Eating Out vs Eating In

Eating out is the new eating in, or so claims this feature on MSN Money, and lists two peoples opinions to substantiate the purported fact that eating out actually comes out pretty even on dollar terms to eating in (also known as cooking at home).

That is as fallacious as can get in terms of substantiating an argument - take two premises, make comparisons on essentially uneven terms, without establishing common ground, come to conclusions on those uneven terms, and then proclaim one argument as the winner over the other...and the media companies wonder why people are skeptical of their reporting?

Take the first example of a person who would get off with spending $17 plus tips on dining out on hand-stuffed ravioli slathered with puttanesca sauce as opposed to about $30 for cooking at home (you know, driving to the farmers market, buying organic veggies, spending an hour cooking etc). Another dude goes as far as counting his hourly rate to the cooking time and opines that taking out his family to eat would essentially come out to the same...

Crunching numbers, this is supposed to prove that eating out is cheaper. Count me as one of the skeptics to this theory, and also to the veracity of this feature. For one, both the examples are set on uneven terms. Hey, the second dude factors his wages for cooking at home, but not for his waiting at a restaurant for his food to arrive etc...and the first dude prefers organic veggies for home cooking, but would rather eat cholesterol-laden ravioli made from non-organic stuff at a restaurant...comparison indeed.

Heck, the simplest logic demands that eating out be more expensive than dining at home. Just the simple fact that eating out is a convenience, and any convenience costs money. That's why a cup of coffee that otherwise costs about $0.10 sells for at least $0.99 at your local gas-station. Do the math...and enjoy dining out, because that is indeed an occasion to indulge the senses...

"Looking For Comedy In the Muslim World"

Diversity. In language. Mannerism. In speech. In contexts. Its everywhere. So it should be no surprise that people have a hard time understanding each others' idiosyncracies. Be it at the individual or family or ethno-religious or national context. A lot of times, we seem to be at logger heads. Being the curious people that we are, we want to try and understand the other.

And when we fall flat and fail to understand, it is because of one and only one reason - the effort was not honestly unbiased.

Looking For Comedy..the film, is the story of one such attempt by the American Administration to understand what causes the Muslims to laugh. Tragically, they use the means of a Hollywood comic, Albert Brooks to achieve their results, and well, the result is a comedy of errors, culture shock, and misunderstandings bordering on the comic. What is perceived as a job well done by the Brooks' character is actually a botched job that may have resulted in precipitating the already tenous relationship between India and Pakistan. (Talk about difference in perceptions).

What this movie so adeptly underscores is that, despite best efforts to actually try and genuinely understand something, when we go into an initiative inadequately prepared, the result is inevitable catastrophe. Especially when the funny guy sent in by the government has had no prior exposure to the cultural subcontexts of the places that he is supposedly scouting.

Two poignant scenes that underscore the theme of the movie happen within minutes of each other...first, the State Department cohort sent with the comic asks the comic's secretary to tell him to "break a leg". Her response..."Oh please. Thats rude." The second is when, the comic has tried in vain to get the audience to respond to some of his stand-up jokes, he asks in jest as to how many in the audience knows and understands English. And much to his chagrin, the entire audience lifts their hands up.

Two vastly different experiences - one at an individual level and another at a group level that has the same symptoms of the vastly under-rated problem - the problem of understanding and appreciating multi-culturalism. When an effort is made to understand a different culture through the same lens as we view ours, the result is a grotesque misrepresentation of the glorious concept of cultural diversity.

Looking for Comedy is a fantastic indie that atleast has the guts to hint at our seeming inability to understand diversity on its own merits.

On Education

Came across a rather interesting portrayal of education by the famed English economist John Maynard Keynes on the web earlier today...and sat down to think as to how truly it resonates atleast in my personal experience with the education systems in India and the USA.

"Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent."

Brevity befitting an Englishman. Easily confounding just as easily comprehensible. Must be why the best education people generally receive is in the school of life.

