All The News That’s Fit To Print

If anthropologists from 300 years later see the screenshot below, of the Times of India’s headlines right now, I wonder what conclusions they will draw:

Posted by Amit Varma on 07 November, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media

Shiok 2.0…

... is now open.

Shiok is one of my favourite restaurants anywhere, and I wish Madhu Menon, my friend who runs it, had moved it to Bombay. Instead, he’s moved it to a new location in Bangalore—so if you live there, I hate you. Shiok serves South-East Asian food, and if you make the wise dining choice of going there sometime, ask for my favourite dish, Drunken Beef. (That’s just one minor masterpiece among many, of course.)

The old Shiok had acquired a cult status for its lounge extension, which served up some terrific cocktails. (Some of Bangalore best bartenders have been trained by Madhu.) This has now been expanded into a separate lounge named Moss. Check that out as well, and raise a toast to India Uncut if you go there after reading this post.

Here’s the address and phone number:

Shiok Far-eastern Cuisine
96, Amar Jyoti Layout
Koramangala Inner Ring Road
Domlur
Bangalore - 560 071
Phone: 6571 5555 / 6666 (changed from old number)

Previous posts on MadMan: 1, 2.

Posted by Amit Varma on 06 November, 2008 in Personal

Devdas Meets Ramadoss

Heh.

Posted by Amit Varma on 06 November, 2008 in India

Ganga Gets A Promotion

Here’s the WTF headline of the day:

Ganga to be declared a national river

I’m baffled about what purpose is served by declaring Ganga to be “a national river”. Protecting “the ancient river from pollution and other degradation” is a worthy cause, but why do they need to declare it a national river for that?

I now demand that India be declared our national country. Maybe then the government will look after it as well.

Posted by Amit Varma on 06 November, 2008 in India | News | WTF

Defaming Maharashtra?

PTI reports:

Accusing Hindi news channels of orchestrating an anti-Maharashtra campaign on the small screen, the Shiv Sena on Tuesday warned them of a “fitting response” to protect the image of the state.

Referring to NCP president Sharad Pawar’s reported refusal to speak to the media for distorted coverage, the Sena mouthpiece—Saamna—said, “Pawar has given a verbal lashing to these elements but this may not suffice while dealing with those bent on defaming Maharashtra.”

[...]

“Maharashtrians are being projected as an uncivilised and violent community on the basis of isolated incidents happened recently,” it said.

If anyone is distorting the news, it’s Saamna—nowhere in the media have Maharashtrians been projected as “an uncivilised and violent community”. Maharashtrians are thought of, to the extent that stereotypes hold, as peace-loving and hard-working people, and there is nothing in the media recently to counter that.

On the other hand, the media has faithfully reported what the Shiv Sena and the MNS has been up to recently, and those reports might well give the impression that those two parties are “uncivilised and violent”. That seems pretty accurate to me, and it has nothing to do with Maharashtrians, for these parties represent no more than a lunatic fringe.

Saamna’s editorial also says:

If this tirade against Maharashtra continues, we shall be forced to take concrete measures in the interest of the state. And when we do it, your so called freedom of expression could be a casualty.

Hmmm.

Posted by Amit Varma on 05 November, 2008 in Freedom | India | News | Politics | WTF

I Have Always Had A Flat Stomach

Once it was a studio apartment; now it’s a 2 BHK.

It’s kind of sad that the more the real estate expands, the less attractive it becomes. Call it Varma’s Law of Middle Age.

Posted by Amit Varma on 05 November, 2008 in Personal | Small thoughts

Dear Times Of India

Dear Times of India

In light of this post by Jyothsna of The Cooks Cottage, I’d like to inform you of a couple of things:

1. Everything on the internet is copyrighted by default. Blog posts and articles posted online cannot just be picked up and used without permission. This is especially true if your reporters put their own byline on it.

2. This applies to photos as well. (On that note, well done Twilight Fairy.)

I assume that your repeated infractions of copyright result from ignorance, not malice or apathy. Thus, it would be nice if you could educate all your staffers and editors on the points mentioned above.

And no, I am not implying that you are the only newspaper that treats the internet as a free resource. But you’re the biggest, and should lead the way by addressing this issue in your code of conduct. If you have one, that is.

