Farewell Duttsaab...

something non-filmi

And just to make sure that not everything is about Bollywood, here are results from a survey taken in Pune some time ago. I guess I wasn't the only idiot who thought that India was shining... 

More from Cannes

Salma Hayek, Nandita Das and Mallika Sherawat. I guess the less clothes the better.......

Nandita @ Cannes 

Salma Hayek @ Cannes 
I believe Mallika Sherawat had made comments about her dresses being better than Aishwarya's last year. So far all I can see that apparently all of them are the same in just different colors... I guess guys wouldn't complain and I'm sure Jackie Chan isn't complaining, but hey, there's got to be more to dress-designing than cleavage??

Mallika Sherawat and Jackie Chan @ Cannes 

Jackie Chan and Mallika Sherawat @ Cannes 

From across the border...

A new(?) trend seems to be raising its head in Bollywood. Actors/Actresses from Pakistan have now started to feature prominently in Bollywood movies.

Moammar Rana and Mahima in Dobaraa (Image credit: indiafm.com) 
I wouldn't say that this is a new trend. I mean we have had actors such as the fantastic Dilip Kumar (aka Yusuf Khan) was born in 1922 in Peshawar, or present-day Pakistan. However, his ending up in Bollywood is not quite the same thing.
I believe the trend of movie performances from Pakistan began mainly with the ghazal singing of Ghulam Ali with Lata Mangeshkar. However, there was no real impact of this until the immensely popular 'Afreen Afreen' sung by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The popularity of this song made Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan also quite well-known in India, and he went to sing and make music for movies such as Aishwarya's debut film in Hindi 'Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya'.
And of course there is the inimitable Adnan Sami who was born on 15th August (!!) and is a Pakistani native, although he was brought up in the UK and probably lives in Canada now.

Meera (*ing in Nazar) (Image credit: Mahiram) 
Anyway, recently we have had an actor and an actress feature in mainstream Bollywood movies, Moammar Rana in 'Dobara' and now Meera in 'Nazar'. I do believe that this is a desirable trend and we would like more of these cultural exchanges. There are people who argue that Bollywood moviestars will never work in Pakistan and so we must not accept their stars - but thats just foolish. Bollywood is the biggest movie industry in the world (most movies per year) and who would want to leave that to work in a smaller industry. Of course there is more visibility for someone to star in a Bollywood movie, than in a Pakistani movie....

sultry Meera in Nazar 

Of course, if we talk about television serials, then Pakistani television serials are miles miles ahead of the moronic 'Kyunki...' stuff that viewers in India are subjected to. As an example, I offer the tele-serial Tanhaiyaan.....

Bad reporting or Outside influence

A few days ago, around 10th May, A US magazine called Newsweek reported that the Holy Qur'an was being used as a interrogation tool at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by US military authorities.

Apparently, there had been instances of interrogators flushing the Holy Qur'an down the toilet to upset some Muslim detainees and get them to talk. In any case, after the Newsweek article came out, there was widespread agitation in the Muslim world (as is justified). Along with severe rioting in Afghanistan and major outcry in Pakistan, most of the Muslim world demanded some sort of enquiry and/or action into this.

Condolezza Rice tried to placate the world by saying that such an enquiry would be done.

Today, Newsweek apologized for its initial report and claimed that its source was no longer sure that the Holy Qur'an had been desecrated.

IS THIS RIDICULOUS OR WHAT ??

Not only has this caused tension in an already edgy Muslim world, but it also caused people to die. This is absolutely horrific reporting. Of course, my first thought was how irresponsible Newsweek must be to report something and then have the source go back on his words just days later.

But the more I thought about it, it occurred to me that of course this could very well be the Pentagon and/or US govt. putting pressure on the source (whoever that is) or Newsweek itself. What do you think?

Top languages of the world....

I always wondered which were the most spoken languages in the world. I thought it would be English, with Spanish also pretty high considering that the whole on Latin America spoke it. Of course I expected some Indian languages to be in there, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Marathi at No.17 in the whole world ahead of Italian, Vietnamese , Gujarathi or Persian.

Sorry about the format of the post.

