The Alpha, Beta, and World Cuppa of cricket

Cricket came to America through their colonial cousins - the Brits, much before it arrived in India.
Americans were hitting fours and sixes long before they were hitting home runs.

Historic references to cricket in the US include games in Georgia in 1737 and Baltimore in 1754, the same year Benjamin Franklin brought a printed copy of cricket rules home to the Colonies - almost 100 years before the first book of baseball rules was published.

The first ever international cricket match involved not the Brits and Aussies, but -hold your breath here - Americans and Canadians.

Founded in 1854, the Philadelphia Cricket Club god-fathered the American Lawn Tennis Association in 1881 and even hosted the National Women's Tennis Championship till 1921 when it was moved to New York.

In fact, the game was so popular in the region that the city of Seattle, fearing their residents were being 'Canadianised', issued an ordinance in 1923 explicitly forbidding: "the playing of cricket in Seattle parks without the express permission of the City Council."

http://www.timescrest.com/sports/the-alpha-beta-and-world-cuppa-of-cricket-5109

" We never had husbands to worry us to death"

In 1917, the two sisters made their way to New York City. 

Bessie had planned to become a doctor but ultimately decided to go to dental school.

 She graduated from Columbia University in 1923 and became the second black woman to work as a dentist in New York.

Known as "Dr. Bessie, Harlem's colored woman dentist," Dr. Delany socialized with Cab Calloway, W. E. B. Du Bois and the doyennes of the Harlem Renaissance. 

She treated many of Harlem's poor, and in 27 years of practice never raised her rates. 
It was $2 for a cleaning and $5 for a silver filling, from 1923 until the day she retired, in 1950.

...'Having our say: the Delany sisters first hundred years'



 

Topic for a PhD / Pune University

"A critical study of consumer preference on ice-cream consumption pattern in Pune city, with specific reference to Amul"

                                                   -- a recent awardee of a Ph D by the University of Pune

- daily Sakal

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible.
A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace.

Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century.
At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle Creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation.

During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labor government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands: the words used in American documents.
At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WucOPZLQYoA
***
As a student of journalism in 1973-74 in Pune, I had written the editorial of the 'daily' issue our class had brought out.
Must look for the saved copy in my nostalgia papers.
The topic of my choice?
Diego Garcia.

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Jobs gives examples from his own life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd_ptbiPoXM

Marathi classified

मग आत्ता ही जाहिरात कशासाठी ?

Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

 If you're hot and thirsty after a 20-minute run in summer heat, it's easy to guzzle that 130 calories Gatorade bottle in 20 seconds, in which case the caloric expenditure and the caloric intake are probably a wash.
From a weight-loss perspective, you would have been better off sitting on the sofa knitting.

There's some confusion about whether it is exercise — sweaty, exhausting, hunger-producing bursts of activity done exclusively to benefit our health — that leads to all these benefits or something far simpler: regularly moving during our waking hours. We all need to move more.

Very frequent, low-level physical activity — the kind humans did for tens of thousands of years before the leaf blower was invented — may actually work better for us than the occasional bouts of exercise you get as a gym rat.
 

You cannot sit still all day long and then have 30 minutes of exercise without producing stress on the muscles,  The muscles will ache, and you may not want to move after. It would be better to distribute the movements throughout the day.

In short, it's what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight. You should exercise to improve your health, but be warned: fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html

Penn: America's First University

"Penn does not claim to be America's first college, but it is America's first University.
In the Anglo-American model, a college, by definition, is a faculty whose subject specialization is in a single academic field. This is usually arts and sciences (often referred to as "liberal arts"), but may also be one of the professions: law, medicine, theology, etc.
A university, by contrast, is the co-existence, under a single institutional umbrella, of more than one faculty.

Penn founded the first medical school in America.In that year, therefore, Penn became "America's first university."
If you wish to take the position that "first university" means first institution of higher learning with the name "university," Penn also qualifies as first.
In 1779, the Pennsylvania state legislature conferred a new corporate charter upon the College of Philadelphia, renaming it the "University of the State of Pennsylvania" (in 1791 still another new charter granted Penn its current name).
No other American institution of higher learning was named "University" before Penn. So whether you take the "de facto" position (1765) or the "de jure" position (1779), Penn is indeed "America's first university." [8]

—Mark Frazier Lloyd, director of the University of Pennsylvania's archives [9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_university_in_the_United_States 

Teaching to the Text Message

“Come up with two lines of copy to sell something you’re wearing now on eBay.”

 For another project, I asked them to describe the essence of the chalkboard in one or two sentences. 

 A lot can be said with a little — the mundane and the extraordinary.

And short isn’t necessarily a shortcut. When you have only a sentence or two, there’s nowhere to hide.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/opinion/20selsberg.html?src=me&ref=general

A Place Where Indians - Now New Jerseyans -Thrive

Oak Tree Road, which runs through this sprawling town of 100,000 people and into neighboring Woodbridge Township, may be America’s liveliest Little India, with 400 Indian businesses that attract Indian immigrants from across the region. 

