We're turning 19 soon!

And you're invited to the party

A banner at Anfield in 94. Soon after United won their 1st Premier League Championship under Sir Alex.

At Anfield in 2009.

Talk about comebacks!

Update:

Banner unfurled at Anfield by United fans during the Liverpool - Tottenham match.

Battling Corruption

If you have government, you'll have opportunities for corruption. One way to fight this is to have more stringent laws. Anna Hazare & gang have taken this route. And they seem to have got a lot of mileage as well. But this route is fraught with dangers. Laws always lead to unintended consequences, which could easily open up new opportunities to play the system.

Another option is to have lesser government. Smaller government. Reduce the role of government in everyday life. And leave it to the market to fill in. This reduces opportunities for corruption.

We can have both tougher laws and smaller govt. But if just one, I'd prefer the latter.

Reading Statistics & The G.O.A.T Federer/Nadal

One argument on why Federer cannot be considered the Greatest Of All Time is his record against Nadal. It stands 14-8 in favour of Rafa, with their 23rd competitive meeting scheduled for later tonight.

Their fascinating rivalry is also considered the G.O.A.T! They are the only pair in men's tennis to have finished 6 consecutive years as the top two.

I personally believe Federer to be the better player. And I propose to manipulate the stats to validate my case. This is also a good reason why stats should not be unquestioningly believed.

Splitting into court types the Federer -Nadal records show 4-3 on hard courts, 2-1 on grass, and 2-10 on clay. So one could argue that Federer is the better player on 2 of 3 surfaces.

But there's more to this. The 2 being the top ranked players for the last 6 years, would invariably be seeded to meet in the finals. If more meetings haven't happened between the 2, it's because one of them fell off before reaching the summit clash. This has been Nadal more often. Federer has been generally more consistent in reaching the finals than Nadal.

While Rafa has been the undisputed master on clay (over the decade), Roger has also been pretty consistent in reaching the finals of a good chunk of the clay-court tournaments the two participated in. This has led to >50% of their clashes being played out on clay, though going by number of tournaments this should have been less than 25%.

What this could mean is that while Federer was the 2nd best player on clay, Nadal was not the number 2 on grass or hard courts. Though he has been showing more consistency on all surfaces in the last couple of years.

I immensely like both the players. Roger for his graceful movement, effortless artistry and panache. Rafa for his tenacity, magnanimity in victory & defeat and humility. Also for being left handed;) And both for their talent, competitiveness, sportsmanship and excellence.

But I am wary of stats. And 6-sigma.

"Almost, but not quite entirely unlike Tea"

Dedicated to R - a fantastic cook - with whom my only disagreement has been about making Tea.

Douglas Adams' version.

George Orwell's rules.

Christopher Hitchens paraphrasing Orwell

Choice Snippets

The socially correct way of pouring tea is to put the milk in after the tea. Social correctness has traditionally had nothing whatever to do with reason, logic or physics. In fact, in England it is generally considered socially incorrect to know stuff or think about things. It's worth bearing this in mind when visiting. - Adams

Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water. - Orwell

And do not put the milk in the cup first—family feuds have lasted generations over this—because you will almost certainly put in too much. - Hitchens quoting Orwell

The Changing Times - New Year Greetings

I remember a time when New Year wishes were actually exchanged in person. This happened whenever you met the person the 1st time into the new year. This could be as late as the 3rd or 4th week of January. This was also complemented by a flourishing business in X-mas & New Year greeting cards. With the postal rush during the period, it meant that you'd have to mail your cards in early December to give it a chance of arriving on time. Quite often one would receive the cards in mid-Jan.

Cut to the mid 90s. With telephones becoming ubiquitous, and long distance charges dropping, a lot of new year greetings changed to phone calls. Usually around the stroke of midnight for your peers, and the morning of the 1st for relatives, elders etc. This meant that if you didn't wish someone within the 1st few days, you might as well save it for next year.

Come the late 90s, and free personal e-mail addresses caught on. This made things much easier. Especially for slouches like me. You could send out e-greeting cards to one and all. Didn't have to shop around for these one month in advance. Mobile phone penetration too had started growing around this time. These two changes reduced the greeting window to about a couple of days into the year.

Early 2000s saw the growth of SMS as a medium to exchange greetings. No sooner did the clocks strike midnight, than your phone would be inundated with a flood of greetings. The likes of me, would wait for about 30 minutes, go through all the messages recieved, copy the most creative ones, and forward that on to all our contacts. This to a large extent replaced the phone-call. But the e-mails continued to complement, since they were free anyway.

Gradually the e-mail volume started to come down over the years. This was being replaced by other forms of on-line greetings. The SMS continued. And the window for greeting reduced to about 12 hours.

This year, 2011, seems to mark the beginning of a new trend. For the 1st year in more than a decade, I got less than 5 SMS. It's not that folks were asleep. Logging into Facebook, I can see the time-line deluged with new year wishes, and exchanges. Facebook & Twitter seem to have not only wiped out e-mails as the primary medium of communication, they appear to have started pushing out the SMS as well.

And all of sudden I'm nostalgic for Bob Dylan.

Not quite the Golden Gate

Signs of Progress

 A Wi-Fi enabled bus-stop in Calicut, Kerala