whether weather is an interesting topic..

with the warmest days of the year in Bangalore, it difficult not to complain of the weather.
as everyone is eagerly anticipating the refreshing evening showers to set in - to cool the dry, hot day temperatures, i chose to dedicate this post to the weather.

many years ago, when one of my classmates in B.Sc., decided to go to the US after graduating in Physics, to pursue studies in meteorology - many of us used to pull his leg that all he would need is a set of standard predictions and just mix them all together with some probabilities - and some part of it would be true every day.

in one sense, we also used to tell him that he should take a parrot with him - since computers were still not that common - to model his predictions along the lines of the street parrot soothsayers.

my ideas of the weatherman - or the weathergirl - made popular by the TV channels, and the profession have significantly changed since then.

from Dr Karmarkar's model for predicting the Indian monsoon, to the detailed reports of Vinson Kurian in the business line newspaper, i am starting to get more intimate with the weather systems around us!
yes, the reports talk of systems and with names for the cyclones and treat them as individuals with their own behaviours,
the reports talk of these systems or names moving across, having to resist opposition or be influenced by other emerging phenomena - sprinkled with acronyms such as IMD, ECMWF, MJO etc.

i also found it interesting that the India meteorological department has so much of information available for free and near real time. another company skymet, has made a business of analyzing and providing weather data feeds and a few of the leading newspapers and TV channels depend on their feeds.

such analysis are also available in specific contexts - such as  Media, Agriculture, Insurance, Shipping, power etc.

so, talking about the weather is not just a social pastime, as it is supposed to be in the U.K.
one of my friends, while talking about the ever changing weather in London, said - if you do not like the weather in London, just wait a minute! [hoping that it would change so quickly].

talking of weather - a friend, when asked why he does not exercise regularly, blamed it on the w(h)e[a]ther. he said that he would exercise based on whether he felt like it when he got up in the morning! and most of the days, felt lazy to get out of bed. he was in Seattle, where most of the year, one can see only cloudy or rainy days!

the next couple of months, i have one more serial to track  - the monsoon watch on TV and the newspapers.

(re)cursive writing

i have wondered why children are taught cursive writing in India, while in the US most of the writing practice is to  'print'.
one also finds a lot of variations in the script and handwriting - sometimes possibly influenced by the other - mostly vernacular - language that is also taught.
Indian scripts require a different stroke mechanism, while the Roman script expects the hand and pen to move differently.
and there is no concept of a cursive writing in Indian languages.
nor for that matter, in the typed world.
since most of us type our words using computer keyboards, is there still a place for cursive writing?
one argument that i have heard in favour of cursive writing is that it lets one write fast.
i guess that was ok when everyone was expected to learn typewriting and shorthand!

in writing letters or emails or other notes, a larger amount of time is spent in thinking and formulating our sentences than in the actual writing. so, the benefit of speed is also not all that important.

if it was really that beneficial, why can we all not adopt the shorthand notation and script?
that could be one solution to the multi-lingual requirements of the Indian constitution.

why is this post called recursive writing?
it is writing about writing!