Ten laws of the modern world

Back to posting after a break. My wife is here with me now, and that should explain the hiatus :)

Great post by Sadagopan on the ten laws of the modern world (from a Forbes article). Familiar ones like Moore's law, and not so familiar ones like Drucker's law.

The flower fields

Visited the flower fields in Carlsbad, about 30 miles north of San Diego. This place is basically a flower farm, where they grow flowering plants in order to harvest the bulbs (roots) that are then sold to gardeners. While the flowers are growing, it is good sight for spectators to see a hillside colored with radiant colors with the oceon glittering away in the background. And the San Diego sun makes the sight all the more brilliant. They have just one type of flower, rununculus, that they grow here. Also, there is a small rose section, where winning roses from the past 50+ years are planted. Today, only about a third of those actually had roses on them, and I have seen better roses. A place worth visiting if it is the season, and if you live in San Diego.

Also drove by the TaylorMade golf factory on College Av, a few miles from the flower fields. It turns out all they do at this factory is to assemble together heads, shafts and grips that are imported from China and other places. Lou Dobbs has not added TaylorMade to his list. If you want distance, you got to take out some divets. But divets are people too.

Mail from Taranto

Had the following email exchange with James Taranto of Best of the Web Today of opionjournal.com (the WSJ opinion pages website). He is a smart man with a great sense of humor.

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My Mail

Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 11:32 PM
To: Opinionjournal
Subject: Pulitzers and Larry Summers

Dear Mr Taranto,

Your first item for Apr 5 2005 says

"Congratulations to our Wall Street Journal colleagues Joe Morgenstern and Amy Dockser Marcus for their Pulitzer prizes."

Now I wonder why you named the lady after the gentleman. The Pulitzer website you mention has Ms. Marcus's name before Mr. Morgenstern's, and an alphabetical arrangement of the names will place the lady's name first too. All the more surprising, the news stories I could google search all had Ms Marcus's name first.

So either you know Mr. Morgenstern better than Ms Marcus, or it must be reason number (3) on Larry Summer's list given below.

"1) Women want to have children, and as a result they don't put in the 80-hour work week that would make them competitive with their male peers;
2) the innate differences between men and women lead men to outperform women at the top end;
3) discrimination discourages women from pursuing science and engineering past their undergraduate education."

Maybe discrimination extends to the field of Journalism too.

With sincere thanks for your witty column.

-Rajat Prakash

Reply from James Taranto

Nothing to do with sex. I listed Joe before Amy because his reviews fall under the editorial page rubric, as does my Web site. Amy is on the news side. Same reason I listed Dorothy Rabinowitz before Ian Williams in 2001: http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=90000454

Cheers, James

Sin City (movie)

Saw Sin City, a movie based on Comic books by Frank Miller. The movie reminded me of Freud's eros and thanatos. Though many movies are about these base drives, Sin City throws away the polite coverings, and brings bare all that is erotic and destructive in the psyche. This movie has more of noir, and less of the cutting edge cool of Tarantino in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, or Beaty in Dick Tracy. Overall, a good movie, but nothing much missed if you miss it.

One day cricket

Went to a local screening of the 1st Indo-Pak ODI of this series. The arrangement at the theater was quite good, plenty of space with a good big-screen projector, and some reasonably priced samosas and chai on the side. Regarding the game itself, the most striking part was how the whole Indian innings fell apart after Sehwag got out. This was pointed out by Ashish Magotra in Rediff here. Is it something psychological: he makes batting look so easy that incoming batsmen's mind is messed ?

Another interesting point was how Inzy gave up many singles to Dravid and Sehwag. Was this again due to the mental stranglehold batsmen of the calibre of Sehwag and Dravid can have on an opposing caption ? In contrast, Ganguly kept the field up, and prevented the singles.

Continuing on Cricket, Amit Verma has a crusade against cliches in cricket commentary. Okay, it is not a crusade, just a campaign ;-). Here is what the master of clarity has to say on the subject of cliches, and other abuses of the language.

Also, got the first comment on my blog, from Braveheart.

आज बहुत दिन बाद हिनदी लिखने का हौका मिला

But need to find a tool that works better than SC Unipad. It does not transliterate properly, and I could not find (in five minutes at 1230am) a way to insert half letters in Hindi. Anyway, something to look at at leisure.

Also visited a bunch of IITK blogs, just for old times sake. Can find some here, and more show up with a simple google search. Blogging is taking off for some people still at the hostel. I guess blogs of youger people are always more entertaining, they say more about themselves, and less about others. Oh ! that angst of yesteryear.