The Old Curiosity Shop

New year resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:21:00 +0000

Based on certain observations I have made in the last few days, I have concluded that the most common new year's resolution in the United States must be to loose weight. Yes, I know. It should be obvious based on just looking around at people and estimating their average size. But in order to implement my new year's resolution, I will tell you anyway.

These days, the only time I get to watch TV is when on the treadmill at the gym. And what channel I end up watching is entirely determined by what TV I end up standing in front of. I try for CNN but am mostly unsuccessful these days because for some reason it is only on 1 TV at my gym. So this week I have watched MSNBC, STYLE, A&E and ESPN respectively and not at the same time of the day as I go whenever I feel like it. And every time, at least 60% of commercials I saw (I only counted today, but am extrapolating for the other days I did not keep track) was for either a diet like Nutrisystem or some exercise product like the rather obnoxious looking ad for Shake Weight.

Then there is the fact that my gym is full of people that I have mentally labeled "new year resolution type". They are identified by having two or more of the following attributes: a) they ask questions like how the towel service works or where the day use lockers are, b) have long conversations about weight loss citing their own past experiences or those of others they know, c) show up wearing clothes that are decidedly uncomfortable if you are going for a primarily cardio work out which most of them do.
Let us hope for the future of the health care system that most of these people stick to their resolution!

Important first step

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:31:00 +0000

Even though this will probably not hold in the long run, the Delhi High Court's decision to rule that consensual gay sex is not criminal is a very important first step in bringing India into the 21st century in terms of civil rights. I am happy.

Good one

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:16:00 +0000

I like it! John Hodgman at the White House Radio and TV correspondents dinner...

Math Humor...

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:26:00 +0000

Credit Crisis visualized

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Sat, 23 May 2009 11:22:00 +0000

I liked this...clear and concise.

The associated web site is here.

Instant News

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:19:00 +0000

In the beginning of the Wikipedia era, I was careful to judge the reliability of the stuff I read there by looking at the attribution, and when an attribution was absent, do some googling of my own and when that fails, take that information with big pinch of salt. But over the past few years, I do this a lot less. This story is an interesting wake up call!

Today on CNN

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:57:00 +0000

Today, my day started earlier than normal. The reason being that the only way I will be able to get any physics done this week is to do it before the rest of the world wakes up [1]. So, I got hungry for lunch early and hence went for my pre-lunch treadmill run early as well. I run in front of a TV that is tuned to CNN headline news.

Today due to the odd time I ended up watching something called “Showbiz tonight” where I learn t such earth-shattering things as the fact that Kristie Alley apologized on Oprah for being fat, the bay watch dude David something got drunk (with some statement like “this gives him the opportunity to lead America by example toward taking responsibility for one’s addictions”) and some dogfighter guy whose name I did not catch is going to join PETA or something. I just have to say WTF? [2]

[1] I am part of the organizing committee of a conference that starts in a couple of weeks and I have been doing such interesting things as arranging for food, getting stationery, juggling schedules and so on…

[2] If you feel like it you can watch the videos of the first two stories here and here. Did not catch enough of the third story for a quick google.

Time 100

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Sat, 02 May 2009 11:08:00 +0000

Under the list of artists and entertainers, my man A. R. Rahman was there. I was happy. Then I looked at the list more carefully and saw that the likes of Rush Limbaugh were there on it as well. Now I am not so happy…kind of like grouping a genius and a “geniass” under one heading…

John Oliver goes to LHC

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Fri, 01 May 2009 11:00:00 +0000

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Large Hadron Collider

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

First 100 Days

Asians need simple names

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:36:00 +0000

This story makes no sense at all...But we immigrants must try and comply right? So....

My Betty Brown Approved Name is LaVerne "Lynard Skynard" Brown.
Take Betty Brown Name Generator today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Rebirth

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:59:00 +0000

This blog had been in a coma. It was not dead. Now it is regaining consciousness. Go web2.0!

The reason for the silence was that I was in a transition point in my life. I have been a post-doc for a while now and had to make the transition to getting a real job, in my case that of an Assistant Professor. I was running around making applications, and then interviewing and then agonizing till the offers started showing up then agonizing after that to pick among the different ones I had.

Now the decision is made. I am at peace. And I thought I will celebrate the peace by reactivating all of the other things in life that had been in limbo. If you are one of the people that still has this blog on your feed reader, thanks for not deleting it yet.

