That’s one curious disease

Ramu Ramanathan writes:

And so, to flashback to a curious sequence of events in Mumbai. Raj Thackeray demands an apology from the Hindiwallahs. Abu Azmi demands an apology from Raj. Kumar Ketkar and Loksatta demand an apology from both of them. Saamna demands an apology from all of them. Meanwhile Vinayak Methe demands an apology from Ketkar and Loksatta; and so he vandalises Ketkar’s home. The do-gooders demand an apology from the Home Minister. The NCP demands an apology from its member, Vinayak Methe. Meanwhile Narayan Rane demands an apology from the CM. The Shiv Sena continues to demand an apology from Rane (for deserting them); and so they lampoon him in Saamna. Rane flexes his muscles and demands an apology from Saamna, whose office is vandalised. This time, the do-gooders do not demand an apology from the Home Minister. [source: Tehelka.com]

Taking cue from him, I could say something about AP politics too, in the near future:

Chief Minister YSR, should demand an apology from Chandrababu Naidu, who in turn should apologise to Balakrishna and family, for backstabbing NTR. Balakrishna should seek apologies from the two people he shot because they probably told him the truth about his own movies , and they should apologize to Balaiah’s fans  for hurting Balakrishna’s index finger and not making another hundred movies with him.  Meanwhile, actor Rajashekar should apologize to Chiranjeevi’s fans for not getting beaten up properly and Chiranjeevi should apologize to his youngest son-in-law, who should in turn apologize to Pawan Kalyan’s estranged wife - just for the heck of it. In the meanwhile, Uday Kiran can apologize to Mohan Babu who can thank the general public and also apologize because, he loses his mind amidst people anyway. K.Raghavendra rao B.A., must apologize to the grape vendors in the state for shifting to oranges, and Genelia, Trisha, Shriya and other heroines must apologize for not being retarded enough in their roles. Ah, I could go on and on, but I must apologize, I knew I had to stop long ago, but just couldn’t resist.

In love with Calibri

This might surprise you -but read on.

Dear Calibri,

Ever since I saw you last week, I’ve been dreaming about you. I can’t get my eyes off from you at work - literally. You were the missing element; God’s beauty etched on a white sheet of paper. And the curves and smoothing are simply excellent(!). Perfect shape. I Love you. I was struggling with chubby Arial and ugly Times New Roman before I saw you. I have been typing unusually looooong sentenetences with tyyypos full of long wrong words, so that I can fill up more of my screen space- just with you. I’m at peace with Word and Excel, you make my work place brighter, my reports better, my development tools lighter, gosh - I do Love you.

–

Sorry if you can’t see the text lines above - but if you are not using Microsoft Office 2007 suite yet, you are missing Vista fonts. If you want them for free, you can either get them through PowerPoint Viewer (download) from Microsoft or Office compatibility pack (download) and get the Fonts along with these packs. (source: labnol.blogspot.com). I nearly hate Times New Roman and Arial by now, Arial with size 10 is sometimes ok, but I got bored by it. And yes, Calibri may not look that good on WordPress - just use it on your Word Doc and see. The letter in normal world press font is reproduced again below:

Dear Calibri,

Ever since I saw you last week, I’ve been dreaming about you. I can’t get my eyes off from you at work - literally. You were the missing element; God’s beauty etched on a white sheet of paper. And the curves and smoothing are simply excellent(!). Perfect shape. I Love you. I was struggling with chubby Arial and ugly Times New Roman before I saw you. I have been typing unusually looooong sentenetences with tyyypos full of long wrong words, so that I can fill up more of my screen space- just with you. I’m at peace with Word and Excel, you make my work place brighter, my reports better, my development tools lighter, gosh - I do Love you.

–

Have fun.

Sly-dial : Call someone without having to talk to them.

The possibilities are endless:

“After a long beta period, Boston-based MobileSphere launched a ’straight-to-voicemail’ service yesterday called Slydial. If you call 267-SLY-DIAL and listen to a short ad, you can then be connected to the voicemail inbox of any US mobile phone subscriber, without causing their phone to ring. Sounds kinda useful — but incredibly, MobileSphere is pitching the service as a way to avoid actually communicating with all those difficult, boring people in your life. In reply to suggestions that Slydial erodes and cheapens genuine human interaction, a MobileSphere exec says the company is just combating technology with technology, by helping people take control of whether and when to talk with their friends, family, and coworkers.”

Source slashdot

And the scenarios are endless too:

Source: Cartoonstock

God says - ;) (wink)

Frenzy over sai idol with one eye open..TOI reports

God says - naughty!

Hundreds of people descended on a merchant’s house in Bangalore on Friday to witness what they believe is a miracle - the Shirdi Sai Baba idol is purported to have opened its left eye. ..

O.k, so when god finally decided to show his existence, he chose to open one eye.

The idol had some black mark on its left chin and the couple’s son Dhrupad, who was cleaning the eye, suddenly felt some change in the idol - the eyelash seemed moving. The devotees were astounded and stopped the cleaning work.

If it isn’t naughty Drupad applying soot from an oil lamp on the eye, and having fun, then it’s probably that the sculptor had to deliver an idol with two eyes ‘open’, but had some kind of finishing problems and the patch didn’t work long enough. I say catch the sculptor, demand a partial refund or get his tools and put a side pedestal and worship a hammer and chisel, as a tribute to the art of sculpting.

Christian, the lion.

Christian, the lion who lived in my London living room..

