Today is World no Tobacco Day. If you consume tobacco, then please consider kicking the habit. You have one life. Whats the fun in smoking it out?!

I fully agree with what Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russel Crowe) in the movie, The Insider, says to the Lowell Bergman (played by Al Pacino)... that the tobacco industry is in the "nicotine delivery business".

Novell Jumps to Linux Rescue

While SCO is gung-ho about collecting license fees from Linux users (which I personally think is a silly idea to harbour even for a moment), Novell has jumped into the fray in this game of corporate one-upmanship.

Companies are suddenly mounting a vigorous counterattack to SCO Group's claims that the Linux operating system is polluted with code misappropriated from Unix, and that Linux users should pay SCO license fees for their use of SCO-owned Unix code.
The most damaging blow so far came from Novell, which on Wednesday said that it, not SCO, owns the key Unix copyrights and patents in question, and will challenge SCO's claims that Linux illegally contains chunks of misappropriated code.

SCO responded to Novell's claims by reiterating its stance and claiming that it intends to "aggresively continue" with its legal actions.

The open-source community is watching this corporate war with great interest. While many of them feel that this war is getting funnier by the day, there are others who are outraged by this petty-minded commercialization of open-source efforts.

"We wrote our Unix and Linux code as a gift and an expression of art, to be enjoyed by our peers and used by others for all licit purposes both nonprofit and for-profit," open source software advocate Eric Raymond wrote in a position paper about this fray. "We did not write it to have it appropriated by men so dishonorable that after making profit from our gift for eight years they could turn around and insult our competence."

Well said Mr. Raymond!!

In quotes : Reasons for the Iraq war

US and UK leaders floated many reasons for the war on Iraq before it began, from Saddam Hussein's oppression of the Iraqi people to his refusal to release prisoners of war he was said to be holding.
But Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction - in defiance of United Nations resolutions - was among the most frequently mentioned.

Now one of the leading proponents of the war, US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, has said that while there were many reasons to go to war, the Bush administration chose to focus on weapons of mass destruction because it was the one issue behind which all factions could unite.

But we already knew that didn't we?! ;-)

This article also gives a selection of reasons, for the military action in Iraq, put forth by various people at various times starting from September last year. It makes for an interesting reading!!
link via Technorati Breaking News Cosmos

Virtual is real

A study conducted by the The Work Foundation in UK has concluded that the Web is much more localised, more honest and far less chaotic than it is usually given credit for.

Online communities get real

So-called social software - e-mail, messaging systems, weblogs and shared online diaries - is allowing people to make the net work for them and bring the virtual world home.

New phenomena such as weblogs have allowed people to share their interest and passions with a wider audience but often provide a quite mundane and honest view of life.

The report also mentions that the existing notions that people would thrive on false personas over the impersonal Net are being borne out as people are using social software to support real world interaction and to enhance face-to-face contact rather than departing from it.

Another key aspect of online communities is the ability to generate and build up public opinions.

And people power is also being helped by online communities such as epinions.com, a site which allows consumers to give their views on any products they have bought.

"As knowledge management and access to information have become central to all of our social and economic well being, so it has happened that social networks have grown in power," said Will Hutton, Chief Executive of The Work Foundation.

Will Davies of The Work Foundation sums it up best when he says, "People are finally ditching the two-worlds view, which separates the internet from everyday life and now realise the two are part of one picture".

Take on Gates, Kalam tells Indian techies

President A P J Abdul Kalam on Wednesday urged Indian IT professionals to develop and specialise in open source code software rather than use proprietary solutions based on systems such as Microsoft Windows.

Now that is an interesting thing to say!! Politicians are generally loath at saying something so drastic. But then... President APJ Abdul Kalam isn't a politician!! Thank god for that!!

He made this statement at IIIT (International Institute of Information Technology) at Hinjewadi in Pune. IIIT was dedicated to the nation on Wednesday.

President Kalam also made a reference to his conversation with Bill Gates...

He said that during a discussion with Microsoft CEO Bill Gates at the Rashtrapati Bhavan a few months ago, he had discussed the issue of software security and the need to look for open source codes. "Our discussions became difficult since our views were different," Kalam said.

