Saturday, February 27, 2010

Cheese ( from Economist)

Food fashion in France 

Low culture
Feb 18th 2010 | PARIS 
From The Economist print edition


The latest threat to the French way of life

ROQUEFORT, camembert, brie de Meaux, Saint-Félicien, gruyère, comté, münster, pont l'évêque, cantal, reblochon, tomme de Savoie, crottin de chavignol. A spontaneous familiarity with the display on a three-tier cheese trolley is essential to the national identity of the French. Each of them guzzles 25kg of the stuff per year, second only to the Greeks. Now, though, there are disturbing signs that the land of the unpasteurised gourmet cheese is being colonised by pale plastic-packed foreign stuff.

Last year, despite the recession, overall French cheese consumption grew. Yet to the dismay of purists, sales of such soft cheeses as camembert and brie dropped by 2%, according to the National Interprofessional Centre of the Dairy Economy. The fastest-growing sales, by contrast, were in the category covering Italian mozzarella and Greek feta, which jumped by 10% (although overall volumes remain small).

Some of this is explained by the rise of the pizza, now part of the French staple diet. In 2008 Domino's Pizza, an American home-delivery firm, saw its French sales jump by 31%, as its outlets spread across the country like melting mozzarella. Another factor is France's sandwich boom. These days the French spend on average just 31 minutes munching their lunch, down from an hour and 38 minutes back in 1975. Young office types increasingly shun the sit-down brasserie meal in favour of le snacking: salads in plastic boxes or toasted panini, filled with yet more feta and mozzarella.

Artisan fromagers are hitting back. Next month will see a National Cheese Day, just after the annual Paris Agricultural Fair, a ritual event where mud and straw is imported into the capital and the French celebrate their roots in the terroirs. French cheese, says the Association Fromage de Terroirs, a lobby group, is not just food, but a "theme of national importance". It fears that traditional cheese-making, demanding raw milk, sweat and loving care, is being eclipsed by a bland, pasteurised industry, designed in part to suit foreign markets. Even in France only 15% of fine cheeses are made from unpasteurised milk. "The French now buy cheese as they buy washing powder," laments Véronique Richez-Lerouge, the group's president. The group sells a wall calendar featuring women in their underwear offering cheese (see slideshow), which "defends the values of the French art de vivre".

The trouble is that, even as traditionalists fret about industrialisation, French business is taking matters into its own hands. Santa Lucia and Salakis, two of the best-known brands of, respectively, Italian mozzarella and Greek feta on French hypermarket shelves, are owned by Lactalis, a vast dairy group with 127 industrial sites worldwide. The company's nationality? French.


Friday, February 26, 2010

APPRIASAL RATING..........


 

The appraisals are at door steps……be ready for the comments like below from your beloved managers…


Sachin's 200 : Appraiser's comments

 

 

200 Runs/ 147Balls/ 25X4 / 3X6

 

Agree you have done GREAT BUT BUT BUT BUT

 

25 x 4s = 100

3 x 6s   =  18

 

It implies that you have done 118 Runs in 28 Balls.

 

And 12 x 2s = 24

       58 x 1s = 58

 

It implies that you have done 82 Runs in 70 Balls.

 

It means you have done all 200 Runs in only 98 balls

 

So you have wasted 147-98 = 49 balls

 

Considering only 1 run scored on each of these balls you could have earned 49 valuable RUNS FOR OUR TEAM

 

MANAGER'S COMMENT: So you only met the expectations and NOT EXCEEDING (though anyone of our team could not do it) and your Grade is MEDIUM

 

Trainings for him: Learn how to STEAL singles.

 

 




Monday, February 22, 2010

No Smoking Please !





Fwd: Siesta is Good





Afternoon Nap Might Make You Smarter

Snoozing refreshes the brain's capacity to learn, study finds

By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter

HealthDay/ScoutNews LLC

SUNDAY, Feb. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Want to ace that next test? Try taking a mid-afternoon siesta.

While the findings are preliminary, new research raises the prospect that sleep, specifically a lengthy afternoon nap, prepares the brain to remember things. Think of it as similar to rebooting a computer to get it to work more smoothly.

