Category: People, Places & Friends
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Babies and cute animals sell products. Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona set out to take that marketing ploy a bit too far, in fact nauseatingly so. During last Saturday's debate on health care reform, he used an infant like a ventriloquist's dummy to make his case against publicly funded medical insurance. Even by the low standards of honesty and decency set by the Republicans, Rep Shadegg's exploitative grandstanding was…
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It was a small volume tossed carelessly in with the rest of the frayed spines on the Public Library bookshelf : "Love of Seven Dolls" by Paul Gallico.He was one of my favorite authors as a teen, and this was one book that intrigued me, with a faded rendition of a full-skirted girl looking at…
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The taxi winds around the narrow maze of roads leading up to the fort. It's a very democratic cross-section of the population that lines up to enter the grounds: at Rs.10 per ticket, this is a poor man's park, not just the haunt of the well-heeled. The lawns near the entrance are surprisingly green, well-watered…
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Norman Borlaug died of cancer last Saturday. Despite being the recipient of numerous national and international honors, the Nobel Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal among them, through his long and productive life Borlaug remained quiet, unassuming and mostly unknown to the public. But the impact of his life's mission on the world is extraordinary. A tireless crusader against world hunger, he was better known in…
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I present here a longish excerpt from an essay by guest author Narayan Acharya (who goes by the name "narayan" in his writings). On a visit to India Narayan learnt about Elihu Yale's connections to the south Indian city of Madras (currently Chennai). He later traced Yale's footsteps from England to India and back in a book by Yale professor, Hiram Bingham. (Narayan's complete…
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A photo I took of some Uighur men, at their request, on the Southern Silk Road in Summer 2006. More photos here. Some ruminations after the break.
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RIP, Michael Jackson. ———— Buzz Aldrin wanted to be the first Moonwalker, but thwarted, in the final moments, by simple logistics. "In the end the decision came down to logistics. The lunar landing craft's hatch was located on Armstrong's side. It would have too cumbersome, and perhaps even dangerous, for Aldrin to have climbed over…
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From the Indychannel: Patrick Roth uses a fully electric car to take his daughter to school and run errands, 6News' Jennifer Carmack reported.The car may look like any ordinary Ford Escort, but a closer look reveals that it's anything but. Roth didn't buy the car that way. He built it himself Here's a step by…
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Long time reader and family friend, Jatinder Bhatia has sent me the link to an upcoming Math-Art exhibition in Washington D.C. (Dean, don't throw up your hands yet!) The interesting thing about the exhibition seems to be that the mathematically inclined artists have deliberately expressed math concepts as "real' art. While most of the pieces are two or three dimensional visual depictions, I…
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why Barack Obama decided to announce that his middle name was Steve in the Alfred E. Smith dinner. Could this be a reason why? Maybe not, but it would be fun if it were. "NCSE's "Project Steve" is a tongue-in-cheek parody of a long-standing creationist tradition of amassing lists of "scientists who doubt evolution" or…
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