varnam

Finally we have a fool proof plan for making Kerala the hub of IT development. This plan is so perfect that once implemented, investors will be running to the state with the same enthusiasm with which Karunakaran is running towards the Communists.

Previously, some management types working for investors did some research on places to invest in India and came up with Kochi, Kerala. The person had used factors like educated workforce, access to airport, roads etc and Kochi was the perfect match like the hammer to the sickle or Prakash to a Karat.

A bunch of VC's came with bag loads of money, made the decision to setup shop, and while trying to enjoy the trip were are stuck in a houseboat in middle on a lake in Kumarakom due to an instant hartal called by the Communists, protesting the lack of hartal for a month. The oarsman who was a Communist had deserted the boat.

After living on fresh fish for two days, the realization stuck them that they need to add more parameters into their Excel spreadsheet while choosing places to invest. Since then Kochi was blacklisted among all VCs and they instructed their travel departments never to book a ticket to God's own country, even if an actual God ordered them. So no one invests in Kerala anymore.

If you have been reading news, you know that politicians have changed the name of Bangalore to its ancient name Bengaluru to more accurately reflect the 16th century infrastructure there. As a result, the name Bangalore is up for grabs.

Our plan consists of instantly renaming Kochi to Bangalore. Now when a VC wants to invest in Bangalore and books a ticket guess where he is going to land? I mean who calls his travel agent and says, book a ticket to Bengaluru? Before you know investors will be landing in the Kerala and creating startups. IBM, Microsoft and Google will be having offices in coconut groves and employees will be getting free Ayurvedic massages as perks.

By the time the Comrades return back from their conclave in Kolkatta, the palce would have changed like anything. Internet cafes would have changed to dotcoms. Old dilapidated shops which used to sell bananas, cigarettes and Ma magazines would be having a BPO operation on the side. DYFI members would be speaking Malayalam with an American accent and SFI activists would be enthusiastically discussing BitComet's non-honoring of BitTorrent private flag.

Looking at this, the Comrades would be wondering if a coconut fell on their heads. They would take out their Nokia phones and dial each other to protest this invasion of globalization. Wouldn't that be a sight to see.

By Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to Kerala Communists

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee took a swipe at the hardline fringe of the Kerala unit which has yet to come to terms with the reforms within. ''Why should we oppose foreign companies if they bring in jobs? Why should we oppose shopping malls from MNCs if they provide employment to our jobless youth?'' he said. [Why are you afraid of foreign firms if they give jobs]

Jobless youth are required to destroy public property and bring life to standstill depending on if Achyutanandan or Pinarayi Vijayan got out on the wrong side of the bed. Giving such lectures will not change anything and so we need to follow the tactics in HOWTO: Develop Kerala document.

Do you want to know about Indian history and how European Aryans came to India? Take a look at the SABHA version, assembled from the works of "scholars".

Stanley Wolpert explains lucidly in his book, The New History of India, the fate of the inhabitants of this civilization.

Around 2000 B.C. the original Indo-European speaking, seminomadic barbarians, who most probably lived in the region between the Caspian and the Black seas, were driven by some natural disaster, possibly drought, prolonged frost, or plague. Elaborating on the type of natural disaster, he writes,

Whatever the cause of their dispersion - it may even have been a series of Mongol invasions from Central Asia - the ancestors . . . were forced to flee from Southern Russia to survive.

We chose "whatever" as the cause (since we haven't yet figured out how a series of Mongol invasions falls under the category of natural disasters), and were in luck when we found the actual explanation buried in an article by Michael Witzel! Apparently, civilizations developed on pond sides! A tsunami from the pond must have drowned the entire civilization. Well, not quite the entire civilization. The male members and horse chariots survived! [SABHA 4M Report]

More and more evidence is surfacing which is disproving the Aryan Tourist Theory^TM. Archaeological and genetic evidence do not show that there was a massive migration of Europeans to India. They did not teach us agriculture also.

Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans:

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (NAY'-gin) is suggesting that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America" and at black communities too

Pat Robertson on Thursday linked Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke to God's “Enmity against those ‘who divide my land.’” “He was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations, or the United States of America," Robertson said on his television program, “The 700 Club," Broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach. “God says 'this land belongs to me. You better leave it alone.’”

A healthy herbal beer, invented by an Indian is to hit UK markets. The beer promises much less hangover. Lady Bird Bio Beer contains aloe vera - more commonly found in health food shops - and medicinal herbs.

