Tag: News

Ever heard of the story where Akbar asks Birbal to find the biggest fools in his kingdom? Birbal walks around looking for fools and is rewarded with a candidate on that very night. The night air is cool and the full moon is shining down benignly on the Earth below. A tranquil night, interrupted by the restless presence of one man. This man is looking agitated and is frantically searching for something in the clearing in the moonlight. Birbal asks him what he is searching for, to which the poor man wrings his hands in despair and tells him he has lost an expensive ring. Birbal asks him, “Did you lose it here?”
“No”, says the man, looking positively teary faced now, “I lost it there under the trees, but it is brighter here. So, I am looking for it here…”

I know that is one man, but is seems to me that entire regiments of armies are guilty of the same thing several centuries later.
“Which is the best hiding place in Afghanistan?”
“The deep caves in the mountainous regions..”
“Good! Don’t spare a single cave.” says the commander and the commandos comply for a full decade. The sheep, and wildlife are tired of having commandos peeping into their humble abode every night, but the poor animals have no choice. This is for a global war on terrorism – so if you think having a soldier peeping into the snow leopard’s cave at night, so be it, they tell themselves and mumble themselves back to sleep.

The best hiding places may be in the mountains, but was Osama in the mountains? No…he was watching the manhunt for him with considerable interest for a while from his mansion in a different country housed in the Army Cantonment area, and then he himself lost interest in the search for him. How long can you watch bumbling children play hide-n-seek in the wrong location?

Ah….Evolution…..

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-05-04/pakistan/29508386_1_bin-al-qaida-leader-osama

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/09/holly-thompson-cant-shut-her-mouth-after-yawning-in-class/

I feel sorry for both parties in this story.  Holly Thompson and the Professor. Holly Thompson is the poor girl who gave in to a perfectly natural impulse during a fascinating political theory class, and could not close her mouth. She yawned.While the agony she experienced is no laughing matter, it opens up other venues of thought.

The perfect treatment for insomnia. If I were a doctor, I would treat patients coming in to see me for insomnia by prescribing a course credit with Professors whose tapes I have listened to, and create a soporific index to go along with the intensity of the problem.  I once had a Mathematics professor who made my jaw bones beg for respite. This: when I thought, you couldn’t really fall asleep while solving Math problems. This Prof used a soothing technique of 0.02% voice modulation coupled with a loving stroke of his extremely pregnant looking belly in a clockwise direction for 3 minutes, followed with the anti-clockwise pat-down for another 3 minutes. Just watching that was enough. Coupled with his tone, the man was Grade-A treatment for the most severe of insomniacs.

I feel sorry for the Professor too, who thankfully has not been named in the article. But, there are few things that are more consistent than stupor inducing lectures that unite the atmospheres of college and school – the unifying factor transcending geographical and ecological barriers. In the Hall of Infamy, this poor Professor will surely have a place for making a student’s jaw drop in his class!

Blessed as some people are with droning voices, I wonder why Scientists don’t tap this simple source for warfare. You know play the lectures of a stupor star non-stop over the Kazaksthan mountain range or to diffuse the tensions in Libya? Who feels like picking up a rifle and firing when sleepy?

And that is why I am not offered the post of Defence Minister or that of a qualified doctor…. Sigh!

Man barks at dog .. gets arrested for animal harrassment

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20051029-504083.html

This news item snuck straight through to the part of my brain where the memories of my college life reside. I don’t know if any of you have taken the subject titled ‘Software Engineering’. If you are considering this horrendous credit, please back off now. Pull yourself away like an arm near fire. The thing with subjects like this is that you can take an entire chapter or half a book and condense it into one diagram on half a page to prove you understood, but that would not get you marks. It was our firm belief that no examiner likes to see an answer script that runs to two pages (front-to-back) and credit you with understanding the subject. Plus you had to kill three hours in the exam hall and that can’t be done without filling your answer script with stories.

I was always okay with leaving after the first student took the brave step, but could never bring myself to leave first. It had something to do with the look that teachers reserved for you when you did this. Part disgusted, part wondering what this person would make of her life and part amused exasperation. So, I sat there prodding myself for ideas and non-existent explanations. Sometimes, inspiration would strike, and I would write ignoring the envious glances cast by my classmates and the reams of paper I was running through. It is all a performing art I tell you. The moment one bloke or blokess casts you an admiring glance to write through reams of paper, you want to surpass your previous attempts and write more.

It was one such occasion, I was sitting looking quite bored in a Software Engineering exam, and thinking of something to write, when I wrote, “Dog bites man”, is not news-worthy, but when “Man bites dog” is the title, it is news-worthy. See?! It is called ‘Philosophical Insight’ and can be cultivated with the combined effect of a stupor and a reluctance to leave the exam hall. Or maybe, some brilliant Software Engineering author wrote this shining jewel and it made an impression. Nevertheless, I took the title and spun an impressive yarn about this very thing for 5 yards and a bit.  If I were any good at drawing, I might even have drawn a dog barking like this, and explained how this does not kindle our sense of wonder, but I didn’t. I have limits.

