Swiss Peace

In an incident reflective of the age-old Swiss stance of neutrality towards all nations and the resulting lack of any intensity in the small nation's armed(?) forces(!), what began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighbouring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality earlier this week before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

"We've spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it's not a problem," Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.

Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.

Einstein is supposed to have remarked, "If only the whole world behaved as sensibly as Switzerland, it could be as beautiful."

:)

The complete Dilbert archive.

Last King of France!

Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon, an Indian lawyer and part-time farmer from Bhopal, may be the last king of France!

This Indian father-of-three is being feted as the long-lost descendent of the Bourbon kings who ruled France from the 16th century to the French revolution. A distant cousin of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, he is alleged to be not only related to the current Bourbon king of Spain and the Bourbon descendants still in France, but to have more claim than any of them to the French crown.

Article in The Guardian

Ulta-pulta

Burka Blues in Kabul

"My mother wears a burka,
I must wear a burka too.
We all wear a burka, we don't know who is who.
Blueee, burka blue."

- Burka Band
The first-ever Afghan girl band

"Blueee, burka blue" sings the lead singer on the tv, while another woman plays the drums and a third the guitar.

The three girls make small dancesteps and swing the microphone as you would in any other girl band. But there is one big difference. The three girls all wear the Afghan burka, the blue dress that covers a woman from head to toe.

25-year-old Nargiz is pictured here while making the video in Kabul , the capital of Afghanistan . She is one of the three girls who started the Burka Band two years ago.

Nargiz started the Burka Band when she met a German music producer in Kabul in late 2002. The producer was teaching Afghans to play modern music, and Nargiz learned to play the drums. One day she wondered why all the burkas in Kabul were blue, and together with two friends she wrote the song "Burka Blue", later recorded in Kabul with help from the German producers. The band would rehearse behind locked doors, so nobody would find out that the women were playing music. The burka also helped hide who the bandmembers really were.

In 2003, the German record label Ata Tak released the song in Germany and the song became a hit in German clubs after it had been remixed by a german DJ. The Burka Band even performed at a big concert in Köln during a trip to Germany .

The Burka Band has never performed in Afghanistan and at the moment the band is not active. During the Taliban regime music was totally forbidden, and women were not allowed to work. To sing in public could carry a death sentence. Today the country is still very conservative, and there is no market in Afghanistan for the Burka Band's music. The band members have to wait for a European or American record label to help them if they are to make a whole album one day.

Nargiz now works in an international organisation in Kabul ,

while the lead singer of the Burka Band has gone to Pakistan because she can't sing in Afghanistan , and the guitarist has a regular job.

Today the only place to see the Burka Band is on video, linked below. On the screen the first and only Afghan girl band plays on with their headphones on the burka-covered heads and the drumsticks swinging.

:)

Best Quote Of 2006?

"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named Bush, Dick, and Colon." -- Comedian Chris Rock

Honda goes green; the rest go bananas!

The Honda F1 Team, has decided to spread the 'Green' message in the forthcoming F1 2007-'08 season. Notice the conspicuous absence of any sponsor logo on the car. The message is decidedly clear- Global Warming is here.

In the meanwhile, scientist's can't reach any consensus on the causes of The Great Warmth. Experts are sharply divided over the question of whether humans and greenhouse gases are indeed the ones to be blamed for all the heat.

The official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - which brings together almost all the world's leading scientists in the field and all its governments - published the first instalment of its latest massive "assessment report", concluding that it was 90 per cent certain that human activities are heating up the planet. The conclusion was all the more authoritative as the IPCC is a cautious body that acts by consensus; all governments, including the United States, have to agree its conclusions.

Some scientists still disagree - that is the nature of science - but their numbers are diminishing, and few are leaders in their fields.

But the debate rages on as British Channel 4 screens what it calls a "polemical and thought-provoking documentary" - The Great Global Warming Swindle - by one of the environmentalists' favourite hate figures, film-maker Martin Durkin tomorrow.

It follows hot on the heels of a decision by the British Environment Secretary, to send a copy of Al Gore's box-office hit, An Inconvenient Truth - which won two Oscars this month - to every secondary school throughout the UK.

In the meanwhile, Filipinos (94%) and Czechs (98%) were found to be the most aware about Global Warming in a recent survey conducted by AC Nielsen, while the US and UAE lagged far behind at 13% and 16% respectively. No surprises there, really!

Leaders across the world want to spread the message wider. Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Bill Clinton have formed a $3 billion fund to combat The Big GW!

International organizations don't want to be left too far behind either. As part of the UN-sponsored International Polar Year in 2007-08, a 60-nation project to probe polar areas on the front lines of climate change, Michael Nickel of Stuttgart Univ is to study Arctic spiders in the hope of finding further clues to the impact of GW.

Amidst all the noise, we keep burning fossil fuels, cutting trees and dumping effluents at will. Self-destruction, anyone?

'Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on for too long.’ - Ogden Nash

P.S. Honda Environmentology page - Hybrid Cars, Fuel Cell Cars, Alternative Energy et al

Street Art - Banksky

Gallery of Banksky's street art.

Banksy - pseudonym of a well-known yet anonymous English graffiti artist from Yate near Bristol. His artwork are often satirical pieces of art which encompass topics from politics, culture, and ethics. His street art, which combines graffiti with a distinctive stencilling technique, has appeared in London and in cities around the world.

Some select examples of his art..

The World Cup is HERE!!!!!!!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, buckle up your seats-belts as we approach the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 - touted as being 'the most wide-open' in recent times- which means that all but Bangladesh have a shot at winning it. As it happens, so does India ..