The beer has the same alcohol strength - five per cent - like all other regular beer. The difference however, according to its inventor Dr Srinivasa Amarnath is that it will leave you with less of a sore head.

Dr Amarnath, who has apparently worked on the particular beer for a decade claims it, has health benefits. He claims it can alleviate conditions such as asthma and arthritis. [Indian to launch herbal beer in UK]

Google Calendar, besides having cool Ajax features like click and add, drag and drop also allows you to share your calendar with others. You can create a calendar for your local cricket team schedule, another one for  your Java Users Group and share it with the people involved. You can also import global calendars like the list of Indian Holidays and the Wimbledon schedule and view it alongside your personal calendar. These features are quite easy to use and one group which could benefit from this is the monkey brigade of the Kerala Communists (Official Motto: Taking Kerala back to Parasurama's time).

Recently members of DYFI, protesting against the recent hike in fuel prices decided to block trains. There was one problem though.

The young comrades of the DYFI here were not lucky enough to squat before a moving train that chugged on to the railway station.

Reason: their fellow agitators in other parts of Malabar had already detained a few trains in various stations. As a result, the DYFI activists in Kozhikode had to agitate in front of a stationary passenger train, shunted to the yard.[The not so lucky comrades]

Sometimes international politics and diplomacy offers more chance of fun than watching kids play in a day care center. The first one comes from Colonel Muammar Gaddafi who landed in Nigeria with some 200 armed body guards. When the Nigerians refused the body guards to carry arms, Gaddafi threatened to walk some 40 kms to the capital city from the airport. With some intervention from President Obasanjo, the Libyans backed down, though it would have been more fun to see Gaddafi walk all that distance.

The second piece of funny news from that land where Uncle Castro rules from the bed. Right now the biggest threat to Cuban national security comes from - Rock Climbers (gasp!). The reason is that Castro launched his 1959 revolution from a camp in the Sierra Maestra Mountains and now the the Cuban Govt. thinks that all people who climb mountains are about to conduct another revolution. Also some of the Cubans climb mountains with Americans. Due to this now Cubans are required to get a permit before climbing, with only one problem that no one knows how to get a permit.

If tiny countries can act juvenile, it is hard for the lone superpower to stay away. In a move which is sure to bring down the regime of Kim Jong Il, United States has banned the export of iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters to North Korea. When Kim knows that he will have to listen to music on the Zune, watch the latest James Bond movie on a normal television and will have to walk instead of zipping on the Segway, he is sure to roll back his nuclear programme and come out from the Dark Side.

I thought I would stay away from blogging for the holidays, but all these folks won't let me.

• When you buy a Canon SD800 why do they give only a 16MB card along with it when you can buy a 2GB Secure Digital Card for $20 in the market?
• When you buy a HP Deskjet 5940 why can't they give a USB cable along with it when it costs just $9.99 in the market?

No more need for vipassana. Just focusing on these koans will give you nirvana.

Kerala is currently run by Tom & Jerry. Tom is Pinarayi Vijayan, the Communist party state secretary and Jerry is V S Achyutanandan, the octogenarian Chief Minister and they love each other the way Nouri al-Maliki loved Saddam Hussein. At present, administration in Kerala essentially consists of both of them and their supporters trying to out smart one another. If they ran into pitch forks or doors and like how Hanna-Barbera intended, it would have been more fun, but it is not so.

And the politburo is not amused by this cartoon show. Good Communists are supposed to get rich, keep the masses poor, create agitations, disrupt life, but not fight among themselves. The politburo has zero tolerance for such behavior which is common among the bourgeoisie.

In a recent speech in Kannur, Pinarayi came out against the Chief Minister's crony Manjalamkuzhi Ali MLA for the reason that sun rose in the east. Pinarayi claimed that Ali was infected by the Shahjahan syndrome. This did not mean Ali was importing marbles to construct another Taj Mahal, but just that Pinarayi had lost his marbles. Pinarayi also mentioned that Ali would have the same fate as Shahjahan. People took it to mean that when Ali dies Indians would pay Rs 20 to visit his tomb and foreigners would pay Rs. 750.

That was not what Pinarayi meant. He meant that like Shahjahan, he too would be expelled from the party. Then some newbie party worker reminded Pinarayi that Ali was not a party member and as an Independent member of the Assembly, it would be difficult to expel him. Pinarayi admonished the newbie and said that facts should never deter a good communist.

