BIG BLUE and Taiyo Nippon Sanso are apparently creating a gas which will be used in the fabrication of 32 nanometre and later generations of semiconductor chips, according to nikkei.net.
What this gas is a mystery wrapped in an enigma variation, because they didn’t bother to say what it is.
But it will be “very pure”, apparently and will be ready in 2011. There’s more, but not much more, here. ♦
DAVID EVANS has a mobile phone which is so old and knackered that the LCD screen is long gone. To phone his mates – such as Tone “the Phone” Dennis and Mad Mike Mageek, he pulls out a large piece of paper with our numbers written on it.
This phone has long been the subject of baleful comments by Tone and myself, comments that have been consistently ignored.
So we were truly truly shocked yesterday when Dave announced that his faithful old Samsung retainer was going into retirement forever, and that when we returned from Ole Bengaluru we’d find he had a new one.
At the wake for the phone, held at the Shakespeare’s Head hostelry at a crossroads on Carnaby Street, Dave duly proceeded to quaff four pints of Kronenburg in rapid succession, as he wept for what really must be the end of an era. ♥
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Carnaby Street, David Evans, Mike Magee, Samsung, Tony Dennis
INDIA TODAY reported that Heidi Klum and her man called “Seal” have invited a Varanasi pandit to celebrate their third wedding anniversary.
This man, Shailesh Tripathi, said the mag, conducted a “Ganga Puja” for them when they visited Benares last year. Tripathi also showed me round Varanasi last year, but I wasn’t offered “Ganga Puja”. He had an intriguing explanation for a large painting of a Kali Yantra on Narad Ghat which we noted, with interest, and some scepticism.
He also took me to a Durga temple where they don’t sacrifice goats any more, but merely nick the ear of the male to draw blood, he said. Durga is fond of blood sacrifice, but they all have to be male animals. The head of the unfortunate creature is supposed to be severed with one blow. Formerly, human sacrifice was performed, but the folks have it the animals for sacrifice represent peculiarly male characteristics, such as greed for tom cats, lust for billy goats, and pride (ego) for men. The idea, according to the Bengali Karpuradistotra, is the real sacrifice of these characteristics inside yourself, not beheading poor creatures.
Here’s a little vid of Tripathi on the Ganga, doing his thing at dawn. And here’s a pic below of Narad Ghat, complete with Kali Yantra, pictures of Shiva and Kali, and a couple of goats, one of which we were to encounter in unusual circumstances, later in the day. The goat was unscathed. And so was I for that matter… The Kali Yantra is below the bush in this picture. ♥
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Durga, goats, Heidi Klum, Kali Yantra, Kalika, Karpuradistotra, Narad Ghat, Seal, Shiva, Tripathi
THE LADS AND LASSES at nikkei.net have an interesting wee story about a breed of music players that offer far better quality than your average IC based gizmo.
The article said Sanyo and other manufacturers are rapidly moving into producing linear pulse code modulation (PCM) players. They apparently have the advantage that the technology does not compress data, with sampling frequencies of between 48 to 96KHz/sec and sampling bit rates are 16-24 bits.
They also are affordable, with prices under ¥50,000. There’s more here (subscription required). ♣
A BIG DEMONSTRATION in New Zealand had 4,000 pro-Chinese demonstrators turn out against four folk holding Tibetan flags.
In other news, the People’s Republic is sending someone to meet the envoy of the Dalai Lama, although what they’ll say to each other no one really knows.
Mr Dalai has long said he’d like Tibet to be an autonomous area of China – there are many Tibetan Buddhists in Taiwan now, don’t you know. And quite a few in India. And even quite a lot in Scotland.
Of course, in all the hoohah about the useless concept called the Olympics, everyone seems to have totally forgotten the British expedition to Tibet in 1904, headed by a man called Younghusband. A few squaddies under the command of this geezer shot their way through to Lhasa, it appears.
This book, on page x of the foreword, has the telling statement: “The [British] Government of India, however, despite its perceived geopolitical requirements, was never able to persuade its masters in London that Tibet was not in some way or other a part of the Chinese world… When, soon after the British had departed the Subcontinent in 1947, the Government of independent India was not slow in acknowledging the fact of a Chinese Tibet.”
The problem, of course, is not suzerainty, but religion. The PRC in 1951 was hardly secular, and a form of Buddhism has long been prevalent in Greater China and still has many adherents. It is all very complicated. The PRC does get its knickers in a twist over this however – religion is not the “opium of the masses” any more, capitalism is. And the Opium Wars are long over.
Perhaps if the new Kuomintang government in Ole Taipei gave back or at least started talking about the treasures held in the CKS museum to mainland China, a new era of rapprochement between “autonomous regions” could kick off again. After all, even Scotland has its own “parliament” these days, apparently from an Old French verb “parler”. And as Winston Churchill is said to have said, “better jaw jaw, than war war”. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to think that… ♦
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Dalai Lama, Kuomintang, New Zealand, olympics, Tibet, Younghusband
PIC ABOVE is the Berlin skyline a few years back. Interesting idea to bung a huge photo of some lass advertising mobile phones on the side of a skyscraper. Pity it wasn’t the Everywhere Girl. ♥
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