Desi Tamasha

The average American takes America's superpower status quite seriously. At the same time, she is uncomfortable with it. All this has been poll-tested+documented.

The Bush 43 team came in and tried to create fears of a Chinese takeover of the world. Then came 9/11 and they shifted their focus. In between, China's status changed remarkably in the US, and now the Chinese are regarded roughly the same way as the Japanese were in America in the '80s.

The smart, well-heeled American is so convinced the Chinese will take over the world, that he is paying 6-figure-salaries for nannies for his kid who are fluent in Mandarin.

In an article on Slate about lip-syncing on YouTube, for example, you see this random line:

The Two Chinese Boys' emergence as the best lip-syncers in the world may be the surest sign yet that we are passing the superpower torch.

In this article, the line is strictly tongue-in-cheek; but this meme is going to get stronger over time...
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I was doubting evolution a few hours ago and ready to throw my lot in with the loony creationist types. How, I wondered, can a little mutation here and a little mutation there result in something as complex as the human body. No freakin' way! Why wouldn't a good change here then be overturned in the next generation, especially if it's very very slight? But I was saved by Digg. This link via Digg shows how the eye may have evolved within half a million years from something simple into what it is right now. In that time frame, there would be tens or even hundreds of thousands of generations of organisms, and the statistics would favor good mutations.

Creationists - you don't have me yet.
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There's so much talk about cricketers being overloaded and there being 'too much cricket'. Just a load of crap. There isn't half as much top-level cricket as there is demand for it. It's time to really have a few more teams, especially from a country as big as India. India should be allowed to field multiple teams. Or Ranji Trophy will have to be televised and internationalized. Isn't that bleeding obvious to the folks who run ICC/BCCI?

The political process in the US is not really broken. So many individuals are donating, no wonder campaigns spend a lot of money!
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Akila tries to connect a Madanlal Khurana statement from a couple of days ago ("Bigger scandal than Sanjeev Joshi to be revealed in a few days.") to the Pramod Mahajan incident. Speculation is rife that either this whole drama (Pravin Mahajan shooting his brother point blank) was enacted to avoid scandal, or this incident had something to do with the 'scandal' Khurana was referring to.

The movie 'Lakshya' has a fairly good re-enactment of the Kargil War. The then-Indian Army Chief's writeup here.
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