Another point of disagreement among the communists is on whether the state should take an ADB Loan. The Chief Minister is against it while Pinarayi is for it. In a speech in Kozhikkode, Pinarayi said that people who opposed the loan were Dogmatix.  Later he said, he meant "dogmatists"

When you are charged up like this and going to the politburo, you have to be prepared. Yesterday  Pinarayi was detained at Chennai airport, on his way to Delhi, for possessing five rounds of live cartridges in his bag. He did not have a gun though. Probably one of his Maoist comrades would have loaned it to him if needed in Delhi.

The State Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said that this was certainly illegal, but the media need now blow up the incident. On hearing this Osama bin Laden called up George Bush and asked if he can use the same defense?

This makes you wonder. Does everyone come with firearms and bombs to politburo meetings? Is this how unanimous decisions are made? Maybe it is like a scene in Tom & Jerry where Achyutanandan comes with an AK 47, Buddhadeb with a Howitzer (Copied and Made in China), Prakash Karat with a bow and arrow and Brinda Karat with a rolling pin. They all bow to the Chinese flag and then start shooting each other while Scott Bradley's music plays in the background.

Remember Ottavio Quattrocchi? The middle man for Bofors who represented Snamprogetti and big pal of ex-dead-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi? He was arrested in Argentina on Feb 6th and there is a 30 day period during which India should ask him to be extradited. Of course bringing Quattrocchi to Delhi is not something the UPA would like to do and so they decided to let the 30 day period lapse.

Then some spoil sport "leaked" the news after 13 days and there is lot of activity in the Parliament. Apparently the file went to our Prime Minster and no action was taken because a) they could not identify it was Ottavio Quattrocchi and b) They could not find anyone to translate documents from Spanish to English. Now that the news has been leaked the CBI is forced to book a ticket to visit the beautiful Buenos Aires.

According to the Government, which always looks if the glass is half full or empty by tilting the open side of the glass towards its face, the criminal in this whole case is the person who leaked the information to the media. He has been called a "saboteur" and "culprit" and various agencies have been asked to find the "mole".

It was with great effort that the Congress Party erased the word "Bofors" from public memory and now this saboteur-culprit has undone two decades to hard work. If Bofors comes back, it is going to be trouble for lot of pundits. They will have to refresh their memory on what the case was all about and teach their spell checker to correctly spell Quattrocchi.

This will also distract us from other  issues  of national importance like the Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding. N. Ram will soon start publishing photo copies of Quattrocchi's nursery school mark sheets and will have no time to reprint articles from the People's Daily. The UPA Administration will be busy denying all Bofors allegations that they will not have time to express shock at various acts of terror happening in the country. Do we want this to happen?

We hope the CBI officers take  one of those boats at the Gateway of India which takes tourists to Elephanta Caves  or  better, Air India, to go to Bunos Aires. Once the 30 day period is over, then Quattrocchi will be safe and both Sonia Gandhi and rest of the nation can sigh in relief.

Dopamine, a naturally produced chemical in the brain functions as a neuro transmitter, which means that it helps pass signals from one neuron to another. Dopamine is the reward center, so when something pleasurable happens, like news of Quattrocchi being arrested, dopamine is released in your brain. Understanding dopamine can help in your love life and explain Musharraf.

A recent study was conducted on 15 people who were mending broken hearts. They were shown pictures of people to whom they had intense romantic feelings and some neutral images. Magnetic Resonance Images showed that when they saw the pictures of their loved ones, the dopamine system in the brain was triggered. This implied that they still maintained feelings for their loved ones. 

After 9/11, Musharraf had to part company with his loved ones, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, to whom he had intense feelings. If you do an MRI on Musharraf's brain and show him images of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden or Mullah Obaidullah Akhund you will see that dopamine system is triggered. In medical tests it has been found that subjects with such failed relationships show brain activity associated with risk taking, and controlling anger. This risk taking mentality explains why Musharraf allows al-Qaeda to roam freely in Pakistan while denying it and we have seen intense anger when it is suggested that Pakistan is not doing enough in the war on terror.

Currently, the relationship between United States and Pakistan, like that between two old lovers has become mundane and not so exciting. Brain studies help here too. It has been noticed that over a period of time, the intensity of the romance  between couples fades and something must be done to ignite the passion.

One set of couples were asked to perform new and exciting activities like sailing or an art class while another group was asked to perform familiar activities like dinner with friends. Couples doing new activities found that their quality of marriage got better as the novelty of the new experience triggered the dopamine system.

