Amazing photos of the volcanic eruption in Iceland

Have a look at the Eyjafjallajokull eruption here...

Om Prakash Aditya

I am a great fan of Om Prakash Aditya. He was a great hindi poet and satirist. A master of laughter in the pre-cable days, he commanded great admiration at DD on the regularly broadcast "Hasya Kavi Sammelan".

Remembering him I got to know that he passed away some six months ago in an accident! May God rest his soul in peace.

Some lines from a poem of his...it is the lamentation of a student about the vast course syllabus.

नास हो इतिहास का, सन के समंदर बह गए,
मर गए वो लोग, रोने के लिए हम रह गए,
बाबर, हुमायूँ, शाहजहाँ, और अकबर आप था,
कौन न जाने किसका बेटा, कौन किसका बाप था!

ज़िन्दगी भर लिख न पाया मैं चेकोस्लोवाकिया

अंक के  अतिरिक्त  मुझको  और  कुछ  भाता  नहीं,

क्या  करूँ लेकिन  गुणा करना  मुझे  आता  नहीं,

अकल अल-जब्रा  हमारी  जाएगी  जड़  से  पचा,

तीन  मैं  से  छह गए  और  क्या  बाकी  बचा?

भुगूल  में  गत  वर्ष  आया  गोल  है  कैसे  धरा,

और  मैंने  एक  पल  मैं  लिख  दिया  उत्तर  खरा,

गोल  है  पूरी  कचोरी, और पापड़  गोल  है, 

गोल  है  लड्डू, जलेबी, रसगुल्ला भी  गोल  है,

गोलगप्पा  गोल  है  मुंह  भी  हमारा  गोल  है  

इस  लिए  हे मास्टरजी  यह  धरा  भी  गोल  है.

Chauteau di Khachchar ki Laat

From: J U G U L A R V E I N

Just for kicks

Jug Suraiya

My friend Reva – editor and publisher of Sommelier India, the country’s first and, so far only, wine magazine – is puzzled. So, presumably, is Sharad Pawar who, according to popular report, owns acres and acres of grape-producing vineyards in the Nashik region. And so would have been Thomas Jefferson, who remarked that no people who drank wine and beer in preference to hard liquor would ever find themselves in dire need of applying en masse for membership to Alcoholics Anonymous. All these very different people are – or in Jefferson’s case, were – advocates of the civilised practice of enjoying the occasional glass of wine. To them, and many others like them, wine does not represent the demon drink. Far from it. Wine is a lyric in liquid form, music turned into moisture, a rhapsody played on the palate. So, how come, they ask, don’t more Indians drink wine? Dry days, punitive excise duties and economic downturns notwithstanding, the sales of whisky, rum, vodka, gin and brandy show no signs of decline. On the contrary, they get higher and higher, as presumably do the customers of these products. But, by and large, wine remains a no-no among India’s drinking glasses.

And the reason for this is simple: the idiom of wine is all wrong. When asked to ‘nose’ a wine you aren’t meant to snort the stuff up your nostril, like snuff, but rather to inhale its ‘bouquet’, or the smell it gives off. Or when your host urges you admire the ‘legs’, don’t gawp around looking for the young female in the micro-mini; the ‘legs’ are the streaks of wine which adhere to the side of the glass when you tilt it. A wine said to have an ‘excellent finish’ is not an invitation to grab the bottle by the neck and swig it down till empty in record time; ‘finish’ denotes the lingering aftertaste that the wine leaves in your mouth. ‘Well-structured tannins’ don’t refer to generously endowed bikini-clad sunbathers bronzing themselves on a beach but to the acidic elements, which add complexity to the wine. And no, a ‘complex vintage’ is not a senior citizen in need of psychiatric care but a wine which has matured and gained subtle nuances of taste with age.

In short, wine talks too much. Or rather, people talk too much about it. This was brought home to me succinctly some years ago at a Haryana liquor vend when i was buying a bottle of Bosca (which in Haryanvi is pronounced ‘Bose-ka’). In those days Bose-ka was the only Indian wine available, and which, as a wine, made for an admirable varnish remover. A fellow customer buying an Auntie Kooty (not a female relative but a brand of local whisky, namely Antiquity, the second most preferred drink in Haryana after Arkoolis rum, known to the outside world as Hercules rum) looked at my bottle of Bose-ka and asked ‘Usme kick-shick hai?’ (Does it have kick-shick?)

In a single sentence that unsung Haryanvi had summed up the fatal flaw in the wine marketing strategy in India: never mind your noses, and legs, and fruity bouquets and rare vintages. Where was the kick-shick quotient? If Reva, and Sharadji, and others, are serious about popularising wine culture in India, they have to address the issue of the kick-shick, which is the main – some would say the only – reason why people drink in India, or at least in Haryana, where men are men, and don’t care who knows it. Tanninsshannins. Show us the kick-shick.

To be a success, in Haryana anyway, wines should be rated by the kick they provide. A mild, low-kick wine should be given a ‘One Mule’ rating, a stronger wine be given a ‘Two Mule’ grade, and a real pehalwan super-strong wine be accorded a ‘Three Mule’ status. And an appropriate name for them? What else but Chauteau di Khachchar ki Laat?

