Plutonium made dwarf element

Rueters, November 13, 2008.

Two years after the controversial decision to demote Pluto to dwarf planet status, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry today ruled that the chemical element Plutonium has been re designated as a 'dwarf element'.

Scientists around the world expressed their approval for this bold and innovative move. "Pluto is a bad influence on our kids", said Dr Ying Hu, Professor of Chemistry at Yandall University, "we should banish it from all science."

A small but vocal minority of scientists questioned the decision. "It is blatant political pandering", said John Jacques, member of the American Plutonium Fans Association, "What has Plutonium ever done to anyone?". He blamed the Democratic party for this. "I'm sorry, but Obama just doesn't know Chemistry."

Spokeman for the Vatican, Bishop Francis Agnossi told the press that the Vatican supported this demotion. "God made only 92 elements. All others are works of the Devil."

The position of 94th element is now open. In an unprecedented move, IUPAC has put the slot up for sale on Ebay. "We want to engage the community on this matter", Wolfe said, "We are selling this hot piece in the Periodic real estate to the highest bidder". She hastened to add that Science still comes first. "We require all bids to have atleast 225 neutrons. We also need the name to begin with Pu to avoid reprinting all those books".

At time of writing, PopUnderium was the highest bidder on e-bay. If it wins, it will be the first element to be named after an annoying internet technology. Pussium, Puliyogrium and Putridium were trailing close behind.

Ondu Benchina Kathe

It was dark when I came home that evening. Having missed the 248, I had walked all the way from the Deepanjalinagara stop. Tired to the bone, all I wanted to do was crash in bed.

"Who is this Anukriti?"

My mother's voice jolted me out of my lethargy. How did she ... the letter! The goddamn letter which I had carelessly left in plain sight.

"How long has this been going on?" she asked with quiet fury.

"Three months", I blabber.

"Which bench does she sit in?"

"S-She's from a good konkani brahmin family, amma. Only daughter of wealthy parents. Her father owns..."

"Which. bench. does. she. sit. in?", her anger was palpable now.

"L-L-Last B-Bench", I stammered.

Crack! The sound of the slap resonated with the sound of my heart breaking.

That was the end. I never saw Anukriti again. The next day I was forced to join another college, a much inferior college, but one which had a single row of desks in each class. There would be no more last benches in my life.

Disclaimer: All characters in this story are fictional. Any resemblence to Anukriti Pai, c/o Niranjan Pai, 121/38 5th cross 8th main Malleshwaram 560003 is a statistically improbable coincidence.

Poli Kannada to Classic Kannada Translation

To celebrate Kannada being given "classical language" status, Google Labs and the Govt. of Karnataka announced a new feature today in Google Translator: Poli Kannada to Classic Kannada translator. The Govt. of Karnataka spokesman Dr MS Timme Gowda, explained the reason behind this new feature: "We are worried about language of today's youth. These peoples like kashinath, jaggesh and upendra they have spoiled kannada with bad words. Now that kannada is classic, we should educate them about good language".

We took a look at this new feature and tested it to see how it works.



Here are some phrases we tried and their translation

original: ninajji
translation: nimma tandeya taayi athava nimma taayiya taayi

original: nin henDran
translation: tamma dharmapatniya

original: indina koosu, naaLina piece-u
translation: vartamaanada baalike, bhavishyada mahanagara paalike

original: nin mootige girlfriend bere keDu
translation: nimma mukhakke sthree-sangaati yelli siguvaLu

original: maga, nan dove nange kiss koTlo!
translation: putraa, nanna priyatame nannannu chumbisidaLu!

original: oLage seridare gunDu, huDugi aaguvaLu ganDu
translation: madhyapaana sevaneyinda streelingavu pullingavaaguvudu.

original: kenchalo, machchalo yellavraa nin dove-gaLu
translation: shreemaan kencha, mitra, neevu preetisuttiruva sundariyaru yelliruvaru?

original: sisya, mysur mallige noDidiya? full hot ante!
translation: shishya, mysooru nagarada mallige hoovannu noDiruveya? adu bahaLa bisiyaagiruttade!

original: MTV subbalakshmige bari oLu bari oLu
translation: shreemati subbalakshmiyavara abhipraayadalli MTV asatyagaLinda tumbide.

original: by-two kaapi koDamma, full strong-aagirli.
translation: taayi, ardha loTa kaapiyannu neeDi, bahaLa shaktiyuta aagirali.

original: aa song-nalli, ravichandran priyanka full touching touching
translation: aa haaDinalli, shreeman ravichandran ravaru shreemati priyankaaravarannu sparshisidaru.

original: dum idre daasraLLige baaro! ond kai noDkoteeni.
translation: dhairyaviddalli daasara haLLige banni. Nimmannu ondu hastadinda noDi koLLuttene.

original: Dum Dum Dagaar Dagaar
translation: Translation Failed!