After 9/11, the relationship between United States and Musharraf has been like that between  Charlie Sheen and Heidi Lynne Fleiss. The US pays some money, called aid, and in turn Pakistan offers some Taliban/al-Qaeda types at regular intervals. This worked quite well from 2001 and now after 6 years, the intense romantic feeling has died down. To rekindle the love, United States thought instead of money, why not send some F-16s, but still Musharraf's dopamine system was not triggered enough.

Then what you need is a drug. Steven Kotler in his book, West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief talks about an experiment conducted by Swiss neurologist Peter Brugger in which he gave the participants L-dopa, a drug used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. Such people had increases in the levels of dopamine, the drug which evolution created to get us to do the things we need to do to survive.

Apparently Dick Cheney has the same effect.  We don't know how much of Musharraf's dopamine system was triggered by the exciting activity called one on one meeting with man who shot a lawyer in the face, but the end result is that Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, former defense minister of the Taliban government and #3 in the leadership council was arrested.

This also explains why India is not able to get Musharraf to budge on anything. Every time there is a Pakistan sponsored terrorist attack in India, all we do is re-issue previous warnings with just a change in the time stamp on the documents. Then there is the usual accusation/counter accusation new cycle and all goes still till the next terrorist attack. If we are able to pull a Dick Cheney on him, something tangible might happen.

Last month, Discovery Channel's planned telecast of The Jesus Tomb was scuttled by Joseph Diaz, the General Secretary of Catholic Secular Forum. Mr. Diaz without even watching the documentary, clairvoyantly assumed that it trivializes the Bible and would hurt the sentiments of people. Christian population in Christian majority countries and the Vatican had no issues with the documentary and in such countries Discovery Channel went with the telecast. In India they meekly submitted.

This time Joseph Diaz was able to step in at the right time and prevent people from seeing the documentary. We fear that sometimes things may slip through, like for example, he forgot to get the book, Da Vinci Code banned.  Books like Satanic Verses and Dwikhandita could only be banned in time because the concerned people were alert.

Also it is not just book banning that requires help. Political parties and communal organizations need help in disrupting the life of Indian citizens for matters which have nothing to do with India like the hanging of Saddam Hussein or the Palestinian issue. Besides this there are various effigy burning worth national incidents, like Khusboo's remarks on sex, or India losing to High School cricket teams or the Shilpa Shetty- Big Brother incident.

If California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger meets Sonia Gandhi (mother of India's future), they will have a common topic to talk about. As per American laws, Arnold cannot be the President of United States since he is a citizen by naturalization. In India, the Supreme Court has asked the Government's opinion on the issue of registered citizens holding constitutional posts. By registered citizens'  everyone means Sonia Gandhi.

Let us say by some miracle, the court finds that Sonia cannot hold any constitutional post, it still does not prevent the next generation of the Royal Family from giving us that world class governance.  More effective that this PIL business would be to plead with Rahul Gandhi to give a public speech every day.

If there has been one news which has denied front page coverage of Abhishek Bachchan's marriage to some Ms. Rai for at least one day, it has been the kissing (not on lips) of Shilpa Shetty by that foreigner Richard Gere. Apparently this is not Indian Culture and I agree for it provides excellent business opportunity for my effigy making startup. Due to this Richard Gere-Culture-Vulture thing, I am missing all those wonderful Rakhi Sawant, Mallika Sherawat, Emraan Hashami movies on TV which were instilling Indian culture into us.

The last foreigner issue comes from the Infosys Campus in Mysore where they decided not to sing the national anthem in a function attended by the President of India. Instead they decided to play the instrumental version. So far so good. Then Mr. Narayana Murthy made the statement that they decided not to sing the Indian National Anthem in India because the foreigners present would feel embarrassed.

President Abdul Kalam thinks Mr. Narayana Murthy would be a good candidate for the post of President of India. As President, Narayana Murthy will have to receive  many foreign dignitaries and there is a 100% chance that the national anthem will be played in all those occasions. To avoid embarrassing situations for foreigners, President Narayana Murthy will have to enforce a new rule -  visitors can bring their own songs which will be played instead of the national anthem. This could sometimes result in the Teletubbies theme song being played when President Bush visits India, but hey Athithi Devo Bhavah!

 What would we do without foreigners?

