The Long and Short of It

Embarassing stuff this is. More so since it has been on the BBC's Most Emailed / Most Read articles for the last three days. All the Brits are probably having a good snigger or two over their evening Earl Grays. Going back to the article - two questions immediately popped to the distraught mind - Surely 1200 men do not a nation make, and what if it's true? Statistical analysis are prone to errors aren't they especially when with such a small number, such large inferences are derived! Or are the Indians really not cut out to international standards.

If you, dear reader, haven't visited the link yet, I shall try and get the gist of it in the next few sentences. The title of the BBC article reads "Condoms 'too big' for Indian men". I think that one sentence is enough for the gist after all. On to the substance then. 1200 men from various classes, religions, villages, cities were checked for length and breadth and it seems that they didn't set no statisticians pen on fire. The failure rate for condoms (falling off/tearing) in India is high - one in five times (Where do they get this kind of information?!!). And that custom-made condoms (read smaller) should be introduced since those made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.

The Ego has crash landed...

Now I don't know how these 1200 men volunteered for the survey. I wouldn't take it too kindly if a chappie with a measuring tape came up to me and asked me drop everything and raise it so that he can then measure it. So firstly, I am not too sure of the kinda men who were actually measured. No self-respecting, virile and well endowed Indian male would have stood for such nonsense - a bunch of wusses these surveyors must have run into and cowed them into standing in front of the tape. Moving on to the next possible flaw in the survey. The measurements need to happen when the thingy is at its best - that would have called for the volunteers to get it to the maximum. Now that would take some stimulation. How can I be sure that the surveyors had high quality material with them to get the volunteer's blood flowing. Was the erotic stuff textual or was it visual? Did it take into account the participant of the survey's individual taste and kinks? I dont't think so. So the chances are that due to the lack of good infrastructure the most of the 1200 men didn't get it to their maximum. I mean there is the real large probability that they could have stuck a better pose and raked up a couple of more centimetres on the ruler if they were shown their favourite porn star in action. Finally, onto the actual process of measurement. The article mentions that the measurements done were accurate to the last millimetre. I remember my Physics teacher telling the class long ago that the instrument that is the daddy of all measuring tools is vernier callipers - it takes it down to the millimetre and more. Since the survey claims to have been very precise with the readings I assume that this would have been their tool of choice. One thing I vividly remember about the contraption was that it was extremely cold - steely and very very cold. It also had a couple of sharp points. Now when I imagine the cold steel with the pointy things taking readings I can't help but feel that it would most certainly have had a damping effect on the poor soul that is being measured. Kinda like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. If the calliper touches, it would shrink, if the calliper doesn't touch, reading would be inaccurate. Either way, it points to more skew in the conclusions drawn.

These are the three compelling arguments I have in defence of the slandered Indian male.

Excerpts from the article

But Indian men need not be concerned about measuring up internationally according to Sunil Mehra, the former editor of the Indian version of the men's magazine Maxim. "It's not size, it's what you do with it that matters," he said.

"From our population, the evidence is Indians are doing pretty well.

"With apologies to the poet Alexander Pope, you could say, for inches and centimetres, let fools contend."

On a not so relevant note, I must mention that the survey was done in Delhi. (I live in Bombay by the way)

Poxy Pixels Turn Pricey

The chap who made a million dollars by selling a million pixels at a dollar each as advertising space on a website is at it again. (All the ads contain links to websites.) This time though each pixel is going to cost two dollars. The minimum cost of an advert is 200 dollars (the minimum that one needs to pay - for a space of 10 x 10 pixels). One dollar goes into Alex Tew's kitty and one gets added to a pot which when will finally be handed over to a lucky surfer. One month after the final pixel is sold one advertisment from the page will be randomly chosen and another draw will determine one surfer who had clicked on the chosen advert - the surfer gets a million dollars. I was wondering how the site administrator would know who clicked on which advert. It turns out that you need to create an id on the site and then login before setting off on the clicking spree to increase your chances of winning the jackspot. However you are allowed to click on only a maximum of 10 ads a day. The new site has sold around 75000 pixels so far.
I spent some time going though many of the adverts put up on the original page - most of the adverts are for online gambling sites, there are quite a few dating / networking sites, there are sites that have aped the idea (this site was launched on 11 Jan 2006 and has sold around 200 thousand pixels so far, 800 thousand more to go), adverts for medicinal cures for hairloss, organ enlargement and so on. Advertisement of pornographic sites is not allowed though (like they need any you may say eh!). At the end of it, I really don't think there were any sites except for the Internet Yellow Pages) which seemed useful or were of interest. (The site still gets 7000 hits a day and at it's peak it used to get around a million hits a day!). The point is, the site made money only because of the novelty of the whole thing, because Alex thought of something noone else in the world had thought about. Grudging envy - my feelings on Mr Alex Tew - the 21 year old who made his million bucks in 5 months - purely on the strength of an idea. I wish him luck on his new Pixelotto venture.
Are ideas spontaneous or is motivation needed for an idea to germinate? (Alex needed money for his education and was thinking of ways to make some). When was the last time I thought of something innovative that at least made me feel good even if it didn't make me any money...I don't know. Imagination - I need to work on it.

