In trying to use a new word processing program, such as Google Docs, it is typical to resist a new order of icons. Fingers follow muscle memory, and the mind, focused on the task of composing that perfect sentence, is loath to break off from the task at hand to figure out new ways to tinker with a new program.
But, with Google, there is always the allure of the new kid on the block – the one with all the lollipops, the one with all the surprises.
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2 minute read | 423 words
Reuters informs us that Malaysia is considering a ban on fast food ads… With Malaysia’s growing affluence, almost 40 per cent of its 26 million citizens are obese, up from 20 per cent a decade ago. No wonder.
In Britain Ofcom proposal to ban junk food adverts targeted at under-16s – expected to be enforced from the end of January 2007, and be phased in over 24 months – has obviously come under attack.
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1 minute read | 109 words
If you want to buy a kidney or any other organ just contact your local broker. A wired story reports “…a group of poverty-stricken women living in a tsunami refugee camp 7.5 miles north of Chennai confessed at a public meeting that they sold their kidneys through brokers.”
An unnamed member of the state-appointed ethics committee which must approve all transplants says that “…patients have no hope because in India, organ donation after death is extremely rare.
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1 minute read | 97 words
It’s six in the morning, we’re jet lagged, and sleepy in the sleepy little airport of Perth, on our way to Sydney from Delhi, via Singapore. The kids trundle to the cafeteria looking for fries, we’re after the coffee, and my brain is looking for a bed to tumble into. I feel like I’ve tumbled upside down to another time zone (which I have) and landed on my bum (which I haven’t).
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2 minute read | 361 words
Just one month after having successfully completed the Raid De Himalaya in is Honda CRV, that he so lovingly calls ‘Mogli’, Mukul had to summon the courage to drive himself to medical help while he was bleeding profusely – he lost eight bottles of blood, I believe. Why? Because two thugs attacked him at a crossing just as the light turned green. Not one to give in easily, Mukul fought back and sustained a knife injury – eight cm wound the attending doctor said.
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4 minute read | 669 words
“Farm suicides have also been on for several years in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere in India… Farm suicides have been on for a while in the cotton-growing West African nations too. As they have in many other parts of the world with farmers into other crops as well. (They occurred in the United States, too, during the Great Depression. And again, as corporate farming snuffed out small holder agriculture in the last quarter of the 20th century.
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2 minute read | 254 words
Many trips just don’t happen because we’re perennially counting our pennies. Even if we can cough up the airfare, the thought of hotel tariffs in countries like Italy, Greece, France, Australia is enough to deter me. Till I discovered the wonderful world of hostels, and alongside, the wonderful world of the Internet, which allows you to scour the whole wide world in search of the cheapest digs. So, you have www.
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1 minute read | 128 words
Finally, something I’ve known all along gets the expert stamp. Children belonging to families that eat together have a much lower chance of slipping into addictions and trouble. For proof check out Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse(which, incidentally has designated Sept 25 as Family Day).
Their research has found that children who have a regular family mealtime are less likely to smoke, drink, use illegal drugs, experiment with sex at a young age, and get into fights.
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3 minute read | 521 words
I’m surrounded by the cadences of Bangla in the wordy wonderful world of writer Amitava Ghosh. In the middle of a finally-arrived Delhi monsoon, I’ve emerged from the cyclonic chaos of the Sunderbans in The Hungry Tide, with names like Moyna and Rakhal humming along with places like Gorjontola and Morichhjhapi. It’s pouring outside my concrete home, but I am still sitting inside the thatched hut in Lalpukur in The Circle of Reason.
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2 minute read | 270 words
Pluto’s gone! In one day, the ring of planets stuck on the ceiling of my kids’ room has become outdated. I need to reach up and yank out little Pluto. What’s the big deal, you might ask? It’s just another lump of celestial stuff zipping in a higgledy piggledy path around the sun. One less, no big deal.
Well, to my kids it is. They can rattle off the nine planets from memory.
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1 minute read | 191 words
I like people, suspect technology. If I pick up the phone, I’d prefer talking to an inept operator than an efficient machine. Till a year ago, if I wanted a train ticket, I’d prefer wading through the mass of humanity straggling outside the booking counter than “outsourcing” the task to a travel agent. I’ve been accused of enjoying this particular form of torture. And it’s probably true. I mean, what can be so uplifting about standing around for two hours in a line of sweaty, irritable people all waiting for the booking clerk to get his act together?
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3 minute read | 440 words
How do films get rated nowadays? The new and “improved” Superman is just out and everyone is making a beeline to see it. Especially kids. All hell broke loose when my six-year-old daughter Damini discovered that my son Siddharth had gone off to see the film with a friend of his. More importantly, without her. He sauntered back and informed me that I would be crazy to take her for the film.
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2 minute read | 219 words
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