I think I'm going sane

Freakonomics Review

2008-03-26T19:59:00.001+01:00

Freakonomics – a study of the plausibility of probabilities

Economics – the ‘queen of the social sciences’ - is conventionally considered the study of ‘the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services’, but however the last decades has seen an expansion in the applicability of economic analysis to diverse fields, some of them rather surprising. Freakonomics is one of the most notable recent books that has demonstrated the power and scope of economic analysis, as applied to the transactional incentives for humans and societies – ranging from Sumo wrestlers to the Ku Klux Klan!

Who wrote it?

The book is a narrative of the desultory yet incisive analysis of a “rogue” economist Steven Levitt, co-written with the New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. Released in 2005, through an innovative viral campaign in the blogosphere, the book has already achieved wide readership – already having sold 3 million copies by 2007! Levitt – the Indiana Jones of economists – in recent years has garnered a reputation for his off-beat theories wrought out of his brilliant insight and bold answers derived from data and numbers. For example, in 1999 he stirred up a furor when his scientific papers that proposed a causative link between abortion and crime hit the mainstream media. In this book, he explores several aspects of pop culture through the unexpected tools of economic microanalysis and takes the reader on a fascinating walk through the data-fields of several seemingly impenetrable and off-topic issues, littered with landmines of specious conclusions, but carefully emerging on the other side with a harvest of insightful results and a lingering skepticism about accepted conventional wisdom.

Levitt attracts mixed reaction from his academic peers; some of them unwilling to classify his work as economics because he deals in areas (like parenting and baby names) that have never been under the purview of prior work in the field. Dubner writes, “His abiding interests – though he says he’s never trafficked in them himself – are cheating, corruption and crime.” He essentially has distilled the primary goal of his science to elucidate the machinations of how people get what they want. A striking feature of his ratiocination is his readiness to artfully use his personal observations and intuitions, and through a collage of data-mining & anecdote-telling, manage to derive results on entities that veterans in the field have so far considered unmeasurable. Normally, economics deals with hundreds of covariant variables and parameters and requires tedious mathematical analysis of reams of numbers and statistics. However, Levitt’s blazing curiosity (and Dubner’s reportage) provides him with the intuition to transcend the rigorous math and emerge onto a plane that renders them interesting and useful to laymen, which has been evidenced by the support and encouragement of thousands of New York Times readers and subsequent Freakonomics blog-readers. This propels the notion of the modern era that although the world is rife with confounds, confusions and even deceit, it is not ultimately impenetrable given we ask the right questions with the right tools. His numbers-don’t-lie belief and his erudite training has won him acclaim and recognition – he was inducted into the prestigious Society of Fellows at Harvard at the age of 26, with most resident experts sure of his competence but unsure of what to call his expertise.

What’s in it?

The authors disclaim the book from having any “unifying theme” and therefore, follow a “treasure hunt” approach to go where Levitt’s curiosity takes them, with the aim of uncovering “the hidden side of everything”. Some topics are:

The foreboding of the ‘superpredator’ crime wave in the States in the 90s and its subsequent failure to materialize despite expert’s fervent forecasting. Is legalized abortion the cause?
How real-estate agents are similar to the Klu Klux Klan? (The incentives of lying.)
How are public school teachers in the US like Sumo wrestlers in Japan? (The incentives of cheating.)
The workings of crack gangs in urban ghettos in the States, and why do most drug dealers live with their mothers?
What’s in a name? Is there a discernible link between the probability of success in life and one’s name? Why do parents choose certain names for their children?
How much do parents affect the outcome of a child’s growth? Obsessive parenting formulae and their ineffectiveness. What makes a perfect parent?

Clearly, the book is unafraid to touch upon a wide set of politically charged topics. Despite the claim that there is no unifying theme to the book, I tend to think that actually there is one. Dubner and Levitt state that, “Morality represents the way that people would like the world to work – whereas economics (through data) represents how it actually works.” While the book might be too diffuse in its topics to qualify for scientific scrutiny directly, it provides laymen with a revealing introduction to the basic process of how people behave, and therefore, transactional incentivisation of risk would be my vote for the basic theme of the book.

How does it go?

The first chapter, I believe, is to introduce the reader to the sensibilities of Levitt’s approach. It essentially provides a synopsis of a few startling and some understandable conclusions that nullify “conventional wisdom”. Most experts expected a massive crime wave that would “throw society into chaos” in the 90s. But it was a phantom: the crime wave never came. This has puzzled observers a good deal, but Levitt traces the reason to a single Supreme Court ruling about abortion back in the 70s. This may be a political hotbed, but Levitt is unafraid to go where the data takes him. He shows how “dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes.” – Like the ‘butterfly effect’ in chaos theory. Saving up the details for later, he skips to the issue of how professionals – real estate agents, car mechanics – have personalized incentives in not giving you the best deals possible. This would hardly come as a major surprise, but my guess is that most people would not be able to pinpoint the actual dynamics of why and how this is so. Levitt gracefully does so. Next he takes on the truism of “money wins elections” and seeks to show that this is a fallacy, due to the innate tendency of the candidate’s images in a contest to stack up the odds differently between them. He pulls a rabbit out of the hat: “A winning candidate can cut his spending in half and lose only 1 percent of the vote”.

The basic point he makes however, is that “Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life” but “conventional wisdom is often shoddily formed and devilishly difficult to see through, but it can be done. Identifying what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world seem less so.”

The subsequent chapters form the core of the book in dealing with the bizarre yet curious topics stated earlier. Dubner’s literary panache sets the course for an interesting ‘storyline’, providing historical info, teasing the reader with confounding questions and translating the rigorous methodology into a set of cogent arguments, while waylaying the championed claims of conventional wisdom. This is the primary reason why a book of such lofty, erratic ambitions and intricate analysis manages to please like a well-told riddle, and brings a smile to the reader’s face almost as if one is watching a precocious smart-aleck student artfully trump the veteran teachers.

However, one must be wary of this iconoclasm so as not to read more than what the authors intend to say. For the most part, they have made it quite easy – drawing perhaps from their histories of journalistic balance and scientific focus – as they steer clear of making judgments or policy recommendations; perhaps feeling that resolving political controversies is irrelevant to their intellectual swashbuckling. I think they are right in delegating moral judgments to the reader (and hence the people), while only choosing to resolve the conundrums of the complex data of the society that the reader inhabits. I would not be surprised if the objective paradigm of their analysis engenders a genre of further research, books and public debate.

