The Sports Quarter

There are too many things happening in the Indian Sports arena over the last week. Here are some.

The Magazine

One of the Sports weekly of India, “The Sportstar” has changed its format recently. It would be in a Tabloid format from now on. What has to be watched out is how much the readers would welcome the Tabloid format after getting accustomed to the Glossy Magazine over the years. For more on this

The Sportstar

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Cricket

It was a Dream Spell by Pathan in the on going 3rd test match against Pakistan. A pace man could not ask for me, a wicket in the 4th, 5th and 6th ball of the first over of the test match. Hats off to Irfan Pathan for his Hat trick. He becomes the first cricketer to take 3 wickets in the first over of the Test Match. This one was simple awesome for any cricket lover except for the shocked Pakistani cricket fan. In spite of this brilliance the match is in favour of Pakistan as of now. One has to wait for couple of more days to know the end result.

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Tennis

Roger Federer lifted the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup. I mean won the Men Single’s Title in the Australian Open Tennis Championship. This is his 7th Grand Slam Title. This number 1 seeded tennis player has never been defeated in any Grand Slam Final. He is yet to win the French Open. Cheers on winning the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, and good luck for the French Open, will he win it this time around?

Mahesh Bhupathi won the mixed doubles championship in the Australian Open along with Martina Hingis. Kudos to him. This becomes his 10th Grand Slam Double’s title. And incidentally this is his first Australian Grand Slam title. He joins the elite club of tennis stars who have won all the 4 Grand Slams. The Australian, French, Wimbledon, and the US Open. If this winning pair is going to play together for some time in the future then I guess Mahesh would break even more records in the doubles championship.

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Formula 1

Narain Karthikeyan the fastest Indian on wheels finally managed to be in the Formula 1 championship as a Test Driver. After the debut season with Jordan now known as Midland, in 2005, he had to move out of the Midland team for whatever reason mentioned in the media. Without a team, many thought he has to stay out of the Formula 1 circuit in 2006. But that was not reality; he managed to become the Second Test Driver for the Williams Team. Williams being a top team in the F1, the experts hope that it would be an amazing learning experience for Karthikeyan. We need to wait and watch whether he would be back as a race car driver in the F1 circuit in 2007. That’s a very long time from now.

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Chess

Anand won the Corus chess tourney. Apart from the highly satisfying victory, Anand had another reason to cheer as he will now cross the magical 2800 ELO barrier for the first time in his career. After Russians Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik and Topalov, Anand will be the fourth player in the history of the game to achieve this peak.

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Hockey

Before I wind up, an update about our National Game. Though it is our national game, this definitely takes a beating when it comes to Cricket in this country. To promote the national interests in the national game, the Indian hockey think tankers came out with a idea of the Premier Hockey League an annual event. Here is the official Premier Hockey League address on the World Wide Web.

Premier Hockey League

In this second year, the league couldn’t have been more interesting. The 2 out of 3 most favourite or strongest teams are out of the finals. The best of 3 finals is been played between the Bangalore Lions and Chandigarh Dynamos. The latter being the top team both by results as well on paper, surprisingly lost out to the Bangalore Lions yesterday in the first final. Will this be yet another David beat Goliath Story, have to watch out today’s and tomorrow’s game for it. Pledge your support for this game. You would not be alone, I have come across good souls who watch this game just to support it, so that it does not get completely crushed by Cricket.

Happy Chinese New Year

The 2050 Team would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR

'GONG XI FA CHAI'

Wish you a Happy Republic Day! :)

:)

Healing Blogs

The Star had an excellent article on medical and patient blog on Sunday.

Here are the list of the bloggers doing their part for a better future.