And also the female Yash Chopra! (From the Pioneer)

In an article about Santosh George, who could be India's first space tourist, PTI writes

He will pay around Rs 1 crore for the two-hour-flight on SpaceShip Two but there will be no landing on another planet. The tourists will experience zero gravity and re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.[President meets India's would-be first space tourist]

Imagine the disappointment of Santosh George, when he knows that he cannot get off at Saturn as planned. Seriously, how old is the person who wrote the PTI  article and how old is the Rediff editor who approved it?

Word processors like Microsoft Office or Star Office chain you to a computer. Instead, if you opt for hosted services like Google Docs and Spreadsheets, your word processor is accessible from anywhere an Internet connection is available. Hosted services, like Google Apps, are powerful and requires no setup or maintenance. The software and hardware are updated without the user even having to know about it and whenever there is a problem in the service, the host will take care of it. Thanks to Bush administration, now a hosted democracy service is available for countries like Pakistan and Iraq.

Recently, after seeing that no one Pakistan was listening to him, the General in the labyrinth decided to impose emergency. He  had already signed the order declaring emergency when the phone rang. "Yes, Dick", he probably answered, thinking it was the Lord Voldemort on the line, but it was Dr. Rice. A few minutes of conversation and Gen. Musharraf, who is seen a macho macho man only in India was shredding the document.

"Hey, isn't the hosted service provider saving dictatorship here", you may ask. Calm down, grasshopper. Sometimes to save democracy, you need to save dictatorship. Yes, it is one of those Zen things.

Since Gen. Musharraf is nearing his expiry date, the Bush administration has been looking for a Prime Minister. Sadly, the available ones cannot enter the country. So, there has been negotiations and re-negotiations between Benazir Bhutto and Bush administration officials about a possible deal. Maybe the Bhutto deal won't work out and it maybe Nawaz Sharif. Either way, you will hear it on CNN before the Pakistani people know about it.

We all know Pakistan cannot handle democracy and such outsourcing helps them avoid wasteful expenditures in terms of elections, booth rigging and bullets fired into fellow Muslims. It is not just Pakistan which is having problems in democracy. The ratings of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been plummeting and his opponents in Iraq have decided to campaign against him, not in Iraq, but in Washington D.C. Ayad Allawi, who was the interim prime minister is  paying the GOP firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers (BGR) more than a quarter-million dollars to lobby on his behalf. 

Finally we are sure that a group of armchair quarterbacks in Washington D.C. will do what is right for Iraq. Isn't this kind of democracy wonderful?

Amit Kaundinya's review of Priyadarshan's new movie Dhol  has the following paragraph

Armed with a script that is as old as the Harappan Civilization and with actors who are competing for the Worst Actor Award, director Priyadarshan sets off to make the audience laugh. And as expected he fails miserably. Clichéd scenes, garish cinematography, tiring songs and perhaps the most banal screenplay are what you take back after watching Dhol. [Dhol]

ASI archaeologist Karunanidhi, who also doubles as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, would have explained Priyadarsan's miserable failure as the result of a Dravidian trying to adapt a script as old as an Aryan civilization. Besides this, Priyadarshan also used Aryan actors in a movie which was initially written and performed by Dravidians.

Today's  WP has the story of how Rep. Dennis Kucinich met his current wife.

That very morning, believe it or not, guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who teaches peace through meditation and rhythmic breathing, had come to town. Dennis and Ravi have known each other for a long time. Ravi asked about Dennis's love life. Dennis said he was still looking for that special someone.

"And his response was, 'Stop looking and then she will appear,' " Dennis says. "And I said, 'Okay, I'm going to stop looking.' I said that.

Her first inkling that Kucinich might be different from the run-of-the-mill congressman was the presence of two Indian nuns from the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University in Kucinich's reception room. She chatted with the nuns about India and felt herself being "opened" up by the conversation.

Then she and Zarlenga were called into Kucinich's office.

Dennis watched the young woman's eyes. First they went to a bust of Gandhi sitting on his bookshelf. Then they went to a picture given to him by the Hindu nuns -- a burst of brightness against an orange background meant to depict "conscious light." Then her eyes went to his.

"That was it," Dennis says now. "One, two, three." He knew.

Shocking headlines from around the world about things we would not have known otherwise.

1. Pakistan A 'Hotbed' For Terror
2. Pakistan polls will be massively rigged: Report 
3. Hostility surprises Musharraf
4. Anti-social elements will be ousted, says Pinarayi
5. CPM promoting violence:Gowri

The past month Public Radio had interviews with various authors regarding the rise of India and China. Kishore Mahbubani, dean and professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore,  rightly mentioned that both India and China were the economic powers till 1820 and are only rightly regaining their space in the world. Tarun Khanna, professor at Harvard Business School and author of Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Futures--and Yours, is optimistic that the economic rise of these two countries is good for Asia. Even in  popular fiction , characters are talking about these countries.

