Well done!!!! I'm so happy for you USians!
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 10:08 PM on November 4, 2008

Good luck USA, I'm sitting here in a country not my own obsessively watching an election in a country not my own, and yet I'm very excited about this election. I'm secretly hoping for a blue sweep, cause it's about damn time.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 10:50 AM on November 4, 2008

I think I like the new hologram thingy on CNN.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 4:19 PM on November 4, 2008

I strongly recommend John Crowley's Aegypt Cycle for anyone interested in Bruno, I'd never heard of Bruno till I read the books.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 6:47 PM on October 24, 2008

(speaking as a rest-of-the-worlder) I reckon that by and large, the actions of a country do determine what others think of it, irrespective of the proportion of the people inside said country who oppose those actions.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 10:34 AM on October 22, 2008

Missed the live feed

I was watching the live webcast and it wasn't entirely smooth. The stream kept stuttering, and i don't think they even linked to the stream from the page. But it was fun, and very different from the typical NASA launches.

(can we skip the whole poor-Indians-throwing-away-money talk? )
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 5:51 AM on October 22, 2008

sorta related: I just found out that the spanish slang for dictionary (in mexico ) is 'tumbaburros' , suggesting the book is large enough to knock a donkey over.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 2:00 PM on October 20, 2008

heh. I went to australia for the spiders!
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 11:33 AM on October 20, 2008

On CNN international, the ohio men flatline on the little meter whenever obama talks. Weird
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 6:42 PM on October 15, 2008

Heh: Obama just picked a hole in the offshore drilling business. Plus the moderator is supremely annoying.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 6:48 PM on October 7, 2008

That's the first time I've heard McCain concede that Obama was right on something!
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 7:21 PM on October 7, 2008

The song 'brimful of asha' was a hit for the british group Cornershop, and the funny thing is that they didn't even know she was alive and well and recording.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 5:53 PM on October 6, 2008

I reckon she thought the question was a trap, and hesitated to commit to a certain newspaper.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 8:50 AM on October 2, 2008

> a hypothetical McCain win

That ad was so weird...
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 12:46 PM on October 2, 2008

> she scares the shit out of me

Yeah especially when they asked her about nukes...
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 8:18 PM on October 2, 2008

I was sure that the wink was some kind of nervous tic, but now I'm not so sure.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 7:43 PM on October 3, 2008

what! does McCain oppose science projects? I don't get it.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 6:16 PM on September 26, 2008

jeez, it's not like he didnt expect to talk about iran. Maccain should have atleast spent ten minutes memorizing the name
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 7:10 PM on September 26, 2008

> Obama people released 21 fact checking emails during the debate

This what you mean?
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 8:24 PM on September 26, 2008

btw, this article at National Geographic has better images.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 1:15 PM on September 26, 2008

Wow I love this vase.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 9:40 AM on September 26, 2008

I seem to remember that Mahabalipuram was actually a training school for carving temples, and hence you find many unfinished pieces.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 9:13 AM on September 25, 2008

> But Barack Obama has never been a muslim

wow, imagine the shitstorm if obama was muslim...
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 8:05 AM on September 24, 2008

What a wonderful clock! Thanks for the post.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 10:54 AM on September 19, 2008

I've been forced to watch CNN for my news these days, and in comparison to SBS or ABC in Australia, the quality difference is so great that I despair and start muttering angrily to the TV all the time. I guess I will soon have to depend on the net for news.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 9:41 AM on September 8, 2008

> Easily fixed: Don't go to the USA. No big loss.

