All Too Human!

The Beeb has a series titled "Human, All too Human" that discusses the life and works of philosophers Sartre, Nietzsche & Heidegger. Hope they feature more people, say, Wittgenstien, Godel and without doubt Immanuel Kant.

I Want My Father Back (Part 2). A highly recommended documentary on farmer suicides, the events over the past 3-4 decades that led to it, globalization, MNCs & industrialization of farming.
A must watch for all the people who believe globalization & technology are good things. Specially the city bred no-nothing-of-the-world "Westernized" consumerist.

Shettihalli

Church
Originally uploaded by Ananth Narayan S

Me and a friend biked to a small village called Shettihalli near Hassan recently. Shettihalli's claim to fame is an old, abandoned church. The structure gets submerged in the river water during the monsoon. But since it is summer now, the water has receded.
The place is ~20KM from Hassan, off the Bangalore-Hassan-Mangalore highway. On the bypass, one can see a board that reads "Gorur 22". The approach to Shettihalli is the next left turn. There are lots of people around to ask for directions. So one can't get lost. :)
From the main road, only the top and the water are visible. Makes for an amazing view. The ruins of the church are pretty impressive too. Unfortunately, as is the case with most of our old buildings, this one too is vandalized :(. But it is a place where one can spend a few mins in silence and solitude.
Apart from the place, the journey itself is quite nice. 400 KMs in a day is definitely tiring, but enjoyable nevertheless.
If anyone is driving past Hassan, I would strongly recommend them to take a short detour, visit the church and then resume their journey. Just make sure NOT to dirty the place.
Photos from along the journey and from the church itself @ my flickr stream.

Happened to find this interesting photograph through Stumbleupon. Not sure if it is real or a hoax, but powerful nevertheless.

Poor quality news

I like The Inq's style of writing. Adding a humourous & witty twist to every news item they post. Like the one on the BBC not being able to handle criticism. The BBC might have drawn lot of flak, for instance its iPlayer not being supported on Linux and Mac. It is however, respected for the quality of news. Our own "BBC Wannabe" NDTV however has to improve manifold.
First stop plagiarizing the layout and color scheme from the BBC.
Second get the closed captions at the right time.
Third get the names of people displayed at the right time. Almost always, the name of the person is never displayed when the person is on screen.
Finally, stop misinterpreting and misrepresenting. 2 simple instances recently seen:
A Tibetan national says that their struggle is going to get more aggressive. The news reader says "Tibetan struggle is going to get more violent". Violence and aggression are not the same. Like Denzel Washington says in Cry Freedom to the lawyer in court "I see confrontation here, I see no violence".
Second Kiran Bedi doesn't want to carry the torch since the extreme security "cages" the torch. News headline reads that "she feels like a caged human".

The XKCD domain is throwing me a page from Questionable Content (another comic). But trying to load a previous comic. So trying to load comic 404 gives a HTTP 404. Now that would make a straight out of HTTP geek-dom.

Wierd "Also try"

Searched for a self portrait of surrealist painter Salvador Dali. And Yahoo threw an interesting set of "Also try" links. Orson Welles, fried bacon, french television. No idea how these are related to Dali.

Meanwhile, Santhosh Guru has decided to start www.sangoo.org. A non profit portal. SANthosh's answer to Google and Yahoo! Sangoo- Sounding the death knell for both.

Google-kkum, Yahoo-kkum sangu daan! :)

When cartoon life captures real life!
Read this: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/WaterCooler/story?id=4323900
And have a look at the Dilert comics from 20th-26th Feb.

2 Treks

Happened to go on 2 treks in the last 3 weeks. Both in the Western Ghats, around the Charmadi Ghat region. The first one was to a mountain named Amedikallu near a town called Shishila. Shishila is ~20 KM from the holy place of Dharmasthala. The trek didn't involve covering much distance, like Kumaraparvata. But was real steep & extremely tiring. And things don't get better if one gets multiple bee stings, do they? It is one trek I would definitely think more than twice before attempting again.

The second one, more recent was from Durgadahalli (the village of the fort) to Ballalarayana Durga, to Bandaje falls and terminating at Mundaje (near Dharmsathala). Ballalarayana Durga was built by Ballala Raya (as the name suggests), but apprently was later captured by Tipu Sultan. The trek was via Bandaje Falls. About 600 feet high. The view looking down from the top of the falls was awesome.

The trek was planned so that it would be mostly climbing down. So it was not tiring. But as usual, the ankles and knees took a severe beating.

Photos of both treks on my Flickr page.

Fat? No food!

StumbleUpon happened to throw up a Mississippi State Legislation (HB 282) which prohibits food establishments from serving food to obese people.
Link : http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/2008/pdf/history/HB/HB0282.xml

Forget freedom of choice, privacy, liberty for a moment. It is ridiculous, hilarious and scary that people require legislations to make them eat healthy.

iRack

Jujubi!!!

Sunset @ Arabian Sea

Sunset @ Arabian Sea
Originally uploaded by Ananth Narayan S

One of the many (probably the best :-D) photographs taken during the visit to Karwar, Kaiga and Dandeli over the last weekend. Click on the image to navigate to my Flickr page and view the rest.

Pirates of silicon valley

IMDb page : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/

Google Video Page : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1552555273778978142
Yes, the movie. All 1.5 hrs of it.

Boycott.....

An anonymous reader on /. says that he/she can't bear to buy Lenovo laptops (a Chinese company) due to the atrocities and human rights violations committed by the Chinese.
Going by that, probably the whole world must boycott IBM, Credit Suisse and other big names since they had very close business alliances with the Nazis during WW2.

Related:
Boycott Made in China
Banking with the Nazis (Google Video)

Adblock

Yes, Minister Developer

Have been feeling like James Hacker (the eponymous minister from the famous Yes Minister series) at work for quite some time now. Why? Coz there has only been "lots of activity, no actual achievement"!

Looks like all I can do is to ROTFL at myself, the "enlightenment" that has dawned on me and at the comparison I have come up with.

Revolution OS

Google Video Link

Good Copy, Bad Copy

Good Copy, Bad Copy
A documentary about copyright and culture. (~1 hour)

Skandgiri

The Hillock
Originally uploaded by Ananth Narayan S

Last weekend, bunch of us went to scale Mt. Skandagiri. :-) Well... it is a hill ~70KM from Bangalore and not too far from Nandi Hills. The hill is in Kalavara village, so is also referred to as Kalavara Betta. We left @ 2 A.M. and reached the base at around 4.

We were hoping to catch the sunrise from the hilltop, but it was so foggy we could see the sun only when we were half way through our descent. Added to the fog was wind, so strong we had trouble walking steady.

A flag post marks the summit and signals the end of the trek. On the top is a temple that also doubles up as a shop to enterprising people who sell water, tea, bajji, even puliyogare!!

Any time later in the day, the ascent is a non event, but climbing the hill at 4 in the morning in heavy fog, darkness & faulty torches was a different experience.

The strongest argument in favour of social networks.

PhD Comics - Comic 877