This official logo for the Trump-Pence US Presidential campaign was released on 15 July 2016:
In about one day, the logo was removed from the campaign website, after a number of sarcastic comments on Twitter and other social media.
Here is a gist of the type of comments:
Please do share your comments / interpretation, in the comment form below.
A few months ago, it was time to replace the water purifier at home. The present one was difficult to maintain – the model was discontinued and its replacement parts were no longer available.
We thought it would be a simple task of selecting from one of the popular brands (like Kent or Aquaguard).
Little did we know that it would become a whole big project that required deeper research and evaluation of many alternatives based on criteria. Our task was made easy by the details available at achawater.com – a comprehensive site that covers water purification in great depth.
As the first step we had to figure out the possible impurities to be removed. Our water is supplied by the municipality in Bangalore (BWSSB).
Here is a list of possible impurities in this water.
Continue reading Choosing a Home Water Purifier in Bangalore, India
Passports were earlier used as travel documents, to establish the holder’s country. With time, a passport has also increasingly become a proof of identity and address.
However, passports have an expiry date, and upon renewal, a new passport is issued with a new passport number. This is extremely inconvenient, as one now needs to remember the new passport number while filling travel documents (every time one enters and exits a country) and sometimes at other places in a foreign country. Additional mess can be created if the passport renewal date and travel dates are close to each other, or there are valid visas on the old passport (to which passport number is the visa attached? :=( ).
My driving license number remains the same, even when it is renewed. So does my PAN number with the Income Tax Department. My Aadhar number will not change when I apply for a renewal (due to change of address or replacement of my mugshot). So, why can’t my passport number remain the same over my lifetime, as long as I continue to hold the passport of the same country?
Before one starts attributing the situation to the state of the Indian bureaucracy, this is true of the US, the UK, Australia, and most other countries.
Continue reading Why Does the Passport Number Change when Renewed?
| Title | Headhunter |
| Author(s) | Michael Slade |
| Initially Published In | 1984 |
| Publisher | W H Allen & Co. |
| Formats Available | Paperback, Hardcover |
Headhunter is a murder mystery, a psychological thriller, a whodunit and a horror story with plenty of details of police investigation procedures and methods. The novel is based in Vancouver, Canada in the 1980s and revolves around a set of grisly murders of young women, whose bodies are found headless. While the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is investigating, more victims are discovered. Graphic violence, traumatized bodies, and perverted sex are all depicted with powerful imagery in this extremely well-written book.
I have read Headhunter three times, and each time I am gripped by the narrative and held spellbound even though I knew the ending.
“This is, beyond all doubt, a real chiller!”
— Robert Bloch, author of Psycho
Continue reading Book: Headhunter by Michael Slade
Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, a 1983 film produced by NFDC and directed by Kundan Shah, is a dark satire on the the unshakable corrupt ways of Indian politicians, bureaucrats, and the media. It is set in Mumbai and has a pretty simple and outwardly hilarious (sometimes infantile) narrative. Released in 1983, it was not very successful at the box office at that time. Eventually, this movie won many awards, and has achieved a cult status. It generally figures in most Top-100 movies lists of Indian/ Hindi movies.
| Directed by | Kundan Shah |
| Released in | 1983 |
| Genre | Dark Satire, Comic Political Thriller |
| Cast |
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| Music by | Vanraj Bhatia |
| Produced by | National Film Development Corporation |
| Language | Hindi |
| Length | 2 hours 12 minutes |
Vinod Chopra (Naseeruddin Shah) and Sudhir Mishra (Ravi Baswani) are young men starting off as professional photographers, who open a studio in a relatively upscale Bombay locality.
Struggling to get business, they fortunately get an assignment from the editor of an investigative journal Khabardar, Shobha Sen (Bhakti Barve). The assignment is to get evidence to expose a corrupt nexus between the city commissioner D’Mello (Satish Shah) and builder Tarneja (Pankaj Kapoor).
The fun starts when Vinod and Sudhir accidentally photograph a murder in action. The rest of the movie is an out-of-control, hilarious story, that sometimes feels like a skit, improvised by brilliant people in some kind of ‘zone’.
Continue reading Movie: Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983, Hindi, India)
| Title | The Speed of Dark |
| Author(s) | Elizabeth Moon |
| Initially Published In | 2002 |
| Publisher | Orbit Books |
| Formats Available | Paperback, Kindle, Hardcover |
The Speed of Dark is a near-future story about a young autistic man, Lou. Lou is computer analyst, who is also a good fencer. The novel is a combination of science fiction and a thriller, often narrated from the autistic man’s point of view.
“Every once in a while, you come across a book that is both an important literary achievement and a completely and utterly absorbing reading experience—a book with provocative ideas and an equally compelling story. Such a book is The Speed of Dark.”
— Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
The main character in The Speed of Dark has been inspired by the author’s own autistic son.
The Speed of Dark is a futuristic story, where the world has found treatments to manage the condition of autism. This treatment is administered in very early childhood.
