Well in India we just got done with Diwali. The fireworks were great if you don’t mind the air and noise pollution. I think foreigners should visit India during Diwali. I don’t think any other country has so much in terms of fireworks as India during Diwali. But I don’t think we have fireworks battles in India.
Easter on the small Greek island of Chios means one thing – a massive firework battle, with over 50,000 rockets raining down on two small towns.

[Source.]

Jon Stewart cracks me up.

Steve, a friend in San Diego, forwarded me this email. It’s doing the rounds and sooner or later you are bound to read it. So you may as well read it here.

This is a wordle cloud of the post “National Corruption Guarantee Scheme–Revisited.”

Penn and Teller are pretty amazing. I especially like their debunking videos. They are iconoclasts and have a lot of fun letting the air out of some of the high and mighty. They have done the usual ones. YouTube has a lot of their stuff. Here’s a video of one great illusion by Teller: Shadows

The Airbus 380 cockpit. Click on the image above to see the amazing 360 degree view (which will open in a new window or tab.) Note the controls at the bottom of the screen which allow you to zoom and tilt the view. (Thanks Yuvaraj for the link.)
The last time I sat in the jump seat of an Airbus was a flight from New Delhi to Paris on Aug 31st 2001. I had been traveling a lot on business and gotten to know the flight crew. I spent a couple …

2.5 million MBAs? Really?

This just cracked me up. (Hat tip: Anup Nair).

It is a brilliantly composed song and the video is packed full of very clever references. Here are a few lines that matter here:

blog blog blog it all
blog it if it’s big or small
blog at the cineplex
blog while you’re having sex
blog in the locker room
babies blogging in the womb
blog even if you’re wrong
won’t you blog about this song . . .

The most famous coyote (I like the “kai-o-tee” pronunciation) in the whole world is Wile E. Coyote and his supplies from the ACME corporation, but I am sure that Charlie is going to be pretty famous on the internet.

From “The Daily Coyote“:
Charlie came into my life when he was just ten days old, orphaned after both his parents were killed. He lives with me and a tomcat in a one-room log cabin in Wyoming.
Definitely not work-safe as it will distract you no end. But it is food for …

Germans!

Source.

Check out this site. Click on the little square after the site has finished loading. Like that instruction on the shampoo bottle, repeat. Isn’t the web an amazing place? Why? Because the world is full of inventive, amazing talent and it allows people to showcase their ingenuity, and because we get to share in the joy of discovering those nifty ideas.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who resigned in protest from the National Knowledge Commission, quoted Tom Paine that “We pity the plumage, but forget the dying bird.”
Mr Mehta, the plumage don’t enter into it–it’s stone dead. This parrot wouldn’t voom if you put four million volts through it. This parrot is definitely deceased. It is no more. It’s bleedin’ demised. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. It’s a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, …

“Don’t drive like my brother” is usually the last bit of advice that “Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers” give to their around 2 million listeners of their weekly National Public Radio show Car Talk on 370 radio stations.
I used to listen to them religiously. They are funny and irreverent and clever and poked as much fun at the callers as they did at themselves. In the closing credits, they acknowledged the research done by Paul Murky of Murky Research and thanked their law firm Dewey, Cheetham, and Howe. They …

I have been associated with India Rural Development Fund (IRDF) from its very inception many years ago. IRDF was started by my friend Uday Kumar when we were both working for HP in the Valley and it does a remarkable job of providing primary education to many villages in Andhra Pradesh.
Since I am listed on the “About Us” page of the IRDF website, I do occassionally get emails from various agencies working in rural areas. I got one today which I think is too good to keep to myself. Here …

Well, thank goodness that there are options when it comes to transportation around here. This SUV is not going to be stopped by streets with 6-foot deep water levels. At water levels that would leave cars totally immersed, this fellow will barely notice it.
Now aren’t you glad that we did not go with those compact Japanese models of elephants? Sure they gave more miles to the bale of hay, and were easier to park in the crowded streets, but they were useless when it came to crossing overflowing …

I make no representations about the authenticity of the picture above. Any idiot can doctor up a photo these days. Even then, it is funny. Kind of goes with the image that one has of the prime chimp President of the United States of America.

So if you are all done with Google Earth, it is time to see Google Moon.
Those guys at Google do have a sense of humor. See the moon at max maginification. Don’t forget to visit the Google Moon Help page and the Google Copernicus Center if you are looking for a job.

Want to have some fun and waste time and learn all at the same time? Check out these optical illusions.
When I come across these sorts of things, I cannot stop marvelling at the amazing power of the world wide web.