Wah! Wah! Girls

Don't hold your breath, grandpa, this post ain't about girls, girls, girls :)

It is about a musical that is playing in London, which the Guardian doesn't care for much:

You could translate "wah! wah!" – how some Indian audiences express their pleasure at a performance – as "bravo!". Sadly, there's far more woe than wah in this feeble attempt to create a British Bollywood musical, which seems to owe more to a dull episode of EastEnders than it does to rich traditions elsewhere. The costumes often have a bright, jewelled swagger, but the rest of Keith Khan's designs, including what appears to be a papier-mache red London bus, look cheap and tacky, as if the budget had unexpectedly run out.

Ouch!

And the review ends with this line:

there is not a single song you'd come out singing.

Must have sucked big time, eh!



The music that the above video begins with is one of my favorite fun-songs-videos--the colors, the tune, the beat, ... I haven't watched this movie.  Early on during my graduate schooling days, one of the visits back to India, this song was the rage then and seemed like I could never go five minutes before somebody somewhere cranked it all over again... here is that movie original:



Anyway, hey, grandpa, that Elvis movie that you had in mind, featured this awesome piece:



It is crazy to think that "Return to Sender" was in 1962, and the Beatles appeared in the Ed Sullivan Show only slightly more than a year later.  Yet, the two come across as from two different generations!

With the girls theme, here is one of my favorite Beatles number:



Well, I might as well wrap up this post by looping back to India, with the Beatles; happy listening!

Gosling and me. It happened, again!

When I blogged this a month ago, I noted how it didn't occur to me then to take a photo.

Well, sometimes, I learn from experience.

So, hey, I shot the birds :)

You happy now? :)

No money. Will travel. Donations accepted!

It has been a while since "B" swung by my office.  It is always a delight to chat with this student, who is rapidly transitioning to serious adulthood.  As we talked, she asked, "this summer, are you going to Ecuador or any other crazy place like that?"

I wish!

I so wish :(

What a wonderful experience that was!  A week in an "elevated" mood, taking in sights, sounds, and smells that were so far away from my regular life.  And, yet, so many seemed so familiar too.  A sense of "strangely familiar" that echoed yet again, in a different way, when I later spent a hundred days in India.

Thanks to "B" here I am reminiscing about Ecuador, and thinking that bizcochos will go well with a cappuccino :(

Sadder is the realization that with so many other places in the world that I want to visit, I might never return to Ecuador.  As I warn students, being infected with the travel bug simultaneously leads to pain and pleasure.

Talking trash. No, it is not about university faculty :)

This map from the Economist is three days late as far as I am concerned; I could have made wonderful use of it in my intro class on Monday!

In the US, we are one heck of a consuming population that generates so much trash!

Meanwhile, this report (ht) argues that we are getting ever so close to an ecological tipping point:

In a paper published in today's edition of the journal Nature, 22 researchers from a variety of fields liken the human impact to global events eons ago that caused mass extinctions, permanently altering Earth's biosphere.
"Humans are now forcing another such transition, with the potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience," wrote the authors, who are from the U.S., Europe, Canada and South America.
If current trends continue — exploding global population, rapidly rising temperatures and the clearance of more than 40% of Earth's surface for urban development or agriculture — the planet could reach a tipping point, they say.
"The net effects of what we're causing could actually be equivalent to an asteroid striking the Earth in a worst-case scenario," the paper's lead author, Anthony Barnosky, a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley, said in an interview. "I don't want to sound like Armageddon. I think the point to be made is that if we just ignore all the warning signs of how we're changing the Earth, the scenario of losses of biodiversity — 75% or more — is not an outlandish scenario at all."
Global population just passed 7 billion and is expected to reach 9.3 billion or more by 2050. "By the year 2070, we'll live in a hotter world than it's been since humans evolved as a species," Barnosky said.

 Party like it is 2025!

A "sweet" cupcake ending to the term :)

Every term turns out to be unique it is own way.  The neatest aspect to this term, which is nearing the end?  Students brought munchies to class. ("J" brought me, not to the class, home-baked banana-nut bread.)

"R" brought donuts for us.  Not once, but twice!

"A" brought a box of chocolate chip cookies.

But, the grandest of all was home-baked cupcakes that "K" treated us to, and they were awesome.

Cupcakes with fruit preserve filling, and decorative icing on the top.  At the end of the class, when "K" was gathering her stuff, she noticed that there was one left--because one student didn't show up today.  His ill-luck that he missed out on this experience.

