Que Sera Sera

This video of the famous song [from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956)] by Doris Day presents a stylized version, but we get some more details in this 8-minute clip from the movie, and it is far more moving. Here it is:

A blog post by my colleague, Prof. Arunan, took me on a joy ride of sorts into the world of this song which has some seriously great cover versions. Here's Pink Martini:

And, here's another, from Marcus Miller:

There's an interesting Indian angle here: the tune of this song was used in a Tamil movie in a song whose lyrics start with a similar storyline ("I asked my mother, "what will I be? will I be pretty? will I be rich""). However, (and as Arunan points out), the song proceeds to present an unambiguously optimistic view ("yes, dear, everything will be great"), which runs so completely against the iffy message ("que sera sera, the future is not ours to see...") packaged in a nice, rousing tune.

The last stop (for now) is the Telugu version [hat tip to Madras Musings] which features the legendary Bhanumathy singing the original lyrics in a strange fusion of ... well, I'll let you figure it out:

How do you say, "I don't know" in Discipline X

Performance poet and writer Hannah Chutzpah asked on Twitter:

What are the technical terms, in your field, for 'dunno'? In medicine there's 'ideopathic' [corrected the original, incorrect spelling] In archeology/anthropology there's 'ritual purposes' How do you professionally term 'we haven't got a clue'?

And the answers are a veritable riot!

As they say on Twitter, Thread.

And Fun.

Picture and a Thousand Words

This, from PhD Comics, is a gem.

That's all.

"Removing Morons from the Productive Flow"

This profile of Scott Adams, the genius who created the Dilbert comics, has its focus elsewhere (his rationalizations of the rise and rise of Donald Trump during the US Presidential primaries and election), but somewhere in the middle is this gem (in bold, below) [If you are wondering why it stuck a chord, you haven't seen this ... (;-)]:

Adams’s Dilbert empire has been growing for three decades. When he launched the strip in the late ’80s, long-running staples such as Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, and Blondie seemed saccharine and dated. Adams’s creation was fresh, starring a sardonic software engineer named Dilbert; his conceited and grandiose dog, Dogbert; an incompetent boss; and a host of odd co-workers. Early installments showed Dilbert at home. When Adams refocused the strip on the workplace, it caught fire among a generation of office drones who spent their days staring at spreadsheets and slide decks. While workers had long tacked comics like The Far Side and Cathy to their felt cubicle walls, to say something about themselves and their brand of humor, here was a subversive comic about cubicle culture itself. During the ’90s, amid waves of corporate downsizing and the tech boom, a zeitgeisty Dilbert graced the covers of Newsweek, Time, and Fortune. Adams churned out Dilbert-themed calendars, knickknacks, and even a TV show. He also penned op-eds and business tomes, including The Dilbert Principle, based on the theory that companies tend to promote their least competent employees to middle management, “removing morons from the productive flow.”

* * *

Update: Wikipedia has an entry on the Dilbert Principle, in case you are interested.

QoTD

I am not a fan [of flag burning]. I agree that the American flag should not be disrespected. It's a sacred symbol that should be honored, whether it be on paper plates, or napkins, or banana hammocks.
-- Stephen Colbert [The Late Show (30 November 2016); the clip is also embedded below -- the relevant part starts at the 7th minute.]

"Trump Begins: The Dawn of the Donald"

Turbulent events demand an origin story. To make sense of "Just What Happened?"

Here's one from the land of Stephen Colbert [Update (24 November 2016): It looks like the embed doesn't work, but this link works, at least for now: The Dawn of the Donald].

Laura Benanti, the Awesome

In these grim times, there's nothing better as a cheerer upper than Laura Benanti's impersonation of Melania Trump. Here are the three "Late Night with Stephen Colbert" shows she has appeared in so far:

Are kids natural scientists?

SMBC has an answer that you really ought to check out!

The New Yorker on the Deutche Bank's 10 Billion Dollar Scandal

As always, we go the extra mile to get you the juiciest of excerpts from the actual story:

Although the bank’s headquarters remained in Germany, power migrated from conservative Frankfurt to London, the investment-banking hub where the most lavish profits were generated. The assimilation of different banking cultures was not always successful. In the nineties, when hundreds of Americans went to work for Deutsche Bank in London, German managers had to place a sign in the entrance hall spelling out “Deutsche” phonetically, because many Americans called their employer “Douche Bank.”

