Another Face of Terror - New York Times: "Dr. Shazia's husband, Khalid Aman, was working as an engineer in Libya, but he finally was notified and rushed back 11 days later. Dr. Shazia, by then freed, couldn't face him, but he comforted her, told her that she had done nothing wrong, and insisted that they report the rape to the police so that the criminal could be caught.

That was, perhaps, naïve, particularly because there were rumors that the police had identified the rapist as a senior army officer and were covering up for him.

'When I treat rape victims, I tell the girls not to go to the police,' Dr. Shershah Syed, a prominent gynecologist in Karachi, told me. 'Because if she goes to the police, the police will rape her.'

That's the way the world works for anyone unfortunate enough to be born female in much of the world. "

Why are the educated people of Pakistan quiet ?? Why dont they raise their voices against this nonsense ? I thought they are much better than other middle-eastern islamic countries. Are they not

| posted by Rajan @ 10:28 PM

Tiffinbox: Rucksacks In Nottinghill: "You gotta love this. If you are brown, in or around London, don't carry a rucksack/backpack or wear a large coat. And definitely don't run with any of the aforementioned items in hand onto a bus or attempt to get onto a train. You are asking to be harassed.

I am apalled by this. The thing that gets me the most is about 'looking a bit foreign.' Hello! London is quite likely the most cosmopolitan city in the world [thanks to their colonial past, but that's another post]. Are they going to stop just everyone who isn't WHITE and interrogate them? I called this a long time ago when this whole Iraq mess was brewing; the civil liberties of brown and non-white people was going to take a major hit. And it's happening. Slowly but surely our travel will be restricted, our intentions questioned and lives rebuked."

| posted by Rajan @ 2:06 PM

Well., this is creativity in Advertising!

[Thanks Govkan]

| posted by Ramki @ 10:31 PM

I am sure the percentage deaths will be very similar in the US as well.

[Via Dailybrowse.com]

| posted by Ramki @ 1:50 AM

Julian Beever is an English artist who is famous for his art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. It's peculiarity? Beever gives his drawings an anamorphosis view, his images are drawn in such a way which gives them three dimensionality when viewing from the correct angle. It's amazing !!!


More here: Link1 Link2

| posted by Ramki @ 1:41 AM

View Magazine covers and ads of the future...

| posted by Ramki @ 1:38 AM

It rings, it plays, it has TV | csmonitor.com:
I saw a friend of mine with his Sony Treo. The only good thing I liked was the GPS which needs you to buy extra software and memory. How many of us really need a PDA device, I wonder ?
I guess the TV on Cellphone could make sense. "While standing in line at the ATM 'you might not want to watch an entire episode of 'Seinfeld,' ' Greengart says, 'but a 2-1/2-minute standup comedy routine could be compelling.' Some companies are creating serials told in one- or two-minute episodes. Dubbed 'mobi-sodes,' they are suitable for viewing in a spare moment, such as waiting in a supermarket checkout line or at a dentist's office.

A video-equipped cellphone can be a mobile baby sitter, too. 'I can tell you there's nothing better than sticking 'Sesame Street' in front of a 5-year-old,' Greengart says." Also Video chat with family might be nicer :)

The funny thing is my voice calls still get dropped, are they compromising on the basic radio design to get all this fancy stuff in.

| posted by Rajan @ 10:05 PM

Former Vikings offensive lineman Korey Stringer is the only NFL player to die of heatstroke.

Four years after he collapsed during training camp, the Vikings are exploring the use of a "radio pill" that would allow trainers to monitor players' body temperatures while they practice.

A base CorTemp system consists of temperature pills and generally two or three data recorders, priced at $2,500 apiece. The data recorders allow a trainer to read a player's temperature with each recorder accepting up to 99 sensors.



[Via J-walkblog]

| posted by Ramki @ 9:55 PM

Certainly something ambiguous about this creative work ...

| posted by Ramki @ 3:56 PM

China is planning to study the effects of space on pig sperm, by sending the semen from pedigree pigs into orbit.

Some 40 grams of pig sperm will be taken on board the Shenzhou VI spacecraft for its October launch.  Agricultural experts hope to use the sperm to fertilise pig eggs back on Earth - to see what effect a period of microgravity will have had on the sperm's activity.

| posted by Ramki @ 3:48 PM

| posted by Ramki @ 2:57 PM

| posted by Ramki @ 2:53 PM

Often billed as the worst movie ever made, and not entirely undeserving of the title, "Plan9 from Outer space(1959)" is a masterpiece of Ed Wood's making. Numerous plot inconsistencies, horrid acting, and masses of stock footage - some of which are repeated several times makes it a terrible but funny movie.

The Plot: A highly advanced alien culture is determined to destroy Earth before our scientists discover a bomb which will explode sunlight, the description Eros gives of this is quite funny. In order to destroy our world, of several billion people, they raise three zombies from the dead. :-)

This movie is available under Creative commons license in public domain and is available at archive.org.

One more movie in public domain is "911: the road to Tyranny", which gives a totally new angle to the 9/11 WTC attack.

| posted by Ramki @ 2:47 PM

Imposter sites plague free credit report site.

A Web site created by federal mandate last year to help consumers spot identity theft is opening up new avenues for fraud, according to a privacy watchdog group.  