"K" asked me if I wanted it.  I told her that if she didn't want it, I would gladly enjoy a second one.  And that became mine!

I remembered to take a photo of the cupcake after I reached my office.  I wish I had patiently set up the background and taken a good photograph; but, I am glad I have at least this much.  Eat your heart out :)

A wonderful term, at least for this reason, and a contrast to the bitter experience from a few years ago, when an ill-tempered student took the advice of a moronic faculty colleague.

Thanks to "J," "K," "R," and "A."

Oh, yeah, I took a bunch of orange-cranberry scones to one class.  No, I didn't bake them--I bought them at my favorite store.

Maybe next year I will get back to baking cookies and brownies for my classes?

Ray Bradbury dies at 91. His writings will live on--unless we burn 'em!

Heard on NPR that Ray Bradbury died. 

In his memory, and as thanks to him, am re-posting the following old one from my own blog:

ht

Based on Ray Bradbury's warning, I imagine that books engage in self-immolation when Jersey Shore is on!

Hey graduating high school seniors: You sure you want college, now?

"S," who is working on her thesis on whether it will be to the students' advantage if they are counseled about a gap-year between high school and college, or even when in college, might be happy to read this advice from across the continent (if she does read my blog, eh!):

[Don't] rush into college right after high school if, like me, you would benefit from an extra year of growing up. People are starting their careers later than ever, and in the long run it’s better to be a 25-year-old with a degree in something you’re passionate about than a 22-year-old with an aching feeling you just wasted four years. And don’t pick a school for name recognition or because you like the way it will look on your resume. Why anyone would choose a prohibitively expensive school like Harvard or Penn or Dartmouth (minus a scholarship of course) for their undergraduate degree when there are plenty of quality universities offering a solid education at a reasonable price is beyond me. (At $180 a credit, Community College of Philadelphia has a first-year honors program that rivals those at many four-year colleges.) Save the big names for graduate school when they’ll pack more punch.
Finally, consider spending your first year in a comprehensive liberal arts program.

Yep!

If only the jobs news was enjoyable as news about Facebook shares!

If only the news was always as good as this one: Facebook shares are trading at $25.79 as I type this!  Couldn't make my schadenfreude better :)  I am enjoying this because, well, why the heck not!  Even if commentaries like this point out that the schadenfreude is bizarre!

In contrast to the fun with news about FB, I am not thrilled with the latest jobs report that has shocked the markets into a tumble as investors worried about the economic outlook.  Oil is down to $82, which was hard to imagine three months ago.  

This is not good news for any incumbent President.  On the other hand, it appears that the incumbent chief executive of the state of Wisconsin might survive the recall effort, which will add to the President's political woes as the summer campaign begins to heat up.  

Take it away, Jon Stewart, and let us watch that wonderful game-show called "Polish that turd" :)

The Daily Show
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On the death of a 19-year old :(

"I have a sad news for you" my mother said.

I knew it had to be about somebody's unfortunate and premature death. I prepared myself for the awful news that was coming.

"You remember "M"'s grandson--the son of "S"?" she asked, not as a question but more as a preface.  By then I knew what was coming.

"He died a few days ago."

He was a kid, who was in the final year of his teenage phase of life.  A freshman at Stanford.  The cancer that he had battled against, the battle that I thought he had won a couple of years ago, had come back in a nasty manner.

After the phone call, I remembered "S" telling me a couple of years ago how this kid had taken on a couple of initiatives to spread cancer awareness and to raise funds to wipe out the dreaded "C" word.  I was confident that the newspaper I grew up with would have something about him.

The paper does have a lengthy piece on the kid's demise.

Akash Dube, a symbol of courage and resolve for so many cancer patients across the country, succumbed to the very disease earlier this month. A freshman at Stanford, this 19-year-old spent the last few months in the hospital, battling against the disease and undergoing multiple rounds of intensive chemotherapy

19!  I mean, nineteen!

Akash initiated and organized the Terry Fox runs in Chennai, and raised money for cancer research and treatment.

Akash Dube wanted to wipe out cancer. He wanted a world where no one would know of this six-letter fiend, a disease whose grip seems to only be tightening around us with each passing day. Akash envisioned a world where cancer is spoken of in the same breath as the bubonic plague and tuberculosis; as epidemics that ruined thousands of lives in the past but also as diseases that man no longer needs to be afraid of.

...

Akash Dube was a teenager, just like you and me. Yet, he fought for what he truly believed in and worked towards the greater good. He had a vision, a mission and a road map. Akash Dube taught us that no hurdle is too much to cross, no goal is too big to aspire towards and there is no such thing as overambitious.