Baseball Bliss

Now, it must be said that thanks in part to a series of collapses over the past several years (2001 to the Arizona Diamondbacks, 2002 to the Anaheim Angels, 2003 to the Florida Marlins, 2004 to the Boston Red Sox and 2006 to the Detroit Tigers), bashing the New York Yankees for their collapse is becoming almost too sad. Almost. Because it is never enough to poke fun at those Bronx bomber fans with their sense of entitlement, bordering on the obnoxious.

So, to all those Yankee-haters amongst us, ESPN.com has this veritable top-ten list of Yankee collapses. And you may note that of the ten, five happened in the last six years. Must be that baseball players now no longer believe the "mystique" and "aura" of Yankee Stadium. Must be Curt Schilling's famous quote in 2001 ("Aura and Mystique sound like night-club dancers") is coming true. Afterall, night-club dancers do have their shelf-life and then they are just consigned to dust-bins. Thanks to the fawning New York-based media, we've been treated to stories of Yankee mystique and aura etc, and of how Yankee Stadium is the toughest place to play in etc. Now, thanks the same media, we can gloat over the failure of these paper-champs. Until their next such collapse.

Washington Post: Gender? It's A Gray Area.

Here we go again. Another attempt at reasoning out why women are, well, women, and men are, shall we say, men.

See the single-page, printer-friendly view of the article and you can as well decide if you are going to agree or disagree.

Louann Brizendine, a Bay-area shrink, writes in her book "The Female Brain" that men and women have different systems for the brain. And her choices are rather telling. Women have Mac. And men? PC. (Sniffle. No wonder my girl thinks I am on the verge of a memory-overloading crash all the time. Atleast, now I know and have my excuse. It's my circuits. )

Some of the stuff that's apparently discussed in the book (hey, it's on my library check-out list, so can't say for sure without actually seeing it) does actually seem like tired-old rehashing of stereotypes, and the Wash Post article does make it appear like it's just a tired-old rehash with out basis in truth. But none-the-less, they make for one hilarious read. To wit...(quoted verbatim from the Wash Post along with added commentary of my own in green)

- Men think about sex every 52 seconds while women think about it about once a day. Man, I gotto wonder how they decided to estimate or measure that one.
- Women speak faster on the average - 250 words a minute to 125 for a typical male (now, I know a few women that are quite good at speed talking, but then, if you tune in to the typical radio network, you hear men that are quite adept at speed talking as well. Makes you wonder about the legitimacy of this specific comparison...but then I digress) and also adds that women use 20000 words a day while men use about 7000. This does make me realize what some men complain about when they say their wives talk too much. Its not that they talk for longer time as much as they cram too much in the time they speak...
- A woman knows what people are feeling while a man can't spot emotion unless someone cries or threatens bodily harm. Oh boy. I surely can't complain or contradict this one. Because I for one surely refuse to "interpret" what other people are thinking, without any external sign of it. But then, what do I know? I am a man.

But at the very least, it does add fuel to the gender stereotypes prevalent in our societies, and maybe, at its remotely best possibility, has stumbled onto something that is really significant. I doubt this latter possibility, but I am just willing to keep an open mind until proven otherwise. Definitely worth a peep from your local lending library, if only to laugh at the hilarity of "reasoned deductions" that are likely nothing more than convenient twisting of facts.

Walking.....Shark??

See related post here.

Ok. So we've seen an octopus that puts up an act. In any of (known till now) three disguises - a lion fish, a flat fish, and a sea-snake the octopus surely puts on a show - evasion? Safety from predators? (Thanks to Tom Tregenza at University of Exeter in Cornwall) Maybe...whatever...ultimately, its just a treat to see an animal mimicking behaviour.

Now we are getting to see another fantastic example of unusual behaviour in another sea-living animal. This time, the walking shark. It apparently walks. See image above (Copyright Conservation International, via AP). Nick-named the epaulette shark, its been observed in the area called Birds Head Seascape off the Indonesian Papua provincial coast in Asia - the so-called Asian Coral Triangle.

Whatever will they find next?

Quote Unquote

This gem is from Jim Hacker, the Right Honorable MP, from the laugh-a-thon "Yes Minister".

