Swiss.....Cheese.....Holes

You walk to your local Subway restaurant....you pick out a foot-long veggie max on Honey Oat Bread, and you are asked...would you like some cheese on it? You say yes...Swiss please...and out comes sliced swiss cheese with the trademark holes....

So what do you think caused the holes? Did someone sit there and poke holes into the blocks of cheese prior to shipping? You wish! Well actually it turns out, someone did sit and poke holes in it..well, not exactly holes, but air bubbles which became the source of the holes in swiss cheese.

Yes, the very same bacteria that contribute to the fermentation of milk to cheese, are the culprits behind these holes. Turns out, three types of bacteria are added to the fermentation process. Lactic acid, an interim by-product of the fermentation process, is consumed by one of the bacteria - a certain Propionibacter Shermani, or P. Shermani for short (awfully close to P.Sherman of the P.Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way Sydney (Finding Nemo) fame aint it?). Result of the consumption of lactic acid? Carbon di-oxide, which gets trapped inside the fermenting milk and ends up as air bubbles that contribute to the holes.

To put it crudely, the eyes (as the Swiss call it) are a result of certain bacteria passing gas!

Bon apetit....

MSNBC - Stress? Work overload? Think India

MSNBC - Stress? Work overload? Think India

The Reality of Reality TV

I admit it. I am an avid television watcher. But, for whatever the reason, I have never caught onto the reality buzz. And boy, am I happy about it? You betcha I am.

Here is a critique of reality television that made for some worthwhile reading.

Almost to a show, these reality shows have only served to the whoring of people for money. But then, in America, its all about making money and living the good life. So I guess if it involves subjecting your family to tears, trepidation and disgust in front of a television audience, it obviously is worth it.

Now, I can recognize some good reality shows - CBS's Amazing Race actually makes for an interesting watch on Americans in different cultures, Extreme Makeover serves to give ideas to viewers about how to carry themselves off professionally, Extreme Makeover Home Edition gives the do-it-yourselfers invaluable tips on making a better home.

But everytime I see preview ads for stuff like "Wife Swap", "My Big Fat Obnixious Fiance", "Bachelor", "Bachelorette", "Who wants to marry a millionaire?" and similar (I would use crap, but it insults crap) things that TV execs pass onto the viewers as content, I have to reach for an airline style sickness bag to puke into.

Whats sickening is not so much that TV channels carry boat loads of these idiocy-driven programs, but that they are able to get the gullible public to watch these - does the viewing public get a high seeing the suffering and humiliation of another fellow human being?

Luckily for people like me, there is content-providing channels like Discovery Network Channels, Turner Classic Movies, PBS, etc to offset the trash thats too often on TV these days.

In the meanwhile, here is an S.O.S and an A.P.B detailing disappearence of television as we knew it. If you ever come across classic television with classic sitcoms like the Cosby Show and Simpsons and with no "puke-invoking" reality shows, please contact me.

India the Great?

So, I was called pessimistic, way too cynical. I am told that India is on path to greatness and prosperity, that India is taking baby steps toward maturity and the smarts that come with being a mature self-aware nation.

Objectively speaking, I would not be true to myself if I did not recognize the truth in these statements - I would be no better than one the umpteen India-bashing arm-chair experts who pass off as journalists in India. Heck, I would be one of them.

To quote Andy Dufresne from that classic endurance story The Shawshank Redemption, "Hope is a beautiful thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies". So, inspite of all my cynicism, inspite of feeling like the apathy of people will never change, here is a toast to my country.

Afterall, who I am, what I am, and how I became what I am, were shaped in part by family and society and culture that is us. That culture of humility, of humanity, of civility, one of family and values (mind you, more depth and width than any such thing you can ever hope to find in America!), it is the cornerstone of a civilization more than 3000 years in the making.

A civilization and culture so deep and so vast, all it is going to take is for people all over the country to be proud of who they are, is to realize with their hearts and minds the cultural similarities, and recognize with their minds, the cultural diversities that make India a unique melting pot, a smorgasbord of cultures unlike the world has ever seen before. We already celebrate the unity in our diversity. Maybe we just need to celebrate it even more :)

As has been pointed out recently, progress is made in baby steps, and baby steps are painfully slow and painstaking. But none of our parents gave up on us when we were babies - they persevered with us, and kept us going. Similarly I think we only owe it to ourselves as a society and as a nation to be persistent and patient with this growing up.

The sheer fact that, whether by design or accident, we as a nation are making tangible progress (even if it mirrors the story of a frog trying to climb out of a well - three steps forward and two steps back) points to a culmination of total synergy somewhere. What else can explain the progress?

Recently I have been advising people on the need to develop cynicism. And I ended up being cynical about something that deserves better - my attitude toward the Indian nation. So, what exactly was I being cynical about? The peoples attitudes. And the answer? As was pointed out earlier yesterday (Nov 12) and something that I should have realized on my own - self-leadership.

