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This is one SNACK which no one like but everyone MUST eat!

If you had a choice you may even refuse if given for free! But in a posh movie theatre the same snack is a must have! And you pay a bomb to get the same snack!

Another interesting fact is that these snacks are not a modern multiplex issue! They are one the oldest snacks ever!

Now now, do not get heated and POP! Yes! The POPCORN!

Do you know how old is pop corn as a food!? As old as the incas!

Apparently the Incas specifically had an incredibly sophisticated way of storing, tracking, and doling out the food their people grew.

Essentially, each family grew their own food – at the same time, they were part of a larger group called an ayllu!
The ayllu’s food products were then held in specially-ventilated food shacks – which were carefully organized and monitored.

Of the crops the Incas grew, they were many of the vegetables we’re familiar with today: beans, grain, potatoes, and cocoa.

And one of their most popular crops was maize, which was often made into cakes. However, on special occasions, the corn was popped! Popcorn are the best way to pass time!

Everytime it actually amazes me how no one actually LOVES popcorn but if it is a movie with friends and family; there is no snack which is better!

ANother thing which amazes me is that however big the box is; you will finish it for sure! Especially the last part which would have all the flavours!

As a snack, it is ICORNIC! Iconic also was Sachin da or Sachin Dev Burman!

So grab your corn and enjoy the night or sleep!

Shubh Ratri…

In the book of Human emotions and nature by Robert Greene he talks about Grandiose Humility!

Reading the description many (even me!) may relate! In this world what is seen is sold! In the era of reels and social media, there has to be a balance between some humilty and some grandeur!

Which is why you must know what that is!

So Grandiose humility is a paradoxical persona where an individual projects an exaggerated, theatrical display of modesty while secretly feeding an inflated sense of superiority and craving deep admiration!

There are several examples and instances of this!

One is the performative modesty! In which the person may publicly downplay achievements, possessions, or status in a way that feels calculated to draw praise!

Then you have the “Humblebrags” who casually drop massive accomplishments or high-status connections while pretending they are ordinary or a burden!

Then you have the Virtue Signaling folks who are involved in engaging in public acts of charity or self-sacrifice primarily to bask in the glow of one’s own virtuous image!

Now of course many would like to show off since the average human is constantly thirsty of praise and appreaciation! He or she like to be noticed or be aknowledged for the work they do and then some!

Then again at the end of it all; you are what you are! Some display is nice but let it not become Grandiose!

Of course the level of Grandiosity constantly happens when the price of the product is much more than its worth so to speak!

Like people having an unlimited Narcissistic Supply! True humility requires letting go of the ego, but grandiose humility uses modesty as a tool to harvest compliments and social validation!

It also protects the ego from criticism by adopting an untouchable, saint-like posture that cannot be questioned!

Finally the issue is always a matter of Internal Grandeur in which the person is deeply in love with their own perception of being more enlightened, humble, or selfless than everyone else!

In short; do post your achievements but do it in a controlled manner! Never borrow someone else’s achievements as your own and most importantly, be true to yourself first then Humility would be genuine and not Grandiose!

A person of true Humility was also Lal Bahadur Shastri ji!

Now have a GRAND sleep!

SHubh ratri!

So now you know how the weird fahrenheit scale was Invented and how the freezing point became 32!  

If not you can go through yesterday’s blog…

What is your degree!?

If you thought that Celcius was better, well you are right but then even there is a catch! 

Did you know that the boiling point of water according to the first Celsius scale was 0 degrees!?

The Celsius scale was invented in 1742 by Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, who originally designed an inverted scale with water’s boiling point at 0 degrees and its freezing point at 100 degrees!

Now Anders Celsius proposed a 100-degree interval (centigrade) between the freezing and boiling points of water!

But the scale was inverted! He set 0° as the boiling point of water and 100° as the freezing point!

This was because the layout avoided negative numbers during cold Swedish winters, as temperatures dropped below zero frequently but rarely exceeded boiling!

Celsius proved through rigorous experiments that water’s freezing point remained stable regardless of air pressure, while the boiling point changed based on barometric pressure!

