Midwest ramblings

Why do you read?

2010-04-11T17:43:00.001-07:00

I usually associate free time with logging on to the internet to find something to read. I derive immense pleasure from labouring through a lengthy essay or feature, ruminating on its import, talking to someone about the contents of the piece, which often leads to a healthy debate, eventually allowing me to concretise my thoughts.

I have a few standard web sites I visit and often I stumble upon a few pieces through my facebook and twitter streams. I don't know when and how I developed this habit - maybe journalists subconsciously think reading is good, maybe this was one of the ways I got better as a cricket writer - and it gradually turned from habit to addiction.

A friend, who has been observing this trait of mine, recently asked me a perplexing question. "Why do you read?" This I was unprepared for. I had grown up surrounded by books and was always admonished for "not reading enough". I often look back on my school days and wish I had read more instead of spending my free time overdosing on cricket.

A few days ago I had answered a related question - what makes a good piece? Since I had thought of that one in far more detail, it wasn't too difficult to answer: something that either provokes new thought or something that moves. If a writer satisfies either of these, I feel I've spent my time productively.

But this was a far more complex question, philosophical almost. And I could only resort to cliche - "to shape my thoughts and opinion", "to become a better writer", "to be globally aware" - but struggled to nail it.

After grappling for a few hours, I finally realised I was complicating matters. I liked reading for the same reason I liked movies - I loved stories. I kept tab of the news because, as a journalist, I feel I have to. But what I really enjoyed was reading stories - finely crafted narratives that held my attention. Nothing more, nothing less.

And on that note, here's the wonderful story of Olga Gurshin, the first student from the Soviet Union to take a four-year course in the U.S. At the end of it, I was as happy with my reading addiction as with my answer to the intriguing question.

Innocent adults

2010-04-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

How many ever times I watch Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven, there's always something new that provokes thought. Today, in what was possibly my fourth screening, I focussed on Zahra, the little girl with an angelic smile and a wonderfully-expressive face.

Through her, Majidi shows us how several poor children are forced to grow up in a hurry - washing dishes, baby-sitting the new-born, assisting in the kitchen - but continue to retain a large part of their innocence.

Zahra, a six year old, leads the life of a working professional - attending school in the morning and handling household chores for the rest of the day. There isn't a single shot of her playing with her friends or being pampered, activities that are a norm in more privileged six-year-olds' lives.

Yet there's a unsullied innocence about her, the kind that hasn't succumbed to the cynicism and world-weariness - traits that a 35-year old with her background, schedule and challenges would have been expected to have.

Zahra shows us the kinds of challenges that many children face - we understand how the frustration of losing a shoe can really mess with daily rhythms. We understand that poor children can take nothing for granted and yet, deep down, they cannot afford to give up hope.

A dream job that often isn't

2010-03-31T21:43:00.000-07:00

I just read Tom Swick's fine piece on the evolving role of a travel writer. Here's one part that struck a chord:

These books have done a great deal to romanticize the profession. (Tell people that you are paid to travel and write about it and you’ll be greeted by exclamations of envy.) ... “Travel writer” may be the one title everyone wants except the people who have it

.

I can see where Swick is coming from. "Cricket writing" is a highly romanticized profession too. People gawk when told about one traveling the world to cover cricket.

That's way off the mark. Several leading cricket writers spend close to 250 days of the year away from home. Even the ones who are assigned individual tours, are out for 50 days at a stretch. It's an immense burden on their family lives and several end up with extremely unhealthy lifestyles (it's difficult to be on tour and stay away from a drink or seven).

Most cricket writers go through tournaments under a lot of stress. One needs to file three or four stories every day and it often requires preparation, burrowing instincts and last-minute flexibility. Persistence is vital - whether it's calling a former cricketer for an interview, or lounging around in the team hotel lobby for a stray quote or diary entry.

The additional occupational hazard is the daily press conference - often a stream of cliches that add little value. Each one of these is like a repeat of the previous - with players being highly guarded about team compositions, injury updates and team assessments. Every game is "crucial"; every opposition "cannot be taken lightly".

A handful of writers may well bypass all these irritants - you can work for a monthly magazine, you can skip the press conferences, you can write and not report - but what even they can't do is change the way they watch the game.

We all began as cricket fans before becoming professional cricket writers. Being in the profession, though, takes away a lot of the fizz. Of course, we are taught to be objective (to the point of being cynical) and stay away from flag-waving zealotry but what really rocks the boat is the gradual understanding of the players, the system the politics and the shenanigans.

