By krishna

  1. Child Care

    One thing that improved health care for women and children across the world has done is to decrease birth rates. Some people imagined that reducing infant mortality would result in ballooning populations and instead wanted to use other means of reducing birth rates. But it seems that one cause of large families was the danger…

  2. A Few Random Thoughts

    It has to be that way for a sci-fi movie to a success in the country where it is produced, but have you noticed that if there is an alien invasion in the movie, it always starts in their country? Hollywood movies have the aliens trying to get in touch with the US government. Similarly…

  3. The Miserable Creators of the “Lost” Series

    I am not sure how many of you saw the “Lost” series that used to air on ABC, and how many of you who saw it have forgotten it by now. But when it was playing, it was one of my favorite TV series. I had missed the first few episodes, but my wife was…

  4. The Common Theme in Car Insurance Advertisements

    If you watch any auto insurance ad, you will always hear something like, “By switching to our Insurance, auto drivers saved an average of $250″ or some such figure. But every company seems to run the same theme, which seems strange on the surface. After all, they cannot all be right. Correct? What is really…

  5. Anthony Griffith: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

    This is extremely tragic and difficult to watch. In the movie “Sholay”, when a young man is killed, his father says, “Do you know what the heaviest burden in the world is? It is the dead body of your child carried on your shoulder.”  Death is always with us, but when those come later go…

  6. The Hatmaker’s Sign, by Candace Fleming and Robert Parker

    the-hatmakers-sign

    Rating: **** (4 stars out of 5) Nothing serious here, people, move along! This is a fun book about an interesting story that Benjamin Franklin apparently told Thomas Jefferson when he finished writing the Declaration of Independence and found that the Continental Congress wanted to make several changes to what he thought was a perfect document.…

  7. Sherlock Season One

    I am a bigger fan of Hercule Poirot than Sherlock Holmes. For several reasons. One is, of course, that Poirot explicitly makes fun of the “get down on your knees and look for evidence” methodology used by Holmes. Poirot relies less on pieces of physical evidence than logical analysis of the crime. However, another big…

  8. Hindi Songs — Part IV

    More songs! “Hazaar Rahein Mud Ke” from “Thodisi Bewafaii” (1980) “Safal Hogi Teri” from “Aradhana” (1969) “Beete Hue Lamho Ki Kasak” from “Nikaah” (1982) “Jiska Mujhe Tha Intezar” from “Don” (1978) “Mera Kuchh Saamaan” from “Ijaazat” (1987) “Kahe Toh Se Sajna” from “Maine Pyar Kiya” (1989) “Ye Shaam Mastani” from “Kati Patang” (1970) “Ek Pyar Ka…

  9. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo

    Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo

    Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5) Katherine Boo has written an amazing, heart-breaking novel about the people who inhabit the slums of Mumbai. There are many inter-locking stories of different characters in the novel, all of them existing in precarious, miserable conditions, but trying their best to beat a system that has reduced them to…