Auto - No Wisdom

After I wrote the two earlier posts on Auto wisdom I was looking for examples 'inane' or 'clever' (according to the perpetrator) ones and found the best (worst) today. Here it goes, with no comments:

Love is Rose
Rose is Red
Red is Danger



ugh!!!!!!!!!!

Courtesy

A few days ago, I returned home, walked in, pushed the wheelchair out to bring my son in. The road being small, I had to block a part of the road. Normally this would not be a problem. But that day there was a large vehicle (Innova?) parked on the other side of the road, a few meters away. This made it difficult for vehicles coming from either direction, almost impossible, to pass us. As soon as I opened the car door, a taxi came, stopped and waited silently. Since my son had not started getting onto the wheelchair, I closed the door shut and let the taxi pass. I was impressed.

Taxi drivers are notorious for their impatience and noisiness. But this one was silent. Great.

After I opened the door again and my son started getting on to the wheelchair, another taxi came. This one too stopped and waited silently. When I could, again, I closed the door and indicated to the driver that he could now pass. He smiled at me and passed. Ah! Good.

As I started pushing the wheelchair, a big car came towards us, honked impatiently, slowed down but moved past us, very close. Close enough to cause some anxiety.

Ah. Big guns, no time for the hoi polloi in an an (six year) old Maruti . . . ?

Heartening

I was about to get off the footpath but stopped because a heavily burdened Lambani woman was about to come in my way. After she passed, my path was blocked, again, by a small boy being led by the hand by a girl, behind the woman.

The urchin was being led by the hand by a 'modern girl' complete with faded denims, trainer shoes, a t-shirt covered by a denim jacket, complete with a back-pack like bag. The boy had a bedraggled teddy bear and a few other toys which had 'discarded' written all over them - invisibly but unmistakably. I wondered - since when did Lambani girls get this modern?

Finally I got off the foot path, crossed the road and stood on the other footpath waiting for my bus. When I looked across, the girl was walking back, having seen to it that the urchin was safe on the other side of the crossroads. On the distant footpath, a Lambani group was in the process of making their temporary home.

She stood in the bus stand as if she does this kind of thing every day . Perhaps she does. She caught the next bus that came.

Heartening. Heart warming.

sarigannaDa

A friend sent me this photograph with the comment that it was super.

For those who do not read Kannada, here are the transliteration and translation:

kAvEri nIru kuDiyuva munna kannaDa kali
karnATakada anna tinnuva modalu kannaDigara saMskriti kali

Before you drink Kaveri water, learn Kannada.
Before you eat "Kannada rice" (food from Karnataka) learn the culture of Karnataka.

The unfortunate part is that one can easily, and rightly I believe, find errors in the Kannada in the slogan itself.

It should have read:

kAvEriya nIrannu kuDiyuva munna kannaDavannu kali
karnATakada annava tinnuva modalu kannaDigara saMskritiyannu kali

Exercising poetic freedom, some parts could perhaps be dropped. Such parts are in italics above.

This opinion of mine is perhaps controversial. I am ready to let it go.

But below the solgan is a couplet which is just plain wrong. It reads:

Enu ninna ciMte
heLE nanna kAMte

what is your worry
do tell me dearie

The first word in the second line should read hELE, the capital E in the word symbolising the long vowel - like hey!

If we have such facility with and respect for our own language, what is the use of asking "outsiders" to learn our language and respect our culture?

There are many "kannaDa" advertisement hoardings written in English script! No one questions that and protests. That, to me, is sad . . .

Block

One enquired why my blog was dead. Another just ordered me to update my blog. One more told me that he was sick of seeing the same Auto Wisdom and 'pleaded' with me to put something new. Feels good that there are such people who are looking at my blog to see if there is anything new there.

I just went dry, like my eyes .

There was this top adviser to a past PM of India. He was very garrulous. He was talking non-stop to (not with) a visitor from abroad. The visitor apparently had enough and hinted to this VIP thus: "I see many boards all over India that say, "Talk Less, Work More . . . .".

Off went the protagonist of this story and lectured the hapless visitor about the need for such boards in India as we Indians are very talkative . . .. blah blah....

Like him, I am here just to say that I do not know why I have not blogged . . .

With these few words . . .

Auto Wisdom

One more piece of wisdom on the back of an autorickshaw. (see the earlier one)

For non Kannadigas:

If you go after a girl - sadness
If you go after an auto - dust

Regret

News: The descendants of Che regret that his image has been so grossly commercialised.