You begin to understand that X was picked over Y not necessarily because he was better but because he was from a certain zone or because he was backed by a certain agent or because he was the distant cousin of Z. You also realize how players (some of whom you might have idolized before you entered the inner circle) can be egotistic pricks and manipulative Machiavellis.

At a more basic level, you are constantly searching for narratives to write on. The multiple aspects of the game that you earlier noticed give way to a more thematic observation - trying to weave a story through a common thread. Of course there was a wonderfully athletic catch at midwicket but how does an appreciation of that play fit into the day's story? You are forced to focus and not simply ramble along - which is basically what fans do when they watch a game together.

At some point, when all these influences come together, you start watching games through a different prism. It's no more the innocent past-time that made you jump up and shriek or kick the floor in anger or sulk all day. It's now the sport that you are detached from (though in reality, you're very close to the epicenter).

You begin to view it as a job - I've actually felt really frustrated when a cricketer died on a Sunday, simply because it meant more work - and ask yourself - just like Swick says of travel writers - what am I doing here? And over time, you gradually forget why you got here in the first place.

The genius of Blaise Aguera y Arcas

2009-01-27T19:16:00.000-08:00

There can be no doubt that this is the golden age of photography. I'm not referring to the quality of photos being taken, but to the quantity - the gazillion photos that people click every day, on their point-and-shoots, SLRs, mobile phones etc.

But there was a big problem: of what value are all these photos? Flickr and Google Images are seeing a rapid proliferation of uploaded photos every day but how does one separate the gems from the rubbish? How does the cream rise up to the top? Who makes sense of all these images and integrates them into something meaningful.

Along comes Microsoft's Blaise Aguera y Arcas and a great creation called Photosynth. I won't do much explaining here because Arcas does a fabulous job of it himself.

And so we actually have a software that not only aggregates similar photographs (those taken at the same event or venue) but also integrates it into a meaningful whole (that's way, way more useful that the parts).

Just as you have hyperlinks in text documents, Arcas explains how one can cross-link pictures and create this panoramic experience. And not only do you get to see your pictures of the event, but a collage - putting together various views from diverse lenses.

It's a classic case of the gems coming together neatly with the rubbish - producing something that's highly viewable.

Read Farhad Manjoo's piece in Slate for more.

Asif Sheikh and ten cows in the background

2009-01-23T22:53:00.000-08:00

So we're back to TGE (that great era when India were on the cusp of liberalization) and there's no better video to illustrate the contradictions of the period that this.

Remember Asif Sheikh? Or Ruchika Pandey? Well, even I forgot these guys but I still remember the Filmfares of those days featuring them. (of course, the Filmfares I used to read in the local barber shop, that seemed to never have India Today but always have Filmfare, Women's Era and Debonair. No wonder it was always crowded).

Now to this legendary video. You'll recognize the song - not necessarily because you remember the movie (Yaara Dildara) but because a guy called DJ Suketu created a remix a few years ago. It made the MTV charts and everyone was humming the tune again.

But what of the original? It's a peppy tune, something that the young generation would have hummed easily. And, considering that the Youtube video has 226 comments to it, I think it's fair to say it was a raging hit back then.

But look at that video. Look at the primitive camera work. Look at the amateur lighting. Look at the clothes that Asif and Ruchika are wearing. Look at their expressions, the setting, the flowers. Simply look at Ruchika standing in one place and gyrating as she taps her waist.

Most importantly, look at those cows in the background. I mean ... cows! They didn't move a few feet away and shoot without cows. They insisted that they stand right in front of the bovines, make sure that eight or ten of them appear on every single moment of the video. They needed that rustic quality to this video. As two cows danced int he foreground, they needed more in the background. What creativity!

Imagine 15 years from now. I'm telling my children about the good ol' days, when I was their age. And these are the kind of gems that will pop out. I mean, I used to laugh at my dad in his bellbottoms. Everytime I see this video, I wonder if he was better off. I mean ... Cows!

The price one pays

2009-01-17T13:30:00.000-08:00

News organizations are normally prepared for deaths. Important obituaries are written well in advance, and many organizations are ready to publish them immediately after the news of the inevitable.

Lasantha Wickramatunga, the chief editor of The Sunday Leader, was different. He wrote an obituary for himself, just in case he was killed. And last week, just as he predicted, it happened. The piece, which appeared in the Jan. 11 edition of the Sunday leader was poignantly titled, "And then they came for me", a line borrowed from German theologian Martin Niemoller.

