Join the bandwagon - screw the nation!

Will our people never realise ? Oh my God... The rest of the taxpayers have to pay for satisfying this moron's ego! Who is accountable to the national exchequer ?

Fulfilling a major election promise, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi Friday launched the distribution of free colour TV sets to the poor at Padappai near Chennai on the 98th birth anniversary of DMK founder C N Annadurai.

Speaking at the function, in which 25,245 colour TV sets worth about Rs 9 crore were given to the residents of Samathuvapuram (a colony of all communities and creeds) at Thundalkazhani village in Padappai in Kanchipuram district, Karunanidhi said Rs 750 crore had already been allocated in the state budget for distributing 25 lakh colour TV sets.

(Image and text courtesy: Rediff.com)


Spending Rs.750 crore and then applying for central aid citing famine! Hypocrites. Lets see what Jayalalitha offers people if they elect her the next time!

Bookmarks

No. I am not referring to the social bookmarks like del.icio.us, digg.com or my favourite bookmarks in my firefox browser. Instead, this is a blogpost on the traditional paper bookmarks, used in books.

I don't know why I love bookmarks. In India too, I had a penchant for collecting bookmarks. It probably stemmed from an aversion to keeping books open and turned down. If there is one reason I fear giving my books to someone, it is because most people will not return it in the same condition as it was before. It is all the more scarier if they say 'I will take care of it as if it is my own book' , especially when you know how they care for their books!

Most often, I use a small piece of folded paper as a placemark in a book if nothing else is available. But recently, whenever I go to the Auburn Public library, I love to pick up their latest bookmarks. The idea behind their bookmarks is so ingenious that it definitely needs to me mentioned.

One objective in keeping free bookmarks for take-away at all places around the library is to ensure that patrons use them and hence take good care of the books. But what differentiates these bookmarks is the design.

Look at some of the bookmarks in the figures. You will notice that they suggest alternate books of the same genre! How often have we wanted to read another book of the same genre! The suggestions are so relevant and have helped me make a good suggestion many a time. The bookmarks contain details about other books, their catalog numbers, genre and other information. And this is a service offered in a public library!

It is sometimes painful to think about our City Central Libraries(CCL) in Bangalore. The Government does invest a huge amount of money into them but the staff and public hardly care in caring for the precious books. Moreover, the rampant vandalism mentality in India hardly helps the cause of public libraries.

So next time you take out a book for reading, use a bookmark.

ಇಂದಿನ ಗೊಂದಲ

ಭಾರತದಾತ್ಮಂ ಕಂಗೆಡುತಿದೆ ಪರ
ಸಾರಸ್ವತ ಸಂಪದ ಭರದಿಂ
ತಾರಿ ಹೋಗುತಿದೆ ತಾಯ್ನಾಡಿನ ಮನ
ಏರುವಿದೆ ಸ್ವಪ್ರಯತ್ನದಿಂ

-ಪು.ತಿ.ನರಸಿಂಹಾಚಾರ್

I don't remember where I had seen this, but I found it jotted in my diary. How true it is today!

Sakkat links...

Been browsing a lot and discovering a lot neat websites. Here are some good ones worth visiting.

1. Popularity Dialer : Have you ever been in a situation where you wished your cell phone would ring? Well... this one does just that for you! Fake a phone call easily and credibly! And you can even decide what kind of conversation you want to have! Now if that isn't neat...
2. Gmail Skins : I always wanted my Gmail to have smileys and other neat features. This firefox extension provides that and a lot more mindblowing value additions. This skin also helps you integrate Gmail easily with GCal, Google News, Picasa, Weather, etc.
3. Boing Boing : Arguable the most popular blog on the Internet right now, this blog is simple 'A directory of Useful Things' as it says there.
4. Lifehacker : In its own words, 'Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time. Don't live to geek; geek to live'. Now who wouldn't want that?
5. Wikimapia : Anything from the Wikipedia people is awesome! This one integrates with Google Earth and enables you to tag prominent locations on the earth. They specifically tell you to tag only important places that would be helpful to others but whose ego can resist locating one's house and tagging it 'This is my home' ??!?!
6. Microsoft Folder Protect 1.0 : I would have thought this was one of the really useful softwares to lock and protect folders in PCs. However, Microsoft withdrew it after a backlash from many bloggers! Huh... You can still get it here.

ಸಕ್ಕತ್ ಹಾಡು ...

ಸಕ್ಕತ್ ಹಾಡು ...

'ಲಂಗ ದಾವಣಿ ಎತ್ತ ಹೋಯ್ತ್ರೆ ಕಾಲೇಜ್ ಹುಡುಗೀರ'

ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಕೇಳಿ...ಆನಂದಿಸಿ !

ಇದೇ ಶೈಲಿಯ ಇನ್ನಿತರ ಹಾಡುಗಳು ಇಲ್ಲಿವೆ.

States I've visited so far!

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Is this anti-feminist?!?!?

Just curious; in today's women's lib and feminist world, what would the "forward looking" culture think about this shloka? Is this denigrating ? Male Chuvisinistic? Patronizing? Suppressing ? Or does it still describe all the qualities that a man can look for in a wife in the 21st century?

ಕಾರ್ಯೇಷು ದಾಸೀ ಕರಣೇಷು ಮಂತ್ರೀ
ರೂಪೇಚ ಲಕ್ಶ್ಮೀ ಕ್ಷಮಯಾ ಧರಿತ್ರೀ |
ಭೊಜ್ಯೇಷು ಮಾತಾ ಶಯನೇಷು ರಂಭಾ
ಷಟ್ಕರ್ಮ ಯುಕ್ತಾ ಕುಲಧರ್ಮಪತ್ನೀ ||

If you can't see the kannada script, click on any one of the images below to read either in Kannada or Samskrita:

Dell Laptop bursts and catches fire at a Conference!

Can we ever trust these little things which are billed as the products of the technological revolution?

And I bought a Dell Laptop :-((

More information here.

Courtest: Slashdot

Interpreter of Maladies

I had wanted to read the Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri since long but got an opportunity only recently. Having read rave reviews about this book which has sold about a quarter of a million copies, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction(2000), the O. Henry award and a couple others, I wanted to discover what was so great about this collection of short stories.

Moreover, it was written by an Indian-American Bengali and naturally all stories were biased towards Indian-American immigrants.

To begin with, the style of narration is amazingly good. So elegantly written, they are a pleasure to read! The backgrounds for the stories begin somewhere far away from the place of their climax and the author weaves through the continents and cultures giving the reader a glimpse of the authentic Indian values and traditions. One natural difficulty was that being from South India, I never knew much about the customs of Bengalis which stand out in amost every story. Too much of fish eating and non-vegetarian culinary information in almost every story makes it a hard book to read when I am eating something!

But quite a few stories were a disappointment in their climax. The lofty expectations fall short in some stories giving way to endings that lack in vigour and that 'spark' that you expect from a short story.

Still, I enjoyed reading this book and my current reading is the Namesake by the same author.

Rating: 7/10 - definitely worth your time.

The Reserved Messengers!

Courtesy: PK