"My Name is Harry Meadows, But You Can Call Me Death"

So I am doing a little news segment on Asian Affairs for our weekly Asian Cultural Society meeting. Of course, there was no way I am going to use the common current affairs material, because, like Canada, who cares. So I dug around trying to find some interesting stories from the past, present, and the foreseeable future of Asia, and I found the following stories on the BBC website of QI (Quite Interesting).

The first story is about Cats in Boxes, continuing my cat theme from previous posts:

Between 1959 and 1961, a British/WHO project accidentally killed lots of cats when treating malaria with DDT in the Sarawak area of Borneo. The DDT also killed cockroaches, which were eaten by cats, which also died and the area became thus infested with rats. Now Sarawak is quite a dense forest region and fighting rats the conventional way was problematic, so the British/WHO team decided to parachute in cats in boxes into the region to fight off the infestation. The boxes had little springs attached to them which would open the box when it hit the ground. Forget about whether it worked or not, the whole concept boggles the mind!

Second story, Adding 2 Feet to the Everest:

Radhanath Sikdar a Bengali mathematician, was the first to measure the peak as 29,000ft, but because he thought people would think he just rounded up to 29,000 feet, he "added" 2 feet to make it 29,002 feet to make it seem legitimate. This was the accepted height of Everest up until 1955, when it became 29,028ft. Incidentaly, Mt. Everest is named after George Everest, the Surveyor General of India at the time, and he pronounced his name as "EVE-rest".

On a side note, apparently the most dangerous sport in the world, purely in number of related accidents and deaths, is kite-flying! Apparently the "manja" string causes many people to lose fingers, and in a few cases, arems and heads! Falling kites have also known to fall in front of motorists causing road accidents and such...

I have a few more, but if any of you have heard anything interesting of late, let me know...

Buy My Umbrella...

How do I sell something that I do not own? You pay me the money, I buy the umbrella, and I give it to you. Simple, right? That's how all brokers work. However, what happens if the person sells an umbrella that does not exist, and the buyer again sells it to someone else who sells it someone else and so on. All the while, no one has actually seen the umbrella since it doesn't really exist, just the promise of it. Now consider everyone who has bought the umbrella had to borrow money to make the purchase and the last buyer borrowed money from the first seller. Who loses?

Exceprt: Ramblings in Econometrics; Maity, Abhishek, Pengu, New York, 2007.

Bradfinger's Shadow

I tried but I could not think of a more banal title.

This is a story, not just any story, but a story. Captain Homomorphism is there. So is Redfield, Sloth, and The Cow. Mass produced Schrodinger's Cats play special weapons. We're not entirely sure what they do, but it's pretty bad. Tamim is the retarded son of a retired triad kingpin. he has a feline fetish. The Bald Pragyan is his brother. He is bald. He wants to kill Tamim so he can take over the Triad Empire. His weapons of choice are exploding kittens. Coupled with a Schrodinger's Cat, the kittens explode, but miraculously survive to be reused. It is still in the testing phase but the manufacturer Clicheco claims it can be used nine times before it needs to be returned to the animal shelter. There is no intrigue so stupid people can read it. There are a few women with nice puns. It is a story told within a story to understand a story that is essential to the the story - take that Faulkner. There isn't a laugh track so you probably will not laugh as the jokes are too sophisticated. They may seem poor and corny - so stupid people can read it - but underneath that what is hidden lies a deeper, funnier, Woodehousian humor, several from the mouth of a nonchalant cigarette.

This is esstentially what I have at the moment. I was bored in Econometrics and didn't want to "write some emails"...