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August 30, 2005

Object Lust #2: A smart coffee mug

I drink a lot of tea at work. Apart from my afternoon cup of coffee, tea is my primary source of caffeine. One day it is English Breakfast. The next day it is Irish Breakfast. The following day is Lady Grey. On all of these days though, I lovingly brew my tea for 3-5 minutes and then proceed to pour it on the second most sensitive part of my body (just in case you were wondering, the most sensitive part of the body is not this or this, but this). Though I'm cautious about this fact before I brew my daily cuppas, the sheer delight of filling my nostrils with the scent of a freshly brewed cup makes me forget everything. With a scalded tongue and a curled up nose, I set down my cup of tea for a while and attend to other tasks. By the next time I remember that I have a cup of tea at my desk, it has gone completely cold and is unfit to drink and enjoy.

I came across a smart coffee mug, which keeps a warm liquid warm, but also has an isolated upper chamber to bring the liquid to a drinkable temperature fast. This lets warm liquids be maintained at high temperatures until just before they are sipped. A stroke of simple and creative genius. Each mug has three settings: Lock, Tip&Cool and Sip. The Lock setting seals the mug and lets liquids be transported easily without scalding or staining spills. The Tip&Cool setting uses the upper temperature controlled chamber to cool the liquid instantly while it is still too hot to drink directly. After the liquid has cooled down enough, you can use the Brugo mug like a traditional mug by using the Sip setting to bypass the upper temperature controlled chamber. This is a bit of a modal user interface, but it's a small price to pay for the considerably reduced risk of tongue scalding.

(Brugo Mug; http://www.brugomug.com; $15.95)

Posted by Vishy at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: black money

black money./blæk·muh·NEE/. Akin to dark matter that makes up most of the universe but isn't actually detectable by our instruments of observation, black money is money that powers the Indian economy, but isn't subject to the mere trifles of accounting or tax audits. Remittances and receipts for big-ticket items are hardly ever publicly disclosed in full. The official cost for an item is expressed in so-called 'white money'. In truth, the seller usually charges the buyer some more money under the radars of accountniks. The white and black portions of a remittance are always on separate checks. The particularly paranoid seller may choose to receive the black portion entirely in cash to reduce its traceability. The 'black' designation is also used idiomatically, as in, "This apartment will cost 35 lakhs, 25 of those in black."

Untaxed black money powers a parallel economy in India and fuels some exorbitantly affluent lifestyles that occasionally make outsiders forget that India is a developing country. Men of industry are reminded how un-self-made they are as they periodically draw grudgingly from their pools of black money to pay protection money to various goons. Black money also fuels the astonishing pace with which Bollywood makes movies. Occasionally, pangs of guilt seize a businessman as he approaches his demise and coerce him to bring his black money into whiteland by donating generously towards constructing hospitals and libraries for public welfare, or temples for private salvation.

To give credit where it is due, black money's stranglehold on India's economy has shrunk considerably in the last decade or so due to increased calls for transparency and government measures extending clemency over declared assets. Nevertheless, on occasion, it makes one wonder where all the crores of rupees being doled out on Kaun Banega Crorepati? (India's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) come from.

Posted by Vishy at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2005

Windows Remixes

Windows has its detractors. Windows also has its fans. Much like how the fan fiction surrounding a literary franchise occasionally reinvents its subject in new and interesting ways, Windows users have gone about providing remixed versions of the operating system everyone loves to hate.

Wired News ran a story about Windows remixes currently available on the software underground. These remixes enhance Windows by paring it down to the bare minimum or by modifying it to serve a specific purpose. There are Knoppix LiveCD-like distributions, which make it easy to boot a computer into a diagnostic mode, as well as bare bones versions such as "Windows XP SP2 Lite Edition". All these redistributions violate Microsoft's license terms and are essentially fly-by-night operations. Moreover, Microsoft is kind enough to remind you that accepting modifications from anyone other than the original publishers of Windows, themselves, poses a security risk.

If you have the crippled Windows XP Home Edition and you continually ache for something better, you can assuage some of that pain legally. An article I came across the other day describes how to convert your copy of Windows XP Home into Windows XP HomePro. This HomePro Edition re-enables those features that had been crippled in Windows XP Professional to yield Windows XP Home. Most importantly, it makes your formerly XP Home computer start believing that it runs Windows XP Professional. Of course, the HomePro edition does not provide all the features of Windows XP Professional, but it definitely adds back several useful features that power users miss.

Posted by Vishy at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2005

Spot the Fake Smile

How good are you at spotting fake smiles? Try this questionnaire with 20 smile videos. It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/

Posted by Vishy at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2005

FAQ: Why do Indians not eat beef?

[This post is by request of Stephen, a friend and former co-worker, who was pondering this question as he chewed on BBQ ribs in Texas.]

