THE DIARY OF Z

Agreed Anjelina Jolie is doing some really good work through her humanitarian efforts to alleviate the pains of refugees, but it’s early days yet for her to make a serious bid at politics.

However, news is that she finds Hollywood boring and has now set her sights on the White House. Yup, she wants to be part of the Obama administration and do more for the world.

Some insiders even say that Anjelina could well be America’s first female president 20 years from now. Though one can’t see that far into the future, all I can say is that Anjelina has her heart in the right place. So whichever work she takes up should do her good.

But Ange, I have just one thing to say. Politics is a different ballgame. You need to be cunning, super shrewd, thick skinned and brave all odds. Don’t know if you are up to it.

Rumour is rife that Jennifer Aniston is dating Bradley Cooper who starred with her in the latest He’s Just Not That Into You.

The news spread like forest fire when the two were recently spotted at a romantic Italian restaurant in New York. But the way he dispels this rumour is at a recent press conference saying, ‘we are just good friends’.

And then, he goes on to say that he doesn’t seen any screen space in the film as he comes in the first half when he’s paired with Scarlett Johansson and Jennifer Connelly. But then, that doesn’t mean he’s not meeting her. Familiarity breeds contempt, so the best way to beat it is braek the ice with strangers who are not part of the scenes that you are doing. And that indeed seems to be case with Bradley.

Ofcourse, I agree with him that they are only good friends as of now, I am not sure if it becomes a romantic link-up later. But then, you never know with Cupid, do you?

Michael Jackson is no more, but he still lives on.

The king of pop is managing to keep the flicker of flame alive with his innumerable songs, dances and his very own autobiography Moon Walk. If you were to decode his life of ups and downs, you only need to look up his profile on Wikipedia. But if you were to mark his progress on life’s many paths, his book should do the deed.

What appeals to me most is that he’s a great leveller. My brother was born eight years after I was. And yet, both of us share the same fondness for MJ. That’s bridging generations. And to think that MJ’s most notable work was way back in 1995, it’s amazing how he has remained in the minds of music fans all over the world for over a decade and counting.

But the best part of his life was his unstinted support to as many as 39 charities around the world. However, what displeases me is that his philanthropic efforts didn’t ease up the pains that he was undergoing all his life. From child sex abuse to marital failures to law suits, his life could easily make it to the big screen like boxer Muhammed Ali’s film Ali.

You never know with Hollywood. MJ could be resurrected again and controversies will rear their ugly head yet again. With MJ, disputes were his second cousins.

Mention Lindsay Lohan and you will think of her lesbian connection and her naked news spreading across the universe. So what’s quicker than a Facebook or LinkedIn to get your visuals around? No, not Picasa or Flickr, but Twitter.

Yes, Lindsay has discovered this new way of shedding her inhibitions and grabbing eyeballs. She has gone topless on Twitter. But you can’t credit Lindsay for originality. She’s blonde, remember?

So how did she wisen up? Ashton Kutcher, baby. He was the first to make the most of Twitter and even posted his flame Demi Moore’s ass picture on Twitter.

Sometimes, celebritydom has its extremes. Once you become famous, you wonder how much more famous you can be in that much little time.

The chase continues… But then, that’s life. No chase, no gain.

First things first. There’s a book called The Hologram. And no, this is no artificially-induced simulation of reality, but reality itself. And the upshot? That reality is much more fluid and changable. Which means, we are literally making reality as we go along by probing it and measuring it.

And then, there is the GEO600 German experiment looking for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. While no gravitational waves have been detected so far, it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century - that we could well be living in a giant cosmic hologram.

This idea is being propounded by physicist Craig Hogan, who is also the director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics. He says the hologram idea is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes in theory.

New Scientist explain this phenemenon more succintly. The medical journal says the holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard ‘t Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

My, my. It’s quite an idea, sirjee!

Statistics reveal much about the society we live in. Now there is a study that says married women sleep better than singletons. Though, I am not sure if many women I know agree (haven’t asked yet), I am wondering how such a thing can be generalised across the social spectrum.

But first, here’s what the study says. According to the study’s lead author Wendy Troxel, the assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, being stably married or gaining a partner is associated with better sleep in women than being unmarried or losing a partner. This research paper was presented by him on June 10, 2009 at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

There is more. The study gathered data from 360 middle-aged African American, Caucasian, and Chinese women drawn from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation, with a mean age of 51 years. What’s more, he claims these results persisted even after controlling for other known risk factors for sleep like age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and depressive symptoms.

I feel the results could vary from home to home. If a woman leaves the autocratic regime of her parents and enters a liberated household where she is allowed to fly, ofcourse she will sleep well and even live well. On the other hand, if the case is vice versa, she might have more sleepless nights than ever before. So I am not sure if the study makes sense to the larger population.

What say, women?

Everytime, there are experts telling the government to increase outlays to education, reduce fiscal deficit, grant more tax holidays to new age industries like IT, insurance and so on.  I will do none of that. I will just reproduce what Ninad Karpe, CEO  & MD of Aptech Limited has to say about his pre-budget expectations…

“Indian education and training sector has not received the attention it deserves. Hopefully, the Budget will ensure the following 3Ps for education sector: Participation: private players should be allowed to participate and contribute to this sector in a more unfettered manner

Performance: quality provided to the students needs to improve and should be monitored especially in state managed education institutions

Proportion: larger amount of money from the Budget needs to be allocated, as it is really an investment in India’s future

If these simple steps are taken, it will have a Domino effect on the entire education and training industry”.

Is finance minister Pranab Mukherjee reading this?

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I agree with Indian cricket coach Gary Kirsten. He says playing in the IPL cost the Indian team the T20 World Cup. Why? Player fatique and injury.

Easier said. But then, why didn’t he sound an alarm when the IPL schedule was announced? Why weren’t senior cricketers and concerned sports buffs airing their views before the start of IPL?

They just needed a scapegoat and they have chosen the IPL for all their ills. Agreed, you cannot rule out player fatigue and injuries, but then, why can’t we have two teams, one for the IPL and one for the Indian cricket team. This way, things like this can easily be avoided.

It’s about time the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) sat and took a collective decision on the issue. I am sure, there are many Tendulkars and Sehwags waiting in the wings. This can be the best chance for them to be hired for India and IPL.

This is new. After news that lightning and turbulance (read bad weather) could have crashed Air France 447 that killed over 200 people in one of the worst aircraft accidents, there are experts who don’t rule out the role of meteors striking the plane.

While the topic has invited many to offer up their opinions on what could have happened, some even cite Flight 800’s explosion and subsequent crash in 1996 to have been caused by a meteor the size of a plane.

But my considered view is that it could well have been extreme turbulence. Why not a meteor, you ask? Because most meteors disintegrate before they penetrate the earth’s atmosphere and those who don’t are too small to cause much impact on a giant aircraft like the 447. At best, they could punch holes on entry and exit, not explode the plane and these airframes can probably sustain that kind of impact in most parts and still fly (remember that Australian flight that lost the entire top of its forward cabin?).

However, one expert tells me that the Airbuses are completely fly-by-wire, no old-fashioned cable or screw backups, and if that goes dark in that heavy turbulence, you are totally out of trim before the backups can come up.

Hmmm.