2012

"2012": One of the most hilarious movies in recent times. Things to check for:

1. The part where they say Neutrinos have started interacting "a lot more" with the earth's core.

2. The part where an "Indian" "scientist" dude says something in "Hindi" that sounds worse than my Dutch colleagues attempting to pronounce my last name.

3. The part where they try to fly a plane through a maze of collapsing buildings through Los Angeles. And then Vegas.

4. The part where the Yellowstone Park super-volcano goes from complete tranquil to infernal hell in 5 seconds.

5. The part where they use cargo helicopters to carry animals through the Himalayas. The animals are suspended from the helicopters, not in them (because that would . . . look stupid, I guess).

6. The part where the Earth's curst completely shifts positions and Wisconsin becomes the new south pole in about 24 hours. They had to stick in a Biblical reference there, so they put in giant ships called Arks ("and the Oscar for most creative naming goes to . . .") which they built next to mount Everest so there's something to collide with when the flood eventually shows up and named one of the minor characters in the movie "Noah". Loved it. I'd put it somewhere between "Hitch" and the Austin Powers movies.

Flea Markets and Aneroid Barometers

Ramya and I went over to the flea market in Burkliplatz yesterday. The market is heaven for anyone with the slightest interest in antiques, art, or old machines. You find all sorts of people giving away/selling all sorts of interesting things. I've seen matchlocks, snow axes, gas masks, French and English army helmets, accordions, sextants, and several other things you can't imagine buying at the local supermarket.

One of the things we bought yesterday was an aneroid barometer, our second (the long one with the thermometer above it). This one has a hand-carved wood base, is about 60 years old, and was made in Zurich by an optician named Schulthess (couldn't Google them, no idea if they exist any more). It has a thermometer on it as well. When I was looking at it, the kindly old gentleman at the shop asked me if I understood any Swiss dialects. When I said I barely understand the language proper, he proceeded to explain to me that
thermometers which have a tiny spiral vial containing the mercury at the bottom have a name in Swiitzerduutsch which means something like "the rear end of a pig", possibly because to some, it looks like the curled tail of a pig.

The other barometer we bought a few months ago is just a barometer, is about 70 years old, and was made by an optician in Frankfurt.

It serves as a better example for demonstrating how an aneroid barometer works. See the corrugated circle somewhere near the centre, on the inside? That's an evacuated container. It has a spring on the inside that prevents atmospheric pressure from causing it to collapse. However, the spring gets extended or compressed based on how much pressure the atmosphere exerts on the evacuated container (needless to say, this is a very sensitive spring). The movement of the spring is translated by a system of cogs to movement of an arm over a dial. This arm is the blue arm in the "Frankfurt barometer", indicating atmospheric pressure on one side, and its effect on the weather on the other side. "Veränderlich", "schön" and "trocken" respectively mean "changeable", "beautiful", and "dry" in German. There's another arm that can be manually moved, which is useful for marking measurements and observing relative changes to a certain reading.

Bush's Comment on Food Prices

It's amazing how big a deal it is. President Bush said something that is inaccurate, insensitive, and not very diplomatic. Understandably, we Indians are outraged. The papers in India are screaming for Bush's head. I've been reading about accusations, insults, and statistics flying about in all directions, and thought I'd verify a few of them (and as usual, digress on the way).

Are BioFuels an Obvious Good?
Pick up the English edition of the National Geographic Magazine, October 2007 (cover story "Growing Fuel - The Wrong Way, The Right Way"). This is a rather thorough article which discusses what different nations are doing with biofuels. It says that ethanol plants burn natural gas or coal to create steam that drives the fractional distillation needed to produce ethanol. Based on which studies you refer to, ethanol requires nearly as much to more carbon-emitting fossil fuel than it displaces. The article also states that ethanol distilleries are competing for corn with meat producers. Of course, this competition drives up prices.

That doesn't mean that biofuels are a bad idea. It's just which biofuel you choose. For example, let's compare ethanol produced from corn in the US to ethanol produced from sugarcane in Brazil. I've tried to draw some charts to help understand this better.

