Category: Uncategorized

What is the connection between Van Halen and M&M’s? This band used to ask for M&M’s in their dressing room with all brown ones removed! Crazy! Well, it was actually brilliant!

Then again you may first ask who or what is Van Halen!

Now I am sure everyone has heard the song Beat it by MJ! The guitar riff in the middle which is actually the best part of the song is by Eddie Van Halen

Shortly after its release, “Beat It” was included in the National Highway Safety Commission’s anti-drunk driving campaign, “Drinking and Driving Can Kill a Friendship”.

Also the album Thriller is actually highest selling album ever! Even now the record has not been broken and it will not be broken too soon since no one buys music albums anymore! Then again you do not get such great music albums anymore!

Michael Jackson’s Thriller, estimated to have sold 70 million copies worldwide, is the best-selling album ever! Jackson also currently has the highest number of albums on the list with five, Celine Dion has four, while the Beatles, Madonna, Whitney Houston and Pink Floyd each have three!

See the amount of side track!? Now we were with Van Halen and M&M’s!

Now Eddie and his brother drummer Alex Van Halen officially launched the  Van Halen band which consisted of Eddie Van Halen, his brother, lead vocalist David Lee Roth (will come to him later since he made the M&M demand!) and bassist Michael Anthony.

They had one of the most amazing success stories as far as the live shows and performances were concerned!

In fact Eddie is known for his Guitar intro called the eruption which is one of the best Guitar intro ever!

BUT! Let us not digress again! The blog is about M&M’s!

The show’s lead singer had a very specific request for the organisers when they used to arrange for the show! This whole incident has been described in The checklist Manifesto by Atul.

Now David Lee Roth’s notorious insistence that Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters contain a clause specifying that a bowl of M&M’s has to be provided backstage, but with every single brown candy removed, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation to the band!

And at least once, Van Halen followed through, peremptorily canceling a show in Colorado when Roth found some brown M&M’s in his dressing room. This turned out to be, however, not another example of the insane demands of power-mad celebrities but an ingenious ruse!

As Roth explained in his memoir, Crazy from the Heat, “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets.
We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors-whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.

The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function!

So just as a little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider, would be article 126, the no-brown-M&M’s clause!

So if the band member walks backstage and saw a brown M&M in that bowl then he would line-check the entire production!

There would be a high chance that there will be a technical error!
The mistakes for not following the whole protocol could be life-threatening!

In Colorado, the band found the local promoters had failed to read the weight requirements and the staging would have fallen through the arena floor!

The whole Idea was to make sure that the organisers have seriously gone through the list of technical specifications given to them and they have been taken seriously since a single misfire would have been catastrophic!
And like always, the non brown M&M’s saved the day!

Of course all this goes to show that even great rock legends and planners follow a checklist! Of course sometimes life does not follow a list; it is sudden like the passing away of the talented director and actor Manoj Kumar Bharathiraja…

he will be missed…

OM SHanthi…
SHUbh Ratri…

I know I bore you all with my blogs and sketches but am really happy with these two! Hope you like them too!

Story time!

We love symmetry! In fact nature is full of symmetry! In fact even in medical science as well as in nature, any asymmetry is feared!

This is really surprising because not everything has symmetry! In fact your own body is not symmetrical! You cannot divide an average human or for that matter most animals in two and expect each part to be symmetrical!

Even in primary section we have learnt that since most people are right handed, even the measure of their biceps would reveal that the right is a little bigger and possibly stronger than the left! Of course it is the opposite for a left handed person!

But for specific areas we do look for symmetry! This is when there are similar organs or central organs! Like even in the average scan we look for symmetry before anything else! In the nose and sinuses we look out for symmetry and it is the same for the ear and even the brain! These have to be similar or must have symmetry! When there is a difference then there is usually an issue!

Which is why asymmetry is actually good! It is like the pain! No one likes pain and usually you are pain free, but when you do have pain it shows that something is wrong and needs to be investigated!

