I have always thought of Switzerland as a country where nothing happens - there never seems to be news about the country or its people. It is usually organizations like CERN or the various United Nations agencies who make the headlines, or the inordinate number of Swiss Nobel Prize Winners. The only Swiss that feature regularly in the Indian media are banks, watches and chocolate.

The sentiment is vaguely echoed in (the not entirely accurate) Orson Welles' monologue in The Third Man :

"You know what the fellow said — in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

The Ig Nobel Awards are always good for a chuckle, which is what they are awarded for : achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The 2008 awardees lived up to the billing; did you know that

• dog fleas can jump higher than cat fleas?
• armadillos modify history by interfering with archaeology?
• if you are peddling placebos, you should price them higher?
• the lowly slime mold can solve puzzles?
• a professional lap dancer's ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings?
• Coca Cola is an effective spermicide?
• Coca Cola is not a spermicide?

To get back to the subject though, the Peace Prize went to The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) and the Swiss for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity. Browsing through the ECNH website is revealing : The Swiss Constitution apparently enshrines the concept of the Dignity of Living Beings, and the ECNH translates this concept into concrete terms. For example, the report that earned the award concluded that

• an arbitrary harm caused to plants is morally impermissible
• the instrumentalisation of plants (their use for the benefit of human beings) requires moral justification
• plants are excluded for moral reasons from absolute ownership (majority opinion)
• genetic modification of plants should involve conservation of natural relationships (majority opinion)

The very notion of ethical considerations around animals and plants is (pleasantly) surprising to me. Quite a few people on the planet still have trouble applying ethics to human beings.

Tags : Ig Nobel Switzerland Ethics

An article in ZDNet remarks on what the common citizen should really worry about in the wake of the ISO OOXML voting controversy.

Whether or not OOXML is a good candidate for an open standard is beside the point: there is prima facie evidence of voting in bad faith, without proper consideration of all the aspects of the proposal. This is not something that can be fixed later; there are severe implications for the industry in adopting a standard that has not been fully analysed. Those who vote without understanding what they vote for, or because they have primarily political or commercial reasons, are guilty of subverting the process.

I suspect everyone understands precisely what they are voting for. Atleast some of the reasons have nothing to do with the merits (or demerits) of the proposed specification, and there's the rub.

The questions of how a national committee, deciding on a vote in any standardization process, is constituted and who participates in the deliberations should be considered by the ISO. For ISO standards to continue to be treated with universal acceptance, it should take cognizance of what goes on in the standardization process outside its halls.

The Hungarian Standards Institution has been asked by a minister to reconsider its approval. Sweden has decided to abstain from the OOXML vote, reversing the earlier approval due to a technicality. I came across a blog post by Wictor Wilén on the original Yes vote :

When this day approached both camps, the pro Office Open XML team and the no-sayers both gathered their forces for the final battle. We all entered the meeting at the last possible minute and we all was signed in to the meeting.

Sounds less like a specification meet and more like a medieval gathering of Vikings. Sam Hiser writes that the French meeting degenerated into what sounds like a slanging match. The Inquirer covers more, to coin a phrase, un-standards-like behaviour.

Jason Matusow writes on his blog :

If Open XML is to be approved for standardization at JTC1, it needs to do so by the book... it is critical that these activities remain within the realm of ethical behavior as well as behavior defined by the rules for the JTC1 process.

The stuffing of voting bodies, amazingly enough, seems to be within the rules - ISO addresses the question of who represents a country, but is vague on how national voting committees are constituted. This should be corrected. However with all due respect to Jason, it seems to me that the realm of ethical behaviour is being gerrymandered. The ISO Code of Ethics states, amongst other things,

ISO members are committed to developing globally relevant International Standards by :

ensuring fair and responsive application of the principles of due process, transparency, openness, impartiality and voluntary nature of standardization

There are atleast three principles in there that have been violated in several countries, if reports are to be believed. A case has also been made for involuntary canvassing in the Inquirer article. It is only because the Internet has ensured openness that the allegations are receiving publicity.

Unfortunately, actions coming under scrutiny are those seeking to get the standard approved. OOXML supporters seem to be ignoring the fact that a "No with comments" vote will be converted into a Yes during the Ballot Resolution Meeting if objections are addressed. When the comments are distributed after September 2, ECMA has until February 2008 to either refute them or change the specification to nullify them.

