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Category Archives: fun

Melon picking wisdom

As Boromir would have put it, one does not simply pick fruit at the Palo Alto farmers market. This is a city in which the average denizen’s fitness would put most fiddles to shame; a town with more yoga studios per square mile than banks in Manhattan. If you’re a Starbucks barista here, you better […]

Recipe for a great start to summer

1 sunny weekend afternoon 1 portable grill 4 stalks of fresh corn 1 significant other for making pomegranate-blueberry-banana smoothies 2 garden chairs 1 copy of the latest New Yorker and, most importantly… 0 mails from co-workers.

FBPNN: Routine enquiry yields seminal body of scientific work

In the myth-shrouded history of medieval England, a single apple’s fall moved Isaac Newton to discover the well known theory of gravity. In an understandable, if not excusable, pursuit of this process, the Indian administration decided long ago to on its Controlled Ordering of Vacuous Enquiries to Really Understand Phenomena (COVERUP) policy. In India, whenever […]

The reticent cabbage cutter

Cooking for yourself can be addictive. It’s easy after a while, doesn’t force you to think every day about finding food, makes you crave simple food if you’ve eaten out too much, but most of all it makes you do crazy things at times. Yesterday I was feeling mighty adventurous and in the mood for […]

Thinking outside the slice

So this morning I was told by someone that they had a slice of bread and half a slice of cheese for breakfast. Half a slice of cheese. I don’t know about you, but this novel idea left me dumbstruck. Maybe its because I’m a computer scientist and I tend to discretize everything; or maybe […]

FBPNN: Steve Bucknor to win Medal

Yesterday evening, the nation of India watched yet another display of Just In Time Harakiri™ from their cricket team. The fans’ anger, however, was partly directed at the game’s referees, whose actions a viewer mailed in and charitably described as mentally retarded. Indian authorities and fans have complained bitterly not only to the ICC, but […]

Lunch queue

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 […]

Now we know

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.

Happy Children’s Day

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 […]

Bush and Mush: International intrigue

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.