You know what the average Common Market official is like ? They've got the flexibility of the Germans, the organising ability of the Italians and the modesty of the French. And that's topped up by the humour of the Belgians, the generosity of the Dutch and the intelligence of the Irish.

Humorous, scathing, and skilfully enough, makes it seem like a compliment!

Would someone tell the Democrats to hire the script writers of this fantabulous BBC politi-comedy? The Republicans are catching them with pants-down at every opportunity with their brilliant fluency in obfuscating facts and concepts in terrifying cavalcade of words, morality and self-righteous out-rage. So fluent in fact that its not even funny any more.

Maybe its time for the donkeys to man-up, and atleast pretend to show that they've got a spine.

LiveScience.com - Nature's Wrath: The Most Dangerous U.S. Cities

LiveScience.com - Nature's Wrath: The Most Dangerous U.S. Cities

"Sir, would you please say something"

I've heard it said in the US that focus on careers for kids about to head to college are driven by the prevailing theme of the prime-time dramas on TV - how the current slew of crime-dramas are driving people to consider careers as detectives, crime sleuths, and all such related careers that are the part of programs like NUMB3RS, Law & Order, Miami Vice, CSI and its spinoffs.

Apparently, in just fourteen years since the cable revolution in India, the country's thriving and not-so-thriving networks and their inane focus on "news" has spawned such a mini revolution in career focus for the country's young'uns. From traditional careers like doctors and engineers to the not-so-occasional lawyers, to the omni-present "software developers", the focus has now shifted to "TV News". Or atleast, wannabe TV journalists.

The BBC's South Asia bureau chief Paul Danahar writes an interesting critique of the new phenomenon, that threatens to over-run the TV news sector with substandard and often pathetic reporters who often show up because these are jobs with "No Experience Required". No wonder there are journalistic pieces like "Sir, would you please say something?", and "Who are you?" get thrown at no-less than a person like the Home Minister of India. Paul notes the interesting phenomenon of dumbing down of TV news, that is directly, and indirectly a result of the strangling bureaucratic mess thrown up the Indian government, under the pretext of security requirements. While Paul does suck up to NDTV, calling them thoughtful and serious journalists (apparently he didn't note/care for their coverage of the Vadodara incidents earlier this summer), one cannot fault with any other segment of his thoughtful piece, including his indulgent dig at the "old or ugly" journalists that the BBC hires :)

Now what can we learn from animals?

Two specimen examples of things that we can indeed learn from animals... Frog giving a rat a piggy-back ride to help survive the monsoons in Lucknow, India. And a dog helping feed tiger cubs in Hefei, China.

If its a spade...call it a spade

http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jun/15franc.htm

Someone with guts to say what the mainstream hype-driven media refuses to report.

An Inconvenient Truth

Here we go again...another attempt at trying to educate the masses on the effects of climate change, and how we are bringing purported disaster on ourselves.

You want to have an opinion of this movie? Watch it yourself, and THEN evaluate the FACTS for what they are, PRIOR to jumping to a conclusion on whether or not this is a propaganda movie, irrespective of your political dispensation.

Are You Being Served?

Ground floor: perfumery,

stationery and leather goods,

wigs and haberdashery

kitchenware and food. Going up!

First floor: telephones,

gents ready-made suits,

shirts, socks, ties, hats,

underwear and shoes. Going up!

Second floor: carpets,

travel goods and bedding,

material, soft furnishings,

restaurant and teas. Going down!

"Are You Free?"
"I am free"

Are You Being Served? (or AYBS? for short) runs on weekday afternoons on BBC America, but for those of us at work, public libraries should have the entire DVD set available for loan. Crass and cheap at times, with plenty of double-entendres to go around, and totally politically incorrect at all times, yet this show manages to pull the laughter hidden deep inside our bowels.

How does it manage to do that? With plenty of good acting, fantastic dialogue, and excellent comic timing with superb facial expressions to go-along as displayed by the actors involved. The actors share a chemistry that shines through. Mostly though, despite its reliance on cheaper tactics to elicit laughter, the basic script is outstanding in its comedy potential.

