Kalam...

Kalam gives five key areas of development for India -

1. Agriculture and Food Processing
2. Education
3. Information and Communications Technology
4. Networking of Rivers
5. Self-reliance in critical technologies

I am impressed with the order of these 5. Importance of 1 and 2 for India cannot be overemphasized.

He talks about the importance of PURA and administers a couple of oaths among school children - one to have a vision for India's development and another not to support any religious, caste and language differentiation.

When asked who his role model is, he replies that it is his science teacher Sivasubramanya Iyer.

It is so refreshing to read news about Kalam.

Two movies and the director...

Needless to say, Quentin Tarantino has his own style of film making. From what I have seen in "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction", he considers a movie as a bunch of scenes. He takes special effort in sculpting each scene - with sparkling dialogue full of wit and humor. Many scenes are movies in themselves - with so many "take-aways".

But the movie as a whole always seems to miss something. It is almost as if that missing something is an intentional omission. There is no definite word for that something and the closest I can get to what is missing is a strong storyline.

They are good movies, nevertheless.

After the movie is over, when you sit and think why Tarantino made this movie, it is very difficult to come up with an answer. Except that, maybe he wanted to have fun.

Puzzle Time...

You might have seen these puzzles before -

USSR
USA +
-----------
PEACE
-----------

SEND
MORE +
-----------
MONEY
-----------

Can you characterize exactly when such strings make a unique valid sum?

God Hypothesis...

Nancy Gandhi paints a beautiful picture of Coonoor. She also says that God, and associated beliefs, are theories of convenience.

I recall the anecdote involving Laplace and Napoleon. When Napoleon asked Laplace why there wasn't any mention of God in one of Laplace's books, Laplace apparently replied that there was no need for that particular hypothesis.

Advani - The Opportunist!

How irresponsible is this? Makes me think that the only good thing happening to Indian politics over time is probably that such politicians are aging.

My first photo upload...

Google Vs. Yahoo!

Couple of days back, trying to find driving directions to Crater Lake - I searched Google (my first choice)... And I got to here.

I then had to go to Yahoo! (second choice) to find what I wanted.

Same thing happened today trying to find a SSN office here and then here...

Maybe I will switch my first and second choices soon...

Journalistic License

Because this article has Pune as its theme and highlights it as the future silicon valley of India, it had to say this -

While Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad suffer from the accent factor, the BPO industry has Pune to look to, for a large English speaking public.

I would really like to know from a BPO industry expert on this. Does a city like Bangalore really have an "accent factor"?? And is there something called an "accent factor"?

Bride and Prejudice...

I saw Bride and Prejudice and pretty much liked everything except Aishwarya Rai.. Granted that some of the dialogues were completely out of place and there was maybe something else that I could have disliked... But none of the other shortcomings of the movie stood out like the presence of Aishwarya Rai... So I thought I should mention that...

This lady who was travelling with me was jumping in joy after watching the movie... She said she loved it... So, I should also mention that Gurinder Chhaddha (I know the spelling is wrong.. Never mind) has successfully established a distorted image of Indian culture to the western world through this movie...

Agreed, the arranged marriage system somewhat resembles a shopping market in some places... But there was no necessity to underline it so much, that you only see the underline and nothing much else in the movie...

"Blogs have Integrity!"

Did you know that?

Secular-Right India, in what could be termed as the best glorification of blogs yet, comprehensively proves that blogs have "Integrity". The reason - because a few blogs got hysterical and decided they should put a poster on their websites protesting Musharraf's recent visit to India (to watch a cricket match!).

From elementary (il)logic, it follows that commercial media does not have integrity. It also (somehow) follows that commercial media is actually a mouthpiece of the government. In fact, "it's a means for the Government, and its proxies, to shape public opinion."

Okay?

Ideas for an Indian Century" claims the tagline of this blog. Here's definitely one very very 21st Century idea being propounded. "If you are not with us, you are with them." We all remember that, dont we?