Full TP

At what point is a person dead?

2006-10-16T06:15:00.000-07:00

How much percentage of the world's water is contained in a cow?
How does a perm work?
Of all 19th-century politicians, who was most like Tony Blair?

The common link? Oxbridge interviews

A penny for his thoughts

2006-10-11T05:17:00.000-07:00

A hilarious question on Yahoo! Answers and equally hilarious answers.

He should probably consider registering his email with spammers.

What's more likely to kill you: A hernia or a terrorist?

2006-10-04T04:32:00.000-07:00

If you are in the US, your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaeda.

In a neat article, One Million Ways to Die, Wired extrapolates data from the last ten years to create a colour-coded chart of the threats US citizens face. Driving off the road tops the chart, and terrorism comes second-last, above only carbon monoxide poisoning from products.

In fact, you are more likely to be shot by law enforcement than a terrorist.

World eBook Fair

2006-07-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

For a great collection eBooks, head for the World eBook Fair.
To celebrate Project Gutenberg's 35 birthday, the site is offering free access up to August 4.

Gaping hole

2006-07-24T00:57:00.000-07:00

The next time the urge strikes you to gape at passing celebrities, remember to lock the safe

Oh Marco!

2006-07-11T02:08:00.000-07:00

My young colleague, Nazim Khan thinks Materazzi is no angel. And he's got some video evidence too.

Want some vaastu for your home page?

2006-06-26T04:59:00.000-07:00

If your web site is not doing as well as it's supposed, may be your should try some feng shui or vaastu for your site.

"Earth is the layout, fire is the colour, air is the HTML, space is name of the Web site, and water is the font and graphics," says one expert.

You're in politics. No I am not. Yes you are. No am not. Yes. No

2006-06-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

This hilarious pow-wow between Karan Thapar and Rahul Bajaj on prime time television has forced me to come out of hibernation. They are squabbling like school kids.

Where have I been?

2006-04-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

For the two or three people who still frequent this blog, I have been a touch too busy for my own comfort.
Normal service is unlikely to resume for a while...

Beer on tap

2006-03-13T22:58:00.000-08:00

A bar worker mixes up pipes. And a Norwegian woman, two floors above, gets beer instead of water to rinse here knives.

Look ma no hands!

2006-03-10T00:07:00.000-08:00

Driver caught on camera using both hands to apply make-up on one of Britain's most dangerous roads.

The warm glow of distance

2006-03-09T04:55:00.000-08:00

Want to have a drink with a loved one who is miles away? Here are some wine glasses you may want to raise a toast to.

That sinking feeling

2006-03-04T00:10:00.000-08:00

There are many treasures hidden in the Fark forums. Like this one. :)

Wrong number

2006-03-02T02:34:00.000-08:00

This is just too funny. A British diplomat lost two satellite phones in Iraq... And Britain's foreign office ended up funding a sex chat line (to the tune of 594,000 pounds) in a Baghdad street for 17 months without knowing it.

Link via Fark

Spell bound

2006-03-02T01:59:00.000-08:00

You can land in big trouble if you don't know how to spell. A Pakistani forger learned this the hard way. He spoilt a near near perfect copy of an Afghan passport by misspelling ministry ('menistry') and government ("goverment'). He's now doing time in a Cyprus jail.

Still infamous, after all these years

2006-02-28T08:25:00.000-08:00

When I studied in Mangalore, Government College was notorious for the antics of its students.
Though, it has changed its name to University College, it's good to see that the students haven't changed a lot.

Mutual fundas from ET

2006-02-21T03:19:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I visited my favourite newspaper. But they never disappoint.

Beats me!

2006-02-12T21:53:00.000-08:00

India's selection of the supersub for the Lahore ODI beats me. If India were planning to chase after winning the toss, they should have chosen a supersub based on that strategy. So, typically you would have wanted a batsman, say, Raina to be the supersub.

But, no, they pick Zaheer as the supersub. And, now, having picked him and having won the toss, they will have to figure out how to play him without weakening the batting. Obviously, there's no way he is going to get his full quota if they sub him in for another bowler.

Update: Prithvi posts exactly the same thoughts on his blog. It's not as uncanny as you would imagine. It's just the logical thing to do.

A 1000 dollars for the taking...

2006-02-10T04:31:00.000-08:00

If you can prove that the earth revolves around the sun.

Hold the press!

2006-02-10T04:24:00.000-08:00

Typos can be a pain, as the Bush administration is discovering.

Publish and apologise

2006-02-10T02:24:00.000-08:00

The Patna edition of the Times of India publishes the cartoons about Prophet Mohammed, and ends up apologising all over the place.
Ha!

Radio Gaga

2006-02-09T05:29:00.000-08:00

They call it the social music revolution. I say pretty cool!
Enjoy the music.

Where did radical come from?

