Brown Motion

It seems the valley has Hollywood envy.  How come all the gossip is always centered around the antics of Lindsay (who oddly has gone quiet) and those of some royal across the pond?  Why after all having tremendous wealth are the valley elite not part of the tabloids?  Is geekdom ruining our chances of hitting the spotlights?  Is the Zucker walking with Chan the best photo op we can present to the world? Well the answer came this week in the form of the media outlets going beserk (as in atwitter - also using twitter to twit all the juicy nonsense) with the news that a famous Russian (or ex Russian) - no not Putin - the other most powerful one - Sergey - not the one from Dom Joly's tour of the Chernobyl site - but the Brin himself was in the news. Not with his glasses (as in Google Glass) but with some sort of egg on his face or so they would have you believe. Apparently the world's richest (one of the top few anyway) fell for the oldest scam in the book - g...

As in either sex having sex.  Some doofus research out recently suggests that people that are rolling in the hay four times a week are making 5% more in their paychecks.  Really?   Have these scientists visited India?  Or Africa?  What demographic are these bozos talking about? In India the more sex you have the more your litter and therefore the faster you go broke.  5% raise in salary is hardly going to be enough to spread around. Are they proposing safe sex or just any old sex?  Are there specific time of day for the action that gets you a better raise (pun intended every which way) or just any old quickie would do?  Is it recommended with someone you know or just visiting the local red light area can get the job done?  In the latter scenario the pros might just start charging a permium if the news gets widespread attention. Inflation (puns intended every which way) is not far away.  Or maybe this would open up a new idea ...

Pankaj Udhas came to town.  He is a 62 year old native of India who has carved a niche for himself with his melodious bassy (not smelly, but low freq desi) voice to sing Ghazals. Primarily written as poems of love, the cultural origins are Arabic that made it to the Indus valley in the 11th and 12th centuries and finally morphed into today's music that sometimes appears in popular Hindi dramas created in Bollywood. For a person of that age I would be surprised if I am able to get a complete coherent sentence out let alone sing with such depth and nuance as to amaze a fan base crowd of about 500 in the local auditorium. The attendee demographic was largely 40 plus in age and not surprisingly almost 40% Urdu speaking which I had never seen in any bay area gathering before. Yet some of the native silliness was evident in the organization of the event to the execution of the program.  While there was ample surrounds to accommodate and manage the modest crowd the ticke...

So a recent episode of a famous personality getting unbagged made headlines stateside.  As in not getting the bag.  As it happens this very rich and supposedly famous lady walks into a store in Switzerland and asks to be shown a bag.  The store keeper refuses to do so and utlimately the rich and famous lady has to leave bagless.   That must have created quite the vacuum in her heart. But that is not the point.  The point is that people have baggage.  Even if they actually don't.  As in they think they come from a position of power or whatever and they expect other people to fall in line and suck up.  Regardless of what the scenario is rich people or poor people tend to treat other rich people or poor people respectively and without respect in a manner that is presumptuous.  They think you should make the effort to know who they are.  Clearly in this story neither appears to really know who they were dealing with. All in all it w...