DISQUS

You and I must have the same relative who sends out those emails. Wait, ....

Don't worry - you'll find that your sanity returns as J&G appear to lose theirs :-) At which point you'll start questioning who is and isn't sane...

Yahoo's image search, on the other hand, yields a single result, which is a picture of you. There is hope for Y! yet.

Sell GOOG, buy YHOO, and bring me back overwater.

Shri - Agreed that ultimately, as with anything, you can't go by broad generalisations and you have to look at each specific case.

Radha - I'm not sure all parents really want what's best for their kid. There are many out there who pay lip service to that notion, but in actual fact appear to want what's best for themselves. Not that anyone can really judge this from outside, of course.

I guess my contention is that, having chosen to have a kid (by whatever means), if you then take responsibility for that kid, and put their needs first, then you're probably doing the right thing in general. That will obviously mean different things for different kids.

Now that I have a 1 year old, I'm terrified about having her go to school in this country based on what I see.

Frankly I think a lot of the problem is that parents don't want to bother parenting. We all have our own "rights" and therefore don't feel that we have any obligation to parent our children. Note that by parenting, I don't mean turning into an over-protective helicopter parent - I mean helping prepare our child over 18 years for the real world. If you don't want to do that, get a puppy!

I see schools assigning amounts of homework that I never thought possible when I was a kid, but I don't see the kids getting any great benefit from it. Path of least resistance to get them to keep quiet for a while, I suppose. Worse yet, I see parents "doing" the homework for their kids, to make sure their kid stays at the top of the pack. Some life preparation that is.

If parents just focused on teaching their children how to deal with life, hard knocks and good times and all, and helping their children to learn how to learn (sorry for the cliche), I wager a lot of these concerns would disappear.

As for starting kindergarten early or late - I'm a big believer in keeping kids with their age group. I am so glad that I never skipped years of school when the opportunity came up. I'm generalising of course, but socially it has a phenomenal effect on a kid who is 12 being stuck in a class full of 14/15 year olds. And I think the opposite is true as well.

Bottom line - if as a parent you're actually prepared to commit to your kid, you can challenge them, stretch them and prepare them without having to buck the system and hold them back or accelerate them in school. A school worth it's salt will facilitate that too, though I say that knowing little about public schools in this country.

I'll stop - I could rant for days on parenting, schooling, the dreaded Kumon, and how we bring up our children in general.

Wait, and Indian and other fans don't do this? I've watched plenty of cricket around the world, and what you describe is certainly not unique to English fans. Never heard an Indian fan call Shoaib a cheat?

Somebody uses foul language, somebody else hurls insults, somebody else hurls bricks, and yet someone else wastes a fully roasted chicken on Pat Symcox. To each their own. Some think questioning a batsman's parentage is fine, but you should appeal politely. Others think you should keep your mouth shut, but it's okay to appeal three times in succession, at increasing volume, for the same incident.

As for the specific incident, what Dilhara did was within the laws of cricket. So was Bodyline, and many other things that are frowned upon.

I'm sure the anthropologists have looked at this somewhere. One man's meat and all that.

I don't know. I've seen the ad a few times now, and compared to some of Nike's football (soccer) ads, this seems pretty standard fare to me. Definitely a leap forward for a cricket ad though.

As for the world cup, the opening ceremony was pathetic (are they ever much good though?), so I hope that's not a sign of things to come.

I hate it when things put my life in perspective - it's so much easier to feel sorry for oneself!!

Seriously though, not to be overly cynical, but most people are parasites. It works, because by and large we all find ways to engage in (beneficial) symbiotic relationships. True friendship (which is not to be equated with unconditional or blind support, in my book) isn't that trivial to come by - cherish it if you find it, I say.

Kung Hei Faat Choi!
Lai See Dou Loi!

In my world, the guys had to do Home Ec classes - two years of needlework, and two years of cooking -- this was in Form 1/2, so Year 7/8. I'm proud to have aced them both as well - my Duncan Fearnley cricket bat cushion was a particular highlight. Woodwork, Metalwork, Plastics - everyone did it all.

Political Correctness taken too far. We can choose to see racism in everything, if we desire to do so. Sadly, many of us do. Especially here in the bay area. Sometimes we need to learn to just take things for what they are, instead of trying our darndest to read between the lines when no concealed meaning was intended.

Someday the world will learn that two entities can be equal without being identical. Until then, we move inexorably along a path towards a planet populated by thirty-something, gender-neutral grey-coloured beings, as I opined back when Pluto was chucked out of the interplanetary alliance - http://4thumpire.blogspot.com/2006/08/equality-...

Or maybe the ads are intended to reflect reality. Sad to say, but if there's one country in which I've seen and heard expressions of hostility towards those of darker complexion, it's India. It was a well-travelled gentleman in Chennai who once matter-of-factly explained to me that Melbourne was the greatest city in the world, "because there are no black people there."

All I'll say is that I lived the birth and gestation of Panama, and I left Yahoo in 2005.

Might be the first Apple product that is not ludicrously overhyped. Well, it is, but maybe not by as much as most others.

Cingular rocks by the way. I swear by them. Occasionally at them, but mostly by them.

Of course, I can't view the demo on the apple site, because it crashes both Firefox and IE. Might be the quicktime plug-in that's the problem - who makes that again? :-)

The big problem with Indian cricket is that it's fans are usually high on hallucinogens. India has never had a truly great team, and has never been the best team in the world. Yet the considered expectation is that they will beat all-comers, and it is therefore no surprise when hopes are dashed on a regular basis. We have a truly great cricketer in Rahul Dravid - let's just enjoy and appreciate that. The team is middle-tier, and the sooner we realise that the happier we will all be as fans. I don't for a moment condone embracing mediocrity, but a dose of reality is always helpful on the road to future success.

As for the Rediff analysis, it's for pyjama cricket - who cares?

Fascinating. No silver bullets here I don't think, but even if it's highly debatable that any of this can be quantified, it's great to have an analytical approach to the problem. One more data point on which to base my choices.

P.S. I guess this blog is how I'll keep track of you guys!