Cool. Soon there will be 15 hydrogen-powered ‘green’ trishaws plying the Galle Fort (where trishaws are currently banned, apparently, though I’ve seen them there). This is funded by UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Dev) and I’m assuming the trishaws are Mahindra HyAlfas, which have previously debuted in Delhi. This is only a test in Sri Lanka, but a damn cool one.

This is a guest post by my mother about the five planets currently visible in the night sky. This is a rare moment where most of the solar system is visible to the naked eye. I’ve seen Mars blazing away as well. There are some more details at earthsky.org. These are my mothers comments on the scene:

This is a live stream of penguins walking around Sea World and being awesome. It’s strangely addictive. If you mute it and put on appropriate music it’s actually mind-blowing. I’ve watched it for longer than you might think. You get to see a rotating cast of characters, dancing, crazy head-flapping, it’s pretty great.

In Asian or Sri Lankan cooking, we put a lot of diverse ingredients into a dish. Salt, chili, curry leaves, coconut milk, onions, garlic, green chili. That’s just the base for many Sri Lankan recipes, before you start adding distinctive stuff. In western food, by contrast, the base is less, and less diverse. This seems apparent anecdotally, and also now scientifically. A chemical study has shown that Asian dishes incorporate more diverse flavors than western ones.

Alex is a cat (a kitten to be exact). He’s basically addicted to Valium. If he misses one dose he has seizures, which are absolutely pathetic to behold. As long as he gets his meds, however, he’s a lovely and personable cat. He likes biting and play-fighting and sleeping in improbable positions.

Word is that the government has demolished illegal hotels and restaurants along the Unawatuna beach. This is not entirely unexpected or unfair, but still a bit of a shock. I called the owner of Black Beauty (nice place, pool), itself a bit off the beach. She said she hadn’t been down to the beach but had heard that they started with Kingfisher, Tartaruga and that she saw policemen standing at Summer Garden.

The Ugly Indian is a website and a sort of movement. The site itself is a nice old-school bit of hypertext story telling. Reminds me a bit of HyperCard. The movement seems like shramadana, or people cleaning their own neighborhoods up (as opposed to waiting for politicians or NGOs). They start from a premise that it’s not external factors that are the problem, it’s the Ugly Indian.

To me, dragons make perfect sense. They’re dinosaurs. If I found a T-Rex skull, as proto-humans must have, it would look like a dragon to me. Awesome attracts awesome. If I didn’t imagine that this thing also flew and breathed fire, the next village certainly would. I mean, how do we know dinosaurs didn’t breathe fire anyways? Un-burnt dentition I guess, but still.

Kurt Cobain sang “It’s OK to eat fish, cause they don’t have any feelings.” Indeed, most people don’t empathize with fish at all – I don’t really – despite the fact that we are evolutionary relatives. Pescetarianism is an acceptable form of vegetarianism, and in Sri Lanka dried fish is basically a vegetable. The artist Ted Sabarese has explored our relationship with fish by photographing people with fish that look like them. Interesting results.

Sayy has a shot of today’s full moon eclipse from Jaffna. It’s been raining in Colombo and I can’t see anything but lightning and clouds. Went up to Jaffna for the last solar eclipse and it’s a great place for it. Only weird thing, as Sayy comments, is that people tend to avoid eclipses there. According to Sayy he was counseled not to eat during the time. I dunno.