2006-02-09T04:58:00.000-08:00

A Boston Globe columnist takes off on the protests around the world against the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper to paint a scary picture of what's to come.

"...Hindus may consider it odious to use cows as food, but they do not resort to boycotts, threats, and violence when non-Hindus eat hamburger or steak. They do not demand that everyone abide by the strictures of Hinduism and avoid words and deeds that Hindus might find upsetting. The same is true of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Mormons: They don't lash out in violence when their religious sensibilities are offended. They certainly don't expect their beliefs to be immune from criticism, mockery, or dissent.

"But radical Muslims do."

Wonder why the author added the adjective radical to Muslims but left it out of Hindus, Christians, Jews etc?

All in the family

2006-02-09T02:33:00.000-08:00

Prithviraj Hegde, who outranks me in the family by four years, has started a cricket blog over at Rediff iLand.

Funny, not ha ha

2006-02-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

I hate to do this to you, but here's more nonsense from what's fast becoming my favourite newspaper.

What in the world is it doing here?

Comparisons are odious

2006-02-01T20:21:00.000-08:00

Former Miss India and jewellery designer Naina Balsavar says the demolition of malls in Delhi on Wednesday is a "9/11 for all of us with shops here".

The tips that boomeranged

2006-01-31T22:43:00.000-08:00

First it was Younis Khan who thanked Rahul Dravid for his tips that changed his batting fortunes. Now, rookie centurion Faisal Iqbal has expressed his gratitude for the Indian captain after scoring his maiden century.

I hope Dravid shares some of those tips with the Indian batsmen. They will need it to save the Test.

Water cooler and other talk

2006-01-31T00:27:00.000-08:00

Overheard in the Office publishes snatches of conversations heard in offices. Some of them are really funny. Like this:

Receptionist: What are the new shirts made out?
Clerk: They're 100% cotton.
Receptionist: Cotton? That's the stuff that grows on sheep, right?
Clerk: No, cotton comes from rabbits. That's why they're called cottontails.

The way of all flesh

2006-01-31T00:25:00.000-08:00

A surgeon in a seaside town in New Zealand has closed his medical practice. His sugery will open as a brothel next month.

"It's about providing a private service and maintaining confidentiality, which is what my medical practice was about - so it's not a big leap, really," the good doctor said.

Link via Fark

The secret art of earning the best pay package...

2006-01-20T02:44:00.000-08:00

...that's the top story on the online edition of Economic Times at 4pm India time.

If people in the market for a job are not yet familiar with the 'secrets' revealed in the article, they deserve the salaries they are paid.

Economic Times is full of these stupid how-to articles that are badly written, poor in substance and even more poorly edited. But to make something like this a top story, running over six pages... well, what can I say, it's from the TOI after all.

Who will put out this fire?

2006-01-19T03:45:00.000-08:00

A fire awareness promotional event in Japan ended with a fire at a fire station, and a lot of red faces among fire-fighters.

"I wanted to eat him, but I didn't want to kill him"

2006-01-19T03:39:00.000-08:00

A cannibal in Germany claimed during his retrial that he was carrying out his victim's wishes to be eaten and had not wanted to kill him.

He was last year sentenced to eight and half years for manslaughter, but was spared a murder conviction and a life sentence. But the Supreme Court ordered a retrial.

Pretty gruesome stuff. Not for the faint of heart.

No music for my ears

2006-01-10T05:49:00.000-08:00

I have not been able to sleep much lately because my Worldspace channels are blocked even though my subscription is valid.

To crack the problem, I called up their toll free number. I was put on hold for an inordinately long time, then transferred to an answering machine and then cut off before I could leave a message. I tried again. Got the answering machine and left a message. Didn’t get the return call that was promised. I am persevering if nothing else. So I called again, and again, and again. Many messages later, I gave up on the toll-free number.

I went to their Web site and checked whether my password was valid. It was.

So I decided to try a different tack. I sent a mail to their customer care. I got a 5mb attachment with instructions on how to enter my password. I already knew that. But I tried to do as they said. No luck.

So I sent them another mail.

Their solution was simplicity itself:

“Thank you for writing to WorldSpace.

“With regard to your problem with the receiver, we suggest you to get the receiver repaired. You can send the receiver to our regional office at Mumbai or to our corporate office at Bangalore for repairs.

“Please note the servicing and ` is done at Bangalore and it would take 7-10 days for the repair.

“We hope you find the above information helpful.”

Even though I have no idea how a Worldspace receiver works, I had more common sense than whoever drafted that letter to realize that it was not a problem with the receiver.

So I called up their regional office in Mumbai (the one they asked me to send my receiver to). Thankfully, I got a human being, who gave me another number. I called the number. Another human being. I love talking to human beings. He heard me out patiently. And then gave me a new password.

Apparently, they change the password every six months to save my ears from damage resulting from excess exposure to good music.

