a new economic architecture
India and Brazil are refusing to open their markets further to goods from Western companies without a substantial reduction of subsidies provided to Western farmers.

New Delhi residents faced with hair-raising, and often deadly, daily commute

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has reported the disappearance of $22 million worth of equipment, computers and other items from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

haha...who cares for Sex on the beach, when you can enjoy the Joy of Sex :)

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers..as in..'Ssssh, its a library.'

Whoever said librarians can't have fun! ;)

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Other popular articles at New York Times today:

The bridge across the Penobscot Bay

Bachelorette parties at vineyards!

Small but mighty - The molecule called water

Just back from dinner at Fat Fish Blue in Cleveland..and enjoyed 40 minutes of great blues music from the Bryan Lee blues band. Heard a few good songs.... some from his latest album, Katrina was her name (review), which was released late last year and some (eg: The Things That I Used to Do by Guitar Slim) from an older album - Live, Saturday Night at the Old Absinthe House Bar, which is the name of the French quarters bar in New Orleans where Bryan Lee used to regularly play for many years. (Still does? Read somewhere it was closed down and made into a daiquiri bar?)

Wish I had stayed longer and heard them after the break too... but I had finished my meal and did not want to take another drink and sit through the 25 minute break and so decided to come back to the hotel room.

So...here now... wwoz.org or some blues station via shoutcast.com or last.fm or pandora.com or rhapsody.com beckons.

Its a strange world!

Police who chased a car for miles along a highway at speeds up to 100 mph said the driver was drunk, hardly a rarity in this resort town. But there was more: When they looked inside the flipped vehicle with guns drawn, they found an 11-year-old girl at the wheel. The girl, who was slightly injured in the crash, is now charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, speeding, reckless endangerment and leaving the scene of an accident.

The girl was charged for being under the influence as her blood alcohol level was higher than .02, the legal limit for minors

WTF... why is there even a legal limit for minors.

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More proof that it is a f-ed up world!

Video Appears To Show 2-Year-Old Girl On Ecstasy

Much has been written and debated about Mona Lisa's smile ... seems the confusion arises due to a painting technique called Sfumato which Leonardo honed and excelled at..

The debate (over the smile) is due to the use of sfumato around her mouth, making it a mystery as to whether the shadows are a result of a smile or if the smile is a result of the shadows. The painting is painted using tiny dots in several layers, around the eyes and mouth as many as 40 layers.

George Saunders, about whom I blogged earlier, wrote a great editorial in the Guernica magazine in October 2006 about the process of writing..

..talent is only the beginning - the essential thing is having a talent for having talent. You have certain abilities, certain defects as a writer: how do you accommodate these? There are certain things you can't seem to do - what form can you invent to circumvent these things? You have certain fears, obsessions, neuroses, patterns of thought and speech - can you let these into the work, accepting them as part of the wonder that is you, and accepting the wonder that is you as part of the greater wonder that is the world? Or do you lunge back to the shore, taking comfort in the conventional?

The young writer is called upon, in other words, through work and craft and persistence, to take the raw talent he or she has, and force it into some deep, dark corners...to try to wrest from "mere" talent a kind of iconic originality...to confront the parts of himself or herself that, in the early days of a career, one thinks can be ignored, or overcome, or hidden under a mattress somewhere.

But no. Turns out, everything must be used. So it's interesting to watch this process unfold. ...

Read more at the original. Its a pretty good editorial and points to some other good upcoming writers.

Just finished reading an interesting novella - The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders

A quick read but absolutely brilliant. Amazing imagination, sardonic wit, and a fine commentary on the way people in power manipulate information and people to keep the status quo.

Saunder's novels have been said to be a great satirical representation of "America’s empire-building and pop-culture obsessions" which he sees as both "comic and tragic." Here's Saunders on reading Slaughterhouse Five by another guru of the tragic-comic novel genre, the recently deceased Kurt Vonnegut .

Also read some interesting interviews with the author: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Just heard a great song, I still think about you by Dr. John (from the album, Afterglow) on Mel Hill's Jazz show on BBC Radio. You can also listen to it on Rhapsody music.

Also, this week's show starts with "six and a quarter minutes of red-hot excellence" with a "wonderfully vigorous version" of Struttin' With Some Barbecue by Tom Saunders' Wild Bill Davison Band, which can be found on this album and heard online at Rhapsody music.(The original version of this song was written in the 1920s by Louis Armstrong and his then wife, Lil Hardin. You can hear various other versions of the song, including that by Armstrong, here.)

Right after that I heard a very delicate and wonderful piano piece - Echoes Of Spring by Johnny Varro, followed by a good piece, Four On Six by Wes Montgomery & Wynton Kelly Trio and then Dr. John's beautiful bluesy song. That's all the time I have for jazz this morning... but that will do. Beautiful...what a start to the day!

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For now, here are the lyrics to Dr. John's song - as best as I could understand and transcribe them as I listened to them.

Sometimes when I'm with her
I feel lonely...

She love me still
I feel good

Although I'm bad
to that woman

Although I'm bad (?)
to that woman

Can I help if I still think about you

There are times when we get together
little things she does
reminds me of you

.....

