Size does matter!

My favorite drink at Starbucks is Tazo Chai Latte (No Water, No Foam, Extra Hot). Most of the time I use the terms small, medium and large to suggest the cup size in which I would like to ingest my Tazo Chai Latte.

The Starbucks' naming convention for small, medium and large sizes, as we all know, is: Tall, Grande and Venti. This, I utterly dislike. Why can't they just call it the normal way? What's the rationale behind inventing a new measurement system? (Apart from being different.)

Dave Barry, who writes a periodic (Ask Mister Language Person) in The Miami Herald, expresses his disagreement quite humorously here:

[...] Unfortunately, we consumers, like moron sheep, started actually USING these names. Why? If Starbucks decided to call its toilets ''AquaSwooshies,'' would we go along with THAT? Yes! Baaa!

Recently, at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Death March, Mister Language Person noticed that a Starbuck's competitor, Seattle's Best Coffee (which also uses ''Tall'' for small and ''Grande'' for medium) is calling its large cup size -- get ready -- ''Grande Supremo.'' Yes. And as Mister Language Person watched in horror, many customers -- seemingly intelligent, briefcase-toting adults -- actually used this term, as in, ''I'll take a Grande Supremo.''

Listen, people: You should never, ever have to utter the words ''Grande Supremo'' unless you are addressing a tribal warlord who is holding you captive and threatening to burn you at the stake. JUST SAY YOU WANT A LARGE COFFEE, PEOPLE. Because if we let the coffee people get away with this, they're not going to stop, and some day, just to get a lousy cup of coffee, you'll hear yourself saying, ''I'll have a Mega Grandissimaximo Giganto de Humongo-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong decaf.''

Amen!

By the way, talking about cup sizes at Starbucks, only recently I discovered that Starbucks also have Short size cups (smaller than the Tall size). They don't advertise Short size on their price boards, which has prices for Tall, Grande and Venti size cups only. Below is the liquid content of each size:

Short = 8 ounces
Tall = 12 ounces
Grande = 16 ounces =1 pint
Venti = 20 ounces

Considering this, the Grande makes some sense as it corresponds to 1 pint. And Venti actually means twenty in Italian, so there's some sanity in calling it a Venti. But what's the logic behind Tall? It is named "Tall" because it's taller than the smallest size? If so, I find the logic quite absurd, and non-intuitive when there are two other sizes available that are taller than Tall itself.

I am going to stick with the Small, Medium and Large. Let Starbucks call them whatever they want.

Indian media biased?

There is some sort of "media bias" e-mail being circulated on the net. It is declared, without any citation or references, that mostly all of the media groups and agencies in India (NDTV, Times of India group, Indian Express group, CNN-NBC etc.) are owned by non-Hindu organizations. And that is given as a reason for why these media groups have (allegedly) become "hindu bashers". Here're some excerpts:

NDTV: A very popular TV news media is funded by Gospels of Charity in Spain Supports Communism. Recently it has developed a soft corner towards Pakistan because Pakistan President has allowed only this channel to be aired in Pakistan. Indian CEO Prannoy Roy is co-brother of Prakash Karat, General Secretary of the Communist party of India. His wife and sisters.

India Today which used to be the only national weekly who supported BJP is now bought by NDTV!! Since then the tone has changed drastically and turned into Hindu bashing.

I think this is utter B.S. (Yes, it is true that NDTV is the only Indian channel that is currently being broadcasted in Pakistan. But I don't see why that would suddenly make them anti-hindu. By the way, I don't think "co-brother" even means anything.)

I spent some time online and googled these alleged connections but didn't find any authentic information. The only sites where this "media ownership alignment politics" is mentioned are on-line discussion forums, blogs and some religious fundamentalists' web-portals. Barring the last one, most questioned the validity of these fragile allegations. Here's some more:

Gujrat riots which took place in 2002 where Hindus were burnt alive, Rajdeep Sardesai and Bharkha Dutt working for NDTV at that time got around 5 Million Dollars from Saudi Arabia to cover only Muslim victims which they did very faithfully. Not a single Hindu family was interviewed or shown on TV whose near and dear ones had been burnt alive, it is reported.

Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka.com regularly gets flat check from Arab countries to target BJP and Hindus only, it is said.

(Emphases mine)

Does someone really have to be a genius to see right through these?

I have made a rule of thumb long time ago: Do not trust ANY forwarded e-mail at once. Most of them are nonsensical twaddles. A little research can easily reveal the truth.

The last line of this forwarded e-mail reads "PONDER OVER THIS. NOW YOU KNOW WHY EVERY ONE IS AGAINST TRUTH, HOW VERY SAD."

Really, how very sad!