Wickramatunga's obituary is a resounding affirmation to journalists around the world, that their community, even in this day and age, can indeed play a major role in nation building.

People often ask me why I take such risks and tell me it is a matter of time before I am bumped off. Of course I know that: it is inevitable. But if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot, whether they be ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged or the persecuted.

Look around war-torn regions of the world and you'll find journalists risking their lives. El Periodico is Guatemala’s leading newspaper for investigative reporting and its editor, Jose Rueben Zamora, made a career out of exposing the government. Some of his most famous pieces were about the connections between narcotrafficking, organized crime and people who exercised iron-fisted control over Guatemala’s government.

In June 2003, gunmen claimed to be detectives and his his family captive. They then tortured Zamora, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger on an empty chamber thrice. They then left, ordering that he stopped publishing articles against the establishment.

Zamora's response was as ballsy as it got. He sent his family to live in the U.S. for a while, before publishing stories identifying the people who had invaded his home.

There's a lot of jargon being thrown around in the media industry: reinvent the business model, understand your audiences, unbundle the content, fragment the market, integrate the platforms of publishing ....

But there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that can substitue for heroes like Zamora and Wickramatunga. If those in the media hope to make a serious difference, if they genuinely believe they're in it for some higher good, if they understand their social responsibility ... it's time they saluted those like Wickramatunga. Let's hope, as he himself did, that his death served as an inspiration that will galvanize forces to usher a new era of human liberty in a war-torn country.

(We'll get back to the TGE theme soon)

That one-run victory

2009-01-11T21:27:00.000-08:00

The Ranji Trophy final has started today and it's time we rewind the clock to That Great Era (TGE). As I have said earlier, TGE refers to the period that encompasses the late '80s and the early '90s - no specific dates but you get the picture - when we were still leading wonderfully sad lives.

So we're back to TGE. It's May 1991 and it was time for a Ranji Trophy final. I mean, it was a big thing those days in the Pip household and Grandfather Pip was happy it was telecast on TV. I'm not sure if the whole game was shown but I sure know that the final day was. And that's generally what people remember when you say Haryana v Bombay, Ranji final.

If you ask any cricket fan about that final, I can pretty much assure you that he won't remember Deepak Sharma, who was the top-scorer for the match with 199. He will tell you about the final-innings chase, about Dilip Vengsarkar's valiant hundred, Kapil Dev's inspirational bowling, a climactic run-out, and tears, lots of tears. Vengsarkar cried, a nation cried with him and another set of Kapil's Devils rejoiced.

I've heard many nice stories about that game but the best ones are from Rakesh Sanghi, the official scorer for Haryana in those days. He clearly remembers the train journey to Mumbai. It was a long trip and the players were keeping themselves occupied with songs and dumb-charades.

But a few hours were enough for Kapil to send out orders. Nobody enjoys themselves until we win the final, he said. It was loud and clear. The rest of the journey was spent in near silence. Sanghi's words are worth repeating: "When Kaps spoke, everyone listened."

And then to the final day itself. Apparently it wasn't Vengsarkar who caused problems for Haryana. The headache came from elsewhere. More from Sanghi (paraphrased and not exact quote): During one break Kaps spent close to 20 minutes talking only about the strategy to get Sachin out. He was in such great form that nobody had any clue about where to bowl to him. He flat-batted Kaps for a straight six and a few of us in the dressing-room were convinced that the game was over.

I vaguely remember that six, seen through grainy DD television pictures. A few journalists who were at the game remember it too. One likened it to a shot that got the Wankhede pillars to creak.

Here's H Natrajan's view in Wisden Asia Cricket:

After lunch, Sachin Tendulkar, still only 18 years old, launched a counterattack with a six over the straight field off a slower one from Kapil. It was a declaration of intent. Tendulkar then greeted left-arm spinner Pradeep Jain with another straight six. As word of Tendulkar's charge spread around the city, the Wankhede began to fill up. Before long, 18000 had thronged to witness the unfolding of an epic.

I wasn't one of them. Instead I endured the pictures constantly flickering, the commentary (yes, that banal commentary) enthralling, and the tension mounting. AIR was on too, I think it was Suresh Saraiyya calling the game there. And suddenly there was chaos, an obscure guys called Kuruvilla, a run-out. And tears. And joy. And tears. And joy.