Wow!! this man can sure talk straight!! :-)

The entire text of his speech can be found here.
link via Slashdot

Rediff features an article by Anita Bora on site counters, titled, Hits and Misses. It looks at why people are so fond of using site counters on their sites/blogs. Many bloggers are featured in the article. Yours truly finds a mention too. :-)

Check it out!

US finds evidence of WMD at last ... buried in a field near Maryland

The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.
The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.

link via Metafilter

Wow!!! ... its good that Maryland is not a country!! ;-)

Now don't say they didn't warn you about this!

Massive tsunami sweeps Atlantic Coast in asteroid impact scenario for March 16, 2880

If an asteroid crashes into the Earth, it is likely to splash down somewhere in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet's surface. Huge tsunami waves, spreading out from the impact site like the ripples from a rock tossed into a pond, would inundate heavily populated coastal areas. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States.

link via Slashdot

The probability that this asteroid would indeed crash into Earth is about 0.3% which is quite low. But consider the effects if indeed the asteroid crashed...

The 60,000-megaton blast of the impact vaporizes the asteroid and blows a cavity in the ocean 11 miles across and all the way down to the seafloor, which is about 3 miles deep at that point. The blast even excavates some of the seafloor. Water then rushes back in to fill the cavity, and a ring of waves spreads out in all directions. The impact creates tsunami waves of all frequencies and wavelengths, with a peak wavelength about the same as the diameter of the cavity. Because lower-frequency waves travel faster than waves with higher frequencies, the initial impulse spreads out into a series of waves.

Errr... not very comforting, is it?!!

And now... the story of a modern day male version of Anne Frank. This only goes on to show that even though the war might've been unjustified to begin with, the end result has been generally good.

Iraqi man ends 20 years in hiding

Twenty-one years ago, Saddam Hussein placed an execution order on Jawad Amir for supporting an outspoken Shia cleric.
Mr Amir escaped - not into a far-off town or neighbouring country, but into a space sandwiched between two walls in his parents' home.
He said for the whole of his hiding he never left that small, dark space and had only a tiny peephole to view the outside world.

link via Metafilter

What happens when people stop viewing movies just for the pleasure of the experience and start reading too much into the theme of the movie?! They start philosophizing about it and start drawing allegories based on the details seen in the movie.

Matrix, with its futuristic plot and ideas provided a lot of cannon for the "philosophers" who wrote reams about the coded allusions that were liberally sprinkled throughout the movie.

And, the Wachowski brothers did not help the matters either. When asked how many hidden messages there were in "The Matrix," they once teased, "More than you'll ever know."

And now with the release of Matrix Reloaded, philosophers are once again having a field day! ;-)

Philosophers draw on the film Matrix [NYTimes registration required]

Now that its sequel, "Matrix Reloaded," is out, the interpretive industry is also gearing up. After the first film, Christian allegorists leaped at the bait the authors left: characters named Neo and Trinity, allusions to Jesus and resurrection, a city named Zion. The Buddhist character of Neo's "awakening" to reality's veil of illusion was discussed. And academic interest grew because the film self-consciously tapped current fascination with pop culture and critical theory. Recent anthologies have included " `The Matrix' and Philosophy," edited by William Irwin (Open Court), "Taking the Red Pill," edited by Glenn Yeffeth (Benbella Books), and "Exploring the Matrix," edited by Karen Haber (St. Martin's Press). Even the Warner Brothers "Matrix" Web site contains a growing collection of papers by academic philosophers

And now, keeping in mind the current flavour... terrorism, the interpreters are claiming that The Matrix represents contemporary America with all its problems. And the solution or response to the 'hegemonic' power is said to be "terrorism".

Similarly, in "The Matrix," Morpheus tells Neo he must regard all inhabitants of that virtual world as enemies that may be killed; anyway, most people are "not ready" for the truth. Morpheus is even wanted by the Matrix's ruthless agents for "acts of terrorism."

And going one step further philosophers are also giving it an almost divine colour...

In fact we eventually learn through cryptic pronouncements of the Architect of the Matrix — its software writer, its God — that Neo is actually living in the sixth version of the Matrix. In each, a savior figure has arisen. And in each earlier case, the savior has not been able to free humanity at all. Instead, the result has been a large-scale loss of life, until the Matrix begins again, with an apparent upgrade — a new web of earthly illusions — allowing no recollections of the disastrous past.