Language	Speakers	Group	Location
MANDARIN CHINESE	952,000,000	Sino-Tibetan	CHINA
English	470,000,000	Indo-European	Europe/America/etc.
HINDI	418,000,000	Indo-European	INDIA
Spanish	381,000,000	Indo-European	Europe/America
Russian	288,000,000	Indo-European	Europe/Central Asia
Arabic	219,000,000	Afro-Asiatic	Middle East/N Africa
BENGALI	196,000,000	Indo-European	INDIA
Portuguese	182,000,000	Indo-European	Europe/America
Malay	155,000,000	Malayo-Polynesian	Malaya/Indonesia
Japanese	126,000,000	Altaic	Japan
French	124,000,000	Indo-European	Europe
German	121,000,000	Indo-European	Europe
URDU	100,000,000	Indo-European	INDIA
PUNJABI	94,000,000	Indo-European	INDIA
Korean	75,000,000	Altaic	Korea
TELUGU	73,000,000	Dravidian	INDIA
MARATHI	70,000,000	Indo-European	INDIA
TAMIL	69,000,000	Dravidian	INDIA

Credit: The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series

** Bollywood film in 500 week record **

Shah Rukh and Kajol -- my favourite onscreen pair 

A Bollywood romance made 10 years ago makes history by becoming the only Hindi film to run for 500 weeks at a stretch.
BBC story. Now isn't that amazing.... Previous longest running movie was Sholay.
To hammer a point home, the world takes notice of Bollywood......

Egypt architecture

Here's a short discourse on Egyptian Architecture and an example.

Cannes jury .. more pics

Another picture of the Cannes jury including actress Nandita Das. 

more from Cannes 

Sphere of Influence

Its time for the Cannes film festival again. This year as well we have an Indian member on the jury - Nandita Das. Last year it was Aishwarya Rai. The Cannes film festival has been a place where Indian cinema leaves its mark. Be it, Aishwarya's dazzling dress last year(see below) or the fact that Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali will begin proceedings at the Cannes Classics session.

It has been pretty fashionable among young people in Western India at least to mock Indian movies, but I'm a die-hard fan. I might not like all Hindi movies, but I undoubtedly love all of them. Right from spectacular Mughal-E-Azam, melodious Arzoo (*ing Jubilee King Rajendra Kumar), cult-classic Sholay, Mithun's Disco Dancer where Bappi Lahiri shone, wildly popular Tezaab, all-time-favourite DDLJ upto present-day Yuva.
Finally it seems like Bollywood movies are starting to make an impact the world-over. I read recently that
20th Century Fox bought Munnabhai script to remake it in English. Now thats definitely very interesting. In fact in India, we dont realise how much Bollywood has spread all over the world. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw how many Americans wanted to see Bride and Prejudice (not so good), or how many actually came to see Hrithik in Lakshya (excellent).

For that matter, its also heartening to see that 'Bend it Like Beckham' star Parminder Nagra has a really great role on the NBC series ER where she plays a doctor.
(For pictures of Parminder).
And of course there is Mr Kalpen Patel, or Kal Penn who starred in 'Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle'. (If you haven't seen this movie, then you are missing the time of of your life). Kal landed the role of Ashton Kutcher's best friend in 'A Lot Like Love' which was a mainstream Hollywood movie.
South-Asian actors and movies are starting to get more and more popular. I have an Armenian friend who comes from Yerevan and claims that Raj Kapoor movies (dubbed in Russian) are shown pretty regularly on national television. I also have this article about popularity of Bollywood in Indonesia.
(See here.)
Or for that matter there is this blog(hindifilmi) by a Finnish student doing his masters on Bollywood movies!!

Coming back to Cannes, Aishwarya Rai made quite an impression last year. She went on to make appearances on David Letterman, and Oprah. Undoubtedly she has done a lot to bring attention to Bollywood. (Notably she isn't event that good an actress, she just has a great publicist.) Of course there was also Lagaan, which could/should have made a bigger impression in world media. For all the hype in India, there was surprisingly little hype abroad.

In conclusion, the hindi movie sphere of influence is growing, steadily. And lets not forget the South Indian film industry which churns out probably more movies than Bollywood. Outside India, these movies are nearly as popular as Bollywood ones!!

The Cannes Jury

French director Benoit Jacquot, German film-maker Fatik Akin, Nobel laureate in literature Toni Morrison, Hollywood actress Salma Hayek, Jury president Bosnian-born director Emir Kusturica, French director Agnes Varda, Bollywood actress Nandita Das, Spanish actor Javier Bardem, and director John Woo 

Angelina Jolie is in Pakistan as the UN's ambassador. Any comments from people in the sub-continent? 

A few links

'Intoxication' - charcoal of photo taken by Tim Koeth
Lets start off today with links to some sites -
I am going to indulge shamelessly in promoting the blog/websites of some people, but hey, one has to stick up for friends and family right.
Lets start with my wife's blog. For all you architecture fans out there, here is a blog which will look at life from an architectural point of view - for all you non-architects: well go read it and learn something new. In fact, she's just started a series where she's going to "tour through of the styles of buildings right from stone-age to the modern ones". Sounds fascinating? It is! Today was about a couple of buildings from Neolithic times.
(Here's a little shameless promotion - my wife was all India 73rd on the IIT entrance exam for architects, so I bet she knows what she's talking about).
After this series, I'm going to try and coax her to write a series of how architecture of a certain time was influenced by the prevalent culture of those times. If you think, this is an interesting idea, then help me convince her! And if it starts getting too heavy, maybe we'll throw in the odd bollywood review or two. Here's the link -
"Archi" facts by Shraddha.
You can find the link on the right hand side Links section too.

