Miscellaneous

A short while ago Set Max, as part of Extraaaaaaaa Innings, showed a gentleman somewhere in India doing Pooja for the Indian cricketers. He stood in front of an idol and chanted things like “Om Wicketkeepera Namah” and “Om Googly aur Offbreak”. Then the cameras cut back to the studio, where Charu Sharma and Mandira Bedi had their palms folded in prayer. “She is very religious,” Charu informed us about Mandira. (I would argue that her being on a cricket show instantly disproves the existence of God, but let’s not go there.)

Now, isn’t it ironic that all this should be happening for sport? To me, sport is all about celebrating human endeavour. Perhaps this is best reflected in the fact that the team that invokes God the most was the first strong team to crash out of the World Cup. Divine intervention ain’t no good if you don’t walk the hard yards yourself: that’s one good lesson sport teaches.

On a related note, do check out this excellent piece by Austin Cline on atheism, in which he makes the following point:

The BBC informs us about a new currency started by a group called the Global Country of World Peace, set up by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, called the Raam. Check it out:

The currency is being used as unofficial tender in Holland, as well as in the Maharishi Vedic City in the US state of Iowa. All quite droll, and I’m particularly amused by this bit:

Benjamin Feldman, ‘Minister of Finance’ of the Maharishi movement, told BBC News Online the raam could be used to battle poverty and create world peace.

He said governments could use the raam to start up agricultural and other development projects around the world.

Perhaps Mr Feldman and his followers function in a spiritual realm where the traditional laws of economics do not apply. A bit like R’lyeh, maybe, with its famously non-Euclidean geometry.

I think there should be a Cthulhu currency.

(BBC link via email from Prabhu.

Previous posts on Eldritch horror: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.)

A baby polar bear named Knut is abandoned by its mother. The staff of Berlin Zoo, where Knut is based, take over responsibility of looking after the baby rather than leaving it to die, and begin bottle-feeding him. However, some people are not happy about this. Daily Mail reports:

Animal rights activists argue that he [Knut] should be given a lethal injection rather than brought up suffering the humiliation of being treated as a domestic pet.

“The zoo must kill the bear,” said spokesman Frank Albrecht. “Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws.”

Yes, and I’m sure there’s a great bureaucrat in the sky looking down and noting this severe breach of protocol. Pah.

Do check out pics of this incredibly cute bear here. And below the fold, a YouTube clip of Knut. It’s in German, but that hardly matters. Just look at that bear, utterly adorable and harmless: can you imagine that some bastards want it killed?

Via email from Anand, I discover that there’s a new product on the market: an anti-rape gadget.

I don’t understand how it would work. I’m sure women aren’t expected to wear it all the time, but only when they might get into a situation where they’re in danger. Now, if they knew that in advance, why would they get into such a situation? I’ll be interested to know how well this sells.

The best anti-rape device, in my book, is an efficient police and a swift judiciary. That isn’t enough by itself, of course, but it’s essential. And do we have one? Ha!

We are informed of the possibility that “consciousness exists apart from the purely mechanistic or biological workings of our temporal bodies.”

What a drag.

(Link via email from Quizman.)

Nicolette Hahn Niman writes in the New York Times:

As a cattle rancher, I am comfortable raising animals for human consumption, but they should not be made to suffer. Because we ask the ultimate sacrifice of these creatures, it is incumbent on us to ensure that they have decent lives.

Ah, such compassion. It’s okay to slaughter them and eat them, but while they’re alive, keep them comfortable. Give that pig a cushion, someone. Make some iced tea for the chicken. We’re going to ask them for the ultimate sacrifice, let’s hope they say yes.

Reader Vikram Chandrashekar points me to a couple of news pieces (1, 2) about the launch in the UK of Current TV, the television channel started by Al Gore. We are informed:

The user-generated programming will feature three to eight-minute short documentaries, known as pods, and half-hourly “news” bulletins describing the UK’s most popular Google search terms.

A third of the films will be made by members of the public and the rest voted onto the channel by viewers.

I’m rather sceptical about “user-generated programming.” As I mentioned here, crowds are great at collating content (Wikipedia) and filtering content (Digg etc), but not so much at creating content. Still, the content creation of crowds can work if you have a real-time filtering mechanism that crowds themselves operate, and if you can cater to the long tail. YouTube can do both of those; Current TV can do neither. For that reason, I think Gore’s venture is likely to fail.

Of course, there’s still the presidency. (1, 2.)

They’re the new trend, Time magazine informs us.

Thanks goodness my days of working for others are behind me. Socially awkward chappies like me would have immense difficulty in impressing anyone with a video résumé. I’d imagine, however, that even if good video résumés help some confident freshers get entry-level jobs, their usefulness will diminish as one goes up the ladder. After a point, what you do surely has to have more impact than how you present yourself. No?

(Link via email from Kusum Rohra.)

You can’t undo history, can you? What, then, is the point of this?