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Snippets

A remarkable dressing down. 

“Constituent loses his temper at Rep. Tom MacArthur over health care.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/constituent-loses-temper-rep-tom-macarthur-health-care-47338603

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Snippets

That time David Lee Roth played himself on “The Sopranos” (S5E4)

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Misc. Snippets

Frightening observation of the day:

Fidget spinners have started showing up on EDC blogs. 

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Newley's Notes

Newley’s Notes 92: Gig Economy; New ‘Bladerunner’ Trailer; Dinner with Mark

2017 05 13water

Edition 92 of my email newsletter, Newley’s Notes, went out yesterday.

To subscribe, simply enter your email address at this link. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.


Hi, I’m Newley Purnell – welcome to the latest issue of Newley’s Notes, where I share my Wall Street Journal stories, posts from by blog, and various links about technology, business and life.

📝 What I Wrote in The WSJ

📲 5 Must-Reads in Tech

1. Is the “sharing economy” good for America? In a piece that was much-Tweeted this week, The New Yorker’s Nathan Heller examines services like Uber, TaskRabbit and Airbnb. The nut graf:

The American workplace is both a seat of national identity and a site of chronic upheaval and shame. The industry that drove America’s rise in the nineteenth century was often inhumane. The twentieth-century corrective—a corporate workplace of rules, hierarchies, collective bargaining, triplicate forms—brought its own unfairnesses. Gigging reflects the endlessly personalizable values of our own era, but its social effects, untried by time, remain uncertain.

2. Clayton Christensen, profiled. Also in The New Yorker, Larissa MacFarquhar looks at the effect that the man who coined the term “disruptive technologies” has had on American business. (My notes from his seminal book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” are here.)

3. There’s a new trailer for “Bladerunner 2049.” I am stoked. So stoked. You can watch it here. Vox has some analysis. And here’s a shot-by-shot comparison showing just how much the firm appears to respect the 1982 original.

4. On having Mark Zuckerberg over for dinner. Daniel Moore, of Newtown Falls, Ohio, had Zuck over for dinner when the Facebook founder was touring the state. He talks about the experience in this Business Insider story.

5. Frightening: Russian website aggregates web-linked security camera footage. CBC news found some even showing medical clinics and the interiors of homes.

💫 1 Fun Thing

1. “history of the entire world, i guess.” That’s the title of this very amusing video that explains everything from the birth of this universe to artificial intelligence.

What’d I miss? Just hit reply to send me links, rants, raves, juicy news scoops and anything else.
Thanks for reading.

Love,
Newley

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Snippets

Guide to art criticism emojis

😂 📕

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Snippets

Painting spotted at a hotel in New Delhi. Slightly unsettling?

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Snippets

Spotted here in Delhi: Arsenal antiperspirant

Now accepting suggestions for product’s tag line.

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India Snippets

How you know you’re buying good cheese here in India

“Manufactured by a Dutchman according to Dutch traditions.”

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India Snippets

Among the many excellent birthday gifts I got this year:

A sponsored this lovely New Delhi street dog in my name! Still missing Ashley a ton but thrilled to be helping out another pooch. 

Categories
India Travel

Trip Report: Varanasi, India’s Holiest City

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Back in February we took a quick trip to Varanasi, India’s holiest city. I’m late in writing about the journey, but it was remarkable and I wanted to share some images.

Varanasi, located about 400 miles southeast of Delhi in populous Uttar Pradesh state, is renowned place of pilgrimage for Hindus. It is known for its many ghats, or embankments along the Ganges river where people perform religious ceremonies and cremate the dead.

Varanasi map

The city has been continuously inhabited since about 18th century B.C., and the Buddha is said to have founded Buddhism nearby in the late 6th century B.C.

Varanasi is “older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend,” Mark Twain wrote in his 1897 travel book “Following the Equator,” “and looks twice as old as all of them put together.”

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Map of the city, which is also known as Banaras. We stayed on the southern stretch of the river

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The view from our hotel, south of the central ghats, looking up the Ganges.

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Cows on the riverbank

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A ghat

The city and surrounding area can feel overwhelming, not just due to the intense sensory impressions but also due to thick crowds and traffic.

So you might wish to take a targeted approach to visiting, which we used: Leave Delhi early on a Saturday morning, arrive in Varanasi and have the evening and Sunday morning there, then return to Delhi that afternoon.

You could certainly stay longer, of course, but for a first-time visit this schedule allows you to take everything in quickly and easily.

We took a flight on the Indian carrier IndiGo that departed Delhi at 8 a.m.; the flight takes less than an hour. Then it’s about an hour drive from the airport to downtown Varanasi.

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Heading up the river as the sun goes down

An excellent way to see the activities along the river is via rowboat. You can rent one, with a driver, for about 200 or 300 rupees ($3-$4.50) per hour. We took one on Saturday as the sun set on the river, and another at sunrise on Sunday.

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A ghat where cremations take place

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Saying a prayer and floating a diya, or small lamp, in the river

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Varanasi at night

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View from the river

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Performing a ganga aarti ceremony at the main Dashashwamedh Ghat

You can stop along the banks and take in the sights, like this prayer ceremony.

We stayed at the descriptively named Hotel Temple on Ganges. It’s quite basic, but has a big rooftop, serves decent food, and the staff are very helpful.

If you need your morning cuppa, you might visit the nearby Open Hand Cafe, which has good coffee and a variety of baked goods. There’s also Raga Cafe, which serves excellent Korean food.

For those interested in India, I put Varanasi in the “must-see” category.

Previous travel-related posts:

Trip Report: Three-Day Getaway to Neemrana Fort Palace

My Top 10 Southeast Asia Travel Tips

Two and a Half Days in Istanbul: How to Have an Amazing Time