Pun of the weak #31

Advice to the lovelorn: If at first you don't succeed, try a little ardour.

O Tempora, O Mores #6

Excellently funny article out of New Zealand about the dangers of letting kids near computers:
Toddler buys real digger online
A New Zealand couple nearly found themselves in a financial hole when their three-year-old daughter bought an earthdigger in an internet auction.

The child, Pipi Quinlan, was trying out her online skills while her parents were asleep in bed.

They only unearthed the truth when they received an email demand for NZ$20,000 (£8,000) from the seller.

Pipi's mother, Sarah, had left the computer logged on. The owner of the digger is not insisting on the sale.

Shock

Sarah Quinlan told the BBC that she had been looking for toys online, and using an automatic log-in to an auction site.

But a shock was in store when she got up the next day.

"When I found an email from a guy who said 'can you deposit the money?' I thought - hang on - this isn't quite what I expected," she said.

Pipi had only been allowed to use the computer for the first time the week before - but is obviously a fast learner.

"It's been a lot of fun," said Sarah, "She's earned a bit of notoriety."

But Sarah is determined the same thing will not happen again, and has urged the parents of other young children not to be caught out.

"I've taken all my automatic log-ins off anything she could purchase from," she said.

The Singh is king

Dr. Manmohan Singh was sworn-in yesterday for a second successive term as Prime Minister of India.

I was surprised that the ruling Congress party won again, as it bucks recent trends. This will be the first time since 1971 that a sitting Prime Minister has been re-elected. Usually Indians like to kick out the incumbents for a term and let the other guys loot and pillage for a while. We try to spread the wealth around amongst the crooks who are our politicians. (I thoroughly recommend this strategy to all other countries, too.)

Still, Dr. Manmohan Singh is a thoroughly decent man and not a career politician. He used to be chairman of the Reserve Bank of India, which meant he was highly influential in economic circles. Then he was appointed Finance Minister in 1991 and made a member of the Upper House. That term ended in 1996. Then the Congress Party spent a long time on the sidelines until winning quite unexpectedly in 2004 as part of a coalition. Dr. Singh was a very surprising compromise candidate to be Prime Minister, and now he's won a second term. By the time he's done, he'll be India's third-longest serving Prime Minister, which is remarkable for someone of his background.

He is immensely qualified to tackle the Indian economy, holding degrees in economics from both Cambridge and Oxford. Perhaps he cannot take all the credit, but it is immensely satisfying to note that during the mayhem in banking circles in many parts of the world, Indian banks did not experience the catastrophic failures that has plagued more celebrated names.

Five more years of this guy? Yes, I can deal with that.

Pun of the weak #30

Puns are for children, not for groan adults.

For the beauty of the earth...

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has announced a goal of planting 7 billion new trees on the earth by the end of the year. Now, human-led climate change may be real or may be a hoax, but there should be few doubters that the loss of trees is a loss for all of us.
Forests and jungles get a raw deal from almost every side these days. On the one hand, swathes of trees are being cleared to feed the building-frenzy in parts of the world or for beef production to supply the fast-food industry. On the other hand, excessive protection is being blamed for supplying the fuel for the destructive forest fires in Victoria, Australia seen earlier this year.
The happy medium, it would seem, is to use trees wisely and at the same time replace the ones that have been felled. The latter, however, is somewhere that we've been lacking during our existence. Hence the UNEP's challenge to people everywhere to plant more trees.
While many of us may be struggling to contribute financially to such a cause, there may be a way for us to help out without having to spend money. A friend of mine sent me a link to a free search site called gearch.com. The people behind gearch have pledged to plant one tree for every 10 days that a registered user uses their site. And as you can choose your existing search engine (gearch is just a shell; I've set mine to google), you don't lose out on search capability.
I have not been able to verify independently (so far) whether or not these guys are legitimate, but if there is even a slight chance that they are, I'm taking it.
If you want to register with gearch, let me have your e-mail address and I can send you an invitation. Each accepted invitation earns one tree.
So, any takers?

Mind over matter

Chennai summers are slightly on the warmish and humid side (note the ironic understatement). Actually, Chennai's winters are also slightly on the warm and humid side, at least during the daytime.
This summer has been, incredibly, even warmer and more humid than Chennai's usual standards. But I did not notice it much. Well, let's say I chose to notice it much later than everyone else. While most people started commenting about the weather in April, I managed to refrain till a couple of days ago.
My secret? Habit.
For 14 of the past 15 summers, I have been out of Chennai, mainly in the US and UK where the height of summer isn't till July (some years in the UK, not even then). Even Qatar doesn't get outrageously hot till August. So, in my mind, April simply cannot be hot. Never mind that the temperature was nearly 100 F most of the time and that people were suffering from heatstroke (and worse) in parts of the country; it's April! Ergo, it cannot be hot.
Then came May, and with it came power failures at inconvenient times, and even I have to admit it's a tad on the warm side now (105+). Oh, well. It was cool while I managed to fool myself.

My civic duty

It only took 15 years, but yesterday I finally got to vote in a General Election. I didn't become eligible to vote in India till 1993, and I missed every General and State election since then because I was always overseas, and India doesn't have absentee ballots (half a billion people vote here, who is going to miss a few thousand scattered throughout the country?). Actually, I was in India for the 2004 General Elections, but my records were incorrect so I was ruled ineligible to vote. This time, however, I got it done.

Actually, I very nearly put this on my Bucket List.

The rehabilitation of stinkers

One of the great benefits that a cricket fan had till recently was that there wasn’t much cause to change one’s opinion about the players. Cricket has traditionally been divided on geographical lines: a player represented his local club , then his state or county, and ultimately his national team. There’s very little changing of teams by players. So once you decided you didn’t like someone, you could carry that hate pretty much till the player retired.

Then came the Indian Premier League, an American franchise-style tournament with players from around the world playing for teams based in eight Indian cities. This posed a dilemma. The team based in Chennai, the Super Kings, has for two of its star performers Matthew Hayden of Australia and Mutthiah Muralidharan of Sri Lanka. The problem? I’ve loathed these two guys for years. Now I love 'em.

Am I fickle? Not a bit. In my mind, they’ve undergone repentance (by joining my team) and I’ve forgiven them. Being a star player for one of my teams wipes out a multitude of sins. Welcome to my world.

(Mind you, when Murali represents Sri Lanka, I still loathe him. My forgiveness is not yet unconditional.)

Happy Star Wars Day...

May the Fourth be with you.

May Day!

In honour of May Day, here's the funniest commercial I've ever seen:

Pun of the weak #29

Some people are so out of control they couldn't exercise restraint even if they had a dog named 'Restraint'.