rantlust

Posted by anupcs on May 31st 2006 in Health & Fitness, Productivity, Science
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Whenever someone asks me how I get the time to do all the stuff that I appear to be doing, my first answer is always that I sleep less than most people I know. I average around 5-6 hours daily. This is contrary to the widely accepted figure of 8 hours that the medicos advise you to do. I have been getting by with this much sleep for years without any problem. I rarely set an alarm and I wake up when my body tells me to.

The Economist has an article debunking the myth of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of play, and 8 hours of rest. The article mentions that everyone has their own “individual sleep need” which could be anywhere from 3 to 11 hours.

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Posted by papi on May 30th 2006 in Humor, Society
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CNN reports that bay area techies are now getting their kicks the old-fashioned way. By having someone give it to them. Turns out software engineers are flocking in droves to underground fight clubs where they pummel each other with… frying pans. Apparently, baseball bats and knuckle-dusters are passe. Frying pans are the latest in urban assault gear. I wonder if they use cast-iron or teflon.

What struck me most was the following quote:

Men involved in fight clubs often carry bottled-up violent impulses learned in childhood from video games, cartoons and movies, said Michael Messner, a University of Southern California sociology and gender studies professor.

Now how on earth did he make that association between fight clubs and violent impulses? Sure beats me.

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Posted by anupcs on May 26th 2006 in Auto, Cars
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Sympathies should go out to the rantlusters residing in the Northeast US. Apparently, the dumbest drivers in the US are from there. One out of five didn’t know that pedestrians have the right of way in a crosswalk.

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Posted by renéejo on May 26th 2006 in Celebrity, Rants
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Yikes! Sacha Baren Cohen aka Ali G aka Borat shows off his ‘hot body’ at Cannes. Excuse me while I vomit.

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Posted by anupcs on May 26th 2006 in Blogs, India, Journalism, Photography
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Neil Samson Katz is a New York based journalist, photographer and designer. He recently spent some time in India and has written a series of articles for the New Jersey Star Ledger about touchy topics such as female feticide and Naxalites. They are worth a look. His blog, that has links to the Ledger articles, can be found here. Katz also has some fascinating photographs here.

[Thanks to Sree for the links.]

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Posted by anupcs on May 25th 2006 in Travel
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The guard at SFO politely asked me to step aside last night while going through airport security. He wanted to examine my camera bag. The bag, as far as I knew, contained only electronic devices needed for the couple of long road trips we are going to do in the Southwest. When asked if the bag contained any sharp objects, I confidently said no. Mistake. There was a kick-ass switchblade knife in one of the side pockets.

The guard stared at me for an uncomfortably long time while I sheepishly grinned. He then called for a supervisor. I was told that I can indeed keep the knife but I’ll have to be escorted out of the security gate and go back and check-in the knife by itself. This was surprising to me. The last time this “mistake” happened to me was in Phuket airport in Thailand where I was almost strip-searched after they discovered a switchblade knife in my backpack… by four gruff looking policemen. I wasn’t given any options then.

This time, I just told them to keep the knife and I was let go without any further bother. The TSA experience is getting better though by all reports, air travel in the US is going to be hellish this summer. A quick look at the prohibited items before embarking on a trip will help make the going smoother.

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Posted by anupcs on May 24th 2006 in Health & Fitness, Nature, Outdoors
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The above photograph shows a tick bite I suffered recently while hiking in the rugged Ventana Wilderness near Big Sur. The offending arachnid feasted on me overnight while I slept. The previous day, I had hiked a trail that wasn’t well maintained and I had to often go past shrubs and trees strewn across the trail. The tick must have latched on to me somewhere along this trail. I woke up to a stinging and itching feeling on my stomach. It didn’t take long to identify the culprit and I had the wife pluck it out. She did it so fast and with such force that the tick was lost to science for ever. The advice is to preserve the tick to identify whether it’s a vector of diseases such as Lyme disease.

Lyme disease is a tick-borne disease caused by a corkscrew-shaped bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi. This is only spread by the bite of an infected tick and never from person to person. The two species of ticks capable of carrying this pathogen are the deer tick found mostly in the Northeast and the upper Midwest, and the closely related Western black-legged tick in northern California and Oregon. Usually, the tick has to be inside you (meaning the head is inside with the body sticking out) for at least 36-48 hours before the bacteria can pass on to your body. If identified early, the disease is curable and a single dose of the antibiotic doxycycline can reduce your risk to almost nil. If left untreated, the results could be devastating.
(Read more…)

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Posted by anupcs on May 23rd 2006 in Auto, India
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All of you, who have been waiting for this beauty to be available in the US, can now relax. The Bajaj Chetak is available now in the US for a mere $2899 and gets you 110 miles per gallon. I see some snickers among the likes of you who used to ride Yamaha and Kawasaki motorcycles in India as opposed to the oh-so-uncool Bajaj scooters. It’s only a matter of time before Apple’s mom, Gwyneth, or the autograph hating Cameron Diaz start riding these on the streets of Beverly Hills and make it über cool.

Thanks to my buddy Akosan (sic) for forwarding the link.

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