Our own weird democracy

I've been catching up on Obama's, now concluded, visit to India. I happened on this video about Obama's interview with the villagers in Ajmer.



So the video looks decent enough and touts the achievements of IT in helping the villager's day to day activities. Now obviously the villagers don't speak English, so everyone is assigned a Minder to help translate their views.

So in the end, the president (or anyone else) doesn't really ask any questions and all the responses look canned. Now why would that arouse any suspicion



Aah yes, now things look in context. So in the effort to promote the advances in India, our file pushers (or secretaries if you must), turned this whole exercise in to a propaganda campaign. Funny how one person's democracy is another's autocratic regime.

The long dance

I was recently introduced to Madeleine Peyroux's jazz numbers and have been really enjoying the way she seems to bring the feel of 1940's jazz to present day.

Just the other day, while watching How I met your mother (natural history), I heard a haunting melody in the background when Ted and Zoey dance. I saved the episode, trying to figure out what the song might be or who sang it. After a few days of unfruitful searched and countless replaying of that episode piece, I finally came across this lovely rendition of Serge Gainsbourg's La Javanaise by none other than Madeleine Peyroux.

She has sung it so beautifully that anyone who appreciates jazz music should definitely listen to it and if possible go to one of her shows.



French to English translation