Several of their examples intrude upon topics that are both crucial and sensitive to several sets of people. They decide to scrutinize situations for fraud where the perpetrator is a figure of authority/honor, and therefore difficult to catch. A public school teacher is the authority in her classroom with the duty of educating the students in an honest environment. But how does one detect his/her misdeeds? Unlike a regular investigator, Levitt conducts no interviews. Instead, in a typical economist’s fashion, he takes up years of data from the education commission about classroom test results. His intuition for asking the right question shows: he sets up a problem that involves searching for patterns in the data and sets up intelligent clauses to eliminate counter-conditions. It is fortunate that his predictions are able to be tested against reality, because the problem was first brought to him by the head of the commission. Therefore, they devise a controlled, actionable experiment by retesting the exams in schools, which eventually led to the dismissal of several teachers in Chicago. Another study involved checking for instances of match-fixing amongst Sumo wrestlers. Sumo Wrestling is a national sport in Japan, and is steeped in honor and respect. Any untoward allegations are met with avid opposition. However, Levitt’s analysis (of years of match fixture outcomes) makes a pretty strong case for the occurrence of cheating. He even draws up reports of a rather suspect case of two whistleblower Sumo wrestlers who died mysteriously in the same hospital on the same day. I gather the Sumo Wrestling community still denies any allegations of foul play about the whole matter. However, this is another example of Levitt’s work rendering a real effect on the world through the resultant public interest. It is stated that his personal desire is to be able to catch terrorists and miscreants by intelligently working through the numbers, and one is left with an optimistic estimate about the enterprise: Numbers don’t lie.

In the next chapter, Levitt looks at the incentives of information hoarding in group identity and advantage. Clinical as that may sound, the chapter is a joy to read, simply for the interesting historical narrative and anecdotes it provides. The two unlikely groups that they draw a parallel between are the Klu Klux Klan (a white supremacy secret society in the USA during the times of segregation) and modern day real-estate agents, salesmen and Enron traders! The narrative is derived from some interviews with Stetson Kennedy, the man imputed with the dissipation of the KKK in the face of a possible resurgence of racist zeal. They argue that the KKK was effective in its ability to rouse fear/dread amongst the black population not by using violence, but by information hoarding. Contrary to popular belief, he demonstrates, the amount of lynching and crimes against blacks was on a constant and rather rapid decrease. The proposition is that in reality, the KKK through its initial violence had established a strong incentive against rebellion, and had further fortified their group identity via secret codes, rituals and passwords.

What does this have to do with modern traders? They draw a parallel: “the KKK was a group whose power – much like that of politicians or real-estate agents or stockbrokers – was derived in large part from the fact that it hoarded information.” The comparison is nicely established, in that, they consider the method of downfall of both the KKK as well as previously unchecked merchants/traders. The coming of the Internet to consumers has led to a never-before dilution of the information barrier about products and prices. This is evidenced by the all-round, and rather rapid, drop in prices for commodities that became easily available on the internet. Similarly, the KKK suffered a huge blow when Kennedy cunningly released all its secret codes & information over an Adventures of Superman radio show, which led to kids running around donning white capes, thus shaming the idea of their father’s secret society. “Information is a beacon, a cudgel, an olive branch, a deterrent, depending on who wields it and how”, they sagaciously demonstrate using the example of the day-old-car effect. They go on to include employees in Enron & Merrill Lynch, expensive cardiologists, real-estate agents and other groups to be involved in the same scheme of incentivisation through information hoarding.

The chapter remains fairly interesting as they explore cases of information denial that is not the domain on only experts, but common people. How? Voters, game show contestants and dating websites provide a plethora of data which is put to good use: by looking for patterns in the numbers that belie the difference between opinion and action. Of course, it came as no surprise to me that people lie on dating websites either in the form of exaggerating their assets or misrepresenting their true preferences in order to be seen as politically correct. But, the analysis is reassuring.

The next chapter moves the scene to the gang-ridden urban black ghettos of Chicago. Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers? But first, they discuss the idea of conventional wisdom – original use of the phrase was not as a compliment. That wisdom is developed through the agent of both journalists and experts, or advertising. For example, “Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis” (obscure medical name for bad breath), as one scholar wrote. Thus, conventional wisdom is setup by several means, but once established it can be quite hard to budge. With this in mind, they turn to the problem of drug-related crimes in urban housing projects in the 90s. They have an extremely interesting vantage point into the problem – Sudhir Venkatesh, then a grad student of Indian origins at the University of Chicago and now a professor at Columbia University. He managed to infiltrate, befriend and live with a particular black gang, just one of hundreds that dealt in crack-cocaine. The narrative and anecdotes of the story that ensue is gripping and extremely interesting to read. Who wouldn’t be voyeuristically interested in the workings of a black crack-cocaine gang in the city? Especially when the conclusion is that, again contrary to popular belief, crack dealers were nowhere close to making tons of money, and actually worked in the same way as a MacDonald franchise! Without giving anymore details of the plot away, I must say that it’s stimulating, yet somehow pleasing, to see how a study of these gangs draws out similarities in the nature of human enterprise for profits and personal advancement. In there lies a good reminder for the multitude of people who complain about the soul-crushing or “grunt jobs”, even in second-tier glamour professions without a clear idea of the sort of pyramid structure they inhabit.

I would say that this chapter is the high-point of the book, as it transitions from a gripping narrative of Sudhir’s gang infiltration into the chronicling of the entrance of crack cocaine into the US market. The concomitant increase in drug-related violence seemed to grip the cities fear and imagination, with speculations of “bloodbaths” turning into forecasts of widespread chaos. This was the phantom crime wave that never came, but in fact curiously and inexplicably, ebbed out to crime levels lower than before. As a child of the nineties, I find it interesting to note how distant, quite unrelated decisions made a few decades earlier could affect dramatic changes then. Levitt and Dubner again start off at a tangentially related historical narrative: communist Romania in the 60s as it banned abortion, in what was previously a liberal place for the same. The story of abortion in Romania might seem an odd way to start the story of American crime in the 1990s, but they show how it provides a reverse image of the same story – a valuable countercheck.

The authors are consistent in warning us about confusing causality and correlation, as most scientists learn in their career. While there are several championed reasons for the drop in crime, not all of them might be valid. Levitt explores these with clarity and force, after all, this having been a part of his earlier scientific work and diligently counters them with insightful readings of the data. The analysis is long, detailed and interspersed with anecdotal digressions – a good blend with Dubner’s background – but is well worth it if one wishes to understand the link between abortion and crime. The story runs from crack cocaine to Columbian drug barons to Gun control laws to NY mayor elections and more, deftly picking up the required details for establishing a good question. In the search for a better answer, he comes to the Roe vs. Wade court case in the 70s, a remarkable case because it was really only a young mother who was pregnant again and did not wish to deliver a child. However, the powers-that-be led this to a Supreme Court hearing which overturned the earlier ban, and allowed legalized abortion in most states (subsequently). Levitt argues – from the data, and apparently sensitive to the moral and political charge of the question – that more the number of young poor women able to choose abortion legally, the lesser the number of babies being born into a socio-economic condition that is thoroughly, and positively correlated to being conducive to criminalism. What does this mean? Did the poor, uneducated black (or otherwise) teen girls from the 70s to the 90s essentially purge a generation of possibly criminal lives? Such socially (and academically) interesting questions make the chapter a meaty, and juicy read.

Working along a related theme, the rest of the two chapters discuss the role that family and socio-economic environment has on children, and particularly, do parents really matter in a child’s development? Just how much would be hard to measure, but they attempt to measure it. The issue of parenting has become a heavily loaded topic in recent decades, and a lot of “obsessive parenting techniques” abound in the populace.

Again, informative data and insightful questions reveal certain interesting facts about parenting: reading aloud to your child seems to make no difference to their abilities, but having books in the house does. Once again it is revealed to me, how intricate and subtle a topic is the study of probabilities; most people usually can’t judge probabilities very well and that’s where an economist’s dexterity with information allows them to put numbers on sublime probabilities. Parents would be interested to know that your child playing at a friend’s house is a lot more likely to be killed in a house that has a pool than a house that has a gun! There is a lot of light-shedding and intelligent iconoclasm in the chapter for interested parents: the nature vs. nurture debate, safety and fear-mongering, parental education, etc. If numbers don’t lie, then perhaps all the new-age parenting literature is being over-eager?

A big section of this research is supported by the involvement of Dr. Roland G. Fryer Jr., a young black Harvard economist who is a reputed scholar on the black community identity and development in the United States, himself having come from a shaky childhood. The chapter is intricate, with lots of sub-plots and themes, and is interesting to anybody with an interest in the empirical evidence of the effect of childhood conditions on one’s probability of success. The next chapter – another one related to parents – asks questions about why and how parents name their children, and if it makes a difference in how the children grow up to be perceived.. Dipping right into the pool of human absurdity, we receive several hilarious (and some perturbing) stories of names people have given their children: Winner, Loser, Shithead and several more! The data-driven approach uses a rather special dataset – the demographic birth certificate records – and considers the emergence of the most popular names for the last few decades. He goes so far as to try and predict what the most popular choice of baby names will be (for both the educated and the poor quarters) in 2015!

This chapter seemed somewhat slow, but in no sense, really strayed from the principles set out in the first chapter. Although at certain points it seemed that the data was incomplete: for example using the mother’s information but not the father’s. I suppose the question still contains academic merit for sociology and parent psychology, but as with every other chapter, the trivia and factoids in themselves are entertaining enough. In fact, the book itself would almost be worth it just for its anecdotes and facts… but when used as a story-telling device by an economist, in using the ‘rational utility-maximization’ principle, elevates it to a treatise of social, political and perhaps even moral interest and relevance. The ending is strategic in its brevity, with a stunning example where human randomness meets the dependability of data, thus leaving a reminder to keep an open mind.

So finally…

The book is particularly effective as it leaves one with a lingering sense of skepticism about the “common sense” and “conventional wisdom” which we readily use, abet and subvert on a daily basis. This, to me, is a sign of a book that has the potential to be an intellectual fountainhead for the future. However, there are some reports of experts calling the data Levitt used into question and as he himself warns us about the actual nearness between causality and correlation. But to settle those issues would be beyond the purview of this review, suffice to say that the book’s ability to engage a thought-provoking, elegant and objective argument is already the hallmark of a scientific endeavor, and might do good to inspire some more. I’m certain that Freakonomics will do, if not already, a great amount of good in the cause of economics being recognized as scientifically relevant to the average person in a modern world and upping the ante of what future economists, sociologists and mathematicians dare to question in the spirit of free enquiry.

Oh, how I hate her now

2007-05-22T18:44:00.000+02:00

It's just incredible how quickly love can turn to hate, isn't it? In fact, I just thought about it and realized that...

... no I don't hate her. Stop nosing around you!

searchfree counter

Picture this

2007-04-08T17:26:00.001+02:00

The girl in the picture is Priyanka - the one who churns out juicy short pieces of rhyme and prose. She had the enthusiasm to patter out a simple, yet intriguing, story around one of the photographs I've taken.

The girl in the photo though is a close and dear friend of mine; taken in the IIT Madras campus set in it's sylvan surrounds teeming with deers, monkeys and Deans of students. I caught her on one lazy afternoon peering out into the woods, while the sun took it's lazy arc through the skies. I liked the sense of expectation and longing this scene conveys, and so I captured it.

Priyanka though, adept writer that she is, took it on as an 'assignment'. You can read her lovely short story woven around this picture here.

Oh, btw I call this picture "Awaiting the Garden of Eden". :-)

Copy-Paste All!

2005-02-21T11:11:00.000+01:00

If you live in a college campus, well a technical university at the very least, you'll see a MASSIVE amount of data shuttling about. And this, until recently in my univ, was in the form of CDs. On seeing stacks of hundred's of cds in a few people's rooms, I got curious about how much data was being replicated at IIT M?

So I went to the campus store...

... and asked him about how many CDs he sells per week. Being a very friendly chap he told me he'll look it up by the end of the week. And being an even friendlier guy, I never turned up to follow up on the data.

And then muh'mate the jakeass sends me a very appropriate article on much the same lines! Thanks ol' boy...

Now, I have EVERYTHING!