And how does that start? One person at a time.

Like my father. He founded the local civic exnora and met with immense opposition to hire and pay for daily clean up and trash removal. But like a true leader, he persevered, and now apparently the moves are paying dividends.

Like Vidyakar of Udhavum Karangal. Who showed the way to render service to the society - one person at a time, by making meaningful lives out of destitute and abandoned/orphaned children.

Like Ramakrishnan and Sankara Raman of Amar Seva Sangam. Their refusal to let their disabilities defeat them. Their faith in themselves and in the inherent good of people has led to what is potentially the first disability access enabled village in India. And all this, while fighting to ensure that other people with disabilities could lead dignified independent lives to the best of their abilities.

Like that friendly next-door kannada-speaking neighbor who provided refuge to their friendly next-door tamil-speaking neighbor in Bangalore, at the height of riots against Tamils over the Kaveri water-sharing dispute. Proving yet again, that humanity's most humane face sometimes pops up under the most adverse of conditions.

We are a nation of extremes and diversities. We are a nation prone to swings in emotions - a la close friends duking it out over differences. We are also a nation that is highly capable and suave. But what we are, in addition, is also the greatest continuing experiment in society. If only, the people living in our country realize what they have at their hand, sooner rather than later.

But, I have seen the extreme nature of my thought, and instead of cynicism and despair, I should say, I have hope. Hope for our future. Hope for sense in people. Hope for maturity in thought. In the meanwhile, I am here, growing and developing, seeking ways to contribute toward what I expect out of India.

Vande Mataram

Addendum: Serious notes of thanks to my brother Shankar, Vish, Pradeep, Lisa, Aarthi, and my parents. All your points at various times during our discussions were invaluable, and helped me play devils advocate with myself, and realize the futility of my cynical attitude.

India - an accidental nation?

If you have recently been reading news coming out of India, it does paint a (somewhat unfair, ofcourse, given the culture of the main-stream English media's predisposition toward running India down at every opportunity) gloomy picture about the state of the Indian State.

All this has germinated this rather uncomfortable, yet undeniable thought in my mind - are we Indians even supposed to be together under this huge, sometimes unwieldy nation-state that we call India? Or is this just a marriage of convenience amongst the various peoples who are actually too busy and too haughty to try and come up with a common sense of identity?

I have this nagging doubt as to whether we Indians will ever be able to show a sense of pride and belonging to the country - will nationalism ever override the immense sense of regionalism and factionalism that is rampant in the country? Unfortunately the answer currently is a resounding no. And why do I feel so? Mostly a sense of apathy bordering on the ridiculous, an almost unnerving sense of not being perturbed any anything.

In short, I feel now that India is a nation put together by accident, that is bumbling and hurtling its way apparently no where, freewheeling from one disaster to another prosperity back to disaster. I usually do not like to be wrong, but in this case, I am just hoping, in fact praying from the bottom of my heart, for the love of God, that I am dead wrong in my assessment. Only time will tell....

Coca-Cola - Audio/Video Center - Coca-Cola Advertising

Coca-Cola - Audio/Video Center - Coca-Cola Advertising

Now, a collection of advertising related to Coca-Cola brands currently available on their website. My fave is Coca-Cola's I Wish an ad from the UK.

Ah...Finally...

Run and hide, America. Run and Hide. The Idiots are coming, the Idiots are coming....

Yes folks, the idiots won the Major League Baseball championship today (October 27, 2004) sweeping their opponents (the bumbling St. Louis Cardinals) away in impressive fashion.

These idiots were a fitting bunch. They had to be, in their refusal to subscribe to the pathetic excuse theory called the Curse of the Bambino - a rather disingenous creation of a sports writer to explain what in effect was the sheer failure of professional ball players to play at their best ability.

Pretty interesting that they exorcised the curse on the night of a total lunar eclipse - symbolically enough, the lunar eclipse represents the serpents of the night sky "eating" up the moon (aint that a bogus story?)

Honestly no surprise that the Sox won - they had the best team chemistry of the eight teams that made it to the baseball postseason. Indeed, it was surprising that they even went down 0-3 to the Yankees, them with their god-forsaken starting pitching. But then, with the clarity of hindsight, I can now proclaim that it was all part of a grander scheme of things to get the Sox faithful to start believing in the can-do nature of this team, and to start thinking rationally and logically (I mean, come on, it is hard for Sox fans to be rational about anything, obviously, ever since they started believing in curses).

Effectively though, thank goodness the Sox won cuz now we do not have to hear that pathetic excuse for mismanagement and terrible play. How many times have the Red Sox even been good enough to play for the title since 1918? Four times. And they failed all four times, twice on fielding errors and twice on not-so-good pitching as compared to their opponents. And oh, facing failure four times and not bouncing back to thumb nose at it indicates not a curse, but a pathological affliction for failure.