If you own a Worldspace receiver, don’t bother calling the toll-free number or writing to customer care. Call 55022121 (it’s a Mumbai number by the way).

And I hope to sleep well tonight.

Golden Rules

2006-01-09T03:12:00.000-08:00

Business leaders share some secrets of their success.

Link via Fark

No Pigeon this!

2006-01-05T00:06:00.000-08:00

Glenn McGrath was ordered to appear for an ICC hearing for "using language that is obscene, offensive or insulting and/or the making of an obscene gesture". Good move!

I wonder how Andre Nel has not yet been reported. Could it be his hail-fellow-well-met attitude towards the umps?

Yeh kya jagah hain doston?

2006-01-04T21:37:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle. I took a long hiatus from blogging towards the end of 2002. I had been blogging for a year, and just didn’t have the bandwidth to continue posting. I completely switched off from the blogging circuit.

When I resumed blogging recently, I discovered a completely different world than I had left three years ago.

There were very few bloggers at that time... Anita, Sylvia, Codey, Madman, Nidhi, Mahesh, Kiruba (on whose account much curiosity and discussion ensues at my home), Anand, Floating Creeper… are some of the names I do remember. It was a small community, more like a group gathered around a campfire making small talk, rather than the blogosphere it has evolved into.

For me, blogging has lost much of its early innocence. It is far more self-important these days. Debates rage for days, across many blogs. There are comments long enough to fill up the entire TOI edit page. There are trackbacks, and cartels. And, yes, there are far more blogs to read; many of them with content that is compelling, fresh and engaging, adding new perspective to my worldview.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I feel a little out of place, like someone who has unwittingly gatecrashed a party and can't figure out what the fuss is all about.

A quiver full of quirks

2005-12-30T21:43:00.002-08:00

Sougata, one of my favourite bloggers, tagged me with the 'What are your top five quirks?' meme.

My quirks are like seasons. They come and go. And, I must admit, I am far less quirky than I used to be, say, five years ago.

So, here, in no particular order, are my five top quirks, most of them a product of my absent-mindedness.

I have already written about two of them -- making paper boats and rolling pieces of paper -- on this blog.

Number 3: Like Sougata, I prefer to go to sleep to some sound. In my college days, it used to be the sounds of All India Radio. Nowadays, I set my Worldspace radio to switch off in 30 minutes. Usually, I am switched off before the radio switches itself off. If I forget to set the timer, as sometimes happens, I get the pleasure of waking up to music as well. I am not particular about the kind of music: it could be Hindi pop, old Hindi, Western classical and Indian classical. On days that my wife isn't home, I even go off to sleep watching TV.

Number 4: My legs are in constant motion, even though the rest of me is still. Whether I am in a restaurant, or in a meeting, or at my desk, I am continuously shaking my legs. I am doing it even as I write this. My wife says I shake my legs in my sleep as well. But then, she says that I also snore sometimes. I strongly disagree. I think I just breathe a little more deeply than usual. But that's one argument I can't win :)

Number 5: I love the word compelling. I use the word more often than I would like for work-related writing...

So those are my little idiosyncrasies. And I now pass on the meme to Sylvia, Zaki and Codey.

Seems familiar...

2005-12-30T00:27:00.000-08:00

A man's digicam gets stolen from a restaurant. He heads to eBay, and finds a great deal on the same model. He is happy that his accessories won't go waste. He buys it. And realizes that it's the good ole camera he lost in the restaurant.

Moan... moan...

2005-12-27T22:47:00.000-08:00

You're fired!

In a German firm, you are not allowed to exceed your limit of moans at the water cooler.

Ganguly, ganguly, ganguly

2005-12-26T02:40:00.000-08:00

Ganguly, Ganguly, Ganguly, Ganguly, Ganguly...
Ganguly, Ganguly, Ganguly, Ganguly, Ganguly...

Can someone please turn of off the tap?

Lice, damned lice!

2005-12-25T22:32:00.000-08:00

If Head and Shoulders had been invented in the early 1800s, history may well have read differently.

Louse-borne diseases killed more soldiers of Napolean Bonaparte's invading army than the Russians.

Chamchas have a mind of their own

2005-12-25T22:17:00.000-08:00

In a path-breaking study, Australian scientists have proved that teaspoons have a mind of their own, and a habit of disappearing. Spoons have an aversion to humans and are believed to be migrating to a planet populated by spoonoid life forms.

While such cutting-edge research is most certainly welcome, I would like more research on two other objects that love to vanish: pens and umbrellas.

During my days as a journalist, I have lost not only several of my own pens but also those that belonged to my colleagues. To solve the problem, they pitched in and gifted me a thick, fat pen that you could hang around the neck. But pens will be pens. It's their karma to disappear.

Within a week, only the cap of the said pen was hanging around my neck. The pen had moved on.

About umbrellas, I follow a golden principle: It's better to get drenched without investing in an umbrella, than get drenched after investing in one.

