Energy Source

This is surely the invention of the year:

A solar powered bra that can charge a phone

So if you boys ever spot a chica wearing one of these, walk up to her, rest your palm on her device and say: “Is this a solar panel or am I turning you on?”

Damn, that is so bad I feel like slapping myself.

(Link via email from Chandoo.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 15 May, 2008 in Science and Technology | WTF

Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?

This is a fun test. I got 9/10, and was told at the end of it: “You’d spot Hannibal Lector in seconds at an Open Source conference. Your liver’s safe.”

Well, I’ve never been to an Open Source conference, but if there are livers on offer… muhahahaha.

(Link via email from Santosh of UberDesi.com.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 15 May, 2008 in Miscellaneous

The Power of Blogging

This is an interesting piece of reportage:

Mithun would never speak out openly against Amitabh and fear incurring his wrath especially now that he has started blogging.

Ignore the grammar—that sentence confirms what I’ve always suspected: Blogging is a powerful tool in the hands of the powerful. That means little for the rest of us, who blog to indulge ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. What else is life about?

(Link via email from Rajeev Mantri.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 May, 2008 in Arts and entertainment | Blogging | India | News

The Liberalisation of Indian Cricket

"The IPL shows it is time to liberalise cricket,” wrote my friend Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute in a recent email, and the thought is echoed by Neelakantan of Interim Thoughts, who draws a comparison between the IPL and what liberalisation did to the IT industry in the 1990s.

Needless to say, I agree with them—though I wish the extent of both liberalisations was greater. Just as the government retains a stranglehold over many areas of our lives, the BCCI retains its monopoly over representative cricket. Deeper change will be a long time coming—though I’m grateful for the little that has come so far.

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 May, 2008 in Economics | India | Sport

Mr Vengsarkar’s Just Woken Up

Here’s the WTF headline of the day:

Selectors likely to watch second half of IPL

Why on earth weren’t they watching the first half?

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 May, 2008 in India | News | Sport | WTF

America and the Middle East

We stumbled for eight years under Bill Clinton over how to make peace in the Middle East, and then we stumbled for eight years under George Bush over how to make war there, [and the result is] an America that is trapped in a region which it cannot fix and it cannot abandon.

That’s Aaron David Miller, author of “The Much Too Promised Land”, as quoted by Thomas Friedman in his latest column. Do you think any of the presidential candidates still in the race would agree with all of that analysis?

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 May, 2008 in Politics

On Art

Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else’s aesthetics.

RIP, Robert Rauschenberg.

(Pic courtesy NY Times.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 May, 2008 in Arts and entertainment | Freedom

Signs Of Life…

... are apparent in Rave Out and Workoutable, both of which opened their eyes and looked around a few hours ago. Amitava Kumar sent in “One Chai and a Wills Navy Cut”, an appreciation of Pablo Bartholomew’s recent work. And I had a few questions lying around from a recent quiz I conducted, so I figured this would be a good day to start uploading them.

I cannot promise that Rave Out will not slip back into coma. I don’t like to harangue contributors, and I’ve been too lazy to write stuff for it myself, though I’ve been intending to do so for a while now. Workoutable will continue on a regular basis, though. As for Extrowords, I have about 100 old crosswords that I was too lazy to upload, but they’re all on the hard drive of an old laptop whose motherboard crashed. So I need to get an external casing for that hard drive, retrieve the data, and then I’ll be ready to roll. Sadly, lassitude is the driving force of my life, and I cannot promise when this will happen.

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 May, 2008 in Personal

Marvel vs DC

Jonathan Lethem says in an interview with Powell’s.com:

The other thing about Marvel superheroes, as opposed to DC, is that when Superman is Superman, that’s who he really is; Clark Kent is a pretense. When he’s Superman, he’s fulfilled; he’s in his right place. And Batman is really Batman; Bruce Wayne is the disguise. With the Marvel superheroes, it’s the other way: When they put on their costume, they’re pretending. Despite their powers, they have massive imposter syndrome.

I was a huge Marvel fan as a kid in the 80s, and I hated DC, but I never thought of it this way. To me, the Marvel superheroes just had more complexity—even more humanity, if I may put it like that. There was much more gray. (This was before Frank Miller reinvigorated DC’s Batman franchise.) And I liked Spiderman the least of the Marvel superheroes.

That reminds me, I need to go watch Iron Man today.

PS: Powell’s has some great author interviews, look on the left panel of the Lethem interview for more.

Update: In separate emails, Rahul Gupta, Gaurav Sabnis and Abhishek Mehrotra quote this excerpt from Kill Bill 2:

As you know, l’m quite keen on comic books. Especially the ones about superheroes. I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating. Take my favorite superhero, Superman. Not a great comic book. Not particularly well-drawn. But the mythology… The mythology is not only great, it’s unique. Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there’s the superhero and there’s the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he’s Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn’t become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he’s Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red “S”, that’s the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that’s the costume. That’s the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent. He’s weak… he’s unsure of himself… he’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race.

Ya, whatever. I still think Superman is the suckiest, most simplistic superhero. If boredom was my Kryptonite, Superman would have killed me by now.

Posted by Amit Varma on 13 May, 2008 in Arts and entertainment | Personal

“The Voters Have Stolen My Nomination”

Hillary Clinton lashes out in her bunker in this superb video by James Adomian:

Anybody who supports Barack Obama over Clinton, as I do, would have loved this commercial. But consider the resentment and rage Hillary supporters might feel when they watch this, and similar attacks in this vein. Won’t they be tempted to stay home when it’s time to vote in November?

(Link via separate emails from Gaurav Sabnis and J Alfred Prufrock.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 12 May, 2008 in Politics