A said (about B) “He has never been known to use any words that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

to which B replied “Poor A. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use “.

B is the more famous one. Identify B (and A too, for bonus points) without googling.

This Guardian report says that we have reached the peak for oil production.

If this report is true.

I had found about this site called Sleeping in Airports long back from Madman’s Linksmatic (incidentally Madman, having to sleep in an airport has nothing to do with poverty) Now I learn (via The Acorn and Sepia Mutiny ) that they have classified Changi Airport in Singapore as the best airport to sleep in. One of the runners up is Schiphol, Amsterdam. Hey I’ve slept in both!

The only other airport I’ve slept in is the Mumbai one – it is rated as one of the runners up in the worst airports category.
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from the Economist

I’ve wanted to jump into the fray on Amit Varma’s question for some time. The question in question is whether a man who eats another man with the latter’s consent should be prosecuted.
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Manish Chauhan writes about Kaifi Azmi. He lists some of Kaifi’s lyrics, but doesn’t mention the one that is my favourite – O bekarar dil (lyrics in Hindi) from Kohra.
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Plan to start digging up roads in June.

What happens is that you folks plan to start digging up the roads right after the monsoons. Naturally the planning gets delayed and you eventually start the actual digging around December. By then you realise that the roads will probably stay dug up when the monsoon starts. So you probably put in a request for more resources to be put into the task so that it can be expedited and finished by June. Naturally, those plans too take time to get approved and by the time you are able to start the expediting, it is May. So when the rains start, all the roads are dug up and we all regret not investing in amphibious vehicles. So if you plan to start in June, you will actually start in September and it will all work out fine.

Give top billing to the dialogue writer. Flash his name prominently. Display his photograph if required.

Because it struck me that they are tortured souls who believe that they don’t get the attention they deserve. So they express their frustration by coming up with increasingly florid dialogues which end up doubling the length of the movie.

Go here to see my photo online for the first time ever. It bears a fair likeness to me, so you can give it to the hired assassin when you decide to take out a supari on me. S Anand has posted pictures from the Bombay Bloggers’ Meet.

This is part of a series of posts on how I write. I am not actually starting here. I just thought I’d acknowledge a book before the start.

The book in question is Language in Thought and Action and you should read it.
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I appreciate Google’s efforts to democratise the web, but I think that finding this headline as the top news on Google News is clear evidence that it has gone too far:

Schoolgirls captivated by unidentified man in Germany

Also note the URL. It turns out that DCEAlumni.com belongs to the alumni association of Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon.