Terrorism - When it will be just history?

Terrorism is shaking the entire world, when it will be just history?, period.

Few snaps from TOI and I found it good.

The future students will be memorizing the terrorist attacked dates. Slightly different from our days, we memorized when Babar invaded india or Raja raja cholan invaded sumatra.


Courtesy: TOI

MJ - The king of pop

While I was driving back to office in the morning, I was thinking of writing some article about Michael Jackson sometime, my favorite during my college days. The first time I heard about Michael was during my school days, when paandiarajan claims "michale jackson yen machan, yen aatathe paarthu kapsa adichaan".(what it means is, MJ plagiarized from a kollywood actor). Then, the first time I watched/heared his song is in my first year of college, after that I became a great fan of Michael. I watched almost all of his works and realized how much of his steps, choreography, style are copied in indian movies. (and ppl like paandiarajan took the credit of his works :-p ). The stage performances from him are the best of his; good choreography, good team work.


He became the king of pop, I have seen many videos in which fans were dying for him. He rocked the world. But, somewhere something went wrong. He became a publicity freak, did anything for it, accused of child molestation cases and he became infamous.

And why this blog? The first news I read today in office is about him, he converted to a different religion. And got one more reason to write a blog.

http://www.rediff.com/movies/2008/nov/21mj-turns-to-islam.htm
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Catchy warnings

There are lot of things to notice on road while driving: shops, new vehicles, number plates,... (my favorite time pass while driving is to look into the number plates and find any 'magic'ness in the numbers).. One more thing that I have started noticing, the warning messages; that are pasted, mostly at the signals. Many of them are creative, and catchy. Here are quite some which I found good.

Speed is a five letter word, so is death;
Slow is a four letter word, so is life.

Helmet or hell met?

Speed thrills, but kills.

But none of these matches "vootle solltu vantiya?" from auto drivers ;-).

Classical languages

Today I read some news on classical languages, and got some interest over how it is classified. There are four match criterias for classifying a language as classical:

00) High antiquity of its early texts/recorded history over a period of 1500-2000 years.
01) A body of ancient literature/texts, which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers.
10) The literary tradition be original and not borrowed from another speech community.
11) The classical language and literature being distinct from modern, there may also be a discontinuity between the classical language and its later forms or its offshoots.

And the languages that are matching these criteria are: Kannada, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu. I have intentionally listed these lexicographic, not chronological, for obvious reasons :-P). In some places its mentioned that pali & prakrit are also classical, but I am not sure how true it is, and I doubt anyone will make it an issue, since its hardly spoken these days.

I am glad that I have got a chance to learn tamil & sanskrit, anyways, I don't remember any of its literature stuffs. Definitely both these classical languages have played an important role in my life, particularly in academics. And also now I see a reason why should I learn kannada & watch telugu movies ;-)..

I am going crazy now by imagining few robots arguing/fighting for classical status for C, C++ etc in 5000 CE, period.