Rodent Roadsigns
Mice can retrace their steps because they arrange objects to help them remember where they have been, say researchers.

These rodent "roadsigns" - piles of seed shells, leaves and other small objects - could be the first evidence of such sophisticated behaviour in any mammal apart from humans. The phenomenon was uncovered by researchers at Oxford University, UK, who noticed that wood mice tended to move piles of small objects, then return to them frequently. They had the theory that these were primitive landmarks, designed to help them forage for food efficiently. To test this idea, Drs Pavel Stopka and David MacDonald brought eight wild mice into a controlled environment inside a laboratory and left them to explore it. [BBC]

Nature... ah what can I say, never ceases to amaze me... Btw, who all have watched Mouse Hunt? I loved that flick.

Everest Online
Everest, the roof of the world, a place of freezing winds, glittering skies, and awesome silence. Or maybe not. Climb the mountain this spring and you may encounter a middle-aged entrepreneur chattering busily into his mobile phone. It will be Charles Zhang, founder and chief executive of Sohu.com, one of China's most successful internet companies. Mr Zhang's trekking diary will appear daily on Sohu.com's site alongside a medley of news, shopping tips and adverts. Expect it to be garnished with digital snapshots from his mobile handset. [BBC]

A blog from Everest could prove to be the most remote location for a web diary yet. Weblogs are becoming increasing popular as online diaries discuss every topic under the sun, including now one of the world's most ambitious climbs. Lorenzo Gariano is one of an army of climbers who will be setting out to tackle the world's largest mountain in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Everest's conquest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. He has been recording every stage of his momentous journey via a satellite phone which beams live audio blogs to a website run by the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute, (KMI), based in Milton Keynes. [BBC] [Lorenzo Homepage]

Man the world is gonna be a real geeky place soon... :)

Because we are French
...It was just over three-and-a-half years ago that he first gave us a piece of paper, suggesting we add that venerable blue cheese to our daughter Maya's diet.

For - this being Paris - he gave her marks for elegance and charm. One time he decided she was a "belle poulette", on another occasion a "lovely little lady" - written in English.

Rather sadly, I was more concerned about how he'd rated her poise than whether he'd decided that she had some terrible disease.

And then - in no time at all - Maya went from being a charming baby to a boozing toddler.

When we asked our local boulangerie to bake a cake for her third birthday party, we were bemused, shall we say, when the impressive gateau came infused with unmistakeable aroma of Grand Marnier. One bite was enough to tell us that it was soaked in the stuff.

It turns out that this is common practice. In fact, the lady who runs Maya's nursery has a strict rule about birthdays - parents can only bring homemade cakes.

"I don't want a load of drunken kids on my hands," she says. [BBC]

As Robin Williams would say - Why are you doing this? Because we are french...!! Oh boy I love BBC for filing these amusing reports...

Father Cappuccino
Pope John Paul II has formally placed a monk who inspired European resistance to Muslim invaders in the 17th Century and five other historic Italian religious figures on the path to sainthood.

...Marco d'Aviano, a wandering preacher for the Capuchin monastic order, is credited with rallying Catholics and Protestants on the eve of the Battle of Vienna in 1683, which was crucial to halting the advance of Turkish soldiers into Europe.

...He is also remembered by some as the man who, by legend, inspired the fashionable cappuccino coffee now drunk by millions across the globe. The monk, who was born in the city of his name in northern Italy in 1631, was sent by the pope of the day to unite Christians in the face of a huge Ottoman army. Legend has it that, following the victory, the Viennese reportedly found sacks of coffee abandoned by the enemy and, finding it too strong for their taste, diluted it with cream and honey. The drink being of a brown colour like that of the Capuchins' robes, the Viennese named it cappuccino in honour of Marco D'Aviano's order. [BBC]

BigMac Index explained
...Invented in 1986 as a light-hearted guide to whether currencies are at their ?correct? level, burgernomics is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP). This says that, in the long run, exchange rates should move toward rates that would equalise the prices of an identical basket of goods and services in any two countries. To put it simply: a dollar should buy the same everywhere. Our basket is a McDonald's Big Mac, produced locally to roughly the same recipe in 118 countries. The Big Mac PPP is the exchange rate that would leave burgers costing the same as in America. Comparing the PPP with the actual rate is one test of whether a currency is undervalued or overvalued. [Economist]

SARS virus in your email
A computer worm that takes advantage of growing concerns about the Sars virus has hit the web.
The computer virus, known as Coronex, takes advantage of public panic about the real life virus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

The mass-mailing Windows worm aims to persuade people to open an attachment offering details on the current epidemic.

