Author: जयकृष्णः | ജയകൃഷ്ണൻ

Mumbai Blasts (Updates)

“Sameer”:http://supersam5.blogspot.com/2003_08_24_supersam5_archive.html#106188973679797026 writes from Mumbai
bq. The people of Mumbai have, as always, bounced right back, refusing to be cowed down. Whether this is resilience or apathy… one thing is certain. The spirit that keeps Mumbai ticking has not died down. An example of that resilience is the fact that the Sensex, which plumetted 120 points during the day yesterday, after the news of the blasts broke… has bounced back by regaining most of the lost ground. The sensex was 108 points up from yesterday’s close at the time I posted this entry.
And “MadMan”:http://www.yazadjal.com/mt/archives/000113.html is furious at the intelligence agencies
bq. And why is it that the only intelligence information that you can come up with is something that any one of us could have figured out? Have you been taking lessons from Bejan Daruwalla?
And India has “pointed the finger at Pakistan”:http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/aug/26blast7.htm
bq. “India’s growth, its success both as a democracy and as a secular country with a large Muslim population, its economic progress are the factors at the root of the neighbour’s hostility. It is wrong to attribute it only to differences over Jammu and Kashmir,” he said during a visit to the metropolis.

25 years of Mohanlal

25 years back Mohanlal acted in his first movie, “Thiranottam”, which was released in one theatre. Now he is one of India’s best actors.
bq. Malayalam superstar Mohanlal rode a bicycle on the road leading to his house in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday to recreate his first shot before the arc lights 25 years ago when he made his debut as an actor. Almost all the artistes and technicians who were associated with his first film ‘Thiranottam’ were present for the rare photo session in front of the Poojappura-Mudavanmughal residence of the versatile actor.
Update: Rediff has a “special feature”:http://www.rediff.com/movies/2003/sep/03mohan1.htm on this occasion
[Source: “Sify”:http://sify.com/movies/malayalam/fullstory.php?id=13232877, “Srijith”:http://www.srijith.net/trinetre/archives/2003/09/03/index.shtml#000412]

Bomb Blasts in Mumbai

45 people have been killed and 150 people injured in two bomb blasts that have occured in South Mumbai. “Rediff”:http://www.rediff.com/news/mumbai-blasts.htm has extensive coverage of the event, so do bloggers “Yazad”:http://www.yazadjal.com/mt/archives/000112.html and “Sameer”:http://supersam5.blogspot.com/2003_08_24_supersam5_archive.html#106180019265145295 from Mumbai.
“Jihva”:http://www.jivha.com/blog/archives/000397.html writes:
bq. Today was the day the Archeological Survey of India�s(ASI) report on the existence of a temple on the disputed Babri Masjid site was to have been released. The blasts came hours after the release of the report – so evidently they�d been planned for today.
Update: “More than 100 detonators found on rail tracks”:http://in.rediff.com/news/2003/aug/25blast32.htm
bq. Hours after twin bomb blasts in Mumbai killed 46 people, more than 100 detonators were found from a railway track at a place about 60 km from Nashik just an hour before an express train carrying mostly Kumbh pilgrims was to pass, senior police and railway officials in Nashik said.

Kerala School of Mathematics

Dr. Subhash Kak has started a new column in Rediff. In his first article, “India’s schoolbook histories”:http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/aug/22kak.htm he writes about the Kerala school of Mathematics
bq. The astronomers Aryabhata and Bhaskara may be familiar to some from the eponymous spacecrafts of the Indian Space Organization. Aryabhata (500 AD) took the earth to spin on its axis and he described the planet periods with reference to the sun. He also took the solar system to be several hundred million miles across. In all of these things he was ahead of the rest of the world by more than a thousand years. Bhaskara (12th century) was a brilliant mathematician. The last two names belong to the amazing Kerala school of mathematics and astronomy.
There is more
Continue reading “Kerala School of Mathematics” →