Recommended comedy watch, considering that despite its sometimes crude portrayals, its got my parents laughing their tummies out...

Sweating It Out!!!

Old Spice tells us in a breathless press-release this past week that Phoenix has held on to its title of the sweatiest city in America. Surprise, surprise...considering that Phoenix IS the hottest city in the nation...Surprise, surprise #2...Phoenix was named the sweatiest city only three times in the five years that this survey has run...

But having visited my native Chennai this past May, and being faced with gallons of sweat running right down my face and down my shirts, I CAN attest to Phoenix atleast being a lot more comfortable because of the drier conditions. Dangerous yes...but nothing that lugging a gallon of water with you can't fix.

Boy, can't wait for sizzling July...especially with parents in town :) Its going to be fun for them.

Found in Translation

If you are like me, and can never remember the multi-lingual names of your favorite Indian food stuffs in your favorite and mother-tongues...

You need this resource.

Bon Apetite

Economic Spiral

Interesting perspective on the flattened globalized world. Are we headed...
Toward perpetual prosperity or totally out of control?

NASA - NASA's Cassini Discovers Potential Liquid Water on Enceladus

NASA ::: Cassini ::: Saturn ::: Enceladus ::: Water!!!

"We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists: Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton. Cassini changed all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and one of the most exciting places in the solar system," said Dr. John Spencer, Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo. (from above link to NASA)

Maybe, if funding for such projects are kept up, we'll have scratched the surface a little more by the end of the next century?

In the midst of this, two other ideas/questions pop-up - one of a diametrically opposite view, and another a sort of a paradox.

The diametrically opposite view - have we exhausted all possible venues of development and improvement of life on this planet that we currently call home that we are looking to explore the possibility of life on other bodies in the Solar System?

The paradox - plagiarized from the promo for the excellent BBC/Discovery co-production "Blue Planet" - we know more about outer space and the moon than we do about our own oceans and water-bodies.

SDLC

Two hilarious version of the software development life cycle (SDLC) - the first one looking at software development as it has evolved through the years, and the next looking at the state of the affairs now. I suppose you should now start to club techies writing software along with the Poles, the Irish, the Canadians, and the Sikhs as peoples capable in their infinite wisdom of poking fun and making witticisms at themselves...I mean, with the state of software today, humor is easily their best friend!!!
(Image courtesy Lost Garden Dot Com)

(via anonymous email forward)

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | How babies do maths at 7 months

How babies do maths at 7 months?

Apparently, babies are not afraid of Math like we adults are, what with our predisposition to dislike even basic arithmetic and a disposition to use electronic calculators to do these rudimentary tasks.

Still it is amazing that babies can grasp an elementary sense of numbers even before gaining the ability to vocalize or verbalize or get ambulatory. To quote...

By the age of seven months infants have an abstract sense of numbers and are able to match the number of voices they hear with the number of faces they see.

No wonder they seem to realize/know when one or both of their parents leave the room and they begin to wail...I wonder if this is further proof of babies being relatively more intelligent than all grown-ups!

Perpetual Error Correction

A swinging pendulum is going about its lively, frolicking and music-filled way from this way left to that way right, on and on and on for perpetuity. If it were to have intelligence, would it wonder at its fate? Would it think of itself as a device thats not just swinging to-and-fro in a merry never-ending dance, but rather as a contraption that is ensnared in its own fight against the spirits of nature - its own version of perpetual error correction?

Many times, when I notice people falling into traps and troubles of their own making, again and again, with no flicker of recognition of the recurring issues in their memories, no sign of hope of resolution in their desultory faces, and I am put at deep wonder - are we just the human version of pendulums, stuck in perpetual error correction mode?

The coconut temple courier

BBC NEWS | South Asia | The coconut temple courier service

15,000 coconuts on regular days, 100,000 on festival days. Batons in an infinite relay race - until the coconuts reach the Maa Tarini Temple in Ghatgaon of Orissa state in eastern India.

Religiousity to an extreme? Probably. But, what matters the most is that people are happy doing it. And there are ancillary industries - candy and coconut oil that have sprung up around the area. More power to the people.

