Thank god u didn't get this in one of those chain mails

Stuff that struck me over the past few days:
* Barrack Obama will have to beat Sarah Palin not McCain to be President.
* Pune may be the safest metro in India right now. Especially if your Christian.
* The human capacity for forgiveness is vast. Only outdone by human capacity for meanness.
* Ray Charles and Willie Nelson singing Seven Spanish Angels can make me cry (not because they are bad, of course).
* If I am truly free, it also means that I am truly dead.
* It’s good to get drunk after a long dry spell.

Moral of the deal

Tony Blair, former Brit PM begins teaching a course on ‘Faith and Globalisation’ at Yale this week. The need for that course came in the wake of 9/11 and the realization that what people believe cannot be separated from the way they will react to even the smallest ripple effect of globalisation.
I wonder why, in the wake of the economic crisis, no one is speaking about Morality and Economics, or Value-based Business Practice? It is clear that greed and an unhealthy focus on bottomline has caused the present financial catastrophe. Now, who is going to bell this cat?

A WTF moment

I just had a WTF moment. A colleague, who I have the greatest respect for in terms of domain knowledge, but who, frankly cannot speak or write English better than me, pointed out a grammatical mistake involving a ‘transient verb.’ Right enough, I went WTF! Mind you, this guy cannot speak better than me, or write, but ‘knows’ the English language more than I will ever care to.
I promptly went to Google and have since added to my repertoire the understanding of the transient verb. Whether I will be able to recognize one now remains to be seen.

Butterfly effect

I’ve always been fascinated by the adage - ‘When a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa there is an earthquake in Japan’. The cosmic unity of all things living is something that resounds deep within my being. However, I now notice the same phenomenon in the financial markets of the world. If Chuck in Texas defaults on his mortgage payment, stock markets in the Gulf lose $39 billion, and 5,000 people in India lose their jobs and so on and so forth. With amazement I have watched the world economy unravel to the butterfly effect of the subprime crisis.

Bumbling and overzealous

The standard of TV journalism in India continues to appall me. Rajdeep is too loud, Barkha too opinionated, but even the second rung sucks. Nidhi Razdan reporting from Vienna on the nuke deal says, on air: ‘Countries (represented there) are frantically communicating with their leaders back home. They are communicating via email and phone… and even fax.”
What kind of journo thinks modes of communication are information. Thank-god homing pigeons are outdated and telepathy is not yet proven. TV journalism and viewers in India are like adoloscents on their first date. Bumbling and overzealous. I hope both grow fast.

What's good for the goose....

I’m still undecided on whether it’s a good or bad thing for Premiership clubs to be sold like cattle to the highest bidders. No, not high-class hookers (or gigolos), that’s the players. Most UK commentators are incensed by the presence of Russians, Icelanders, Americans and now Arabs, as owners of very old traditional English clubs. ‘It’s like watching fantasy football being played with real players and real money’, fumed one Brit hack. Why take your sport to a global audience if you did not want real interest in it? Where is the fine line between nationalism and globalization?

Literary exercise

Indulge me in a little literary exercise. It involves a four-letter word that starts with ‘f’, ends with ‘k’, and is not ‘fork’.
The idea is to insert the word in every three-syllable word you use, for a day. Of course, you can, and will probably have to use the word in its verb or adverbial form. So, for ex-f***ing-ample, you need to be in-f***ing-volved with the language to know enough words with three syl-a-f***ing-bbles for this to work. After about half a day you almost expect Guy Ritchie to come out from somewhere and shout cut!

Oh God!

If you’re a creationist then you should be running scared. The Large Hadron Collider will be switched on tomorrow and 80 scientists from 40 countries will be looking for the Higgs Bosun particle – or as they call it, the God particle. They are trying to recreate the circumstances that may have caused the Big Bang and therefore, take us a step closer to figuring out how we all got here.
So, is God in danger? Will proof emerge that God does not exist? I have implicit faith in the existence of God... and in the facts of science.

Ass-kissing nuclear power

India’s entry to the nuclear club gives me bragging rights. However, it’s a classic case of how we are still slaves to the Western (US, largely) perspective. When I ask the average person whether s/he is comfortable with Iran’s nuke programme, the answer is no. So why should anyone be comfy with India’s? Because we are more non-violent than the Iranians? Bull shit. It’s because we have been kneaded and brainwashed into being a Western lackey. Our new nuke status should have tremendous civilian benefits. But make no mistake. We kissed ass to get it. The Iranians have not.

Rooney, the playmaker

We all love Wayne Rooney (and we all do, you just don’t know it yet)? Not merely because he plays for Manchester United. No, because he is an ordinary bloke who can play amazing football. The magic thing about an ordinary person who can do special stuff, is it fills us all with hope. And that’s why Rooney bulldozing through defences was considered a sight of beauty and amazing grace. Then, he stopped scoring. He still created chances and set-up goals, but he just didn’t bang them in like we expected him to. Is Wayne Rooney actually a playmaker?

Eating healthy is eating costly

Unhealthy, tasty food is easier to find, and cheaper, than healthy food. Living on my own right now, and not knowing how to cook, is costing me an arm and a leg, apart from proving to be a logistics nightmare, to eat healthy.
Before I embarked on this journey to stay alive, I never spent more than a minute on deciding what to order. But, try getting a West One Chicken Salad delivered. Besides, I can get a biryani, loaded with half a goat, for half the cost of a bed of lettuce with a dead fish on it.

Na-no, Na-now

I have watched with gret pride and interest the development of Ratan Tata’s Nano. I have reserved judgement for sometime, because nationalistic fervour is hard to douse. However, I think it’s time to say that with a global perspective of the single most element that will determine the future of humans in the next 50 years –environment – the Nano is a decade too late. Flooding the Indian market with Nanos, their meeting fuel emission norms notwithstanding, will do no good for the climate. What we need now is the Nano that does not run on gas. Latest by 2010.

Cut the bullshit

I am a functional alcoholic and drug addict. I’ve kept them at bay for some time now. It may seem like I’m bragging, but you need to only speak to those close to me to know the devastation that stuff like this can bring. My point of flashing my dirty laundry in public, is to stress the chasm between tolerance for bullshit and no tolerance, that I feel. When high, my tolerance for crap is very high. When sober, especially over a period of time, I just can’t handle bullshit. However, there is some value to shooting the breeze.

The amazing US presidential race

America’s first black presidential candidate beat a white woman to win the ticket. He will now race-off against a former prisoner of war. The PoW picked a gun-loving mother of five as his running mate. Seems to me Obama’s man for VP who only has - underwent lifesaving surgery to correct two brain aneurysms – on his resume, may be the weakest link in this surreal drama of politics.
No scriptwriter could have come up with this thick a plot. And just when you thought it could’nt get any more human, Palin’s daughter is pregnant, at 17, out of wedlock.