The match report in The Hindu (R Mohan, obviously) did the game justice, or so it felt then. The Sportstar had an even more detailed spread. And then there was Sportsworld. Cricket was good back then - if gave you time to inhale, recall and exhale. It allowed the big boys to play in a Ranji final. It allowed TV viewers to watch a Ranji final. It allowed young boys to analyse the game, talk about Tendulkar's six, feel bad for Abey and feel happy for Kaps.

Those were the days.

Ps:just for the record, they won by two runs. It still feels like one, though. So the headline must remain.

Change is here

2009-01-10T19:28:00.001-08:00

Everyone and their uncle knows about the '60. Sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, rebellion ...
So I don't want to go there.

The '70s have also been flogged to death. More sex, more drugs .... you get the picture.
OK. I am trivializing those epochal decades. But there's always Vir Sanghvi to elaborate on that.

The '90s have their share of glories. Liberalization, internet, mass media ... I can relate to that era but I would rather not. It's not something I look back on fondly.

What I really look back on fondly is period of transition. The period that covered the late '80s and early '90s.

The era just before and just after India moved from a closed economy to an open one; the period where DD and AIR still ruled; the days when Street Hawk was a rage; the period when Rahul Roy was actually called a hero.

Ever heard of a Kannada hero called Ravichandran? If not, just see this
I mean ... if ever there was a quality ratio comparing video to audio, this one would probably be the lowest. As in, it's probably the most melodious song with the least watchable video.

And we were the privileged generation growing up to this. Oh, and there's a book waiting to be written about Rahul Roy and his shenanigans. There was actually a song (another pretty melodious song) where he says the most outrageous line in Bollywood history: "Yaadon ke sab jugnu jungle mein rehte hain".

Here's the translation: All the fireflies of our memories live in jungle.
Touche.

Await more such gems in the days to come.

Seriously, those were the days.

Prepare for change

2009-01-10T19:21:00.000-08:00

Finally.

I started this blog for one reason and one reason alone: to have a storage space for my random thoughts. But I soon realized that it's impossible to always have access to the blog whenever I get a random thought. And since I don't remember random thoughts for more than a few minutes, the blog was largely a waste. There were useful bits now and then but it really left the reader unfulfilled. As you would no doubt testify.

Time for change.

Spare a thought for the economists

2008-12-23T12:59:00.001-08:00

House prices crashed, investment banks bombed, auto manufacturers tanked. Governments have been lambasted, corporate honchos have been exposed and the public have been blamed for spending too much. But what of the economists?

If the world was one large company, the first persons who would be sacked are the economists. Aren't they responsible for predicting these crises? Isn't it their job to warn the rest of the world about impending doom? Just as intellegence officers need to cop the blame for a lapse in security, shouldn't leading economists be pulled up for this mess?

The Economics department in the University of Chicago has parking lots designated 'NL' (Nobel Laureate). Some of my friends who study there estimate that every third room belongs to a Nobel prize winner. What were these guys thinking a few years back? Couldn't even one of them see the whole crisis coming?

Reading Drake Bennett's piece in Boston.com gave me a few answers. And the problem really may not be as much with the economists as with the field itself. The title of the piece - Paradigm Lost - sums it up.

Economists are asking aloud whether the field has grown too specialized, too abstract - and too divorced, in some sense, from the way real-world economies actually function. They argue that many of the models used to explain and predict the dynamics of financial markets or national economies have been scrubbed clean, in the interest of theoretical elegance, of the inevitable erraticism of human behavior. As a result, the analytical tools of the trade offer little help in a crisis, and have little to say about the sort of collapses that led to this one.

A few quotes and a couple of shoes

2008-12-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

The editor of the Yale Book of Quotations has complied the Top Ten quotes of 2008. I liked most of them but No.7 made me choke a bit more than the rest.

"Maybe 100." - John McCain on how many years U.S. troops could remain in Iraq.

McCain and Sarah Palin dominate the list but what was particularly interesting was that there was no quote from Geroge W Bush. Now then ... that's a clear sign of how much he's been overshadowed of late.

But he's not completely disappeared - will he ever? - and a shoe-hurling Iraqi journalist brought him right back into the spotlight. In the LA Times Rosa Brooks is relieved that it was only a pair of shoes and not grenades.

By willingly risking prison and death just to throw those shoes, he reminded the powerful and powerless alike that a single symbolic gesture can be more effective than a thousand grenades.

I've always been fascinated by this footwear-throwing business. In our part of the world, few insults come worse than a threat to being hit by a chappal. "Yeddu Seruppai" is a Tamil phrase that can roughly be translated as: 'piss me off more and I'll slam you with my chappals'. Why pick up a flimsy, rubbery, harmless bit of footwear to threaten someone? Even a leather shoe can cause only so much damage.

