cool stuff according to me (an expert in the cool stuff field)

I love Improv Everywhere. They do stunts around the city and the world. In their latest adventure, they had 200 agents freeze in place for exactly five minutes in one of the most rushed spots in the country: New York City's Grand Central Station. It's especially poignant for me because of the dozens of flat out sprints I have taken through that place to catch the 7:48 Express to North White Plains after a fast bike ride from Brooklyn that may or may not have involved truck surfing up third avenue.
Link to their site and a video of the stunt

Scientists grow a replacement jawbone for a man in his own abdomen. It took his own stem cells (my personal area of expertise) and nine months to birth this beautiful new structure.
Link
via Marilyn

An interactive chart of the web trends of 2008. A neat way to find new places to waste time at work (because www.addictinggames.com can only do so much for you):
Link

A touching veterinarians account of the animals he has to euthanizes each day
Link
via BoingBoing


My friend Clark wrote a piece for the famous Huffington Post about the Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) and their current predictions about the presidential nominations. Snip:
"The Iowa Electronic Markets, founded by the University of Iowa in 1988, are real-money markets that deal with predicting future events. More succinctly put, the IEM are futures markets.

"The IEM has generally outperformed the major national polls [at predicting political winners], and has been more accurate than those polls even months in advance of the actual election," James Surowiecki wrote in The Wisdom of Crowds.

For the Republican side, John McCain's price is currently about 87 cents. ... Mitt Romney's price, meanwhile, is 9 cents and Mike Huckabee's is about 3 cents.

The IEM political market for the Democratic nomination currently prices Clinton at about 60 cents. Obama is at 37 cents."

He's an excellent writer with a firm grasp of politics and currently studying journalism in NYC. He also has an excellent tattoo on his left arm of a crow trapped in chains symbolizing the evil Jim Crow laws of the American South.
Link

pics

I have new photos up. Click "My Photos" under the favorites tab on the right side.

quote

.x: I'm pissed. I come to the most magical place I can find and it's still not enough. I want adventure. I want magic. I want quests. I want dragons. I want unicorns. I want secret rings. I want a princess I can marry or kill or something. I'm serious. It depresses me.

tp (sarcastically): Sounds like someone needs to believe in heaven
'pause'
and that depresses me.

I Love India: reason # 72

No personal space.

I met a wonderful couple last night who live in LA and Mumbai. He mentioned how much more isolated he feels in America with the lack of human contact. In America, I can easily go an entire day without coming into physical contact with a human being. In India, I am literally lucky to go ten minutes without.

It's one more thing that makes me more at home here. People here have no silly compunctions about touching someone else. Why do Americans shy so much from physical contact? It seems unnatural to me.

PS: I got the nicest compliments from two different people at my friend's birthday party last night. One man said to his wife "We found another one of those Westerners who fits in here and is never going to leave." An older woman told me that "I think you are going to do very well here. you have just the right attitude for this place." I have to say, that's some of the nicest things I've heard since I got here.

i love this fucking country

I hope you can can use the same post title more than once because I say the above line at least every two days. Vignettes from my life with apologies for lack of posting, I've had lots of people in town:

I came home slightly drunk from Leopolds, the tourist trap bar in Colaba that has some of the only dancing in the city on a Sunday night. I saw some bright lights down a normally dark alley. I find a bunch of guys playing a board game and listening to music under a beautiful canopy with strings of light while Krishna constantly waved his arm with the help of a little motor. They immediately sat me down at the board to play a game called carrom that resembles pool but used flat heavy discs instead of balls. I loved my partner: an older guy with streaks of gray through his beard who danced at the table whenever a new Bollywood song started. Word of wisdom for best ways to make friends: sing the latest Bollywood hit, currently Om Shanti Om with his greatness, Shah Rukh Kahn. We won quite a few games until I missed an easy shot. Eventually, we gathered in a circle and somebody broke out a drum. About six guys started clapping this hands and singing songs in Marathi (at least I assumed Marathi, it sounds almost exactly like Hindi so I have to judge by the look of the people rather than their words, if they wear a cool narrow pointed hat, Bingo, Marathi). I sat there for about 90 minutes listening to them and thought to myself "well, you found what you were looking for." Luckily, someone took my video camera and started making movies. I'll upload them as soon as possible.

I went the to Manish Market with my friend Dave Sears so he could get some illegal software ($900 of software for $6) and so I could trade in some headphones that didn't work. I went back to the same shop and got the guy to confirm that I had bought them there. Then I told him that I wanted them replaced because they didn't work. He pointed at the sign that said no exchanges or returns. I figured I'd have to act a little heated to get the job done so I did. After a few minutes of loud statements of refusal by me and passive resistance by the owner, he agreed to replace them. I immediately lightened up and thanked him. He gave me new headphones and we tested them together. Then he took the old ones and put them in their package and back on the shelf. I told him that they were broken. He just looked at me and smiled. I started laughing and winked at him. He laughed and grinned mischeivoulsy. I shook his hand and said "that's funny. that's really funny."

Again at Crawford Market. I took my two friends from Austria, Judith and Sonia, so they could find gifts for friends back home. Turns out there's really nothing good in that department unless your friends like severed animal heads, weird chinese electronics, cell phone covers, bolts of cloth or guinea fowls. As we walked, two guys on the side asked to take a picture of them. My answer in this situation depends on my mood (which depends on my hunger level) and my feel for the people. For some reason I didn't like these guys so I said "no" loudly and kept walking. They just stepped forward and took a picture. This pissed me off. I turned to him and started berating him. Our exchange started getting heated and then he said something angry in Hindi. I said "what?". He repeated himself in English. I said "what?". After repeating this little performance a few times, we all started laughing about it. I said, "Oh, you Indians. I love you." We shook hands, still laughing, and went our separate ways.

Cool links

Amazing. The Atlantic Monthly opens it entire archives for free perusal. The New York Times did this same thing a few months ago. I hope this trend continues (New Yorker, come on, please). I haven't got a chance to search it all yet but I'm excited:
Atlantic Monthly

A complete scan of a photograph book documenting the strangest practices of humanity. 564 pages of weirdness:
The Secret Museum of Mankind

judo

I found a judo class and showed up on saturday morning after the required asking ten people where to find the National Stadium. I walk in to find 15 little kids rolling around on the mats together watched by two guys in judo gis. I felt pretty out of place but the teachers run over to talk to me. Unfortunately, someone told me I didn't need a gi but they had no extra. I had to wear my new, too tight (Indian style) pants.

The teachers immediately ignore the students and spend the rest of the class teaching me the basic throws while occasionally scolding the kids for being noisy or restless. I felt bad hogging the teachers but they didn't seem to care at all. They seemed to like working with me and I felt good until I ripped out the entire crotch of my pants (15 Rs to fix, wonderful). They took pants of another kid and gave them to me.

At the end, they bought me an orange juice, told me to keep the pants and start coming on Sundays when the older kids attend. I'm pretty excited about this and even started working out before my morning bucket showers.

I can't wait for a competition because wrestlers kick ass. Judo concentrates on throwing. If you throw some directly to their back, you automatically win the match. You can pin people if you keep them on one shoulder blade for one second but they see it as dishonorable. Luckily, I don't worry about honor. This means that they have no experience wrestling on the mat and as a wrestler, I spent most of my time on the mat, usually on my back. We come to them with an attack that they almost never see. It makes us quite good and quite disliked. During practice, I want to learn more about throwing but when it comes to compeititon, we're heading to the mats.