New way to make money - Borrow it

With negative interest rates coming in, I am tempted :)

Warden rides Rhino!!!

Wow!!!

Read more here.

Brussles Sprouts and Neanderthals

If you think cabbages, brussels sprouts or other such vegetables taste bitter, then you could be the descendant of a Neanderthal! Check out here.

Google Books - New Features

How does one use a book in the real world? Shouldn't that be the benchmark of how one should be able to use an ebook?

Google attempts that...more details here.

Weary India Lost It!

Wow - What an analysis, that too on 31st May!

Symbol for Rupee

Vote for the symbol of Rupee.

Jesus played cricket as a child

Interesting, eh!

Here's more detail!

Recession predicted in 2006!

It's not often that we get the chance to see quite as clearly as we do in this video how pundits and experts can be completely and totally wrong. But if the people ridiculing and condescending to Peter Schiff in this video are deceiving themselves, how sure can we be that our most cherished convictions are correct?

This video is from 2006 !

At least we didn't do that

I quote this from an email list I am subscribed to:

"Interesting read [[about Iceland]]....about a country which stood at No.1 in UN's 2008 Human Development Index.... Where the stock market multiplied by 9 times between 2003 and 2007.....Where fishermen became investment bankers.... Whose debt today is 850% of its GDP.... Where people blow up their newly bought cars to claim insurance.... 

Its the only nation on earth that Americans could point to and say, “Well, at least we didn’t do that.”

I agree!

Read the complete article.

Did the Cosmos exist before the Big Bang?

Well, this article seems to think so. I am tempted to co-relate this to the Hindu concept of the Cosmos (Brahmand) which says that it behaves like the lungs of the Brahma, inflating and deflating at regular intervals! May be this scientific theory has the same end result.

Eat Ghee

Eat Ghee. This is what my mother maintained inspite of people telling her that other oils were safer. She replied, "It is healthier as you need to use less of it."

Seems she was correct. Here.

Policy Bazaar

My friend, Alok Bansal, has started a website along with some other people. Policy Bazaar (www.policybazaar.com) is an insurance aggregator. An interesting and useful concept. The company has now received VC funding. Here are the details.

_____________________________________________________

Info Edge To Invest Rs 20 Crore In An Online Insurance Aggregator

Info Edge will pick up 49% stake in Etechaces Marketing and Consulting, which runs Policybazaar.com . Info Edge India Ltd, the owners of Naukri.com, will invest Rs 20 crore for a 49% stake in eTechAces Marketing and Consulting Pvt Ltd, an online aggregator of insurance products, the company informed the stock exchange. eTechAces runs policybazaar.com, an online aggregator of life and non-life insurance products. The website essentially collects insurance leads and let the insurance companies compete for it. 

In a press note issued from the company, Info Edge, Ambarish Raghuvanshi, CFO and Director, Info Edge (India) ltd. said, “eTechAces has a great management team and a differentiated approach to distributing financial products online, by empowering the customer to enable comparison of available options and make an informed data-driven decision. The company’s bouquet of products include insurance products to be sold online, which is so far an untapped area in India. In other countries, especially in Europe, it is a high growth category."

Etechaces is founded by Yashish Dahiya who is also the CEO of the company, Alok Bansal and Avaneesh Nirjar who act as the CFO and COO of the firm respectively. It was only in July that Info Edge invested Rs 6.5 crore ($1.54 million) for a 40 per cent equity stake in Applect Learning Systems, a Delhi-based education content developer. It had already disbursed Rs 1 crore as part of the first tranche of the investment. 

Earlier this year, Info Edge invested $1 million in StudyPlaces Inc, as part of the latter’s $3-million series A round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave

I really liked this one from Thomas Friedman. His analysis stops short of saying but gives enough hints that Bush's friends in the oil business are the ones behind the current carnage in the international oil market. Bush's weak policies are hammering the dollar too, which to my mind is the biggest worry facing Americans!

A good read!

Spam King hit by 6 million dollars!

Spam comes home to roost, or not! Read here.

Interglobe 2008, An MDI Initiative

Management Development Institute, Gurgaon and ESCP-EAP European School of Management, London are jointly hosting InterGlobe 2008 the first in a series of annual conferences.The event is being organized by students of MDI and aims at bringing together personalities from the corporate and academic world to better understand the current business trends and issues that affect us all. The theme chosen for this year's InterGlobe Conference is 'India: Emerging Trends'.

The distinguished Speakers at this year's conference are:

1. Amit Chatterjee, Vice President, Tech Mahindra, U.K.
2. Ashish Gupta, Head of Design, British Telecom, U.K.
3. Ashvini Chopra, Head of Private Banking, ICICI, U.K.
4. Mark Bretton, Head of Outsourcing for UK & Ireland, TCS, U.K.

Discussion Panel Moderator: Dr. Davide Sola, Director, ESCP-EAP, London

Further details are available at the website.

Date of the event : 19th June

Official Website : www.interglobemdi.com

Parrot parrots parroted address

The title of this post is cryptic, eh? Well this article does it better!

The Biggest Drawing in the World

Check this out - this is indeed the biggest drawing in the world! Some people have waaay too much time, money and waaaaay too many ideas. But good, nonetheless!