Thinking of asymmetry reminds me of this clinical rounds story during our medicine posting.

There was a patient with recurrent infection sitting and minding his business but the exams were near and any patient is dear to the average final year student!

One of my seniors had remarked that he is an interesting case without mentioning what was interesting! So we all armed with our stethoscope and couple of us with the Indian ones while some had the Littman rushed towards him!

If he was not well, I am sure he would have just jumped and ran away! We were sure that he had a heart murmur! So we started with the site for the most easiest to find; Pansystolic murmur! Couple of guys ‘found’ it and we all wanted to hear it! When I placed my Indian steth all I could hear was a very faint muffled heart beat! Forget murmur! But when everyone heard it, the best option was to nod along which I did!

Our senior PG then came and saw us proudly exclaim the ‘finding’ to him! Couple of ‘guys’ and ‘gals’ even heard some rarest of the rare murmur which we simple blokes could not hear!

The PG simply said, “That’s great! You guys are better than me! I could not hear any!” With that he simply took out his steth and placed it on the right of the chest and not the left! We knew he was a very intelligent bloke! In fact he had got AIR rank and he selected our college! But to see him place the steth on the right to get a heartbeat which even a junior would know is usually on the left was shocking!

We thought maybe the stress of the PG had got him!

Then he proudly said, you can hear the heart beat here! Which we did eventually and this time it was not muffled or had any murmur!

The PG then announced that the interesting thing was that he is a case of Dextrocardia! Dextrocardia is a rare congenital condition where the heart is positioned on the right side of the chest, with its apex pointing rightward!

He was right and the heartbeat was on the right! The look which the patient gave was not very symmetrical! In fact even before the examination he had told us where to place the steth but we ‘knowledgeable’ final year students did not listen to a ‘patient’!

What would he know!?

Well, this time we could not even say, “At least his heart was in the right place!” since his “Heart was in the RIGHT place!”

Rightly places with great directors also is Quentin Jerome Tarantino!

Confirm that your heart beats a little to the left and sleep!

SHubh Ratri!

The Checklist Manifesto is an interesting book by Mr (dr) Atul Gawande. It is surprising that many surgeons like to be called by their names while physicians always prefer Dr!

That Dr Atul is a general surgeon specialising in Endocrine Cancers surgeries is something you get to know only after a couple of chapters!

On top of that, in spite of the seriously medical input in the first couple of chapters, the book is actually about increasing efficacy in your professional world!

In the introduction he tells how the age of specialisation has grown so much that one fine day you would have a doctor who has specialised in the RIGHT ear while another one in the LEFT! You can imagine the same with the eyes!

For now the average Otologist is specialised in both the ears so you are safe!
But this craze for specialisation is well, crazy!

There were times when we feel like having a coffee outside, all we need is to ask for either sugar less or normal! By the way in Bengaluru, sugar less does not mean without sugar! But with less sugar! If you do not want sugar you have to say; no sugar!

But now when I was with some friends going to the coffee shop for a well, coffee! There is nothing like just coffee! With so many choices, I never get what I want which is of course just coffee!

This complex specialisation brings about the very big problem of selection! Atul then tells about this great air competition with Boeing and the US army! One of the airplane was so complex that the pilot just could not handle it and crashed!

This is when the mandatory checklist system was introduced! You must remember that human brain though an amazing creation with amazing power is still mortal! If it has to process too many things then it gets very difficult! The solution is to have a checklist! Now you have this standard checklist before any flight which is why aviation has become so safe!  Everything starts with a simple thing which makes a big change!

Like a simple man with clear thought and true nationalism would rise to become a great freedom fighter in spite of being just a young lad less than 25 years while old blokes were making talks!