It's news like this that is making me fly halfway across the world just to avoid going through the US. And it would have been so much cheaper *sigh*
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 11:11 PM on July 31, 2008

I always wondered how the beetles managed to fly with their hard elytra in the way. Now I know.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 12:43 AM on July 25, 2008

meh. If you're going to mock bollywood, you have to be sure you don't become it. I prefer this.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 10:19 PM on July 24, 2008

See also the atlas of plucked instruments.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 8:02 PM on July 23, 2008

psst. jfrancis
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 12:56 AM on July 14, 2008

There's a Banksy in Melbourne that was covered by plexiglass presumably to prevent it from disappearing, and some wag had affixed a small cardboard to it saying " is it art if it's behind glass?"
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 10:05 PM on July 13, 2008

And the essay on Purcell (second link) is by this John Crowley.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 1:23 AM on May 29, 2008

Excellent! Thanks for the post.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 10:34 PM on May 27, 2008

That's weird. Mefite Soma lkzx had a similar site called Snacksby with a similar premise, featured on MeFi Projects. But it seems to have vanished.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 8:34 PM on May 27, 2008

Here's a Flickr set for those with firefox woes.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 11:32 PM on May 5, 2008

As a kid (growing up in a vegetarian household), I hated Brinjals (eggplant). Just hated them, would eat them only under extreme duress. And then, I had a minor epiphany. I decided that since I'm not the one doing the cooking, I shouldn't complain about anything I'm given, and since then I started eating anything without fuss. And now, I do like brinjals (occasionally-heh)
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 8:52 PM on April 27, 2008

Wow. Thanks for the post, and to think I only used the sun's rays to light cigarettes when I'd forgotten to take my lighter on a field trip...
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 8:47 PM on April 27, 2008

This is my favourite Kransky sisters piece: they do a cover of Pink Floyd's Another brick in the wall.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 9:01 PM on April 23, 2008

I'm guessing that the author of the article (who is not me) intended to emphasize the 'not speaking much' aspect of GGY's personality? I don't know...ask your cousin.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 8:31 PM on April 22, 2008

It's a very clear illustration of how broadly well-intentioned public policy can go horribly awry as it's filtered through a network of organizations with various degrees of corruption, incompetence and conflict of interest.

I did a project in Nagarhole National park, and at the entrance of the park was the area allocated to the displaced tribals. The problem was that the govt officials bulldozed the area before alowing the tribals to live there, and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 7:11 PM on April 16, 2008

Great article. White's story read like something straight out of a Paul Auster novel.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 7:06 PM on April 15, 2008

Here's a link to the pdf. I hope that works.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 6:19 PM on April 13, 2008

> I vaguely remember hearing a suggestion that pubmed give identifying numbers to each unique author.
The people behind ISI web of science introduced Researcher ID, a unique identifier per researcher, for which I am very grateful. It can get quite hard looking for my own papers, since I have a very very common surname, and there are a lot of us.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 7:05 PM on April 13, 2008

> If I hadn't been drawn into the article by the Octavio Paz reference who knows...

Wow. I think that comment is the high point of my whole MeFi posting life.
LH, I think you can safely take back your nitpick:)
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 5:12 PM on April 10, 2008

> For me, the objections are of elegance and of compassion.

Exactly. Jeez, I'm so going to steal that line the next time I'm embroiled (heh) in an interminable argument with nonvegetarians. (In India, the default term is vegetarian, all other are 'non-vegetarians')
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 5:39 PM on March 25, 2008

A gentle introduction to carnatic classical music. Part 1, 2, 3, 4
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 6:05 PM on March 15, 2008

> I've heard the theory that hallucinogens were involved in the creation of most of the world's major religions before

There's a book by Graham Hancock called Supernatural where he talks about this stuff. The website makes it look dodgy, but I found it quite interesting.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 8:29 PM on March 7, 2008

> Uh, it never happened in the first place and is just a made up story?
Yeah but these 'made up' stories occur with surprising regularity all over the world. I like this hypothesis because it's a rational explanation of mystical experiences.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 10:55 PM on March 7, 2008

I too grew up reading stories of mythology from ACK, and later in college ended up reading the actual sanskrit versions of some of the stories, but now, I still remember the ACK versions.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 6:14 PM on March 3, 2008

drawing no real conclusions

Well he points out in the essay that Eastern people dislike coming up with conclusions since it would mean that this conclusion is now a statement of fact...

I quite liked the essay, but I'm from India, and though currently working in (western) science, I can totally relate to the differences. One of the big problems I have while writing papers is that when it's time to say definitively the result... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 5:36 PM on February 24, 2008