Sunday, June 25, 2006

Karl Marx is a substitution on German side

While Germans, Argentines and Brazilians cruise thru the 2006 FIFA cup, check this classic philosophy football match by Monty Python.



Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Protest over hike in fuel prices?

Leftist parties in India protest over hike in fuel prices. They oppose the anti-people increase in price and demand a complete rollback of prices.

Its so disappointing to read news like that. Why should state-owned oil companies pay the market price and sell the general public at a subsidized price? How is rolling back prices a pro-people measure, when it is going to bite back in the ass, when staterun oil companies go bankrupt after a period of time owing to the dead-weight of subsidizing market prices?

Accept the fact: Oil is scarce and scarce is always costly. State-run oil companies are not brewing oil in their kitchens. Its imported and every darn country in the world is paying a price and fighting for reserves and resources.

Subsidizing market prices has disastarous effects not just on oil companies, but on society in general. Consumers do not know the real market price, so the usual price check on consumption doesnt work. The incentive to develop fuel-efficient technologies is taken-off from the automobile industry. The incentive to develop efficient public transportation systems, alternate fuel sources and bunch of related stuff...is just off the hook! Its a golden opportunity to be a leader in such technologies in the developing world and the left parties want to throw it away!

Whats even more depressing is the fact that, none of the Indian Media seem to question the protest. All they seem to do is an as-is reporting saying 'so and so party protests in such and such state'.

"Why so?", "So What?", "How sensible is your protest?".......no such questions attached.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

1961 TV Commercial

Here is a 1961 TV commercial, an introductory-tour+operation-manual, rather. Contrast it with today's iPod. We have sure come long way in matters of user experience. Haven't we?

Friday, June 09, 2006

I am the 'Keshava' guy in this podcast

TOI's unbelievable arrogance

I cannot believe the arrogance of Times of India. They spin the 10-billion-INR-aid-to-Nepal as " Koirala thrown Rs 1,000-cr aid lifeline". Times is proving all worthy for a Razzie or something.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

movie:Gandhi

Amidst all the events of epic proportion that permanently changed the course of world history, there is a little boy that climbs up the tree and starts breathing fresh air of freedom after looking at hoards of people marching along with Mahatma 'Walker' Gandhi towards Dandi on the western coast of India. Similarly, among those BBC-Breaking-News events, Gandhi goes in circles along with his wife, re-enacting their marriage for a journalistic friend. Gandhi leaves for mudpacks, while Nehru, Jinnah and Patel discuss about the possibility of country's partition. Such are the intricate details, director Sir Richard Attenborough paints on this mammoth canvas of one of the last real epic movies ever made. In a pre-digital era, the movie employs about 300,000-400,000 extras in some scenes!

Along with a ton of those intricate moments, Attenborough has some of the greatest cinematic moments as well. Judge Broomfield (played by Trevor Howard) standing up when the 'extra-ordinary' prisoner whom he is going to try enters the court hall, those mesmerizing talks between Gandhi and NYTimes' journalist Vince Walker (played by Martin Sheen) as Gandhi tries to explain that all he found out after years of thinking and travelling is the 14th century song "Vaishnava Jan tho...", Nehru jumping into the crowd asking the traitor to kill him before touching Gandhi, talks between Lord Irwin (played by Sir John Gielgud) and his cabinet and later with Gandhi, Gandhi ascending the steps of the majestic Viceroy palace (which becomes Rashtrapathi Bhawan later) as the camera pans up and zooms out, all those conversations with Life's photographer Margaret White (played by Candice Bergen)...and the list of moments seem endless.

Couple these with Ravi Shankar's music while Gandhi discovers India and you start to get an idea of how much of an accomplishment is getting the movie made.

Yeah, I saw Gandhi yesterday for the nth-time and the movie has been extremely inspiring every time I see it.