"Sleep is not just for the body. It's very much for the brain," said study author Matthew Walker, an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Walker and colleagues divided 39 young adults into two groups. At noon, all the participants took part in a memory exercise that required them to remember faces and link them with names. Then the researchers took part in another memory exercise at 6 p.m., after 20 had napped for 100 minutes during the break.

Those who remained awake performed about 10 percent worse on the tests than those who napped, Walker said.

There's one more twist: People's ability to learn declines about 10 percent between noon and 6 p.m. normally, but the nappers were able to negate that decline.

The structure of the study suggests that a phase of non-dreaming sleep that the nappers went through is boosting memory, he said.

"This is further evidence that sleep plays a critical role in the processing of memories," he said. "It provides more evidence that it's not just important to sleep after learning, but you need it before learning to prepare the brain for laying down information."

But it's important to sleep long enough to give the brain an opportunity to go through various cycles of sleep, he said. Using electroencephalogram tests to track electrical activity in the brain, the researchers determined that memory-refreshing seems to occur between deep sleep and the dream state, called rapid eye movement or REM.

"The brain's ability to soak up information is not always stable," Walker said. "It seems as though the brain's capacity may be a little like a sponge. It may get waterlogged with continued learning throughout the day."

Jessica Payne, an assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame, said the study findings "really add to something we already know about why sleep is important."

One message from the research, she said, is that sleep can be valuable for "students and for people who are struggling with their memory because they're aging."

Other recent research has suggested that sleep can help you think more creatively, have better long-term memory and preserve important memories.

The study findings were scheduled to be presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science in San Diego.

More information

The National Sleep Foundation has details about sleep.

SOURCES: Matthew Walker, assistant professor, psychology and neuroscience, University of California at Berkeley; Jessica Payne, assistant professor, psychology, University of Notre Dame, Indiana; Feb. 21, 2010, presentation, American Association of the Advancement of Science annual meeting, San Diego

Copyright © 2010 HealthDay. All rights reserved.


Saturday, February 20, 2010

New Words !









Abracadabbler: an amateur magician.

Badaptation: a bad movie version of a good book.

Carbage: the trash found in your automobile.

Dadicated: being the best father you can be.

Ecrastinate: checking your e-mail just one more time.

Faddict: someone who has to try every new trend that comes along.

Gabberflasted: the state of being speechless due to someone else talking too much.

Hackchoo: when you sneeze and cough at the same time.

Iceburg: an uppity, snobbish neighborhood.

Jobsolete: a position within a company that no longer exists.

Knewlyweds: second marriage for both.

Lamplify: turning on (or up) the lights within a room.

Mandals: sandals for men.

Nagivator: someone who constantly assists with driving directions in an overly critical manner.

Obliment: an obligatory compliment.

Pestariffic: adjective describing a particularly pesty person.

Qcumbersome: a salad that contains too many cucumbers.

Ramdumbtious: a rowdy, energetic person who's not too bright.

Sanktuary: a graveyard for ships.

Testimoney: fees paid to expert witnesses.

Unbrella: an umbrella that the wind has turned inside-out.

Vehiculized: you own a vehicle.

Wackajacky: very messed up.

Xerocks: two identical pieces of stone.

Yawnese: the language of someone trying to speak while yawning.

Zingle: a single person with a lot of pep in his or her step.
__






Thursday, February 18, 2010

Reflections on India - By Sean Paul Kelley






 

Reflections on India By Sean Paul Kelley
 

Sean Paul Kelley is a travel writer, former radio host, and before that an asset manager for a Wall Street investment bank that is still (barely) alive. He recently left a fantastic job in Singapore working for Solar Winds, a software company based out of Austin to travel around the world for a year (or two). He founded The Agonist, in 2002, which is still considered the top international affairs, culture and news destination for progressives. He is also the Global Correspondent for The Young Turks, on satellite radio and Air America.



