still spinning from the sheer genius of its structure..

Update: And that would be that the Nth word is N letters long

Astronomically Speaking

Courtesy the Astronomy Picture of the Day archives, tonight we raise our vision skyward...and get to enjoy AllTheSky.com's Till Credner (credner at AlltheSky.com) amazing capture of the constellation Ursa Major's Big Dipper.

(For the uninitiated, the Big Dipper is not a constellation per se, it is just a part of the constellation "Great Bear". Such a highly visible portion of a constellation is termed as an asterism)

Click on image to view fuller size picture.

Pigskin Withdrawal Syndrome? Suggested Remedy

Has the end of the NFL/NCAA football season gotten to you? Are you suffering from acute pigskin deficit syndrome? Are you disappointed by the cancellation of the NHL season?

Maybe this will do it for you...Check out "Pigskin pilgrimages". A "Budget Travel" recommendation, this will be a potentially good road-trip, especially once the spring thaw sets in....

Consider the triad of Green Bay(WI), Chicago(IL) and Canton(OH)...driveable from one to the other, and the spring thaw would potentially lend to some pretty darn good scenery too. Personally, having seen the Lambeau Field and Soldier Field up close and personal on the same trip, I can vouch that it is something interesting, an excellent beyond-the-facade look into the stadia...even if you are a casual NFL fan. And for good measure, throw in a visit to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, MO or to Pittsburgh to visit whatever it is they have out there to remember Three Rivers stadium by.

For my money, these are the stadiums/sites that I am interested in visiting/have visited
- Lambeau Field, Green Bay, WI *
- Soldier Field, Chicago, IL *
- Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA
- Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA *
- Sun Devil Stadium, Tempe, AZ *
- Yankee Stadium, New York, NY
- Fenway Park, Boston, MA
- Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL
- Pro Football Hall of Fame, Canton, OH
- Notre Dame Stadium, South Bend, IN
- The Big House (Michigan Stadium) Ann Arbor, MI
- The Shoe (Ohio Stadium) Columbus, OH
- Autzen Stadium (The Duck Pond), Eugene, OR
- Neyland Stadium, Knoxville, TN

If all this seems tad too much to do, you can always count the striations on your fingers till about mid August of this year, when the Black Coaches Association classic will kick-start the new NCAA football season....either way...easy peasy jappaneasy

Winged Migration

One of the perks of living/growing up in an area blessed with tropical climes? You get to see the flocking of the so-called snow birds of course..and no, I am not talking of people that flee colder climes. I am talking of the "real" birds...our feathered friends.

Vedanthangal..about 80-odd kilometers SSW of Chennai...a tank that serves as the set-up, a grove of Barringtonia Acacia, dry evergreen shrub and thorn forests providing nestling grounds. Simple, and yet wonderful. (Now if only I know how to identify the birds from pictures....)

Anyway...courtesy M.Subbu (Austin, TX), here is a peek at the splendor of Vedanthangal..

Simple and yet wonderful..the splendour of Vendanthangal bird sanctuary, in Tamil Nadu, India

Ho-hum...like we cared

The tiniest of the Big 4 sports - Ice Hockey..as played in the NHL...is locked out for the current season...if you really cared!

Blending community and caffeine

As if Starbucks needed any more publicity...

And yet, here is another..see for yourself...

Live Richly

"Overtime pays more............because of what you are missing."
There is more to life than money. Citi. Live Richly.

These are the lines of a well-meaning thought-provoking advertisement from Citibank..

What a masterful irony, considering Citi is part of the banks that drives people toward bankruptcy through the menace of creditcards.

Wag the Dog

Opening credits for the movie of the same name..

"Why does a dog wag his tail?
Because the dog is smarter than its tail. "

"If the tail were smarter, the tail would WAG THE DOG.."

A nice satire on selling almost anything to a gullible public...sorta kinda ironic...with contemporary resonance...and yet, an unmistakable scent of a conspiracy theory

Recommended viewing, especially for Dustin Hoffman's acting.