I'm pretty sure it's got to do with the moral insult of using a weapon that's been stained with dirt and muck. And which accentuates Brooks' point more: might as well inflict moral damage rather than a physical one.

K Anil and the art of the fiver

2008-11-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

So K Anil is gone. One by one, they're all leaving. By the end of the year, only SRT and VVS may remain. Sometime soon after, both will be gone. There can be no further evidence that my childhood is ending. And don't even get me started on looking forward to watching legends like Virat K and Robin U from now on.

I still vividly recall the only time I spoke to Anil Kumble, in a coffee shop in central London. He was talking about the mind of a spinner and spoke about how Indian bowlers have long neglected the art of getting wickets. He didn't care about a spinners run-up, or his delivery stride, or his head position, or his wrist, or fitness, or muscle strength, or finger length, or anything. He just wanted spinners to learn how to get wickets.

"Just like there's a way a batsman goes about getting hundreds, pacing himself, rotating strike, targeting bowlers, conserving energy ... there's a way for a bowler to get five wickets. It's something you pick up with experience but it's the only thing that matters at the end of the day."

And that pretty much summed up Kumble. There was no real drama in his run-up (unlike Warne's mesmeric approach); and there was no fluidity in the action (unlike Murali's rhythmical bounding in). But there were wickets, buckets and buckets of them. Hopefully he takes to coaching young spinners like Mishra, Chawla and Ojha, teaching them the art of the fiver.

As far as the fan in me went, I was far more attached to the the pre-2001 Kumble. It was so heartwarming watching an Indian bowler put the fear of God into batsmen. To just see their mortified faces, when up against Kumble on a crumbler was sheer drama. I used to go mad when Kumble unleashed those yorkers that rattled the base of stumps and there were few more exhilarating sights than watching Mongia, Azhar, Manjrekar and Dravid prowl around the bat for an inside edge. It was too riveting and there was no way my school grades were going to improve in that era.

Post-2001, Kumble lost that destructive element in him. He still got plenty of wickets, and his overseas record improved considerably, but he was always a grafter rather than a destroyer. In many ways, it was similar to Tendulkar post 1999, when he sacrificed aggression for precision. He was still effective but batsmen rarely feared him anymore. My grades were still bad but that's because I was watching VVS.

Linus the genius

2008-10-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

I am usually reminded of my first story, when my grand-dad insisted I get creative. It's quite a joke in the Pip household, and there have been suggestions about passing on this work of art to future generations so that my stupidity is preserved.

My story always was: "There was once a dog that lived in a town. One day, the dog died. End." Needless to say, my grand-dad cried out in anguish and gave up all hopes of me being a great writer.

Today, I was jobless enough to surf through some old Peanuts comic strips.

Linus is trying to wheedle Lucy into reading a story to him. Having had enough, she grabs a book at random.

Lucy: “A man was born, he lived and he died. The End!”

Linus: “What a fascinating account. It almost makes you wish you had known the fellow.”

Genuis!

Happy Heckler

2008-10-25T21:29:00.000-07:00

There is a thrill in walking into a sporting arena that's jam-packed, buzzing with energy and eager for the game to start. There is another sort of thrill, which very few people understand, in walking into a deserted stadium. Everyone watches the big games, everyone knows the days when their team scaled those mighty peaks but there are people more interested in the depths, when athletes perform in empty arenas and hear echoes of their own voices.

It's often said that an athlete reveals himself under pressure, when a sell-out crowd is roaring him on, cranking up the expectation levels. I think athletes reveal quite a lot even when no-one is watching. In fact, it must be really difficult to simulate pressure in empty stadiums, to know you're career is on the line amid this silence.

Often in these silent times, a spectator will take the opportunity to liven up the day. In Mumbai you're likely to hear of Vijay Gaundalkar, the umpire who lost his head and turned into a traveling supporter. Gravy and Chickie were very much part of games at the Antigua Recreation Ground and there are tales of Kojak in Cape Town, hollering away during South Africa's sporting isolation the '70s. And then there was Yabba, the legendary barracker in Sydney.

The best part about these guys is that they're always there. Through thick and thin, they're by the team. They have plenty of advice and abuses to hurl but usually, heart of heart, they really care. They land up every morning hoping that some time in the distant future the dark days will pass. That some day in their lifetime, their team will lift the ultimate prize.

