Category: Miscellany

  • Let Motherhood Not Be Forced

    Let Motherhood Not Be Forced

    [Background information for non-US readers for whom Roe and Wade just mean a pair of names, and “Choice” and “Life” are not obvious antonyms: US Supreme Court is very likely to come out with a decision in June 2022 that paves way for abortion becoming illegal in a large part of the United States. Read…

  • Much Ado About Theresa's Sari

    Recently, pictures of British Prime Minister Theresa May wearing a sari have been doing the rounds on social media, with captions on the lines of “New British PM’s first day in office and she chose to wear an Indian sari. Many Indians don’t do so. Salute to new lady PM of Britain.” This is partly…

  • 7 Myths Broken for Pro-377 Indians

    7 Myths Broken for Pro-377 Indians

    In 1861, the British created Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code, criminalizing homosexual behavior. A century and a half later, our attempts to get rid of this archaic law have come to a naught. Most of my friends on social networks have had something to say about the situation, and very few of them…

  • Google Books Ngram Viewer

    Google does some interesting things. Ngram Viewer which I found about just today is one such. To know what the Ngram viewer does, we first need to know what an Ngram is. Well, according to Wikipedia, an Ngram is “a subsequence of n items from a given sequence.” If you just wanted to know how…

  • Dhar Mann – Raja of Ganja?

    OK, another Indian sounding name was in the news today – Dhar Mann. The news on CNN was “‘Walmart of Weed’ to open in Arizona, promote growing your own“. So, here is the background: Marijuana, Cannabis or Ganja (as we Indians know it) is illegal in most of the United States. In the state of…

  • Hardest to Enter American Universities

    Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com) has just released the “list of hardest schools to get into“, which is American English for “list of American colleges or universities with the lowest ratio of number of admitted students to number of applicants”. Here are top three from the list: 1. Harvard University: 2,110 accepted out of 30,489 applicants (6.9%)…

  • Air Travails 2: Do I Need a Transit Visa in UK

    As I was shopping online for airfares from Washington area to Delhi on Oct-2, I came across this incredible price of $569 return fare on British Airways (via Travelocity). Normally any price below a thousand bucks is considered a deal. So, as I was drooling over that price (the site said only 3 seats were…

  • Verb "Googled" Not in Google's Spellchecker

    It has been several years since the verb “to google” was added to the English dictionary. According to Wikipedia, It was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary on June 15, 2006, and to the eleventh edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in July 2006. However, Gmail’s own spellchecker shows the word “googled” as a…

  • Air Travails 1: Eccentricities of Air Tickets

    Past one week has been kind of a roller coaster ride for me. It started with a travel plan and ended with no travel at all, with a number of lessons learned along the way. News of a family member’s death in India came on last Friday night. Within minutes I was online looking for…