World’s Hottest Curry

My friend Geetha forwarded this article about the world’s hottest curry prepared by an Indian chef in a London restaurant.

The lamb curry named Bolly Burner, measures 855,000 on the Scoville scale - over 100 times hotter than the jalapeno pepper. He was inspired by the Andhra cuisine and uses Naga peppers and seeds.

From the article:

Before ordering the curry diners are required to sign a disclaimer saying they are aware of the nature and risks involved with tasting the curry before eating it.

This curry may not be on the menu everyday though.

… he said the Bollywood Burner may not regularly appear on the menu: “I would create it on demand for customers but will not include it all the time. I think it’s just too extreme a dish.”

The Bollywood Burner is being submitted to the Guinness World Records for verification of its status as the world’s hottest curry. The results should be announced in two to three weeks.

Read more here.

Genius Award: Grapevine High School, Texas

Grapevine High School in Grapevine, Texas proved that it was one of the stupidest schools in the country when it denied an overachiever her due last month because of a carelessly formed rule.

16-year old Anjali Datta topped her senior class out of 471 students and graduated with a GPA of 5.898, believed to be the HIGHEST in the history of the school. She graduated in 3 years instead of 4 (because she is very smart).

And what did her school do? Like a true rule-checking brainless robot, denied her valedictorian, which would have given her one year’s scholarship in college. The school’s reason was that according to their policy, “The valedictorian shall be the eligible student with the highest weighted grade-point average for four years of high school.”

Since Anjali graduated in less than four years, the school decided she was not eligible for valedictorian, even though she had the highest ever GPA of 5.898. Instead, they decided to give it to the second highest student 18-year old Tyler Scott Franklin who finished with a GPA of 5.64.

As if to put a band-aid on this, Grapevine High School created an on-the-fly award, “Valedictorian – Three-Year” just for Anjali Datta. How come they were able to add new awards when they were apparently not able to rectify a stupid law that discourages smart and brilliant students? Whatever happened to the America that rewarded intelligent people and overachievers?

From the article here,

“We’re doing what we can to extend an additional honor within accordance of school board policy,” said Megan Overman, a district spokeswoman. “I’m not going to say that this has been an easy situation. This is something that is new for all of us. We’ve not faced this situation before.”

Ms. Overman said the district researched the decision for months.

“There was a lot of thought involved in this. There is no perfect answer,” she said.

Maybe you should hire people who have the capacity to think, especially when a student’s future is involved, Ms. Overman. I don’t believe you put in even 5 minutes of thought in this. You said the district researched the decision for months. You showed your intellectual colours when you and the district came with this decision. Maybe there is no perfect answer, but you are a perfect idiot.

Read the email sent to Anjali’s parents. Typical “Hey, you’re great, blah blah blah…. but you don’t deserve it” mail.

Anjali and her family are obviously upset. From the article:

Anjali says she and her parents are baffled.

“I have not heard of any educational institution penalizing a student for excellence – for completing a demanding set of classes ‘too quickly,’ ” said her father, Deepak Datta. “Anjali’s experience will surely send a strong negative signal to other talented students trying to excel.

“They will most certainly be discouraged from trying to do their best – instead will be more focused on gaming the system.”

State officials say it is the local school district’s responsibility to determine the highest ranking student, and the state has no authority to get involved. At graduation June 7, Anjali will be honored for her perfect ACT score. She will be acknowledged as an honor graduate and allowed to address her classmates. But Anjali said it still doesn’t feel quite right. “This really diminishes the value of the valedictorian title,” she said.

Anjali will feel the hurt for a long time, but given her brilliant record, hopefully she’ll make it very big in life.

If you have a smart child who is an overachiever, do not let him/her study in this school. There are many other good schools that will reward your kids for their hard work.

Google’s New Favicon - lowercase g

Google decided to join the “rebranding and logo changes” bandwagon by changing its favicon to a lowercase borderless g from the traditional G with a border.

The new favicon looks a little dull, but maybe its because I was used to the G for many years.

Scripps National Spelling Bee 2008 / guerdon

The 2008 National Spelling Bee was won by a 13-year old student Sameer Mishra from Indiana. There was a record number of 288 participants this year. Sameer Mishra beat Sidharth Chand of Michigan with the word “guerdon”, which means “something that one has earned or gained”. It was a close fight. This was Sameer’s fourth and Sidharth’s first Bee competitions. Sameer was coached by his sister who was also one of the contestants.

The profiles of other contestants are great and many had attempted the Bee before unsuccessfully. The youngest was an 8 year old boy Sriran Hathwar.

I love spelling competitions and have always followed them. The movie Akeelah and the Bee is one of my favourite movies. If you like spellings, English grammar/vocabulary and origin of words, you’ll really love that movie.

Read more about this on CNN and Yahoo! News.

Sameer Mishra is an American of Indian origin, so some of the Indian news websites lapped up the news.

Rediff.com misspelt the word American as Amrican in its title post!! Very good tribute to someone who won a Spelling Bee.

I lost my Violin

What is with violinists and their carelessness these days?

David Garrett smashed a $1 million violin when he fell over after a concert in London over Christmas.

[February 13, 2008]

A Wiltshire man leaves a 1698 Venice-made Goffriller valued at £180,000 on the train.

