Lasagna & Birdwatching?

I was just watching The Daily Show and saw a commercial for Ask Jeeves. It was interesting to say the least. Here's how it went: A bird-watcher is standing in the marshes observing what I can only assume are some very interesting birds - because why else would you be in a marsh? Of course, that's something for another post. A woman comes out with a child and says, "I need a recipe for lasagna". The bird-watcher makes a face and then ignores her. This is followed by a voice-over which says, "Don't ask a bird-watcher. Ask Jeeves." Now, I understand the point of this commercial. But is there an arcane relationship between bird-watching and lasagna of which I have been unaware all this time? Have I been kept in the dark when it comes to the one of the most boring pastimes on the planet and the-food-that-Garfield-loves ?

Speaking of the show, Alan Alda was on ! Even though it was just for 10 minutes, I found out that he has just written his memoirs - Never Have Your Dog Stuffed : And Other Things I've Learned. Oh well, another day, another book on the wish list.

They did it again !

I had forgotten all about the Booker Prize shortlist, which was supposed to come out on 8th September. I just remembered and looked it up, hoping that they had found their way to nominate Rushdie again. Of course, life is full of disappointments and therefore, no Rushdie. *sigh* Well at least, they did retain my other favorite this year - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Never you mind, Mr. Rushdie. You will always be no. 1 in my book !

But Groundhog Day was on !

That's how I excused myself the other day when what was supposed to be a 5 minute break turned into a 2 hour interlude and left 2 oh-my-god-I-need-to-read papers unread in its wake. Groundhog Day is a member of the set that I call "Black Hole Movies". They are the movies that suck you in no matter what you are doing. Once you turn the TV on, you are no longer a man of your own free will. The force of these movies is so strong that it even lasts across commercials, so you are not immune even if you are watching it on network television (Heaven help you if you are watching commercial-free television!). Now, here are some axioms about the Black Hole set:

1) There is one such set for every person on the planet.

2) If you deny the existence of such a set, you are pathetically deluded.

3) The set only grows with time.

4) As soon as you come across a movie from this set on the TV, you will experience a strong urge to put down anything that you are doing and submit to its will.

5) You will experience strong feelings of joy and giddiness after watching such a movie which will far outweigh any feelings of guilt about shirking work, if any.

6) If you actually try to use this set as an excuse to another person (esp. a superior), you will be ridiculed and laughed out of the room.

7) There is no requirement that all movies in this set be good movies. Some movies may derive their force from the atrocity of their scripts.

8) If you record yourself watching a black hole movie and play it back in reverse while you are standing on your head wearing a one-sleeved shirt, you will hear the words "resistance is futile" over and over.

I will now reveal to you some members of my black hole set. Judge not lest ye shall be judged. Groundhog Day, Godzilla, Jeepers Creepers 2, One Fine Day, Army of Darkness, Scent of a Woman, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Agneepath, The LOTR Trilogy, The Die Hard Trilogy.

[ P.S.- Yes, I do not have a social life. Thanks for asking. ]

Rushdie Rocks !!

So I have been really busy lately since these are the last 2 weeks of my internship and I have to present my summer research work to the whole group. So I have not had a lot of time to do other things like read or write. Of course I still have to take time out to feed this cute guy and take him for a walk:



So today I finally got to bed about half an hour early and had time to resume my re-read of Rushdie's Satanic Verses. I had first read it back in junior year of college and I have always been in awe of it. Now, before I get accused of supporting an anti-Islamic agenda, let me make it clear that I am one of those people who can appreciate a work of art without attaching any religious connotations to it. I watched The Passion of The Christ and I thought it was an excellent movie. A movie, that's it - not anti-Semitic pro-Catholic propaganda as it is claimed to be. Whatever Gibson's intentions might have been, I still see it as a piece of entertainment and therefore treat it as such. Same with Verses - it is fiction.

Phew, that was a long disclaimer. Where was I? Oh yeah, I was going to describe how much Rushdie rocks as an author! Well ... a lot! For those of you unfamiliar with Rushdie, here are a few pointers:

1) He was born in India but raised in the UK. He is British by nationality.

2) He won the Booker Prize in 1981 for Midnight's Children (my all time favorite book). The same book then won the Booker Of Bookers' Prize in 1993 for being the best work in fiction to have won the Booker in its first 25 years. He was nominated 3 more times for Shame, Satanic Verses and The Moor's Last Sigh but did not win. (A gross oversight, as I like to claim).

3) He has been longlisted for this year's Booker as well for Shalimar The Clown (which yours truly has already pre-ordered, of course. It comes out in September.)

Yes, I am aware that I am gushing like a school girl but when it comes to authors like Rushdie (or Ishiguro, Morrison, Desai and countless others), the gushing is pretty much involuntary. Here's a little excerpt from Satanic Verses:

"They hadn't been getting along lately.
He told himself that afterwards, but not during.

Afterwards, he told himself, we were on the rocks, may be it was the missing babies, may be we grew away from each other, may be this, may be that.

During, he looked away from all the strain, all the scratchiness,, all the fights that never got going, he closed his eyes and waited until her smile came back. He allowed himself to believe in that smile, that brilliant counterfeit of joy."

It's passages like these that make me glad I became a reading nerd.

[ BTW, the canine's name is Java. He belongs to my landlady. I apologize if the pic is not very good. I took it with my new cellphone (flash warning). Don't you just love shameless self-promotions ?! ]

InfoVis/Flash Excellence !

I was never a big fan of Flash but that's probably because Flash creativity was not as prevalent as it is now. The Flickr Tag Browser is an excellent example of good Flash and an even better example of Information Visualization. I should make sure and get this added to the InfoVis Collection that our class created back in Spring'05.

Man, this is addictive ! Oh, BTW, if you are not familiar with Flickr ... where ya been ?

Haiku

I have recently been bitten by the Haiku bug. They are amazing little things, aren't they? Here are the 3 that I wrote very recently. The last one is sort of a riddle. Try and guess if you can.

Broken heart yonder.
Life is empty and devoid,
Love does not answer.

War lives once again.
Death rides naked and merciless,
Men turn a deaf ear.

Intruder Alert.
Greek tragedy replayed.
Blue death imminent.

My favorite modern Haiku of all time is the one that won Salon.com's Haiku Computer Error Message contest:

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

Positively Brilliant !!

Slashdot + Microsoft Windows = Hilarity

All right, so I don't need a lot of convincing to grant you that the Slashdot crowd is not a big fan of Microsoft, especially that infernal piece of software they call an Operating System*. The latest story there is "Getting a handle on Vista" - discussing the features of the Microsoft Vista, Microsoft's new OS that they plan to release in late 2006. One of these "features" is, and I quote a Microsoft executive here, "reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted".

I could stop here because the humor inherent in that statement itself is sufficient to prove the equation in the title correct. I won't.

A poster on Slashdot commented that Microsoft made similar claims about Windows 2000 when it advertised it as "only having 7 events that would necessitate a reboot". The person (blessed with an amazing sense of humor) who replied to that post said:

it does only have seven events that necessitate a reboot:

1. Installing anything
2. Uninstalling anything
3. Being connected to a network
4. Not being connected to a network
5. Running an application
6. Not running an application
7. Starting up

I have not laughed this hard since ... since ... um ... for a long time !

* Didn't I mention it? I'm one of the Slashdot crowd !

Bloglash be damned !

Apparently this gentleman is upset with blogs. Very upset. Very very upset. He says a blogger is "anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives." Never thought I would be described as narcissistic. Ah well ... another day, another discovery.

Oh, and speaking of tedious bit of minutia, I have to say that I am loving watching the old seasons of Frasier. Buying that six-season pack was a very good decision. As I have said over and over again on my instrument of narcissistic self-expression, Wit rules. And you know what ? So does Sarcasm.

Take that, Mr. Angry Man !

I have the tickets !

Alright ... so I just bought the tickets for Glengarry Glen Ross from BroadwayOffers.com and got a pretty good deal I think ($78 vs $115 full price). They are for the 2 pm show next Saturday (7/30). I am pretty excited and nervous at the same time. I will get to see Alan Alda in person and may be get an autograph as well. Let's see how it goes.

Perhaps...

The world abounds with men and women,
wielding pens mightier and wiser than mine.
Their written word emotes life itself,
while I produce that which is mediocrity defined.

Day after day I struggle to find words with voice,
while They speak the language that transcends all that is man-made.
It is They who are read and revered,
and They who are remembered even when men's memories begin to fade.

Think not that I wish ill of them,
or even envy them their skill.
Respect and awe I bestow upon their work,
and some hope that inspiration be instilled.

Perhaps the future holds promise,
perchance the days will come.
I shall find the golden words that elude me now,
and, God willing, even be read by some.

Throw out that PC [not] !!

Just read on Slashdot that there is an NYTimes article [registration reqd. for reading] that talks about how certain people have developed a new response to the growing problem of Spyware - throw out your PC and buy a new one !! Absolutely outrageous ! By doing this, you don't do anything except indirectly give Microsoft an incentive to not fix this problem. Any new PC you buy will fetch it more profits from the licensing fee of another copy of Windows.

One of the people mentioned in the articles holds a PhD in Computer Science, no less! This is sort of disappointing because rather than actually get at the root cause of their problem, people think that just buying a new computer will solve it ! Of course it would arise again if you do not change your habits.

Let me reiterate a couple things that have been mentioned over and over again in conjunction with the Spyware issue:

1) Do not use Internet Explorer : I cannot stress this enough ! Most exploits are written for IE and you should use Mozilla Firefox - much safer.

2) Change your browsing habits : Do not just blindly click "Yes" or "OK" to any pop-up dialog or window that asks you a question. Try to understand the question that it's asking you. If you do not understand it, then better to be safe and click "No" or "Cancel". Do not click on advertisements or flash banners on websites no matter how enticing their message !