Its NOT the game, stupid

Disclaimer: Like ESPN takes pain to point out, the poll is unscientific, and hence unreliable to draw "scientific" conclusions. I am not a court of law, and I don't split hairs in establishing what is the truth and what is right. So this poll is a good enough trend indicator for me!

The Best Part of Super Bowl sunday? To over half the people in this country, its the sideshows that accompany the game itself, and not the game. I am sure everyone must have heard of the story of not killing the goose that laid the golden egg, but then I cannot be so sure.

But one interesting trend showed up - about one in four loved their Superbowl parties and if people want to use this Sunday as a pretext to get-together with friends and family, so be it. Another interesting trend that showed up in the poll was the fact that other than in the states of Washington (home of one of the teams playing the game) (and in the Pacific NW states of Oregon and Idaho) and Pennsylvania (home of the other team), and regional states of West Virginia, Delaware and Maryland, no where else, as of the time of this post, did the game register atleast a 50%. By a simple majority, the hype and hoopla around the game is whats preferred by the people over the game itself. Chalk up a big win for the NFL Hype/Marketing Machine. Vince Lombardi must be fuming in his grave.

The Federer Express

So, I am a Federer fan. The Fed has made watching tennis meaningful again. And his stunning display of emotion after winning the 2006 Australian Open only makes him that much more of an endearing champion.

Especially when you have a stark contrast available in Justine Henin-Herdenne. Maybe she really desparately wanted to live up to the characterization of people of her country as portrayed in the comedy Yes Minister. To paraphrase, "...Common Market official ...has the organizing capacity of the Italians, the flexibility of the Germans and the modesty of the French... the imagination of the Belgians, the generosity of the Dutch and the intelligence of the Irish". I can't imagine how she could have even thought of justifying her pull out, and I am sure she did not even imagine how her lack of grace toward the eventual winner will play out. The telling moment was when a concerned Amelie Mauresmo (lets not forget, she was once dissed as being half-a-man) had the class and grace to go and talk to JHH and inquire after her health.

Someone somewhere (probably was Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated) had written that Federer looked uncharacteristically mortal at the Aussie Open, and yet found a way to win. In a way, this elevates the Fed.

Maybe even like how the boring Pistol Pete Sampras suddenly became a crowd favorite after he uncharacteristically broke down in tears during the 1995 Aussie Open quarters.

Apparently the similarties between these two great players are a lot more than meets the eye.

"You think you know who you are?"

...
"You've absolutely no idea" (from the thought-provoking movie Crash)

Have you thought lately on how prejudiced you are or can be? Especially when it concerns the matter of another race of people? Or even when it just concerns the matter of people that "look" differently than you do?

We've made our own lives so complex, so profoundly shallow, so irresponsibly ego-centric, we may have just forgotten what it means to be a person. We can argue about morals, morality, right, righteousness, God, etc till the cows come home. But until that time comes, when fraught with danger and faced with hurdles we stop resorting to racial slurs and epithets against any one or more perceived communities, we maybe all are doing a Jim Crow, albeit to every discriminated race.

And economic progress and how long a country has been free has apparently nothing to do with it either. India has been and still continues to be victim of its own prejudices; Australia, France, Britain, Germany and the US also boast an ignominous record. Yes, statistically the developed nations maybe have a leg up on the rest of the world, but the fact still remains - almost everywhere is a prejudiced society. Many places, we've managed to hide it under a veneer of sophistication that passes off as tolerance and acceptance.

I am not sure where we can start to unlearn the prejudices that we've learnt, but I suppose, by accident or by design, we have begun moving along that path of accepting diversity, because we're atleast acknowledging that there are problems. And the new economic realities also seem to be spurring this acceptance along.

To quote documentary film-maker Bill Brummel's words - "Imagine we are all the same. Imagine we agree about politics, religion and morality. Imagine we like the same types of music, art, food and coffee. Imagine we all look alike. Sound boring? Differences need not divide us. Embrace diversity. Dignity is everyone's human right." (Starbucks' The Way I See It #61)

If you want to run with the big dogs...

...you got to stop pissing with the puppies.