Now doesn't this sound suspiciously like "Yada Yada Hi Dharmasya. Glanirva Bhavathi Bharatha,. Abhyuthanam Adharmaysya. Tadatmanam Srijami Aham", the famous verse from Bhagavad Gita (Chapter IV-7)... which translates to "Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion--at that time I descend Myself". Hmmm! :-)

I wonder what path the third movie will take!

Satellite Snaps Earth's Photo From Mars

NASA on Thursday released what it billed as the first portrait of Earth as seen from Mars.

The colorized photograph shows Earth from 86 million miles away as a small blue dot orbited by its even smaller moon.

Strange!! No one ever asked me to "Say Cheese!!"

Just go and have a look at the snaps here. And then you'll realize what once prompted Carl Sagan to write...

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives,"

Wired 11.06: "If We Run Out of Batteries, This War is Screwed."

A good article on how technology aided Donald Rumsfeld's theory of swarm tactics. Following are a few interesting excerpts from it.

The history of warfare is marked by periodic leaps in technology - the triumph of the longbow at Crécy, in 1346; the first decisive use of air power, in World War I; the terrifying destructiveness of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, in 1945. And now this: a dazzling array of technology that signals the arrival of digital warfare. What we saw in Gulf War II was a new age of fighting that combined precision weapons, unprecedented surveillance of the enemy, agile ground forces, and - above all - a real-time communications network that kept the far-flung operation connected minute by minute.

Now Mims draws a bunch of small circles spread out on the page. This is Rumsfeld's theory of swarm tactics. Because technology allows soldiers to keep track of each other, even when they're out of one another's sight, they can now move in any formation. "We may not always know exactly where the enemy is," Mims explains, "but we know where we are. When the enemy engages us in this spread-out fashion, we send air cover to protect the unit until the support forces arrive."

Swarm theory holds that you move fast and don't worry about securing the rear. The benefits to this are many. First, you need fewer troops and less equipment. War becomes cheaper. Second, it's harder for the enemy to attack a widely dispersed formation. Third, units can cover much more ground - they aren't forced to maintain the wedge by slowing down to accommodate lagging vehicles. Fourth, swarming allows you to go straight for the heart of the enemy's command structure, undermining its support from the inside out rather than battling on the periphery.

Swarm theory is also moving online - into chat rooms, an application Mims is pioneering for military purposes. When a problem develops on the battlefield, a soldier radios a Tactical Operations Center. The TOC intelligence guy types the problem into a chat session - Mims and his colleagues use Microsoft Chat - and the problem is "swarmed" by experts from the Pentagon to Centcom. Not only is the technology changing the way we maneuver, Mims notes, it's changing the way we think.

Quite an interesting theory!! And not just a theory since we've already seen it pass the gruelling test in the recent war in Iraq, with flying colours.

"What's funny about using Microsoft Chat," he adds with a sly smile, "is that everybody has to choosean icon to represent themselves. Some of these guys haven't bothered, so the program assigns them one. We'll be in the middle of a battle and a bunch of field artillery colonels will come online in the form of these big-breasted blondes. We've got a few space aliens, too."

ROTFL!! Well at least their sense of humour was intact in the heat of the war!!

And finally...

In the war to change the way war is fought, the techies seem to have won the first battle. Despite the heat and the glitches and the holes in the communications network, Rumsfeld's great experiment is being hailed a success. The revolutionaries now have plenty of ammunition for their drive to change the military. But the success papers over the uncertainties that remain. The next enemy - North Korea? Syria? Iran? - may be better prepared and better equipped, and will certainly have learned from Saddam Hussein's experience. Perhaps more likely, the next enemy won't be a nation-state at all but an adaptable terrorist organization much less vulnerable to swarming tanks and missiles.

Quite true !!

Iranian jailed over Weblog

On April 19, Hossein Derakhshan, a young Iranian living in Toronto, got an alarming e-mail from a friend of his in Tehran. The friend, Sina Montallebi, wrote that he had been summoned to appear before the religious police.
The next day, Mr. Montallebi became the first person in history to be jailed for the crime of keeping a Weblog.