Jason also writes in an earlier post that all comments (including those prefaced with a Yes) will be considered by ECMA. Apparently this kind of reasoning has also prompted some countries to vote Yes and append technical comments. The logic escapes me : There has to be an incentive for the proposer to respond adequately to comments. The incentive is converting a No into a Yes.

When a voter has already voted Yes, the voter gives up the right to satisfaction. All comments could potentially be addressed by calling them invalid, for example. I might be doing ECMA an injustice by exaggerating, but the possibility exists.

There is also the chance that a vote can be changed from a Yes to a No, but if the original Yes vote is tainted, what odds would a gambler give on a change happening? Brings me back to the original question of the process.

I live in a country where subverting processes is done more often than one cares to remark on. Most of us avoid a code violation ticket by speculating with the constable on what miracle pays for his tea. An ISO process is held to higher standards, I hope.

Tags : OOXML ISO Standards

The weekend has been exhilarating. Ferrari took their second 1-2 finish this year at the Turkish Grand Prix, keeping the driver and constructor championships alive. Raikonnen had won the French GP and Massa had come in second, and they exchanged positions (no, not under team orders) for the Istanbul result. The German and Hungarian races had been disappointments, and it was a relief to see the prancing horses take maximum points last evening.

Ferrari and McLaren now have 6 wins each from the 12 races, but the other statistics reveal why the former is still 26 points behind : 4 second places to McLaren's 7 and 4 DNFs to McLaren's 1. Hamilton has been the find of the season, and Alonso is the only driver to score points in every race. Here is hoping Monza sees another Ferrari 1-2.

If Ferrari has been inconsistent, Manchester United's form has been dismal at the start of the English Premier League season : 2 draws and a loss in the first 3 matches, 1 goal scored, Rooney injured, Ronaldo suspended. Sunday's game against Tottenham Hotspur did not do much to restore confidence, but the scorcher of a goal from Nani and some luck meant that the team got its first win. I cannot type much more because I am too busy knocking on wood.

Tags : Ferrari F1 Man United EPL

I have to admit that I am not much of a Paul Scholes fan : I throw up my arms in frustration as he gets caught in possession or makes a lazy pass that is intercepted, too many times in my opinion. However, I stop breathing every time he gets the ball just outside the box. The sublimity of his shots from around that area, and the consistency with which he scores from there are unsurpassed in modern day football.

Opening day was a huge disappointment for Manchester United - a draw against Reading (who amazingly seem to have scored against Chelsea as I write) at home and an injury that will keep Rooney out of the team for some time meant that the club stumbled. Adding to their relative woes were the wins by Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool, not to mention that their next fixture (today) was to be at Fratton Park, unhappy hunting grounds that Portsmouth has been for them recently.

Scholes though has scored yet another blistering goal from the D. Nani looks bright. Tevez does not look any more handsome in red than he did in claret, but that is neither here nor there : he isn't in a beauty contest. I just hope he reproduces the scintillating form he displayed at West Ham. ManU of late appear to stutter every now and then before getting into full gear. The Scholes goal should do them a world of good.

Update : As is often the case with Football, I spoke 45 minutes too soon. Portsmouth came back strongly in the second half and earned a draw, Ronaldo faces a possible suspension and Chelsea beat Reading. Cup of woe and all that.

Tags : football Man United Scholes

As the network has become a medium that facilitates business and social interaction as well as a significant purveyor of identity, it was inevitable that the virtual and real planets are blurring into one, mashed-up if you will, brave new world. It is not exactly an insight to conclude that actions on the Internet have real consequences just like on any other medium, but recent developments are bringing the spotlight back on the collision of the two worlds.

The problems that Ginko Financial is facing on Second Life mean that a considerable amount of real money is at risk. The crisis must also have prompted Linden Labs to post this entry on the Second Life blog. One wonders why an explicit warning about money for nothing = pie in the sky is necessary at all, given that Second Lifers, avatars not withstanding, are all human beings in at least peripheral touch with real life shenanigans. A comment on that entry implies that Second Life is fairly casual about preserving the in-world money that users own. That is astonishing, but then, I haven't spent much time on the site (having decided that I'll give my first life a second chance), and don't know much about the economy there.

The Wired Threat Level blog has a vote going on spin jobs at the Wikipedia, after Virgil Griffith unveiled his Wikiscanner tool. The tool allows listing of anonymous edits at the Wikipedia for a range of IP addresses. Since the tool went online, people are having a field day correlating organizational IP addresses with edits to pages related to those organizations. I hesitate to make automatic conclusions on formal organizational involvement in such attempts at spin. Again, it is not news that some employees will attempt to tailor information about their employers, but the Wikiscanner makes identifying such goings-on far easier. Next stop : a tool that somehow identifies ex-employees editing information about their ex-employers.