The BBC's Delhi-based South Asia bureau editor Paul Danahar writes this excellent piece on the India - US diplomacy and the new row sparked this week by the US Ambassador to India, David Mulford's remarks to the Press Trust of India.

A fantastic analysis, even-handed in explaining the points as they played out on both sides of the row. Especially considering that both sides are neither right nor wrong. Each is just trying to play the cards to their advantage - the US in getting an all-important vote to get the UN to refer Iran to the Security Countil, India in not upsetting the apple-cart vis-a-vis its special relationship with both Iran and the US.

In George W. Bush's world of black and white, the choices in this issue are mut-ex i.e. mutually exclusive. And in a rarity for me, I completely agree. But unfortunately for Georgie (and me), world politics is never played out in black and white. Rather, the viewer needs binoculars capable of interpreting the billion shades of gray that are possible in this drama.

Cooler heads are bound to prevail in this spat, and after all the posturing on both sides (Condi Rice apparently joined in the chorus, warning that the US Congress might not approve the deal if India voted against the US position, and David Mulford had to do the classic back-pedal "the remarks were taken out of context/I was quoted out of context" charade after getting a dressing-down from the Indian government). But it has queered the pitch for the Indian government...thanks to a moment of tactless lapse by a professional tactician.

I mean, how thick do you have to be, to not get the simple fact - nations do not like being bullied around, especially those that have aspirations of their own.

It is too soon to make a comparison, but if this keeps up, I cannot help think of future India-US relations on the same scale as the current French-American relations - quibbling step-sisters who cannot stop arguing/fighting/spitting at each other, and yet cannot be divorced off each other.

Vive diplomatie...

The Inevitable Overload

Ok. So it is the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Superhawks that are going to play for the Lombardi Trophy this year. The Championship game of the National Football League. Or as affectionately referred to by us aliens, "American Football". Or as affectionately referred to by us natives, the "World Championship" game.

The game I can live with, even manage to watch, especially for the fantastic commercials that are a result of the millions poured in by companies who are presumably dazed/drugged into thinking that these spots were worth that much.

But please, oh please, spare me the hype. Spare me the bull that the NFL is the national pastime. Spare me the marketing blitz that would tell me that if I miss the Superbowl, I am missing a part of life. When it has reached the point that the hype and hoopla surrounding the game is bigger than the game, when the media circus surrounding the game has the audacity to criticize a host city for short-comings for a mere game, when the league has the audacity to hold league cities to a ransom, forcing the citizens to pony up a tax to pay for a stadium that will fund their pockets, count me out.

Am I enraged? Of course I am enraged. Especially when I am paying a tax to pay for the new stadium for the backbone-less franchise helmed by the leech named Bill Bidwill just so they can put spineless spiritless teams on the field and wallow in mediocrity, while those fat cows fatten themselves even more.

In a sense, the next two weeks will mean a lot more time for myself - what with all the time I will save from not having to watch ESPN drum the Super-hype-bown in to my head...

Thank God for small mercies...

Pongal O' Pongal

(image from the Pongal restaurant web-page at pongal dot org)

Pongal - literally translates to "boiling over" as in boiling over in thankfullness, joy, celebration, a joie-de-vivre if you will. It is a celebration of the harvest, and also of the elements of nature that helped sustain the harvest, and the farm animals that helped sow the fields. Simply, it is an elegant, charming celebration of nature and our part in it. January 14 of the Gregorian calendar marked this year's celebration of the harvest in Tamil Nadu in southern India.

The first day of the month of "Thai" (rhymes with why) marks the transit of the Sun from the sign of Saggitarius to the sign of Capricorn. In southern India, it coincides with the withdrawal of the monsoons, and the ripening and eventual harvest of the fields. Plus, this also marks the end of the (brief) chilly period that is heralded by the previous month of Margazhi. Ergo, it also means a favourable disposition from the Sun. What better way to celebrate all of the above, than to indulge in it?
Traditionally the festival spreads over three days.