In spite of this reason the scale was odd since the fact that a freezing point is more than the boiling point did not make sense so it was reversed!

So shortly after Celsius died in 1744, his colleague and successor, the famous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, flipped the scale 180 degrees!

This placed 0° at the freezing point of water and 100° at the boiling point, making it more intuitive for general heat measurement!

Now one more thing! We always called the grade Centigrade without knowing why! For two centuries, the measurement was known simply as the “centigrade” scale!  Centigrade means “consisting of 100 steps”!

Finally in 1948, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures officially renamed it the Celsius scale to honor Anders Celsius!

So now you know that before 1744; your water used to boil at 0 degrees! Ah! Those were the days!

Like the days of Parashakti and Karna! Starring Sivaji Ganesan!

Shub ratri!

In the novel ‘history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson’ he tickled my curiousity by telling about the Fahrenheit scale! He says he does not know why Fahrenheit chose such a crazy scale where freezing point is 32 and water boils at 212!

Of course we Indians use the SI unit and the celcius scale so we have no trouble since for us ice is zero and water boils at 100! Simple and practical!

But still it did make me wonder while driving on why 32 and 212! Luckily driving on the streets of Kuwait is a breeze so you can wonder while you drive!

Anyway the story is not so simple (like my blogs, they rarely are!)

Apparently Fahrenheit did not choose the numbers, the numbers chose him! Oldest story in the book!

So it was found that those exact numbers are a mathematical result of how he originally calibrated his scale and how later scientists adjusted it!


In fact like any sane person he did start with zero and almost hundred but the reference points were not the same!

Fahrenheit based his initial thermometer scale on two different reference points:

He set 0°F as the lowest temperature he could reliably reproduce in his laboratory using a cooling mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride (a type of salt)!

He set his second point at approximately the temperature of the human body (or inside a healthy person’s mouth).

For this he chose 96 because the number could be easily divided in half repeatedly (96→48→24→12→6→3), which made marking physical tick marks on glass thermometer tubes practical!

So the lowest point is zero and human body temp is 96! Which made the 32 and 212 happen!

When Fahrenheit placed his thermometer in pure ice and water, it consistently measured 32 degrees!

Then practically when he tested boiling water, it measured around 212 degrees!

Later of scientists wanted a cleaner, more standardized system!

They redefined the scale using water’s physical phase changes—fixing the freezing point of water cleanly at 32°F and the boiling point at 212°F.

This left an interval of exactly 180 degrees between freezing and boiling, which also slightly shifted the original body temperature measurement closer to what we know today as 98.6°F!

Again later comes Celsius with his more practical scale which we all use now! But even that has an interesting story! Now do not reach boling point  in Celsius or  Fahrenheit! You will learn about it some day!

That’s a big Golmaal! Which reminds me of our OG director Hrishi da aka Hrishikesh Mukherjee!

Now hope that either fahrenheit or celcius; the Earth does not heat up much and sleep!

Shub ratri!

The best thing about a visit or walk in the woods or close to nature are the birds!

I can make these nice bird calls using whistles!  The bird calls I used to hear early in the morning during our village visits or occasionally even in Bangalore used to be so nice!

I miss them so much! Morning does not feel like morning without them! Maybe which is why I am usually very groggy in the morning!

Then again anyone who sings very well especially a lady singer is called a nightingale! Which is surprising! Why you will find out soon enough!

The nightingale and its song is often quoted in literature and poetry as a metaphor for love, beauty and for poetry itself.

However these frequently refer to the singing nightingale as a female when it is actually the male that sings!

Of course the Male nightingales sing to serenade migrating females down as they fly over! 

In fact the first ever live radio broadcast of birdsong was of a nightingale in ‘concert’ with the cellist, Beatrice Harrison, on 19 May 1924 in Oxted, Surrey and it was so successful that Beatrice received 50,000 fan letters!

The nightingale of India was Lata Mangeshkar whose birth anniversary was the other day!

Birds sing from their chest using a special voice box called a syrinx, allowing some species to make two different pitches at the same time!

