In my ideal world...

In general, I believe choice is a good thing. But over time, I have come to think that there are some things which ought to come without it. In my ideal world:

• There would be only one ring-tone for cell phones. And that would be a no-nonsense old-school ringtone, just like that on a landline phone. Not Vivaldi's Four Seasons, or Sir Mix-a-Lot's I like Big Butts, or any other tune.
  
• No one would use HTML to compose email messages. At least not to me. It makes me go jumping mad when I see multi-colored text in my email. It is irritating, distracting and makes the email less readable, defeating any purpose of using fancy fonts. I believe that if you can not put your point across in plain-text, you simply haven't given it enough thought.
  
• Cell phones would be made only by Nokia/Ericsson. At least there wouldn't be no flip-phones -- the clam shell design.
  
• Fruit juice would not come in mixed flavors. Nothing enrages me more than being disappointed in the supermarket every time I search for a carton of pineapple flavored juice. I see pine-orange-banana, pine-orange, pine-banana and many other exotic combinations, but I'll be damned if I find just pineapple. No, sir, no pinepple. I end up going nuts.
  

In other news, I just installed and started Apache on my home machine. Check out my brand new homepage. Its a sorry situation that Verizon blocks port 80 on residential connections. So, I had to resort to the horrendous 8080 figure. My photo gallery is also up. At the moment, it is empty. It should fill up in the coming days. Yet another way for you to waste some more time from your daily routines, meaningless as they are.

Intelligent design and `hot' yoga

This is sort of old news, but y'all probably heard our beloved Dubya speaking out in support of intelligent design being taught to kids in school. This at a (quoting from the Washington Post), freewheelin', spirited news conference with Texas paper reporters. Sounds like Dubya felt right at home. In the midst of the uproar that ensued, his science adviser (what? he had one? yeah, only I suspect he hasn't had much to do since assuming that position) tried to smooth it out by clarifying that it was in a "social context" that the president meant intelligent design to be introduced in schools. That is swell, but why not also introduce kids to alternative sexual preferences (like, homosexuality) in the very same "social context"?

After that profound reflection, its time for more pop culture whoring. And what better to gripe about than that fad of all fads... yoga! I was reading an article where some hipster mentioned that he was into the latest manifestation in this genre - hot yoga. I didn't get it at first, but then I realized that it was a mangling of the term hata yoga (the hata rhymes with butter, if you will). Now, hata is a Sanskrit term used to describe a kind of obstinate, dogged persistence, which, combined with yoga, indicates the kind of physical activity that I usually associate with some yogi up in the Himalayas. I find it hard to believe that some jetsetting, capuccino/moolatte-sipping, Wall Street Journal-reading, yuppie could practice real hata yoga. Heck, I find it mighty unlikely that any consumerist American could. But then, isn't that what fads are all about...

Oops, in my zealousness to disparage fads, I forgot to Google hot yoga, just in case I missed something. Sure enough, when I Googled the term just after I wrote the previous paragraph, I found out that it was not mistaken for hata yoga (, although that sneaking suspicion lingers...). But wait, this hot yoga is apparently a sequence of some 26 asanas (positions) supposed to be performed at a balmy 106 F. Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.

I should have signed off on that triumphant note, but I couldn't resist adding this bit of information. I was born in this sleepy little town called Mysore in Karnataka, India. Now, after 24 years, I learn that there is also a very popular style called Mysore yoga. Wonders never cease.