Gee!! I'm a criminal too!! Maybe I should go and get an anticipatory bail!!

I feel like singing (with due apologies to Anastacia)...

If blogging is a crime baby
I'd do my time
Whether it's wrong or right
You can sentence me
Sentence me to life

Bharateeya Blog Mela

Bharateeya Blog Mela #13 is up at Kingsley's blog and he's done a great job of hosting it. It looks all bright and cheerful... just like what a Mela should be!! :-)

Go check it out!!

Wired News: Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare

Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce prose the likes of Shakespeare.

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.

LOL !! What can I say!! Read it yourself!! ;-)

Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It [NYTimes registration required.]

While personal blogs have been around for years, their proliferation has caused a wrinkle in the social fabric among people in their teens, 20's and early 30's. Inundated with bloggers, they are finding that every clique now has its own Matt Drudge, someone capable of instantly turning details of their lives into saucy Internet fare.
link via Manju's Journal

Well... that's ok. Nothing new! This is an article about blogging like all others that appear in various newspapers these days.

But what I really wonder about is... why is it under the Fashion and Style section??!!

Any thoughts??

India as a punching bag.

Bashing India and its culture or the lack thereof seems to be a popular sport all around the world these days. In just the last couple of days, two incidents have incited some irrelevant and arbitrary people to hurl some vitriol India's way.

First it was the "heroic act" by 21 year old Nisha Sharma, of reporting her husband-to-be to the police and getting him arrested on their wedding day for demanding dowry and mistreating her father. Quite a courageous act!! There was a mention of this news on Metafilter on May 15 2003 and a few comments appeared on that. That should've been the end of the issue.

But no!! just the next day (May 16 2003) the same news (although from a different source) was posted on Metafilter by a MeFi user named elpapacito.

First point about this post by elpapacito was that he, quite idiotically, had made a double post since this story had already been posted on Metafilter. But that was the least of his brainless acts!!

I quote from the post made by elpapacito...

Not surprisingly she is a "software engineer" student probably a programmer with some clue. Groom goes to jail. On a tangent, your job position is currently being outsourced to this "civilized" country with only 7000 dowry deaths in 2001.

Whoa!! ... and since it was a double post... Double Whoa!! *complete with a What-the-fuck?! look on the face*

Now what the hell has her being a software engineer have to do with her guts? Since coincidentally I am a "software engineer" too, I wonder if I missed something along the line. No one taught me how to be brave and stand up for yourself during my college years. I mean it certainly wasn't in the curriculum... nor was it in the job description when I took on the job as a "software engineer". So what is this "elpapaidioto" trying to convey?? Does it have any relation to the news or is he just trying to take a potshot at Indians in general. Quite clearly any dumb person with half a brain will tell you that "elpapaidioto" has been afflicted by the sour-grapes syndrome. He is just whining like a low-life. And trying to link two altogether unrelated issues.

Well "elpapaidioto", the reason why Indian "programmers with some clue" are getting your jobs is because we have "some clue"!!

Does this idiot know what he's ranting about? Making a reference to the 7000 dowry deaths in India he gets on the high horse and questions the civilized nature of the Indian society. As an Indian, I'm deeply ashamed by the practice of dowry deaths as I am by various other retrograde practices attributed to religion and culture. But what the hell is all this about?!!

Civilization cannot be quantified so easily, as someone rightly claims in the flame war started by that idiot's post. And "elpapaidioto" seems to agree as he says,

I think that unless we all use the very same function to evaluate what is more or less civilized, we'll never be able to quantize a "civilization" level and express it with numbers, so making a comparison apples-2-apples possible.
...
And given that death, I believe, it's one of the fundamental , constact factors that excludes absolutely nobody anywhere in the world and that nobody (unless strongly emotionally disturbed) welcomes, we could try to evaluate the "civilization" level of different groups of people by how violence leading to death is tolerated or (sometimes) accepted in their social group.
I think that any group of people that has some rule (written or not written) that allows violence toward some other human being as socially tolerable/acceptable can't be really considered "civilized".

Isn't that lovely??! Such a clear cut definition of "civilization"!! Now... I'll produce some facts and figures. Lets see!!