My room-mate is a very talented guy. Seriously, very talented. Not only has he built a cyclotron by himself (which makes Rutgers the only university in the world to have a cyclotron for undergraduate students to play with) but he is also an excellent photographer. Tim Koeth, who has recently featured in an article in "Physics Today" dedicated to him and the cyclotron, has put up some of his favourite photos on this website, Tim's photography. The lead-off photo for this post is one of his. Of course, he's used photoshop for this picture. That is one thing though that I'm not too fond of. I mean, he's a great photographer, and I have seen some of his pictures which look absolutely amazing. Yet, ever since he bought photoshop (2 weeks ago) he's been trying to fix images. Well, but you can't win them all....
If you like his work, then maybe you'll like his website, Tim Koeth. There is a link to more of his pictures way down in that page.

Okay, in case you think I'm being too much - here is a blog about photography by someone I don't know. Check out Jason's blog. There was this nice entry maybe yesterday for up and coming photographers - 5 tips. It was pretty much right on!

IF

My take on the incredibly infuriating Kansas hearings about whether evolution should be taught in schools --
IF
Rudyard Kipling's Verse

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son!

"If"
(with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)
Dave Williams

If you can lose your head when all around you
are seeking for the truth in science books,
and let improbabilities astound you
and claim the world cannot be how it looks.

If you can just ignore the fossil record
and claim that it was laid down by a flood,
and say that evolution's past is checkered
'cause God says he made Adam out of mud.

If you think biologic understanding
is best shown by computer engineers,
confront the "evolutionists," demanding
they fill in every gap throughout the years.

If glaciers and erosion aren't persuasive
that our old earth is very plain to see,
then claim a plot by atheists invasive
like Lyell, Cuvier and Agassiz.

If you can see the facts, yet not get rattled
and fight a losing fight, then claim you've won,
cry "persecution!" when your view's embattled,
then you'll be a creationist, my son.

Swades...

I saw Swades this weekend. Yes, yes its a lot later than I should've seen it, but better late than never.

As a person of Indian origin living outside the country, (specifically in the US), movies which have central characters who are NRI's always evokes strong feelings in me. The movie itself was not bad. It avoided a lot of pitfalls possible in such a story and inspite of being three and half hours long, it didn't seem to drag. It also avoided many mistakes that it could have done - Shah Rukh's character actually goes back to the US to finish his project. Or the scene where he is shown getting money from the bank prior to buying the turbine for generating electricity. Small things like that make you feel better.

Of course, one could always nitpick - he gets a long vacation without seeming repercussions, the presentations on the GPM (Global Precipitation Monitor) are a little flimsy. But these don't take away from the movie. What I thought was a much interesting question was what sort of work is this guy going to do after returning to India? He mentioned some place in India where he could find work, but that was it. There was also some implication apparently that NRI's (or smart NRI's in any case) aren't doing enough for the motherland. The director (Mr Gowariker whose only claim to fame is Lagaan [I'm not impressed]) tried hard not to come off sounding as though he were preaching, and yet if the female lead of the movie declares stubbornly that she will never go to the US, then that speaks about the director's mind a bit. And this is the same guy who was drooling at the prospect of getting an Oscar for Lagaan!!

I would have liked to see what would've happened if Shah Rukh had not met a girl he fell for in the village. Would he return to India only for the country, or for the old lady? That would have made for an interesting proposition --

But I'm not complaining. Baby steps, they say. One day, we might have movies which go that extra step in trying to be realistic.

Tevatron

Fermilab's Tevatron ring (top) and the Main Injector ring (bottom) in this hawk-eye view. This is the world's highest energy accelerator right now. The Tevatron ring has a radius of 1 km. For more info go to the Fermilab website. 

The Tevatron main Ring on the inside.... 

Media bias?

FORGET MEDIA ATTENTION IF YOU'RE POOR, BLACK, UGLY OR OLD - Yahoo! News
LINK
============================================================
Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/

I do agree with this. This runaway bride lady has been getting way too much media coverage. Every day, every month, there are thousands of people who go missing, or have far worse things happen to them. The most news coverage they get is a couple of times, once explaining what happened and once explaining the end result.
Perplexed at why this lady was made into such a big fuss, I tried to read into the news at the beginning of this story. Apparently there was a reward of something like a 100 grand offered for any news of the missing bride. And of course there was the possibility that she was kidnapped. Together these two facts account for whay the media should be interested in this woman.