Professors, I am sure, just feel sorry for the students having to write such muck for so long that they give marks, more out of self-pity than anything else. Think. If they don’t; they get to read our creative genius one more time. It is not as though we are going to improve the quality or quantity of our churn, so they might as well do the less painful thing and make you pass.

In any case, when I saw this news item my heart sang the song from those days, and the fact that that little bit of philosophy made it this far to CBS news is heart-warming.

Awareness is key. USA has done a good job in teaching its citizens that 911 is there for emergencies. Take this couple for instance. Nothing remarkable about them. The only thing he wanted was some cash to take his girlfriend on a date, plus a number of other items on his list that he is not in the mood to share with us. This boy chose to get the money by robbing a store. I don’t know whether he experienced any qualms about the modus operandi, but he certainly did not let those bother him on the date. On the way, their car broke down and the smart couple summoned 911, who not only helped them get their car on their way, but offered additional service by taking the boy in to ride with them free of charge to the Correction unit.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_17482691?nclick_check=1
Robbery suspects dial 911 for roadside towing assistance!

Who said the serious business of life has no sense of humour?!

I am all for a little complexity in life. After all, that is what keeps us peppy and full of zing what? But I don’t understand how the time change twice a year is useful. Complex yes, but useful no. Probably in the days of yore if I’d been an old farmer’s daughter, and the extra hour of sunshine meant the difference between having water and milk as opposed to strawberries and cream for breakfast. Now, even if you fill me up to my eyes with daylight, I am not sure I am going to gorge out on those strawberries with the oh-so-sinful cream. So why do we still go about with this bother?

Why do I sound this piqued for something this normal and predictable? Well..it is the unpredicability of it all. You know how your computers automatically fall back an hour in the fall or spring forth an hour in spring? I expected my phone to do that too. It did.

I have the alarm set for a reasonable hour every morning on weekdays and what do you think the correct time showing cell-phone did to me? It rang an hour earlier than it was supposed to. Now, I am a great snoozer eh..snooze-presser. I love hitting snooze, but even I thought an additional hour of this encumbrance can ruin the joy of the early morning snooze because as with all regular snoozes, this cell phone does not allow you to indicate the time limit in which to remind you again. So, 10 minutes later, I will be fumbling again and then again in 10 minutes afterward. Exciting as mornings go, this doesn’t appeal to me very much when the clouds of sleep are still gathering around and singing me my lullabies. So, I dismissed the alarm and set a mental alarm to get up an hour later.

Only the agile mind sprang forward an hour like an over-zealous tiger making it two hours after the alarm went off. The scramble that ensued is not for the public eye to discern and dissect while shaking their heads in dismay, and has been withheld.

One news article claims setting it to airplane mode for a while helps. I may do that, but if I forget to set it back, will it still arouse me, or assume I am travelling by airplane and my fellow passengers deserve to sleep better and flip out on me again?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110314/ap_on_hi_te/us_iphone_glitch

Time will tell ….

My college days found me staying in what roughly can be called a ‘hostel’. Only it wasn’t. It was a house that converted into shared lodgings for 30 odd girls. There is a whole saga of my life there in that hostel that would simply take up reams of space. Dining in the place was a simple problem. We had asked one of the messes nearby to bring us our food to the tin shed that doubled up as our dining hall.

I have often wondered how these eateries got the name, ‘Mess’, and it dawns on me that it is probably the mess that is all around that contributes to the name. Anyway, this particular mess that served our food was not the best, it certainly wasn’t the most hygienic. One day, as we were sitting with the sambar floating in our plates over the rice, one of my friends asked me to check whether the red chilli in the sambar looked red chilli enough. I gave her a feverish look. That day was one of the days, I was genuinely hungry and the watery sambhar even looked savory from a distance. It wasn’t as brick reddish as usual and I was rather looking forward to it. I gave her a look of disdain that was entirely lost on her. She was too busy staring into her plate. So, I joined the band of observers and it did seem a little strange that the red chilli should have sprouted little feet and arms. There were distinctly there.
“Maybe, the chilli split in that odd manner.” I said unconvincingly, only to have my co-observers give me a look of disdain. What goes around comes around I tell you.

And so it was that despite my best intentions to believe otherwise, the offender was classified as a cockroach. UGH!

In other news,Valentine’s Day is here, and the daughter is all a-twitter. I have been asked several times what I consider to be the most important day of February. There is love in the air. This time, with all the attention this day is getting in her life, I thought it a rather bright idea to see what is it that other folks were getting the loves of their lives. The roses and the chocolates I knew, but what I did not know was this….

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110211/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_valentine_cockroaches;_ylt=AqHiIYNehXxlvYRA3zuFdHvtiBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTMzc2EyY2hiBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTEwMjExL291a29lX3VrX3ZhbGVudGluZV9jb2Nrcm9hY2hlcwRwb3MDNwRzZWMDeW5fYXJ0aWNsZV9zdW1tYXJ5X2xpc3QEc2xrA3JvYWNoZXNhcmVmbw–

Here is a gift – I don’t know if any, but die-hard naturalists would consider the gift romantic, but there it is. The chance to name one of the species of cockroaches for now and ever more is the Valentine’s Day Gift.

Given that the creatures do not kindle any loving instincts in me – in fact the only images they kindle in me are those watery sambhar images, I think I’ll pass.