Time travel

10 years ago, I would be listening to classical music all the time. These days it is jazz (and occasionally blues) .. listening to it incessantly on the internet for the most part - my favorite shows being Jazz with Mell Hill on BBC Radio and WWOZ.org straight from New Orleans.

But driving back from running some errands today, I was taken back to those times remembering a past joy.. (for listening to classical music has now become a past fad, the possesion of 100+ CDs from those days notwithstanding!) ... when I heard two great performances today on WGBH.org public radio

1) Ravel: Tzigane played by Dmitri Torchinsky on violin and Daniel del Pino on piano.

2) Paganini's 'Introduction, theme & variations on Paisiello's "Nel cor più"' played by Romanian violinist Eugen at the Newport Music Festival, which took place this year from July 7–23.

Body Worlds

Andrea Shea, WBUR’s new arts reporter, has just reviewed the touring exhibition “Body Worlds 2,” that opened at Boston’s Museum of Science this past Sunday. - via

Good riddance to bad rubbish - 1

nu-cu-lear Ghandi

A few days back, Amit Verma wondered why Westerners spelled Gandhi as Ghandi. I think it is just a case of a wrong-becoming-a-right simply because it was repeated often enuf... error being cast as a variation (or metathesis) of the norm - the kind of broohaha that one sees in the case of Bush (and many others like him) pronouncing nuclear as nu-cu-lear...or whatever it is Bush says and his supporters justify!! (And don't get me even started on other Bushisms and verbal gaffes)

anyways, just read Scott Adams (yes..him, of Dilbert fame) justifying the spelling because of a silent H .. much hilariy ensues :)

A silent h can be put anywhere you want, precisely because it is silent. So for example, it is equally proper to spell it Gandih, Gahndi, hGandi and even Gandhhhhhhhi.

and more fun later..

In Viking days, not only was the h totally noisy, but the Norsemen used them in practically every word. This caused a lot of confusion. The most common phrase in Viking became "Whhaht? I cahn't hunhderstand! Get the h out!" But it all came to a head one day when Eric the Artistic carved a wooden chair out of a tree stump and was showing it off to friends. That's when Allen the Insensitive said, "Nice Chairh, hEric. I thinkh I'll shit on it" Well, the next thing you know, swords are drawn and limbs are flying. And that was the day that the Vikings decided to stop talking in English and go discover the United States, which they called America.

haha.. Waiting for the day when "misunderestimated" and "subliminable" becomes a legit word :)

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via Monkeyfilter:

Do you speak American? PBS put together a site to go along with its broadcast special (premiered in January) that's chock full of linguistic goodness! Take a quiz or check out the dictionary.

Everything you wanted to know about our crazy language - from Slayer Slang to New York Speak to Women Talking Too Much to Artificial Voices in Technology. There's also a nice list of commonly mispronounced words. Some people will just never learn.

Death be not proud - 2

Pakistani cricketer, Wasim Raja dies from a heart attack while playing cricket
Obituary - The good die young Dileep Premachandran - Cross-border hero Gideon Haigh - A breathtaking strokeplayer

Veteran filmmaker Hrishikesh Mukherjee, feted with the Dadasaheb Phalke award and Padma Vibhushan, and director of several Hindi movies that continue to be enjoyed by me time and again, including Anand, Golmaal, Chupke Chupke, and other classics like Abhimaan and Khubsoorat, died at age 84 at the Leelavati hospital in Mumbai after a fight with a series of illnesses recently. His last work was Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaate starring Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla, released in 1998....which I have not seen. Other fans pay tribute here..

Pati patni aur woh

Some spouses perhaps empathize more than others on this one :)

Laptop slides into bed in love triangle

As electronic devices get smaller, people tote their technology around the house more than ever. And as the number of home wireless networks also grows, laptops — along with Treos, BlackBerries and other messaging devices — are migrating into the bedroom and onto the bed. The marital bed has survived his-and-her book lights and the sushi-laden bed tray. Can it also survive computers that tether their owners to the office or make the bed the workplace itself? In the morning Larry Smith edits his online magazine in bed while his wife, Piper Kerman, tries not to lose sleep over it.

This part was hilarious..

She also lies in bed and exchanges instant messages with her husband, who is elsewhere in the house on his own computer.

Killer Lakes

Apparently, Geysers spewing sand and dust hundreds of feet into the "air" have been discovered on Mars. Images from a camera orbiting Mars on the Mars Odyssey probe have shown the 100mph jets of carbon dioxide erupt through ice at the planet's south pole.The geyser debris leaves dark spots, fan-like markings and spider-shaped features on the ice cap. The scientists said geysers erupted when sunlight warming the ice turned frozen carbon dioxide underground into high-pressure gas.

(In a bizzare coincidence, I saw a documentary on Science Channel yesterday on the 'killer lakes' of Africa - where a huge cloud of CO2 emanated from the bottom of the lake and killed 1800+ people around Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986. Had never heard of this huge tragedy before and moreso also that such a thing was possible on earth! Interesting how scientists went about deciphering what happened and also how to degass the lakes to prevent future disasters - although per this 2005 article, efforts to prevent the release of deadly clouds of toxic gas from two African lakes appear to be failing.)