Celebrating the Shaheed diwas by remembering Shaheed Bhagat Singh…

Jai hind…

Think of detective and Sherlock and maybe Poirot come into your mind! But having read most stories of sherlock and Poirot; I have a special bias to Byomkesh dada! Of course it is because his stories are relatable for an Indian since they occur in the by lanes of India!

Unlike Sherlock or Poirot; Byomkesh was not quirky and was not exceptional! He was like the Batman of Superheroes! Mere mortal in every sense which made him more closer to the audience and readers!

One of the best stories (there are many!) is in which he meets a person in a function who happens to be a police official (If my memory serves right but that is not important!); the officer then proceeds to tell a surprising story in which they could not find the suspect who had apparently disappeared! The twist was that with a twinkle in his eye Byomkesh tells the official that “I know who is the culprit!”  The official is taken aback when he and we the audience realise that it was the official who was the culprit all along who either overestimated his own intelligence or underestimated Byomkesh! In hindi the story is called Anjaan Khooni!

Then again Byomkesh is a mortal in every sense!

In fact, like every other mortal Byomkesh gets old, gets married and has a kid! He even gets a small plot of land in Kolkata and makes a small house there like a middle class Indian!

Of course I never liked the fact that he smoked! But his love for tea was tolerable! Which again makes him a mortal!

Byomkesh never like the name detective or investigator but he called himself the seeker of truth! The original novels were written in Bengali though you can get the translated ones! Or you can watch the famous DD serial starring Rajat as Byomkesh!

So when Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay created his Satyanveshi or the seeker of truth Byomkesh Bakshi, he never thought that the character will become so famous!

In fact just like return of Sherlock Holmes after Reichenbach Falls, after a hiatus of four years he started writing Byomkesh stories again! His last story of Byomkesh was unfortunately not complete.

In an interesting twist he had predicted that  Satyabati (Byomkesh’s wife) would never own a car! In the last story she was waiting for a taxi and finally Byomkesh compromised and thought of getting a second hand car! The story was not completed since Sharadindu passed away suddenly without writing the end which is the best part of his stories! Satyabati though never got that car just like how Sharadindu predicted!

In the crowd of Sherlock and Poirot, do not forget Byomkesh! Like we do remember Sunita but let us not forget Butch Wilmore also! Here’s to Butch! Welcome home!

SHubh Ratri!

Sometimes knowledge is a tricky thing! Too many options spoil the choice! It is like when you have time during weekend and then you decide to watch a movie with the family! 

Now if it was the once a week movie in DD; you simply had no choice! All work would be done and you will promptly sit in front of the TV and watch the movie in between the ads and maybe even the news!

Now you do not have ads and the time is yours and you have a thousand movie to choose! But still you have difficulty in selecting what to see! You have more than one option but still may not be hundred percent sure which is the best!

Welcome to the state of Epistemic Ambivalence!

First you must know what is Ambivalence!

So Ambivalence  is the emotional state often arises in complex relationships, where an individual’s feelings are influenced by conflicting behaviors or traits of the other person. For example, you might like your friend but also feel frustration due to his or her annoying habits! You also respect and love your parents but know that they are not perfect since neither are you!

Epistemic Ambivalence is almost the opposite idea of what ambivalence means because to be epistemic means you know, you are sure! 

Epistemic ambivalence is when you may know the truth of a situation but cannot say which truth it is, because there is more than one option!

Confused!? Well, imagine a situation and then imagine more than one option. Or imagine a parallel universe where more than one option exists at the same time though in this universe only one of the options is true!

Epistemic Ambivalence creates a delicate interplay between uncertainty and confidence, distinguishing it from epistemic uncertainty that typically diminishes with new information. 

It’s like Schrodinger’s cat analogy where you can have both options!

Doctors face this many times since they have the option of treating a condition in more ways than one and depending on the situation every option may be different but still valid and may work! Then again you may never know which is right or wrong till you do it! Of course that is experience! In medical practice that is one of the most important factor! 

Then again Epistemic Ambivalence may just be another fancy term to confuse us all the way to space! Anyway that talk about space and you know our stranded Astronauts who had a plan of maybe some days, ended up for months so far away uncertain of the future! 

For them and in fact majority of people in the world, life needs to be simple! A routine which is a dream for many and not some fancy sounding word!

Wishing Sunita Williams and  Butch Wilmore a comfortable night’s sleep with gravity on a cozy bed on Earth!

Oh yeah! You already have that don’t you!?

shubh ratri!

Life leson time!

Next time if you are preparing to make an important decision in your life and you are troubled whether it is right or wrong then you must drink a lot of water, make the ac super cool and wait for the bladder to fill up!

Apparently you make great decision on a full bladder! Full mind, well that it not very important!

This theory which got an Ignoble award was put forward by Mirjam Tuk!

Mirjam Tuk is from the faculty of behavioural sciences at the University of Twente, Netherlands. She and her colleagues won an Ig Nobel prize in medicine for their research into the effects of controlling your bladder on your ability to control decisions in other areas. The Ig Nobels, in their 21st year, are awarded for improbable research that “first makes people laugh and then makes them think”!

Of course it is intended to be taken in proper spirit or in this case, water!

But there is research into bladder and decision making which can actually make sense and maybe get a Noble next time!

Tuk came up with the idea after drinking several cups of coffee in an attempt to stay alert during a long lecture about biological factors that have a detrimental impact on self-control.

This made her and her team to experiment on her hypothesis!

One such experiment involved asking participants either to drink five cups of water or take small sips from five cups. Forty minutes later, the average amount of time it takes water to reach the bladder, participants were asked to make eight choices that would affect whether they received a small reward immediately or a large award later on!

The researchers also found that simply thinking about urination had the same effect in similar experiments.

Does that mean we should wait until our bladders are full before deciding whether to buy that house or car, invest in a certain stock or make a marriage proposal?

Well; take a drink of water and find out!
Now of course if the decision is to be the James Gordon in Gotham then Gary Leonard Oldman is definitely a choice made in a full…ahem brain!

Now don’t try that before you sleep! Don’t drink and sleep!

Shubh ratri!

Some dress materials like the Silk and the Suits are costly! But they are actually more costly to maintain!

This is of `course because they have to be dry cleaned!

Also it was invented because of a clumsy maid!

Now everyone knows that in dry cleaning garments are placed in a large dry-cleaning machine, which uses a solvent that removes dirt and oils. While normal washing uses water to flush out dirt, the dry cleaning solvent cleans without saturating the fabric with water!

Giving clothes for laundry is such a rich thing to do! So those days it was reserved only for the clothes which were actually rich! Since they would always be returned ironed and cleaned it was like getting a new dress again!

Specially our dhoti or suits or sometimes even some high priced shirt! If you are too lazy to clean and iron and take care while throwing it in the washing machine, the best alternative is to send it for dry cleaning!

Now of course it is a mighty industry and dry cleaning is only a small part of it! They are now the stain removal experts! They of course survive on bedsheets and carpets! The history though like most history is really interesting and not at all dry!

The history of dry cleaning is associated with Jean Baptiste Jolly who worked in the clothing industry as a textile maker in France which is supposed to be the origin of dry cleaning!

The French Federation of Dyeing and Cleaning gives an account of a servant in the household of Jean-Baptiste Jolly in Paris in 1825 who spilled the contents of a lamp on a soiled tablecloth.

When the tablecloth dried, the spots had disappeared!

The liquid in the lamp was probably camphene, produced from pinene, which is the main ingredient of turpentine. Camphene was initially used as a spotting agent, but it was later used for complete cleaning by hand.

Use of volatile organic liquids to clean cloths became known as ‘French cleaning’ in Scotland and ‘chemical cleaning’ in Germany!
Eventually, such processes were called ‘dry cleaning’ because they do not involve the use of water!