Subject lines include "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome", "SARS Virus" and "Hongkong.exe". [BBC]

Frankly, I am bored of these viruses that come in the mail and fwd themselves to all the people in your address book, its the same story over and over again just with some different name. I am no great programmer and all but I mean come on grow up already, the whole thing was fun for about 10 mins after the first virus of this kind was sent out.

And whats with the users, how hard is to understand one simple sentence - Do not open attachments with funny names and unknown users. Dimwits...

DNA: A design icon
Denna Jones, curator of the TwoTen Gallery and Contemporary Initiatives at the Wellcome Trust, looks at how DNA's double helix became a design icon.

Why has the double helix become so popular? Simplicity, symmetry and serendipity are key.

The simplicity of the design - a spiral form resembling nothing more complex than a twisted ladder - means the metaphors used to describe DNA are easily understood and even more easily depicted. [BBC]

Beautiful article.

Heres some more DNA trivia, the title of the sci-fi "Gattaca" is composed entirely of the starting letters of nucleotide bases of the DNA - Gaunine, Adenine, Thymine and Cytosine.

Surviving a dog-day morning
A dog called Dosha may have as many lives as a cat. She was hit by a car, shot in the head and kept in a freezer for two hours, but she survived and is now doing well under a veterinarian's care. [BBC]

It never ceases to amaze me, how strong the will to survive is...

The title of the report is a play on the title of the movie Dog Day Afternoon I think (Btw, is this a phrase?). I saw it last semester, brilliant performance by Al Pacino.

US wants bases in India
A classified report commissioned by the United States Department of Defence, a copy of which is available with rediff.com, states that the country wants access to Indian bases and military infrastructure with the United States Air Force specifically desiring the establishment of airbases in India.

The report on the future of Indo-US military relations, being distributed among decision-makers in the United States and made available to a handful of senior members of the Indian government, also speaks of the USAF's desire for 'having access closer to areas of instability'.

...The report, prepared by Juli A MacDonald, an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, for the department of defence, is based on interviews of 42 key Americans, including 23 active military officers, 15 government officials and four others. [Rediff] [Booze Allen Hamilton]

Addendum: Part II of the series is now online.

INS Shivalik
MUMBAI: India on Friday unveiled to the world its capability to incorporate stealth technology for military purposes with the launching of "Shivalik," a warship which has this system, at Mazagon Dock here.

At 1 pm, Kaumudi Kumari, wife of Admiral Madhvendra Singh, chief of naval staff, broke a coconut on the warship's hull and named the vessel after a Himalayan peak. She then pressed the launch trigger and the new radar-evading warship, resplendent in its colourful buntings, slid down the slipway to the strains of 'Sare Jahan Se Achha." [TOI]

This is just awesome, I searched for some pics but havnt been able to find any so far. Any sources?

Sare Jahan Se Accha, its almost becoming a pseudo-national song or something. Yuck, I hate it... Absolutely despise it... I hope Iqbal's word rang true for him when he decided to go to Pakistan after the partition. ;)

Great...!!!
A court in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has sentenced three people to life imprisonment for killing a new-born baby girl. [BBC]

Ad Crazy
Bored? Check out some cool ads at AdForum.com

If you really like the ads, you can download the clips by following these steps:

1. Open the ad window
2. View Source
3. Search for extension .mpg (all ads that I've seen so far in MPG format)
4. Copy-paste the location of the file in your browser or download accelerator.