These events and actions are, of course, commented on extensively. Surprisingly some commentators still think that the medium in use here being the Internet is in itself news, that virtual implies virtue and/or no influence on the "real".

Tags : Second Life Wikipedia

Your Brain is Purple

Of all the brain types, yours is the most idealistic. You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense. Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries. You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places - or a very different life for yourself.

I wouldn't characterize Evolution, History, India, Science, Society, Technology and other such subjects as wild, though the word amazing does occur to me now and then. Idealistic, Inventiveness, Fantasizing - Hmmm, this site must know something about me I don't.

Joerg's result sounds like his brain and mine influence each other :).

Tags : yapt personal

The title of this post does not refer to the peerless combination of the Sun Ray, smart card based authentication and the Secure Global Desktop. Last night, I was re-united with my estranged mobile phone, after 3 days of separation. I have been leading an interesting existence meanwhile, and reflecting on it throws up several insights.

I lost the phone in Bangalore airport. Under the impression that I turned it off and slid it in my backpack, I didn't discover its loss until landing in Pune and walking out. What followed was sheer nightmare. Anyone who has flown out of or into Bangalore must know what had already transpired - the flight took off half an hour late, the carrier citing the meaningless "delay due to late arrival of aircraft" excuse. We are never told why the 'plane dawdled on its way. Perhaps the crew had to air-drop a few weapons into Purulia. Maybe the pilot mistook the traffic signal on the Richmond Road flyover for an aircraft stop sign. Lounging around amongst a few hundred tense people lends itself to some rather creative speculation. I would still have made it in time for the meeting, but ... you guessed it, we circled over Pune while migratory Cranes were cleared off the runway. Or so I surmised; we were not told why we weren't landing. I didn't see any cranes on disembarking; I attributed that to the excellent guards - they must have noticed that the birds were not wearing their seat belts while landing or taking off and promptly arrested them.

Lesson 1 : If you want to fly, avoid airports.

I digress. I couldn't call anyone, because the art of memorizing numbers went extinct in the Triassic period, ever since phones coerced human beings into giving them legs. I couldn't borrow a phone even if I conjured the numbers up - my fellow passengers, intent on making up for the lost hour, ran pell-mell toward the luggage carousel, where they then waited interminably for baggage to materialize. I wasted more time pulling things out of my backpack (in no particular order, the laptop, sundry cables, numerous bills, a Technovate 2007 Shirt, iPod, my Income Tax Form 16, the phone charger, keys, The Luck of the Bodkins, a half solved Sudoku puzzle) : no secret compartments. Airline staff explored the aircraft. Nothing was found. Luckily, I remembered the number of a colleague in Bombay. Borrowing my cab driver's phone, I called him and after exchanging numbers, established contact with the guys in Pune.

Lesson 2 : The mobile phone has eliminated a significant amount of memory cells in my brain, a device that didn't exactly deliver predictable service levels in the first place.

Meeting over, I go back to the airport. Further co-operation : the aircraft had returned to Bangalore by then, and the airline staff call up their Bangalore counterparts to see if the truant phone has given up eluding discovery. No luck.

Lesson 3 : Under normal circumstances, you can be invisible for all the notice that people take of you. When you are in trouble however, they make extra-ordinary efforts to help. The human race has some time to go before its final lap(se) into savagery.

I land in Bombay that evening. Since my calendar is on the phone, I guess that a presentation I am to deliver is on the next day, and spend the night preparing the slides I need. I discover later that my session is on the day after.

Lesson 4 : The Computer should be the Network. I had started noting down appointments, rather than relying on my memory (See Lesson 2). The phone was a natural choice, but a stateful device turns out to be a single point of failure.

I spend most of the day glued to a desk in the office. I cannot get a replacement SIM card for my number until I return to Bangalore, and summon up the nerve to spam an e-mail alias with the news, and how I can be reached. The office phone starts ringing soon after.

Lesson 5 : The mobile phone is called that for a reason. Without it, you vanish off the face of the earth unless you chain yourself to an antiquated instrument. How did I ever get things done when mobiles used to be works of art?

Lesson 6 : Once upon a time, and in a galaxy that has now redshifted, my identity was associated with my physical self. Today, it is mostly etched in plastic and silicon. Apart from a suspicion that my carbon footprint now resembles the pugmark of the Abominable Snowman, I also harbour that nameless fear - lose the cards and SIM, and I will have difficulty establishing I am me. Mobilo, ergo sum.