A dirty cloth, a clumsy maid and broken lamp with an astute observer created a very successful modern industry of dry cleaning! A great voice and some training with real talent can create success like Alka Yagnik!

Listen to some songs by her and think about which dress to give for dry cleaning soon!

Shubh ratri!

You say the same thing in your native language and then someone else comes and speaks in English with an accent then more often than not, he or she will get all the attention!

Thats quomodo sit! No, that was not a spelling mistake!

But read on to realise that though now English gets a high enough respect, at one time it was considered to be crude and barbaric!

So now Impromptu means spontaneous or without preparation, Quid pro Quo means “of equal exchange or substitution.” Literally, it means “something for something”

Per se is In itself, intrinsically, of an inherent nature while A Priori is Based on hypothesis or theory, rather than experience. Derived by logic, with no observed facts!

Ad hoc mean for one specific case, many times can be replace by “specific”.
Bona Fide indicates Unquestionable or in good faith while Pro Rata is Proportionally, in equal parts and Ergo means Therefore, consequently.

Finally Audio literally means I hear while Video means I see!
Also the Thats quomodo sit above means ‘That is how it is!’

What’s great about these words is that they are all latin in origin!
Yes! What you actually pronounce is the literal meaning in Latin!

In fact one of the most derived languages in the world in English and Latin is the source for more than two thirds of the words in English!

For every word rooted in a “barbarian” tongue like Anglo-Saxon, there is a word from the Latin for the same thing. So writers can choose between the Old English “face” or the Latin “visage”; “hear” or “auditory”; “touch” or “sense.”!

Latin is often referred to as a Mother Tongue because so many modern languages descend from her. These include French, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, and many others. These are called “Romantic” languages because they descend directly from the “Roman” tongue, Latin!

But English is not a Romantic language. It is a West Germanic language that developed far away from Rome.

And yet, over 60% of English words are Latin-based. These tend to be the longer and fancier words, so the more syllables you add, the higher the percentage.

In the 15th century, English had produced no great poets, philosophers, or playwrights.

But they were seen as the exception that prove the rule: English was a lowly, crude, and “barbaric” language with little literary or artistic value!

Any great minds or artists to come out of England at this time preferred to write in Latin. They thought English was inadequate for lofty ideas or artistic expression! Now of course the whole thing is changed!

That is history! Language and customs and civilizations which were actually top notch or most developed even before many had started making clothes unfortunately get no respect while the ‘remixed’ language and neo cultures get the craze!

Then again, gold may get old but it will always glitter while the Aluminium will fade eventually!
Old comedy reminds me of the old movies of Goundamani! Now I have never been his fan since his usual bit used to be a combination of body shaming and just abuse! Then again after watching some stand up nowadays with only curses and expletives; I guess he was much better!

Guess Thats quomodo sit! Or that is how it is!

Now bonum noctis! Or shubh ratri in Latin!

The stereotypical scientist is usually the one with the white coat who is clumsy and awkward!

He or she may not be very steady in spite of not having a drink of alcohol!

Butterfingers is his or her middle name!

But a keen curious scientific mind will compensate! A butterfinger scientist’s clumsiness is now responsible for one of the greatest inventions in glass!

Actually even Butterfingers has an interesting story!

A butterfingers is someone with a clumsy tendency to drop things they’re holding. Being a butterfingers is considered a particularly bad trait in baseball, for obvious reasons. The common use of this term by sportscasters in the 1920s inspired the name for the newly-invented candy known as Butterfinger!

One such butterfingers was Edward!


One fateful day in 1903, scientist Edward Benedictus was working in his lab when he accidentally knocked over a flask.

However, when Benedictus looked down, he noticed that rather than breaking into a million little pieces, the glassware had actually just cracked slightly while maintaining its shape!

Further investigation made him realize that a film had formed on the inside of the vessel! The vessel had contained an alcohol solution of collodion, a plastic made by treating cotton with a mixture of sulfuric and nitric acids!