Whose public interest is it anyway?

2005-12-23T04:22:00.000-08:00

Sting operations are the flavour of the season, and it’s a bad time to be a politician. Hidden cameras make for great TV and even better TRPs, and I have no problem with that. But when the media starts to position sting operations as public interest exposes, I find it a little hard to digest.

If broadcasting politicians making complete asses of themselves did not translate into higher TRPs, the spycam would not be as ubiquitous as it is today. That sting operations may actually serve public interest is incidental. The icing on the PR cake. So let's just call a spade and spade.

By the way, isn’t bribing a public official illegal in India?

Butcher's knife or surgeon's scalpel?

2005-12-23T01:43:00.000-08:00

Surendra, a rickshaw puller, went to hospital to have his appendix removed. The doctor, instead, stole his kidney.
IBN Live, CNN-IBN channel's online avatar, reports that Surendra is now battling for his life.

Upate: Surendra died Saturday. Apparently, the doctor stole both his kidneys.

Bells and whistles

2005-12-22T23:06:00.000-08:00

The Times of India adds some Christmas cheer to its online masthead.

Why does it remind me of Google?

Not as easy as it seems

2005-12-22T21:30:00.000-08:00

The Guardian has an article on how unscruplous companies are manipulating rankings on Google. The newspaper created a spoof site for a company that sells eco-friendly flip-flops and managed to secure top billing within a couple of days. The trouble with the article is that it uses a particularly bad example to prove its point.

It is common sense that your ranking on Google will be determined by the number of pages that are competing for that particular key word or phrase. One of the most important factors Google considers while ranking a page is the text in the title (the words that appear on the blue bar on the top of a browser).

Any company serious about selling eco-friendly flip-flops will have the phrase in its title. An easy way to check the competition is by using the Google syntax allintitle:eco-friendly flip-flops. Till yesterday, there were only two results, one of which was the spoof site.

So if only one other site is seriously competing for eco-friendly flip-flops for top ranking on Google, what are the chances that the spoof site would rank number 1?

Even otherwise, the article on the whole takes a rather simplistic view of how people manipulate Google's rankings.

Update: The competing site is the blog of the article's author :) So essentially eco-friendly flip-flops has no competition.

Thank you Eminem!

2005-12-21T07:27:00.000-08:00

Nusta Khallas alerts me to an epoch-making first for FullTP.
Mumbai Mirror, the chota paper that accompanies the bada paper, has managed to excerpt my very chota post on Eminem for its column called Blogger's Park.
Not my favourite paper, not my favourite column, not my favourite post, but I am not complaining.

Third degree with Eminem

2005-12-19T22:07:00.000-08:00

If listening to Eminem gives you a headache, imagine the plight of these detainees in a prison in Afghanistan.

Human Rights Watch claims that United States operated a secret prison near Afghanistan's capital as recently as last year, and that the rap music of Eminem and Dr. Dre were used as instruments of torture.

Link via Fark

The math behind Sudoku

2005-12-18T23:16:00.000-08:00

American Scientist has an interesting article on the logic and math behind what was for a brief while my favourite early morning pastime: Sudoku.

May I watch Eknath Solkar get his 100?

2005-12-17T03:14:00.000-08:00

The first TV in our building (rather neighbourhood) arrived with Clive Lloyd’s West Indians in late 1974. It came into the home of the Bhats on the ground floor. The Bhats soon realized what a heady cocktail live TV and cricket can make. The entire neighbourhood wanted to watch Clive Lloyd and his merry men smash the Indians to pulp. The Bhats had a simple solution to the problem: A house full board outside their door on match days. I kid you not!

The first TV in our home arrived with the new year of 1975. It was – hold your breath – a 24-inch Standard TV that my father had managed to buy through connections in the customs department. The West Indies were playing India at the spanking new Wankhade Stadium in Mumbai. After losing the first two Tests, India had come back with two wins, thanks to our famed spin quartet and the original little master, Gundappa Vishwath, who single handedly stood up to the fiery Andy Roberts. A keen contest was on the cards.

All I remember of the first two days is Lloyd’s double hundred, suitably aided by Bedi’s butter fingers. On the third day, Lloyd put India out of their misery, declaring for a mammoth 600-odd. Gavaskar provided some early fireworks with a stunning assault on Gibbs.

The next day, as Eknath Solkar edgily, scratchily neared his first Test hundred, there was a knock on our door. A complete stranger stood outside. He said he was a friend of Solkar, showed us a picture of them together to prove it, and wanted to watch Ekki get his ton. Join the party, we said. And he squeezed his way into our crowded living room. Solkar got his ton (if I remember right, he almost got run out running the hundredth run), the stranger thanked my dad profusely and left, Vishwanath played an uncharacteristic innings of 90 and India lost by an innings.