Can I help it if I still think about you

If she found out
it would only hurt her
she would turn and wanna go

We'll just let this remain our secret
Its something she must never know

I try but still
I can't stop crying
She never know what makes me so blue

Although I'm bad (?)
to that woman

Can I help it if I still think about you

Can I help it if I still think about you

1. Why Dutch women don't get depressed

2. Family dynamics, not biology, behind higher IQ

3. New Zealand scientists breed cows that produce low-fat milk

4. Scientists find drug to banish bad memories

5. Jets of matter clocked at near-light speed

6. Scientists have taken a first step toward making synthetic life by transferring genetic material from one bacterium into another, transforming the second microbe into a copy of the first

7. 13th century text hides words of Archimedes -The pages of a medieval prayer text also contain words of ancient Greek engineer Archimedes. It takes high-tech imaging to read between the lines.

8. Anthropology unites humankind rather than dividing it Only by understanding our cultural differences can we hope to get along on this planet, says Luke Freeman

9. Crater could solve 1908 Tunguska Meteor Mystery

10. Archaeologists let looters do some of the work

11. Researchers find what may be the first gunshot victim in the Western Hemisphere.

12. The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged two of the largest known asteroids, revealing craters and other features that will soon be the targets of close-up observations by NASA's Dawn spacecraft.

A Blue Moon is said to occur when there are two full moons in one calendar month. Americans had a blue moon on May 31st, with the first full moon of the month being May 2^nd). Owing to time zone differences, Europeans are enjoying a blue moon tomorrow on June 30^th. This phenomenon doesn't occur often, thus giving rise to the phrase "once in a Blue Moon" - find out about future occurances using a Blue Moon calculator. - via

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More importantly... look at the full moon today. And look at Jupiter, and Venus and Saturn in conjunction..close to each other...the really bright Venus and the small dot next to it is Saturn..

This page gives more details..

Night Sky Note for June 30, 2007

Saturday, June 30, 2007
Venus passes 0.7° to the south of Saturn. This is the best pairing of naked-eye planets this year. At 0.7°, both planets should fit into the field of view of a telescope with a wide field eyepiece. Venus is a 36% crescent. Saturn's rings are tipped 13°. Look with the telescope while the sky is still blue to get a better look at Venus' crescent shape. The Moon, which turned Full at 9:49 am EDT, will be rising in the southeast.

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Night Sky Note for June 29, 2007

Friday, June 29, 2007
Venus and Saturn are about 1° apart. Look to the west in the evening.
The asteroid "17059 Elvis" makes its closest approach to the Earth. Today, Elvis is only 135 million miles from the building. The asteroid, named to honor the King of Rock and Roll, was discovered in 1999. It's a main-belt asteroid orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. 17059 Elvis is much too faint to see without a large telescope and a good finder chart.

Should Yale University return its relics of Machu Picchu? And who in Peru would actually benefit if it does? - NYT Magazine

See this slideshow with pictures of some of the relics.

Britain's Damien Hirst has been crowned the world's most expensive living artist at auction, lifting a title held for years by America's Jasper Johns. Hirst took the title on Thursday when Sotheby's sold his "Lullaby Spring" pill cabinet for 9.6 million pounds ($19.1 million).

Earlier last month, Damien Hirst had unveiled a diamond-encrusted human skull worth £50m - said to be the most expensive piece of contemporary art.

After I saw Amit's Linkastic post about the comic about Secret Worlds, I looked thru the next few.

This one is such a great demonstration of the geek being a little social-klutz and awkward when it comes to love. beautifully done..

P.S. There are many more really good ones ...do click through the rest to enjoy the series. It is 10 minutes worth spent.

Moreso today than in 1947, we have a tryst with destiny. Are we ready to shape our future?

I just read a very interesting article (via India Uncut), which was published some months back in the Bloomberg News (crossposted at IHT).

India Argues as Window of Opportunity Closes

Every modernizing society reaches a demographic inflection point where the returns from speedy -- and progressive -- economic policy-making rise exponentially. China was at that point in the early 1980s, and it made the most of it. India's clock has started ticking now.

The next 20 years are crucial. India can choose to act now and get rich, or its people can continue to argue, stay poor -- and become old. Indian policy makers can't continue to chew cud on state-asset sales, urban renewal, capital account convertibility and labor-market flexibility.

Vijay Kelkar, a former top bureaucrat in India's finance ministry, recently spelled out a pragmatic agenda for the government in his paper titled ``India's Economic Future: Moving Beyond State Capitalism.'' The paper, which Kelkar co-wrote with researcher Ajay Shah, makes suggestions that are as valuable as they are controversial. They include privatization of several government services, cash transfers to the poor, full currency convertibility and an end to exchange-rate targeting so as to make full use of monetary policy. ``This is our last chance,'' Kelkar said, presenting his paper in October last year. ``If we miss this opportunity, then we'll be in the dire straits of being a poor, aging country.''

Here is a presentation and the paper by Kelkar outlining what the Bloomberg article summarizes.

Also, some related papers:
- Connect and Catalyze
- Economic growth and India's future
- India - Strategies & Impacts
- India Rising - Faster Growth, Lower Indebtedness (World Bank)

All links above, except the last, are pdf files.

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The Bloomber article refers to Amartya Sen's Argumentative Indian (Reviews:1, 2, 3, 4. Excerpt: 1). I bought the book when I was in India earlier this year but have not started reading it yet. Late last year, I read the first 1/3rd of Sen's Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny and was very impressed with his eruditeness.

Both these books are definitely a must-read...some day I shall make the time to read these instead of books like New Sudden Fiction (which is a good book actually - it is a collection of short pieces (4-7 pages long, at most), which I started reading this week. The instant gratification provided by short pieces is good for someone like me who seems to suffer from a shorter and shorter attention span as I grow older and do not seem to have the time (patience?) lately to read for hours lately... oh woe!)