Synopsis: Scream, Spray, Shove

A woman has love life issues and feels purposeless in her job, but she has enough money to travel to distant countries for long periods of time.

When she lands, she notices that the women in these countries also have problems, like lack of access to drinking water and healthcare, and they have no money. She accepts that her problems are insignificant in the face of theirs and decides to add books to the For Dummies series which tackle their difficulties, beginning with one on sexual harassment.

Inspired by: Eat, Pray, Love

Synopsis: Walt, the Chemist

A chemist named Walt has the skills to transform ordinary items into precious material but he's sick and needs medicine. He meets a boy who seeks treasure.

Walt and the boy travel through the desert and settlements and have thrilling adventures. To become rich, the boy needs to lead this cowboy lifestyle but he also wants the comfort of a woman regardless of the constraints his career choice imposes upon him.

Towards the end, Walt dies because he didn't get enough medicine, and the boy is given a consolatory happy ending. It is up to the reader to infer that the boy could have become rich beyond his wildest dreams if he had just learnt Walt's skills instead of mucking about.

Inspired by: The Alchemist

Synopsis: The Farts In Our Stall

Three teenage kids running the games corner at a fete, seated closer to the bean snacks hut than permitted, get exposed to vicious bouts of flatulence. It's so bad that it literally gives them cancer. The book inadvertently also teaches the correct usage of the word 'literally', synonyms for 'fart', and some other medical words useful for taking extended periods of sick leaves.

The rest of the book tries to highlight the disconnect from reality and society that cancer patients face. Teenagers unlikely to survive till the next World Cup are reading books and going to Amsterdam just to meet an author, abusive drunkards are suddenly recovering, and guardians are okay with their children jetting off to meet weirdos who have withdrawn from the rest of the world but are okay with talking to their children only if they show up in person.

Inspired by: The Fault in Our Stars

Synopsis: Who Moved My Seas

There are lots of people stuck in a maze, looking for energy sources. Some of them learn to harness fossil fuels and then colonise everybody else and make everybody use fossil fuels too. Everybody prospers, some more, some less.

After some time, many experts unanimously observe that the maze's glaciers are receding, extreme weather events aren't as rare as before, and the coast seems a lot closer than it used to be. They also find overwhelming evidence pointing to fossil fuel consumption as the reason behind it.

In light of this new knowledge, some people try to find alternatives to fossil fuel but most others choose to continue using fossil fuels in the interest of GDP and votes.

The ones searching soon discover the power of renewables. The ones not budging keep waiting for it to make economic sense to switch.

Inspired by: Who Moved My Cheese

Synopsis: The Old Man Who Was a C-word

This is centred around an old man who grew up in a culture where preying on the helpless and gullible was a way of life. Of late, he has been living off of the work of others and not really doing much himself. One day he realises that nobody respects him and then something snaps in him.

On a morning soon after, he sets out with the intention of going a long way out to harm those weaker than him, just to prove himself to his peers. On his return he boasts about all the wicked things he did to the rest of the village who take his word for it despite scarce evidence of the same. So awestruck is the rest of the village that they elect him their leader and inflict more brazen atrocities in his name. The old man goes back to doing nothing except now he has to provide the occasional sound byte.

This is the story of so many old men that perhaps this could be an anthology of biographies titled, The Old Men Who Were C-words.

Inspired by: The Old Man and the Sea

Mekedatu, Karnataka, India

Mekedatu is a half a day trip from Bangalore. The story goes that at that point, a goat ( meke ) jumped ( datu ) across the Kaveri river to escape a chasing tiger. A herdsman who happened to spot the incident suggested the name, probably to his herdsmen chums. Whatever floats your goat, his herdsmen chums said to him having more important matters of their own to deal with.

According to legend, these are goat hooves because the
goat that jumped across the river was actually Lord Shiva.
A simpler, more believable, explanation could be Punjabi aunties.

My Problem With #notallmen

Like that one racist uncle in every family who thinks all Muslims are terrorists, everybody has that one feminazi friend whose post-sexual-assault-news posts do actually sound like they blame ALL straight men for any sexual violence. In a country like India, where the genders don't really intermingle because, depending on whom you hear it from, either men are dicks or women have a princess complex, it only exacerbates an existing problem. Some straight men, who felt unfairly vilified, decided to respond with #notallmen. A #yesallwomen also arose after that to inform all men that all women face sexual harassment. Some day these will be the names of a female superhero movie trilogy. Or tags on orgy videos.

Ryan must have been really pleased when he came up with this. I can imagine
the smug smile on his face as he entered that emphatic line break between
the 'does' and the 'it' at the end, hit the post button, sat back, and waited for
he likes to pour in by the bucketful as he stroked the white cat in his lap.
( image source: Ryan Henly )

Risihikesh, Uttarakhand, India

Rishikesh is a wild party city in the state of Uttarakhand in India.

Anarchy in the UK ( Uttarakhand ).

Marimekko Charts in ggTimeSeries

( Originally appeared on the Ather Blog )

We just added Marimekko charts to the ggTimeSeries library.

What are Marimekko charts? Also know as mosaic plots, they help visualise the co-occurrence of two categorical or ordinal variables and compare the occurrence of that pair to other pairs.

Remember the plot showing the proportions of accelerations from our last blog post?

Fantasy Football - 8: Easy Stretches of Fixtures

Compared to identfying teams that are performing well, it's a pain to identify stretches of appealing fixtures. The coloured indicators for match difficulty that FPL tacked on in 2016-17 don't seem to update with performances.

The charts below use only the EPL data to try and highlight four aspects that one would typically look at when trying to decide transfers. The thresholds, etc. aren't some sort of recommendation. Feel free to change them if some other number makes more sense.

Code and ( usually ) updated charts available here: