Photo(s) of the day: Chennai

Forbes says Chennai will be one of the happening cities in the next decade.  The power of idli and sambar!  But, this is the best picture of the city the magazine could offer?

The Hindu refers to the Forbes report, but has photo that looks betterbut one which says nothing about a happening city!

What is wrong with these publications? :)

Quote of the day on Christine O'Donnell

Bill Maher thinks he has been laughing at Christine O'Donnell with his old clips of her appearances on his shows. If she wins, Bill Maher will have created her.

James Fallows has nothing but sharp observations about this witch Senate candidate.  Fallows writes that O'Donnell and her likes are more dangerous than Sarah Palin because:

O'Donnell has not seemed uncomfortable for one second** -- even in her most obvious dodge, about whether she really thinks evolution is a "myth." The difference is, she is a talk show regular. Among the many things wrong with talking-head gab shows, which have proliferated/ metastasized in the past generation -- they're cheap to produce, they fill air time, they make journalists into celebrities, they suit the increasing political niche-ization of cable networks -- is that they reward an affect of breezy confidence on all topics and penalize admissions of complexity, of ignorance on a specific topic, or of the need for time to think.

O'Donnell comes across as a perfect, unflappable product of the talk-show culture. Sarah Palin knows that she is bad under open questioning -- so she avoids it, speaks only to selected audiences, is interviewed only by Fox. If she were to run for president, which I've always doubted, this would make her brittle for the unavoidable main campaign. Christine O'Donnell shows that the other path can create a better, unshakably on-message product for this era.

Oh well ... how about laughing all these off with two cartoons?  I suppose at the end of it all, the jokes are really on us folks :(

The unholy Farmville McDonald's alliance

The video takes on a sarcastic and humorous tone, but McDonald's and Farmville hooking up for a day is true.  The monetization of Facebook to the next level, I suppose.

A few days ago, during a conversation with a student, I told her about the millions of dollars Farmville and its parent company, Zynga, earned last year.  Initially surprised, she later thought it was possible because of her familiarity with friends who spend hours playing Farmville.  I didn't tell her that according to Zynga all the Farmville players in Facebook are considered as beta testers of the game :)