There are numerous cases of missing people, poor, old, Asian whatever. Each deserves a certain amount of media attention -- but anything that is not going to affect more than a handful of people, should not get more than 10 mins of airtime!

A look at Sholay

Amitabh as Jai, Dharam as Veeru, Sanjeev as Thakur and Amjad as Gabbar in this rare picture from the sets of Sholay.

The movie starts out in the classic western style - a dusty railway platform in some small town/village in India called Rampur. The first spoken words in the movie are not till at least 5 minutes in the movie. (It is worth noting that Ramesh Sippy ,the director, was not trying to save any time)

Among the other impressive things that I am reminded of this movie is the setting. Set in typical rural setting, all with the village overlooked by the Thakur’s haweli on the neighbouring hill and surrounded by rocky mountains. What better place for bandits to terrorize the people.

Thakur Baldev Singh played so memorably by Sanjeev Kumar was perfect as the vengeful ex-cop who has his hands chopped off. Hard to believe, but Sanjeev Kumar was only 37 years old, and yet manages to convice us that he is 55 at some places in the movie and 60 in others.

And who can forget Amjad Khan, in his debut movie as Gabbar Singh. It would be a waste of words to describe the popularity of this character. Undoubtedly his opening sequence is the most repeated dialogue in all of hindi cinema. (Tidbit: In high-school, I once one a piece of candy from my physics teacher for reciting this dialogue in entirety during class – the teacher was impressed enough to not pick on me for the rest of the term!!)

And of course, Mr AB himself. Way cooler than Dharmendra, he played the wry-humored Jai with aplomb. Who can forget the scene where Veeru in drunken stupor has climber the water tower and is threatening to jump. Basanti runs to Jai and implores him to help her get Veeru down or he’ll die. With infinite patience, Jai pours tea from his cup in the saucer and proceeds to drink it. The sheer coolness exuded by this man makes it so easy why he is still India’s most popular actor at well-past 60 and why BBC picked him as the superstar of the millenium over any other actor IN THE WORLD.

What made Sholay a cult classic was however the additional fact that all the bits and pieces roles were immensely popular. Asrani as the Jailer was hilarious (he played the Jailer in an Adnan Sami video in 2002!), and Jagdeep as Surma Bhopali was unforgettable. Although both had roles lasting a screen time of only 10 mins each (in a 3 and half hour movie), yet they carried these roles with them throughout the rest of their careers.

This being a brief review makes me stop here, but I’ll get back to Sholay in a few days/weeks. We’ll delve into more aspects of this absolutely incredible film then.

Paheli will be Shah Rukh and Rani's next movie after Chalte Chalte. Directed by Amol Palekar, it should be a breath of fresh air for Shah Rukh. Although, he has been going for the different with movies like Swades, at this point in his career, he could lose the 'Raj' character that he inevitably ends up playing. Rani Mukherji has been on top for a long time now, with great performances in Saathiya, Yuva and Hum Tum. She looks ravishing here as well, and I look forward to one really good movie. After Kajol-SRK, the next best pairing in the industry is Rani-SRK or even Rani-AB where AB is the son - Abhishek.(Image credit to indiafm.com)

Here's a neat illusion. For more, go here 

Physics Limericks and Jokes

> Physics saves lives
>
> One day our professor was discussing a particularly complicated
> concept. A pre-med student rudely interrupted to ask, "Why do we have
> to learn this pointless information."
>
> "To save lives." the professor responded quickly and continued the
> lecture.
>
> A few minutes later, the same student spoke up again. "So how does
> physics save lives?" he persisted.
>
> "It keeps the ignoramuses like you out of medical school," replied the
> professor.
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> See You at Work
> by Steve Langer
>
> The chairman of AT&T
> Said, "Your graduate physics degree
> Is not worth a - penny,
> Of your kind we've too many.
> Perhaps you can program in C?"
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> On What's New and True
> author unknown
>
> A certain Phys Rev referee
> Considers all papers with glee:
> "What's new is not true,
> And what's true is not new,
> Unless it was written by me."
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Quark-Dork Symmetry Group
> by Kay R. Devicci�
>
> When we physicists talk about quarks,
> And "sleptons," "sneutronos," and "squarks,"
> We shouldn't be stunned
> When the Congress won't fund
> Our big projects - they think that we're dorks!
>
> _______________________________________________________________________

A bubble chamber, an old particle detector. These are the state-of-the-art particle detectors of yore. Now they are but a relic of the past. 

First Post

Apparently there is this website, Quantum Diaries (click here) where physicists from around the world put their blogs. There is nothing stopping us then, is there. Especially as long as there are free bloggers. Hopefully we'll have better fun things to share.