When asked about when this feature will be available to the public, Google Labs spokesman said that their team plan to test this using the dialogues from "tarle nan maga", and would make the feature available as soon as the testing is completed.

Update: Google Labs announced just now that the project has been cancelled. Apparently they couldn't finish their testing since their servers kept crashing.

A geek can't live without ...

Think meta.

dowry function

Now for some matrimonial math...

Death Hallows cover designs

These are a few covers I designed in early 2007 for Deathly Hallows, in response to a contest at mugglenet. Since I've been feeling a little morbid lately, I'll put them up here, so that in case of my untimely death, these would not be lost.

deprecation and depression

I'd seen a lot of deprecated methods, but never a self-deprecating one!

Yella OK, idella yaake?

With due apologies to the original source of this image.

for the love of lol

(pseud) Ivy League

I live near the junction of Princeton Avenue and University Avenue. This is as close to Ivy League that I am ever going to get.

Biking trip

Today I went on my first serious biking trip, on the 30-km Capitol City Loop. I've been cycling on the 5-km Howard Tenin Lakeshore path for some time now, so I thought I'll try my hand at something longer. Most of the Loop is the Capital City Trail, one of the reasons Madison is known be the most cycle friendly city in the US. The use of the trail needs a $4 donation, but it is self-enforced, which means you can get away with not paying (Such 'honor'able things are only possible in rich countries, in India nobody would pay).

The trail took us through some very picturesque locales, going through hills, plains, and occasionally, woods. It wasn't a very difficult trip, because the terrain was (mostly) flat and the uphill slopes we encountered weren't very steep. Except for the (literal) pain in the ass, I didn't suffer any ill-effects from the trip.

This trip has solidified my new found love of biking (And Madison is a great place to be 'romancing the bike'). I'm looking forward to more such trips in the future.

(In case you are wondering, I'm the tall guy in the white shirt on the right.)

real life John F Hickory

Who does'nt this guy hate?

Dog of the temple

Q: What do you call a stray dog outside a temple in Kerala?
A: God's own kantri.

Salman Rushdie in Madison

Ever since I read The Moor's Last Sigh, I've been an ardent fan of Salman Rushdie. His writing is such that, even if you don't like the story, you'll keep reading his books for the sheer beauty of the prose (case in point: The ground beneath her feet). No other author I've read (admittedly few in number) manages to string words together in an way which conveys emotion and conjures up images, and at the same time plays with puns, dabbles with double-meaning and sparkles with satire.

So imagine my joy when I chanced upon an announcement in the local newspaper that the recently newly-knighted author was to appear in Madison promoting his new book The Enchantress of Florence. So I landed up at the Borders store at 7:00 pm on July 11, 2008 to listen to him reading a few pages of his new book and answering a few questions.

A very healthy crowd was already assembled at the place by the time we went. I was quite surprised that so many Americans knew about Salman Rushdie, given that he generally doesn't write about America.(Then again, the fatwa has made him quite famous all over the world).
In the next half hour, Rushdie talked about his book, and the amount of meticulous research that went into it(apparently 7 years of research and 1.5 years of writing). He read half a chapter from his new book, relating the meeting of Qara Koz, the eponymous Enchantress and Argalia the Italian mercenary. He was witty and humorous, inciting quite a few chuckles among the motley group of people gathered there. After reading from the book, the stage was let open for questions, which he again answered with wit. Thankfully (and surprisingly) there were no controvertial questions or questions related to the fatwa etc.
So what did I come away with? An increased respect for one of my favourite authors and yes, an autographed copy of his new book.

Spam-o-rama

They say you can tell a lot about a man from the contents of his spam folder. (Who the fuck are 'they'? How do 'they' know everything? I've never heard this one, you just made that up, shithead. I'll ... I apologize for this schizophrenic outburst. I've taken the meds, and we're OK now ).

Anyway, I decided to find out what kind of a man I am(You're a loser). So instead of deleting the spam folder as part of my morning routine, I let it grow. For two days and three nights, the contents of my spam folder grew and grew and grew, until the Google sent me a warning about '100% of 6122 MB full: do you want to upgrade?'. Let's see what I had inside.

Like everybody else, I had the usual mix of Nigerian money scams, V1agRa ads, ads to increase the length of certain ... err ... appendages etc etc, so I'm listing only the interesting ones.