Regards

Amit

*

The hall of shame: 1, 2.

More open letters here.

Posted by Amit Varma on 04 November, 2008 in Journalism | Media

Our Unfit Politicians

Via Cafe Hayek, I find this superb quote by HL Mencken that is especially apt for this season:

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.

This doesn’t just apply to America—all political parties everywhere are unfit for the job. The purpose of government is to serve the people, but people enter politics to rule, not serve. Their incentives are aligned to their own interests, not to ours. Yes, theoretically they are accountable, for we can vote them out of power if they misuse it, but given that we are always faced with a choice between the pillager and the plunderer, this isn’t much good in practice.

And it’s easy to rationalize our choices, isn’t it? We vote for the devil because he has fire in his belly; we choose the deep, blue sea because of its calming influence. And so on.

Also see: A Beast Called Government.

Posted by Amit Varma on 03 November, 2008 in India | Politics | Small thoughts

Objects In The Rear View Mirror

The Local reports:

Officials with Sweden’s Road Administration (Vägverket) have denied a driver’s request for a licence place with what at first glance appears to be a completely innocent combination of characters.

Recently, the agency received a request from an individual who wanted a licence plate reading X32IARO.

Despite no obviously offensive reference in the desired combination, Vägverket nonetheless rejected the application.

[...]

When read in reverse, as it would be seen through a rear-view mirror, X32IARO suddenly appears as ORALSEX.

Apparently, Vägverket’s ‘guiding principle’ is that “a licence plate shouldn’t be offensive”—but oral sex is surely offensive only to those who don’t get any, by which logic they could also ban all BMWs.

Bonus link: Check out this XKCD guide to numerical sex positions.

(Links via email from Salil and Sumant respectively.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 31 October, 2008 in Freedom | News | WTF

Spread The Peanut Butter

The quote of the day comes from Barack Obama, responding to the latest accusation from the McCain campaign that he’s pally with “a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization”:

I don’t know what’s next. By the end of the week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I bet someone in McCain’s campaign heard of that quote and said, “Damn, wish we’d thought of that first.” Really, there are many reasonable arguments that can be made against Barack Obama’s ideas, but the McCain campaign has disgraced itself (and the Republican Party) by choosing to try and smear the man instead. I hope they pay the price for it soon—and if so, McCain would have lost more than just a presidency.

*

Meanwhile, Stanley Fish examines the McCain and Obama campaigns:

What’s going on here? I find an answer in a most unlikely place, John Milton’s “Paradise Regained,” a four-book poem in which a very busy and agitated Satan dances around a preternaturally still Jesus until, driven half-crazy by the response he’s not getting, the arch-rebel (i.e., maverick) loses it, crying in exasperation, “What dost thou in this world?”

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that McCain is the devil or that Obama is the Messiah (although some of his supporters think of him that way), just that the rhetorical strategies the two literary figures employ match up with the strategies employed by the two candidates. What Satan wants to do is draw Jesus out, provoke him to an unwisely exasperated response, get him to claim too much for his own powers. What Jesus does is reply with an equanimity conveyed by the adjectives and adverbs that preface his words: “unaltered,” “temperately,” “patiently,” “calmly,” “unmoved,” “sagely,” “in brief.”

In response, Satan gets ever more desperate; he conjures up rain and wind storms (in the midst of which Jesus sits “unappalled in calm”); he tempts him with the riches of poetry and philosophy (which Jesus is careful neither to reject nor deify); and finally, having run out of schemes and scares and “swollen with rage,” he resorts to physical violence (McCain has not gone so far, although some of his supporters clearly want to), picking Jesus up bodily and depositing him on the spire of the temple in the hope that he will either fall to his death or turn into Superman and undermine the entire point of his 40-day trial in the wilderness. He doesn’t do either. He does nothing, and Satan, “smitten with amazement” — even this hasn’t worked — “fell.”

This reminds me of McCain’s bluster about following Osama bin Laden “to the gates of hell.” First he’s got to beat Barack Obama to the gates of heaven, and he’s huffing and he’s puffing and he’s “swollen with rage”, but it’s all no good.

Posted by Amit Varma on 30 October, 2008 in News | Politics