If you're one of those who enjoys the silent times, you'll enjoy Ashby Jones' piece in WSJ. The deck sums up the story well: As Tampa Bay Rays draw a noisy throng, Robert Szasz gets drowned out. This was the Rays' first home game in a World Series. Szasz was very much there but, for once, in a really sweet irony, his voice wasn't heard.

A game divided

2008-10-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

Not too many great cricket pieces off late (of whatever I've been reading). But here's the Age's Greg Baum in full flight:

The ICC has its head in the sand, which in Dubai is not so surprising. So does the players' body. Test cricket draws crowds only in Australia and England, and that is not enough. In television terms, one Test used to be worth four one-dayers. Now, two Tests are worth one one-dayer, hence England's skewed schedule in India. Test cricket is screwed.

More such pearlers in the piece. Read the beauty.

No tipping point

2008-10-22T18:41:00.001-07:00

I'm not talking Malcolm Gladwell here. I'm talking about the final act in a restaurant or bar. Yes, I know you're thinking about the final trip to the restroom after the big slosh but get over it. I'm onto the question of tipping waiters.

The discussions around tipping, in my circles at least, can get tedious. "You're actually thinking of 15%? Are you out of your mind? We're not earning here, we're students." But there's always a counter: "What goes around comes around, it all evens out. Socialism has its values." I've even had emotional blackmail thrown at me: "Some day you may take up a part-time job as a waiter, surely you'll want to make some cash."

Somehow I've never bought these theories. There is a person here doing a job. He or she is getting paid. If he does a great job, I would commend the restaurant for hiring this guy. I'll definitely recommend it to people. I'll surely come back again. So everyone is benefiting. If he does a bad job, none of the above will happen and if many people feel that way, the place may not exist anymore.

When I was employed, I didn't get paid for every article I wrote, however good it might have been. I never expected readers to pay me 10% of the amount they spent on reading the article (which would include the cost of internet, electricity etc). If I wrote a good piece in a magazine that cost 50 bucks, I didn't get even 1/100th of it as a tip. I just made do with my salary. So how does the logic work differently here?

OK fine. "Sitting in an air-conditioned room and rattling off 800 words is way easier than pleasing a hundred hungry people." But what about the ones who make your bills in retail stores? What about the guy at the bookstore who patiently ferrets out the edition you want. In fact, what about the guy who's cooked all the food you're eating? He's surely done more work than the waiter. Why do we leave these guys out while tipping?

Of course, my stern tipping policy is also usually linked to my shoe-string budget. The Spanish waiters must still be cursing the Pips after what happened a couple of months back. Every place we went, we paid by rounding off to the nearest Euro. So if the bill was 9.97, we ended up paying 10. If it was 9.01, we still ended up paying 10. My logic was, it's evening out anyway. Someone was gaining more, someone was gaining less and we were losing anyway.

But we probably took on sensible decision on that trip. We never visited any place more than once. Never.

Read more about the tipping phenomenon in Neal Templin's Wall Street Journal column.

Campaigning across platforms

2008-10-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

The U.S. presidential election is being fought on newspapers, TV, radio and the internet. But Barack Obama is going way beyond. The Obama campaign is flooding videogames, Twitter, iphones and text messages. Chris O' Brien has more in Idea Lab.

The Starbucks stops here

2008-10-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

The more Starbucks a country has, the bigger its financial problems, says Daniel Gross in Newsweek.

Like American financial capitalism, Starbucks, fueled by the capital markets, took a great idea too far (quality coffee for Starbucks, securitization for Wall Street) and diluted the experience unnecessarily (subprime food such as egg-and-sausage sandwiches for Starbucks, subprime loans for Wall Street). Like so many sadder-but-wiser Miami condo developers, Starbucks operated on a "build it and they will come" philosophy.

Gross starts his piece by citing Thomas Friedman's McDonald's theory (where he posited that countries where the middle class could afford McDonalds could be expect to resolve disputes). It seemed revolutionary until Lebenon and Israel decided to disprove it.

Now it's Turkey's turn to disprove Gross.

A first for the Trib

2008-10-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

Never in its 161-year history has the Chicago Tribune backed a Democratic nominee for President. Until now ...

It may have seemed audacious for Obama to start his campaign in Springfield, invoking Lincoln. We think, given the opportunity to hold this nation’s most powerful office, he will prove it wasn’t so audacious after all. We are proud to add Barack Obama’s name to Lincoln’s in the list of people the Tribune has endorsed for president of the United States.

