{ Monthly Archives }
Recently saw this PBS production detailing the landmark Dover trial in which evolution and intelligent design battled each other. A really well-made documentary, and a fascinating story both for the human and legal interest.
Convincing a conservative judge appointed by George Bush to rule that Intelligent Design is not science and shouldn’t be taught in science classes is no mean task!
You can watch the thing online here.
So I’m in the queue at the Indian food stall in the canteen during lunchtime when this scenario unfolds. A couple of girls up ahead in the queue are chattering ecstatically, as girls are wont to do when a friend of theirs comes and stands right behind me. There was the usual wave of delightful glee and the torturous over-extending of the word “Hiiiiii” in chorus; I’m referring to the kind that must have convinced the apes to evolve away from humankind.
Then the inevtiable happened. The ladies up ahead made a tiny gesture of come-join-us with a perfectly matched roll of the eyes. People who invite other people behind the queue do so in complete confidence. Complete confidence that if someone’s caught and humiliated, it won’t be them. The response of the invitee, however, varies with queue-cutting skills and experience. Real experts can simply melt away from the back of the queue and smoothly appear in front in a process thats similar to gaseous diffusion and is still being examined by many scientists.
The dame behind me, however, after a hesitant glance left and right (I’ve no idea why, all the queue members were in front) shook her head no, and mouthed in a very low voice, “Log maarenge!” I was impressed. And wondered what other things she learned at her mother’s knee. For about twenty seconds.
So our hitherto courteous lady tells her friends surreptitiously in Hindi to just order an extra plate for her. A tactful gesture, assuming nobody figures out what she’s saying. Unfortunately, while this is Singapore with a dominant Chinese-speaking population, the queue is in front of a North Indian stall. All of this becomes irrelevant, however, as soon as this plan is given swift approval in the committee and the question of whats to be ordered crops up. At which point our heroine taps me on the shoulder, asks me to please keep her place in the queue (in English), and moves right up to the stall for the special preview of the chef’s recommendation. Returning, she helpfully translates terms like “chicken”, and “egg” into Hindi and shouts out her order to the co-conspirators in this subtle deception. An order which subsequently gets changed only twice as the lead implementers move up to the front.
By this time everyone in the queue is either trying to hide their smiles or their scorn, depending on how their pre-lunch class went. We’re Indians, queue-cutting is built into our DNA. It’s not that which worries us. It’s just that this particular damsel was saved from being in distress only because we’re way too civilized to helpfully point out glaring errors in queue etiquette. A concern about a fellow Indian who’s clueless while cutting a queue. A concern which only deepens as her two friends come down the queue with three plates of food, and suddenly, she seems to have an idea. Brightly she makes a double circular gesture with her hands and says, “Why don’t I come with you gals?” and walks away leaving behind some people with a palpable mix of emotions, ranging from homesickness to amusement.
I couldn’t hear the mutters of everyone in the queue, but I did hear someone who had to be a Star Wars fan say in a low voice, “Much to learn, she still has.”
After a fighting 192, Kumar Sangakarra fell to one of those increasingly common dismissals these days - umpire error. With more than two sessions to go, the 10th wicket partnership may not last very long but isn’t short on entertainment.
101.5 Clark to Malinga, SIX, Malinga goes downtown. Full in length, Malinga moved outside leg stump and swung it over long-on!
101.4 Clark to Malinga, SIX, Hello?! Malinga has pulled a Clarke delivery over the deep backward square leg! It was dug in short, at the body, Malinga was backing away and he just short-arm jabbed it . up up and over!
101.3 Clark to Malinga, FOUR, bang! four more. Malinga pulls a short-of-length delivery over midwicket
Went to an exhibition exhibiting Andy Warhol’s works this weekend. Pretty good experience. In particular, loved the electric chair and the dollar sign series of prints.
Rediff reports:
Special judge Mohammad Shamim’s order in the matter came on a review petition filed by Rajesh Bidkar against Tendulkar, saying cutting of a ‘Tiranga cake’ by the cricketer was an insult to national pride.
Right. While the left parties band together and hold India’s international reputation to ransom with the US and IAEA, and the toothless Congress which ignores a near war-zone in Nandigram in the sole interest of pushing its own agenda; lets all focus our attention on how Sachin Tendulkar, who’s been an impeccable ambassador of India for eighteen years and counting, insulted national pride by daring to depict the Indian flag in an interesting way.
The Economist writes:
Indeed, this is the nub of the nurturists’ argument. Natural selection should have pushed intelligence genes as far as they will go, so all variation should be environmental. That it is not suggests there is some unknown countervailing advantage—at least in reproductive terms—to being less than averagely bright.
In India, we used to celebrate the 14th of November (birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru) as Children’s Day in school. It was one of the few days when wearing our uniforms was not compulsory, and instead of classes we used to have games and fun all day long. Truly the good old days.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.– Khalil Gibran
The photo is a mosaic of snaps taken from my Flickr stream.
Wishing everyone a Hapyp Diwali and joyous year ahead!
Here’s one article on rediff:
Here’s another:
Looks like our two esteemed world leaders have decided to make love, not war. The happy couple are, of course, to be applauded except that I wish they would, maybe, find a room? And no thank you, Rediff, one can do without the images.
Since the new version of GMail has rolled out, the GMailManager extension for Firefox has stopped working. I found a hack on the mozilla forum by PMDv1 which I’ve tested and it works.
find your profile folder
browse to the extensions directory
open the folder named {582195F5-92E7-40a0-A127-DB71295901D7}
open the components folder
Open “gmServiceGmail.js” in your favorite text editor (notepad)
Use the find feature to the following text: “?search=inbox&view=tl&start=0&init=1″ (without the quotes)
Append “&ui=1″ to that text (again, without the quotes)
Save the file, and then restart Firefox! It should now show your unread messages!