On Caffeine

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:31:00 +0000

Suppose you wanted to get a caffeine fix to get your day going, prolong it longer than you planned or just pep up your afternoon a bit, what do you do? Drink a cup of coffee or tea, may be some chocolate, and on really bad days may be an energy drink (think Red Bull in my case). Did you know that you could take a shower instead? Or in the winter, get your fix from your chap stick? I almost wish I was bold enough to try it!!

A R Rahman ad jingles

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:41:00 +0000

In spending time with my feedreader this afternoon, I saw this, featuring a clip from the movie Slumdog Millionaire that apparently has music composed by my man ARR. It is the first I heard of this movie. I am way behind on my Rahman listening. I was stuck on Jaane tu ya jaane na for a long time. I have just moved on to Sakkarakatti, am yet to open my Ada CD (I know, Sakkarakatti jumped the line, but it was in Tamil, so that was inevitable). And it also got me thinking that I have not yielded to my Rahmania in a while. So, I spent some time that was to be used to finish a calculation googling around for A R Rahman ad jingles that I remembered from a long time ago. Find below a few for your amusement :

1. Garden Sarees

Featuring Lisa Ray and sounding so Rahman:

2. MRF tires

I actually did not realize this was Rahman until recently actually:

3. Premier

This one is sung by Sujatha, you know the one that sang “puthu vellai mazhai” in Roja:

4. Titan

And of course the famous one that has Rahman paraphrasing Mozart for Rajiv Menon:

And finally the bonus video of anyone that made it this far down the post, Baby Rahman on Surabhi

Trigger any nostalgic memories that you want to share? Pointers to any ads that I missed (I know the leo coffee one, but it featured in an earlier post), or trivia about the ads featured here would be great too!

Religion again

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:29:00 +0000

I do not know how I missed knowing about this guy for so long...this is fun!

Amusement

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:17:00 +0000

Came across this joke recently. Should resonate with anyone that has TA'd a basic science course:

A college physics professor was explaining a concept to his class when a pre-med student interrupted him.

“Why do we have to learn this stuff?” he blurted out.

“To save lives,” the professor responded before continuing the lecture.

A few minutes later the student spoke up again. “Wait– how does physics save lives?”

The professor responded. “By keeping idiots out of medical school.”

LHC linking park

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 22:26:00 +0000

The Large Hadron Collider comes online on the 10^th and there is little else that is the topic of conversation at any place where there are more than two physicists. Higgs or no Higgs? That is the first thing we will know. And supposedly a whole lot more.

As with all else in the world, LHC has been associated with theories that tell you that the world will end when we turn the machine on. You can find out about these concerns from the horse’s mouth here. And I also came across this refutation/explanation by Sunil Mukhi (via).

If you wanted to know more about the LHC, you could try this. Or at 8pm on the history channel tomorrow there is a show on the LHC that I must have received 10 emails telling me to watch. The host of the show talks about it over at Cosmic Variance.

Or, you could watch this video I found recently…LHC rap…pretty cool I thought it was…

On names

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:43:00 +0000

A short while ago I learned from Bongo what the name “thong” means in Australia and that got me thinking about names and how contextual they are and how they have evolved in my mind. Let me take food for example, Capsicum has been replaced by green peppers, red peppers etc, lady’s finger by Okra. And peppers no longer stands for the round black things you put in pongal or molagu rasam. I have to think hard to remember what I used to call an eggplant, the word Brinjal has totally dropped out of my mind.

There used to be a time when any piece of paper whose purpose was to clean I called a tissue. Now depending on the location in my house it is present in, it has a different name, and when somebody refers to a paper napkin as tissue, I cringe. I cannot bring myself to say the word “rubber” any more. I call it the eraser, even in my mind.

What is surprising about this whole thing to me is that within a relatively short time, under complete immersion (in that to everybody else in my environment that fat purple vegetable is an eggplant), with no conscious effort, our brain adjusts and rewires so that we start thinking that way too! Adaptability thy name is the human brain?

Geeky Foxtrot

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:14:00 +0000

Reentry – 2 On Sabbaticals, superstitions and other things

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 09:28:00 +0000

It turns out I am superstitious. Before you yell at me and say “You are supposed to be a scientist damn it!”, let me explain. My poor little blog has been abandoned without any attention from me for more than two months. This is not the first such sabbatical I have taken from blogging. I have done this at various times in the past, because I fell in love with my brandy bottle, or with books or with some problem that was so all consuming that I had space in my mind for little else. And every time I come back from such a sabbatical I have a post that is so predictable that I might as well have used this to generate the post. Incidentally I tried and got this:

“Wholy smoke I just realised I have not updated this since they invented sliced bread... You would not believe how insane my life has become. Please don't abandon me!.