The site, AnnualCreditReport.com, offers consumers free copies of their own credit reports. It was launched in December by Equifax, Experian and   TransUnion, the three major credit reporting agencies in the United States, in accordance with the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003. The federal law aims to quell growing concerns over privacy and disclosure of sensitive financial data.  

However, the online service has quickly fallen prey to imposter sites, which are designed to lure traffic from a legitimate Web site by adopting a   similar domain name. Imposters targeting the AnnualCreditReport.com site now number 112, according World Privacy Forum...

| posted by Ramki @ 11:58 AM

Isn't this total waste of time and money? : Teddy Troopers 'Jump' Into Arms of Iraqi Children.  

They can be seen parachuting into various areas around Baghdad -- specially  trained individuals recruited during Operation Iraqi Freedom 3, whose primary  mission is to bring smiles to the faces of Iraqi children.  

These airborne "soldiers" are actually "Teddy Troopers" or "Para-Bears," stuffed animals with makeshift parachutes jumping into the arms and hearts of children during Operation Teddy Drop.

[Via J-walkblog]

| posted by Ramki @ 11:54 AM

Mr. Haksar, has placed a large billboard in one of Chennai's busiest areas that features the ubiquitous red Coca-Cola wall painting, commonly found across India. Directly preceding the Coca-Cola ad, and part of the billboard, is a dry water hand-pump, with empty vessels waiting to be filled up with water - a common scene in India, particularly in Chennai.

| posted by Ramki @ 12:22 AM

One more story of an invention (discovery?) from nature:
The glue secreted by a rare species of frog was found to be non-toxic, set rapidly and adhered to a range of materials including flesh, cartilage, wood, plastic, glass and even beer cans.Scientists hope to create a synthetic version of the glue.

| posted by Ramki @ 12:16 AM

More Cannes Lions award winning animations and commercials at their official website.

| posted by Ramki @ 12:10 AM

BBC NEWS | UK | Muslim leader assesses Leeds mood: "Firstly, communities were agreed that more had to be done to get young people into mosques to keep them on the straight and narrow."

Wow is that the solution ??

| posted by Rajan @ 3:17 PM

CNN.com - Web sites change prices based on customers' habits - Jun 24, 2005: "According to a recent study, many consumers are unaware that price discrimination occurs over the Internet. But apparently, it does.

The Internet allows shoppers to easily compare prices across thousands of stores. But it also enables businesses to collect detailed information about a customer's purchasing history, preferences, and financial resources -- and to set prices accordingly

"

| posted by Rajan @ 11:59 AM

This 18-year-old boy from the city claims he works for Bill Gates! And, the Microsoft honcho chats with him whenever either is in trouble!

| posted by Ramki @ 10:17 AM

The project proposes linking the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar on the east coast of India by creating a shipping canal through Rameswaram Island, which would provide a continuous navigable sea route around the Indian Peninsula. ..The project was originally conceived in 1860 by the British Commander A.D. Taylor of the Indian Marines..



Construction for this ambitious Rs.2000 crore project kicked off today and has sparked lots of controversities on the need for it and side-effects of such construction in a "marine-biosphere". Even though there are environmental concerns and life of fishermen might be affected, this will give a major boost to trade in South India and it is perceived that Tuticorin port can directly compete with Singapore and Colombo ports for port activities. More on this from Deccanherald and another news website.

| posted by Ramki @ 3:23 PM

The following prose is from Mark Twain it seems... however could not check its legitimacy though!

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould
doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

| posted by Ramki @ 2:26 PM

The Net is revolutionizing how we access information. I wonder how the visually handicapped are impacted by this. Technology should help them access this beautiful resource. This thought occured when I was reading something on spam-blogging leading to 'captcha'  technique to prevent spamming.

More :
" Captchas based on reading text — or other visual-perception tasks — prevent visually impaired users from accessing the protected resource. However, captchas do not have to be visual. Any hard artificial intelligence problem, such as speech recognition, can be used as the basis of a captcha. Some implementations of captchas permit users to opt for an audio captcha. The development of audio captchas appears to have lagged behind that of visual captchas, however, and presently may not be as effective."

" A Screen Reader software application reads aloud information displayed on a computer monitor screen. The screen reader reads aloud text within a document, and it also reads aloud information within dialog boxes and error messages. Screen Readers also read aloud and menu selections, graphical icons on the desktop. Recent upgrades are much better reading aloud information on the World Wide Web. "

" What is a braille display ? [ link]
A braille display is a tactile device consisting of a row of special 'soft' cells. A soft cell has 6 or 8 pins made of metal or nylon; pins are controlled electronically to move up and down to display characters as they appear on the display of the source system - usually a computer or braille note taker. Soft braille cells have either 6 or 8 dot pins depending on the model. Advanced braille code features 8 dot braille, but most will probably only use the 6 dot code. Dots 7 and 8, if present. can be used to show the position of the cursor in the text or for European 8 dot braille. They can also be used for advanced maths work and for computer coding. "

| posted by Rajan @ 9:26 AM

Fishermen in northern Thailand have netted a fish as big as a grizzly bear, a 646-pound Mekong giant catfish, the heaviest recorded since Thai officials started keeping records in 1981. The behemoth was caught in the Mekong River and may be the largest freshwater fish ever found.


[Via Slashdot]

| posted by Ramki @ 8:53 AM