forsv: potpourri of thoughts

jest for pun (March'05)

March '05 BlogThoughts

Every calendar's days are numbered.

I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry. - Rita Rudner (b. 1956) - American comedian, actress.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored. - Evelyn Waugh

Those that think it permissible to tell white lies soon grow color blind. - Austin O'Malley

remember, where there is a will there is a way (to go)!

tame the monkey

meet and eat

Here we have a game that combines the charm of a Pentagon briefing with the excitement of double-entry bookkeeping. - Cecil Adams (on the game Dungeons and Dragons, from Straight Dope)

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me. -Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) British Novelist and playwright

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. - William Faulkner (1897 - 1962) American author. Nobel prize winner.

My school was so tough the school newspaper had an obituary section. - Norm Crosby

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination. - Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos. - John L. Mcclenahan

PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it. - Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

Doctors pour drugs of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, into patients of whom they know nothing. - Moliere (1622 - 1673)

If it's the Psychic Network why do they need a phone number? - Robin Williams (b. 1952) - American Oscar winning actor.

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor. - Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)

Picture Book

This country is so urbanized we think low-fat milk comes from cows on Nutri/System weight-loss plans. - P. J. ORourke (b. 1947) - American political satirist.

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in. - Dennis Potter

Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything. - Herb Caen

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. - Robert Frost

Never judge a book by its movie. - J. W. Eagan

Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones. - Albert Einstein

You know the oxygen masks on airplanes? I don't think there's really any oxygen. I think they're just to muffle the screams. - Rita Rudner (b. 1956) - American comedian, actress.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. - (1880 - 1956) Henry Louis Mencken, US Critic and Editor.

Anita Jain: Is Arranged Marriage Really Any Worse Than Craigslist?

Read the MOST POPULAR article from NewYorkmetro.com

(posted here with Author's permission)

Recently, i was cc’d on an e-mail addressed to my father. It read, “We liked the girl’s profile. The boy is in good state job in Mississippi and cannot come to New York. The girl must relocate to Mississippi.” The message was signed by Mr. Ramesh Gupta, “the boy’s father.”

That wasn’t as bad as the time I logged on to my computer at home in Fort Greene and got a message that asked, forgoing any preamble, what the date, time, and location of my birth were. Presumably sent to determine how astrologically harmonious a match with a Hindu suitor I’d be, the e-mail was dismayingly abrupt. But I did take heart in the fact that it was addressed only to me.

I’ve been fielding such messages—or, rather, my father has—more and more these days, having crossed the unmarriageable threshold for an Indian woman, 30, two years ago. My parents, in a very earnest bid to secure my eternal happiness, have been trying to marry me off to, well, just about anyone lately. In my childhood home near Sacramento, my father is up at night on arranged-marriage Websites. And the result—strange e-mails from boys’ fathers and stranger dates with those boys themselves—has become so much a part of my dating life that I’ve lost sight of how bizarre it once seemed.

Continue reading ...
Anita Jain is currently Technology and telecommunications reporter for Crain's New York Business

Your body as data

2 GB of data per second, piggybacking on your skin's electrical field. You == organic lan for small electronic devices. And it's a little more secure than bluetooth.

COOL Javascript Trickery

COOL Javascript Trickery. Useful? Sure seems like it could be, though I can't think how. Fun? YES!

bored in class

[Illustrated Notes from Computer Science:] [Tom Murphy VII] gets [more] [bored] [in] [class] [than] [you]. And thanks to his [free] [fonts], your boredom can look just as snazzy. (Previous Tom7-related action [here]. This guy [keeps] [busy]. I blame the [80/20 rule].)

Why some see colours in numbers

US scientists say they can explain why some people 'see' colours when they look at numbers and letters.

As many as one in 2,000 people has an extraordinary condition in which the five senses intermingle, called synaesthesia.

Some see colours when they hear music or words. Others 'taste' words.

The study in Neuron tracked the brain activity of people with the most common form and found peaks in areas involved with perceiving shapes and colours.

Cross-wiring

The University of California San Diego team said their findings lend support to the idea that the condition is due to cross-activation between adjacent areas of the brain involved with processing different sensory information.

This cross-wiring might develop, they believe, by a failure of the "pruning" of nerve connections between the areas as the brain develops while still in the womb.

Continue reading...

another one for all my Indian friends

Software Ke Phool

Guru Dutt is reborn and sets up a Software firm. He makes a film, called 'Software ke phool'. Sahir Sahab likewise revises his old song for the new venture.

It goes like:

yeh document, yeh meetings, yeh features ki duniya,
yeh insaan ke dushman, cursors ki duniya
yeh deadlines ke bhooke, management ki duniya;
yeh Product agar ban bhi jaaye to kya hai?

yahaan ek khilona hai programmer ki hasti
yeh basti hai murda bug-fixers ki basti
yahaan par to raises hai, inflation se sasti
yeh Review agar ho bhi jaaye to kya hai?

har ek keyboard ghayal, har ek login pyaasi
excel mein uljhan, winword mein udaasi,
yeh office hai ya aalame microsoft ki
yeh Release agar ho bhi jaaye to kya hai?

jalaa do ise, phoonk daalo yeh monitor mere saamne se
hataa daalo yeh modem tumhaara hai tumhi sambhaalo
yeh computer yeh Product agar chal bhi jaaye to kya hai?

Protect Yourself from Tom DeLay With a Living Will

There are many lessons to learn from the unprecedented intervention by Congress (as led by Rep. Tom DeLay) into the tragic situation of Terri Schiavo.

The first is that the current Congress will intervene in the most private of family matters if it sees political advantage in doing so.

As a result, the only way to ensure that your own views are respected in similar settings is to have an advanced healthcare directive or living will. Working Assets does not provide legal advice. However, many have found helpful the information on these subjects provided by The American Bar Association. and the Living Will Registry

The second lesson is that there is no limit to the sheer audacity and hypocrisy of Rep. DeLay and his followers in this unprecedented intervention, only days after voting to slash billions of dollars from the health program which provides for millions of Americans and which itself saves thousands of lives.

We urge you to demand that your representative save lives by restoring cuts to the critical Medicaid program.

Click here to take action!

**Please forward this to your friends and help spread the word about this important campaign!

Thank you for working to build a better world,

Jennifer Willis
Director
ActForChange.com

Don’t you know you’re gonna to shock the monkey

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows users to create scripts that alter the display of existing web pages. Like removing ads from google pages. I learned about the google script from boingboing. Oh, here's a script to remove the ads from there. Greasemonkey has a lot of uses, but has adblocking gone too far?

First Annual Northeast Desi Blogger Meet

If you’re a bloghead and you’re Desi, then nothing should keep you away from the First Annual Northeast Desi Blogger Meet. This is the social occasion of the year for those of us who are really with it. It’s in New York (after all!) and it’s on April the second. Oh, yes, there will be a [Fun-filled] [Tiffinbox] full of [Random] goodies, with [Literary] [Stories] about [Movies] and some [Thought-provoking], controversial, [Geeky] and sometimes [Idiotic] and funny [Lectures]. So get your [Deeshaa] over to Bay Leaf and join the crew for a [Fair and Balanced View…] with some [Yelling] which might be a little [Inside-Out]. With such a fine [Potpourri] you will end up smelling like roses and having a blast.

So please join us
Date: April 2
Place: New York
Venue: Bay Leaf
Time: 1:30

Please ping Prashant Kothari (prashantkothari-at-stringinfo.com) or Kaushik/ Seshu/ Reuben or email [tiffinbox at pipalproductions dot com] your name and blog URL. Subject line, BAY LEAF.