Will yam Sheikh's Pear

2005-02-16T20:52:00.000+01:00

So is it even necessary to learn to spell a certain way, or is the author of www.freespeling.com rather correct? What with all the parallel processing that the human bairn is cabaple of in corecting mitsakes such as the ones you have been now raeding... why bohter with spelling pedantism?

Besides, one can always find such thrills as...

AN ODE TO THE SPELL CHECKER

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marcs four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My checker tolled me sew.

Ough, you oaf!

2005-02-12T12:51:00.000+01:00

Its been a while, and another Saarang goes by, a few more sleepless nights and a dash of TV apperances and last minute make-do grand extravaganzas...

But I spotted recently in class a nice poem which illustrates why I like this language that is the infuriating invention of the Brits.

Ough

I'm taugh p-l-o-u-g-h
Shall be pronounced as "plow"
"Zat's easy when you know", I say
"Mon Anglais I'll get through.
My teacher says zat in zat case
O-u-g-h is "oo."

And zen I laugh and say to him
"Zees Anglais make me cough."
He say, "Not coo, but in zat word
o-u-g-h of 'off."
O sacre bleu! Such varied sound
Of words make me hiccough.
He says, 'again my friend is wrong;
o-u-g-h is 'up'
In hiccough." Zen I cry, "No more.
You make my throat feel rough."
"Non, non," he cry, "you are not right.
o-u-g-h is 'uff."
I say, "I'll try to spik your words.
I can't pronounce them, though."
"In time you'll learn, but now you're wrong;
o-u-g-h is 'owe'!"
"I'll try no more, I shall go mad.
I'll drown me in ze lough."
"But ere you drown yourself," said h e,
"o-u-g-h is 'ock.'!"
He taught no more! I held him fast
And killed him wiz a rough!

Vive le france, eh!?? :-)

Metaphysical Semen

2005-01-15T23:22:00.000+01:00

You no doubt recall Aristotle's authoritative teachings regarding procreation. He says, in his Metaphysics, that the union of both sexes allows for reproduction in the following manner: the male semen lends the child being formed its identity, essence and idea, while the woman lends it only the matter that will fashion the future child's body.

And the great Aristotle says that semen is not a material fluid but that it is wholly metaphysical.

That's from The Anatomist by Federico Andahazi (and translated into english by Alberto Manguel), a mafioso-looking goateed chap with dark mysterious eyes who apparently wields the pen.

The book is about the turbulent times in the world of anatomy and the church when Mateo Colombo, who like his namesake found a new land of opportunity and pleasure: the clitoris. The church was (no points for guessing) outraged that this man explains the difference in the pleasure for women, and hence their morals (which obviously HAVE to be inferior if those priests have to get any). The book is a so-so read holding you onto the drama only because of the subject of its exposition. However, it has some interesting facts about what some people have said and thought, espcially those screwed up gay geniuses that were the greeks.

So this little excerpt is from Colombo's defence to the tribunal where he is trying to prove that he hath commited no heresy by exploring this issue. And get this: for clarity and ease of understanding, his defence is split into nineteen parts! And some of them are interesting!

Concerning anatomy of women and the morals of men.

Concerning the inexistence of women's souls.

Concerning the dark ways of women.

Concerning the moral fraility of women.

Concerning the reason why male semen is of a metaphysical nature and why it is able to propel itself by its own means.

Its pretty cool to read about some of the ideas he expounds, like one point where he claims that the clitoris is the female equivalent of the male's soul. And how good women continue to stay clean even though they have no soul. And why the amor veneris (is what he phrases it) is compatible with the genesis explanation of women and other stuff that should sure make the bra-burning head-shaving clit-ringing feminist bitches (oops did I say that aloud?) wanna burn all the men, and then join the church.

Anyway, he was apparently gonna burn real bad when suddenly the pope falls really ill and wants this reputed anatomist to babysit him. So this guy escapes but his book De Re Anatomica is banned. He then follows his self-proclaimed destiny to track down and express... well, basically to score with this really famous whore. I wonder if he succeeds, haven't got to that part yet.

So here's to his success, and pardon me... its time for me to get a little metaphysical with myself.

To be or not to maybe!

2005-01-15T23:15:00.000+01:00

A math professor is going through the security check at an airport and as the guard runs his baggage through the detector, he notices a bomb in it. He's surprised and immediately accosts the professor and in interrogation asks him if he knows that there's a bomb in his bag?

"Yes", says the professor.

"So you put it there yourself?"

"Yes" said the professor.

"But why" asks the guard flabbergasted.

"Its simple", the learned man explains. "The probability that on any given plane there is a person with a bomb on it is about 0.001. But the probability that there are TWO people on the plane with a bomb each independently is only about 0.00000001. So if I have one bomb, then the plane is definitely safer!"

That was a really cool anecdote I recently heard about the errors of statistical thinking. Something we fall into a lot during debating where we just swallow and spew statistics by the truckfull.

It's a wonder about how often it happens if you think about it. All our fears... fear of the dark, of riding in traffic but not ready to walk in a lightning storm, of our hopes... of winning a lottery, scoring a promotion... and well, just scoring. Of course, the last I will understand on instinctual basis. :-)

So while I'm running a major risk of contracting carpel tunnel syndrome or RSI as I spend these hours staring at the screen thus also reducing my lateral vision capabilities while the heat from the computer raises my blood pressure and increases my chances at becoming infertile, I sit here tenacious in my resolve to bestow upon you a little inkling of my humble BLAH!

Three cheers and a pip for me!

Balls of snot

2005-01-05T21:03:00.000+01:00

So why do people suck?

No really, they do, don't they? Just look at them. From far or near.
I can understand the guy who said (I think it was Linus Pauling): "I love humanity. Its just the individual human I detest."

The average guy is a ball of snot. No denying that really is there?

Just look at him. There he is with all his illusions and aspirations, ideals and (for most) morals from his childhood. Which is of course, maybe a good thing. But you know what screws it all up? His self-deprecating action after action. Its tiring to watch him blare out his dreams and hopes and desires (yes, he calls them that even!) to other soggy-witted friends of his, and go right ahead and do something completely counter-productive.

He likes art or music? He takes up commerce for a safe job.

He likes science or math? He's scared of security and does engineering

He likes her? He doesn't tell her, or worse lets her find out from the grapevine.

He loves his mom? He hides his habits till her heart is weak enough to explode, and then hits her with them.

