:: Sense - The Way I Sense ::

With the confirmation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the next Iranian President, and ouster of the slightly right-centric Rafsanjani…Guess its time for the Republicans to smile around…Am willing to wager a bet that we are gonna see some National-security-at-stake-we-are-not-at-war action in Iran pretty soon…Mebbe in the next 18 months !!Aah…What a wonderful picture it is gonna be of the middle-east once Iran too is sterlised !!

An obliquely related article on selective amnesia of American media on all issues Iran can be found here …

Ever since I’ve signed up for my subrahmanyam [at]gmail [dot] com id, I’ve become pretty popular, I should say. Never realized there were so many of my namesakes who long for this id !!! On an average day, I receive atleast 2-3 gmail alerts on my other id for resetting the password !! But that isn’t where the fun stops…In fact it starts just there…I fail to understand how having such an id suddenly exposed me to a wide range of respos !! Sample this…One guy sends me a whole set of scans of some lady who had undergone a “iodine scan” !! Another guy asks for my opinion on some new kinda coding schema that MSDN suggests…Yet another wants me to send some crappy mail to a million and one dozen coz, well, he was told the same !! I usually ignore many such msgs…But what irks me is when people still send stuff that is listed at Urban Legends or any of the other hundreds of sites that offer listings of spam hoaxes…

And then there is the ubiquitous new Indian breed called the Indian Software Engineer (with all due respects ;)) who have nothing, but time, on their hands and heads !! (Allright, not everyone, but definitely a sizable majority) A guy, from such majority, who spammed my inbox a few days back, and shares my name too, finally acknowledges my reply and says he mis-spelt his own email id as he wanted to send all the mails to his id !!! When all he could have done was to switch on the save mails to sent folder option !! But the cake definitely was taken by a guy who actually sent me a complete scanned copy of his passport along with other bank details as are usually necessary in processing a visa !!! Mebbe time I seriously started thinking of silent payback….Subscribing all such guys to all the p0rn/hate-mail mailing lists

He who comes out enlightened from the movie shall not be afraid to post!!

Just coming back from a preview screening of Anniyan !!(aparichitudu in telugu) Said to be the costliest tamil movie ever made…Sure did leave me wondering where such huge money went..More so when you have a beaten-to-death storyline of MPD and a constant series of jabs at the Indian Society as it exists today…Talking of systemic failures and suggesting extreme solutions, like gruesome murders, which the movie did advocate to a large extent, i guess is pretty in !! Nah, I wouldn’t even want to comment on the indian version of the grim reaper’s acting prowess…The guy wasn’t really left with any choice when half the time he is busy dispatching a 100+ goons, in matrix style

It is said IDBI has financed this project to the tune of 8crores….My best wishes are with them..They would need all of it and more
ps: In case you are still wondering abt that title, its a corruption of the movie tagline that reads He who comes from hell is not afraid of hot ashes

pps: Saw the actor too waiting for his personal screening there…Having taken a liking to his previous works, sure did took a bit of control to come from there silently
extended pps: With Yahoo acquiring Dialpad, and the price of VoIP phones expected to fall, and Skype churning out an awesome product, can’t really wait for things to move forward

Wanna know if your ancestor a few aeons ago was hovering over the trees of africa/central europe?? Wanna know when, as in thousands of years ago, your family migrated to your present geographic state?? Go ahead, indulge yourself and participate in the National Geographic’s Genographic Project . The project aims to collect a 100,000 DNA samples and by analysing them, try to find out the when/why/where of migratory patterns of humans in the past…Sure is some food for thought for anthropologists…

What is interesting to see is how it ends up….In the past, the Human Genome Diversity Project has been doomed right from the word go….Even after a decade, that project is still in its planning stages and from the looks of it, the indigenous peoples groups ain’t gonna let go of it that soon…And people talk of biopiracy too in some instances…Reminds me of those sci-fi series Seriously though, I am all for medical innovation and if it means loss of privacy or disturbing my ethics, so be it…But are the medical companies of today worthy of being trusted??

The other day Sowmya tagged me. So, as a dutifully tagged blogger, I now need to blog on the last five books that I’ve read…But there’s a problem…I am nowhere near to be called a good/decent/ok/whatnot reader…I rarely, if ever have the patience to sit thro’ a complete book in a single sitting, or for that matter in sittings spread over a few days…I’d much rather prefer commentaries/essays…But neverthless, I shall try to give a glimpse into what I’ve been trying to read up over the past few weeks…..

1)The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt & Jeff Cox. Been reading it over the past few weeks….Nowhere near completion..But yes, gotta admit, sure is a good read…I’ve always admired the ops folks for their pragmatism and this book sure does not do anything to take away that image…Hope to finish it in the coming days, ofcourse, that being dependant on the number of hours I spend travelling
2) The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari - Robin Sharma…..Need i write anything more abt this book than has been told…Purchased it a while ago, and ever since its been adorning the centre table…Will take it up once I’m done with The Goal…Hopefully soon….

3)Fivepointsomeone - Finally, read that some time back…And surprisingly, I finished it in a single reading…Why…well…It reminded me a LOT of the kinda things that took place during my engg..(no, not @ an IIT, but @ a college that is prolly representative of the last rung of engg colleges in the country–a college where drugs are just as common as top-notch “professors” having B.Sc degrees)
4)Damn…..its gettin tough to recall :))

I guess I’ll stop it with three books…Other than these, I must have gone thro’ many a biography of Business leaders(?)…But I almost always end up facing the same issue….Book’s that are gripping in part and too drab in others…..But in case you are interested in those “boring” rants, commentaries, lemme recommend a more than decent site here

And for taggin others….Hopefully I do a much better work here…I tag Girish, Amit, Bharathi, Govar and Ranjitha …And a special tag to Zarine coz she’s been struggling to blog of late ;)…….Guess Girish & Ranjitha Have already been tagged…But neverthless, Those folks could actually make up for a dozen ill-read ppl like me

So, finally, America knows who Deep Throat is !! All talk revolving around deep throat in the last few years has finally fructified and the 91 year old man has decided to come out in the open, and so have his journo friends…Frankly speaking, I Couldn’t be less concerned with the whos/whats of this guy is and all that watergate meant for US just as a normal US citizen could care next to nothing for apna very own scams that keep happening by the hour…But one thing I found very surprising in the whole episode that panned over two decades is the manner in which the two concerned journos have stuck to their stand that they were not going to reveal who deep throat is until he died….Now consider a hypothetical case where something similar happens in India. What are the chances the journos ain’t gonna crack up in face of pressure or in face of adversity…And even better, what are the chances of the journos remaining alive if they stood by their ethics !! Pretty slim…And they call the US a violent country !!
Happened to chance on one of the wonderful methods of selling, that is skyshopping !! The ad for this Wonderful product, XoXo Height increase device, features a gal being dinged for an air-hostess’ job due to her short height…And lo, XoXo comes to the rescue…They even have a customized dance video that is developed by a “phamous jaapanese scientist” that helps ya to increase your height !! So next time ya feel the need for height, you know whom to thank