[Bold emphasis added, in case any nanopolitan reader needed a confirmation].

An Illustrated History of Free Speech in India

From Gandhi to Arindam Chaudhuri is the title of this illustrated history. Absolutely great stuff from the Free Speech Journal, appearing at Scroll.in.

QoTD

The three purposes of the University?--To provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.
-- Clark Kerr, Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley (1952-57)

Source: Wikipedia, Quote Investigator.

The Married Kama Sutra

Simon Rich and Farley Katz describe some of the positions from this yet-to-be-written classic.

Interest in adultery as a metric for ranking universities

It turns out that Ashley Madison [Slogan: "Life is short. Have an affair."] had over 74,000 members who used official university e-mail addresses. Who knew?

Inside Higher Ed has done the next thing we all think of -- ranking universities on this metric! In case you are wondering, here are the top two: Michigan State and Penn State; all but one in the top ten are public universities or community colleges.

Life Imitates Onion - Part Deux: Area People Search for Google CEO's Chennai Origins

The farcical search for Venky Ramakrishnan's origins in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, is playing out all over again. This time, the search is for the Chennai origins of Google's newly minted CEO Sundar Pichai.

Exhibit A: Chennai digs for Pichai’s past:

The search for his Chennai connections began soon after news of his new role at Google was announced. Schools, alumni associations and the media came together to track down Mr. Pichai’s roots in the city.

Mr. Pichai was born and brought up in Chennai, but left the city after he completed his class XII in 1989.

At his alma mater, Jawahar Vidyalaya (JV) in Ashok Nagar, the phone has been ringing non-stop since Tuesday morning. “Only when the media alerted us to the news did we start looking through our records. He studied here from 1979 to 1987, and then switched schools,” Alice Jeevan, school Principal said. While the school was able to locate his transfer certificate, they have not yet found his other school records.

“Had he been a naughty child, we would have remembered him,” she said. Mr. Pichai was a quiet student and, though he studied well, was not the school topper.

One of his schoolmates, now in Kolkata, recalls being in the same class with Mr. Pichai, but says they were not good friends. “The only thing I remember is that he and Shankar Subramanian used to compete for the highest marks in science.” She did not wish to be identified.

Vanavani, where he is believed to have attended Classes XI and XII, has been unable to locate his records yet.

Exhibit B: Editing spree on Wikipedia for Sundar Pichai:

The day broke in India with the Wikipedia entry mentioning “done his schooling in Vanavani and Jawahar Vidyalaya, Chennai.” [...]

But then began the edits to the Wikipedia entry on Pichai and, in a sense, all hell broke loose.

Subsequently, various permutations and combinations involving three schools — Vanavani, PSBB and Jawahar Vidyalaya — were the flavour of the day. Other notable mentions were GRT Mahalakshmi Vidyalaya and All Angels Matriculation Higher Secondary School. While the first three were at least in the running, the others were probably long shots for publicity by enthusiastic alumni, taking advantage of the open editing format of Wikipedia.

Visa Hardball

At the lunch table the other day, the Visa Venkateswara   posts came up for discussion, and it occurred to us that, given her name, Goddess Visalakshi should be able to beat every Hindu deity hollow in this very popular and lucrative game. She is certainly losing out!

The materials-engineer-turned-journalist Sidin Vadukut has a funny post (funny only if you have not been hit by a stray ball in the game of visa hardball) -- Borderline Personality: Put Your Game Face On, Passport Control -- on India's e-visa scheme. Its funny-ness comes from his advocacy of strict reciprocity in dealing with travelers from different countries. For example:

USA: When visitors arrive at an Indian airport, immediately ask them to furnish the passport officer with passport photos that are no more than one hour old. Provide photo booths in the airport where visitors can take pictures at a nominal fee of ₹15,000 per photograph. When they have submitted seven copies of the photograph, allow them into the country after confiscating their footwear.

