February 2009 - Posts - A Daily Download

February 2009 - Posts

So, did the recession help Slumdog Millionaire?

Posted by Sukumar Ranganathan at 
I am not surprised a feel-good movie won this year's Best Picture, although I do dread to think of the front pages of papers here tomorrow. A few weeks ago, I'd posted the results of some rough-and-ready analysis I had done on US recessions and the Best Picture Oscars. You can see that here . Well, Slumdog's win definitely makes that hypothesis...

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There is no such thing as Indian Rock.

Posted by Sukumar Ranganathan at 
I read a highly encouraging review of Bangalore-band Swarathma 's first album in Rolling Stone India (whose website is still not fully up) and decided to buy the CD. After all, if they were as good as the review claimed they were I needed to 1. check them out and 2. buy the CD to encourage them to do more. Unfortunately, it just wasn't my kind...

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Music on the way down

Posted by Sukumar Ranganathan at 
A news story on Bloomberg last week said Muzak Holdings LLC, the company behind elevator music is seeking bankruptcy protection . Muzak , for those who came in late is to piped music in public places what Xerox is to the copying business. The music itself, always almost always instrumental (and associated with being instrumental, although as one justifiably...

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Obama-mania (in comics)

Posted by Sukumar Ranganathan at 
His popularity still remains high, but it is evident that Barack Obama's honeymoon is wearing thin. Still, this post isn't about the challenges facing the new Camelot . Instead, it's about a comic that seeks to leverage Obama-mania, and also chronicle what was, inarguably, the most historic presidential election in the US. And no, this isn't...

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Are the banks to blame for L'Affaire Satyam?

Posted by Sukumar Ranganathan at 
A very senior partner at a multinational accounting firm and I were chatting yesterday about Satyam and the role of its former auditor Price Waterhouse in the fraud. How could the auditor not check the bank accounts of the company? I asked. The partner said he wasn't surprised this was the case. At least eight out of 10 banks to which audit firms...

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11 "newsy" questions for the morning of 11 February

Posted by Sukumar Ranganathan at 
1. Will Nimesh Kampani come back to India from Dubai, where he is in self-imposed exile because he faces the threat of being arrested the minute he steps back on Indian soil, before the new government is sworn in at the centre? 2. Will the Andhra Pradcesh CID tell us how they have been able to get a confession out of almost everyone they have arrested...

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Will the recession help Slumdog?

Posted by Sukumar Ranganathan at 
Is there a correlation between a recession in the US, and the type of motion pic that wins an Oscar for best picture? To find out, I picked 15 years when the US was technically in recession, and looked at the movies that had won an Oscar for best picture in each. The results are interesting. Three of the movies, Gigi , West Side Story , and Chicago...

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Kevin Pietersen bats for Vijay Mallya

Posted by Sukumar Ranganathan at 
Vijay Mallya isn't a gent who likes to lose and the performance of his team, the Bangalore Royal Challengers, at last year's inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League Twenty 20 tournament must have hurt. So, what does he do but go and sign up Kevin Pietersen (for $1.55 million), the man who made history with his switch-hit , forcing the...

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