India probably offers the highest number of variations on dietary habits, outside of food allergies. There are lactovegetarians, ovolactovegetarians, nonvegetarians and radicexcludarians (a word of my own invention for certain groups, such as Jains, who don't eat anything that grows below the ground). Some dietary habits even vary with time, such as in the case of people that are vegetarian on certain days of the week but are omnivorous on others. It is understandable for the average outsider to be overwhelmed in the face of such astonishing dietary diversity. Even so, there is one rule in which an outsider can find solace, when trying to understand Indian diets -- the no-beef rule.

Most Indians do not consume beef, beef lard or any bovine-derived products other than milk. It is fair to say Indian meat-eaters are about as squeamish about beef as Indian vegetarians are about any meat. The no-beef rule has had a tangible impact on Indian history. For quite a while, discontent had been festering in the ranks of Indian royals, who had been rendered powerless by the expansionist and divisive policies of the British East India Company in the 1850s. The British played one regional prince against another, assisting whoever it was convenient to assist at the time with native Indian troops fighting under the British banner. These Indian troops weren't too thrilled about being ordered to make war on their own people by a foreign power. The general feeling of discontent against the British reached a fever pitch when rumors spread among British-employed Indian troops about the ammunition they were asked to use during combat. Cartridge covers, which had to be torn off by mouth before loading a firearm, were reportedly adhered to the cartridge using beef and pork lard. Cows were sacred to Hindu soldiers and pigs were profane to Muslim soldiers. The resulting emotional inflammation led to Indian soldiers defying their British commanders in Meerut, starting a localized conflict that grew into the War of Indian Independence in 1857, the first (and only) armed Indian rebellion against British rule.

The cow eats paltry meals of grass, kitchen refuse and a lot of other things humans wouldn't dream of eating. Yet, in an extremely selfless act, it gives of its milk plentifully to nourish humans. Bulls also make their own contribution by helping the largely agrarian Indian population plough its fields. Ancient Indian scriptures exalt the status of the cow because they were written by a largely pastoral people, who had a significant nomadic history before settling in the Indian region. When living a nomadic lifestyle, it makes economic sense to conserve cows, which may be inconvenient or impossible to procure for long stretches, by imposing taboos on their consumption. The most commonly cited reason for avoiding beef is that the cow attains the position of a surrogate mother by giving plentifully of its milk to humans. Just as humans don't kill their own mothers for food even in dire times, so too should the cow be revered thus. It is interesting to note that the status of cow as mother may be further reinforced by the rather striking fact that the gestation period for a cow is the same as that for humans, 9 months.

The ancient taboo against consuming cows presents itself in modern Indian polity in the form of anti-cow-killing laws, enacted at the behest of political parties that place the Hindu faith as one of their central tenets. In most of India, cows are protected by law, thus leaving them free to roam the streets and contribute to one of the Western world's lasting impressions of India. However, Indians really do respect their cows even in this high-tech twenty-first century, which is why they track them with RFID tags. Some nonvegetarian Indians in the United States adhere to the beef taboo. Others start eating beef, sometimes by accident, and hope that their folks back in India never find out. I hope this writeup clarifies the no-beef rule a bit. I will go into a similar explanation of Indian vegetarianism in the future, so watch this space.

Posted by Vishy at 02:16 AM | Comments (1)

August 17, 2005

Armchair window shopping with A9 Maps

I have compared a few mapping services earlier in my blog for features, correctness and user experience. Just when you think the mapping problem has been basically solved and further improvements in various services would be mainly in user experience, technology advances and catches you by surprise. Some mapping services continue to blaze a trail of innovation, adding entirely new features that other mapping services simply don't offer.

Just yesterday, A9.com, a search engine subsidiary of Amazon.com, debuted its map services with an interesting new feature, Block View Images. This feature uses geocoded images to let you literally walk up and down a street from the comfort of your armchair, much as Google Earth lets you fly to a destination of your choosing. There is a database of millions of images that puts users in the middle of Times Square or at other famous urban landmarks. Window shop at the retail scene around a new neighborhood. Don't like the shade on your side of the street? Just cross over to the other side and walk as you soak up the sun.

Browse around your favorite city a little and you realize this service is almost too good to be true. What's the catch? Some poor schmuck has to be driving around all the time taking the pictures that make this possible. Well, hey, at least he is working hard, having fun and making history!

Posted by Vishy at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2005

A comparison of classical music styles

Classical music in Hindi and other Indian languages is called shastriya sangeet. Shastriya derives from the Sanskrit shastra, which means science or method. Whereas classical music in the Western tradition is merely classical, meaning old, its equivalent in Indian languages points to a fundamental science of sound underlying the Indian tradition of classical music.

