Indiaholic

Bat Between Your Legs

2009-05-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

I never quite understood why some commentators had to comment on "the size of the bats these days" every single day. Sometimes even crediting the bat for all the shots, as if the batsman had little to no role in the whole thing. Maybe it was just a running gag, that we never caught on to:

After some ex bowler finishes with yet another analysis of modern day bats, Ravi Shastri says: "He has got quite a big bat between his legs." *Muffled laughter from the other commentator.* And i thought this was a family friendly show.

Gold

2009-05-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

haaaaaaaaaaa! aaaaaaaaaaa! Don't ya?

Eye Of A Tokay Gecko

2008-10-04T06:47:00.000-07:00

For more click here.

And now, the tentacles

2008-10-04T06:39:00.000-07:00

Does this remind you of one of those 'kaala nags' that were all the rage a few years ago?? I have not celebrated diwali since the last 4 years so dunno if they still make these things.

All we need are some tentacles

2008-10-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

If the picture of the baby when its two months old doesn't confirm panspermia, then i don't know what does.

Unspoken Communication

2008-10-04T06:21:00.000-07:00

A Gentleman's Duel

2008-09-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

Aahahahah

2008-09-22T03:51:00.000-07:00

Man Bursts Friend's Intestines By Pumping Air Up His Butthole

2007-12-05T06:44:00.000-08:00

In one of the most bizarre incidents EVER, Ramakant - a washer man working in Ahmedabad - shoved up an air filling machine's nozzle up the rectum of his friend Vivek. Why?

All for fun of course. Both of them felt that it would be very funny to see an inflated Vivek floating around the room. Things didn't go quite according to plan, and Vivek's intestines burst under the pressure.

The police have booked Ramakant for negligence. Heh.

(Source IE)

Sachin Is a Buffalo

2007-11-18T01:51:00.000-08:00

WTF:

But according to Chinese astrology, Tendulkar is also a Buffalo, a cousin of the bull — and these two systems combined make him a Double Bull.

This is from an article by Bejan Daruwala on tips to help Sachin overcome 'THE Jinx':

1.Sleep in the lap of his wife and tell her to love him sweetly and gently

2. Cook his own mutton cheese burgers and eat them

3. Have a terrific bath

4. Jump in his Ferrari and go for a drive

Brevity Rules

2007-11-16T04:31:00.000-08:00

Via Megan:

The government can't fix society for the same reason that you can't remove your own appendix.

Milton Friedman on Greed

2007-11-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks

2007-11-10T04:53:00.001-08:00

Click on the image to enlarge.

I did check the url, there are no pop ups by default but when you click on any of the pics to enlarge them a war starts between the javascript and Firefox's pop up blocker. Lovely.

Excruciating

2007-11-10T02:57:00.000-08:00

Mohammed Hanif on probably the most excruciating speech ever made by a dictator:

But obviously, uncle didn't need any prompting. He launched into his routine about three stages of democracy. He claimed he was about to launch the third and final phase of democracy (the way he said it, he managed to make it sound like the Final Solution). And just when you thought he was about to make his point, he took an abrupt turn and plunged into a deep pool of self pity.

This involved a long-winded anecdote about how the Supreme Court judges would rather attend a colleagues' daughter's wedding rather than just get it over with and decide that he is a constitutional President.

As I said, I have heard some dictator speeches in my life, but nobody has gone so far as to mention someone's daughter's wedding for imposing martial law in the country.

I never expected Musharaff to explain his decision. And no, its not because he couldn't think of any good reasons - after all, you can rationalize pretty much anything - but because it was so obviously done to save his ass that any other explanation would have sounded false.

When you know reason is not going to work, what do you do? You turn to rhetoric. A speech full of impassioned and senseless vitriol proclaiming that the judiciary was standing in his way as he tried to eliminate the evil terrorists and single handedly save the nation was to be expected.