The next day, still phone-lagged, I reach the SAP Summit venue - a hotel in a Bombay suburb. I am to present in an hour. Confident of locating colleagues and event organizers, I wander in only to be inundated by a tide of humanity. I wade over to the exhibition area where Sun has a stall, but don't find anyone familiar. Teenagers helping out at the stall look down their collective noses at me. Why don't you call them?, they ask. I don't want to admit my lack of a phone - in their eyes this must be a mortal sin. I tell them their idea is worth consideration, and trudge back to the conference area. I find people the traditional way : by using my legs and eyes.

Lesson 7 : An entire generation has grown up with six digits on one of their hands. Thumb, Index, Middle, Ring, Pinky (the variety without The Brain) and Mobile. Their first connection to a network, very likely, is through the phone. They are consuming voice, data and media services on phones to an extent that surpasses information routed through their desktops. They will probably give up their computers but never part with their phones, like Scott McNealy suggested in his conversations in India.

I land in Bangalore late last night, and walk into the Terminal Manager's office. Surprisingly there is no one blocking entry and eliciting a hundred details before letting me in. The Terminal Manager (he is no where as deadly as his designation suggests) asks for my name and voila!, produces the phone (my O2 XDA II displays the owner's name). I exit his office five minutes later, after signing one (One!) receipt. His name is Jayavardhan, and he is a refreshing change.

Lesson 8 : Some government offices work. (Open Offices work even better)

This is the third time my phone has made up with me. All break-ups have been at airports. The most notable was when I was checking in at Bombay. I placed it on the counter and bent down to tie a tag on my bag. Ten seconds later, I looked up and it was gone. A passenger on his way past, for some curious reason, reportedly assumed it was his and took it. The counter staff started calling my phone, but got no response. Ten minutes later, the man decided it wasn't his after all and gave it to a guard who then answered our calls. Protecting the phone with a password helped. The person who picked it up couldn't turn it off, make calls or access the data. When the main/reserve batteries drain, the password is cleared but I am glad not everyone knew this.

Lesson 9 : I am fated to be stuck with this instrument, battered and clunky though it is. I can set fire to it I guess, but it might rise phoenix-like from the ashes. I should simply be grateful that I have now rebooted into the network.

Hello again, World.

Standard Disclaimer : Most of this is fact. Where fact sounds strange, fiction has been employed to avoid snorts and other expressions of incredulity. No animals were harmed in the 3 days that this post covers. The cranes were bailed out by fellow jail-birds. Last heard, they were flying to Siberia. From the frying pan into the ice.

Tags : mobile india

Sir Tim Berners-Lee was invited to a hearing, called The Future of the World Wide Web, of the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. According to the article on c|net News, he spoke of the need for a non-discriminatory Internet, ensuring anyone can use the Web regardless of what software or hardware they are running, which Internet service provider supplies their connection, which language they speak, and what disabilities they have.

So, I trot off to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce website, to check if there is a transcript of Sir Tim's speech.

Fine, but the page tells me there is a video webcast available ...

Looks like Berners-Lee browsed through the Committee website before he appeared at the hearing.

As for the title of this post, apologies to the game Zero Wing by Toaplan

Tags : congress proprietary internet

As part of my winding-the-day-down exercises, I took this online personality quiz :

Which science fiction writer are you?

I am: Gregory Benford A master literary stylist who is also a working scientist.

Those of you who know me can detect atleast two adjectives and three nouns that don't apply. Enough with the laughter already. Be that as it may, while I haven't read Benford, googling for him leads me to believe I should in the near future.

The quiz is apparently popular with science fiction authors - Cory Doctorow discovered that he has been masquerading all along, and Gregory Benford himself was told that he was Arthur C. Clarke. To round out things, Kathryn Cramer is Greg Benford.

What kind of fiction do you science?

Tags : scifi

I was tagged by Sechang, and here is a list of five things people probably don't know about me. Statutory Warning : they aren't particularly insightful. However, if we are in the same room, and you wish to get rid of me, some of this, judiciously brought up, might prove useful.

[I] The first competition I ever participated in, at the age of 6 or 7, was a Fancy Dress one. I showed up as Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India. As the years went by and my awareness of gender grew keener, I suppressed all photographic evidence of the event.