He loves his dad? He's foolish enough to live HIS dreams and ruin both. (cos the cookie never crumbles like you want it to)

It works best in his career: Never likes his job, always complains, does it to provide an end to his means, and keeps busy enough that it all never means anything anyway.

I just love it. 80-hour take-my-heart and steal-my-wife job, here I come!

It would really be ok if he sees that its not gonna happen, abandons his delusions and just lives life as it comes. But the scars of childhood (hopes) never do wane I guess. Its sad only when he keeps talking about those dreams... until he can't anymore. About anything.

Today we are gathered here to pray for peace for our loved one who has gone into the heavens. He was many things to many people: brother, lawyer, gay faggot, lecher, shirker, swindler, priest, father, wife-beater, adulterer and a sinner we shall always love and remember. But as he heads to the pie in the sky, remember him for what he was best: a ball of snot! Amen.

But, anyway... why do people suck? The why is so complex.. and tiring as this snotty lowlife is... it'll have to be in another depressive post. (or so I think i hope)

100 Things, and one more

2005-01-04T18:25:00.000+01:00

Here is a weird collection from BBC:

Oh, and they forgot: Women, it is found, ARE complex.

BBC NEWS

100 things we didn't know this time last year

Each week the Magazine picks out snippets from the week's news - interesting newsbites that we learn along the way, and find their way into 10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week every Saturday. So at the end of the year, here is an almanac of those things we learned.

1. Street brawlers sometimes arm themselves with potato peelers, according to the Home Office, which wants to make them banned weapons.

2. Farmers plant their crops up to three weeks earlier than 15 years ago. In the 1960s, temperatures from January to March averaged 4.2C; it rose to 5.6C in the 1990s.

3. Brussels sprouts have three times as much vitamin C as oranges.

4. Crows apparently like the taste of windscreen-wiper blades.

5. 52% of households have five or more remote controls.

6. Dame Judi Dench sends 450 Christmas presents, according to her daughter.

7. The heat generated by a laptop, and the knees-together pose needed to balance it, can damage a man's fertility.

8. Brazilians are the nationality most likely to read spam.

9. Some pigeons follow roads and turn off at motorway junctions to navigate their way round.

10. Ten people die on the UK's roads every day.

11. The opening lines of the Communist Manifesto - "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism" - were initially translated as "A frightful hobgoblin stalks through Europe".

12. Ronald Reagan started planning his own funeral the year he entered the White House almost quarter of a century ago. He died in June.

13. Smoking killed nearly one million people worldwide in 2000, according to the World Health Organisation.

14. Marine biologists say altruistic behaviour is not uncommon in dolphins.

15. UK scientists have developed a clock which ticks 1,000,000 billion times a second. Technically that's a quadrillion.

16. Prince Charles and Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, were born on the same day.

17. Ian Hislop, scourge of the media powerful, now knows that his grandfather's middle name was Murdoch.

18. There are 75 withdrawals from cash machines every second in the UK.

19. The collective noun for rhinos is "crash".

20. Osama Bin Laden refers to 9/11 as "Manhattan".

21. The word "electricity" was first used in English in about 1600 by Elizabeth I's physician.

22. George W Bush got the highest number of votes for president of any candidate in US history, in November 2004.

23. John Kerry got the second highest number.

24. Germany has an 18-year-old MP - Julia Bonk, a member of the Saxony legislature. Her name is not funny in German.

25. Half of Britons have a collection of more than 20 carrier bags at home, according to a survey. One in 10 people has up to 80.
Full story

26. The full names of Scooby Doo's Mystery Inc members are: Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, Scooby "Scoobert" Doo. Shaggy is actually Norville Rogers.

27. So much for the overworked society, the average British employee actually works 75 minutes less a week than in 1997, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

28. The word "celeb" is not a recent invention - it was used in a letter to Woodrow Wilson in 1913. The word "sex", used to mean sexual intercourse, was first used in 1929.
Full story

29. The remains of thousands of mammoths have been found by fishermen in the North Sea.

30. The Sydney Harbour Bridge contains just 16 nuts and bolts. The rest is held together by rivets, because it doesn't need to be dismantled.

31. Herrings break wind to communicate and keep the school together.

32. Tory leader Michael Howard and wife Sandra watch a video of Brideshead Revisited every New Year.

33. Bob Dylan originally planned to use his first two given names, Robert Allen, as his stage name, because it sounded like the name of a Scottish king. After he saw some Dylan Thomas poems, he chose Dylan as his new surname instead.

34. Plastic surgery dates back to 600BC and the first nose job was in 1000AD.

35. George Bush and John Kerry shared the same debating coach while at Yale University. His name was Rollin Osterweis.

36. One in five British homes has a foot spa, although mostly they lie idle, among more than £3bn of "useless gadgets" to be found in UK homes, according to insurance firm Esure.

37. Although it's nearly 24 years since Jimmy Carter was US president, he still receives about 4,000 letters a month.

38. Yoda was based on Albert Einstein.

39. More Brits die each year falling from their hotel balcony than do in diving accidents, according to Foreign Office statistics.

40. There is a British Hat Council - it's the body which coined the phrase: "If you want to get ahead, get a hat." It reports that sales of hats to men have risen by 80% in the past year, and that £51m will be spent on headgear this year.

41. Twenty years ago , seven out of every 10 pints drunk in the UK were ale. Now, thanks to the rise of lager, stout and cider, the number is just three.

42. Running a car costs the average motorist £101 a week, according to the RAC.

43. In 1911, Pablo Picasso was one of the suspects arrested for the theft of the Mona Lisa.

44. Until 3 September 2004, the fastest bus in London was an old fashioned red double decker, registration number ALD 971B. Unlike other buses, according to reports, this one did not have a speed regulator and so could go above 30mph.

45. There is a world record for being able to squirt liquids out of a human eye. The existing record is 8.7 feet (2.65m), but a Turkish man claims to have broken the record with a 9.2 feet (2.8m) squirt.

46. Interesting historical footnote: Greg Dyke was on the Atkins diet at the time of the Hutton Report, he revealed in his autobiography.

47. A "jiffy" is 10 milliseconds in computer science terms.

48. Margaret Roberts (later Thatcher) helped invent the chemical process that produces Mr Whippy ice cream.

49. Guests at the Queen's coronation in 1953 pilfered toilet paper from Westminster Abbey. "It was found early on Coronation Day, that much of the lavatory paper had been removed, and in future it will be necessary to take steps to prevent this," official records released this year reveal.