That was the only time one of my brothers, always in the minority of one, scored brownie points in the eternal who-is-better-Vishwnath-or-Gavaskar debate.

It was such a long time ago, I may have mixed up some of the details. My memory is not as good as it used to be :)

What a catch!

2005-12-16T23:29:00.000-08:00

A New York woman threw her one-month-old son from the third floor of a burning building and the baby was caught by an amateur baseball player standing outside.

Hens lay eggs, hold up traffic

2005-12-15T23:08:00.000-08:00

A truck carrying a load of hens hit a ditch and lost its load. What resulted was traffic chaos caused by a hazardous slick of broken eggs

"Chickens have begun to lay eggs on the roads and the conditions are quite treacherous at the moment, very slippy," AA Roadwatch said on its traffic advice line, warning up to 7,000 chickens were on the loose.

A sergeant said little could be done about the hens' egg-laying: "We wouldn't expect anything less from a hen." :)

Ganguly gets a jaffer!

2005-12-14T05:45:00.000-08:00

Not the way to treat Ganguly, writes Harish Kotian in rediff.com.

I agree.

The selectors did the right thing in picking him for the Tests. Now, they go do something that completely defies logic: drop him for Wasim Jaffer.

Logic, I suppose, is not something you can expect from the five wise men.

Veil of a time

2005-12-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

Daniel Lak has some interesting observations about life in Bhopal.

Here's a gem:

'Then I noticed something you’d never see in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or even Old Delhi. A young couple roaring along on a motorbike, he driving, she riding pillion but legs astride the seat. Her burqa billowed alongside like the wings of a giant bat but her arms clutched his waist in a way that my mother might have considered immodest. A young friend later told me that many Hindu girls in Bhopal kept a burqa in her closet to wear on a date with her young man. "That way they can get to all sorts of interesting activities," my friend explained, "and no one can tell her family because curious passersby don’t know who’s beneath the burqa." '

That's inventive.

Come again, please!

2005-12-12T20:58:00.000-08:00

"I have always maintained that if used rightly, tiny, lens bearing apertures, can empower a citizenry by exposing democracy's toxic acreage."

That's Aniruddha Bahal talking about the sting operation that has netted some MPs taking bribes.

Do people actually talk like that? What the hell is democracy's toxic acreage?

A is for...

2005-12-12T05:06:00.000-08:00

There are some benefits of having a name that starts with the first letter of the alphabet.

Was checking my site statistics, and noticed a spike in my readership (even two extra readers results in a spike, but that's another story :)

I have been getting a lot of referrals from a site called Sunsuna, which tracks Indian blogs.

Since they list blogs alphabetically, yours truly has pride of place, till someone named Abhishek comes and dislodges me.

I am planning to change my name to Aashok. That would be hard to beat. I hear it has some great numerological effects as well.

More on Wikipedia

2005-12-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

The popular encyclopedia now faces a class action suit.

"There is a problem with the operation and functionality of Wikipedia. The basic problem is that none of the Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., nor any of the volunteers who are connected with Wikipedia, consider themselves responsible and therefore accountable for the content.

"They believe themselves to be above the law."

Link via Digg.

Some Idiosyncrasies

2005-12-12T00:35:00.000-08:00

Many of the more tech-savvy readers of this blog may already be aware of this.

I just got a mail that informs me that you can't create a folder called con in Windows. I tried and I couldn't.

Here's some info.

Zaki, meanwhile, points out an IE feature. If you create folder with a name like a Web address (for instance, www.rediff.com), then when you type that address on IE, the browser will access the local folder not the site.

Breaking news on TV

2005-12-11T23:15:00.000-08:00

Amitabh Bachchan ne aaj juice piya.
:)

He's such a doll!

2005-12-11T22:55:00.000-08:00

Suzy Walker cannot bear separation from her sailor husband. So she moves around with a $200 look-alike mannequin.

Your identity isn't a secret on the Internet...

2005-12-11T22:53:00.000-08:00

Brian Chase discovered this at the cost of his job.

Much has already been written about the Wikipedia entry on John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville; an entry that contained a lot of false information.

In fact, the entry prompted Wikipedia to ban new article from anonymous sources.

Daniel Brandt, who runs Wikipedia Watch, traced the computer used to make the Wikipedia entry to a delivery company in Nashville.

When The New York Times came calling, Chase, an employee there, confessed that he had put up the entry as a joke to shock a colleague.

Sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic

2005-12-10T03:59:00.000-08:00

MP Sharad Anantrao Joshi wants the word 'socialist' taken out from the Representation of People's Act, if not from the Preamble to the Constitution.

According to him, the description of India as a sovereign ‘democratic secular socialist’ republic is not only ‘‘vague’’ and replete with multiple meaning, it also forces those who have no belief in this particular ‘‘ism’’ to falsify their stand.

‘‘It has lost all relevance today. It is false, anachronistic and contradictory description.’’