Book Review: Fast Food Nation

Who would have thought that a book on fast food would be so interesting. “Fast Food Nation : The Dark Side of the All-American Meal”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060938455/jksobservat-20 is part history, part investigative journalism. On the one hand there is the story of the various people who started the fast food revolution from South California. Then there is stomach churning details on the state of the various factories where fast food is manufactured. There is also the human interest story on the various other cogs in the fast food wheel, such as the ranchers who do not make any money to the illegal immigrants who work in dangerous conditions risking their lives to produce fast food.
The story, starts with the people who started the fast food revolution in United States, people such as Ray Kroc the founder of McDonald’s, Carl Karcher the founder of Carl’s Jr and JR Simplot who became rich selling frozen fries to McDonald’s. These people identified that Americans were a bunch of people who would want to eat and not dine and made their restaurants a place where one could grab food and be on the way. This was at a time when conveyor belt production was becoming popular in industries and the founders of the Fast Food industry decided to apply the same concept to their kitchen as well.
Continue reading “Book Review: Fast Food Nation” →

Praful's Predictions

Praful Bidwai on July 24th:
bq. The Anglo-American coalition is caught in what is rapidly turning into a quagmire. Every single political plan it devised for Iraq has come a cropper. Its first pro-consul, Lt Gen Jay Garner, had to quit within a month — in disgrace. His civilian successor Paul Bremer hasn’t had an iota of success in establishing a nominally viable government.
Iraq, July 31
bq. BAGHDAD, Iraq — After weeks of struggling to choose a leader, Iraq’s U.S.-picked interim government named its first president Wednesday — a Shiite Muslim from a party banned by Saddam Hussein.
As always, Praful is ahead of the curve.
[Sources: “Rediff”:http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jun/24praful.htm, “Tri-Valley Herald”:http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~1543894,00.html]

Why movies fail

Hollywood has finally discovered why movies are failing, why people are not thrilled by Charlie’s Angles and Terminator 3:
bq. The problem, they say, is teenagers who instant message their friends with their verdict on new films – sometimes while they are still in the cinema watching – and so scuppering carefully crafted marketing campaigns designed to lure audiences out to a big movie on its opening weekend.
It is time Hollywood took this seriously and started taking steps to ban text messaging.
[Source: “Independent”:http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/news/story.jsp?story=434778]

Mamma knows it best

In his book, “Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140250670/jksobservat-20 , Pankaj Mishra reaches Kottayam, Kerala, and meets Mrs. Book Review: PakistanRoy, an activitst, who tells him the following
bq. “I think white people are a curse on mankind. Wherever you look, they are busy causing destruction to something or the other. And they think themselves superior to everyone else! They are really awful!”
Book Review: PakistanRoy is Arundhati Roy’s mother.
This is from the book I am currently reading, “Where the Rain is Born: Writings About Kerala”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143029193/jksobservat-20, Edited by Anita Nair.

Why I use Firebird

“Prasenjeet”:http://chaoszone.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_chaoszone_archive.html#106070718197986260 says that “Google Toolbar”:http://toolbar.google.com/popup_help-beta.html now offers popup blocking ability, so he finds himself using less and less of “Mozilla Firebird”:http://texturizer.net/firebird/index.html. But I am still sticking to Firebird. Read this article by Ben Goodger which explains “Why You Should Switch to the Mozilla Firebird browser”:http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/why/
I am addicted to Tab-Browsing. You can also bookmark a set of tabs. So I have tabs with India related news sites, US related news sites, finance news etc.
Google search is integrated into the browser. So I don’t need a Google Toolbar. Besides this there are features like “Smart Keywords”, where by I can give a nickname to a bookmark. This enables me to type “newshopper” to take me to “Sulekha Newshopper”:http://www.sulekha.com/hopper.asp. To search something in a page, all you need is keep typing the string and the search is performed on the page. No more Ctrl-F required.
Now besides this, the weblog reader I use, “NewsMonster”:http://www.newsmonster.org/screenshots.html, runs under Mozilla as a sidebar.
Till IE has all these capabilities, I think I will use Firebird.
Update: Dan Gillmor has a column on “RSS Aggregators”:http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001285.shtml