 Reflections on India By Sean Paul Kelley

If you are Indian, or of Indian descent, I must preface this post with a clear warning: you are not going to like what I have to say. My criticisms may be very hard to stomach. But consider them as the hard words and loving advice of a good friend. Someone who's being honest with you and wants nothing from you. These criticisms apply to all of India except Kerala and the places I didn't visit, except that I have a feeling it applies to all of India, except as I mentioned before, Kerala. Lastly, before anyone accuses me of Western Cultural Imperialism, let me say this: if this is what India and Indians want, then hey, who am I to tell them differently. Take what you like and leave the rest. In the end it doesn't really matter, as I get the sense that Indians, at least many upper class Indians, don't seem to care and the lower classes just don't know any better, what with Indian culture being so intense and pervasive on the sub-continent. But here goes, nonetheless.

 

India is a mess. It's that simple, but it's also quite complicated. I'll start with what I think are India's four major problems–the four most preventing India from becoming a developing nation–and then move to some of the ancillary ones.


First, pollution. In my opinion the filth, squalor and all around pollution indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don't know how cultural the filth is, but it's really beyond anything I have ever encountered.  At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a garbage dump. Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience. Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree were so very polluted as to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning was an all to common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human fecal matter was common on the streets. In major tourist areas filth was everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad daylight. Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air quality that can hardly be called quality. Far too much coal and far to few unleaded vehicles on the road. The measure should be how dangerous the air is for one's health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in the streets, on the roads. The only two cities that could be considered sanitary in my journey were Trivandrum–the capital of Kerala–and Calicut. I don't know why this is. But I can assure you that at some point this pollution will cut into India's productivity, if it already hasn't. The pollution will hobble India's growth path, if that indeed is what the country wants. (Which I personally doubt, as India is far too conservative a country, in the small 'c' sense.)


More after the jump..

The second issue, infrastructure, can be divided into four subcategories: roads, rails and ports and the electrical grid. The electrical grid is a joke. Load shedding is all too common, everywhere in India. Wide swaths of the country spend much of the day without the electricity they actually pay for. With out regular electricity, productivity, again, falls. The ports are a joke. Antiquated, out of date, hardly even appropriate for the mechanized world of container ports, more in line with the days of longshoremen and the like. Roads are an equal disaster. I only saw one elevated highway that would be considered decent in Thailand, much less Western Europe or America. And I covered fully two thirds of the country during my visit. There are so few dual carriage way roads as to be laughable. There are no traffic laws to speak of, and if there are, they are rarely obeyed, much less enforced. A drive that should take an hour takes three. A drive that should take three takes nine. The buses are at least thirty years old, if not older. Everyone in India, or who travels in India raves about the railway system. Rubbish. It's awful. Now, when I was there in 2003 and then late 2004 it was decent. But in the last five years the traffic on the rails has grown so quickly that once again, it is threatening productivity. Waiting in line just to ask a question now takes thirty minutes. Routes are routinely sold out three and four days in advance now, leaving travelers stranded with little option except to take the decrepit and dangerous buses. At least fifty million people use the trains a day in India. 50 million people! Not surprising that waitlists of 500 or more people are common now. The rails are affordable and comprehensive but they are overcrowded and what with budget airlines popping up in India like Sadhus in an ashram the middle and lowers classes are left to deal with the overutilized rails and quality suffers. No one seems to give a shit. Seriously, I just never have the impression that the Indian government really cares. Too interested in buying weapons from Russia, Israel and the US I guess.


The last major problem in India is an old problem and can be divided into two parts that've been two sides of the same coin since government was invented: bureaucracy and corruption. It take triplicates to register into a hotel. To get a SIM card for one's phone is like wading into a jungle of red-tape and photocopies one is not likely to emerge from in a good mood, much less satisfied with customer service. Getting train tickets is a terrible ordeal, first you have to find the train number, which takes 30 minutes, then you have to fill in the form, which is far from easy, then you have to wait in line to try and make a reservation, which takes 30 minutes at least and if you made a single mistake on the form back you go to the end of the queue, or what passes for a queue in India. The government is notoriously uninterested in the problems of the commoners, too busy fleecing the rich, or trying to get rich themselves in some way shape or form. Take the trash for example, civil rubbish collection authorities are too busy taking kickbacks from the wealthy to keep their areas clean that they don't have the time, manpower, money or interest in doing their job. Rural hospitals are perennially understaffed as doctors pocket the fees the government pays them, never show up at the rural hospitals and practice in the cities instead.