What do you tell a mother whose son died at 19? What do you tell a 83-year old whose grandson passed away?  Life is simply cruel, sometimes.

If arugula was the measure of elitism, how about "salade niçoise"

Remember all that brouhaha after the then candidate, Senator Obama, remarked at a campaign event in Iowa:

“Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” the senator said. “I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”

Of course, during the campaign season, candidates have to go figure out a way to exorcise the Coriolanus curse; it is a tradition in democracies.  Especially here in the US.

Even though I logically understand this, emotionally I cannot but think that country club Republicans will lead a very different life from mine, but that I will be able to relate to liberal luminaries ... Of course, my logic tells me that affluent liberals might not differ all that much from affluent Republicans. Thus, a tension between the logical and emotional understanding of the world, right?

A recent column in the Financial Times further illustrates the point.  Martin Wolf, of the FT, writes about his conversation with Paul "the conscience of a liberal" Krugman, in which he notes:

At this point we order: salade niçoise for Krugman; foie gras terrine for me; and a bottle of sparkling water. This is definitely not going to be up to the gourmet standards of some lunches with the FT.

I have always enjoyed reading Paul Krugman and Martin Wolf.  (Turns out that for whatever reason this old post on Krugman was quite popular last week!)  But, to realize through this simple comment that the world in which they live is so far removed from mine is quite startling, I suppose.

Ahem, that lunch was not up the gourmet lunch standards?  Wow!

BTW, I had to look up "salade niçoise" and "foie gras terrine" ... now I know, but they don't appeal to me :)

An Indian Tocqueville comments on democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville paved a grand path for any "outsider" wishing to talk about American issues.  Every once in a while, I am reminded of Tocqueville, and I even authored a newspaper column referencing him.

With the US increasingly influencing global happenings over the nearly two centuries since Tocqueville's visit, we come across plenty of commentaries about democracy in America, which makes my intellectual and personal life that much more exciting.

One of those observers of the American scene is Ramesh, who was two years my senior back in the wonderful township in India, where I had some fabulous formative experiences.  Ramesh, who blogs on business-related issues, after a rich management career, has the following observations, looking at America from his vantage point in India.

I am not an American. I don’t even live in America. Naturally, I don’t get to vote in the elections there. However, I have a lot of admiration for the country and have a passing knowledge of the issues that seem to be important to the electorate, so I wondered how I would vote, if I indeed had that right.

• I am a staunch believer in the virtues of capitalism and that free markets are the only road to prosperity. That makes me deep red.
• I am completely pro choice (on abortion – a clarification unnecessary to Americans who seem to believe that is the only choice available to mankind !). That makes me deep blue.
• I have nothing against contraceptive pills, but fail to see why somebody else (read insurance companies) should pay for it. You want to have a ball; sure go ahead, but please pay for it. Rush Limbaugh (or was it Glenn Beck) hugs me.
• I believe Americans are nuts to be running the sort of deficit they are running and doing precious little about it except bickering. That makes me a card carrying member of the Tea Party.
• Tax breaks for long term capital gains, for America, is not justified either in economics or in politics. It is purely the rich lobby that is blocking this from changing. So, that makes me a socialist.
• Spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security has gone way overboard and is simply unsustainable. This has got to be cut. I must be welcomed to Fox News.
• The US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries on the top spenders list combined. That is downright crazy. I will be given a free pass to MSNBC.
• I can never understand the fascination with guns. Does any civilised society accept people carrying machine guns around? The Second Amendment was passed in 1791, for God’s Sake when the place was lawless. Are Americans dumb enough to continue to want it in this day and age? Michael Moore makes a film on me.
• Doesn’t America realise that its legal system has gone completely overboard? Tort reform is a must and only somebody with the brain size of a pea will be against it. Nancy Pelosi borrows a gun from Paul Ryan and shoots me.
• To any human not breathing American air, it’s obvious that the health care system is completely broken and that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is not ideal, but the best possible deal under the circumstances. Mitt Romney picks a handgun from his collection and obliterates me, although he hugged me in 2006.
• Corporations are not evil, you pompous Senators. They do far more good than you do – even oil companies. Without them you lot will be driving horse drawn buggies like the Amish. Harry Reid knocks me out.
• Corporations are not people, you silly old men in funny dress. Only a nitwit will allow Super PACs to be going on like this. Clarence Thomas sends me to Guantanamo.

Can somebody tell me how to vote please !

I am guessing Ramesh is a closeted libertarian-Democrat, unlike me who is out in the open about it :)