[II] When I was a kid, my father declared that I ought to learn Latin, a language he was, and is, familiar with. At the time, it ate into my free time, and I never got far beyond the declension of rosa - rosa, rosae, rosam ad nauseam. I did realize though that Ars longa, Vita brevis and Tempus fugit didn't signify what I imagined they meant. Now I wish I had applied myself a bit more. I learnt, and came to love, Sanskrit at school, but cannot speak it any more. Poetry has never sounded quite as lyrical in an other language.

[III] I am asked sometimes how I acquired the quaint ability to touch type (Update : I type at 97 words per minute, with 1 mistake, according to http://labs.jphantom.com/wpm/). Desktops turned up in my school in the mid '80s. Due to the small number available, the school announced a test to select students with access. I heard that the test involved reacting to an alphanumeric character that pops up on screen by hitting the right key (yeah, pre-historic, not to mention irrelevant), and ensured my qualification through a typewriting crash course. Talk about keyboard shortcuts.

[IV] I have been stealth-editing at the Wikipedia. Admittedly, my output is sporadic, but I rather like the work I did on Tatiana Proskouriakoff, Matthew Stirling, and Udvada.

[V] I once gave a speech at a school. As schools go, this one was of the common or garden-variety; yet, as I never fancied myself in the role of He Who Dispenses Paternal Advice, I had fortified myself with suitable quantities of gin. Time seems to have cast a shroud over subsequent events, but I remember connecting, as it were, with the audience. The only part of my speech I do recollect was the way it began -

Boys, I mean ladies and gentlemen and boys, I do not detain you long, but I suppose on this occasion to feel compelled to say a few auspicious words; Ladies - and boys and gentlemen - we have all listened with interest to the remarks of our friend here who forgot to shave this morning ...

Ha! Bet you didn't know my First Life avatar is Augustus Fink-Nottle. I am cheating (incident no. V is plagiarized from P G Wodehouse's Right Ho, Jeeves), but then, like Gussie, I suspect that Bertie Wooster endeavoured to win the Scripture-knowledge prize by bringing, along with his trousers, pockets crammed with lists of the Kings of Judah. If the world can countenance such brazen swindling from the Wooster, I am sure it will overlook a slight manipulation of my identity.

Being tagged is fun, but tagging other people is invigorating, so here goes : Ashish, Govind, Malhar, and Vineet.

Tags : fivethings

Given that the literary gravy train starts this year from Platform 9^3/4 at King's Cross Railway Station, one would expect book publishers (other than Bloomsbury, Scholastic, Raincoast and Allen & Unwin, that is) to come up with some interesting ideas. Penguin seems to be toying with a combination of Mao's Hundred Flowers Movement and the Infinite Monkey theorem.

My frivolity apart, A Million Penguins is described as an experiment to answer the question - Is the novel immune from being swept up into the fashion for collaborative activity? A wiki-novel project from Penguin and De Montfort University, it went public on February 1. My suspicion is that The Novel has been vaccinated against collaborative plotting.

The opening line of the wiki-novel was There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Sounds suspiciously like It was a dark and stormy night. Anyway, the attack of the killer penguinistas ensured that it fell by the wayside.

I tried reading some of it, but the pinky-flexing Big Bababooey Benjy, the current protagonist, put me off a little. The alliterative name reminds me of what happened when an entirely unrelated experiment was tried out at Paignton Zoo in 2003.

Six Sulawesi crested macaques apparently boasted of their literary abilities, and students of Plymouth University offered their services as agents. Following talks with various publishers, the deal was clinched by the local Arts Council which advanced 2000 pounds to the students. The macaques, presumably, received peanuts, but having committed to the project, they demanded a computer to begin work.

Receiving one, the primates propitiated their collective stream of consciousness by promptly bashing the keyboard with a rock. They then interspersed prodigious literary output with sporadic ritual urination on the computer. A month later, they had produced the entire Works of Shakespeare. However, macaques are a naturally retiring bunch of people, and afraid of being the targets of a fatwah by some Witch-doctor (and of being hounded by paparazzi like the Beckhams, which was a worse fate actually), they edited mercilessly to finally hand out five pages. Still, that was far more impressive than the answer to life, the universe and everything.

It did not, I confess, quite happen that way.

The connection I was reaching for was to the fact that the letter S featured predominantly in their five pages of output. Big Bababooey Benjy sounds like they have switched to the letter B over the years.