Obama's Colour

The German magazine Die Tageszeitung had this as a cover recently. All hell broke loose and the accusations ranged from "condescending" to "politically incorrect" to even "blatant racism" and "racial prejudice". The obvious allusion to Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beacher Stowe has caused a transatlantic row.

Some even suggested that the Germans should not indulge in humour. The last suggestion is also based on the preconceived notion that Germans are not good at humour! The one who suggested that seems to be unawate that he is being a racist himself.


I have not seen any reactions to this cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon but wonder if it is going to be on the same scale. I found it equally offensive (or inoffensive).

What says you?






PS: The picture of Die Tageszeitung is from Spiegel Online @ www.spiegel.de and the cartoon is from the site Artizans @ https://zone.artizans.com/

Obama and Osama

When I write about Obama Microsoft asks me if I meant Osama. Apparently Microsoft has not woken up to Obama yet.

PS on the Last Post

I said that I was going off to see the Nadal - Federer match. This post is to say that I am back. It was over that quickly.

"What a poor performance by Federer" or "What a great performance by Nadal"?

Being a great admirer of Fed, it is hard to admit that it was either both or just the latter. But the latter is nearer the truth I think.

Football Myths - De-mystified

Football fever gripping the world from remote (to me, in India) Europe, a lot of stuff has been written about football. The more arcane of them that I came across was a scientific / statistical look at football myths. Let me admit, the claim that there are so many myths itself sounded like a myth to me. Let me list some of them and then the findings of scientists.

1. Football is chancy
2. A game lasts 90 minutes
3. One fouled against should not take the free kick
4. A goal just before half time is more important than one at the beginning
5. The danger of a goal against a team increases immediately after a goal by that team
6. A new trainer brings more wins
7. 40 percent of all goals are accidental
8. The goal keeper can manipulate the shooter from 11 meters
9. A team in a red jersey wins more often
10. Ball shot with a swerve defeats the mind
11. The team playing at home has an advantage

1. Eli Ben-Naim of the Los Alomos National Laboratory analysed the scores of 300,000 games, including 43,000 from the British Premier League, and found that a surprising 45% of the time the team considered to be the underdog won. So the ‘myth’ is not a myth but reality!
2. False! Sports scientists from the Augsburg University analysed the games from the finals of the 2006 World championships and found that the ball is in play, allowed by the referee, on an average for 55 minutes a game. Just the average 39 free kicks per match takes away about 14 minutes.
3. False! On an average when the player fouled against converted 73% of the time and others 75%. This difference is statistically insignificant.
4. False again. A goal just before half time had no significant influence on the course of the game. This was the result of the analysis from the games of the British Premier League done by Peter Ayton from the City University London
5. False too. The theory is that the while the team is still celebrating a goal there is a goal against them. This was also analysed by Ayton and found that there is no basis for this belief.
6. David Forrest from the English University of Salford put under the lens, the change of coaches in Argentina. No, new brooms do not sweep better.
7. Pre-game predictions are like weather forecasts say the scientists. Weather forecasts have a better chance of being correct than football game prognosis! 40% of all goals are accidental or happen by chance.
8. If a goal keeper stands 6 – 10 cm to the left of the centre point between the goal posts, the shooter is 60% more likely to shoot to the right. If the goal keeper stands to one side, obviously, the shooter may see through it.
9. Juergen Klinsman prefers red shirts. But it has no influence on the game! The percentage of teams having the following colours is: White 29%, Red 23%, Blue 21%, Red-White 9%, etc. The scientists could not, however, find a relationship between team colours and wins.
10. A ball shot with a spin travels in a straight line for some time and suddenly swerves as if pulled by a rubber band. When a ball spins on its own axis it experiences the influence of the air around it and is described by the ‘Magnus Effect’. Scientists conducted simulated experiments with trained footballers and found that a goal keeper could not predict the path of the ball correctly.
11. There is no such thing as home advantage, at least in football, found statistician Eva Heinrichs of the University of Dortmund. It apparently played a role in the seventies and eighties. She found that less than half of all matches were won by the home team. The statistician ascribes this to the generally lower goals per match in recent times compared to the seventies and eighties.

If this is the case for football what is the fate of cricket? The pundits use the cliché the “glorious uncertainties” of the game and still go right ahead and predict what happens to matches!!

In any case, I am off to watch Nadal Vs FedEx. I predict that Federer will win. Call me a fool? Man live by hope alone.

Euro 2008 - One More

Germany is about to play against Austria in Euro 2008.