The first day of the festival is actually the last day of the previous month (Margazhi). Bhogi (or bhogi pongal) is the day that heralds the ushering out of the old. Its the day the house is cleaned out, and items discarded into a bonfire. If the harvest has not yet been collected, this day also marks the finishing of reaping. Kolams (or Rangolis) adorn the fronts of homes, adding to the colourful nature of the festival.

Day 2 (also the first day of the new month of Thai) is the day of offering to the Sun and the elements. This is what makes the festival of Pongal a naturally charming festival - celebrating the Sun and Earth for their bounty in the crop, the elements for their cooperation in helping create and sustain the bounty they've just harvested. Naturally, this festival is an outdoor festival. Feasts are prepared in open wood-flame stoves in earthen pots with ingredients that are the traditional part of the harvest of the season - rice, lentils and sugarcane, along with spices like turmeric and ginger, and other crops. These earthen pots are colorfully adorned too, in keeping with the spirit of the season. (See image at top).

Finally, no traditional farmer was complete without his/her own cattle to drive the ploughs. And no farmer can celebrate their harvest without celebrating their farm animals (most notably the cattle that did and still do drive the ploughs of the farmers). This marks Day 3 or Maattu Pongal. The cattle get a well-deserved cleaning, and are decorated up and paraded around the village square. For the women in the households, this also marks what is referred to as Kaanum Pongal - food is offered as rolled balls to the birds and smaller animals of the farm - each of which in their own way contributed to the success of the harvest. This is a day of revelry, fun and frolic. And this also overflows in the following day, and in many places this is considered as the fourth day of Pongal, though in all actuality, the only thing about this day is the farmers get to spend it on their own with their families.

Bawarchi has a fantastic write-up on Pongal, (including excellent material on the antecedants of the various traditions). That article is also a source for part of the material authored above. Another good source is the "About" write up on the festival.

May the bounty of Pongal smile into the hearts, minds and homes of every man, woman and child. May the blessings of the Sun smile its way into and warm every home and hearth of this Earth.

Madras of the 1890's

The Library of Congress' World's Transportation Commission photography collection has come rather interesting snap-shots of the World as it was in the mid-1890's. The entire itinerary that the commission followed is available here.

Below are two snapshots of my native city - Chennai (formerly Madras) in South India.

Madras High Court 1890s


Madras Central 1890s

Africa in America

Experienced part of Africa' Safari and Serengeti...atleast a percent of it...here in the backwoods of Arizona...at Camp Verde. Out of Africa Park. The Serengeti simulation is nice...I wonder if the fencing could be more discreet, but thats nitpicking, especially when an actual trip to Tanzania/Kenya is not on the anvil... Still can't forget the Ostrich picking on my camera and the Giraffe slobbering all over my hand and face! Or better yet..getting charged by a white tiger...albeit from behind a fence.

Dissing Intellectuals

In these times of unprecedented assault on intellectuals (dissing them as liberals, for instance), it is always fun to give the right-wing off-their-rocker types more ammo to diss us with...

One, from a comic, who said whats on his mind and got dissed by his own people...Bill Cosby...in his sensational DVD Bill Cosby: Himself

"Intellectuals go to class to study what others do naturally."

Another from a sixteenth-century French essayist Michel de Montaigne via the Quotations Page

"I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly."

New Zealand

Travel Channel had a fantastic feature on New Zealand in late December 2005. And if the JRR Tolkien-written Peter Jackson-anchored "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy wasn't enough of an advert for the country, this one hour documentary, with no less than the Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark serving as the tour guide, I guess you could call it the final push over the top...


I have fallen in love with the country.

And how could you not, when the Prime Minister of the country is as down to earth and normal as can be. She hikes, climbs mountains (she reportedly climbed the Mt. Kilimanjaro recently), abseiling down 350 feet into an underground cave.

And the NZ has been a nuclear-free zone since 1984. And they seem to be more in the forefront of environmental protection, while still pursuing free trade.

I am sure there is something in it for our blustering conservative politicians, but I have been beaten dumb by our venerated Fox News and CNN...but let that not distract from the beauty of "Middle Earth"...New Zealand. (Images courtesy the Internet, source links provided as hyperlinks on images)