The science behind Indian classical music is codified in ancient Indian texts such as the Vedas. The chants of Samaveda, one of the four principal Vedas, are set to a scale of seven notes, rather than just three, as in the other Vedas. The standard ascending scale with seven notes is sung as 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni' and corresponds to the Western 'Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti'. Today, Indian classical music has two distinct traditions in North and South India. The North Indian style of Indian classical music is commonly known as the Hindustani style and was heavily patronized by the Muslim dynasties that ruled from Delhi during the late Middle Ages. It has significant Persian and Central Asian influences in both instrumentation and tonality. The South Indian style of Indian classical music is known as the Carnatic (from karu nadu, 'black land' -- refers to the dark soil of the South Indian peninsula) style. Relatively isolated from Muslim and other foreign influences, it is arguably closer to the style expounded in ancient Sanskrit texts. As much as possible, this essay will make claims that apply to both styles of Indian classical music, as contrasted with Western classical music.

The Indian classical music octave is considerably richer than the Western classical music octave. The full Western octave consists of twelve notes. The full Indian classical octave contains twenty-two notes. In Western classical music, tonal clarity is highly valued and any emotion is conveyed in how a note is struck by a vocalist or instrumentalist. Indian classical music, in contrast, employs rapidly fluctuating microtones, notes that may fall between the standard twenty-two, to accentuate a standard note. To some Western ears, this sounds like a compromise on tonal clarity, but the value of microtones becomes clearer upon listening deeply to Indian classical music.

Indian classical music is based around the central concept of a raaga. A raaga is a tonal framework that circumscribes those notes that are allowed in a classical music composition and those that are not. Every classical music piece is set to a raaga. For example, if a song is set to Raaga Yaman, it can feature the notes C, D, E, F^#, G, A and B. Every musical composition begins with an ascending and descending scale appropriate to its raaga and proceeds to expound on those scales. Because every composition doesn't stand on its own but is backed by a raaga, there is considerable scope for improvisation when it is actually performed. My understanding is that in Western music, special courses in composition must be taken if an instrumentalist or vocalist wants to make music, and not just play it. In contrast, the most basic course in Indian classical music, be it vocal or instrumental, includes material about several basic raagas and tips on composition. Raagas have fascinating cultural artifacts attached to them as well. For each raaga, there are suggestions about the time of day in which it is best sung. Certain raagas are even said to induce fire and rain!

Raagas provide an extremely convenient and advanced framework for categorizing existing musical compositions and generating new ones. Musical composition, as with any other creative line of work, requires considerable talent. However, having a standard framework of raagas for reference gives the composer a set of rules that they can both follow and flout creatively. My friends say I am frequently guilty of using computer science analogies when not strictly necessary. Western classical music compositions are like incredibly polished looking software programs, perfected to every imaginable degree and handed off to instrumentalists and vocalists. Just as preferences may be changed in Windows XP each time it is booted up, different things may be emphasized over others during different performances. At its core, however, the piece always stays the same. The thought of riffing freestyle on The Moonlight Sonata during a performance seems unimaginable to most composers and audiences. In contrast, raagas act as a library of musical programs. They can be composed together on the fly, just as with Unix commands, to produce a composition that could well vary in its musical notes at each performance.

It is said that one of the most important inventions of the Western world is polyphonic music. The sonorous compositions of the early Baroque period seem wondrously dazzled at their own use of multiple voice and instrumental parts. Indian classical music, in contrast, is largely homophonic. I recall reading a Yehudi Menuhin essay, where he states that polyphonic music stands as an allegory to Western civilization itself, where each member of society gives up a little freedom to participate in the construction of a greater gestalt. He notes that that the awe-inspiring cathedrals of Europe are constructed in the same vein. In contrast, an Indian classical music performance consists of mostly autonomous virtuosos, whose musical strains intersect in intricate ways to yield a performance. This is said to be an analogy to Indian society, where everyone pretty much does whatever they want with less regard to what their actions may add up to in the aggregate than in Western civilizations. Some may say it is unfortunate that Indian civilization did not discover polyphonic music in its extremely long music history. Indian classical music more than makes up for this deficiency with its well-developed body of knowledge about rhythms and percussion. Western classical music may have the occasional tympani beat to accentuate a musical phrase, but subordinates rhythm to melody and reduces rhythm to a matter of counting out beats. On the other hand, the crucially central raaga aspect of an Indian classical music piece shares the stage with its taala aspect, which lays down the rhythmic scheme of the composition. Most Indian classical music performances feature percussion solos when they reach their improvisational phase. Listeners of Indian classical music are as keenly aware of the rhythmic scheme of a piece as they are of its melodic scheme.

Perhaps the best aspect of Indian classical music is that it has two distinct styles. These styles are clearly seen to descend from a common tradition. However, in their present form, they contain many regional Indian influences, which provide valuable counterpoints to each other when they are juxtaposed. One of the crowd-pleasing forms of Indian classical music performance is the jugalbandi, where musicians from the two styles interpret the same raaga and fire musical phrases back and forth in a lively musical debate. Western classical music, in contrast, seems to emphasize distinctive musical traditions less than Indian classical music. Because it lacks the raaga framework, it is hard anyway to come across an apples-to-apples comparison of how different musical styles may interpret a broad set of rules regarding tonal composition.

