Something odd is going on.

Over the last few months, at completely unpredictable and irregular intervals, I'm receiving a magazine from the Dental Council of India (DCI). It's a pretty snazzy trade publication with lots of photos and research papers. And it's completely free.

So what's the odd bit?

Well, in the first place, I never signed up for this magazine. I never, ever, asked the DCI to send it to me. And that's only the beginning.

The address on the magazine packet goes:

                                   SHIV KUMAR
                                   DENTAL COLLEGE, LUCKNOW
                                   STREAMLET ROAD
                                   SHILLONG.

Now, while I do live (not practice) on Streamlet Road in Shillong, my name, so far as I'm aware, is not Shiv Kumar. And as an executive committee member of the state chapter of the Indian Dental Association, I know that there isn't in all this state any dentist by the name of Shiv Kumar.

Then, this is Shillong, not Lucknow. Lucknow is over one and a half thousand kilometres from here. There is no such institution as Dental College, Lucknow in Shillong.

In fact, there is no institution called Dental College in Lucknow either. I studied dentistry in Lucknow; I should know. The so-called dental college is actually the Faculty of Dental Sciences, under the King George's Medical University. Of all people, you'd expect the Dental Council of India to know that little fact.

Since I'm getting a magazine out of this that I do not have to pay for, I don't exactly want to rock the boat to find out what the hell goes on. But that doesn't stop me from, you know, wondering:

1. Why is a magazine addressed to Shiv Kumar sent to Shillong? Who is Shiv Kumar?

2. Why is something addressed to a fictional institution in Lucknow further addressed to my home street address in Shillong?

3. Since my name isn't Shiv Kumar, nor does it resemble Shiv Kumar in any way, why are the issues of this magazine delivered to me? When they are, that is.

Any theories?

You've heard of the Roswell Incident, I assume - the alleged crash of a "flying saucer" at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 that was allegedly covered up by the US Air Force.

And a few days ago I read of an incident where Vietnamese observers reported an explosion in the sky over Cambodia and recovered pieces of grey metal, the remains of a possible UFO.

Now, I've seen two UFOs, so they do exist. I mean they are precisely what they contend to be - Unidentified Flying Objects, with the stress on the first word. And, yeah, I've seen two: a bright red tadpole shape and a mysterious soaring yellow-green light...the sad bit is neither remained unidentified for long. The first turned out to be a rather large and unusual red meteor, and the second, a hot air balloon flying at night.

So, I believe in UFOs. I just do not believe that they are anything more than temporarily unidentified objects seen in the sky, certainly not visitors from outer space. Neither do I believe the US or any other government is hiding data of an alien spaceship crash simply in order to glean some kind of military advantage from it.

But!

Just assume an alien spaceship did crash on earth, tomorrow, and its wreckage was recovered. If it crashed far enough from 24 hour media coverage not to be instantly reported, what do you think would happen to it?

Well, the government under whose jurisdiction it crashed, or its overlord ("ally"), would more likely than not, at once - or as soon as practicable - hide away the wreckage, prepare a cover story, and try to glean some kind of military advantage from it.

Exactly what's supposed to have happened at Roxwell.

So, since I'm no militarist and no patriot, next time you see a flying saucer (not the type your wife just flung at your head in the kitchen) crash, call me. I'll make sure the world knows all, and then some.

Here you get a longer distance and longer duration look at what it does - and does - and keeps doing, for an hour or more.

Although at the time I took this video I did not know what this bird was, I have since identified it as being a yellow wagtail. It's been attacking this car in this fashion, repeatedly, over the last several days. I don't know whether it has something against cars or whether it's just going for its own reflection.
It was very difficult to get the bird on video because (as you can see) it flew off anytime I got close. I'm posting this part because in it, though you see the bird only briefly, you do get a better look at it than in the other part, where I got it for a longer duration but at a greater distance.

What to do if you need fire and have no matches, no lighter and have a condom.

Many years ago, I recall reading an issue (by then already old) of that impeccable propaganda sheet of the American right wing, The Digested Reader (oh, OK, Reader's Digest). One of the articles was about a mysterious shooting of a young woman in her car on the highway. She was driving along one morning on a highway by the sea, her window rolled down, when she slumped over, shot in the head, and her car rolled off the highway until it came to a stop.