It should be on your hard drive in a couple of mins time... ;-)

Once upon a time I ripped a lotta ads from AdCritic.com but sadly they went kaput during the dotcom meltdown... :(

Mr. Garg on French Fries
After a recent week of words from law, where many of the words are of French origin, I received this email from a reader:

"I propose you no longer feature words which have a base or stem from the French language. I no longer see that as a positive e-mail."

In these times when emotions run high, it's understandable why someone would say that, why US lawmakers would rename French fries and French toast in their cafeteria menus. Or why some German professors think they need to exclude English terms from their vocabulary.

This is not the first time linguistic revisionism is being attempted. During World War I, in the US, some had tried to rename sauerkraut as "liberty cabbage", for example. But we're all so interconnected, as are our languages, that any such attempt quickly falls flat on its face.

"Freedom fries" they say? Well, there's still some French remaining, as the word fry comes from Old French frire. "Freedom toast"? What about toast which comes from Middle French toster. Thinking along these lines, we may even have to rename the US (from Old French estat). Estimates vary, but one-quarter or more of words in the English language have a French influence. In the two lines that the above-mentioned reader sent us, at least six words have French connections (propose, feature, base, language, positive, mail).

A language isn't owned by a country. French belongs as much to France as to Senegal or Canada or anyone else who speaks it. To celebrate the diversity of the English language, this week we'll look at five words that have come into English from five different languages.

-Anu [Wordsmith]

Renaming this and that is a waste of valuable time, energy and money, be it in the USA or India. But thats just my opinion, I could be wrong.

For the Film Geeks
Check out ImagesJournal.com, a site that takes quite a geeky outlook towards films. I spent the afternoon reading the articles on Hitchcock. No marks for guessing who sent me this link. :)

How right our Aryan ancestors were to create gods. We seek sex, and are left with two private bodies on a stained bed. The larger erotic dream, the god, has eluded us. It is so whenever, moving out of ourselves, we look for extensions of ourselves. It is with cities as it is with sex. We seek the physical city and find only a conglomeration of the private cells. In the city as nowhere else we are reminded that we are individuals, units. Yet the idea of the city remains; it is the god of the city that we pursue, in vain. [The Mimic Men by V. S. Naipual]

Is the god of your city elusive too?

Dark Ages?
One of the first signs that something was changing came in March last year in the suburbs of northern Atlanta, when people started talking, a little more frequently than might be expected, about mousetraps. It was hardly unprecedented in the US that a group of local parents should be lobbying for their children to be taught that evolution was a disputed theory, not a fact.

...Some other signs: if you were contemplating an abortion and were worried about the rumour that it might increase your risk of breast cancer, you might visit the website of the government-funded National Cancer Institute to read their factsheet, which noted that most scientists doubt a link. Or, at least, you might have done so until June last year, when the page, criticised by some Republicans in Congress, simply vanished. (A replacement page was posted last month.) Or maybe you were an Aids activist, elated by the president's unexpected (and genuinely revolutionary) announcement in the State of the Union address of $15bn (£9.7bn) in funding for fighting the epidemic worldwide - and then surprised to find that only around 10% was destined for the Global Aids Fund, while the rest would be funnelled through US agencies, where it is more likely to be accessible to American abstinence-only groups campaigning against condoms.

...Welcome to the new battlegrounds of American science. No conspiracy, nor even one political agenda, links the incidents above. But US scientists say they are indicative of a new climate that has emerged under the Bush administration: one driven partly by close relationships with big business, but just as much by a fiercely moral approach to the business of science. The approach is not exclusively religious, nor exclusively rightwing, but is spreading worry as never before through the nation's laboratories and lecture halls. [Guardian]

I am not easily scared, things like ghosts and fate dont scare me. What scares me is ignorance, and as of this writing I am turly scared, reading the article sent a shiver down my spine. Seriously, am freaked out.

P.S. I encourage all of you to read The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins, its a masterpiece and should not be missed by anyone who wants to understand evolution.