If you are shocked that India is shining, all you need to do is pick up New York Times and get your daily dose of Sominism. In an article on the development happening in Gugaon, she writes:

Almost half of India’s population has no access to the electricity grid, and many more people suffer hours without power. Nearly 700,000 Indians rely on animal waste and firewood as fuel for cooking. [Thirsting for Energy in India’s Boomtowns and Beyond]

Many great bloggers have worked on the expression Sominism, but so far no one has quantified it. Unless we find a way to measure Sominism it will be hard to compare articles by Pankaj Mishra, Arundhathi Roy and Praful Bidwai. While a complex mathematical formula involving string theory would be the ideal, we will settle for something simple due to lack of time and number of people to criticize.

For now we will use a measure which takes the position of the hatchet paragraph relative to the entire article. In the above article, it appears in paragraph five of a 28 paragraph article: the Sominism Coefficient would be: 5/28 = 0.18 S.

A number by itself is meaningless unless you put it in context. To see where Somini stands in the Sominic scale, she has to be compared to her contemporaries and one place to look for some would be in the Ramayana -- yes, the timeless classic written by Valmiki. We don't know whose brilliant idea it was to get Pankaj Mishra to write the introduction to R. K. Narayan's shortened version of Kamban Ramayanam; maybe Prakash Karat was not available.

By the fourth paragraph, Mishra hits the goal post.

Indeed, the popular appeal of the story among ordinary people distinguishes it from much of Indian literary tradition, which, supervised by upper caste Hindus, has been forbiddingly elitist [Ramayana]

Mishra's introduction which covers the mandatory "Hindu nationalist movement to build a temple on the alleged birthplace of Rama", "North Indian Brahmin called Tulsi Das" and a quote from Romila Thapar that the televised Ramayana was an attempt to cater to the right-wing middle class of India, is 31 paragraphs long. The hatchet job appears in the 4th paragraph giving it 0.13 S, thus giving him an upper edge over Somini.

Since this author does not have the stomach to read an Arundhathi Roy or Praful Bidwai article, finding similar values is left as an exercise to the reader. My guess is that Arundhathi Roy will is the one who will achieve the ideal value of 0 S, where the 'job' will be done in the title itself.

Technorati Tags: Somini Sengupta, Pankaj Mishra,

Shriya Reddy (who?) married Vikram Krishna (hoo! hoo!). From the reports:

Well, chief minister M.Karunanidhi wasn’t able to make it to shower his blessings and his family members including his wives Thaayal Ammal and Rajathi Ammal, son M.K. Stalin and grandson Udayanidhi conveyed their wishes.[Blissful moments for Shriya - Vikram]

Is it legal for Karunanidhi to have multiple wives? Well, apparently the rules are different in some parts of the world for some people.

The DMK chief now divides his time in the houses of both wives - spending mornings at the Gopalapuram residence with Dayaluammal while moving to the house of his other wife, Rajathiammal, at CIT Nagar in Chennai in the afternoons. The Chinna veedu concept is fairly common in Krishnagiri and Salem districts of TN, where males believe in more the merrier.

At least one top Union minister from Tamil Nadu is known to have two wives and so does a senior DMK official, who married his daughter's classmate. An academic said, "The social sanction for two wives can be traced to religion and mythology. Lord Muruga, for instance, had two wives."[In South India, more the merrier]

Then has the academic heard about Lord Rama who had only one wife? Probably that explains the DMK hatred towards Rama.

Technorati Tags: Karunanidhi

Sen. John McCain on if he voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.

"I voted, campaigned for, worked as hard as I could for President Bush's election in 2000 and 2004," he said. "It's nonsense."

Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff who attended a dinner with Sen. John McCain in 2001

McCain replied that as a member of the GOP, Whitford added, he always intended to back the party's nominee. Then, the actor said, someone asked McCain whether he had cast a vote in favor of Bush.

"He put his finger up to his lips, shook his head and mouthed, 'No way,'" Whitford said.

Schiff remembered the conversation the same way. "My memory was he said pretty clearly, no, he did not vote for him," he said. "I discussed it with others afterwards. It was clear to everyone he said no.

See Also: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6