Hyphenated Nation/Notion

Are we (India and Pakistan) forever going to be treated as conjoined twins? Will we ever get a break and be treated for who we are? Strobe Talbott on India-US ties

Who Owns What

From CJR - Columbia University's Columbia Journalism Review

A Guide to the corporate maze thats cluttering the media (news/print/telly/radio).

Just take a peek at what Rupert Murdoch owns in the continental US alone...

The Sound of Melody

Nadhaswaram..

ubiquitous in south Indian festivals/marriages/temple events...symbolically important in such events because of its status as the loudest non-brass acoustic instrument, symbolism in that it drowns out evil curses and bad sounds with its splendorously loud tone.

Nadha Swaram..sanskrit words...nadha or nadham for sound, swaram or swara for the melody or the notes that produce the melody (think Sa Ri Ga Ma or Do Re Mi Fa)...
Back home, no Diwali would be complete without the quartet/quintet of musician toting the nadhaswaram and accompanying instruments came by the house, played a soulful rendition of a classical tune, and picked up a tip or two to go with the home-made diwali-special snacks.

Consists of two-reeds attached at the mouth of a long wooden tube...strategically placed holes along the body provides the "vidwan" the play on wind they desire to obtain the required note/sound of melody


A behind-the-scenes look at the seevali - "...the piece that gives the instrument its character"(The Hindu)
Illustrates the pain-staking and exacting approach....lots of hard work and seasoned judgement..

We are the final frontier?

Via The Doc

Interesting feature in the "Life" section of Guardian..a recommended read..

Stand-out quote by V.S.Ramachandran, of the Center for Brain and Cognition, Universit of California at San Diego -
- Addressing the revolutionary precepts of Copernicus (Helio-centric model of the solar system), Darwin (evolutionary theory) and Watson-Crick (DNA helix), he says...

"..the big question is, why these revolutions don't make us profoundly sad. We're reduced to bags of chemicals with no free will, living on a normal planet, but people still find that exciting, because with greater understanding, we see ourselves as part of some grander scheme. We're part of something larger than ourselves and once we identify with that, it is not degrading, it's ennobling."

The Art of Selling

Increased complexity, increased premium on the individuals time (and attention), increased noise on the telly...and yet...there are those that have seemingly mastered the art of selling...

Haagen-Dazs' Anthem-themed commercials, termed as the no-scream ad-spot by USA Today

Got the creative team from Goodby & Silverstein into a top ads of 2004 list (duh! isnt that obvious).

More creative gems from the agency:(Click on image to view a QuickTime movie of the ad..)

	Saturn: People, not sheet metal
	Porsche+HP: Even wind..
	Birdlife Finland+HP: Preserving nature

Desert Rain

Its February rains..and lush greenery..in the middle of the desert!

Opening Day 2005

Randy Johnson & Curt Schilling. Conjoined twins? Tremendous competitors and teammates?

Team-mates for three-and-half seasons..co-MVPs of a story-book-like 2001 Major League Baseball World Series..partners in crime in what happens to be one of the three or four most exciting world series ever.

And now, about to feature in a made-for-telly soap opera thats the RedSox-Yankee rivalry..the ferocious intimidation of Johnson and the "Red Sock" don't-give-up-ever attitude of Schilling

Also: Hall Of Fame comes calling..for Schilling's bloody sock

Zing..ouch...static shocks

Today's episode of "Full House" featured the Tanners living through what they called a weird day...and boy..how did they know mine would be weird too?

In my recent memory (and that has not been the greatest asset of mine recently), today had to be the worst/weirdest as far as static shocks go....(zing...ouch..)

Even accounting for exaggeration for effect, I got zinged on the average of about once every 20 minutes or so...you could say sparks flew anytime I entered the lounge area of my office floor today...alas..it just wasn't cuz of a femme-fatale...

