A wish for Bangalore

This is all I wish for in Bangalore. A dedicated cycling track through the heart of the city. You may decide to replace Bangalore with any city you know that is on the verge of a grinding halt because of the indisciplined vehicular traffic.

In case you are wondeing what CS stands for: CS = Cycling Superhighways.

History on a Bookmark

An advantage of being around for a long, long time is that you have a fair bit of history under your belt. And the Foyles bookshop on the Charing Cross Road can definitely lay a claim on that. But more importantly, it is how you make that history available to others.
Foyles does it in a very unique way. They have these wonderful - nice and thick and not likely to tear in one use - bookmarks that bring out an aspect of their history.

Each bookmark has a photograph of some event that happened at Foyles in the distant past and has a bit of story.
The one I hold right now in my hands has a photograph that dates back to 10 November 1960. The photo shows: 'LADY C SOLD OUT. IN STOCK AGAIN TOMORROW.

Lady C, of course, refers to Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence. The bookmark goes on to explain: "Four hundred people queued outside the shop on 10 November 1960 to buy the uncensored 'Lady C'. We sold out in 15 minutes and took orders for 3,000 copies that day."

I bet all of those 400 were men!!!

On my flight back from England, I was sitting next to an middle-aged lady who is from Switzerland. She saw the bookmark and exclaimed, "I used to work for Foyles long ago." So I gave the bookmark (another one - not the Lady C) to her. I bet it brought back to her years of memory.

An Indian Scientist Contributes

The July 2010 Issue of the Scientific American (India) has its first Indian contributor - at least to my knowledge.
The author of the article Following the Arrow of Time (an article on how String Theory might explain the assymetry of time) is Gautam Mandal. He is a theoretical scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). And though his post doctorate is from Princeton, he did his Phd from TIFR. In other words, a proper home grown Indian scientist.
Pity his article does not appear in the international edition of the Scientific American. Nevertheless, an occassion to celebrate.
Now I am sure, publishing an article in the Scientific American is not the pinnacle of scietific achievement. Nevertheless, it is important to communicate to the lay reader cutting edge science. The last Indian to do so effectively - to my knowledge - is Jayant Narlikar.

The Nearest Thing to French Class Room

No time for attending French courses at the Alliance Francaise?
No problem!
Welcome to Coffee Break French - the nearest thing to a real life classroom session.
This is actually a podcast. However, the production value is professional. And what's more it is FREE. At least the podcasts are.
You need to pay for the transcripts and the other value added service. But believe me, the way Mark - the teacher - and Anna - the student go about teaching and learning French, you may not need the transcripts.
Each podcast is of 15-20 minutes duration.
You can download the entire set of 80 lessons from iTunes too (podcasts > Education > Language Courses > Radio Lingua Network > Coffee Break French)
Let me know if you enjoy it.

No Online Courses on Indian Languages

"Why not an Indian Language?" I thought.
I mean, if BBC offers online courses on 36 languages, and RFI offers French courses, surely our Akashvani (aka All India Radio or AIR) would offer online courses on Indian Languages.
That would make sense, surely, in a country that boasts of 15 recognised languages, besides Hindi and English.
But would you believe this?!?
I could not find a link on the the AIR website to any language course.
Extremely disappointing!
What a waste of opportunity!

By the way, and here is a surprise, you can download free language learning software for learning Hindi (here), Bengali (here) and, my favourite, Urdu (here). These are the famous (limited in scope, since these are free) BYKI series by Transparent Langauge. Learning from BYKI can really be fun. Try it. I have.

And if you wish to learn some basic words and phrases in different Indian langaues, then visit here. This site has a list of everyday useful words (no audio!)

Free French Lessons from RFI

I have been foolish not to check. Especially since I was aware that Radio France International had co-produced the Mission Europe radio programs. Besides, if BBC can claim to teach French, can you imagine Radio France International not to?

Sure enough, the RFI has an excellent page dedicated to teaching French. I am currently listening to L'affaire du Coffret, which is an excellent introduction to the French Language. It is presented as a crime thriller, which should keep you hooked. You can either work through the associated exercises one by one as you listen to the recording from the RFI website. Or, download the complete podcast of 60 episodes from iTunes and work on the worksheets later.

Coming to Mission Europe: I recommend you download all the three - Mission Berlin, Mission Paris and Mission Krakow, and have a listen. These are fashioned after computer games and will be liked by both children (Note: Mission Berlin and Mission Paris have some heavy duty kissing sounds for a short while; not sure about Mission Krakow. I am not being a prude, just noting a fact) and adults.

Enjoy!

Oil Spill for the Goose, Nuclear Reactors for the Gander and Liability Cap

The unlimited nuclear liability cap (or the lack of it) is a hot topic in India. Interestingly this topic has reared its head in US also, with the BP Oil Leak being labelled as the "Environmental 9/11". Here's a very interesting article by Richard A. Epstein, a professor of law, that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

It is instructive to note what he has to say about liability cap:

"The legal system should never allow self-interested parties to keep for themselves all the gains from dangerous activities that unilaterally impose losses on others."

and

"... we'd all be much better off if there were no statutory liability cap and if operators both big and small were required to purchase insurance—amounting to the tens of billions if necessary—when they operate in dangerous waters or terrains."

and

"A tough liability system does more than provide compensation for serious harms after the fact. It also sorts out the wheat from the chaff—so that in this case companies with weak safety profiles don't get within a mile of an oil derrick."

Now compare this with what Mr. Prithviraj Chavan has to say about the proposed nuclear liability cap (see here):

"If we don’t keep the caps reasonable, nobody will invest in India."
Oh I see!

Actually, nobody needs to fear. In India one can get away with genocide, if one has to go by the example we have set for ourselves with the 26-year-delayed 'justice' in the Bhopal Gas Tragedy case.