Pavansut: The Monkey God

Ads are expected to but rarely capture human emotions. But when they do, they make a real impact. Google India has more than demonstrated the impact of their services on Indians (and Pakistanis) through this ad.  It is certainly worthy of a view for anyone interested in ad business or in Google's services.  I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried.  I cried for the emotion expressed in the ad are so tender - long lost friends coming together.  But I also cried because the ad expresses hope of the two nations that are being kept apart by crazies on both sides, can come together.

When an ad supporting a product does all that, in my book it has achieved it's goal.

According to Ariad's company website..."The name ARIAD originates from the Greek myth of Ariadne, a daughter of Minos II, king of Crete"... who gave Theseus, a spool of thread that would enable him to slay Minotaur and return back safely.  Unfortunately, in this case, the "Minotaur" of drug development - the adverse events - ended up devouring Ariad's latest drug Iclusig (ponatinib)

According to NY Times, FDA today announced that they are halting the sales of Iclusig in the US. The serious danger of blood clots had lead to, amputations in some cases, and death in other cases, of individuals taking the drug.  These adverse events were serious enough that the FDA decided it could not allow continued marketing of the drug.

This is yet another example of just how challenging and risky drug development remains. Iclusig's approval was heralded as a triumph of the vision of Ariad's founder Harvey Burger, who toiled away for years and persisted in the face of…

New York Times reports that a study by the FDA found that more than 12% of US spice imports are contaminated with insect and rodent parts/filth.  This news should be shocking to any foodie, but as a vegetarian I find this exceedingly repulsive.  The FDA must exercise the strength of its powers to ensure that food safety is practiced by the growers and importers.

The unfortunate situation of having to consume contaminated spices stems from the common practice of purchasing ground up spices rather than buying whole spices.  In the old days, must of the spice trade used to occur in whole spices.  Families would by whole "dhaniya" (cilantro seeds) or whole "mirchi" (pepper) etc and take them home where the spices would be closely examined and cleaned before being ground up.  This practice extended to other edible grains like "gehun" (wheat for flour "ata") and pulses like "dal" (lentils), "chana" (grams) etc.  Today, despite the…

Downloaded OSX Maverick and so far it has been fine for the programs I use regularly; only a few programs have had issues.
>  Open Office seems to work fine.
>  Freemind - Program automatically triggered a Java installation.  Took about two minutes after which program worked fine
>  GIMP 2.8:  Seemed to work just fine
>  Handbrake:  Seems to open fine but haven't ripped any new DVDs yet.
>  Inkscape:  Required me to install XQuartz.  Took about 5 minutes to install.
>  Lync 2011 - Had to update to 14.0.6.  Not sure its related to Maverick.  I haven't used Lync in a while
>  Scribus:  No issues
>  Pencil Project:  Keeps crashing at start.  Haven't yet figured out the issue yet.