So then nature is amazing! Which is why Birds like the North American cowbird can move the left and right sides of their voice box independently to sing two tones at once!

You also have a huge range which depends on the species! 

So while a song sparrow knows about 10 songs, a brown thrasher can sing up to 2,000 different tunes!

The most famous bird as far as novels is concerned are the mockingbirds! They have been named aptly since they are Master mimics! An average Northern mockingbird can copy over 200 sounds, including frogs, car alarms, and other birds! Now that is a talent!

Then again it does not come naturally! True songbirds are not born knowing how to sing; they must listen to adults and practice just like humans learning a language!

For all the range and the emotions and the mimics, scientists have found that thousands of bird songs worldwide are built from just eight basic sound types like trills and whistles!

Just like our sapta swaras!

For now you can simply listen to the traffic noise and imagine birds singing! Or if your imaginaitons are limited you can watch a Yash Chopra movie!

Shubh ratri…

Do you know what is Pangaea? Or Panthalassa?

How about Vaalbara!?

It is a SUPER fact!

It is an old story!

Super old in fact!

Now if you are a little knowledgeable you may know Pangea!

Pangaea means “all earth” in ancient Greek!

It was a super continent!

Ages ago, all of Earth’s continents were connected into one giant supercontinent called Pangaea about 300 million years ago!

It was fully formed around 300 to 299 million years ago and began to break apart about 200 million years ago!

Now if the land or earth was one then even the ocean must be one!

This huge global ocean called Panthalassa surrounded this massive landmass.

Then slowly the heat from inside the Earth moved giant pieces of the crust (called tectonic plates). These plates slowly pulled apart, forming the separate continents we see today!

We know this because the edges of continents like South America and Africa look like puzzle pieces that fit together!

Also we do have matching fossils found several thousand Kms apart! Scientists find identical ancient plant and animal fossils on opposite sides of vast oceans, proving those lands were once joined!

Then again you also must know that Pangaea is just the most recent supercontinent. 

The fact is that Earth’s plates cycle and merge into a supercontinent every 300 to 500 million years!

There are in fact many Past Supercontinents!

One of them are the Vaalbara & Kenorland which were the Ancient supercontinents that formed billions of years ago in Earth’s early history. 

Then you have the Columbia or Nuna which was formed about 1.8 to 1.4 billion years ago!

Don’t worry only two more to go!

Rodinia and Pannotia, the former of which were Assembled around 1.1 billion years ago and later broke apart leading to an ice age while the latter formed roughly 650 million years ago before splitting up!

Then finally you get your Pangaea which is the most famous and recent supercontinent, which formed about 320 million years ago and later split into Laurasia and Gondwana!

So ages back you could have taken your car and driven all the way to the US from Bharat; stopping for some OIL and food breaks of course just like movie breaks!

Speaking of which reminds me of Petla “Puri” Jagannadh! Still feel his movie Pokkiri was an absolute entertainer!

Now before your brain thinks about continental drift; you can drift to sleep instead!

Shubh ratri!

This clever Businessman turned a normally occuring phenomenon into a habit loop!

What’s the first thing most people do when they get up!?

Let’s not talk about checking the phone for now!

But it’s usually brushing your teeth!

You know in 1900s, no one used to brush their teeth so routinely or daily! Lets not even talk about taking bath daily!

Most would simply take some water and rinse around and spit! Brushing was over! This is about the west of course!

We in EAST had our barks and twigs and well actually a better sense of hygiene!

But the modern habit of regular, daily teeth brushing was largely created by a legendary advertising campaign for Pepsodent toothpaste in the 1910s and 1920s!

In fact the fact of the matter is that before this campaign, oral hygiene was practically non-existent in the West!


In fact only about 7% of Americans even owned a tube of toothpaste!

Pepsodent’s massive marketing push single-handedly triggered a behavioral shift that skyrocketed that number to 65% within a decade!

This transformation is studied as one of history’s greatest examples of psychological habit-engineering!


In 1915, an executive from Pepsodent approached Claude C. Hopkins, a pioneer of modern advertising, to design a nationwide campaign for their new minty toothpaste.

He discovered reference to mucin plaques—the naturally occurring layer of protein and bacteria that forms on teeth.

Hopkins repackaged this scientific concept into a simple, dramatic buzzword: “The Film”.

Then he went on to engineer the “Habit Loop”

Hopkins built the Pepsodent campaign around what psychologists now call the “Habit Loop,” which relies on a distinct cue, a routine, and a reward.

Stage one of this is the CUE or the Trigger!
Ads instructed readers: “Run your tongue across your teeth. You’ll feel a film.” This gave people a universal, immediate physical trigger they could notice anytime!

Then add the routine! Brushing daily with Pepsodent Toothpaste to specifically clear away that film!

Finally the Reward! A beautiful, whiter, and radiating “Pepsodent Smile” that promised attractive social status.


All while it has been found that historically, the “film” on your teeth is a completely natural membrane that reappears even if you brush perfectly, and it can be wiped away by a finger or a quick water rinse!

But Hopkins successfully tied that everyday sensation directly to a craving for beauty and cleanlines!

So any habit once developed remains! So make sure you develop good ones! Like reading and writing blogs!

Or making someone laugh like Cheyur Krishna Rao Nageswaran aka Nagesh!

Another good habit is to sleep on time!

Shub ratri…

Audiobook of a very famous travel memoir!

It is a long haul! Over 5 hours or more of bill!

For the uninitiated the Appalachian Trail or the AT is the world’s longest hiking only trail!

And bill Bryson is  not so fit author who is not even a sportsman! Then you have his friend called KATZ (which I heard as cats!) who used to provide the comic relief! But Katz is even more non sports like than Bill!

Which is when the question always used to linger in my mind whether they would cover the same! It is of course a non fiction so there is no suspense there! They would hike and hike and fall and get lost and even nearly die so many times but unfortunately they do not cover the whole trail!

It actually takes a full hiker at least 6-7 months to even hike it in one go!

In between Bill gives the amazing history of the trail and of the various shelters and the interesting people he meet on the way!

He also mentions the bear attacks and the death toll telling us in each step that it is not a simple task!


The book details Bryson’s humorous and often grueling attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail (AT)—a footpath stretching over 2,100 miles across 14 U.S. states from Georgia to Maine!


After living in the United Kingdom for two decades, Bryson returned to the United States and settled in New Hampshire. Wanting to reconnect with the American wilderness, he impulsively decided to hike the trail despite being drastically out of shape and having virtually no backpacking experience!

To avoid tackling it alone, he recruited his estranged old friend Stephen Katz (a pseudonym for Matt Angerer). Katz proved to be a hilariously mismatched partner: overweight, a recovering alcoholic, and deeply averse to physical exertion. Their journey is marked by immediate comical ineptitude, heavy backpacks, freezing weather, and fear of bear attacks!

The best thing is when KATZ throws most of the content of his backpack since either they were heavy or not necessary! Including in the end, a water bottle!


Written in a laugh-out-loud, self-deprecating style, the book contrasts the grand romantic myth of the American wilderness with the harsh, grueling reality of blistered feet, bad trail food, and eccentric fellow hikers!

Interspersed between their misadventures are deeply researched, accessible chapters on the history of the trail, forest conservation, the impact of pollution, and the sociology of the backwood towns they pass through!

I loved the part where they meet an annoying know it all gal who constantly used to hike with them and tent with them but always cribbing! The way they got RID of her is so funny!

Then KATZ adventures with gals, beer and bear! In that order!

The best part of the novel though was the ending!


While they do not successfully complete the entire thru-hike, the narrative centers on their personal boundaries, their renewed friendship, and the realization of how precious yet threatened America’s remaining wilderness is!

In the end there is a incident which would wake you up and take notice! Katz is missing! I was on the edge of my seat while driving and I had to know what happened to him! Don’t worry this is non fiction so I will tell you that he is ok! But till the time Bill could locate him it was nerves and anxiety in big amount! When he finally finds him all broken and injured but still resting on a rock (typical KATZ!) we all sighed a big relief! Which is when after all these Bill goes to him and asks him, “Shall we go back home!” Which is what they did!