Be Grateful
If you're wondering why *I* am so worked up about the Marines, well, I think all soldiers everywhere -- EXCEPT Pakistan's, because they are all jihadis, besides which, they've never EVER won a war, all 4 of which THEY had initiated -- should be honoured by civilians, and given more than a fair chance by bureaucrats and politicians, who control their training, arming, clothing and thus, their life-spans. Whether the DoD or the MoD, every person therein is suspect. There's no space left to go into the crimes the MoD has committed against our soldiers (remember the canvas shoes our jawans were given to battle in the Himalayas?), but the Millennium Challenge 2002 saga should alert us to the despicable attitude of civil servants and politicians -- everywhere. [Rediff]

For more takes on the Millenium Challenge and other goofups during the build up towards the war, I encourage you to download/watch the Channel 4 mockumentry called Between Iraq and a Hard Place.

Lets be creative
MUMBAI: The ban bandwagon is on the roll again. People who wouldn’t usually be seen dead without their Nikes and DKNYs are jolting awake to protest US ‘neo-imperialism’ by dumping their designer togs.

In Mumbai’s Muslim neighbourhoods, a door-todoor campaign has been extolling the virtues of Babool over Colgate and Masala Soda over Pepsi.

There’s a sense of deja vu. When the Afghanistan war began, Sosyo was the flavour of the moment from Crawford Market to J.J. Hospital. Well- heeled executives on Mohammed Ali Road were declaring with surprise, ?Hey, Raymonds isn’t so bad, you know,’’ as they put aside their Arrows and Calvin Kleins. But the moment Hameed Karzai’s regime was installed, Coke and Reebok were back, occupying pride of place in the lives of people who don’t know Khadi Bhandar from Apna Bazaar. [TOI]

Ah Sosyo, does anyone remeber that ad in which Juhi use to come and throw the hat that turned into the words "Sosyo, choice of the new generation"? I loved that drink, probably I still do but its close to 8-9 years that I last tasted it so I dont really remember the taste now. I loved Masala Soda too, they used to have it in those bottles with a marble as the stopper.

I hope Indian brands take maximum advantage of the public sentiment and come up with creative ad campaigns and marketing strategies.

What a time to be born

Twin Primes Breakthrough
A pair of mathematicians has made a breakthrough in understanding so-called prime numbers, numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one.

...It was made by Dan Goldston, of San Jose State University, and Cem Yildirim, of Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. It has just been announced at a conference in Germany on Algorithmic Number Theory. The advance is related to an idea called the twin prime conjecture. This idea, still unproved, is that there are an infinite number of pairs of prime numbers that differ only by two.

...One of the important things about primes is that they are the building blocks of the integers - whole numbers. Primes can be multiplied to obtain all of the other integers.

A curious observation is that primes occur in twins with a surprising regularity. For example: 11 and 13; 17 and 19; 29 and 31; 41 and 43; 59 and 61.

Just as with single primes, the frequency of twin primes decreases as one gets to larger numbers. But do they completely fizzle out beyond some very large number? That is the big question. Around a trillion, for instance, only about one in every 28 numbers is a prime. [BBC]

When I read stuff like this, I realise how useless my life is. Yeah, so anyway, one thing that surprised me was that the article took note of all the major breakthroughs on primes, but failed to mention the work done by the students from IITK. Read more about them here.

Lefty Profs, Righty Students
Across the country, the war is disclosing role reversals, between professors shaped by Vietnam protests and a more conservative student body traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Prowar groups have sprung up at Brandeis and Yale and on other campuses. One group at Columbia, where last week an antiwar professor rhetorically called for "a million Mogadishus," is campaigning for the return of R.O.T.C. to Morningside Heights. [NYT req reg.]

Akamai cancels contract with Al-Jazeera
Akamai Technologies was hired by the Arabic TV station to help it cope with increased traffic and repeated hacker attacks.

Al-Jazeera has blamed the Akamai's decision to pull out of the contract on political reasons.

The Qatar-based network has been criticised by the US and British governments for broadcasting footage of coalition prisoners of war and images of slain soldiers. [BBC]

I aint surprised...