I could go on for quite some time about my perception of India and its problems, but in all seriousness, I don't think anyone in India really cares. And that, to me, is the biggest problem. India is too conservative a society to want to change in any way. Mumbai, India's financial capital is about as filthy, polluted and poor as the worst city imaginable in Vietnam, or Indonesia–and being more polluted than Medan, in Sumatra is no easy task. The biggest rats I have ever seen were in Medan!


One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word, backwardness, in a country that hasn't produced so many Nobel Laureates, nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But India has all these things and what have they brought back to India with them? Nothing. The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do the dirty work and so the country remains in stasis. It's a shame. Indians and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I'm far from sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime.


Now, have at it, call me a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the West and all that.  But remember, I've been there. I've done it.. And I've seen 50 other countries on this planet and none, not even Ethiopia, have as long and gargantuan a laundry list of problems as India does. And the bottom line is, I don't think India really cares. Too complacent and too conservative. 





CricTrivia

Which batsman has been out lbw most often in Test cricket? My guess is Basil Butcher of the West Indies. 


The overall leader here is England's 
Graham Gooch, who was out lbw 50 times in Tests. He's just ahead ofSachin Tendulkar, who has so far been out leg-before on 48 occasions (I write before the second Test against South Africa in Kolkata). Players who have played a lot obviously feature more in this sort of list - Gooch was out 209 times in all, and Tendulkar 241 so far - and you're right in thinking that the West IndianBasil Butcher was trapped in front a lot. He was out 72 times in his 44 Tests, and 21 of those were lbws - that's 29.16% of all his dismissals, compared to Gooch's 23.92%. The only higher percentages I can find among players who were lbw 20 or more times are 29.76% by Daren Ganga of West Indies (25 lbws from 84 dismissals), and 29.62% by New Zealand's Craig McMillan (24 from 81).

Shahid Afridi took a five-for in his first Test, and scored a century in his second - has anyone else achieved these all-round feats so quickly? 


You're right, Shahid Afridi took 5 for 52 on his Test debut, against Australia in Karachi in 1998-99, and scored 141 in his second Test, against India in Chennai later the same season. But one man has done that particular double even quicker: in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1964-65, New Zealand's Bruce Taylor marked his Test debut by following 105 with 5 for 86 against India.

Which player captained his side in most Test matches before losing one?


I suspect this question was inspired by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who finally tasted defeat against South Africain Nagpur, in his 12th match in charge of India. The record is 19 Tests from captaincy debut before first defeat, by England's Ray Illingworth, between his first Test as skipper in 1969 and a famous defeat by India at The Oval (their first in England) in 1971. 

Monday, February 15, 2010

Vinod Mehta in Outlook's Delhi Diary


Torrential Reign

I yield to no one in my admiration for Shahrukh Khan. Without doubt, he is a national treasure. He has one small failing, though. He talks in torrents. There are no full stops when he opens his mouth. All of which conveys the impression of glibness, of insincerity, of someone in love with his own voice. Actors are narcissists. That's a given. My useless advice to Shahrukh Khan would be: Talk less, act more.

Vinod Mehta

Fighting corruption in India






A zero contribution
Jan 28th 2010 
From The Economist print edition


An unconventional way to combat petty corruption

5th Pillar
5th Pillar


A ZERO-SUM game is one in which the gains of one player are exactly balanced by the losses of another. In India a local non-governmental organisation has invented a new sort of zero sum which, it hopes, will leave everyone better off: the zero-rupee note.

What on earth is the point of that? The note is not legal tender. It is simply a piece of paper the colour of a 50-rupee note with a picture of Gandhi on it and a value of nothing. Its aim is to shame corrupt officials into not demanding bribes.