[April 14, 2008]

And then, in today’s news, I read this:

A violinist who left his 285-year-old instrument in the back of a New York cab has played a concert to thank the driver who returned it to him.

The violin was valued at $4 million. The violinist Philippe Quint rewarded the taxicab driver with $100 and a 30-minute performance, plus tickets to his future show. Philippe Quint also nominated to the Grammy’s.

For someone of Quint’s stature, $100 is way too small a reward and smacks of extreme miserliness!

Maybe the next violinist who loses his violin on the train or taxicab better not even bother looking for it.

Baby with 2 faces born in north India

A baby with two faces was born in India yesterday. Her mother had a normal delivery and the baby is doing well. She’s being considered by the villagers as a reincarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga. The baby was named Lali. Her father is a 23-year old farm worker and mother a housewife.

Lali has a rare condition called Craniofacial Duplication, where a single head has two faces. She has duplicates of every facial organ except ears.

According to the Associated Press,

“She drinks milk from her two mouths and opens and shuts all the four eyes at one time,” Ali said.

Rural India is deeply superstitious and the little girl is being hailed as a return of the Hindu goddess of valor, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms.

Up to 100 people have been visiting Lali at her home every day to touch her feet out of respect, offer money and receive blessings, Singh told The Associated Press. “Lali is God’s gift to us,” said Jaipal Singh, a member of the local village council. “She has brought fame to our village.”

Read more here.

Earth Hour - a joke

On March 29, many people turned off the lights for an hour from 8pm to 9pm local time to signify that they were “saving” energy (whatever they mean by energy). Very nice, turn off your electrical gadgets for one hour, and then after 9pm, turn on the lights, air conditioners, office lights (maybe all night), flashing decorative lights (oh, these were probably never turned off!), various home gadgets, etc. And then get into the car and drive one block for a crate of coke, circle around the area for 10 whole minutes looking for a parking spot, <<INSERT THE REST HERE>>.

And then, there was Google which jumped on the bandwagon by changing its background to black instead of the usual white.

The funny thing is that black background web pages may use up MORE energy than white background web pages and Google had itself acknowledged the study.

Anyway, Michelle Malkin has more about this and the 1 million phone calls that “eco-friendly” activists intend to make to lawmakers on Earth Day - wonderful way of saving energy indeed!

Read more on her blog here.

Google plays April Fool’s Day joke with Gmail Custom Time

I was about to login to my Gmail when I noticed Google’s “latest addition” - an option that allows the user to alter the timestamp of the email sent, to make it look as if the user sent the email at a different time.

Since I don’t trust anything on April 1, I decided this was Google’s joke for us all. I anyway took a look at the “testimonials” of those who had “used” the beta version of this. Well, those testimonials are fake, but hilarious! Read them:

“The entire concept of ‘late’ no longer exists for me. That’s pretty cool. Thanks Gmail!”
Miriam S., Delivery girl

“I used to be an honest person; but now I don’t have to be. It’s just so much easier this way. I’ve gained a lot of productivity by not having to think about doing the ‘right’ thing.”
Todd J., Investment Banker

Check it out here.

Rubik’s Cube solved in 25 moves

My wife and I are Rubik’s Cube enthusiasts. While I can solve it in about 5 minutes, my wife can solve it faster one layer at a time. There are many who can solve it in under a minute!

Rubik’s Cube is supposed to be the world’s best-selling toy and over 300 million Rubik’s Cubes and variants (2×2x2, 4×4x4, 5×5x5) have been sold worldwide.

The fastest is Edouard Chambon who has an average solve time of 11.48 seconds and a record of 9.18 seconds!

My personal favourite Rubik’s Cube solver is Jessica Fridrich, a speedcuber whose moves are the most commonly used for speedcubers.

Today, Slashdot linked to an article about how Rubik’s Cube can be solved in just 25 moves!

Stanford mathematician Tomas Rokicki has lowered last year’s record of 26 moves to 25.

According to the article,

Rokicki’s proof is a neat piece of computer science. He’s used the symmetry of the cube to study transformations of the cube in sets, rather than as individual moves. This allows him to separate the “cube space” into 2 billion sets each containing 20 billion elements. He then shows that a large number of these sets are essentially equivalent to other sets and so can be ignored.

If you’re a Rubik’s Cube enthusiast interested in decreasing your solve times, go ahead and read the full article.

Starbucks replaces T-Mobile with AT&T (free Wi-Fi)

Starbucks Coffee has replaced its Wi-Fi provider T-Mobile with AT&T. Starbucks announced their partnership with AT&T this morning.

Their new partnership with AT&T allows Starbucks customers to use Wi-Fi freely for 2 hours if they pay using a prepaid Starbucks card. If they pay otherwise, they’ll be paying $3.99 per two-hour session, and monthly memberships will cost $19.99 per month.

In the article,

The chain has slowed its store expansion considerably and has been looking for other ways to appeal to customers. With free WiFi being used as a selling points for many smaller cafes, $9.99 per day at Starbucks just wasn’t cutting it for most WiFi addicts. Reshaping its offerings with AT&T to offer free or cheap service will allow Starbucks to compete with smaller coffee houses for those customers, while making its current customers even happier.

I think this is a right move for Starbucks from the business point of view. They’ll still have to work a little harder at the “free” clause if they want to attract more coffee drinkers/Wi-Fi users who hog free Wi-Fi areas like Panera and public libraries.

Read more here.