In any case, the reciprocity-in-the-visa-game is turning into a source of pain for Indians traveling to the US, and vice versa. While this has been happening on and off for quite sometime (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, with the earliest occurrence in this blog being from way back in February of 2006), the flare-ups make it to the press when the affected parties occupy positions far higher that that of a grad student or a professor. The latest celebrity to be denied a US visa is the Director General of CSIR!

Here's the The Economic Times report -- Indo-US ties: Denial of visas to scientists thorn in the flesh -- by Pallava Bagla who points out that India has been quite good at dishing out pain to the American academics who want to travel to India. The following excerpt is about the troubles of Dr. M.O. Garg, DG-CSIR:

This week, India's leading petroleum researcher Dr M O Garg, Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi went livid on what he called was a 'denial of granting a US visa' for him to attend a scientific meeting in Columbus, Ohio. Garg heads India's largest network of 38 civilian labs employing over 4000 scientists with an annually budget of about Rs 3800 crore.

On June 1, Garg recounts that he spent almost half a day filling out screen after screen of questions to apply for his US visa which he calls was like writing down 'my janam-patri or life history', a day later in usual fashion he was finger printed and photographed. On June 3, he was asked to appear for the 'visa interview' which he did at 8.30 am and he recalls that 'questions for which the consular official already had answers' were popped to him which he says he patiently answered.

Then it seems his troubles began when he was asked to appear for another face-to-face interview at new window where he was now given a piece of paper with several questions and a 'tracking number'. Garg says having procured several US visas in the past this now meant to him that he was being 'singled out'.

The Rolls Royce of Chalk - Part Deux

Gizmodo has a cute story -- Why Mathematicians Are Hoarding This Special Type of Japanese Chalk. Apparently, the firm that made these chalks is no more.

I posted a link to a post at the Williams College blog on the legend of Hagomoro chalks (this post is also fondly quoted in the Gizmodo story):

3. So what is the best chalk out there?

I have wrestled with this question and spent a bit of time pursing this over my sabbatical last year. There have been rumors about a dream chalk, a chalk so powerful that mathematics practically writes itself; a chalk so amazing that no incorrect proof can be written using this chalk. I can finally say, after months of pursuit, that such a chalk indeed exists. It is called the Hagoromo Fulltouch Chalk.

For those lucky few who have used it, it can truly be called the Michael Jordan of chalk, the Rolls Royce of chalk. [Bold emphasis added]

Visa Venkateswara: Part Deux

BBC has a pictorial story on temples whose gods specialize in visas. Chilkur Balaji temple is one of the two shrines covered there; the other is a gurdwara in the Punjab village of Talhan.

The essay features a priceless picture of toy airplanes offered by the devotees at Talhan; this alone is worth a click on that link!

* * *

'Part Deux' is because this is the second time that this phenomenon appears in this blog. The first time was 9 years ago!

Now that India is through to the World Cup quarterfinals ...

... against Bangladesh, the "minnow" that sent England packing, here's a fake interview of MCC Chairman. Much fun there, including a magical appearance of Moore's Last Sigh.

The interview appears in Paaji vs. Punter, a cricket blog with a keen eye on not just the game, but also on some of the controversial and fun stuff around the game; a previous post, for example, featured another fake interview with Virat Kohli.

I think it's just a matter of time before someone like Lalit Modi makes his appearance there ...

Links: Pi Day Edition

1. V. Vinay's tweet-essay on Pi is a must-read! Story of Pi.

2. Manil Suri's op-ed in NYTimes: Don’t Expect Math to Make Sense. "On Pi Day, Celebrate Math’s Enigmas."

The Not Entirely Unintended Consequences of the Erasmus Program

Ah, the possibilities of student exchange [This is six months late, but I'm struck by the timelessness of this "news"]:

A study published by the European Commission this week suggests that more than a quarter of those who take part in its long-running Erasmus scheme meet their long-term partner while studying abroad – and that more than one million babies may have been produced as a result. [...]

European Commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen said the one million babies statistic was a “touching little figure” that proved the scheme “creates a lot of positive things”. “It is a great encouragement to young people to go and live abroad and open up to all the opportunities that exist if you are willing,” she added.

And, oh, the report has a lot more about how great the Erasmus program has been.