Patients’ blogs

NF Malaysia – http://nf.yvonnefoong.com
The Digital Awakening – http://www.petertan.com/blog
Hee Boon’s Amazing New Adventures – http://fhbadventure.blogspot.com
Diabetes Mine – http://www.diabetesmine.com
The Skin Cancer Blog – http://www.skincancerblog.net
Living with Colon Cancer – http://www.eternal-optimist.ca/living
The Amazing Shrinking Man! – http://theamazingshrinkingman.blogspot.com

Doctors' blogs

Malaysian Medical Resources – http://medicine.com.my
Materia Medica Malaysiana – http://malaysianmedicine.blogspot.com
Dr Cheah’s Pages – http://drcheah.com
The PalmDoc Chronicles – http://palmdoc.blogspot.com
Malaysian Medical Students Website – http://ms.malaysianmedicine.com
The Hard Drive – http://academyalley.blogspot.com
KidneyNotes.com – http://kidneynotes.blogspot.com
DB’s Medical Rants – http://www.medrants.com

(sourced from TheStar Malaysia)

The dead has risen

Am back! Hoping to post regularly.
So what happened to the grey vampire all these days. Nothing! Absolutely nothing. That’s why the title reads the DEAD has risen. I was literally dead these days. Wake up, Eat, College, .Net class , Home, Sleep…..! I keep telling people don’t JUST EXIST…LIVE . And all these days I have done all but EXIST. Any way hoping to be a more happening guy in the blogging world…Will post from Monday

Orion Nebula

This is the most detailed astronomy image ever captured. The image was taken by the Hubble space telescope.
[+] Read the story at;[NationalGeographics];[TheHubbleSite]

Thirukural

Thirukural is a work of Tamil literature by Thiruvalluvar written in the form of couplets expounding various aspects of life. It contains 1330 couplets divided into 133 chapters of 10 couplets each. Each couplet consists of seven words, with four words on the first line and three on the second. The word "Thirukkural" is composed of two words Thiru and Kural which mean `Sacred' and `Couplet' respectively. Like the Confucian Lun Yu, which is translated as "Sacred Sayings", the common English rendering of Thiruk-Kural is Sacred Couplets.

Here is an extract from the Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, would suffice to highlight the value of Kural as a classic of international repute.

"Sacred Couplets is considered a masterpiece of human thought, compared in India and abroad to the Bible, John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the works of Plato. .........The Thirukkural is an all inclusive moral guide whose foremost moral imperatives are not to kill and to tell the truth" - (Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature)

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Here is my tribute to one of the greatest works in literature. This is the translation I could find so far, would keep updating the pages as and when I get better translations for the Sacred Couplets.

Happy Reading…

Thirukal English Translations

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. b-day!

Some MLK quotes:

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. -- "From Strength to Love," 1963

I want young men and young women who are not alive today ... to know and see that these new privileges and opportunities did not come without somebody suffering and sacrificing for them.

Happy Ponggal and Tamilar Thirunal

The 2050 Project group wishes everyone a Happy Ponggal and a memorable Tamilar Thirunal celebration. May this day bring forth a new beginning and hope to everyone.

29th annual Chennai Book Fair

The 29th annual Chennai Book Fair opened on Jan 6th at the Quaid-e-Milleth college grounds. The show is set to roll till 16th Jan.

I always use this Book Fair to catch up with whats kicking in Tamil Literature and books. This is the only place one could find such a huge collection of Tamil books.

Fact File:

• 250 Publishers and Book sellers have put up their stalls.
• Around 5 lakh people are expected visit this time.
  

Facilities:

• Eventhough the oragnisers say arrangements have been made for Credit Card payments, Most of the shops still dont accept Credit Cards and prefer cash only.
• Stalls put up by BSNL, Sabols etc. looked a bit odd in a book fair.

Rating: A

Shop Layout and Organisation:

• The overall layout looks more organised than last year's.
• Thank good, they didnt provide eateries at every corners. Which kinda creates a jam near the eateries.
• Walkway is more spacious.
• Entry and Exit at two ends can ease the congestion at peak hours.
  

Rating: A-

Books:

• The quality of the print has improved a lot by the entry of publishers like Kizhaku, Uyirmai etc. It can match the standards of english books in print as well as design.
• Stalls by Vikatan, Kizhaku etc.. pulled in lots of crowd.

Rating: A-

Canteen:

• This time Canteen is run by Sangeetha's. By any scales, its far better than the last year's one.
• The quality of food is Ok and the cost of some items are bit prohibitive.
• Space is too less and not sufficient.
• No proper handwash facilities.