Typos can be expensive...

2005-12-10T03:19:00.000-08:00

...like three-billion-dollar expensive!
Mizuho, the world's second largest bank based in Japan, accidentally sold 610,000 shares, valued at $3.1 billion... for 1 yen each.

Fortunately for them, the actual loss totted up to $224m, thanks to market rules designed to limit price fluctuation.

Link via A Capital Idea.

Wife swap

2005-12-10T03:06:00.000-08:00

A Turkish villager runs off with his friend's wife. And then calls the latter the next day to offer his own in exchange.

9 is never as good as 10

2005-12-09T02:37:00.000-08:00

Anil Kumble's perfect 10 may never have happened if Waqar Younis had had his way.

"Waqar, who was batting with me, had suggested that one of us get run-out to deny Kumble the perfect ten haul,” said (Wasim) Akram

“But I thought it would not be right to do something like that (get run out)...

“I assured Waqar that I would not get out to Kumble and the very next ball I was out!”

Blog is banished

2005-12-09T00:23:00.000-08:00

Lake Superior State University is out with its 30th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.

Blog (and its variations blogger, blogged, blogosphere) makes it to this year's list, alongside such worthies as erectile dysfuntion and zero percent APR financing. We are certainly not in august company.

Some reasons why blog makes the cut:

“Sounds like a Viking’s drink that’s better than grog, or a technique to kill a frog.” Teri Vaughn, Anaheim, Calif.

“Maybe it’s something that would be stuck in my toilet.” – Adrian Whittaker, Dundalk, Ontario.

“I think the words ‘journal’ and ‘diary’ need to come back.” – T. J. Allen, Shreveport, La.

The cracks are showing...

2005-11-24T03:51:00.000-08:00

The headline on Outlook's cover of November 28 reads Abu Salem cracks up... but slowly

I think the usage of 'cracks up' is wrong in this case.

As a noun, crack-up (note the hyphen) means suffer a breakdown.

As a verb (the way in which Outlook uses it), it means to appreciate a good joke.

I would imagine Abu Salem has very little to laugh about.

asdf ;lkj

2005-11-24T03:35:00.000-08:00

The keys go clickety clack. People are still learning to use type-writers.

The gun and the gag

2005-11-22T03:39:00.000-08:00

Abu Salem wants a ban on the media.

"Salem had prayed for an inquiry by I & B secretary into media reports about him and his girl friend which, he said, were "totally baseless". He also prayed that the inquiry should also find out on what basis such reports were put out.

"According to Salem’s prayer before the court, the respondents (including the government) be directed to impose a total ban on such reports appearing in the media, which talk about investigations being conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI), the PTI report stated."

I wonder what their KRAs were...

2005-11-22T03:31:00.000-08:00

Delhi doubles the salaries of MLAs to bring it on par with ministers.

Some faulty detection

2005-11-22T03:27:00.000-08:00

Which is India's top detective agency?

According to the BBC, it's the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)

Chhatees ka aakda

2005-11-22T02:50:00.000-08:00

"Thackeray lives in kachra suburb", screams a Mid-Day headline today. The article is about a BMC survey that has found Bandra (East) to be the dirtiest place in Mumbai.

Sure Bal Thackeray lives in Bandra (East). As do thousands of others. So, what's the point of the headline?

Is it that he is a leader of the Shiv Sena, which rules BMC along with the BJP? I can already imagine the headliine if Bandra (East) was the cleanest suburb while the rest of the city rotted.

I seem to have caught the Mid-Day bug about Hindi headlines.

What will Bal Mama say?

2005-11-21T04:31:00.000-08:00

Mid-Day reports that the daughter of Vilas Gupte, Bal Thackeray's nephew, got married to a doctor -- a Muslim.

According to the bridegroom’s younger brother, Mohammad Qayoom, the bride has converted to Islam.

The question is: Will he, won't he bless the couple?

Pop goes the language

2005-11-21T02:37:00.000-08:00

"What makes a word a pop word? First of all, we're not talking mere clichés. Most pop phrases are indeed clichés -- that is, hackneyed or trite. But a pop phrase packs more rhetorical oomph and social punch than a conventional cliché. It's the difference, say, between It's as plain as the nose on your face and Duh, between old hat and so five minutes ago. Pop is the elite corps of clichés."

An excerpt from the book, Slam Dunks and No Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, and Like, Whatever, by Leslie Savan. There's also a quiz to test your pop language skills, designed by the author.

Link via A Capital Idea

A wing and a prayer

2005-11-21T02:14:00.000-08:00

An 87-year-old man builds a plane. Takes it for a spin. The engine dies on him. So, he lands on a four-lane highway

I lucked out, he said. So did many others.

Link via Fark.

Odd! Where the devil is it?