Let's compare the total amount of fossil fuel energy required to produce ethanol.
In case of corn, it looks like this:



The Indians are Eating Up All the Food!
Indian foodgrain consumption, in spite of the growth of the burgeoning Great Indian Middle Class, has fallen by about 10 kilos per capita over the last 5 years. As it stands now, it's about a fifth or a fourth of the American per capita food consumption. Blaming rising food prices on the growth of the Indian Middle Class is a little like the American reaction to the Tata Nano - "Oh my God, there will now be a billion Indians in cars polluting our dear planet". Lest you forget, a Tata Nano is _not_ a 1-mile-per-gallon SUV (and at any rate, there will certainly not be a billion of them anytime soon).

There's another statement I read in a newspaper, that the "US should not be diverting crops for fuel when many children in India are starving". In spite of this comment coming from my camp, the second part of the statement is not entirely accurate, at least from the Indian perspective. In case you didn't know, India produces more than enough foodgrains to be _completely_ self-sufficient. The problem, of course, is distribution. Our public food distribution system is anything but complete, and _that_ is why people starve or don't get enough food. Bush isn't always correct, but to blame starvation in India on him isn't really fair.

Short version of the story : Bush has had another attack of foot-in-mouth. Why is this even news?

P.S.: Part of me thinks that Bush is trying to get the American public off his back, and media attention off the fact that several states in the US are already feeling the pinch of increase in meat prices (fodder costs more now) and foodgrain prices due to large numbers of ethanol plants coming up in the Mid-West and surrounding regions. As I've said before - he's not as stupid as most of the people who call him stupid. :-)

Book and Movie Reviews

Over the past month, I've spent a good deal of time on Swiss trains. They're an absolute pleasure to travel in (at a non-negligible expense, mind you) and are a great place to catch up on your reading. So in these trips, I did a bit of reading. Mostly low-grade paperback fiction, but let me do a quick recap of everything.

i. "The Afghan" - Frederick Forsyth's latest work is very contemporary, just like all of his works over the years. Everything is well-researched and the details and tidbits of information are fun to read. The plot revolves around a former British Secret Services man with some Indian ancestry (and consequently, some middle-eastern features) and combat experience in the middle east who tries to impersonate a high-ranking Al-Qaeda leader held captive in Guantanamo. It's an intriguing plot and a very interesting read. Frederick Forsyth includes a lot of information on the political background and history of the Al-Qaeda and it makes for a very realistic story. There are a couple of extremely improbable (where improbable tends towards impossible) coincidences in the plot which sound somewhat amateurish. But that apart, it's an interesting read. Pick it up if you have some train/plane rides coming up!

ii. "The Day of the Jackal" - Having read his latest work, "The Afghan", I was curious enough to read his most famous (or second-most-famous, based on what you think of "The Odessa File"). "The Day of the Jackal" was a fantastic movie starring Edward Fox (who played a very convincing cameo of an unremorseful General Dyer in "Gandhi") as the Jackal. There's another extremely poor adaptation of this book named "Jackal" starring Bruce Willis as the Jackal. The story is set in France of the sixties, when Algeria was granted independence from France, and there were circles where Charles de Gaulle, the then President of France became highly unpopular for this move. The Jackal is a top assassin for hire who has been contracted by one such organisation, the OAS, to murder Charles de Gaulle. This book is about 10X more convincing than "The Afghan" and makes for a fascinating read. Not only is the narrative very engaging, but the methods that the Jackal uses to carry out his assassination are downright ingenous, and at the same time, realistic. Advice: Read the book first, and then watch the movie. The movie of course loses some detail when compared to the book, but is still very faithful to it.

iii. "The Alexandria Link" - Ever since "The Da Vinci Code" was written, I have run into tons of paperbacks written by people trying to dig out controversy from pseudohistory and make a fortune. In my opinion, what differentiates Dan Brown is his thriller-style writing - the controversy only helped his cause. The Alexandria Link, by Steve Berry, is built on the controversial premise that the land that is the country of Israel today was not the promised land in the Old Testament, and that the "real" Israel was in fact in Saudi Arabia. He has a very nice method of building and introducing characters and describing action. But the premise is so unconvincing that by the time the body count goes over ten, one wonders what the big deal is.