No motive could be found for anyone to shoot her; and if it were a maniac sniper, he didn't even shoot at anyone else, nor were any traces of a shooter found.

Here's what the investigation threw up: a man had been practising with his rifle on the other side of the bay, using a heavy rifle, firing at flotsam in the water. One of his bullets missed its intended target, hit the water at high velocity and at a shallow angle, bounced off, and, by now tumbling end over end, came over the highway and hit the girl in the head. If she had had the window closed, she might actually have survived, but who ever keeps a car window closed in hot bright morning sunshine?

Lessons to be drawn: keep your car window closed,  and - if you're a rifle owner - either shoot yourself or leave your gun at home.

I still wonder why the NRA didn't pay to have that article quashed.      

I was in junior school (I don’t quite remember how old I was, but most probably this was about 1978 or so – I was seven or eight years old) when one day I got an invitation for dinner from a Muslim neighbour. Now there was nothing odd about the invite; we were always in each other’s houses day in and day out, as children will...though then again, it was a more tolerant time. It’s only that this was a formal invitation, to Eid dinner or something (it was a long time ago and the family concerned moved away long since, so I can’t be specific). But then a Hindu kid of my acquaintance got to know of the invite and came running over.

“Don’t eat anything in that house,” he gasped. “They’ll feed you beef and turn you into a Muslim!”

I went, well, not in that particular format, but approximately, “WTF”?

Well, now, I’m an atheist, so if you’ll excuse me if I don’t understand how on earth eating or not eating a particular food is going to take me to heaven or hell or even change my religion or what. Normally I’d have dismissed it as just another religious incomprehensibility if it were not for some things – how did food ever get mixed up with ritual purity? And why is it that much of the world’s population puts up with being deprived of food nutrients because of some religious scruples? As I was pointing out a while back, beef and pork being interdicted for today’s Hindus, a very large number of them are acutely protein deficient – chicken and mutton are inefficient and expensive for them, even if they are theoretically non-vegetarian.

All right, we were all hunter gatherers once, and we didn’t have scruples over food. We wouldn’t be alive now if we had. If it looked even remotely edible, we ate it, and if we didn’t die or fall violently sick, it ended up added to our diet list. (The Japanese didn’t even have that scruple – they still eat the lethal Tiger Fugu pufferfish.) So where did we go cockeyed?

Some of it is comprehensible – sort of. The Hindu and the cow I explained some time ago as a deliberate policy decision, and the pork ban for Muslims and Jews may have to do with the pig’s role as a scavenger, something it still does in tribal communities worldwide (though they do eat it all the same). And Hindu widows are supposed to torment themselves eternally for their late husbands, which is why they shouldn’t eat any food that tastes remotely good – and all their food must lack onions and ginger because these are alleged sexual stimulants. If you accept the basic premise, it makes some kind of sense.  

But there is the other thing. It’s not just food. It’s how that food is prepared or even killed. Why, I wonder, do Muslims and Jews insist their meat is bled to death (halal/kosher) rather than killed any other way? Why are locusts kosher, specifically, but not any other kind of insect? Hindus will decapitate their meat, but neither they nor Christians will scruple to eat kosher/halal meat (of course, if you look at it, some Hindus won't eat chickens and I read somewhere that Leviticus says Christians shouldn't eat cloven hoofed animals, but I'm talking of day-to-day stuff here). So why won’t Jews or Muslims? All right, I’m not asking for explanations from Koran or Torah. I’m asking how it began. After all, the hunter gatherer will eat his food in any way he can kill it, bash it with a stone axe, spear it, whatever. He won’t waste the blood either, he’ll drink it or turn it into a pudding or use it somehow. So where did these fancy ritual killing ideas originate?

Incidentally, Khasis torture their pork to death by ramming a pole down the pig’s throat, but that’s because they have a mistaken idea that animals killed slowly and painfully are tastier. Actually the exact opposite is true, but that is just another proof of the blind tenacity of tradition.

If anyone has some answers to give, I’d like to hear them.