happy with our latest arms supplier, Israel, for "effing" up in Lebanon with the same advanced "battle-tested" airforce systems they had sold us for a couple of billion dollars, if this Reuters analysis on the Israeli arms market is true. To quote:

"We are talking about the holy grail of future combat, and Israel did a great job of building sophisticated, world-leading systems based on the understanding they were born in battle," said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons. "This is certainly going to make people question the salesmen a bit more, because it appears that in the hour of need this stuff is not working as advertised," he said.

Barbara Opall-Rome of the Defense News journal predicted upsets to Israel's major export deals, including a recent multibillion-dollar package ordered by its top client, India. She described Israel as one of a club of militarily advanced countries whose air forces take pride of place in war planning. "Air power enthusiasts will be licking their wounds and they will surely have to go back and revise their arguments," she said. "I'm sure there will be a lot more humility now."

Does Israel, like the retail stores, have a returns policy? Oy Ehud et al., pliss be taking all of these weapons-shemapons back, and be sending some of the agro technology you got to Vidharbha.

Chickpea, in her latest post, points to this CNN story of four MIT kids driving an old jalopy from London to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia (just gotta to love a place that has a name like that). This actually bought back memomries of one of my all time heros, Richard Feynman's Tuvan saga.

As the story, told in Ralph Leighton's book "Tuva or Bust" goes, Feynman who was an avid stamp collector, had colleceted stamps from in Tuva for their odd ballness; they came in odd shapes (triangles, diamonds, etc.) showing odd scenes (men on camels racing trains, men on horseback hunting with airplanes above them, etc.). In 1977, at a dinner Feynman asked, "Whatever happened to Tannu Tuva?" And when they looked Tuva up in the atlas, they saw that the capital was named Kyzyl. They decided that any place with a name like that must be interesting; Kyzyl- a place without a vowel in it. They soon discovered that a monument near Kyzyl claimed to be the center of Asia, and Tuvan throat singing.

And being the madcaps they were, they decided that they had to go and check out Kyzyl for themselves. The only hitch: Kyzyl was then inside Soviet Union, and those comrades weren't going to allow two madcap American scientists to just take a walkabout in their backyard, even if one of them had already won the Nobel Prize for Physics. By the time the Soviet paperwork came through, Feynman had succumbed to stomach cancer, and Leighton had to go on the trip by himself.

While my Tuvan oddesy is still very much incomplete - a day will come when I will post here from Kyzyl - I was very, very happy when I attended a workshop as well as a concert on throat singing, even if it was the Tuvan cousin, the Mongolian variety, few years ago at the Silkroad Festival in Washington DC (Attention Chicagoians: Silkroad is coming to your city in 2006!). For those of you who must hear throat singing, do watch the wonderful film Genghis Blues. Meanwhile here are some samples for you to check out:

Rekha Alash Artyy Saiyr Feynman Drumming over Throat Singing

Also before you even think of knocking this music, remember it is damn hard!

Since this is the second most emailed article on BBC's current page, I thought I should reflect on this monkey business a bit. This article reports on Delhi Metro's latest hire, a large black-faced langur called Shri. Bajarang Bali. Ok, I made that name up; blame the BBC's shoddy reporting for not mentioning this gentleman's good name.

So Big B gets paid $150 for his services, which consist mainly of glowering menancingly, and baring his fangs at his relatives and cousins, who happen to be notorious fare jumpers. As a spokesman for the Delhi Metro put it, recently one such cousin of Big B's boarded a train at Chandni Chowk station and travelled some 3.5 km to the Civil Lines station before alighting. Since he was hungry, he also glared at his human cousins for "kelas", "angoors", etc were not forthcoming. How dare they? Did they forget who saved Sita-ma?

Yes sir, we are like this only; cows on the streets, monkeys on the subways. By the way, Vikram Chandra's monkey in his novel "Red Earth and Pouring Rain" is a fantastic teller of tales.