* In 1999, there were 28,874 gun-related deaths in the United States - over 80 deaths every day. (Source: Hoyert DL, Arias E, Smith BL, Murphy SL, Kochanek, KD. Deaths: Final Data for 1999. National Vital Statistics Reports. 2001;49 (8).)

* In 1999, 58% of all gun deaths were suicides, and 38% were homicides.(SOURCE: Hoyert DL, Arias E, Smith BL, Murphy SL, Kochanek, KD. Deaths: Final Data for 1999. National Vital Statistics Reports. 2001;49 (8).) Do you realize what that means??... It means in 1999, there were almost 11,000 fatalities due to gun abuse, in USA!!

* In 2000, 75,685 people (27/100,000) suffered non-fatal firearm gunshot injuries. (SOURCE: Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Reports for the United States: Crime in the United States 2000: Uniform Crime Reports. Washington, D.C: U.S. Department of Justice; 2001.)

* USA tops the list of nations with the highest gun deaths in a year. It boasts of a rate of 4.08 gun deaths per 100,000 population. Canada comes in next... with the figure of 0.54 per 100,000. (SOURCE: Data collected by Philip Alpers, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and HELP Network)

Above data taken from Gun Control Network

And if you look at the spousal abuse, a recent press release by Amnesty Internation states, and I quote

Violence against women is one of the most pervasive, yet hidden of human rights abuses. It is rooted in a global culture of discrimination which denies women their fundamental rights. No political or economic system or culture is exempt when it comes to allowing and justifying violence against women - in USA a woman is raped every six minutes, in Russia about 14,000 women are estimated to be killed in domestic violence annually. This year, more than 15,000 women will be sold into sexual slavery in China.

And if you want more...

According to the Uniform Crime Report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 30% of women killed in the United States die at the hands of a husband or boyfriend.

The FBI reports that between 1976 and 1996, domestic violence claimed the lives of more than four women each day (SOURCE: Lawrence A. Greenfeld et al. (1998). Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends. Bureau of Justice Statistics Factbook. Washington DC: U.S. Department of Justice. NCJ #167237. Available from National Criminal Justice Reference Service.)

Civilized society, eh?! Highly civilized I would say!!

I have nothing against America or any other country for that matter (except perhaps against Pakistan... but that is entirely a separate issue!). But if someone tries to put down India, then that really gets me worked up!! My only advice to those who like to pick on India is... Don't fuck with us!!

Another instance of needless India-bashing was the linking of Vijay Singh's (the golfer) comments about Annika Sorenstam's decision to play the men's circuit, to his Indian roots. In case you haven't read it yet, here is the story. As much as I would like to rip up those arguments by the racist columnists, I shall pass on that opportunity since I've ranted too much already!!

It's Mela time folks!! Announcing the 12th edition of the Bharateeya Blog Mela - the best of Indian blogosphere this week!!



Holy Cow!! The humble cow has been the subject of many a posts this week after the Central Government said "Ok" to enacting a law banning cow-slaughter in India! Here are a select few of those cow chronicles...

Shanti is irritated by the Government's attempts to mix religion with politics when it tries to ban cow-slaughter. She consider that This is so stupid!. This post generated a lot of discussion as can be seen from the number of comments to it.

Sandeep delves into the annals ancient Indian history to look at the Beef-Eating Brouhaha from various angles. A very well researched and exhaustive post indeed!

Jayakrishnan Nair has a brief extract from the book, Gem in the Lotus by Abraham Eraly, in his post titled, Holy Cow! to show that "beef" was a normal article of contemporary Brahmin diet during the Vedic times. In another of his posts, Buddha, A Non-Vegetarian, JK again quotes from the same book to highlight the fact that non-vegetarianism was a common practice in Hinduism as well as Buddhism.

After paying due respects to the Kamadhenu, we move on to other, worldly affairs...

Suman Palit is Weary of GM activism as he hopes that the backlash against the anti-GM activism grows from a few muted voices to a roar across the globe.

Niraj explains the futility of the attempts to Ressurect the Non-Aligned Movement by certain ex-UN "officials", claiming that NAM will just be another white elephant.
In another post, Niraj declares that Arundhati Roy doesn't want to help Iraqis.