Base Bose

The time once came when I decided to move on from Sony HiFi systems and set up a home theatre. I had procured an amplifier and a dvd player. I had to go speaker shopping. I grew up hearing a lot about these amazingly small speakers that belt out awesome sound. So the first in the list of probable speakers was Bose. Have you ever visited a Bose showroom? If not I heartily recommend that you make a beeline to the nearest store this weekend when time permits. It makes for a nice experience. I have been to showrooms here in Bombay quite a few times. It never fails to give me a kick. Before proceeding I must state that I have nothing against the salespeople there. They are smart and very friendy. They can also without fail keep smiling for ten minutes without a shortening of the arc which stretches from ear to ear. The demo usually takes around five minutes and is done in batches of five - for the home theatre demo they will normally play the horses scene from Fellowship Of The Ring - Lovely Liv being pursued by the wicked wraiths or the Quidditch cup clip from Harry Potter. They will pause twice in between the demo and ask you to pay special attention to the sound coming from all corners of the room and how crisp the chants of limpid eyed Liv sound. They say it with such vehemence - it is as if till now all you were doing is staring at luscious Liv and trying to listen to the hum of the air conditioner and not paying any attention at all to the speakers. And when the scene is over with a florish he or she will without fail ask you "Wasn't that wonderful!?". They make you feel as if they had just put on a magic show or performed a small miracle. (If you stand up and applaud they will probably take a bow).
Then when you ask them for the specifications of the speakers they reply that Bose doesn't believe in putting numbers to their speakers. No sir. Impedence, sensitivity, frequency response, crossover frequency is all classified information and would be of no use to the customer. We are to let only our ears do the judging when buying Bose. The first time they said that to me I couldn't believe anyone selling speakers can say that to a customer. Yes, the ears have the maximum say in the decision to decide on a particular speaker but the specifications add greatly to the judgement. Any questions on technical details are just not encouraged or met with vague answers. It was apparant that the guys at Bose are not very interested in selling just the speakers. What they want for you to do is to buy their whole system - all the jewel cubes, the media center and the bulky Acoustimass module. The product line is called Lifestyle. That says a lot to me. The reason I became anti-Bose is not because of the quality of their products (which is really good) nor the fact that they have serious competitors (there are many), it is because of their marketing strategy - "Don't question us. Just buy our product". It is not about music, It is about "Lifestyle". They want you to buy Bose, not speakers. It didn't sell to me.

What's in a Name

This is with regards to a post I had put up sometime ago - Unravelling the Womb. This was done with the intention of following it up with another explaning the reason for posting a wierd drawing with the curious title. The time has come.

I was reading up on paintings and downloaded random works of a few famous artists. The names of some of them struck me. They ranged from the very simple to the highly abstract. It set me thinking as to how much thought does a painter have to put into naming his creation. How pertinent is the title of a painting or sculpture for an artist. It looks like the title assumes different levels of importance for different artists. It must have been a very easy task for some - One of Renoir's painting shows a girl with a watering can standing in a garden. Renoir called the painting A Girl with a Watering Can (1876) - it can't get simpler than that. Thoreau would have been mighty pleased with Renoir.

Dali takes it to the other extreme - The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954). It is tough to conjure up a picture on hearing the title. It is equally tough to make any sense of it on having a look at it too. It has a fish, lots of bricks, a couple of leafless trees, watches that seem to be melting with the hands floating over them. It seems that to Dali this painting symbolises "the psychological effect that the advent of the atomic bomb had on humanity"!!! (Wiki's my source) I bet you a million bucks that there was no way you would have come up with that unless you had heard or read about it.