When SRT woke India up

2008-10-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

Eighty five years from now whichever one of us is alive can tell the martians (who will no doubt arrive) about a cricketing god called SRT. The Martians may be far superior to anyone else in playing the game (as they will be in anything else) but we can proudly stare them in the eye and say: The boy woulda creamed ya.

I always wished SRT's voice never cracked. There were days when I hoped India would get themselves in a deep hole, so that he could do the impossible. Hours and hours of class were spent figuring out how much he had to score in his next series to get the average towards 60. Televisions were shut when he got out, irrespective if whether India were winning, losing or drawing.

If there's one image I cannot forget about him, it's that morning. Groggy eyed, I tiptoed to the television room, immediately turned down the volume and tried to find out the score in Auckland. The Indian run-chase had just begun and SRT, opening for the first time in a one-dayer, was simply flying. Suddenly it felt like I was back in bed again, drifting into a dream, seeing the boy smash a quite unbelievable 49-ball 82.

There were several more accomplished innings - and I remember crying after that 136 in Chennai went in vain - but for boyish exuberance, for for an innings of unbridled expression, for a mad adrenalin-fueled excitement, we'll never forget Auckland. In cricketing terms it was the day when "India awoke to life and freedom".

Zook and the art of reinvention

2008-10-18T06:44:00.001-07:00

If you haven't picked up a book titled Unstoppable by Chris Zook, do it now. You don't have to read the rest of this post but here's the abstract if you insist.

Over the next decade, nearly three out of four companies will face the challenge of their corporate lives: redefining their core business. Buffeted by global competition, facing an uncertain future, more and more executives will realize that they must make fundamental changes in their core even as they continue delivering the goods and services that keep them in business today. Unstoppable shows these managers how to look deep within their organizations to find undervalued, unrecognized, or underutilized assets that can serve as new platforms for sustainable growth.

Stages in evolution

2008-10-17T23:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, dear friends. I'm happy to announce that this blog has an audience now. Just one person but every drop ... And trust me, this is a really, really important drop. So dear Mrs. Pip, welcome.

Blog psychology

2008-10-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan analyzes the blog as a medium.

On my blog, my readers and I experienced 9/11 together, in real time. I can look back and see not just how I responded to the event, but how I responded to it at 3:47 that afternoon. And at 9:46 that night. There is a vividness to this immediacy that cannot be rivaled by print.

Read the full piece The Atlantic. Sullivan, a blogger since 2000, says blogs are changing the way we think, the way we record and the way we consume news and information. He says a lots of other things of course in a lengthy article that doesn't seem so lengthy at all.

Which also reminds me of a point Gideon Haigh made in The Monthly recently, while discussing the "essay" as a form of writing.

Two thousand competently executed words in a newspaper often seems too many and yet 6000 words of superbly executed non-fiction narrative writing in New Yorker or Atlantic somehow seems not quite enough. It seems to me that subjects, perhaps at the point of 5000 words suddenly become exponentially more interesting and they're more satisfying for a writer to explore. You're suddenly moving out of the cliche sphere and the subject sort of develops a texture and it begins to exhibit those paradoxes and contradictions that make life interesting.

Because it's home

2008-10-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

I remember one of my friends in college posing a question in our final year: "Why do people continue to stay in Kashmir despite there being such a danger to their lives?" And another one of my friends, without even a blink of an eye, shot back: "Because it's home."

We recently had this discussion about university towns in the U.S. Educational institutions don't have to pay taxes, so it's the others in the town, in many cases people with absolutely no connection to the university, who shoulder the burden.

So the city needs money to provide protection for the people, it needs to ensure a good police network, drainage facilities, community parks, pools etc but ends up taking those funds (and more) from the same people. A university or school, which charges its students, are considered non-profit organisations that cannot be taxed.

Is this fair? Can universities and schools make people pay a larger tax than they would in another town? Some of my friends didn't have much sympathy for these people. "They knew the situation always," went the common refrain. "And it's not as if the educational institutions began as a secret. So they always had the option of moving out. And for those who are new, there is really no excuse at all."

I somehow disagreed. Firstly I thought it unfair to expect people to move out just because an educational institution is being built in their town. Those residents were here first. And it's their home. So to expect people to move out of their home just because you want to run a million-dollar "non-profit" organization isn't fair. They've no doubt developed an emotional attachment to the place - the smells, the sounds - and it's silly even expecting them to go away.

I wasn't as convinced about those wanting to move in. Maybe they could have factored in the extra property taxes they would pay and chosen some other place. Maybe they really don't have a reason to complain. But again, once someone's decided on making a place home, there's little that can dissuade them.