Tags : penguin; wiki; books

All the world's a stagecoach
And all the men and women merely passengers;
They have their emergency exit and their 10 aisle seats,
And one man in his time heaves many sighs,
His acts being seven ages. At first the check-in,
Mewling and puking in the delay's arms:
And then the whining at security, with his satchel
And shining flight face, creeping like snail
Unwittingly to a longer wait. And then the Waiter,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his flight's departure. Then a Boarder,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in the wait, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble take-off
Even in Santa Cruz airport. And then the injustice,
In fair round plane-belly with seat belt lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of unwise oaths and past instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and always busy runway,
With air-hostess and pilot announcements,
His youthful hopes, well sav'd, a plane too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.

With apologies to the Bard

What prompts this unabashed (and not very accomplished) plagiarism, you ask? The flying time from Bombay to Bangalore is 1 Hour 15 Minutes. Stir vigourously with a liberal delay in Bombay. Garnish with aimless circling over Bangalore, and a passenger ends up with a two and a half hour recipe for fretting. Sprinkle commutes in both cities into the mix, and total time spent on the travel will be more than four hours. Repeat for well nigh two years now, and small wonder very few of us have appetites left for flying.

Tags : flying; india; bangalore;

One of the Calvin and Hobbes stories is about the pair of them being taken on a vacation, camping. Amidst all the uproarious chaos that inevitably ensues, the enfant terrible walks up to his father, who is painting a picture of an island. Calvin attempts a rather unflattering guess at the subject of the picture, and his father threatens him with dire consequences if he remains in the vicinity. Calvin rushes to his mother to complain, but as she is reading, he has to content himself with a penetrating observation - he tells Hobbes that adults are very tense when they are on recreation.

It is frustrating to have a weekend come around when you haven't planned for it. In the midst of all the sound and fury that is the week, Saturday sort of creeps up on you. This was one such weekend. On occasions such as these, it is largely sports that I gorge on. Not cricket, because I have lost interest in it and anyway, India has been receiving a thorough drubbing at the hands of South Africa. The Sunday match was no exception - while Sachin Tendulkar scored some much awaited runs, Graham Smith returned the compliment in far more telling fashion. South Africa added insult to injury by finishing in 30 something overs for the loss of just a wicket. So much for my interest in the game.

Manchester United continued their excellent form in the English Premier League. Christiano Ronaldo seemed to make a bit more of his fall than was warranted in the 18 yard box, but they deserved to lead by a goal at half time. When Middlesborough equalized, ManU wasted no time responding. They had thrashed Everton 3-0 mid-week, and while Chelsea managed a draw at Old Trafford, it seems like ManU has found their rhythm this season. I hope they romp through their European Championship game with Benfica this week.

I am watching the Everton - Westham United game as I write this : Pulsating first half but no goals yet.

The Bangalore Strand Bookstore annual sale is on at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. Holding it at the stadium is indicative of the sheer volume of books on display (more than 4000 titles, I am told). I am not too sure all books are discounted specially for the sale, but it is a sight for sore bookworm eyes - Three halls full of books spanning all genres. I bought several, but the highlight was the discovery of two by Ismail Kadare, the 2005 Man Booker Prize winner, - The File on H. and The Successor. Besides his winning the prize, I am curious about Albania, a country that I know very little about.

I haven't started on any of the books I bought, because I was deep into the irresistibly named A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian. Marina Lewycka imagines a tapestry of the Ukraine in the British Midlands, woven around the family of a widower who, in the twilight of his life, meets a glamorous gold digger with "superior" breasts. The man believes that life in his native land was transformed by the humble tractor. In the midst of all the upheavals wrought by his feuding daughters, the Botticellian blonde, the latter's ex-husband, her current lover, and others, he is trying to complete a work dedicated to the excellent iron horse. The book, with its under-stated humour and lively pace, is well worth a read.

Everton just scored, through Osman.

Earlier in the week, we had, three friends, gathered at one of our favourite watering holes, Koshy's. More about the institution that is Koshy's some other time. Acquaintances from the restaurant have just published a book, On a Trail with Ants. It is titled thus as the authors believe that they as observers were in actual alliance with the observed, as the ants went about their lives. The handbook has over 150 photographs in colour, including two of the Dilobocondyla bangalorica, a recently discovered arboreal ant. If any of you has more than passing interest in myrmecology, the primer might be useful, and you can contact the authors at antbook.india@gmail.com.

The 'Hammers are still trying, but the equalizing goal still eludes them.

And so, yet another Sunday draws to a close -

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.

I don't know about the petty part, but I like the sentiment.

Stop press : Vaughan scored in injury time for Everton, and the game ended Everton 2 WHU 0.

Tags : books; soccer; bangalore