Rohini's post on summer Specials takes a look at the "dumbing down" phenomenon affecting the Indians today... something to which the proliferation of newspapers and TV channels is contributing generously.

Kingsley Jegan offers a clue in his post to determine whether a computer user is an expert or a novice, based on the user's pre-emptive mouse movements.

Mahesh, in his post titled Socially backward, idiotically forward [dated 10^th 2003] tells a funny incident in which an ignoramus wrote to him asking for the $500 that BlogShares was supposedly giving away for registering with their site!!

JK features once more in this list as he discusses some More Praful Bidwai Jokes.

Ravikiran pokes holes in Praful Bidwai's arguments about McCarthyism's rise in India, in his post titled, Deafening Silence.

Gaurav Sabnis [permalinks not working, post dated 12^th 2003]proposes an interesting alternative plan to promote tourism in India. He calls it Libertourism!!
Same day, another great post!! Gaurav writes another interesting post on the same day [May 12, 2003], titled Citty Bitty in which he talks about the character of some Indian cities. Nicely done, Gaurav!!

Dina has a slew of great posts this week. I shall make a list!!...
1. Creativity - what we play is life : Dina laments the lack of creativity in our daily lives.
2. Marketing Blogs to Corporates : Dina attempts to bridge the chasm between blogs and business organizations by suggesting how blogs could be effectively used as Knowledge Management tools.
3. Then she goes on to give a round-up of some excellent posts on Weblogs and Knowledge Management

That's about all we have for this week!! Thanks to all of you who sent in their nominations for this week's Mela. And another round of thanks to Ashwini and Shanti who let me host this week's BBM.

Cheers!

C'mon people!! send in those nominations for Bharateeya Blog Mela # 12, quickly!! For details about the Mela and where to send in your nominations, click here. Or else, you could just leave your nominations in the comments to this post.

The deadline for submitting the nominations is at noon on Wednesday, 14th May 2003 (IST)... which gives you *looks at the watch and does some calculations* just about 17 more hours!!

Surely there've been plenty of enjoyable posts in the Indian blogspace in the past week!! ;-)

Can Daypop Stay Out of Google's Headlights?

How much of a Midas touch does Google wield? Google News -- still in beta -- has more mainstream cachet than AltaVista News, AlltheWeb and NewsIsFree combined. So when Reuters (and the Register) picked up a comment Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently made about offering a service for searching weblogs, Daypop's Dan Chan was concerned. "Well it was fun while it lasted..." wrote the man behind the popular weblog and news search tool, Daypop, assuming he was dead meat.

Not a very comfortable position for Dan Chan, is it?! Though Google hasn't officially announced anything to the effect, its quite clear that once Google flings itself wholeheartedly into the "weblog search" pond, the smaller fish will be thrown out unceremoniously!

Chan knows that there's no way he can compete with Google and that they could take all his traffic in a heartbeat. He's nervous but stays optimistic that Google could perhaps lift all boats by bringing more attention to weblogs. Or is that the rationale of a deer caught in the headlights? [via Online Journalism Review]

Vote goes by the book as Austen wins

It is a generally acknowledged cliche that whenever readers are asked their favourite books by women, they will reply Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights - and so it proves in a survey released today of the 50 best books in the history of women's literature.

...

The most hyped author of the last decade, JK Rowling, beats all her contemporaries with four placings. Her hero's original outing, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, did the best, at number 13.

There are four Jane Austen books listed, three in the top 10, and Austen also achieved a unique literary twinning, sharing 23rd place for Sense and Sensibility with Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary.

Virginia Woolf and George Eliot each have three books on the list, and Iris Murdoch two. [via Guardian]

For the complete list of the books in the order of their ranking, click here

Now that's what I call an excellent collection of books!! Enough to fill any book-lover's heart with joy!! :-)

Bharateeya Blog Mela #12

The next Bharateeya Blog Mela will be hosted here on this blog

Directions for submitting entries
* Please submit your nominations for the Mela at webmaster @ opti-mystic dot net
* You can also submit your nominations as comments to this post

Other Rules
* You can submit any type of posts except that it should not be a personal journal entry.
* You can nominate either your own or someone else's posts.
* Please send URLs (permalinks) of the individual posts (not the blog URLs themselves)
* Only the posts dated between 07 May 2003 and 13 May 2003 will be considered for Bharateeya Blog Mela #12.
* Entries should reach me by 12 noon IST on May 14 2003 (that makes it roughly end of Tuesday for people in the US)

If you want to know what this Blog Mela is all about read this and this. Go here if you want to see some examples.