The idea was dreamt up by an expatriate Indian physics professor from the University of Maryland who, travelling back home, found himself harassed by endless extortion demands. He gave the notes to the importuning officials as a polite way of saying no. Vijay Anand, president of an NGO called 5th Pillar, thought it might work on a larger scale. He had 25,000 zero-rupee notes printed and publicised to mobilise opposition to corruption. They caught on: his charity has distributed 1m since 2007.

One official in Tamil Nadu was so stunned to receive the note that he handed back all the bribes he had solicited for providing electricity to a village. Another stood up, offered tea to the old lady from whom he was trying to extort money and approved a loan so her granddaughter could go to college.

Mr Anand thinks the notes work because corrupt officials so rarely encounter resistance that they get scared when they do. And ordinary people are more willing to protest, since the notes have an organisation behind them and they do not feel on their own. Simple ideas like this don't always work. When India's government put online the names of officials facing trial for corruption, the list became a convenient guide for whom to bribe. But, says Fumiko Nagano of the World Bank, transforming social norms is the key to fighting petty corruption and the notes help that process. They are valueless, but not worthless.


Saturday, February 13, 2010

Pierced Men are a good bet to marry !



Men who have pierced ears are better prepared for marriage.............they have experienced pain and they have bought jewellery........


Thursday, February 11, 2010

World's Most Expensive City? Luanda in Angola !!

How to visit Angola

Patience, the essential virtue

If you want to do business, keep your temper

Jan 28th 2010 | LUANDA | From The Economist print edition

THOUGH Angola wants to woo foreign investors, everything seems contrived to deter all but the most intrepid and patient. Getting a visa, for a start, can take many months. Finding somewhere to stay in Luanda, a capital city built for 500,000 that is now home to 5m, is not much easier. A single hotel room, if you can find one, will set you back $500-600 a night. A bed in a simple guesthouse costs at least half that. Even then, you are liable to be chucked out if a guest with a deeper pocket turns up.

Luanda has earned the dubious title of the world's most expensive city for the second year running, according to a study by ECA International, a consultancy. A rented two-bedroomed flat at $7,000 a month is considered fairly cheap; to buy the freehold could cost a good $2m.

Food is as high-priced. A take-away hamburger costs $13, a glass of fruit juice $5, a pair of rubber flip-flops $34. Annual fees for a day pupil at the international school in Talatona, a brand-new suburb 20km (12 miles) south of Luanda's city centre, are $23,000 for a founding expatriate parent—and $38,000 for late-comers.

Just getting around the city is gruelling. There are no taxis or public transport of any sort, bar the ubiquitous, clapped-out, jam-packed minibus taxis. So visitors have to rent a car and driver—for up to $500 a day. Driving your own car may seem sensible but streets constantly change as the city is torn down and rebuilt; signs barely exist.

Besides, you cannot avoid Luanda's mammoth traffic jams. It can take more than two hours to drive a couple of miles along the Marginal, the city's palm-lined coastal road. You have to get to the airport four or five hours in advance to check in for a flight, for fear of losing your seat; the opening of a new airport may ease the queues.

So you need three qualities: a smattering of Portuguese, since outside the ex-patriate community, few speak anything else; wads of cash, preferably dollars, since credit cards are rarely accepted, even in posh hotels; and an inexhaustible supply of patience.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Monday, February 1, 2010

Pretty neat idea.........


[]

Put your car keys beside your bed at night

Tell your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your parents, your Dr's office, the check-out girl at the market, everyone you run across. Put your car keys

beside your bed at night.

If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies. This tip came from a neighborhood watch coordinator. Next time you come home for the night and you start to put your keys away, think of this: It's a security alarm system that you probably already have and requires no installation. Test it. It will go off from most everywhere inside your house and will keep honking until your battery runs down or until you reset it with the button on the key fob chain. It works if you park in your driveway or garage. If your car alarm goes off when someone is trying to break into your house, odds are the burglar/rapist won't stick around. After a few seconds all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who is out there and sure enough the criminal won't want that. And remember to carry your keys while walking to your car in a parking lot. The alarm can work the same way there. This is something that should really be shared with everyone. Maybe it could save a life or a sexual abuse crime.

P.S. Would also be useful for any emergency, such as a heart attack, where you can't reach a phone.