The point is that the title can be very straightforward in many cases and it can often be vague with no obvious connect to the painting. Does a seemingly cyyptic title enhance the appeal of the painting by making the viewer try and think about what was going through the artist's mind when he was creating the work of art? I think it does. The average man would walk past Renoir's painting thinking Aaah, girl with the watering can, how sweet, those are very pretty colours. The same man will stop for more than a while at the Dali trying to figure out what the boxes and the jellyfish have to do with memory and disintegration.

Another enigmatic one is Paul Gauguin's painting that is called Where Do We Come From, What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897) Bill Watterson's Calvin had a very ready answer to Gauguin's queries. "I came from my room, I'm a kid with big plans, and I'm going outside!". Gauguin would not have agreed. His masterpiece portrays more profound thoughts. Gauguin's thoughts on the whole of humanity. The characters in the painting depict different stages of life. The painting is to be "read" from the right to left, starting with birth and ending with death and beyond.

I think artists stopped being concerned with just the composition, form and colours. They wanted their paintings to have a character that was an extension of the artist themselves, wanted the painting to portray opinions and philosophy. The titles have thus kept getting more obscure with time (or so I feel).

Painting Eras of the last century and a quarter - Impressionism giving way to the Post Impressionist period followed by the Expression, Abstraction, and Fantasy and then Surrealism.

Monet (1840-1926) - Water Lily Pond (1899), Impression: Sunrise (1872) (Impressionist)

Renoir (1841-1919) - Girl With a Hoop (1885), On The Terrace (1881), Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (1876) (Impressionist)

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) - The Yellow Christ (1889), The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch (1892) (Post Impressionist)

Van Gogh (1853-1890) - The Potato Eaters (1885), Still Life with Absinthe (1887) (Post Impressionist)

Dali (1904-1989) - The Persistence of Memory (1931), Soft Construction With Boiled Beans (1936), The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937), Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumblebee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944) (Surrealist)

Calling a rose a rose is not going to raise any eyebrows. Calling it Layers of Love on Thorns might add a new dimension to it.

When I Grow Up

Yesterday's paper had an article on Neil Patrik Harris. He has announced that he is gay. His lover is a fellow actor of name David Burtka. Seems they have acted together in the sitcom that Harris is currently starring in, How I Met Your Mother. It was strange - the emotions that coursed through me when assimilating the news on Harris. It has been well over 12 years since all ties between him and me were severed. I am talking about Doogie Howser M.D. It used to be one of my favourite serials when I was in school and Harris played the young doctor who juggles work and adolescence. It had things that are the worries of any teenager - peer pressure, girls, best friends, sports, unravelling life. Was easy putting myself in his shoes (although he was a practising doctor and I was struggling with high school). Then I went to college, Doogie Howser dropped off my radar. Now suddenly Doogie is back and he's back to say that he's gay. I was certainly surprised. Doogie had a steady and sweet girlfriend called Wanda! I also haven't met anyone who is gay so my impression is only that which is stereotyped and somehow Doogie doesn't confirm to that. It all just goes to show how much one tends to associate the actors to the roles they portray on screen.

The article also made me look up on what Fred Savage is doing nowadays. This dude played Kevin Arnold in Wonder Years. I liked this serial more than Doogie Howser M.D. Kevin was the more realistic sort - has a hard time in school, gets bullied, doesn't score wonderful grades, not great at sports. As with Doogie I lost all contact via the TV with Kevin once I moved to college and I missed the last few seasons. In real life, it turns out that Fred later graduated from Stanford, is married to a Jennifer Stone, became a father in Aug 2006, is working on a serial called Crumbs. His girlfriend in Wonder Years Winne Cooper was played by Danica McKellar who has majored in Mathematics and has a theorem to her name now! She has also written and directed two short films.

The place that these serials held was what Friends replaced once I grew up. I can't help wishing that Harris and Savage hadn't grown up with me - Doogie Howser and Kevin Arnold just aren't the same people anymore.

On a different note, the last lines of the final Wonder Years episode pretty much sums up the feelings that most of us have about the time gone by...

Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you're in diapers, the next day you're gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house like a lot of other houses, a yard like a lot of other yards, on a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back, with wonder.