But speeches like those require fire. You do not whine that people aren't scared of you. You do not cry that your officers aren't immune from the law. And most importantly, you do not sound anything like Musharaff sounded on that day. You give a rallying cry to the country to follow you, their messiah. Any speech writer would have known as much. Mushi in his supreme arrogance decided to do away with him. After all, who cares about syntax when addressing their slaves? Seems like the proverbial pride before the fall. No?

(Counterpunch link via Amitava Kumar)

Relief

2007-11-04T03:48:00.000-08:00

The chances of a mass public uprising against Musharaff seemed bleak to me. As long as their 'normal' lives were not affected and they got to watch the Indo - Pak series, will the masses rise out of their collective apathy? It was while being thoroughly disheartened by my own skepticism that I read this paragraph in Musharaff's guest post:

All dancing girls in bars have been banned. Such corruption has decayed our society. True Hospitality requires that we provide certain services to visiting dignitaries. From now on I will perform lap dances for visiting dignitaries myself. Some of the girls are giving me lessons on how to provide the other services as well.

Scared of what Musharaff will do to them, the men will stop frequenting the bars and will turn into a seething mass of suppressed sexual desires. In the end, libido will prevail. There will be a mutiny and inshallah democracy will be restored.

The Vanishing Artic

2007-11-04T03:41:00.000-08:00

The Ethics Of Toys

2007-11-04T03:36:00.000-08:00

The manufacturer of a line of talking Jesus dolls gave a most astonishing reason for his decision to make a Jesus toy:

The owner of the company said he started making the doll because he was troubled by a lack of morals and ethics in toys.

Lack of morals in toys? WTF?

Breaking News: Emergency Declared

2007-11-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

Musharraf has declared emergency in Pakistan, the constitution has been suspended, the chief justice has been replaced and the other judges of the supreme court have been arrested. Communications have been cut in Islamabad and all television channels except Pakistan TV have stopped transmissions.

So It Goes...

2007-10-31T12:07:00.000-07:00

What if Aldrin and Armstrong were unable to leave the surface of the moon? Seems like they had already planned for this worst case scenario.

Ugly gets redefined in this list of the Top 10 Worst Websites You'll Wish You Hadn't Seen.

10 Best Monster Ads.

Now we can finally think about the colour of the paper clips.

2007-10-31T00:56:00.000-07:00

Priceless anecdote from Edward Luce's Inspite Of The Gods: The Strange Rise Of Modern India:

[Arun] Shourie also provided an example of the farce that sometimes results from efforts to reform a system that will go to great lengths to thwart even the smallest of changes. In April 1999, India’s ministry for steel submitted a formal query to Shourie’s ministry for administrative reforms. The grave matter, which would take almost a year to resolve and would consume the valuable time of some India’s most senior officials, was about whether civil servants should be allowed to use green or red ink , as opposed to the blue or black normally used to annotate documents. After several weeks of meetings, consultations, and memoranda, the IAS officers in Shourie’s department concluded that the matter could be resolved only by officials at the bureau of printing. Another three weeks of learned deliberation ensued before the bureau of printing returned the file to the department of administrative reform, but with the recommendation that the ministry of training and personnel be consulted. It took another three weeks for the file to reach the ministry of training, since the diligent mandarins at administrative reform needed time to consider the expertly phrased deliberations of the bureau of printing. .

And so this question of state meandered for weeks and months, in meeting after meeting through ministry, before the following Solomonic compromise was struck: ‘’Initial drafting will be done in black or blue ink. Modifications in the draft at the subsequent levels may be made in green or red ink by the offices so as to distinguish the corrections made.” said the new order. Hierarchy also has to be specified: ‘’only an officer of the level of joint secretary and above may use green or red ink in rare cases [duly set out, with appropriate caveats].” As Shourie noted: ‘’A good bureaucratic solution: discretion allowed by circumscribed!” If Franz Kafka had inserted such a story into one of his novels, critics would have accused him of going too far.

(Via Retributions)

Principles Are OK As Long As I Don't Have Anything To Do With Them

2007-10-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

In-Your-Face-Hypocrisy story of the day:
Cambodia's prime Minister said Tuesday that his adopted daughter is a lesbian and he was severing ties with her, but he urged the country not to discriminate against gays. "My adopted daughter now has a wife. I'm quite disappointed," Hun Sen said. He made the rare revelation about his closely guarded family life during a speech at a university graduation ceremony.

