Word for the day

Topical word of the day:
Chindia

Interesting word of the day:
(Dis)gruntled

Obscure word of the day:
antimacassar

Absolutely wierd word of the day:
etaoin shrdlu

CK Prahalad's "Bottom of the Pyramid"

I haven't yet read this so I found the summary of the ideas in that book here:

http://www.ckprahalad.com/2006/01/29/selling-to-the-poor-by-allen-l-hammond-ck-prahalad/

a good read.

I think its a really fantastic idea to be able to spend some time and ingenuinity in coming up with a useful service for the poor. Some of the examples in the article are really stimlating. However I feel you can't fundamentally change the situation without heavy government investment in rural development, education and healthcare and so on.

To tie this up with another line of thought: the communists and socialists make a similar argument about 'government investment in rural development ..." -- Yes, yes, all this is very important but the real thing is land reform. I find it the right argument in some cases, but the world is moving away from the times when ownership of land was such a key determiner of your status. The government may better invest its efforts in enabling poor people to take part in the modern industrial and service and knowledge economy than in worrying about land issues.

More than you wanted to know

Here are the latest in diet types after vegan. Diet with a political angle:
Freegan, meagan, and flexitarian

I'm delighted to hear that there's a word to describe me: flexitarian. A flexitarian is a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat.

Inglish

I updated my old article on Indian English, so thought I would push it here:


http://www.geocities.com/ahminotep/IndiaBlog/inglish.html


It could actually grow to something quite substantial at some point (definitely there's enough bad usage around to make it substantial)

On another front, there is a small project that I started but haven't made much progress with yet. The idea came from a Tintin comic where Thomson and Thompson introduce themselves as 'Thompson with a p as in "psychology" and 'Thomson, without a "p" as in Venezuela'. Don't worry if you didn't get the second part of the joke, I didn't too, for a long time. Anyway the 'p as in 'psychology' is something that always amused me. I want to come up with similiar ones for all the letters of the alphabet. The only criterion is that it should be confusing and not illuminating and each one should be creative and different from the others . Here's my list so far:


a as in 'awe'
b as in 'bee'
.
e as in 'eye'
f as in 'effort'
.
o as in 'circular'
p as in 'psychology'
(or p as in 'urinate')
.
s as in 'sea'
.
u as in 'usufructuary' (yes there is such a word. I've come across it in water-related contexts at Arghyam. As the link says its one of the few words that has 4 'u's in it. What better ?).


Help me complete it.

More music from Salon Audio

European Oils (Destroyer): Another track from Destroyer, according to the Salon critic, harks of Bob Dylan


Anorak Christmas (Sally Shapiro): Very nice pop from a Scandinavian group


Lies (Carl Hancock Rux): A cool moody piece that I can't slot very easily, somewhere in the blues range I guess

Spirits Rejoice (Albery Ayler): A gospel piece done in full-blown orchestral jazz with lots of funky playing around and improvisation

These (and my previous music recommendations) are all really good. You really should get off your butt and download one of these and check it out. They deserve it. Yes, I mean you ! Now !

Newspaper watch -- The Hindu's 'human interest' page

The last page of the Hindu is 'human interest' stuff, generally wierd and offbeat stuff. Mostly they're not so interesting. Here are a couple of recent interesting ones:

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told some younger women at a TV awards dinner, "If I wern't already married, I would marry you right away". His wife Veronica Berlusconi was not amused but he refused to apologize to her. She responded by publishing a letter in a newspaper demanding an apology: "These are affirmations that I see as damaging to my dignity, affirmations that .. cannot be reduced to jokes. To my husband and to the public man I therefore ask for a public apology, having not received one in private". She got it: " Here I am, saying that I'm sorry. I was recalcitrant in prvate, because I am playful but proud too. Challenged in public, the temptation to giv in to you is strong. I can't resist", said the tycoon.

Its interesting for me to see the human side of this political leader who is quite terrible in his policies(IMO). There was a similiar story about George Bush who writes bad poetry to his wife:


"Roses are red
Violets are blue
Oh my, lump in the bed
How I've missed you.


Roses are redder
Bluer am I
Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy"



For the full story (and poem), check out this page. You'll need to search for "Bush" on the page to find it. Also if you're tastes run that way, there seems to be poetry by Rumsfeld there.

We're getting off-topic here, it was supposed to be about the Hindu. The other article I wanted to note is that Rowling has apparently finished "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", the last in the series. There was some stuff which I forget about readying child counsellers since a couple of prominent characters are bumped off in the book. More info here . And here's her nicely done official site