Filter Coffee

Filter Coffee has moved

Posted by sadmin at 
Filter Coffee, along with all of Livemint's blogs has moved to a new Wordpress platform. Visit http://blog.livemint.com/filter-coffee/ for more on literature, science, travel and culture or simply click here . Also don't forget to update your RSS feed readers and tell all your friends! Share this post: email it! | del.icio.us! | digg it! | newsVine...

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R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
Much like its American counterpart, the unraveling of the Indian equivalent of the Republican Party continues apace. Jaswant Singh was expelled on August 19, because he wrote a book in which he allegedly says that Jinnah was demonized by India, while it was Nehru, Patel et al who were actually responsible for partition. Taking a cue from their national...

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Swine Flu Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
That was going to be our team name for the Landmark Quiz that happened yesterday evening at the Music Academy in Chennai, until we changed it for highly obscure strategic reasons. We were quite lucky to scrape through to the Chennai finals, and then even luckier to sneak into the national finals by finishing second in the Chennai round. In the finals...

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On A Scale Of Five

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
Which is finally a post about science, (tangentially)! This blog started trying to be a "science" blog. Various lumpen elements like Simbu and Subbu came and hijacked the whole enterprise, and the science train more or less derailed. Until now. By some miracle (i.e. the Google RSS feed Reader ), I am finally able to churn out a post that is...

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Potternama, by I. Feelin' Silly

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
Hallelujah, the Lord be praised! The 17.63th Harry Potter movie is out. It is a tour de force of the cinematic oeuvre and delivers a coup de grace that is je ne sais quoi ; the modus operandi of the cast and crew make it the sine qua non of the canon; its ersatz special effects alter your Weltanschauung and cinematify the zeitgeist ; it will 我希望能与猪...

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That Constitution Thingy

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
It's been a remarkable couple of weeks for the country. On July 2nd, the Delhi High Court struck down sections of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalised certain consensual sexual acts between adults by stating that they were "against the order of nature". This must be a truly remarkable event in the history of Indian jurisprudence...

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The Saga of the Side Middle Berth

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
Which was provoked by disturbing goings-on on the Charminar Express last night Long, long ago in a land far, far away, there lived a dairy farmer. He and his friends were mesmerized by the magic of trains. Often, on hot summer days, they would gather near the doors of the air-conditioned compartments, hoping to catch a refreshing gust of cool air as...

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Michael Jackson (1958 - 2009)

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
In which we discuss the dietary preferences of geese Michael Jackson died last week. It was a hugely significant moment for me when I got the news, and my life has not been the same from that point forward. Mostly because for the first time ever, I got real news from Facebook before the BBC . Facebook also informed me that in his dotage, Harrison Ford...

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Queue Cutters and Line Jumpers - A Taxonomy

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
Which was sparked by observation in local grocery store and is about culture, values and traditions When the Truth dawns on them and taxonomists draw up the final hierarchy of living beings, it will read (from top to bottom) something like this: Megan Fox, atheists, other human beings, great apes, some primates...leeches, objectivists , tapeworms.....

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"A Wednesday", On Capital Punishment, And On Being "Middle Class"

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
This post must set some sort of record in that it's partly a movie review. Except the movie was released nearly a year back! Nevertheless, regardless of the hapless plight of the reader, we plough on. While talking to a friend last night, the conversation drifted to movies, and for some reason or the other, last year's thriller drama A Wednesday...

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The Indus Script Saga

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
In the mad days around the elections, not too many people may have noticed a small storm in the blogosphere teacup that erupted a few weeks back. Like the old Phantom comics used to say, for those who came in late: The Indus valley civilization flourished some 6000 4000 (Thanks to Anand M. for pointing out the error.) years ago over a large part of...

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Bangalored!

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
When the outsourcing boom was at its peak, a new word entered the global lexicon - "Bangalored". An American (for example) is said to have been Bangalored if her company "restructured", terminated her, and moved the job overseas because it was more cost effective for the company. But Bangalore itself had shown up in the lives of...

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Upon My Word

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. - Douglas Adams Words have a way of creeping insiduously from the places where they were born into "mainstream" language. The interesting thing about Douglas Adams' quote above is the word 'deadline'. It's one of those words that we use almost unthinkingly...

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Bhaarat's Varsha

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
Yes, I know, I've blogged about this before . But what to do ya , it's that time of the year and can't be avoided. Especially when you're sitting in salubrious Chennai and are basically a walking talking puddle. Anyway, this post is less about wet starlets and monsoon raaginis , and a lot more about history, geekiness, and Murugan Idli...

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Renaissance

Posted by Ravi Mundoli at 
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. -- From Manual of Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan What better way to start off a new blog than with a hi-falutin' sounding bon mot that only geeks of a certain bent of mind are likely to have come across. Nevertheless, Frank Herbert's epic Dune saga...

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