A pet lion bought at an exotic store, that eventually  grew too big and was introduced into the wild far away in Kenya. AN year later, when the owners wanted to see him again, they were advised that it was highly impossible that the lion might remember them. Now, see the video below:

About me

I’ve a story today that some of you might find - not so interesting. But I’ll tell it to you any way. DNA as you know is the building block of life, and this story is that of my DNA. Years ago, when National Geographic announced their Genographic project, I was one of the enthusiasts to provide them with a DNA sample from a buccal swab (buccal is cheek, nothing other than that, OK?) and 120 USD. After months of waiting, they sent me the results with the journey of my ancestors (and most probably some of you, readers).

Genographic

My haplogroup is the same as that of a percentage of people living in China, Indonesia, Taiwan,the Philippines and from regions from northern Italy to Turkey. Some Arabs and Jews also belong to this haplogroup.

50,000 years ago, one of my ancestors was in Africa, 45,000 years ago my ancestors were in Northern Africa and Midlde-east - also called the fertile crescent. 30,000 years ago my ancestors passed through present day Pakistan and the Himalayas to come to India. This is where the Genographic story ends, and one of uncle’s story kicks in.

My surname is a derivative of a dynasty that was once called ‘Khota’ dynasty, which was involved in the Battle of Palnadu, that happened a mere 800 years ago in 1182 A.D. (the in-between 28,000 years of history is yet to be discovered). Now what’s interesting is my uncle told me that our forefather’s came from an area around modern day Rajasthan. Quite close to where Genographic ends their version of the story. It might be sheer co-incidence or  a historical fact, that isn’t too important. Anyway, from Rajasthan to coastal Andhra Pradesh is a 28,000 years of history in itself.

Coming to the present. 5 years ago, I was thousands of miles away, farther than my ancestors traveled in 50-60,000 years. 5 days ago I was 1,200 miles away in Birmingham, Alabama. In one weekend I moved my entire life with me to Boston (apart from a truckload of clothes, cables, laundry baskets and other accumulated stuff that I left back). Memories are stuck and they will fade, like everyone else’s. I don’t know where I will be in the next 20 years, I don’t know where my future generations from the same genealogy will be.

Now, the point is, when I share the same blueprint of my origin with Arabs, Jews, Chinese, Italians, Sicilians, Russians and Indians(of course), and lots more. Is evolution not a resounding proof of the absence of any religious origins or the distinctions that we follow today? Science has the proof, one thing that cannot be changed is that part of the DNA (male chromosome or ‘Y’ chromosome) that was studied for the genographic project. I’ll leave the moral of the story at that, I’m sure you will get it.

It’s also sad that the birth place of human kind is struggling for survival because of human kind itself. Zimbabwe, Somalia and Kenya to name a few. The Palestinian conflict since thousands of years and many more conflicts, wars and man-made tragedies. I’m sure our ancestors did not migrate far enough from each other, just so that one day we may be able to blow up each other with our advanced weaponry.

Probably when we have ruined life on Earth enough, and the nature is sick of it’s own evoluted beings, the final Adam will realize the grave mistakes we have done and shrink smaller in shame and regret into something smaller like amoeba, and slide back into the very ocean water we once came from, probably along the coast of Africa. Regrettably, it will then be a full circle.

Man and Science

Research focusing on the unknown, and protesters claiming that a resultant blackhole ON earth will gobble it up.

Science, such fun!  Link

175 years of history

A book that was first published in 1812, and a replica of which I’m holding right now, with awe and admiration of some of the ‘greatest medical minds’ of the early 18th century, starts of with a quote in Latin that I would love to share with you…

‘Homo, Naturae minister et interpres, tantum facil et intelligit quantum de Natura ordine, re vel mente observaverit, nec amplius scit au potest.’ - Francis Bacon.

Which translates to (link)

“Man, the minister & interpreter of nature can act & understand just in proportion to his experience & observation of the order of nature nor can he know or do any thing further.” - Francis Bacon.

And I’m forced to ask myself - how far have we come? Is this really history, it looks like yesterday and today. And possibly tomorrow, we should be telling the same thing to ourselves, again.

Steve Jobs’ speech

Steve jobs on Life

An excellent speech by Steve Jobs that I came across while looking for something unrelated, successes, failures, life, death, love… connecting the dots.

Please, God

Irrespective of whether you are there or not, please, help me from going insane. I promise I’ll not move again anytime soon and I won’t buy a 100 shirts or T-shirts because they are cheap/they felt good/because I am an absolute idiot.

I won’t buy 4 pairs of sneakers without throwing the old ones (once I feel they are old), I’ll never keep books that I’ll never read, like- Bedford’s introduction to literature, that’s the size of a telephone directory, or Homer’s Iliad, which I read the first page 3 times and couldn’t understand a bit of it (hey, I tried!). I will never buy a home theater system that you can attach to a COMPUTER, and requires seven speakers + a sub-woofer AND seven speaker stands. I’ll never buy cheap wall paintings from WAL*MART to impress girls. I’ll never buy book stands, shoe stands and dumb looking lamp shades from garage sales that will give me the feeling of being an antique collector, when I’m collecting pure junk. I’ll throw away all the cups I get as freebies from job fairs/seminars or dumb ass meetings (from next time onwards), I’ll shred my mail from next month, I’ll label DVDs and CDs from next time onwards. I’ll clean up junk/duplicate files and silly e-mail attachments from my work laptop regularly, next time onwards. I’ll start packing early next time onwards. I’ll probably pray (next time onwards) in a temple, I might even bribe you with a coconut, for now I will bribe myself with a Kendall Jackson. But just this once, if you are there, restore my faith, do a miracle, let someone else pack up my stuff in the way I would want it. Please, God, please. I hope you do what you can, while I sleep.