3) Another cannot-stress-enough-er, Do not open email attachments !

BTW, if you do decide to get rid of your PC, please seriously consider getting an Apple Mac Mini or an iMac. The Mac Mini is very affordable (~$500) and will work with your existing keyboard, monitor and mouse. Apple's operating system is based on UNIX and has no spyware problems at all.

Mr. Alan Alda

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but Alan Alda is my favorite actor. I first came across him as Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce in the incomparable TV show M*A*S*H. He superb acting, as well as directing, garnered him a flabbergasting 21 Emmy nominations and 5 wins during the 11-year lifetime of the show. And then he did the brilliant science show Frontiers, in collaboration with Scientific American. And then there was the fantastic ER episode - The Peace of Wild Things [the eponymous Wendell Berry poem], for which he was nominated for yet another Emmy. Then, of course, there was the Oscar-nominated performance for The Aviator - which brings me to the actual point of this post (other than fawning over Mr. Alda).

I just found out that he has been nominated for a "best supporting actor" Emmy for his work in West Wing and caught a brief sound bite of him saying something to the effect of "Has there been someone before who has actually lost all 3 in the same year ?" And then it hit me ... he has been nominated for an Oscar, a Tony - for the broadway resurrection of David Mamet's glorious Glengarry Glen Ross. which I will definitely be catching before curtains go down in late August and I head back to MD - and, now, an Emmy. My question is - "Has someone been nominated for all 3 in the same year before ?"

Anyway, I really really hope that he wins.

[ PS: I only mention an iota of the work that Mr. Alda did between M*A*S*H and The Aviator. ]

Finally, Monsieur Poirot !

I have finally been able to crack the mystery before Poirot solves it in the episode. I shall always remember "The Spanish Chest", Episode 12. That is good news, n'est pas ?

Museum of Ancient Inventions

Found a link to the remarkable Virtual Museum of Ancient Inventions. Things invented by those distant civilizations without which modern life would pretty much not exist. Don't believe me? Let's peruse the exhibit and let me try to convince you of the veracity of the above statement:

1) What do we have first? Ah, yes ... the Woven Cloth from 7000 BC. Wouldn't be very social without this, would we?

2) Potter's Wheel, Egypt, 2400 BC : You know why civilization would have ended without this invention? Other than the fact that we would still be spilling more than drinking, the coasters would never have been invented. The Horror !!

3) Candles, Rome, 500 BC. "Quick ... honey ... this matchstick is about to go out. Light another one. Damn these power cuts !! If only someone could have invented ... something made out of wax that keeps burning for a long time".

4) Arches, Rome, 500 BC. Invented for a more practical purpose - supporting massive aqueducts that carried huge amounts of water from the mountains into the city - arches have found their way into almost every form of architecture known to man.

5) Stone-hurling Catapult, Greece, 400 BC. This one I can live without. A weapon is a weapon is a weapon.

6) Battery, Baghdad, 250 BC. Come on? It's not obvious?

7) Compass, China, 220 BC. "Always getting lost? Never getting where you want to be? Try this amazing new invention - the South Pointer, or as people will call it later, the Compass !"

8) Steam Engine, Alexandria, 100 AD. And here we were, giving James Watt all the credit ! I am sure he has no problems sharing !

9) Abacus, Russia & Japan, Date Unknown. If we didn't have this ... you wouldn't know whether this is item number 9 or 45.

Lots more where that came from. Do visit the museum itself.

World Monument Fund Watch 2006

I was just reading on the always-informative MetaFilter, that the World Monument Fund has released its 2006 Endangered Monuments List. As the post says, the WMF has taken the unprecedented step of putting the entire country of Iraq on the list. Of course, for those of you not familiar with Iraq, historically known as Mesopotamia. it was the seat of some of the most ancient and advanced civilizations. Read more about that here.

Personally, I just wanted to see if there was anything in India that was on this watch list. Lo and behold, there are actually 8 in the entire Indian subcontinent and 4 in India itself ! These are:

* Watson's Hotel in Bombay : The earliest surviving example of cast-iron architecture from colonial India, built around 1869.
* Dalhousie Square in Calcutta : A 2 square KM area in the heart of Calcutta - once the epicenter and capital of the Raj.
* Dhangkar Gompa in Himachal Pradesh : A forgotten monastery (gompa = temple) on the Indo-Tibetan border from at least 600 years old.
* Guru Lhakhang & Sumda Chung Temples in Sumda Chung : Two of the oldest (11th century) Buddhist temples used for worship to this day.

Although the conditions of all of these monuments is deplorable - and points to the relatively scant attention that the Indian government pays to its historical heritage - I am particularly saddened by the situation at the Watson Hotel, because I have actually been there and seen it. Despite the complete lack of attention by the current owner and the defiling balconies, the beauty still shines through. Recently, three of the balconies collapsed and killed 1 person. I hope that this shines light on the urgency of the situation and that WMF is able to persuade the government to let the proposed restoration and conservation work go through.