Blog of Parag

For Hitchcock lovers

There are quite a few box sets of Hitchcock movies for Hitchcock fans. Here is a few of them...

• Alfred Hitchcock - The Masterpiece Collection


• The Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection


• The Alfred Hitchcock Collection II

Saturn in Beehive cluster, M44

reprocessed photo taken in Mar '06.

Us minus one

Three of us

Out of office

One of my colleagues has this 'out of office' email message.

I am out of the office and will be back on Monday June 26. Because of the volume of email during my absence, I will be deleting all messages upon my return. If you are sending me an important email, please plan on resending it to me on June 26. Thanks,

Cracked me up on this bleak Monday morning.

Happy Father's day

Wishing a very happy father's day to my dear father, who is enjoying the Summer with his grandkids.

I hope to be half as good as him as a father, a husband and a human being.

Joke

Got this forwarded to me today...

Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

This is funny, but factually incorrect. Alzheimer's affects short-term memory while old memories remain intact. People with Alzheimer's can't recognize their grown-up children, but recognize their childhood photos. They don't remember if they have taken a bath or their medication, but can recite poems learnt in school. Hopefully, these elders should have learnt the use of these things a long time ago and that won't be affected by Alzheimer's disease.

Assassination Vacation

Assassination Vacation was my second Sarah Vowell book. It was so entertaining and educational. The book is about Sarah's travels to visit many locations that were center stage as well as little sideshows in the assassinations of three sitting U.S. Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, and William McKinley. She makes this dry political history into something very interesting. The book is so full of facts that I definitely need to read (listen to) it again.

Here are some (not all) interesting facts that were unknown to me before reading this book.

• Presidents #17, 21, and 26 were murdered after the Civil War in a span of 45 years from 1865 to 1901.


• Coincidentally, President Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln was nearby at all these assassinations.


• Eventhough, President Lincoln is revered as God these days, there were quite a number of people who hated him when he was alive.


• Garfield assassin, Charles Guiteau was a member of Oneida Community, a utopian commune. This cult believed in complex marriage, where every man was married to every woman and other weird things like male continence, mutual criticism and ascending fellowhip. Read more about Oneida on Wikipedia.

Here is a passage from the book that I liked and is a good example of Sarah's writing style.

While technically Maryland remained in the Union during the Civil War, it was the border state, a schizophrenic no-man's land with the North at its door and the South in its heart.

Listen to its state song. Sung to the tune of the German Christmas carol "O Tannenbaum", "Maryland, My Maryland", was written as the Civil was breaking out in 1861. The first line goes, "The desot's heel is on thy shore." Who is the despot? The new president, Lincoln, who it's worth remembering, had to sneak into Washington for his inauguration so as to avoid the assassins waiting to jump him in Baltimore, a city which, in the song, is rhymed with "patriotic gore", commemorating the blood spilled on its streets on April 19, 1861, when a mob of local secessionists attacked a Massachusetts regiment passing through town. "Maryland, My Maryland", the song says, "spurns the Northen scum!" The song also calls for seceding from the Union, to stand by its sister Virginia, going as far as to allude to that state's motto, Sic Semper tyrannis:

Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain--
Sic semper! 'tis the proud refrain

Sic semper, of course, was the proud refrain hollered by Maryland's own John Wilkes Booth after making good on shooting the aforementioned "despot" Lincoln at war's end. One might think that a state song hinting at presidential assassination would have eerie echoes when the state's native son assassinated said president and therefore it might be headed for the title of "state song emeritus", the dustbin into which Virginia herself tossed its racist favorite "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny". But "Maryland, My Maryland" did not become the official state song until 1939. Despite the occasional nice try to ditch it, it remains the state song to this day.

Go here to listen to this same passage from the audiobook. She continues this thought a little further and connects John Wilkes Booth to Tim McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber to an obscure magazine called Southern Partisan to the Attorney General of USA, John Ashcraft.

If you have never heard Sarah speak, you must do it. She has a very peculiar style.

Elvis Costello

It was Elvis Costello and the Imposters with Allen Toussaint last night at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival. We received free tickets from work, hence decided to go for it. I am not a big fan of Costello; didn't even know many songs of him other than "Monkey Man". It turned out to be a very enjoyable concert. It was good music eventhough it was all new and we were not familiar with it. Rock'n'roll with a jazz twist. Allen Toussaint is from New Orleans and played great jazz piano.

Before the concert, we went to eat dinner at Ann Arbor's newest Japanese restaurant, "Cherry Blossoms". They still don't have their liquor license. The food was very good and didn't need any sake to wash it down. But, still we'll have to try it again when they get their license. On the next table sat an old couple celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. The man was in the Air Force stationed in Vietnam where he met his wife in the 60's.

Face recognition

Followed a link from Urmila's post and used the face recognition software. Used this photo as input and here are the results...

Adit looks like:
Diego Maradona
Hugh Hefner
Forrest Whitaker
Tom Jones

I look like:
Ricky Martin
Guy Pearce
Clark Gable
Sean Bean
Mark Wahlberg
Jon Stewart
Bing Crosby

Conclusion: The face recognition software at this website is a piece of crap.

Concerts '06 - II

Tomorrow: Elvis Costello
9/18: Roger Waters
9/23: Eric Clapton

Drink for a healthy heart

A report published in the recent issue of British Medical Journal, researchers from Holland describe correlation between alcohol drinking and coronary heart disease. Their observations can be summarised in one line as done on WebMD:

"The more women drink -- and the more often men drink -- the healthier their hearts."

These benefitial effects are only seen in middle-aged and older individuals. In younger people with healthy hearts, the harmful effects of alcohol on other organs outweigh the heart benefits.

As one gets older, they should start drinking more and more for better coronary health. According to the study: "women, who drink 14 drinks or more per week and men, who drink 21 or more drinks per week and drink every day had the lowest risk of heart disease."

Currently, I average around 1-2 drinks per week. I have a long way to go to catch upto 3 drinks per day. Hopefully, I am still young and have quite a few years to get upto that level. Also, women with 2 drinks per day and men with 3 drinks per day... they will have healthy hearts but, can't imagine how many car accidents result from this.

QOTD

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

--Bertrand Russell