I am overwhelmed with sleeping my way to the top, commitments, just generally being asleep, dreaming and chancing to my employer, my day is full to overflowing from 4am to 11pm at which point I fall asleep on the couch. I am totally exhausted. but who cares.

I promise I will blog more regularly. Honestly! Don't hold your breath though, you're likely to turn blue..”

And then, I develop writer’s block and don’t blog regularly at all. And this latest sabbatical is the longest of them all. So, my superstition suggests that the fault lies in the nature of my “re-entry post”. So, this time my reentry should be different. No “Oh, I’ve been so busy”, and “Many post coming up” etc. This time, only action. First steps have been taken. Now all is going to be well from this time forward! [1]

[1] That is the comfort of a superstitious world view you know. You can make such outrageous statements and believe in it as well!

Reentry -1 Ode to my brother

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:38:00 +0000

Today is my brother’s birthday. He is a very special person to me. But, we are Indians and more than that, we are Tam Brams. So, to pick up the phone and say “I love you da” is completely unthinkable and totally unacceptable. So I am going to do something even more horrible. I am going to use this very public forum to express what should be some very private thoughts!

Dear AB baby [1],

Unlike you, I do not have any vivid memories of us together as children. If I try to think about it, I see a flash or two of unrelated things, when I was in sixth standard, you and I on our bicycles going to the shop near Adyar depot to buy a gift for our parents, and one of us (you or me?) falling of the bike at the signal, the time we went “hiking” in valparai and came back with leaches in our shoes….
I remember we fought like cats and dogs as long as we lived under the same roof. I remember thinking you were very different from me. I remember hating it when my friends would ooh and aah about how cute my brother is. But that’s it.

Today, I see that of all the people on earth, you are the one that is most similar to me. Given that we spent 24 hours of every day for 15-16 years together, I guess one should not be surprised. We have a special relationship. It is not like we tell each other everything. It is not like we do not get on each other’s nerves at all anymore. It is not like we are not sufficiently different from each other. We are, due to our respective unique experiences these last 10-15 years. But somehow, you are one of the few people in my world I can pick up the phone and call irrespective of how black a mood I am in. And that my dear, makes you one of my best friends. And my life would be that much bleaker if you were not in it.

So, the bottom line is I am glad our parents choose to put in the “effort” to make you and not just stop with me!

Happy Birthday!

[1] No, my brother is not Abhishek Bachchan, though he claims to look like a Hrithik Roshan, albeit with a Marathoner’s body, instead of the bench-press freak one.

Must see

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:50:00 +0000

Absolutely, no holds bar must see...

The Happening

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:23:00 +0000

I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening this weekend. I watched it on the top floor of a suburban shopping mall near where I live. I came out of the theatre, came to the ledge across from the concession stand and happened to look down. There was a clear drop to the basement, may be 80 feet. I wanted to throw myself down it. May be the movie is kind of like an Escher painting, and the people in it are killing themselves because they just watched the movie themselves. May be.

And I was expecting to like the movie. I am a simple minded person when it comes to movies. I am easily pleased. I liked Om Shanti Om, for crying out loud! And I like Mr. Shyamalan. I have not seen “Praying with Anger”, his first film. But I saw “Wide Awake”, a movie in the exact same format of the “Sixth Sense”, a kind of precursor to the things to come. Of course, like most of the rest of humanity, I watched and was blown away by the Sixth Sense. And then came “Unbreakable”. I liked the John Mclane styled Bruce Willis and the comic book styled message that Nature is usually such that it produces both extremes of any parameter space. Nothing to be blown way by, but I was happy.

Then came the Shyamalan movie that I like best, “Signs”. The thing in the movie about two possible world views, a) everything is just a sequence of random events versus b) everything is part of a grand preordained plan, resonated with me. And the way the dilemma was resolved for Mel Gibson was beautiful. I don’t agree with the conclusion, but I liked it. And of course Joaquin Phoenix and the little Ms Sunshine Abigail Breslin were so good in it.

And then started the plummet down. “The Village” was alright I think. I remember not being bored during the movie. But that’s about it. I can’t remember anything else, apart from facts like “The Happy Days”-kid-turned-director-of-beautiful-mind’s daughter was the heroine or some such trivia. Unmemorable but not bad, for my unsophisticated tastes. But Lady in the Water? What the heck was that about? It left me irritated. And now this, The Happening leaving me with the feeling that I should kill myself for having spent 7 dollars and 2 hours of my life on it. May be its time Mr. Shyamalan stopped making movies. Or may be its time I stopped watching them. May be.