Experts tell me it is because of my dry skin and the rubber-soles of my shoes..but its not like my skin just dried up like raisins this morning or that the rubber-soles of my shoes just opened up this morning...no...it was more of a conspiracy...

Yes..conspiracy..thats what it was....:D (See..the shocks so got to me, I became delusional [self-satisfied smug smile on my face])

My Physics book says that contact between two objects causes electrons from one to get rubbed off into the other...for e.g..rubber-soled shoes scuffling on a rug causes the shoes, and hence the shoe-wearer to be electro-negative (excess of electrons) and hence, any contact with metal or similar components generates the spark (zing..ouch) that we call static electricity...not helping the matters is the fact that I am dry-skinned, and it is the middle of the danged winter/dry season..

But here is the scientifically weird thing...supposedly, incidence of static electricity increases with the decrease in humidity..and it was raining today, for crying-out-loud...and yet...i got zinged at a record pace (yeah..like I said earlier..conspiracy..thats what this is)

Maybe, just maybe..me having mentioned this now, I have jinxed static shocks to hell and they will stop bothering me..in the mean time...just be careful when I enter a room..I just might provide the spark that set off the entire thing alight :D

Credit Cards part 2

In a sequel to the whats and whys of credit cards...

From MSN Money:
Why credit cards expire

Lenghty article warning...

The DVD Upgrade...

.....am off the Hollywood Video's bandwagon.....who the freak wants to deal with a bigger store and a little store threatening a big store with a takeover? (Blockbuster wants to buy Hollywood Video, so does Movie Gallery)

....its onto another bandwagon...Netflix...

now showing nightly at my apartment....

tonight Feb 8 its the 86-carat diamond...the chase and more chase for the same....its the damn Pikeys and bare-knuckle fights of "Snatch".

Coming up on the DVD-spinner...."Bowling for Columbine" and "Wag the Dog"...boy..it sure is satire time in these parts...

The Side Show

Thankfully the hypeshow that was the NFL Superbowl is now over...peace..till August..

USA Today's Admeter Business Week's note Fox's take and ESPN (via AP)

My 'me-too' takes:

....Superbowl ads....the good the bad and the ugly

The Good...
Anheuser-Busch 'Thankyou', Ameriquest "Cat", MasterCard, Tabasco sizzling hot sauce, Anheuser-Busch 'While you were away', FedEx-Kinko's 10 things in commercial, Bud Light sky-diving

The Bad...
Ford's not-so-macho "macho" trucks, Emerald Nuts, Heineken Pitt, MBNA/Rugby Gladys Knight spot

The Ugly...
Subway's 'hot' oven-toasted subs, McDonalds Lincoln Fry, some crappy couter-tops spot, equally awful Visa Check Card spot, not so 'go-daddy' hearings.

Boo hoo...the Iggles

...in case you even care, and you just came out of a deep freeze...

...the Philadelphia Eagles lost in the Superbowl....



deserving or not....these New England Patriots have been labeled a dynasty...

salutes to their consistency, kudos to their hard-nosed professionalism and envy at their luck....and congratulations on their achievement...but please save the dynasty talk...they are about as underwhelming as a champion can be..

The Alphabet Soup

26 alphabets to the English language? Or 26 letters to the alphabet of the English language?

the alphabet: a collection of letters or characters and symbols that make up the written form of a language....In the words of my 7th grade English teacher...there are 26 letters to the English alphabet,and not 26 alphabets.

addendum: Notice that the letter C, is as redundant as a letter can be...most of its use comes with the sounds that are similar to either S or K....

with the notable exception being....

"not to kastigate the letter but speaking in kut and dried terms, if we want to eat sereal and kut up our bread with cheese, it has to be our choise, right?"

Responsibility or the lack thereof

The noise started with the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" during the Superbowl 38 halftime show. It continued through the premiere of "S ex and the city" on basic cable. It went on through the premiere of Desparate Housewives on network television.

In the guise of defending "family values", right-wing groups have gone up in arms over the supposed degradation of television and about how unsafe it was for families and kids. Oh la la..what a discovery..what a concept..noble in precept, no doubt.

