From here and there

We've been obsessively watching "Lost" and here's a good humor quote: Sawyer in a grumpy mood tramping through the lush tropical jungle: "I take comfort in knowing that some day this will be a nice shopping complex or even an auto mall"

The Economist had an obituary for the death of the last living French soldier who had fought in the First World War, Lazare Ponticelli. It quoted him as follows, describing the war: More than anything, he was appalled that he had been made to fire on people he didnt know and to whom he, too, was a stranger. These were fathers of children. He had no quarrel with them. C'est completement idiot la guerre. To the end of of his life, Mr. Ponticelli showed no interest in labelling anyone his enemy. He said he did not understand why on earth he, or they, had been fighting.

The Economist also pushes Earth Hour on the back inside cover. Visit www.earthhour.org , and switch off your lights for an hour at 8pm March 29th. That's the cool thing about the Economist -- despite being weighty and ponderous it has can throw its weight behind idealistic initiatives like these.

Its been raining heavily and unseasonally in Bangalore and I am getting into a funk about global warming (and more. The country and the world seem to be in a mess and digging in deeper).

Thank you, Mr. Lay

Lots of places in Coorg were littered in garbage. Tourist garbage. And place of pride for this was for the fine Frito Lay family of products.



Perhaps you've seen this in other places. It would be nice to take photos and pass on to me to add to this. It would be embarrassing to Frito-Lay and they might do something about it. You could contact them at fritolayindia.blogspot.com to bug them about it.

Two puzzles

I was counting a bunch of cash recently (Arvind will know why) and I got this puzzle idea. I've noticed that I'm really bad at counting cash (or other things), there is some way or the other that my mind gets distracted and I end up never knowing whether I counted correctly or not. So: is there a foolproof method of counting ? Point is -- it can be contrived and laborious, but it should not depend on your concentration, so that at the end you *know* whether you counted right or not. Like a checksum !!!!
One example solution would be to count in batches of 5 and then number the 5*n the note clearly. That way even a ADD-ed person like me would like get the individual bunches right and you even have a numbering to help you recount if you have to. Not a clean or elegant solution but might help you to get my point. Any more solutions ?

The other puzzle is a really cool one I saw at the Vishweshwareya Museum in Bangalore, which despite being a little decreipt, is actually pretty world-class. This is a maths puzzle. Its a board game with 20 positions arranged in a circle. Two people play the game. You have a marker which you can move 1 or 2 steps, and then the other person moves the marker. The person who reaches the 20th square is the winner of the game. The question is: is there a winning strategy to this game ? This is like tic-tac-toe, where there is a strategy where the starting person always wins. This one's strategy is a lot tougher, but I think I cracked it. There was an even tougher version of the game, where I was completely at sea, but I forgot the game so can't mention it here.