Great Democracy = bad tennis system

2008-10-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

Lesson for the day: I found this a year late but the Economist's Democracy Index, formulated in 2007, is an interesting one. Sweden sits comfortably on top (9.88 on 10) while Iceland, Netherlands, Norway and Denmark all clear the 9.50 mark. Read more about it in the Great Magazine.

Which brings me to a completely tangential point but one that tennis fans might spend some time thinking about. A good democracy translates to poor tennis players. OK, that's rubbish. But Sweden, a traditional powerhouse, has to settle for Robin Soderling as their highest ranked player (ATP ranked 35). Thomas Johansson, a former Australian Open Champion, currently sits at 87 and there's no one else in the top 100. And this is the country that produced Borg, Willander and Edberg. Heck even Thomas Enqvist and Magnus Larsson had their moments.

Rafael Nadal's Spain is No.16 in the democracy list and Roger Federer's Switzerland is at 10. Iceland, Netherlands and Denmark don't have anyone in the top 100. Finland (sixth in the democracy list) has just one representative, Jarkko Nieminen at No.33. Luxembourg's finest is at No.68, Australia's best (Lleyton Hewitt) is one rank lower, and Canada has no one in the top 100.

Now I'm not surprised how Serbia (No.55 in the democracy index), Russia (No.102), Argentina (No.54) and France (No.24) are producing a conveyor belt of talent. Cut those freedoms, I say.

Ganguly and the art of the piss off

2008-10-11T15:35:00.000-07:00

Of course I'll remember him cover-driving Alan Mulally off the front foot; of course I'll remember that six off Kumar Dharmasena in 1997 when the ball, a tiny speck in the horizon, soared over the Wankhede Stadium flood-lights; and of course I'll remember him giving himself room, charging down the pitch like an enraged bull and toweling Aquib Javed past point in Dhaka. But here's why Sourav was different from the rest.

Tendulkar in his pomp was impossible to bowl to. You just stood and gasped. You were outsmarted. Just concede defeat. He could have struck that ball to any corner he chose. Just applaud and go back to your crease. Show some grace. History will remember you as someone He hit for four.

Dravid in his pomp was different. You might as well be bowling to a concrete wall. You expend so much energy running in and he simply shoulders arms. When you get the line right, he's ready. Somehow he's simply boring you to give up. Just give him the single. Get me that Gatorade.

Laxman in his pomp was different. Bad day. He's flying and you're stuck. Just limit the damage. Look forward to tomorrow. Today is his. Bowl at the offstump, don't stray down leg. That way at least the crowd is marveling at his batting instead of realizing what garbage you're sending down.

Sourav in his pomp was different. You knew you could get him out - bouncer, bouncer, pitched up - but you also knew he could caress one through the covers after looking mighty clumsy. You knew he would fish outside off, you also knew he had the eye to ramp one over short third man. You knew, if nothing worked, you could run him out.

We loved him because he pissed bowlers off. He made their blood boil. He made them lose faith in themselves. He mocked at those technique-obsessed coaches. He looked beautiful amid looking ugly. Suddenly a gorgeous square-drive, suddenly a play-and-a-miss. From woah to yuck in a flash. From sensational to stupid. From one extreme to another, he had us transfixed.

There were few more endearing sights in cricket than Sourav messing with a bowler's mind. And we'll miss him for it.

Salivating over Palin

2008-10-11T14:51:00.000-07:00

The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg quotes Slate's Fred Kaplan:

... basically a lot of men out there salivate over Sarah because they want to bonk her. I didn’t watch CNN because I don’t want to know what’s going through the neurons of a roomful of know-nothings every second of a debate, but apparently they divided the charts by gender this time, and, so I read, every time Sarah stared into the camera, the male charts went up (along with some other things, no doubt).

Why do I suspect some reverse psychology here? Were CNN trying to make viewers think that men were perking up when Palin was on the screen, leading other men to subconsciously follow suit?

Which brings us to another point. Are large sections of the media showing double-standards with regard to scrutinizing the candidates? Why is it cool to take 'You betcha' Sarah to the cleaners and let Joe-Six-Pack Biden go largely scott free? Both have made some stupid statements - though Biden is yet to talk of sharing a border with Greenland. But why hasn't Hollywood unearthed a male equivalent of Tina Fey [in pic]? Can't anyone out there imitate Biden? Why is he not being watched as closely? Does all this smack of sexism? You betcha.