But here is where I have the biggest issue with the whole issue - whatever happened to the responsibility of the families themselves? Whatever happened to families taking responsibility for the way their kids grow up?

MTV is being criticized for peddling smut on television..the Parents Television Council got into this act this time, claiming that their shows contained n number of sensual acts per hour and (n*n) utterances of foul words per hour...wow..I never knew that...now I sure must check out MTV...

What these rightwing groups are doing is telling you how to live your lives...God or no God, these groups don't want us to be independently thinking folk...hey, if we can think, then we can question, and if we can question, then they hold no control over us, and if they can't control us, we cannot be the zombies who would buy into their "my way or the highway" theory.

And what is pitiful is that parents buy into this, and that causes the biggest issue of all - shirking responsibility. Parents, instead of being in control of their kids' viewing habits, and taking responsibility for it, turn around and accuse the television channels for the content...I would think that you do not need a self-proclaimed champion of family values to tell you what is right or wrong for your kids.

Maybe they still have not heard of the cute little things called parental controls...or an even better thing...don't have cable...but no, they need to have cable, cuz most parents, especially dads need to watch the cable sports and news channels.

It is wonderful to try and have it both ways, but for once, it would be great if parents took the challenge/responsibility for their kids in their own hands, and stop shopping around for reasons and excuses....

On a fair note, I do realize I am ranting especially against these religious rightwing groups who claim to work for the families, and go on incessantly about television shows...hey, pipe down loudmouths...if you want to improve family values, promote the parental controls, promote the concept of families..promote the move away from rampant materialism that has seized the people.

Do not mistake my rant...I do not appreciate the deterioration in quality of television programming as well, but what I do not like, I do not watch and if I had kids, I would not let them watch as well. I do not need some third-party organization to tell me that.

But hey, maybe I do not get it. Maybe I am shouting at the rain..what do I know...I just rant.

Bitterroot National Forest

Hoax or true? You find out


Awesome and poignant at the same time..a 2000 summer forest fire at the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana, United States. Picture owner: John McColgan, a fire-behaviour analyst.



in sharp contrast...pink flamingoes at Sea World San Diego..protected environment..photo courtesy yours truly..

Citius...Altius...Fortius...

The race for the host city for the 2012 Summer Olympics is heating up.The committee in charge of designating the host city for the games of the XXX (30th) Olympiad is heading to Madrid even as I am writing this...

To recap..five cities are still left in the bidding for 2012 - Madrid, London, New York, Paris and Moscow - this is the order in which the committee is visiting the five cities.

Interesting subplot in this is the race between London and Paris to have the distinction of being the first city worldwide to host the Games a third time. Paris hosted it in 1900 and 1924, with London doing the honors in 1908 and 1948.

Just considering the sheer fact that Paris is semi-ready to host the games, I would think it has to be considered the favorite to host the games...we will know for sure in July 05, assuming that the IOC members are not bribed quite like with the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics scandal..

Taste the Flavor

What exactly goes on in your mouth and the brain when you are eating food and are able to savor it? Is it just your tongue in play? Or, as is typical with most things we note, more than one sensory organ comes into play?

Turns out, it is both.

Rewinding a bit to the sensory organs of the tongue and nose...
the tongue can distinguish from the four tastes - sweet, sour, salty and bitter.
the nose distinguishes from among about 10,000 different scents/smells. This we all know...

But when we savor food, what really is happening is the tongue gets the taste of the food...sweet or salty or whatever, and the nose gets a feel for the aroma, the smell of the food.

The combination...the flavor of the food. Excellent smells enhance the flavor of food, and that possibly explains the evolution of the various condiments and spices in the different ethnic foods around the world.

So, doesn't that mean that a severe cold that causes the nasal blockage with phlegm will prevent us from enjoying the sights and smells around us? If you said no, then maybe you are some paranormal creature who can smell the smells through some other extraneous means :D