We are all irritated by different things. People take long detours in order to avoid stopping at a couple of traffic lights. Others cannot let anyone cut ahead of them in a line. Or bear to be left out of a particularly juicy bit of gossip. We have all felt the collective exasperation when a …
Is immortality the paradise it is made out to be? David Murdock of Dole Foods is planning to live to 125. He’s currently a healthy 87 and a headache is one of the rarities in his life. He eats only fruits and vegetables; seafood, egg whites, beans and nuts. He completely avoids dairy products, red meat, and …
Today’s young women have to thank a couple of actresses from back in the 1950s – Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. They made dark red lips fashionable at a time when it was still frowned upon in civil society. The history of lipstick goes back 5000 years but it is filled with stories of betrayal …
Being paid $1.2 million for every episode would be enough for anyone to get down to work, you would imagine. Charlie Sheen, the now infamous lead of ‘Two and a Half Men‘ shot himself in inconvenient places when he called his producer names and ranted that the only reason the show as a hit was because he …
In a chilling series of photographs featured in the New York Times, the scale of the tsunami in Japan is brought to heartrending light. It shows what the affected areas were just a few months ago. And then it shows how the entire landscape just got wiped out in a few minutes. In one-half of the picture, …
With the price of oil and the geopolitics that go with it, the search for alternatives has been on for several decades. The halfway options – a battery for cruising and oil for power with cars like the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight have been on the roads for nearly a decade. While they provide a …
In a great editorial piece, David Brooks reflects on how we have developed an exaggerated sense of self-importance. Case in point: Only 12 % of people in the 50s thought they were important. By the 90s, 80% believed they were. What a profound shift this is. We have gone from being realistic to narcissistic in the …
Every time a trend moves very far in one direction, a counterweight pushes in the other. When disposable becomes the rage, products that endure suddenly appear. When ‘new age’ becomes too extreme, retro returns. Consumers who can choose from the latest and the glitziest pine for a style that is not cutting edge but has …
Reality shows are anything but real, but in India, it is interesting to see how a western show is packaged to reflect Indian sensibilities. The US version of the reality show is crisp, businesslike and fast-paced. In India, we go the whole hog of tears, friends, and family. Melodrama is king. In American Idol, the …
I wonder who writes those ‘How-to’ books. You know what I mean. ‘How to become a topper’, ‘How to start a business with no money’ ‘How to have great sex – all the time”. I am not going to link to any of these abominations. They treat readers like prize idiots and I don’t know …