Hindi movie synopsis : Netflix IShtyle

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:40:00 +0000

I recently saw Sanjay Leela Bansali’s “Black” again as my mother had not seen it and I used it as a way to keep her engaged (do you know how hard a task that is? No no, not watching black but rather keeping my mother engaged. I don’t want to crib about it for if I start I cannot stop). I myself had actually seen the movie whenever it came out back in Florida, back in grad-school, back in a different place in life somehow. This was the synopsis that the netflix DVD sleeve carried (parenthetic comments are mine):

“Michelle McNally is a deaf and blind young girl who's trying to survive in an often harsh world while hoping to determine why she was dealt such a cruel hand (she was deaf and blind and did not yet know what words were, but yeah she was contemplating ). When jaded and stubborn teacher Debraj Sahai enters Michelle's life, it's for entirely selfish reasons on his part (huh?). Unexpectedly, however, the two end up forging a lasting bond, as Debraj works tirelessly to bring light and knowledge (can we get more bombastic) into Michelle's wounded but boundless heart.”

(and no mention of the one useful statement that could have been made – scene by scene line by line the screen adaptation of the Miracle Worker that came out in 1962 + SJB’s imagination leading to additions of a) the bull shit sign (if you do not remember what that was, you can watch it here, about 12 minutes into the video), b) Michele falling in love with Debraj c) life comes a full circle d) loads and loads of melodrama)

I just cannot help but say WTF? And this is pretty standard when they write synopsis for foreign movies. Don’t you think? Here are a couple of more examples that I found on the site while browsing for Hindi movies to rent for my mother. I am sure you know what the movies are:

“In this drama based on a real-life incident, Roja (Madhoo), a girl from a small Indian village, meets and falls in love with computer expert Rishi (Arvind Swamy). Soon after they marry, Rishi and Roja travel to Kashmir and are kidnapped by terrorists en route. As the couple struggles to escape the terrorists' clutches, their love grows deeper. Rishi is then abducted and held for ransom by a group of militants seeking an independent Kashmir.”
“Shahrukh Khan and Kajol sparkle in a film that redefined romance for young Indians. Raj (Khan) is blessed with charm, good looks and money, but when he meets Kajol on a European train, he's instantly smitten. She feels the same, but can they surmount the wishes of their respective families, who have already arranged their marriages … to different spouses?”

I think I almost found a new source of amusement! Or may be a job opportunity for a desi movie buff like me?

Frying our brains apparently

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:58:00 +0000

Unless cell phones emit some particular frequency that is in resonance with some crucial mode in the corn, I think this is BS. Do watch and tell me what you think. And if you google, there are a whole number of people doing this experiment apparently.

Proof of Life

noreply@blogger.com (CuriousCat) — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:10:00 +0000

The Meg-Ryan-her irrelevant husband guy-Russell-Crowe movie?

No no, proof of my life and the life of this blog.

So why this long holiday?

Too many people in the real life (mom visiting from India and complaining about everything, brother visiting my mom visiting from India and complaining about my mom complaining about everything). Plus many things happening physics wise.

When can a rejenuvation in terms of regular posts be expected?

Starting now (fingers crossed behind my back)

So, what else is up? Any "life universe and everything" realizations to be thrust on others who stumble here?

Well, now that the question has been asked, may be I will share just one (of the usual one an hour that I have). Do you, in your circle of friends, have this go-to person you call when you need to know where to find something, or how to get someplace? They have a near encyclopedic knowledge of what is where and where is better and so on. Well, in my circle of friends I am that person. Even if they have lived in that place longer, I usually end up knowing more. Now, why am I saying all this? I have lived in a couple of different places in the US since I have been here. And as I stated earlier I do know these places well as my friends will attest for you. Now, in the decade or so I have been in the US, I have never once been stopped to be asked for directions by anyone (only exception being on campus).

Then, I recently went back to Madras, a place I used to know like the back of my hand. But I found it so changed that I did not know up from down. Naturally, given my tendency, I was insecure like crazy. Still, I got stopped on the streets to be asked for directions to places that I had not ever heard of, at least half a dozen times.

So here is my realization together with its caveat. If this is not just an artifact of Madras having way more people than in the places in the US I have lived in, then this must be what people call belonging. What do you say?

Ok enough realizations, what about science posts?

Coming up shortly. Cross my heart and hope to die if I lie and so on.