More links

All links in this section have been obtained from here.

A fitting reply to the con-men from Nigeria. I tried my own technique once, I emailed them back saying I had some money of my own to transfer, and wondered if they could help me with it. They never got back to me, and I think they had enough transfers on their hands anyway without having to worry about more.

Another quiz, a quickie this time! (All ye dirty minds, thy shalt frieth in hell for a long time!) I got classified as - hold on to your hats - a centrist. Does that mean I am doing nothing better than sitting on the fence? Or does that mean I'm trying to strike a balance between a blind rush to a completely liberal society and a need to retain our traditional values by being conservative? Tricky issue this. I think its the second, more of this in a later blog.

Finally, I cannot believe people actually read and comment on this blog. Is it because people actually believe there are some profound insights to life in those posts? Or is it because people just love to read a parody on the blogs that can be best described as (Kane's words) current affairs blogs? Either way, I don't get it.

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Addition on Dec 19, 7:00 pm

Here is an idea that one would initially tend to dismiss as too simplistic. But the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that it might just work.

PlanetRead is an organization that has decided to introduce same language subtitling for Hindi shows in India. For those who are in USA, this is the same as closed captioning you get on TV, except that it is in Hindi. This way, PlanetRead hopes that the people who watch these shows will read the subtitles, and thus improve their reading abilities.

The reason why I think this will work is that it does not require the target audience to do anything out of their way to read. They just have to continue doing what they do, and read the text that appears on the screen. This idea is not going to make scholars out of the entire workforce, but, over time, is sure to improve the reading abilities of these people.

To read more about this idea, see this link on the official Google blog.

As usual, comments welcome.

Some interesting blogs

Ever since I started my own blog, I've been overcome by this craze of reading other blogs. Blog hopping, I call it. Start off with a random blog, then onto some random blog from among those that the person writing the first random blog reads, and so on. And its amazing the kind of blogs that you find. Some make you think. Some are simply too hilarious. And some make you go wow!

A bra flinging story, a post on perspective and a story about a unique statue of the four-armed Vishnu are some postings that I really liked (and they have no relation to each other). I liked the one on perspective the most. The idea is somewhat obvious, but still required someone to write it. I could summarise it in one line - एकम् सत्, िवप्र बहुध वदंती (sorry that didnt quite come out right), translated as "The truth is one, but the wise see it in many ways" (from the Rig-veda). And if that seems too philosophical and esoteric, how about "Open mind for a different view, and nothing else matters"? (Thank you Koxy!)

Finally rounding off today's post is a picture of Bay Area in San Fransisco. Looks so similar to Mumbai, and so refreshing that it makes New York look artificial. The pic made me want to cry. Nostalgia?