The erstwhile school librarian of my late father’s village, Gopalasamudram (near Tirunelveli) used to maintain an annual handwritten diary of literally everything he learned during the year. This is the diary from 1956
The list of Melakartha ragas in Carnatic music
English proverbs (occasionally with Tamil translations). Also some surprising entries
Family trees
General Knowledge. Almost like a handwritten Malayala Manorama yearbook
He was clearly devastated by the death of Nadaswaram vidwan TN Rajarathinam. There are several pages dedicated to him.
PS: Ustaad Faiyaz Khan’s observation about there being more keener listeners of music in the south
A page on the new currency system (from rupee, annas and pies to rupees and naya paisa) introduced in 1957
Number of seats in Lok Sabha and state legislatures (Gujarat is part of Bombay state till 1960)
Did you know that there used to be a 30 min time difference between Bombay & Madras and a 32 min time difference between Madras and Calcutta?
He seems to presciently leave out Pluto
There are hundreds of pages, and these are just the ones that caught my eye.
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Flavour memories combine and interfere with subsequent aroma detection. For instance, anything with vanilla will taste mildly sweet even if it contains no sugar because we associate vanilla only with sweet dishes. This is a trick one can use to reduce the intake of added sugars.
Adding powdered cardamom to your tea can make it taste sweeter with a relatively smaller amount of sugar. Incidentally, umami can make a smaller amount of sugar linger for longer, so using glutamate-heavy ingredients like walnuts in desserts lets you use lesser sugar
This is also why eggless cakes & ice cream taste cloyingly sweet. Egg yolks, which have a reasonable amount of glutamates let you get away with less sugar.
What connects two 18th century German physicians/naturalists, the Nawabs of Arcot, and winged termites with South Indian cooking? A thread...
Johann Andreas Murray was a Swedish physician of German descent who studied under Carl Linnaeus, who pioneered the binomial nomenclature of all living organisms, a system that we continue to use today.
He was also a pioneering pharmacologist who wrote a 6-volume compendium of herbal remedies and edited subsequent versions of Linneaus’ work - “The Vegetable Kingdom”.
Military research regularly cross-pollinates into consumer innovation - Stainless steel was originally invented for gun barrels, and Microwave ovens invented during research on naval radar systems (the inventor's chocolate bar melted in his pocket when working on radar systems)
The reason so much orange juice is consumed today is thanks to the research of Linda Brewster, who used a debittering enzyme to reduce the bitterness of Limonin in all citrus juices. Without this, the shelf life of orange juice is very short.
Theory: All WhatsApp messages that end with 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 are misinformation. Also ones that begin with “The following has been researched by IIT/IIM/IISc...”. Any other patterns?
If one could only use the replies to this tweet to train a classifier 😬 But, on a less snarky note, responding to misinformation with “facts” is a waste of time. No one changes their mind on the basis of facts. Especially when delivered from a place of arrogance
Listening to the @notsmartblog gave me an alternative approach. Responding with a “why do you believe this? How do you know this is verified?” forces a different part of the brain to deal with it, and is more likely to result in a less defensive response
During the Raj, rich Indians adopted the eating habits of the colonial masters to the point where they would serve British dishes to guests at the start of the meal and then serve Indian dishes. This continues to this day in the custom of serving soup before the main course
The abolition of slavery posed a huge financial risk to existing imperial sources of revenue. The British therefore shipped Indian indentured labour to all sugar-growing places they won from the French in the Napoleonic wars - Trinidad, Guyana etc.
Most of the indentured labourers of Indian origin were weavers whose industry had been destroyed by protectionist laws in the UK that made Manchester-made cotton textiles cheaper than Indian-made ones.