2005-11-20T22:52:00.000-08:00

In my RSS reader, I got a Reuters Oddly Enough news feed about the first day of school for students for a course run by a Vatican University. It teaches students to be demonologists and exorcists.

When I clicked the link, I got a page with the message "We're sorry... this story is not available".

Strange. Odd.

Then I searched on Google, and here's the cache of the story

Makes for interesting reading.

Sample this quote:

"
"There is no doubt that the devil is intervening more in the life of man these days," Father Paolo Scarafoni told the students, most of them priests who want to learn how to tackle the demon if they should ever encounter him.
"

Don't fail! Just defer success

2005-11-19T02:34:00.000-08:00

Global Language Monitor lists the top politically incorrect words for 2005.

Sample these:

"Misguided Criminals for Terrorist:The BBC attempts to strip away all emotion by using what it considers neutral descriptions when describing those who carried out the bombings in the London Tubes."

"Thought Shower or Word Shower substituting for brainstorm so as not to offend those with brain disorders such as epilepsy."

"Deferred Success as a euphemism for the word fail. The Professional Association of Teachers in the UK considered a proposal to replace any notion of failure with deferred success in order to bolster students self-esteem."

"Womyn for Women to distance the word from man."

Great bargains on books

2005-11-19T01:02:00.000-08:00

Fabmall has some really great bargains on books. Some superb classics for under Rs 60.
Grab it!

Update: There's a Rs 25 shipping charge per book. They are still worth it, though.

Hindi mein jaankaari ke liye...

2005-11-19T00:51:00.000-08:00

Headlines in Mid Day, Mumbai, this Saturday:

1. Darna mana hai (Page 1 lead)
2. Sirf bees minute (Page 4 lead)
3. Hello! Abu Salem bol raha hoon (Two-page special, 6 & 7)
4. 'Approver ban-ne par pura sahyog karoonga' (Page 9 lead)
5. Yeh kya ho raha hai (Page 16, top of the page box)
6. Kabhi Hussey kabhi gham (Page 20, Sports)

Also spotted

1. Meri khubhsoorti ka raaz (Page 2)
2. Yeh Dil maange moore (Page 12)

Dhanyavad!

Great pun or stupid typo? You tell

2005-11-18T00:49:00.000-08:00

There's a raging debate in our office, with opinion equally divided, on whether this CNN ad contains a stupid typo or it's the work of a creative genius. Your say?

Hitting axe on own leg

2005-11-16T21:40:00.000-08:00

That's what Chennai's moral and cultural 'custodians' have done by raising a ruckus over Khushoo's comments on pre-marital sex.
Khushboo's comments have now got far more publicity than they bargained for, and has also been endorsed by Suhasini, the Miss Universe, Sania Mirza and Narain Karthikeyan.

Mirror, mirror... against the wall

2005-11-16T00:58:00.000-08:00

Sam Dastoor, the publisher of Mumbai Mirror, the tabloid that accompanies The Times of India, was arrested for publishing a survey on sexual trends in Mumbai.

"Sam Dastoor was arrested on Tuesday morning on the charges of sale of obscene material and sale of obscene objects to young persons before being released on bail."

Obscene object? Well, I didn't get it with my copy.

I wonder why there's a sudden interest in the media about the sexual habits of Indians. A few issues ago, both Outlook and India Today, put a sex survey on their covers. A recent issue of The Week did likewise.

I think sex surveys -- and, of course, advice columns -- are a good way to get some steamy content into your pages.

Gol maal hai, sab gol maal hai

2005-11-12T03:27:00.000-08:00

A senior IPS office in Lucknow sees Lord Krishna in a dream. Decides to become a Radha. Wife drags him to court. Said officer comes dressed as woman.

To add to the confusion, Deccan Chronicle goofs up. And brings an international nuclear conspiracy into a marital dispute :)

Note: There are many articles on the page. This post refers to "IPS man dresses as woman"

Hello! Please hand me your money

2005-11-11T21:51:00.000-08:00

I have always wondered how people can drive while they are having a conversation on their mobile phone. A young woman in Washington has just raised the bar. She robbed four banks while keeping up a continuous conversation on her cell phone. Her only ally: a handgun.

Elsewhere, an unidentified man in Toronto has politely robbed 29 banks. His only ally: a recipe card.

Gangsta zap!

2005-11-11T20:38:00.000-08:00

Has the TOI lost all sense of proportion or do people really care so much about gangsters?
The TOI Mumbai edition devoted six-and-a-half pages, including three-fourths of the front page, to Abu Salem's arrival in the city.
I don't deny that it's pretty important news. But 6+ pages is definitely overkill.

Dear oh deer!

2005-11-11T01:30:00.000-08:00

Man thinks his car has hit a deer. Gets down from the car to check, and is relieved to find that he has not. Meanwhile, another car comes along, actually hits a deer, and sends it flying into the first man, breaking his ankle.
The deer is dead. The second driver has vanished.
Link via Fark, as was the previous one.

English as she is goodly spoken

2005-11-11T01:15:00.000-08:00

Some funny, some curious, some plain silly English mistakes from around the world.

Times of India gets an apology from The Guardian

2005-11-09T02:48:00.000-08:00

The London-based newspaper, The Guardian, apologised to the Jains for calling them notoriously secretive" in an article about Mumbai's newspaper wars.

It's scurrilous

2005-11-07T03:00:00.000-08:00

If there was an award for scurrilous reporting, I would give it to DNA for this report on the Mafatlal family dispute.

Gift horse

2005-11-06T22:42:00.000-08:00

When a team is down, keep them there. When you are riding high, don’t trip on your shoelaces.

I can understand the value of experimentation, but did we have to rest three of our best performing players, and gift Sri Lanka the match, and much-needed confidence? Couldn’t we have rested a player each in the remaining three matches?

Here was a team completely demoralised by four consecutive losses and instead of rubbing it in, we get into experimentation mode.

Did they forget that a Test series is coming up against the same team?

Panties in a twist

2005-11-04T21:27:00.000-08:00

Typos can sometimes be embarrassing.
Like this one:
Quaker Maid Meats Inc. on Tuesday said it would voluntarily recall 94,400 pounds of frozen ground beef panties that may be contaminated with E. coli.
Link via A Capital Idea

The other Tendulkar

2005-11-03T21:56:00.000-08:00

Sample these quotes:

"'If I had a gun, I would still put it to Modi's head. He's a butcher."

"I find increasingly that the media is out to deceive me, me as in the ordinary reader or viewer. There is an organised effort towards that, all raw material is turned into a thriller of some kind, there's a sense of breathlessness... A news event happens once but the impression I get from television is that it happens some 10 or 20 or 100 times. They have to repeat, I understand that, but the repetition often distorts the original. When this happens with issues like rape, we lose our sensitivity to it, it doesn't enrage any longer."

"It [Suketu Mehta's Maximum City] purports to be reality because he appears to have done journalistic exploration but it's a misleading book, full of half-truths and perceptions that don't hold ground. It's a very dangerous one to my mind because it gives the impression of Mumbai as if it was a realistic one; it's not."

That's Vijay Tendulkar, playwright and author, in an interview with Outlook

Kidney hunters stalk quake survivors

2005-10-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

"Hundreds of brokers working for unscrupulous private clinics are roaming in different parts of the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) to 'hunt' for potential kidney sellers."

Rediff has a special story on the kidney mafia that is stalking quake-hit regions.

"This reporter was astonished to see an ad—"Goorda Bara-e-Frokht [Kidney for Sale] outside a worn out tent in Bagh (a village in Pakistani Kashmir)."

Pizza pizzazz

2005-10-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

Secret of the Indian team's success?

After-match pizzas with heaps of cheese.

Link via Sight Screen.

Sex I.D.

2005-10-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

The Sex ID test is a series of visual challenges and questions used by psychologists in the BBC One television series, Secrets of the Sexes.
Here's what the test is all about:
"Get a brain sex profile and find out if you think like a man or a woman.
"See if you can gaze into someone's eyes and know what they're thinking.
"Find out why scientists are interested in the length of your fingers.
"See how your results relate to theories about brain sex."

My brain score (that is where I fall in the male-female brain continuum): Bang on zero (the score is not as bad as you think).

Picking stocks, finding duds

2005-10-28T03:19:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the stupidest reasons to buy stocks, and some of the most common too.

I must admit, I have been stupid a few times :)

When is a bubble a bubble?

2005-10-27T23:06:00.000-07:00

"Anyone who bought after you bought," suggests Erin McKean, editor in chief of the Oxford American Dictionary in Chicago, "bought in a bubble."

The New York Times blows some real estate bubbles.

It's 'sumpnspicious', better have a 'planbdextrous'!

2005-10-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

"Five hundred Washington buses and about 90 subway cars now carry advertising posters with creative dictionary definitions of made-up words urging commuters to keep an eye out for danger and respect fellow travelers on the busy "Metro" system."

Sumpnspicious is a play on the slang pronunciation of "something suspicious". It is defined as "n. (noun) unattended package or odd, unusual behavior that is reported to a bus driver, train operator ... station manager or Metro Police."

PlanBdextrous: adj. (adjective) able to plan an alternate route home in case Metro is inaccessible due to unforeseen circumstances.

Pandemic is not endemic, or an epidemic

2005-10-27T22:40:00.000-07:00

"Words have meanings. Fancy particles from Greek or Latin need to be handled with care. Otherwise verbal confusion may become pandemic."
Ruth Walker's column in Christian Science Monitor.

Turn left, turn right, dance now, says the remote to the human

2005-10-26T01:27:00.000-07:00

Bal Thackeray would love this.

From Fark