Dravid sounds quietly confident that all the hard work and the tough times that the team has gone through since the last World Cup be it Ganguly's sacking, Sachin's injuries, incosistent performance of the youngsters et al will pay off this Caribbean summer. Dravid himself would have a statement to make on the BIG stage- both with his batting form and captaincy, which have been troubled over the past year (except for some good times at home recently) leading into the competition.

The captain will be the first to acknowledge the ferocity of the competition in this edition. All top 7 teams- Aus, South Africa, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, India, West Indies and even England will be fancying their chances. Pakistan, embroiled in one controversy after other, are Pakistan. Pretermit Pakistan at your own peril. Interestingly, all these teams stand guilty of worrisome inconsistency amidst some remarkable cricket recently. So then, results in the forthcoming event will boil down to performances on the day as no team looks a runaway favourite over the other- that should make for some tight contests and good wholesome entertainment!

The bowling and fielding hold the key to India's chances. Far too often we manage to pin quality sides down on the mat initially, only to find ourselves looking at the long end of the barrel later. Sides that manage pressure- shake it off, hurl it back and keep it there- will come out on top. The bowling, not known for its consistency with Zaheer, Agarkar, Sreesanth in the ranks will be severely tested by the big-hitters in the likes of Gibbs, Gilchrist, Ponting, Jaysuriya, Afridi, Pietersen, Graeme Smith and co. on the smallish Caribbean grounds. The fielders will have to maintain discipline and intensity inspite of the aging arms and legs- a tough ask- in World Cup pressure. And yet, success demands that Pressure be built up, unrelentingly sustained and the Knock-Out punch landed- consistently, ruthlessly.

This is where experience and class in the form of Tendulkar, Ganguly, Kumble and Dravid himself will have to come to the fore. This is where Yuvraj, Sehwag, Pathan and Harbhajan have to put their hands up and be counted. The latter 4 are winging a ride based more on hope, a prayer and a paucity of options than automatic selection. This could also be Agarkar's definitive chance to offer answers to some long-standing questions. Dhoni and Zaheer would do well to keep up with the good work. And Munaf would do well to stay on his two feet. This team has the necessary ingredients, but the right factors- focus, skill, hunger, nerve and luck have to come together at the right time.

My wishlist for India this World Cup-

1. "Sachin! Sachin!"- one last time on the BIG stage.
2. Dada and Sehwag rocking it at the top
3. Please, Pleaaaaassseee, let Pathan come good. We NEED him. Bat, Ball and Balance.
4. Yuvraj, Dravid, Dhoni finishing games when on the chase
5. Tight bowling at the death.
6. Singles taken and catches held- all the time!
7. Bhajji picking up wickets - esp. in the middle overs
8. Dinesh Kartik for 12th man
9. ONE wicket through fielding every match (stunning catch, direct hits)
10. If we make it to the final, Zaheer holding his nerve and NOT the ball, come first over!

So will India come good this time, after what proved to be a vain effort in South Africa '03? The answer to that lies at the Kensington Oval, Barbados in 2 months' time. See you there!

Scientists break speed of light

Scientists have finally exceeded the speed of light, causing a light pulse to travel hundreds of times faster than normal.

It raced so fast the pulse exited a specially-prepared chamber before it even finished entering it.

The experiment is the first-ever evidence of faster-than-light motion.

The NEC Research Institute lab

The result appears to be at odds with one of the basic principles of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, that nothing can go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, about 186,000 miles per second.

However, Lijun Wang, one of the scientists from the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J., says their findings are not at odds with Einstein.

She says their experiment only disproves the general misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light.

The scientific statement "nothing with mass can travel faster than the speed of light" is an entirely different belief, one that has yet to be proven wrong. The NEC experiment caused a pulse of light, a group of waves with no mass, to go faster than light.

The key to the experiment was that the pulse reformed before it could have gotten there by simply travelling through empty space. This means that, when the waves of the light distorted, the pulse traveled forward in time.

The NEC researchers published their results in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

Tracing the sun..

If you took a picture of the Sun at the same time each day, would it remain in the same position? The answer is no, and the shape traced out by the Sun over the course of a year is called an analemma. The Sun's apparent shift is caused by the Earth's motion around the Sun when combined with the tilt of the Earth's rotation axis. The Sun will appear at its highest point of the analemma during summer and at its lowest during winter. Analemmas created from different Earth latitudes would appear at least slightly different, as well as analemmas created at a different time each day. The analemma pictured above was built up by Sun photographs taken from 1998 August through 1999 August from Ukraine.

Tripped out wires

Wires have secret lives. I’m sure of it.

Keeping well in line of Occam’s rather sharp doctrine, how else can one explain the mysterious entanglements that wires tend to get themselves into- away from prying human eyes.

Ever rolled up your head/ear-phone wires neatly and tucked them away alongside your disc-mp3 player only to discover a miserable maze of wire in no time? These appendages of electrical equipment intermingle all the time and all over the place- at work with the PC, behind the TV/Audio unit; even when the wires and systems are placed perfectly apart!

One cannot begin to unravel either the loopy loops themselves nor the mystery behind how on earth could it all have gotten so convoluted in the first place. I shudder to think of the horrors of them undersea cables.

Maybe these wires are copulating.Mercifully its merely for pleasure's sake, for there seem to be no ‘wiry’ offspring crawling anew.

Being Sourav

in a recent wide-ranging interview with cnn-ibn, dada talks about his comeback,his time away from the game, expectations from the world cup et al.

worth a watch for the honest candor and renewed perspective that sourav displays..

Part 1



Part 2


Part 3



Here's wishing Dada and the team all the best for the World Cup as they leave for the Caribbean..