Now, we will have to just put up with the pathetic excuses of one team - those erstwhile loveable losers from Chicago, the Cubs. In the meanwhile, my love for the team that I started to follow in 2002 has been cemented - my loyalties are now officially divided between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Boston Red Sox, unless of course when they (eventually, I hope) meet in a championship game, at which point I will simply root for the National League team.

In the meanwhile, at the risk of committing blasphemy, here is a take with which I sorta kinda agree.

Lessons to be learnt from the Red Sox' improbable 11 day run to championship glory? It aint over until it is over. Something that A-Fraud and the Yankees have learnt the tough way. To rehash a cliche, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and the rest just get ground to the earth.

Its a snake..no no..its a fish...no no it's a..its an..

...Octopus..a Mimic Octopus.

Now, for all fans of the underwater animals it is a well known fact that Octopus are intelligent sea-faring creatures with remarkable ability to adapt to their surroundings, at literally a blink of the eye.

These intelligent invertebrates with the special skin pigmenting cells (chromatophores), can blink their cells into different colors to adjust to their surroundings. They also exhibit remarkable problem solving ability, especially through the process of trial and error. This author has seen a controlled laboratory experiment where an octopus just brought in from the sea was put into a tank with a corked bottle containing food. For a while the octopus tried doing everything to get into the bottle, and then remarkably enough uncorked the bottle to get at the food!

For all the remarkable nature of their intelligence, this Mimic Octopus is just a tad too much. I mean come on, being able to play a game of charades? Aint that amazing?

This Mimic Octopus, not discovered until 1998 or 2001 (pick your take, I have read about their discovery during either of the two years, were found off the delta areas of the Indonesian islands and South East Asia. And amazingly enough, in lieu of its rather recent discovery, in the Latin name world of "proper" speciology, the Mimic Octopus does not have a name.
Apparently the reason for this rather late discovery of a rather remarkable ocean species is put down to the fact that they inhibit what is considered a rather bland piece of ocean topography, something that is not as colorful or with the variety and splendor of a coral reef.

While mimickry is often part of natural adaptation of many species for sheer survival purposes, this is the first time that the scientific world has had a chance ot observe a species mimicking more than one species - in the case of the Mimic Octopus it has been observed to mimic atleast three and maybe more species.

Sole Fish or Flatfish(mimicked by aligning its arms in a flat oval and swimming close to the sea floor), Sea Snake (by sticking 6 tentacles together with body and undulating the remaining two to mimic the balck and white striped sea snake) and Lion Fish (by holding tentacles out in a "burst of sunlight" like spines of the poisonous lion fish) were the routine victims of this tricky charading octopus. See here, here and here for visuals of this amazing creature.

One thing is for certain - if this creature is able to imitate a bunch of species, it did pick it up as an evolutionary upgrade in terms of its ability to protect itself from the environment. And it is just as highly likely that the three species of sea creatures that the Mimic Octopus has been observed to imitate, are part of a larger range of creatures that the Mimic can imitate.

Personally I have been impressed over the years by the various social and survival skills seen in various animals - both land and sea-borne. But aside of the family tendencies of a herd of elephants, this is the only other animal that has impressed me so. So much so, I have my MSN sign-on name is Mimic Octopus in honor of this tricky creature, which seemingly has the ability to take a disguise at the drop of a hat, and in response to the situation at hand.

Mesmerizing Organized Chaos...why Mumbai can be exasperating and exhilirating all at once

MSNBC - Mesmerizing Mumbai and the Big Bazaar

To people that have gotten stuck in Mumbai at the wrong end of the stick (the riots of Jan 1993 or the serial blasts in mid 1993) I feel sorry your experience of this vibrant city is limited to something that you would never want to wish on your worst enemy.

But Mumbai represents everything that is India, and then some. Organized chaos in what is arguably the world's largest slum can be depressing. But just don't tell the proud Mumbaikars that, as they go about their business in what is IMHO the world's most throbbing city. Sorry New York, sorry Paris, sorry Rome and sorry London, but you are all the glitz of the high and mighty and rich. This is sheer citizenry at its varied and earthy non-sophisticate best.

Beat that if you can!

The New Yorker: Fact

The New Yorker: Fact

What Kerry doesn’t say—and cannot say—is that when it comes to real threats, like North Korea and Iran, Bush’s fixation with Iraq may already have made it too late for any American President to find a peaceful solution..

Fixation..just like a stubborn 5 year old who is fixated on a candy in a candy store and would go to any lengths, throw any and every tantrum in the book and call others names. Fixation...that should be treated with a good dose of spanking, just like you would do to your disobedient kid.

Come on America, you are better than this. You deserve better than this. You dont need a whimpering crybaby up at the White House. Vote Bush out!