But the impact is more than just commercial. Indians make up from 20 to 25 percent of the population, and they have spearheaded the transformation of Edison — an overwhelmingly blue-collar and middle-class white community a generation ago — into a town with a decidedly Asian flavor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/27indianj.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

जोशी गुरुजी

‘लोळवा त्या राणीला..’ हा उद्गार ऐकताच सगळ्यांनी चमकून आवाजाच्या दिशेनं पाहिलं.
एका मुंजीकरिता सगळी मंडळी जमली होती.
मुंज लागल्यानंतर जेवणाच्या पंगतीला वेळ होता. त्यामुळे ब्रीजची बैठक जमली होती. त्या मुंजीचं पौराहित्य करणाऱ्या गुरुजींच्या तोंडून तो राणीला लोळविण्याचा हुकूम सुटला होता.
http://www.loksatta.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=130940:2011-01-21-07-03-39&catid=305:2010-12-30-21-48-16&Itemid=307 

एका अवलियाचा अस्त

पेपर विकणारे हे बाबूराव थेट हिटलरला भेटले असतील, उलटी पर्वती असंख्य वेळा चालले असतील, वयाची नव्वदी ओलांडल्यावरही नव्वद जिलब्या रिचवू शकत असतील, यावर कुणाचा विश्वास बसणंच शक्य नव्हतं. पण, शतकाचे साक्षी असलेले अनेकजण त्यांच्या दुकानीच भेटत. अर्तक्यवाटाव्या, अशा अफाट गोष्टी करणारा हा अवलिया परवा वयाच्या १०३ व्या वषीर् मरण पावला.

http://maharashtratimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-6938194,prtpage-1.cms

Mother Madness

Unless you've been living on another planet, you know that we have endured an orgy of motherphilia for at least the last two decades.

Movie stars proudly display their baby bumps, and the shiny magazines at the checkout counter never tire of describing the joys of celebrity parenthood.

Bearing and rearing children has come to be seen as life's greatest good. Never mind that there are now enough abandoned children on the planet to make breeding unnecessary.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704462704575590603553674296.html?KEYWORDS=erica+jong

I could care less: A loathed phrase turns 50

Fifty years ago, this month, a reader wanted Ann Landers to settle a dispute with his girlfriend: “You know that common expression: ‘I couldn’t care less,’ ” he wrote. “Well, she says it’s ‘I COULD care less.’ ”
Ann voted with her reader — “the expression as I understand it is ‘I couldn’t care less’ ” — but she thought the question was trivial.
“To be honest,” she concluded, “this is a waste of valuable newspaper space and I couldn’t care less.”

She couldn’t have known it at the time, but her reader’s trivial question would be wasting newspaper space (and bandwidth, too) for decades, as it blossomed into one of the great language peeves of our time.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/10/24/i_could_care_less/?camp=obinsite

Bollywood music videos raise literacy in rural India

Nine years ago, India’s national television network decided to introduce karaoke-style subtitles to these programs — not in a foreign language, but in Hindi, the language the stars were singing in.
People in Khodi, and in the rest of the state, saw the captions as an opportunity to sing along with the songs.
They began paying attention to the moving strip of lyrics at the bottom of the screen.
Often, they would copy the words on paper, going back to them after the show was over.
And as they did, the reading level in Khodi slowly improved.

According to Hema Jadvani, a researcher who has been studying the effects of the subtitles on Khodi, newspaper reading in the village has gone up by more than 50 percent in the last decade.
Her research also shows that the village’s women, who can now read bus schedules themselves, are more mobile, and more children are opting to stay in school.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/09/19/watch_and_learn/

An Early Run for Riches

Joseph Hudicka needs to make about $999,500 more before he can claim the title of young millionaire, but he's still light-years ahead of his peers in terms of entrepreneurial success.

At the age of 8, Joseph has already joined the ranks of the tech elite: He has developed two applications for the iPhone. 

Pretty good for a kid who doesn't even own a mobile phone.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217245

Bolivian President

"I passed the ball, and suddenly I got hit, and not for the first time."
---- Evo Morales, Bolivian president, justifying himself after he was caught on camera kicking an opponent in the groin during a friendly match to inaugurate a renovated stadium in La Paz.

Time, October 18, 2010

10.10.10

I am in US and it's 101010 today!

What confidence!

The first Millionnaire winner...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeqPJojGqxc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Bitter truth about honey in India

Indian companies sell honey contaminated with antibiotics within the country whereas export cleaner product, a new study has found.
Chronic exposure to antibiotics can cause antibiotic resistance and lead to blood related disorders, World Health Organisation has said, leading to its ban in food products in Europe and the US.

The Centre for Science and Environment, an NGO, has found different types of antibiotics, commonly used to check bacterial infection, in 12 brands of honey sold through counter including a brand each from Australia and Switzerland, where antibiotics in honey is banned. In all, these brands account for over 95 per cent of honey market in India.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/newdelhi/Bitter-truth-about-honey/Article1-600675.aspx