Movies:

i. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2006). I just ordered this DVD a few days back. I'm a HHGG fan, and I know practically every one of the radio episodes by heart. If you are a fan, and you like Peter Jones "as the book", and the jokes, witticisms, and top-quality voice acting that the radio series is so famous for, DO_NOT_WATCH_THIS_FILM. The point where Martin Freeman playing Arthur Dent tries to pull off the now-legendary "...counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying Vogonity..." is depressing, to say the least. If you're not a HHGG fan or have never seen a HHGG episode ever, DO_NOT_WATCH_THIS_FILM. If you do, you won't lose anything but you'll not tend to think very highly of HHGG fans.

लिनक्स पर हिन्दी

मेरे कुछ चीनी दोस्तों को "Chinese Simplified Input" पर काम करते हुए देख़कर मॆंने सोचा कि चलो देखते हॆं कंप्युटर पर हिन्दी भाषा में काम करना कितना आसान (या मुश्किल‌ :-) हॆ | लिनक्स पर अप SCIM और ITRANS के जरिए अपने English (U.S.) QWERTY लेआउट पर बिना कोई नए लेआउट सीखे आसानी से हिन्दी में लिख सकते हॆं |

हालाकि हिन्दी में "वोइड मेन (‌)‌ { इंट आइ = १२३; } "‌लिखने में कुछ समय लग सकता हॆं, याहू मेसेंजर पर पुराने दोस्तों को शुद्ध हिन्दी में गालियाँ देने का मजा कुछ और ही हॆं | :-)

Christian the Lion- Reunion!

A lovely video where a man is reunited with the lion that he raised as a cub. While it's amazingly cute, I can't help but wonder how disturbingly unnatural it is. On a lighter note, I have no idea how you stand your ground when a 200-kilo perfectly-designed-to-kill carnivore leaps at you, albeit with benign intentions. :-)

A Week in St. Nectaire - 1

Last week was interesting in many ways. Despite living in France, albeit in a remote corner of the country, I have seen pretty much nothing of the country. Save for a sightseeing Saturday I spent in Lyon last winter, nothing (I'm saving Paris for an occassion). Last week, there was a collaboration meeting (I work in an experiment collaboration at CERN that involves institutes and researchers from all over the world, and we meet once a year off-site from CERN) in St. Nectaire, a really small village in France.


This is the route we took to St. Nectaire. It was a lovely route through the Jura mountains on to the other side, through and over villages located in and between the mountains.

	After a while, it got flatter, and pretty boring. :-)

We were put up in the most luxurious hotel in St. Nectaire. On arrival, we took a walk around the town. In a 45-minute walk, we met _one_ local inhabitant. This continued over the next few days, over which we met a handful of locals, and hardly any young people.

I read about rural depopulation in Europe before I came here. This is a phenomenon where the population of villages reduces because younger people apparently have no reason to stay back, since tourism and agriculture are not lucrative enough as careers. Lots of buildings were for sale, some sadly going into ruin.

The French food over the next few days was great overall. Apart from the one disappointment where they served the boiled remains of an animal massacre, the food was great - the French have learnt a thing or two about flavour and do a good job (between bouts of amnesia).

The area is full of volcanic craters and mountains. It doesn't concern people much because the latest eruption in the region was ~7000 years ago. However, the craters still look like craters (more pictures to follow). The mountains are also famous for an old Roman temple (~2000 years old) and as a popular paragliding site. After climbing one of the neighbouring summit, looking at the town of Clermont-Ferrand from a height of 1400 metres was . . . satisfying. Of course, this was also the site of Blaise Pascal's famous experiment where he measured the effect of altitude on a mercury column (to prove atmospheric pressure).

Here's the first batch of photos.

St. Nectaire