Loew and his players are talking in the dressing room. Loew says, “Have you heard boys? Austrians are bad. But, we have to play them, there is no other way…”

Jens Lehman says, “Let me make a suggestion. All of you go to a bar and I will play against them alone. What do you think?”

“Sounds sensible” says the team manager and all the players go to a bar, have beers and play billiards. After about an hour, Michael Ballack turns on the TV: Germany 1 (Lehmann, 10^th Minute) – Austria 0 shows the scoreboard.

Satisfied, the players return to their beers and billiards. After an hour, they want to see the final score. The score board shows Germany 1 (Lehmann, 10^th Minute) – Austria 1 (Sebastian Proedl, 89^th Minute)

“Damn”, cry the players and run back to the stadium, horrified.

There, they see Lehmann with his head buried in his hands.

“What the devil happened, Jens?”, shouts Loew.

“Sorry friends, the damned referee gave me a red card in the 11^th minute", whines Lehmann.

Euro 2008 Jokes

A man is sitting in a "house full" football stadium waiting for a Euro2008 match to start. He finds an empty seat next to him. He asks the man on the other side of the seat if he is waiting for someone.

He says, "No, that seat is for my wife. She recently died and this is the first time I am watching a match without her, since we got married"

The man is all sympathy. "Oh! I am sorry. But you could have brought some relative of yours to the match".

"But they are all attending the funeral"

*******

After a football match, a man asks the referee, "Do you have three seconds?"

The referee is obliging and says yes.

"Then, please tell me all you know about football"

*******

A black clad man knocks on the pearly gates. St Peter opens the gate and asks "Have you done anything wrong in your life?"

I am a football referee. In a match between England and Italy I gave a free kick to England from 11 meters and I was wrong"

"Hmmmmm, how long ago was that?"

"about 30 seconds ago"

*******

New school. New class. Teacher wants to break ice and asks students to say their name age and father's occupation.

I am Wolfgang, I am 11, my father is a mechanic

I am Heinrich, I am 12 and my father is a brick layer

I am John, I am 12, my father is a nude dancer in a bar.

The teacher is shocked and stops the exercise. At recess she asks the boy privately if what he said was true.

"No, Ma'm. I lied. But, my father is a player in the national football team of England. It was too embarrassing to say so."

*******

How could Greece win Euro2004?

They were too slow for human eyes.

*******

What does a Dutchman do after Holland wins Euro 2008?

Switches his play station off . . . . .

*******

Teacher: Tell me the names of three great men whose names start with B

Pupil: "Ballack, Basler, Beckenbauer!"

Teacher: Have you ever heard of Bach, Brecht or Brahms?

Pupil: I am not interested in substitutes

********

Two retired old men sit in front of the TV and wait for the match to start. One asks the other, "What match is on Today?"

"Austria - Hungary" answers the other. "Against?", the first man wants to know.

********

From Der Spiegel

PS: There are a couple of more jokes. I did not understand them. It is because of my German or poor knowledge of football - I hope - and not because of my poor sense of humour.

Max Planck

The year 1900 is the watershed between what are known as classical Physics and modern Physics – not because it makes the transition from the 19^th century to the 20^th century, but because it saw the birth of quantum theory which changed the character Physics. The author of that path breaking theory was Max Planck who was born exactly a century and a half ago, on April 23, 1858 in the city of Kiel in northern Germany. Planck studied in the University of Berlin under Helmholtz, Clausius and Kirchoff and got his doctorate in 1879. After teaching in Munich and Kiel universities or some time, he replaced his teacher, Kirchoff, as professor of Physics in Berlin University when the latter died in 1889.

The quantum theory concerns the nature of light, a topic hotly debated in the 17^th century. Newton held that light is a stream of corpuscles (tiny particles) whereas his contemporary, Christian Huygens said that it is a sort of wave, As years rolled by, overwhelming evidence in favour of the latter view got accumulated – notably the phenomena of diffraction and interference, characteristics of wave motion – and, as a result, the wave theory was more or less accepted.

It came to be understood that light consists of electromagnetic waves, waves made up of oscillating electric and magnetic waves and travelling with a speed of about 300,000 kilometers per second. Coloured lights, found in the spectrum of white light, are electromagnetic radiations having different wave lengths varying from 3800 angstroms (an angstrom is ten billionth of a meter) at the violet end of the spectrum to 7200 angstroms at the red end. Consequently they have different frequencies (number of oscillations per second) which can be got by dividing the velocity of light by the wave length. The visible part of the spectrum is skirted on either side by the ultraviolet and infrared radiations.