50. A tribe living in a remote part of Brazil's Amazon rainforest has no words for numbers beyond two. The Piraha use "one" to mean one or roughly one, two means two, while any larger number is just "many".

51. The day after the atomic bomb exploded on Hiroshima, the banks re-opened. They had one customer, John Reader's book Cities recorded.

52. Up to 65% of children with a father in jail get imprisoned themselves, according to Home Office figures.

53. Phrase-turner extraordinaire Clive James says he originated the terms "underwhelmed" and "young fogey", but is yet to receive the recognition he deserves. He also says he's particularly proud of his description of the Conan the Barbarian-era Arnold Schwarzenegger as "a brown condom full of walnuts".

54. George Clooney listens to The Archers online, according to model Lisa Snowden who says she introduced him to it.

55. Having breaking news alerts delivered to your mobile phone may seem cutting edge, but the Daily Express pioneered the service back in 1914, offering personal war updates via telegram for a shilling each.

56. The Shining is the "perfect scary movie", according to researchers, who have come up with a scientific formula for such things. They identified the isolated setting, escalating music and chase scenes as some of the key elements in its success.

57. Gibraltar, which celebrated 300 years under British rule this year, was named Jebel Tarik - Tarik's mountain - by Moorish settlers in honour of their leader Tarik ibn Zeyad. The last syllable was lost over time.

58. Saddam Hussein's son Uday kept nine lions as the centrepiece of a bizarre menagerie of exotic animals. In July the lions were moved to Baghdad zoo.

59. Britons throw away enough rubbish every hour to fill the Royal Albert Hall.

60. The bookmakers William Hill loses 80,000 little pens a day - the sort used to fill out betting slips.

61. Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, has got solar panels fitted on the roof of his Cricklewood home.

62. The founder of the Natural History Museum, Sir Richard Owen, was the man we have to thank for the word "dinosaur", literally meaning "terrible lizard".

63. Just one in a hundred workers goes to the pub for their lunch, according to a study. The same proportion spend lunch having sex.

64. Chef Gordon Ramsay says he gets between three and five parking tickets on any working day.

65. "Square eyes" might be real - Australian researchers have found that children who spend a long time inside watching television or on computers become more susceptible to short-sightedness.

66. An American girl aged between three and 11 has, on average, 10 Barbie dolls in her toy box.

67. It's 30 years since the world's first barcode was used. It was on a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit at a supermarket in Ohio. The gum is now an exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC.

68. Bill Clinton revealed in his autobiography that he didn't learn to ride a bike properly until he was 22.

69. The theme music to Crimewatch UK, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in June, is called Rescue Helicopter - written by John Cameron.

70. And reports of UFOs have dwindled since the late 1990s. In the UK, sightings have gone from about 30 a week to almost zero; it's a trend echoed in the US and Norway.

71. Departing chancellors of the exchequer get to choose a cartoon caricature of themselves to hang on the staircase of 11 Downing Street. Not that the current occupant, Gordon Brown, is going anywhere just yet - this year he became Britain's longest-serving chancellor.

72. Desert locusts can travel 120 miles in 24 hours.

73. Ducks have regional accents. London ducks shout out a rough quack to be heard above the urban din; those in the West Country make a quieter, softer sound.

74. Lasagne has replaced chicken tikka massala as the favourite dish of Britons. Sainsbury's sold 13.9 million lasagne ready meals and just 7.4 million chicken tikka massalas last year. Tesco sold 9.8 million lasagnes and 6.3 million chicken tikka massalas.

75. Freak conditions above Everest can cause the sky to "fall in". An analysis of weather patterns in May 1996, by University of Toronto researchers, said eight people died when the stratosphere sank to the level of the summit.

76. More than one billion birds crash into buildings in the US every year. Mirrored office blocks are a particular hazard.

77. There are at least 17 Maxine Carrs in the UK, all of whom are ex-directory.

78. Defeated Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry says he once flew upside-down over Israel. It was, he says, the "perfect way" to see the Middle East.

79. Space is only 62 miles away. That's 100 kilometres.

80. Essex is the UK's book club capital, with more reading groups than any other county and spin-off events such as a walk-and-talk-about-books club.

81 . When people are in love, weird things happen. Men get more female hormones, and women get more male. Scientist Donatella Marazziti says it's as if nature wants to eliminate what can be different in men and women, perhaps to help the mating process.

82. Alan Smithee is a prolific director of film stinkers. His is the name directors use if a film is recut by the studio against their wishes. The alias was first used on the 1969 western, Death of a Gunfighter. Its origins are somewhat murky, but one theory goes that it is an anagram of "The Alias Men."

83. There's no mobile reception at the top of the Gherkin in London - it's too high up at 40 storeys. The phone companies hadn't expected a tower so tall, and it's above the reception area.

84. There are 1,049 offshore British islands. One of the late Norris McWhirter's great loves was visiting them all.

85. Poets die young... "On average, poets lived 62 years, playwrights 63 years, novelists 66 years and non-fiction writers lived 68 years," according to California State University's James Kaufman.

86. You can see the back of your own head in some parts of the universe as time and light are so curved. The universe is neither flat, nor football shaped - it looks like a flat-sided trumpet, German physicists believe.

87. One gigabyte of information - about a quarter of the memory of an iPod mini - is the equivalent of a pick-up truck load of paper.

88. In the past decade, four people in the UK have died in cemetery accidents, crushed by falling tombstones.

89. Continuing in this cheery vein, more than 1.2 million people die in traffic accidents worldwide each year. The first was Bridget Driscoll, knocked down by a car travelling at 12mph in London on 17 August 1896. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death, and warned: "This must never happen again."

90. A quarter of Australia's population was born outside the land Down Under.

91. Scientists have developed cress which changes from green to red when it comes near explosives - ideal for spotting landmines...

92. ...which is a good job as there are still about 100m undiscovered landmines in the world, just waiting to go off.

93. One in 12 of the country's workforce is a cleaner, according to the British Cleaning Council.

94. A cruise ship can put more than 130,000 litres of sewage into the sea each day.

95. There are a third more children at grammar schools now, under Labour, than there were 10 years ago under the Tories (150,750 now compared with 111,846 in 2003.)