The Ranji Trophy Final between Mumbai and Tamil Nadu is interestingly poised. With only the last day to go today, Tamil Nadu still have to make 275 runs with seven of their wickets intact currently!

Mumbai on the other hand will bet on the fact that Tamil Nadu's star of the first innings, test discard, S. Ramesh was out cheaply. Other things in Mumbai's favour are... Tamil Nadu is batting last on a pitch that has been exposed to the severe Mumbai heat for the last four days... Mumbai has two quality spinners who can extract good spin using the conditions very well... Early morning advantage can be claimed with pacemen like Agarkar and Salvi steaming in at the TN batsmen.

The odds look stacked heavily in Mumbai's favour. yayyyy!!

But the crux of the matter is that even in this May heat, the players from both the teams have given us a match worthy of a final of the premier cricket tournament in India.

For all the claims of being a cricket-crazed nation, the empty stands at Wankhede stadium pose questions that no one can answer. Are we really a cricket-crazy nation?? Or just a nation of idol-worshippers??!

Best of luck, Mumbai!!

[update] Mumbai have won the Ranji Trophy final match against Tamil Nadu by 140 runs. As I had said in my post, the spinners did short work of the Tamil Nadu batsmen, as they scalped 7 of the 10 wickets to fall. Sairaj Bahutule continued his good form as he grabbed 5 wickets in exchange of 70 runs. And thus, Mumbai regain the Ranji Trophy, something they are so used to doing!![/update]

Mumbai to get a theme song

At last, Mumbai will have its own song. Its words will flow from the mellifluous pen of Javed Akhtar and its music will be set by the audacious Anu Malik.

To be titled ‘Mee Mumbaikar’, it will be an ode to the spirit of the city, which Akhtar hopes will be sung by every Mumbaikar — be it the bai cleaning the pots, the taxi driver on his endless rounds or the suave resident of South Mumbai. [via Mid-Day]

Cool idea!!

So, if you're a Mumbaikar... what would be your theme song for Mumbai??

May 5, 2003 shall go down in the history of Supersam Blogs as the day on which a high-water mark was reached!

This blog got 248 visitors yesterday, (5th May 2003). That makes it the highest number of visitors to this blog, in a day!!... and by a long way!! ;-)

Now if only I could have more such days!! But for that to happen, I need to make this place a bit more interesting! ;-)

Severe immune response kills SARS victims

An excessive immune reaction appears to be the fatal factor in patients who die of SARS, according to medical data from Hong Kong.

So, its not necessarily the virus that's claiming the lives of so many people! It's our own body that is kiiling us!! Sever immune reactions can be terrible!! I've once witnessed, first hand, a severe immune reaction and it was terrible to watch!!

Moreover, there is disturbing news as far as the life of the SARS virus is concerned!!

Scientists have also discovered that the SARS virus can remain viable for at least 24 hours after being deposited in a droplet on a plastic surface - a simulation, for example, of an infected person coughing on to the wall of a lift.

...

In a study in Germany reported by Stöhr, the virus was dropped in liquid on to a plastic surface, the drop was dried, and examined after 24 hours. "There were 10,000 virus units per millitre before, and after 24 hours there were 1000 - and that was viable viruses." [via NewScientist]

Now, the only hope is that we find some way to fight this killer virus before it mutates into something uncontrollable!!

Bombay Bloggers' Meet a.k.a. Mumbai Bloggers' Meet

The second Bombay Bloggers' Meet concluded this evening amidst a lot of revelry and enjoyment. Details of the meet will follow, as will a set of pics of the historic event! :-)

Twelve bloggers met at Five Gardens in Matunga and after a mandatory round of introductions proceeded towards the newly opened Cafe Coffee Day outlet at King's Circle. Here, the raucous bunch had a blast!!

So, till further details are posted... just keep on ruing the fact that you were not there!! :-D