Planck got interested in the problem of the black body, one that absorbs light of all frequencies and so, when heated, emits all frequencies of light. But, it does not emit them equally. No one, at that time, could explain why the black body radiates different frequencies in the way it does. Planck, however, managed to arrive at an equation which accurately described the distribution of frequencies in the blackbody radiation. But his equation was based on a seemingly untenable assumption that radiant energy does not flow continuously, but does so in packets o energy which he called quanta (plural of quantum). It looked as though he was bringing Newton’s corpuscular theory from the back door. But it was not so. For, he had not rejected the wave theory, but had established a link with it. He had assumed that the amount of energy in the quantum is proportional to the frequency of the radiation.

Energy of the quantum = h X frequency

The constant h is now known as Planck’s constant. Since some phenomena like diffraction are explained by the wave theory and others, like black body radiation, are explained by the quantum theory, the two theories are not mutually exclusive, but are complementary.

The theory was so revolutionary that it was not accepted by physicists immediately. Planck himself half-suspected that it might be a mathematical trick and may not represent anything real. But, in 1905, Einstein used the theory to explain the photoelectric effect, emission of electrons by some metals when light falls on them. It cannot be explained by the wave theory. Niels Bohr, in 1913, used it to describe the atomic structure and explain a great deal which cannot be explained by classical physics. By 1918 the quantum theory had become so important that it fetched the Nobel Prize for its author. Einstein and Bohr were awarded that prize in 1921 and 1922 for applying the theory fruitfully.

In 1930, Planck was made the president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society which was later renamed Max Planck Society. Although Planck was already in his seventies during the rise of Hitler in Germany, he resisted it. He sought to intercede on behalf of the persecuted Jewish scientists and, as a result, had to step down from the presidentship of the Max Planck Society. But, in the world of science, the veneration accorded to him was next only to that accorded to Einstein.

During the second world war, his house was destroyed by allied bombings; his older son was killed in action and the younger one was accused of plotting against Hitler and was executed. Planck lived into his ninetieth year to see Nazism destroyed. He was renamed president of the Max Planck Society and spent the last two years loved and respected. He died in October 3,1947.

* * * * *

My father, J R Lakshmana Rao, wrote this for publication on Max Plank's 150th birthday on April 23. For various reasons it did not see the light of day. I decided to post it here.

Picture: Courtesy Wikipedia

Stony Silence

Doesn't the Stone - Karma affair (no, Karma is not a man and Sharon Stone is not having an affair with him) make you wish that she, and others like her, maintain a stony silence?

It is said that it is better to keep your mouth shut and let others wonder if you are an idiot than open it and leave no doubts.

Perhaps no one told Stone about it.

Are you wondering if it would have been better, for me, if I myself had taken heed of that adage and not written this post?

25 May 2008

The Tendulkar

I posted a tribute to Vijay Tendulkar in Peripatetica, instead of here, by mistake.

Decided to provide a link here.

http://peripatetix.blogspot.com/2008/05/tendulkar.html

RC

RC meant Resistor-Capacitor, for a long time. RC coupled amp kind of thing.

Later some spirited friends who did not know any electronics were talking about RC and I found that it stood for Rum and Cola.

In recent times it has been Bangalore RC. Royal Challengers. (The self styled defenders of all things Karnataka and Kannda and Kannadigas do not seem to have realised that it is not Bengaluru Royal Challengers! Too caught up gaping at the over hyped, under clad cheerleaders I suppose?)

It is another matter that they looked Royally Challenged and did pathetically in IPL.

Is it time to think of other names to follow Bangalore or Bengaluru?

When I see drivers and riders take a right turn on the roads of Bangalore, I feel that they are drifting. Not taking a turn at all. Will Bangalore drifters be a good alternative.

The most common sound that you hear on the roads of Bangalore is toot toot. The most common sound pattern for honking. Reminds me of the Road Runner cartoons. Could Bangalore Road Runners be a good name?

Or, should that be Bangalore Popeyes. Popeye's pipe also seems to make a similar sound but sounds more like a sounds made foghorns of ships.

Heard in Passing

A Kannada newspaper has published today a photograph of Mallikarjun Kharge drinking water. The caption said that he was campaigning constantly, it was hot, he was thirsty and he was drinking water.

An old man, reading the paper commented in the local patois, "What kind of reporting is this? Do you call this news? One of these days they will publish a photograph and say that this man was campaigning continuously. He did not have the time to have a bath. On the fourth day it started itching all over. He is scratching himself."

No. I have not bowdlerised the comment. He did not mention unmentionable body parts.

Are the news paper men listening?