My first quiz post
I was browsing through Vinay's posts and found this. Generally, I dont take these tests and if I do, I try and figure out how to rig them... ;-), but today I didnt have to cuz the result came out to be as I wanted it to be in the very first go...

Result:

Neutral:
Harmony and balance is key. You don't look at the
world in a negative or positive way and you'll
never judge or assume a situation- you just
look at the facts. People like you are peaceful and accepting.

What color do you see the world in?

Dumb Americana
If America wants to be a good imperialist, perhaps it might turn its attention to the lives and careers of the Great Gamers of the British empire, who, exploitative colonialists as they were, still brought detailed knowledge and human engagement to the imperialist project. ?The Great Game? is the name given to the period of intense competition between Britain and Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, for control of the interiors of Asia.

...In fact, the wealth of American intellectual life in its universities stands in sharp contrast to the provincial insularity of its leadership. Morris Berman, professor at MIT, writes in Twilight of American Culture that America has fallen into an irretrievable ?dark age?. The ?dumbest? president in the history of the US presides over a society where the number of people reading a daily newspaper has halved since 1965. In Berman’s survey, 40 per cent Americans couldn’t name the US’s World War II enemies and 120 million Americans had the cognition of an 11-year old. [IE]

As Danny says so rightly in The Believer - If you hate somebody know why do you hate them.

Happy New Year

Fools Day Adventure
Woke up yesterday like any other day, didnt even remember that it was April 1st, it was the same routine day, until things started happening. Around 230-3ish Jedi messaged me saying India has been awarded the WC cuz 3 aussies tested +ve for doping. I was like huh? April fool kisi aur ko bana, so as his plan fell through, he said lets try it on someone else. So Jedi, OJ and I messaged Vinay on msn breaking the sensational news, Vinay being a good boy getting ready for the upcoming exams was busy with his books and like any other Indian started jumping up and down as he recieved our messages. A quick round of Aussie bashing followed, with Jedi, OJ and I playing along. Jedi came running to my room all excited now that he had gotten aleast one tropy for his fools day.

[Trascript]
cypherpunk: oye india declared winners of world cup
Vinay: haan charit bol raha tha.......bhaav nahin haio...but still drug default se milne main thoda pride to hai..now we know where the fuck gilchrist and symonds were getting all that power behing the pulls
cypherpunk: yeah man i know watcha mean
cypherpunk: says: and bret lee too
Vinay: kaun kaun lee adam aur?
cypherpunk: abhi tak to nahi pata
Vinay: hmm i c
cypherpunk: yep
Vinay:anyways chal i will talk to you in person in the evcening
cypherpunk: yeah ok
[/Transcript]

Well, the devil that I am, I declared sitting on my chair while checking news that lets send out SMS(s) saying that I have been diagnosed with SARS. SARS, yeah the mystery flu, is the latest scare thats going around S. E. Asia. Jedi had tasted blood so he got into action real quick and fired a few quick SMS(s) to Mav, Photon, The Dude and Ankit. Ankit, poor guy, hadnt slept the night before and was least bothered about anybody getting infected by virus. Mav with his presence of mind right on spot responded in kind to Jedis message saying - Fuck You...! Photon was sound asleep and didnt hear the incoming SMS alert. But The Dude being a kind and gentle SNAG types, called promptly to inquire what exactly was happening and we devils got our prey. By this time, we - Jedi, OJ and I - had already made Vinay the member of the inner circle and Mav had also been handed out the SOP.

Now because I am ill and supposed to take rest, read the rest of the account here.

OJ left my room sometime ago telling me that hes gonna post a more juicy version of today's events but I believe right now he's busy with some other stuff cuz its not online as of now. I will post a link as soon as it comes online.

P.S. As of now there still are some poor souls on campus who think that I am down with SARS, I got a couple of calls asking how am I feeling? ;-) Oh but the highlight of the day came around 9 pm with NTU announcing that exams have been postponed by 15 days, my first reaction was whoa where did NTU get such a good sense of humour from? It turns out they didnt, its for real... COOL...!!

Addendum: Check OJ's piece here