[Via IE. I couldn't find a link to this story.]

The Power Of Incentives

2007-10-30T00:19:00.000-07:00

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita comes up with a very interesting solution for the Israel Palestinian conflict:

Bueno de Mesquita’s answer to this dilemma, which he discussed with the former Israeli prime minister and recently elected Labor leader Ehud Barak, is a formula that guarantees mutual incentives to cooperate. “In a peaceful world, what do the Palestinians anticipate will be their main source of economic viability? Tourism. This is what their own documents say. And, of course, the Israelis make a lot of money from tourism, and that revenue is very easy to track. As a starting point requiring no trust, no mutual cooperation, I would suggest that all tourist revenue be [divided by] a fixed formula based on the current population of the region, which is roughly 40 percent Palestinian, 60 percent Israeli. The money would go automatically to each side. Now, when there is violence, tourists don’t come. So the tourist revenue is automatically responsive to the level of violence on either side for both sides. You have an accounting firm that both sides agree to, you let the U.N. do it, whatever. It’s completely self-enforcing, it requires no cooperation except the initial agreement by the Israelis that they are going to turn this part of the revenue over, on a fixed formula based on population, to some international agency, and that’s that.

Read the whole article.

(Via MR)

So It Goes...

2007-10-29T23:28:00.000-07:00

What Would Jesus Hate? iTunes, chocolate Mary sightings, Tom Cruise's Baby, Mil Gibson etc.

Thirty Illnesses, Sorted According To Whether Or Not You Can Eat The Victims.

Flirting is not just a way to convey your emotions to that special somebody, its also a technique commonly used by rogues use to hide their evil tendencies.

Dancing Condoms:

Lessons From Zappos, Radiohead And Tata Indicom

2007-10-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

Zappos: Be Human

A woman has a heartwarming experience with an online shoe retailer and writes about it. Seth Godin picks up the story and so do hundreds of other people. This is what they did:

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn't have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.
Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is.

My point is this: Did they do anything that one friend wouldn't do for another? No. And that is where the uniqueness of their act lies. They didn't treat their customer as yet another number in their registry who is to be exploited for all she is worth. They treated her as a friend, and got a customer for life. The amount of PR that they generated from this exercise is another story whole together.

Radiohead: Respect Your Customers

When customers are satisfied by your product, they will pay you gladly. You do not need to rip them off. This is the lesson that Radiohead has drilled into every bodies head. Their basic strategy was to ask the customer what their album was worth. You think its absolutely great and wanna pay 15 dollars? Sure, do it. Think its pure crap and doesn't deserve a penny? You can do that too.

If you thought that Radiohead's experiment was a colossal blunder, if you felt that people would never pay for something they could get for free then here are the figures: 1 Week, 1.2 Million Albums Sold, at $8 per album. No middlemen. Enough said.

Tata Indicom: Stupidity Has No Limits

Seriously Tata, can't you even do some damage control when you know that you are going to be featured in a T.V documentary exposing your abysmally shoddy service? But no. Never. Stupidity is what sets us apart you see:

The only lesson from Tata is to avoid being a dumbass, stories like these make or break a company's credibility. Millions spent on advertising are useless if you have jelly in your cranial cavity.

What If There Is A Difference?

2007-10-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

Jim Watson seems to have upset everybody with the statement that he was

"inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."[Link]

Fact is, the IQ test scores of blacks and whites do vary by huge amounts. The unanswered question is whether the difference is due to genes or the environment. Even if it is the environment thats responsible, Sub Saharan Africa isn't the best place for a child to develop its intellect. If we reject Watson's claims by branding them racist, then we are disregarding facts and acting like fucking retards. Something that makes you uncomfortable, isn't necessarily false.

That being said, his argument is fundamentally flawed. What has the average African's intelligence got to do with our policies towards Africa?