#1: No rain in Iraq
Like every American, (fucker, you're an Indian) I watch the news regularly about what's happening in Iraq. Like every American, I don't give a shit what happens to the damn Iraqis.(Yeah, we watch it for entertainment) What's the point of this spam anyway?: Buy this T shirt and the drought will stop? Were these T shirts made in sweatshops of Iraq and that's why they have a water shortage?

#2: PhDD
As a grad student planning to spend 5 years and two hundred thousand dollars in a small, bitterly cold, midwestern city in the vague hope of getting a 'Dr' in front of my name, this spam pisses me off. I mean, they can't even spell 'Masters'! And what's PhDD? Doctor of Dubious Philosophy? The only way this spam could have been real was if it had come from Bihar. But that's impossible since noone in Bihar knows how to use a computer.(Look what you've done. You've pissed off lots of people now.)

#3 WW3
CNN must have forgotten to report this. Yeah, that can happen, it's only World War III not like Superbowl or something.

#4 KQA
Now why in tarnation would Google classify a mail from Arul Mani as spam? (Coz you pressed 'This is spam'.) Has KQA started selling V1agrA in order to pay for prizes? (Did you listen to what I said? It's not spam). Is Google pissed off that their team got 0 points in the last KQA Corporate quiz? (Aaaaah!)

#5 Marketing disguised as spam
Come on, Microsoft! You can do better than that. I know Vista didn't sell very well and all that, but stooping so low? Gee, I know Vista's supposed to be full advanced and all, but claiming that it can cure diseases? 'both male and female'? What next, solving world poverty in SP1?(Ha Ha).

Things I did today

Spent 3 hours laughing at arbit things on cracked at pictures such as these:



Spent 2 hours killing dogs and generally going batshit insane in Postal 2 : Share the pain.

Irony

This is ironic at so many levels that it cracks me up.

funny kannada song(explicit lyrics)

Lyrics(Parental advisory: extremely vulgar lyrics):

namma deshadalli, sarakaaradalli
bari suLE makkaLru tumbkonDidaare;
kaLL boLi makkaLru, shudda suLE makkaLru,
gaanDu minsteru raaja maaDtaarE;
kaas tinno abhyaasa, lancha vanchanE,
maana maryaadE ildE maaDtaarE;
namma deshadalli, sarakaaradalli
bari suLE makkaLru tumbkonDidaare.

avr akkan naayi mari kEya,
avr amman handi mari gE;
avr ajji aanE mari kEya,
avr akkan naayi mari gE.
(x2)

namma deshadalli, sarakaaradalli
bari suLE makkaLru tumbkonDidaare;
kaLL boLi makkaLru, shudda suLE makkaLru,
gaanDu minsteru raaja maaDtaarE;
kaas tinno abhyaasa, lancha vanchanE,
maana maryaadE ildE maaDtaarE;
namma deshadalli, sarakaaradalli
bari suLE makkaLru tumbkonDidaare.

avr akkan naayi mari kEya,
avr amman handi mari gE;
avr ajji aanE mari kEya,
avr akkan naayi mari gE.
(x2)

namma deshadalli, sarakaaradalli
bari suLE makkaLru tumbkonDidaare;
(x2)

tumbkonDidaare,
tumbkonDidaare
tumbkonDidaare
tumbkonDidaare.

Question and Answer

Yahoo! Answers seems to attract complete retards in alarming proportions, which makes it a constant source of amusement. Yesterday I came across this wonderful question:



My creative (sic) juices started flowing, and I made up this cheeky poem in answer:



Here's the actual link.

Arbit Kannada Movies

I was browsing the extensive collection of movies at Kannada Store, and chanced upon some masterpieces. What were these people thinking, when they made such movies?

Starting off, we have aasEgObba meesEgObba, which roughly translated means "one for love, one for the mustache". I guess it deals with the conundrum the heroine feels in choosing between her (unmustached) lover and her (mustached) husband.

I've heard of white wine, but white wife? That is what the next movie in our list biLi henDti means. I guess it has something to do with a foriegn wife, which used to be (and still is) the No.1 fear of all mothers who's son is abroad.


jaatakaratna gunDajOyeesa, apparently was a famous astrologer. I guess they wanted to make a movie in the line of kaviratna kaaLidasa or amarashilpi jakaNachari, but couldn't afford Rajkumar.

what can I say about chor guru chaanDaal shishya? When a company called Nakoda makes movies, expect cheapness.



number aidu yekka, coincidentally is number 5 in my list. For the life of me I cannot think of any card game where 5-A is a winning hand.