96. One in four 16- and 17-year-old girls in the UK is on the contraceptive pill - more than ever before.

97. Matt Groening's father - the inspiration for Homer Simpson - has only complained once about his alter-ego's actions. It was an episode in which Homer badgered Marge into walking some considerable distance on a hot day to fetch him something.

98. Lord Baden Powell wanted a section on the dangers of "self abuse" in his Scouting for Boys. His original manuscript read: "A very large number of the lunatics in our asylums have made themselves ill by indulging in this vice although at one time they were sensible cheery boys like you."

99. Dom Perignon, the Benedictine monk, was originally employed by his abbey to get the bubbles out of the champagne, according to Gerard Liger-Belair's new book, Uncorked: the Science of Champagne.

100. Bill Clinton sent just two e-mails while he was president.

Heal the world

2005-01-04T18:09:00.001+01:00

With the Palestinian elections coming up (and without), a lot of downright stupid lame-assed stuff happens in the world, don't it Mr.DNA? Here is an excerpt from a newspaper article:

"Hi, I'm Richard Gere and I'm speaking for the entire world. We're with you during this election time. It's really important: Get out and vote," Gere said, according to a transcript of the announcement obtained by The Associated Press.

Gere ended the 80-second spot produced by the pro-peace group, "One Voice," with an appeal in Arabic: "Take part in the elections."

"I'm Richard Gere and I speak for the entire world." Were you even notified of this? Sheesh, what are they thinking? Next thing you know, they'll have little holograms of Julia Roberts on the ballot paper which will play the hotel-scene from Pretty Woman if you put the voting ink on it!

And in other related (?) news:

A zealous young courtier moved aside the chair as Britain's Queen Elizabeth II arose at Christmas dinner — then looked on in horror as she promptly sat down again, ending up on the floor.

Courtier Fraser Marlton-Thomas believed the queen wanted to fetch something from the buffet, but the 78-year-old monarch only wanted to reach for something or talk to someone further down the long table.

Instead of landing back on the chair, she "reseated" herself on the floor along with a couple of the royal corgis, who as usual were waiting for titbits, the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.

Its a wonderful world, alright.

Bury the hatchet, Darwin!

2005-01-04T17:49:00.000+01:00

Here is a real life incident in the wonderful province of West Virginia. (What will they come up with next?) The article sounds like the start of a bad joke: "A guy walks in to a home with a gun AND a hatchet..."

Read on. And discover the guy Darwin never saw coming!! (Bracketed italics mine)

Tuesday January 4, 2005
Police say man sang, wielded hatchet during robbery attempt

A Martinsburg man charged with breaking into a couple's home on New Year's Eve, holding them at gunpoint for more than an hour and making one of them play the piano (and it gets even better!)remains in jail awaiting a court appearance, according to court records.

Paul Kelvin Hardy, 40, of 46 Wilson St., was charged with armed robbery, nighttime burglary and wanton endangerment with a firearm.

Hardy - who police said accidentally shot himself in the leg, ending the ordeal (mine is just starting!) - was being held in Eastern Regional Jail on a $95,000 cash-only bail, according to records filed in Berkeley County Magistrate Court.

Martinsburg Police Department Sgt. John Sherman and Patrolman Michael St. Clair investigated. According to a two-page criminal complaint filed by St. Clair, a couple who lives at 665 Winchester Ave. was watching television at around 9 p.m. Friday when a man walked down their stairs carrying a gun in one hand and a hatchet in the other. (Really, this SHOULD be a joke!)

The man told the couple, Annie Laura Fogle and Everett Fogle, to lie on the floor and pointed the gun at them, records allege. Annie Fogle felt a gun pressed to the back of her head by the man, who told the couple not to look at him, records state.

After the man demanded money, Annie Fogle walked into a back room and gave the robber $540, police said.

The Fogles were ordered to sit on a couch. At that time, the robber used the hatchet to break a phone in their house, police said.

When the robber requested and was given a plastic bag, he filled it with guns he had taken from the couple's upstairs bedroom, police said. (looks like the firearm santa is riding high!)

The robber then made an unusual demand, police said.
"Mr. Hardy then asked Mr. Fogle who played the piano. Mr. Fogle stated he does. Mr. Hardy then told Ms. and Mr. Fogle to go into the room with the piano. Mr. Fogle then played two songs for Mr. Hardy and while Mr. Fogle was playing the piano, Mr. Hardy was singing along. (Now, the most interesting part is: WHAT songs did they play?)

"Once the songs were finished, Mr. Hardy asked Ms. Fogle if they wanted him to order any pizza, Ms. Fogle stated no," according to the criminal complaint. (Holy shit, are you even alive after all the laughter?)

Back in the living room, the robber began to tell the couple about the bullets in his gun, which he said were special because "they tear the insides up," police said.

Moments later, while "still playing with the gun," the robber shot himself once in the left leg, (And we're cursing fake television antics most of the time...) prompting the couple to call police at 10:32 p.m., police said.

When police arrived, Hardy was sitting on the couple's couch, leaning against Everett Fogle, police said. (What is this? The anti-stockholm syndrome?!!)

Police seized a Colt .45-caliber handgun that was on a couch cushion, a hatchet and $540 from Hardy's pocket, records state.

Police said Hardy entered the couple's home by breaking into a shed in their back yard and taking out a ladder. He leaned the ladder against the home's second-floor balcony, police said.

Conviction on a charge of armed robbery carries a sentence of a minimum of 10 years in prison; conviction on a charge of nighttime burglary carries a sentence of one to 15 years in prison; and conviction on a charge of wanton endangerment with a firearm carries a sentence of one to five years in prison.

Bullet Time

2005-01-04T17:34:00.001+01:00

... and from Handguns magazine is this comprehensive article on what ACTUALLY happens in a gunfight, as opposed to the celluloid-encrusted idea we have of exploding chests, bullet whizzes and gun slambacks!

Long, but informative; Thanks to David Spaulding.

Holy Cow and some regurgitation!

2005-01-03T13:11:00.000+01:00

I'm just done reading Sarah Macdonald's debut book "Holy Cow!" (thanks Sabine). Its amazing how wonderfully candid she is about all the drama and dharma she goes through in India. A australian who in her younger backpacking days vows never to return to this god-fucked land, falls in love with it as she returns to meet her love (the human kind fiance)! A beautiful journey of ideas, pathos, bullshit and doubt. A book I recommend, especially to people coming to India.