The most realistic ending of a hike travel diary! They had enough incidents to write a book or two but more importantly they have their life and health and they actually have no reason to be hiking along in the wild!

A beatiful walk indeed!

The Novel A Short history of nearly everything tells us a great deal about this office clerk!

Lets call him sam!

No fun in getting to the point so soon anyway!

So apparently Sam hated wearing socks and could not drive! He later on won a Nobel Prize in physics but actually could not drive a car!

He had some of the highest IQ scores in the world but could not even remember names, dates or even phone numbers!

He was so quirky and loved playing the violin so much so that he named his violin LINA and never forgot that name!

His theories and postulations are groundbreaking and even now difficult to understand but apparently he did not even learn to speak until he was four years old and reportedly repeated sentences to himself until he was seven!

Finally when he did not get any job anywhere even as a junior teacher since apparently he was not knowledgeable enough!

While working as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, he secretly developed his groundbreaking 1905 physics papers, calling the office his “worldly cloister”!

Sam did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, but rather for his work on the photoelectric effect! Though it was the former for which he is most famous!

You got who Sam is now I hope! Of course Einstein!

But (the return of the but!); the whole deal about him not being good in studies is actually a myth!

As a child and young student in Germany, Einstein consistently earned high marks and was at the top of his class in math and science. By age 15, he had already mastered calculus!

What did you do when you turned 15!? Drive a car!?

Then again the rumor that he failed school likely started because the grading system in Switzerland (where he later went to school) reversed its scale!

A top grade changed from a 6 to a 1, and people mistakenly thought his high marks were failing grades!

Now, when he was 16, he did fail the general entrance exam for the Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich.

However, he passed the math and physics portions easily. He failed the non-science sections, like botany, zoology, and languages, because he was two years younger than the other applicants. He returned a year later after studying those subjects and passed!

So he may be simple and ordinary in some aspects but he was actually brilliant with a T!

Also did you know that after his death in 1955, his brain was removed without his family’s initial permission by pathologist Dr. Thomas Harvey so scientists could study the physical anatomy behind his genius!

Also in 1952, he was offered the role of the second President of his home country, but he politely declined, stating he lacked the natural aptitude and experience for dealing with people!

So what did you learn!? Do not wear socks and do not drive a car may win you a NOBEL!? I hope not!

Of course some legends are natural! Like Madhavan Nair aka Madhu!

Shub ratri…

His contribution to astronomy is astronomical!

In fact the only reason why he did not get a Nobel prize is that Astronomy was not part of physics and at the time there was no prize for astronomy!

In fact the telescope named after him has made so many contributions to the study of space!

Edwin’s contribution was immense!

In the early 1920s, humanity believed the Milky Way was the entire universe. Edwin dismantled this idea through two monumental breakthroughs!

The first was to prove the Existence of Other Galaxies! This he did By observing Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda “nebula,” Edwin proved it was actually a distinct galaxy sitting hundreds of thousands of light-years outside our own. This established the field of extragalactic astronomy!

Then he discovered the Expansion of the Universe! In 1929, he formulated a law named after him! By observing that the light from distant galaxies shifts toward the red end of the spectrum (redshift), he proved that galaxies are moving away from us and that the universe is actively expanding. This provided the foundational observational proof for the Big Bang theory!

He created the “Tuning Fork” system to classify galaxies based on their shapes (elliptical, spiral, barred spiral)!

In spite of all this he did not get the Nobel because of a technicality!

Then again some legends do not need a prize to make them legendary!

Did you get the scientist’s name? You would have anwyay heard the name of his telescope or the scope named after him! Frankly that is the only telescope many would even know by name!

His full name was Edwin Powell Hubble!

Yes!

The very Hubble after whom the Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble)  is named after!

The legend who could not get a Nobel though he deserved at least two! Another legend was Soorya Krishnamoorthy who promoted art and artists!

He will be missed…

Shub ratri…