If you have never listened to Indian classical music and are intrigued by the points in this essay, spend some time in the World Music of a music store and look for Indian music titles, ensuring that they are not Bollywood titles. You will definitely not regret this portion of your overall musical experience.

Posted by Vishy at 10:37 PM | Comments (1)

August 11, 2005

Goings and comings in Tamil

A commonly encountered word-related question is: "What is an English word that means the same thing as its opposite?" One commonly cited answer to this question is "cleave", which can mean both to join things together or split them apart in different senses.

As I was talking to my family in Tamil the other day, I realized that Tamil too has such a word. It's not some obscure word like cleave but the very pedestrian varal, "to come" (first person singular present progressive varen, 'I am coming', second person imperative vango, "Come!"). In many situations, the same word, varen, is used in the sense of going as well. The rationale that underpins this strange usage has roots in social customs of politeness. It is customary for a Tamilian taking leave of someone else under normal circumstances not to say "I am going" but to say instead, "I am (leaving now and) returning." To actually say "I am going" indicates that the speaker intends never to return, such as when they don't want future social contact with the audience of the statement. Some superstitious types also believe that by saying "I am going", one portends their own imminent passing from this world.

As it turns out, "I am (leaving now and) returning" is spoken as "I am coming again." It isn't always necessary to include the adverbial modifier 'again'. This results in the somewhat weird situation of someone saying "I am coming" when they actually mean "I am going". It isn't that varal, to come, and its forms semantically entail the senses of both coming and going. In fact, if you were to ask any Tamilian what varal meant, they would say it only means 'to come'. However, out of politeness and social custom, they would use forms of varal when they indicate their desire to leave some place.

That's it for now. I am coming.

Posted by Vishy at 10:00 PM | Comments (1)

August 09, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: to expire

expire./eks·PAH·yər/. Die. Pass away. Kick the bucket. Origin unclear. Possibly from the sense of expiring that means exhaling. Another more demeaning and less likely possibility lies in the sense of to expire like a carton of milk or a package of cold medicine. Probably the most common death-related euphemism in India because it doesn't mention death or passing away directly. For example, "My father expired when I was two, before I could form my earliest memories of him."

Posted by Vishy at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)

August 03, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #18: Nodding and shaking in Bulgaria

Visitors to India often complain about the strange way Indians nod. In India, the neck is craned rapidly to the left and to the right to signify a 'yes'. This different way of nodding is hardly a cause for complaints when you consider what other cultures do to signify 'yes' and 'no' nonverbally. In Bulgaria, nodding your head in an up-down motion signifies 'no' and shaking your head from side to side signifies 'yes'. No really! It's the complete opposite of what English speakers are used to.

So, to all the guys: if you're in the midst of a particularly steamy night with a girl at a club, if she shakes her head, she does not mean yes. Take it as a no before you get into a date-rape situation. However, if you're in Bulgaria (and being an Eastern European country, the girls are particularly hot), an apparent 'no' may actually mean you'll get lucky that night.

Posted by Vishy at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 01, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: STD booth

STD booth./ESS·TEE·DEE·booth/. At first glance, it may seem a bit like a confession booth-like structure with a skanky ho inside -- your one-stop shop for contracting a sexually transmitted disease. However, sadly, Indians get by transmitting STDs to each other just fine, even without STD booths. STD booths brought about the recent telecom revolution in India. STD stands for Subscriber Trunk Dialing, the official name of national long-distance telephone service in India. Most STD booths also allow you to make international long-distance telephone calls, which are referred to by the abbreviation ISD, short for International Subscriber Dialing. They also offer payphones for ordinary local calls, and thus serve as a Public Call Office (PCO). Thousands of such booths marked with modest signs saying 'STD·ISD·PCO' mushroomed in the Indian countryside in the 90s. They employed several rural youth and were as good as a box marked 'Cash Cow -- just add water'. In part, they fueled the expansion of Internet access to remote areas in rural India.

Before the days of STD, people used to make operator-assisted long-distance calls, which were known simply as Trunk Calls. STD removed a human operator and put the power of trunk dialing in the hands of the subscribers themselves. In recent years, particularly in Mumbai, the telephone authority is trying Ingsoc-like to phase out the abbreviation STD and replace it with NSD (National Subscriber Dialing), the national analogue to ISD. However, STD occupies a special place in most people's minds and is by far the dominant abbreviation used to refer to national long distance. The abbreviation STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection) sometimes comes in handy when distinguishing between the senses of STD.

Posted by Vishy at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)