In this scenario, autistic children born before the treatment was available try to live ‘normally’ with their condition, and also work hard to be useful members of the society.
Continue reading Book: The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
| Directed by | Neill Blomkamp |
| Released in | 2009 |
| Genre | Science FIction |
| Cast | Sharlto Copley as Wikus van de Merwe |
| Music by | Clinton Shorter |
| Produced by | Peter Jackson, Carolynne Cunningham |
| Language | English |
| Length | 1 hour 52 mins |
District 9 is a 2009 gritty, grimy, science fiction thriller placed in South Africa. Directed by Neill Blomkamp, the movie uses relatively unknown actors – Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, and David James and adapts a pseudo-documentary style (at least at the start). District 9 was inspired by events during the apartheid era in District Six, Cape Town. The film won many awards and nominations. With a relatively low budget of 30 million US$, it was a box office hit with a collection of over 210 million US$.
“Technically brilliant and emotionally wrenching, District 9 has action, imagination, and all the elements of a thoroughly entertaining science-fiction classic.”
– Rotten Tomatoes
Many of us who work in offices sit for more than 8-10 hours a day. We sit for our breakfast, we sit during our commute, we sit for long stretches at our desks, we sit with our coffee/ tea during the breaks, we sit for our lunch, we sit in meetings, we sit on our way back home, we sit during dinner and watch TV while sitting. And many times we sit continuously for more than 2 hours without getting up.
Being able to sit is also a status symbol that displays higher education and higher income / wealth. People who are more educated typically have jobs that require them to be on desks; richer people do not walk to bus stops and train stations, nor do they walk to shopping centers or coffee shops.
Over the last few years there has been a concerted movement in some countries (like Australia) to encourage people to sit for lesser time during the day, reduce continuous sitting, and increase time standing and moving. However, this movement has not yet picked up any steam in India.
Prolonged sitting has been linked with multiple health concerns like obesity, increased blood pressure, high blood-sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels. It also seems to increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Sitting more than 6 hours a day may be as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day.
Continue reading Don’t Just Sit: Stand, Walk, Move!
| Title | Ender’s Game |
| Author(s) | Orson Scott Card |
| Initially Published In | 1985 |
| Publisher | Tor |
| Formats Available | Paperback, Kindle |
Ender’s Game brought immense fame and recognition to its author, Orson Scott Card. It is a science fiction book, set in the future with a ‘military’ theme.
“Superb! This is Card at the height of his very considerable powers–a major SF novel by any reasonable standard.”
— Booklist
The novel won the Nebula Award for best novel in 1985, and the Hugo Award for best novel in 1986. Ender’s Game was also nominated for a Locus Award in 1986.
Ender’s Game is situated far ahead in the future, where human beings have left the confines of the earth and started expansion to other planetary systems. During this expansion, humans encounter another species on a similar expansion drive. This results in two wars between the two species. At the end of these wars, both species retreat to locations near their mother/ home planets. There is no communication between the humans and the alien species, who are officially called ‘formics’ and unofficially called ‘buggers’ (because they look like insects) by the humans.
Continue reading Book: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Delhi Belly, produced by Aamir Khan, is a rib-tickling, dark comedy with a thriller narrative. It is set in Delhi and uses of a lot of profane language (it was given an ‘A’ certificate). Released in 2011, it received great response from critics as well as movie goers. The movie was later remade in Tamil with the title Settai.
| Directed by | Abhinay Deo |
| Released in | 2011 |
| Genre | Dark Comedy, Thriller, Action |
| Cast |
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| Music by | Ram Sampath |
| Produced by | Aamir Khan, Kiran Rao, Ronnie Screwvala, Jim Furgele |
| Language | Hindi, English, Hinglish |
| Length | 1 hour 40 minutes |
Three young men working in the media/ communication industry in Delhi share a dark, dirty, and dingy apartment in a crumbling building in a crowded area. Tashi (Imran Khan) is a journalist, Nitin (Kunaal Roy Kapur) is a photographer, and Arup (Vir Das) is a cartoonist.
The fun starts when Tashi’s birdbrained and pretty-looking girlfriend, air-hostess Sonia (Shenaz Treasurywalla) unknowingly carries smuggled diamonds hidden in a multi-layered doll. Sonia passes on the doll to Tashi for delivery, who delegates the delivery to Nitin. Nitin gets diarrhea (Delhi-belly) and he passes the doll to Arup along with his stool sample. Arup exchanges the two packets and the stool sample is delivered to the smuggler-gangsters, who are led by Somayajulu (Vijay Raaz).
The rest of the movie is a hilarious, non-stop, roller-coaster ride. At first, the young men try to recover the diamonds and hand them over to the smugglers. Then they try to encash the diamonds for themselves; and finally they decide to take the matter into their own hands, have a showdown with the gangsters, and finish the whole thing once and for all.
Continue reading Movie: Delhi Belly (2011, Hindi-English-Hinglish, India)