When the solvent evaporated, a film of plastic was left on the inside of the glass. An interesting observation but Benedictus thought no more of it until he read a story about a young girl being cut by glass in one of the first automobile accidents. He then spent the night trying to make a coating on glass and within a day had produced the first sheet of “safety glass” which he named “triplex” since it consisted of a sandwich of two sheets of glass with a film of cellulose nitrate in-between!

Even if the glass broke, the pieces were held in place by the plastic layer!

In 1909, Benedictus applied for a patent and triplex went into production. The first practical use turned out to be in the face shields of WW I gas masks, but by the 1920s triplex became a standard item in American automobiles!

One problem was that the cellulose nitrate yellowed with age. In 1933, triplex was replaced by cellulose acetate, which was not quite as strong but did not yellow. The synthetic resin, poly(vinyl butyral) eventually was found to be superior and has now been the standard in windshields since 1939.

And it all began when a chemist couldn’t hold on to a flask because of his butterfingers! And then we got the safety glass which is a class apart! A big class apart and very much loved by one and all was also Puneeth Rajkumar
aka Appu! He will not be forgotten for sure…

OM shanthi…

Shubh ratri!

Do you know what is Overview effect!?

Well, it is profound! Just as the astronauts who were stranded in ISS for nine months are coming back soon; they all would have faced this effect looking at the Earth from above!

The feeling that our planet is just a simple fragile speck in the whole Universe!

That is called the Overview effect!

The overview effect is a cognitive shift reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth from space.

Researchers have characterized the effect as “a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus”.

The most prominent common aspects of personally experiencing the Earth from space are appreciation and perception of beauty, unexpected and even overwhelming emotion, and an increased sense of connection to other people and the Earth as a whole!

The effect can cause changes in the observer’s self concept and value system, and can be transformative.

Of course you do not have to spend nine months in the ISS to get these effect! If you face a life changing experience then you would start to realise that fact life is so fragile that you must enjoy and take care of it as much as possible! You must appreciate the small things in life which are actually the best!

For many people, a regular office job with a steady salary and more or less steady health is Utopia!

The effect on astronauts seems to take hold of astronauts regardless of culture or nation of origin and it has been observed that cultural differences, including differences in religious and social identity, affect the ways in which the effect is experienced and interpreted.

Author Frank White, who in the 1980s coined the term overview effect after interviewing many astronauts, said that the overview effect is “beyond words”, requiring experience to understand, even likening it in this regard to Zen Buddhism!

He said that astronauts’ very first views of the planet were generally very significant, adding that some experience the effect “in a moment” while in others it grows over time; and generally that the effect “does accumulate”.

Of course not all astronauts experience the overview effect.
This is true for professional astronauts, who are focused on their missions—versus people who have recently been going into space “with an intention to have an experience” and who may already be aware of the overview effect. Also it depends on the time of stay which can have a profound effect on the feeling of the finite nature of life!

Of course many state that it may actually a mental disorder stating that the effect embodies a natural imperative for humans to pursue space travel and colonization! In fact there is a concern that a perception of having achieved a new level of enlightenment can cause a feeling of ‘divine experience’ which can actually lead to what some call the “overlord effect” akin to some spiritual guru having a divine transformation!

Then again, it is better to not over analyse things too much and just be happy that they are coming back! Just remember that seeing our home against the blackness of space is a profound experience that leads to a greater appreciation for Earth and its apparent fragility, and a deep connection to humanity as a whole!

And this is a feeling for anyone who has been away from his or her family for a long time! For them simply spending time with their family is pure bliss! Bliss is also listening to music and for some listening to poetry! Which reminds me of the legendary
Devanahalli Venkataramanaiah Gundappa, popularly known as DVG! Celebrate his birth anniversary by reading couple of his great works and you will feel bliss and sleep well!

Shubh ratri!