In addition to ITC and UB becoming employers of choice, one further consequence of the investment banking meltdown is that Chetan Bhagat might soon be unemployed.
I can’t decide if this is good or bad. On the one hand, unemployment might mean he would start writing full time, and we would face the horrific prospect of a new Chetan Bhagat book every year. The horror!
On the other hand, it might force him to actually get a real and respectable job, like becoming a traveling salesman for Fair and Louwly in Coastal Andhra and South Andhra. True, he would probably be completely out of his depth at honourable work, but I’m sure even Chetan Bhagat can learn. And if that happened, he would have no time to write, thus sparing us all.
I feel that the pessimistic case is more likely, for the very reason I mentioned yesterday: in a depression, the vice economy does well. There is a lot more pain ahead.
There has recently been a controversy in the Indian blogosphere about what the projection of power means. In the interests of enlightening lay readers, I asked my good friend and international relations expert Dr. Boris Bhartriraj Pandey to prepare a guide to power projection. Boris is currently a post-doctoral fellow at Parma, and his family background is even more impressive – his parents are the distinguished academics Dr. Acharya Somuchidononanda Pandey and Dr. Valentina Dimitrieva Pandey. He has written a short monograph on the subject at the Pandey family blog. It is also reproduced in it’s entirety here, with his permission:
Kunal Kohli must be struck down upon with great vengeance.
Not because Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic mixes Hindi, Urdu and English words into the title. I actually approve of that.
Not because it’s a ripoff of Mary Poppins. After all, you can’t expect better from a man who’s already ripped off When Harry Met Sally and The Truth About Cats and Dogs.
Not even because the sardar kid in the movie looks like an aspiring suicide bomber in the posters. Yes, looking at his surly gaze can put you off lunch, but I suppose it’s not really his fault or even Kohli’s.
No, the reason Kunal Kohli must be viciously and brutally attacked is that in the process of ripping of Mary Poppins, he has replaced the nanny’s magic umbrella with a magic bicycle. This is nothing but a slap in the face of the good, decent, lower to middle-middle class folks in Mumbai for whom an umbrella is their only defence in the monsoons – unlike poncy git filmmakers with chauffeur driven cars.
A violent assault on Kunal Kohli represents the highest form of class warfare. To the barricades, comrades!
… is like a Hindi film version of a superhero crossover. Kareena Kapoor plays Elektra, or possibly O-Ren Ishii. Akshay Kumar plays a Kanpuriya version of Shang-Chi or Iron Fist. Saif Ali Khan doesn’t fit the superhero stereotype quite as well, but in the second half appears to be like Tony Stark. But then he is typecast as Tony Stark.
The movie also enforces the stereotype of people from UP being uncultured and evil criminals. This is excellent. Only when the popular consciousness turns against the Allahabadi elites will we be able to overthrow the oppressive Indian state and replace it with a loose federation of Saivite neo-Edwardian empires.
Also, due to a makeup fiasco, there is a scene in which Kareena Kapoor has a white face and a pink nose.
Finally, the second half approaches action-movie all-time greatness. Akshay Kumar fights ninjas! On an electricity transmission tower! In a UP don’s lair! Which makes the songs and the first half unnecessary diversions that should have been dispensed with. Such is life.
The leading merchants realized that such practices were damaging the reputation of their most valuable product. One of the leading New York City houses grew concerned that Chesapeake oysters were being sold to England as Bluepoints. An agent for the house intercepted a shipment of Bluepoints, opened the barrels as they were being loaded, and found that they were mostly “Virginias.” It was a new age of communications and the agents was able to telegraph Liverpool so that British authorities were waiting for the shipment when it landed. The oysters were confiscated, though it is not clear what happens to a healthy confiscated oyster. The American shipper was charged with mislabeling, which carried considerable fines. The New Yorkers were not accustomed to such stringent consumer protection and the American agent argued that the oysters had spent a little time in Great South Bay and they had thought that this was all that was required to label them Bluepoints. That the Americans don’t know any better is always an argument of some currency in England, and the charges were dropped.
For the past few months, I’ve been using the Books application on Facebook. As soon as I finish a book, I search for it, add it to my list of completed books within the application with a two or three line review, and a rating (on five stars). This is then broadcast to all my Facebook friends.
The obvious disadvantage with this is that it is broadcasted to only my Facebook friends. And only within Facebook. There doesn’t seem to be any way to get an RSS feed of completed books. Which is sad, because I’d like to have one, and push it onto the blog for permanent archival and suchlike.
Other Facebook apps like iRead which do the same thing also don’t offer RSS feeds.
Shelfari does let you keep a list of books on your blog, but this seems to be in the form of a Shelfari widget, and poking around their FAQ didn’t seem to reveal any way to get a pure feed. Besides, Shelfari spammed me at unmitigated levels back in August or September, earning my hatred (and the dubious honour of being added to my GMail spam filter).
But there is something which seems to meet all my requirements, and it’s a little-known Google service: Google MyLibrary.
This is an add-on feature to Google Book Search. And besides ratings and reviews, there are three extremely cool things which MyLibrary has:
an RSS feed. So now, as soon as I finish a book, I can add it in MyLibrary, and display it in a WordPress widget or in the GOAT feed.
labels. Which allows great scope for taxonomisation and categorisation. Such joy. Such joy.
searching within the book, and reading the whole book, copyright permitting. Yay!
This weekend, I’ll probably be tinkering with feeds and widgets and whatnot.
She takes photographs of Batman buggering Two-face while Penguin looks on with sadistic relish:
Note the strategic positioning of the jar of Vaseline. Also, Batman is so brutal that the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh will have to be called in once he’s done.
I’m not too sure about the significance of If God Was a Banker being there in the background.
Limited by space, we melded the idea of a staircase with our client’s desire for a library to form a ‘library staircase’ in which English oak stair treads and shelves are both completely lined with books. With a skylight above lighting the staircase, it becomes the perfect place to stop and browse a tome.
Words cannot describe the unspeakable awesomeness. Click for photos.
If it’s a KT wedding and not a Tam one, I suppose it’s not too late to pull a Benjamin Braddock. Except that I’m happily committed to the perfect girlfriend, and Hari the Kid is in Seattle. So it goes.
1: Closure is not only psychobabble but financial jargon also. Daughtry has polluted rock with a word used by two despicable groups of people: whiny characters from American sitcoms, and investment bankers.
Posted by Aadisht 