And as I read the last few tens of pages, my heart is crying. Not anything to do with the book... but its the only thing that gets me down now: my sad song list. With a good smothering of U2, Dire Straits and others... My heart has a good weep. Rare as it is... its my special wonderful torture for all the rest of the wise-assed hard-hearted times.

Its the only sadness I allow myself the pleasure of.

Burn them!

2004-12-17T23:41:00.000+01:00

I've really got to watch what I eat.

I need to lose weight before christmas so I can really pig out then.

Oh man, my butt is getting bigger than my heart.

Ooops, this means two more weeks of fat-burning.

What is it with women that they're always trying to lose weight!? Man, do you really think about what you eat? I mean that quite literaly - "Man".

Being in a campus where I frequently string out hair from my food, or separate the hairballs from the beetle-chunks, its best that I don't think about what I eat. However, on the outside I can still take it as big as it comes.

Two dominator pizzas?
With butterscotch for dessert please.

And yet, people all over the world (men included) are trying to lose weight. They try everything... from exercise to over-eating. (go figure out those stress-eaters if you want). On the other hand you have us careless junkies who can't put on weight if we were given a forklift and a detachable jaw. As the romans said, "wine and women"... I've often said, "Cheese and chocolates. Who needs women?" (Of course, cheese and wine is a different thing altogether...)

Something is wrong somewhere! I mean come on, on the scale of humanity most people are trying to lose weight. This clearly violates the law of conservation of godawful flab. And women seem to be the most blatant defaulters! They don't just exercise it off. No no no.. they think about it, look at it in the mirror, obsess about it, caress it, pinch it, scratch it, tease it, hide it, dance with it and bite it before sweating it off! (well ok.. maybe they bite it on their men.. but..)

Now of course, the recourse of rounding up them dang obsessive womenfolk by the hair and burning all blubbery bits of them is appealing no doubt. No doubt. But be as it may, man must spread his seed. And woman is as good a place as any other species no doubt. No doubt. But its just that its a comfortable idea. (Bestiality and the pscyho-andro-sexual interpretations of animals later) And the church sure has no problems with it since the gays turned up.

So maybe we just burn off just the fatty parts? Then again, I'm not sure we fancy a multitude of second-degree burn partners.
"Hey baby.. you look SO hot, you could burn! Oh wait, you already did?"
"looking for a fair, well-done or medium-crisp, was-blonde belgian woman. Dental records necessary."

Ok fine.. I concede.. sigh, we'll just have to be discriminating about it after all. Burn only the fat ones! And maybe the whiny ones if nobody notices. Damn, I knew it would come to this. They always bloody win! Now comes the killer question: "Am I fat?".

And you get all tongue-tied and mind-boggled trying to come up with even correct answers, and suddenly... YOU're the asshole who doesn't feel good about himself.
You're the punk who only digs chicks with the booty.
You're the scumbag who makes women a sex object.
You're the dickhead.
You suck. (And so they won't)

And its all because they want to be thin for us! Now, don't come to me saying women naturally adore a more exacting and healthy body image than men do! Just go check the subscription statistics to them body mags!

Oh vanity.. thou art such a double edged sword.

So until I come up with an effective and workable solution for this fundamental anamoly of over-stimulated blubber transferrance potential (whawassat?), we'll just have to put up with fat women. Of course, fat women are not the problem. (Atleast nothing to do with their fatness) They are only a tad uglier than fat men. But they bloody whine! And worse are the grade of them who are not fat enough to be ugly, but are going to push the line! Or so they think.

Sorry ol' chap, fat women will have to stay for now.

Oh goto hell, I need a double chocolate sunday with a ton on nutella on it before i sleep! It four already...

Good luck with the christmas crash Aniko!

Spread The Sin

2004-12-01T09:12:00.002+01:00

It has been more than a year since I have made a mark here.

And for some totally frustrating reason, the same seems to be true of the rest of my life. Its been such a downward spiral since 2003 and it has now come to this today. Here I return, wounded maimed and devastated... from my statistical physics exam. Of course, not that this is any culmination of my degeneration... life is too bitchy to give you the finality of climaxes.

It seems like the last time I ever engaged in any study, was before I got into college. The last 5 semesters in IITM have been in preparing for exams rather than any studies. I have slowly and severely become an inveterate bum! The lack of motivation is so weird... I don't know what I'm missing. (Right now its just sleep because of the mega-cram session that exams now bring)

There have of course, been some high points - my paid summer in Germany. That was a mini-ambition of mine: to get to Europe (or abroad) before I cross my teenage, and I was 19 when I accomplished it. So really in the nick of time. And that has actually only led to more distraction for it has shown clearly how much I love to travel. So now I spend a lot of bench-time voyaging in my dreams.

Also, I met Iris in Germany. She is thin yet well-endowed, with a real gleam in her eye. It was in this electronics store and I had been eyeing her for many days, and one day I finally got her to go out with me. We clicked right away, and have been clicking ever since. She's living with me currently and is my passion. It's a lot of fun with her - we go out together, travel about and like to see things. Sometimes, I really open her up and see into her... but she tires rather quickly and there's always the wonderful period of rest as she gets charged up again. Another distraction this...

Oh, by the way, Iris is a camera. :-) An Olympus c765 uz. We have put up some of our stuff on Morguefile.

Its my mom's birthday today and I just spoke to her. She is of course all courage and go-get-em, but I know that there's something missing. Or so I'd like to think. It has always been since that fateful 30th of december 2002 when I made her (not my mom) cry. And others too. Things have not been the same since... happiness not what it could be, and pain what it shouldn't be.

If it weren't for the all the irresponsible fun I am having, I'd say life's a bitch. :-) Go figure that out... I'm off to get some shut-eye.

This little confessional sure helps. Helps spread the sin, don't it?

Enter Stage Left. Blink at audience.

2003-08-28T06:37:00.000+01:00

Hmm.. So this is it, is it? Um... or perhaps "hello world" ought to be the first thing to pitter out on a maiden bloggage. Either way... I have arrived. (A very debatable point about where, from where, how and extemely so of WHY?) Watson, come along now, the GAME... is afoot.