Asians need simple names

This story makes no sense at all...But we immigrants must try and comply right? So....

My Betty Brown Approved Name is LaVerne "Lynard Skynard" Brown.
Take Betty Brown Name Generator today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Rebirth

This blog had been in a coma. It was not dead. Now it is regaining consciousness. Go web2.0!

The reason for the silence was that I was in a transition point in my life. I have been a post-doc for a while now and had to make the transition to getting a real job, in my case that of an Assistant Professor. I was running around making applications, and then interviewing and then agonizing till the offers started showing up then agonizing after that to pick among the different ones I had.

Now the decision is made. I am at peace. And I thought I will celebrate the peace by reactivating all of the other things in life that had been in limbo. If you are one of the people that still has this blog on your feed reader, thanks for not deleting it yet.

On Caffeine

Suppose you wanted to get a caffeine fix to get your day going, prolong it longer than you planned or just pep up your afternoon a bit, what do you do? Drink a cup of coffee or tea, may be some chocolate, and on really bad days may be an energy drink (think Red Bull in my case). Did you know that you could take a shower instead? Or in the winter, get your fix from your chap stick? I almost wish I was bold enough to try it!!

A R Rahman ad jingles

In spending time with my feedreader this afternoon, I saw this, featuring a clip from the movie Slumdog Millionaire that apparently has music composed by my man ARR. It is the first I heard of this movie. I am way behind on my Rahman listening. I was stuck on Jaane tu ya jaane na for a long time. I have just moved on to Sakkarakatti, am yet to open my Ada CD (I know, Sakkarakatti jumped the line, but it was in Tamil, so that was inevitable). And it also got me thinking that I have not yielded to my Rahmania in a while. So, I spent some time that was to be used to finish a calculation googling around for A R Rahman ad jingles that I remembered from a long time ago. Find below a few for your amusement :

1. Garden Sarees

Featuring Lisa Ray and sounding so Rahman:

2. MRF tires

I actually did not realize this was Rahman until recently actually:

3. Premier

This one is sung by Sujatha, you know the one that sang “puthu vellai mazhai” in Roja:

4. Titan

And of course the famous one that has Rahman paraphrasing Mozart for Rajiv Menon:

And finally the bonus video of anyone that made it this far down the post, Baby Rahman on Surabhi

Trigger any nostalgic memories that you want to share? Pointers to any ads that I missed (I know the leo coffee one, but it featured in an earlier post), or trivia about the ads featured here would be great too!

Religion again

I do not know how I missed knowing about this guy for so long...this is fun!

Amusement

Came across this joke recently. Should resonate with anyone that has TA'd a basic science course:

A college physics professor was explaining a concept to his class when a pre-med student interrupted him.

“Why do we have to learn this stuff?” he blurted out.

“To save lives,” the professor responded before continuing the lecture.

A few minutes later the student spoke up again. “Wait– how does physics save lives?”

The professor responded. “By keeping idiots out of medical school.”

LHC linking park

The Large Hadron Collider comes online on the 10^th and there is little else that is the topic of conversation at any place where there are more than two physicists. Higgs or no Higgs? That is the first thing we will know. And supposedly a whole lot more.

As with all else in the world, LHC has been associated with theories that tell you that the world will end when we turn the machine on. You can find out about these concerns from the horse’s mouth here. And I also came across this refutation/explanation by Sunil Mukhi (via).

If you wanted to know more about the LHC, you could try this. Or at 8pm on the history channel tomorrow there is a show on the LHC that I must have received 10 emails telling me to watch. The host of the show talks about it over at Cosmic Variance.

Or, you could watch this video I found recently…LHC rap…pretty cool I thought it was…