An unappetizing name for a restaurant

"Potbelly" seems to be a chain restaurant in Virgina. They serve ridiculously large sandwiches.

Doesn't the name of the restaurant put off their clientiele? Why would they draw a straight line between their enormous sandwiches and potbellies?

When Pepsi first came to India, some overpaid taste consultant told them that Indians liked sweet things. So, the initial Pepsi formula was a little too sweet. The reigning Cola manufacturer hit back with an image of a bottle of Pepsi swarmed with a bunch of flies. For a long time, Pepsi in Indian minds was associated with something so sweet that it was fly-infested.

So, what's the idea behind Potbelly? Why would a restaurant chain actively try to induce feelings of revulsion? Is there some thing else going on?

Posters on the white house walls

Count me thoroughly disappointed by the Obamas' art selections.

Take the picture on the left. Don't tell me that this is high art. It's a poster. Sort of like the inspiration posters of golf courses and mountain streams that middle managers like to hang on their walls.

A little self-aware in its depiction of wishy-washiness, maybe (but who wouldn't come off as wishy-washy after Bush the Decider?). But still nothing more than a poster.

And of course, as would befit a "Modern White House", there are craft projects and collages that wouldn't be noteworthy if they had come from a pre-school class. Yikes!

The only piece in that collection that has me drooling is this patent model of Morse's electric telegraph:

The broad shoulders start to shrug

I was changing flights at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, when I saw this worker scraping off "Chicago 2016" signs:

Sad for Chicago, definitely, but Rio deserves it more. The 2016 Olympics will be to Brazil what the Seoul ('88) and Beijing ('08) games were to South Korea and China. They would never have been as momentous to the US, Spain or Japan, all of which have already hosted an Olympics.

Mission accomplished in Afghanistan

What should we need to do in Afghanistan? Send more troops (as McChrystal wants) or carry out focused drone attacks (as Biden recommends)? Neither, says Brahma Challaney, a professor in a New Delhi think tank. He says that we should withdraw:

An American military exit from Afghanistan would not be a shot in the arm for the forces of global jihad, as many in the US seem to fear. On the contrary, it would remove the Taliban’s unifying element and unleash developments – a vicious power struggle in Afghanistan along sectarian and ethnic lines – whose significance would be largely internal or regional ... In fact, the most likely outcome of any Afghan power struggle triggered by an American withdrawal would be to formalize the present de facto partition of Afghanistan along ethnic lines – the direction in which Iraq, too, is headed ... As in Iraq, an American withdrawal would potentially unleash forces of Balkanization. That may sound disturbing, but it is probably an unstoppable consequence of the initial US invasion.

His analysis of the situation is probably tinged by disgust at the increased American aid to Pakistan even as Pakistan shelters all sorts of anti-Indian terrorist groups. But that doesn't make it any less true.

Al Qaeda in Afghanistan is broken. The non-Pushtun groups are strong enough to resist a Taliban takeover of Kabul. Mission Accomplished. Time to leave.

Prechewed food for adults

Because I've been traveling a lot the past month (and therefore, eating packaged foods and in restaurants a lot), the book "The end of overeating" by the former head of the FDA was like a punch in the gut.

This is how he describes Chili's (a typical restaurant chain) "Margarita Grilled Chicken" (something, that because of the "grilled" in its name, I'd have assumed was relatively healthy):

The uncooked chicken had been in a marinade that combined orange juice, tequila, triple sec, sweet-and-sour mix, and artificial color, thereby including sugar, two kinds of oil, and salt.

The marinade is injected into the chicken using needles, or by tumbling in a "cement mixer". The idea is to prechew the chicken, to make the food go down easier and quicker.

In general, our bodies have evolved to crave fat, sugar and salt, but also to automatically regulate our appetite. But when we eat packaged or restaurant food, the level at which that appetite control kicks in is pushed upwards. So, we end up eating more.

Prechewed food. He even has the numbers. In the past, Americans typically chewed a mouthful of food about 25 times before swallowing. The food we are served now needs to be chewed just 10 times. Reasons? The processing of course: packaged/restaurant food is made easier to swallow by increasing the fat (lubrication) and removing bran and fiber. Vegetables, if any, are grated finely and mixed in high-fat dressing (the dressing is cheaper than the vegetables). It's applesauce vs. apples. "Adult baby food," one industry source calls it.

Internet via the power line

The last hotel I was in offered wired internet to all the rooms. The real cool thing was that they didn't do this through a cable or DSL modem. Instead, the internet signal traveled via the power lines, so that the modem was simply plugged into the wall socket:

Over cocktails, I tried to explain the internet delivery mechanism to another guest at the hotel but she was not a tech-nerd and couldn't grok how cool this was.

A griddle to make biriyani

What's a pizza griddle pan good for, besides making pizza?

Making biriyani. Heat the griddle and use it to cover the pot so that the rice cooks from the top and the bottom. (The traditional way to finish a biriyani off is to use indirect heat, to place hot bricks all around a clay pot. Needless to say, your favorite neighborhood Indian restaurant does not do that. They probably use an oven).