Skip to main content

One Day on Planet Earth

Well, roughly.

Yesterday or so was sort of a busy day with many developments. I thought to do a round-up of the news as it were as the Earth rotated around itself.
  • Seven elephants got mowed down by a goods train in Bengal or somewhere. Not an everyday occurrence clearly. Who is to blame? Animal lovers must be furious. I wonder if these gentle giants are loved as passionately by anyone as dogs/cats are by many millions ... Perhaps the undoing of the pachyderms was their tendency to sort of mourn the death of their kin. I think I read in one news item that a kid elephant died first on the tracks and so a herd of elephants had gathered ... perhaps ruminating on the sad event and then they all perished too. I wonder what must go through the giant brains that these giants possess. What thoughts might they possibly have??? Of course, much of their brain might be devoted to housekeeping for the enormous physical sizes they possess and the 'thinking' part or the cerebral cortex part (as it's called in us humans) may be small. I do not know if their cerebral cortex is larger or smaller than that in the human brain.
  • And then Squadron Leader Mahapatra crashed a Mig-27! He survived by ejecting but I guess our poor country lost a fighter aircraft! And they don't come cheap ... how many Nanos can one buy for a single Mig-29? Well, I guess this was nothing out of the ordinary in the sense that sometimes fighter aircraft DO crash ... I guess what is unusual is the name of the fighter pilot ... he has to be from my neck of the woods for sure and therefore the 'event' holds some significance for me ... Alas, I am never going to be a fighter pilot ... sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
  • Oh, a test of the Prithvi II missile failed as it refused to get off the launchpad!!! Ho ho ho ... it was a user trial to be precise. Well, I think a failure once in a while is ok. It's a government program after all. And even software applications crash sometimes ...
  • The usual saga related to the Commonwealth Games continues but perhaps that's a different story.
  • Well, a bit of an older news is that Mahesh Bhupati and Lara Dutta are now 'officially' a couple. Good for them, I say. Not because of the fact that it's 'official' of course ... I don't care whether it's official or unofficial. I mean, it's good that folks are enjoying each other. And India has luckily moved on to accepting people divorcing and changing partners. Life is a ... well, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity ... one could say. Therefore, if folks feel like moving on from one relation to the next, they should be free to do so.
  • And oh, an even 'older' news — the 'young' Putin getting hitched to a 24-year-old gymnast! Oh dear!!! Nothing more to say ...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Longforms and 'Best of 2017' Lists and Favorite Books by Ashutosh Joglekar and Scott Aaronson

Ashutosh Joglekar's books list. http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2018/03/30-favorite-books.html Scott Aaronson' list https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3679 https://www.wired.com/story/most-read-wired-magazine-stories-2017/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/12/the-best-books-we-read-in-2017/548912/ https://longreads.com/2017/12/21/longreads-best-of-2017-essays/ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/21/world/asia/how-the-rohingya-escaped.html https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-journalists-covered-rise-mussolini-hitler-180961407/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/artificial-intelligence-future-scenarios-180968403/ https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/01/20/citizen-kay https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/where-we-are-hunt-cancer-vaccine-180968391/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/dna-based-attack-against-cancer-may-work-180968407/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/22/dona