Rating: B+

Suggestions:

• Publishers and Book sellers can put up a list of "Top 10" best selling books in their stalls. Which will help the buyer to find good books easily or atleast it would help the buyer not to end up with some crap.
• Like every year, only few stalls atract much crowd. May be its because of the publicity those Publisher/Book seller has got. Bapasi can put up a site/prepare a directory with the details of the books being displayed/sold by various publishers atleast.

Giant sensor

The narwhal's most prominent feature is its long spiral tusk. And people have long been curious to know what the tusk is for. Some thought that narwhals were proof for the existence of unicorns and that the tusk had magical powers. Others variously said that the tusk was used for ice breaking, catching fish (using the tusk like a spear), and self-defence. But now Dr. Martin Nweeia, from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, has thrown up a new possibility. According to him, the tusk contains many million nerves that help the sea mammal detect changes in the water pressure and temperature. The tusk, which could be between six and nine feet long, thus acts as a giant sensor helping the animal test the water and find its food. Narwhals are rarely seen but they live in the Arctic Ocean and can grow up to 15 feet in length. This discovery now opens up more possibilities for scientists on the uses of the narwhal's tusk.

Wish You all a Happy Pongal (boiling is the English name for Pongal)

Earth 2050: An Economic Forecast

Cross Posted At Http://urbansiege.blogspot.com


1. There will be no poverty. Either our Poverty erradication programs are going to work(chances of which are minimal), or all those under the 'poverty line' are going to starve to death or suicide.
2. We ll miss Vision 2020. Anyway who would care about Vision 2020, maybe like five years from now. Somewhere down the line we may have another public figure(Che Arindham Chaudri perhaps?) bring out a fresher vision that is going trash sooner or later.
3.'Gawd' is not going out of Fashion. A major style makeover is due somewhere in between now and 2050.
4. Dont worry about Oxygen, you ll get it for free. Most people worry about pollution and stuff like that. Yes, obviously you would require an oxygen cylinder to live, but why worry, its yours to take, absolutely free!!(buy two get one free that is).
5. Corruption is not going to decline. No way!! But when all the poor are gone, why bother about welfare? The rich who got richer over and over again over the decades will actually look at corruption as an easy way out of the system and get things done, without the hassles.
6. Wealth v/s Burden. The rich will claim more incentives and rebates, which the Governement will be only too happy to offer, because while the Middle Class are a 'burden' to the Economy and its the Rich who make most of the wealth of the Economy. The rich will fight against the blatant hypocrisies of the earlier policy makers who would snatch hard earned money of the rich to 'waste'on the poor.
7. There will be no retirement. The quest for higher efficiency and growth of the economy, will require more manpower, which the replacement rate is not able to meet, therefore the abolition of retirement limits. However inefficient manpower, who turn out to be a burden to the Economy, shall be disposed off from Earth, at the earliest with due consideration(dont worry about that, by that time you wouldnt want to live).

New Template

Hey guys, I've updated the template. Please voice your comments. Do you like the colors and all? Does it load properly? Is the image taking forever to load? Please specify the bugs. And enjoy!

The template change and hack is done by Orion Faktory. This is our Year 1 template. If you have any suggestions or designs please forward the information and we will load it. Year 1 ends in August.

Song Offerings

How is life treating you? I have been doing something off late. I have posted the 103 songs of “Gitanjali” written by Rabindranath Tagore in a blog site. Now why did I do this? Just got curious about this Literature some time back, and was looking out for this one in the www, it was pretty difficult to find a complete version of this book (properly compiled) in one place.

Now your google for the Nobel award winning literature ends here.

Gitanjali


Happy Reading!!!

Real man in 2050?

This fall me and couple friends went to Chicago for a day. I wanted to go over museums and planetarium but ended up going countless hours over shops. It Chicago so it is ridiculously expensive. They go couple items for very expensive prices, something I could probably gotten in Russian for 1/50 of the cost. I didn't buy anything but something to eat, and some "pumpkin smell" body wash as present for my mom birthday. We went in a shop called AX, one of my friends bough at !!!!$140!!!! glittering shirt. I am thinking: WTF m8, what ever its your money. On way out the security system went off so we went back in. The MALE personnel near by acting very girlie said OMG, I don't know what to don in this case, all flattering around and called another person. That one at least checked and said that one of the other shops didn't demagnitise and we left.
My "little" 13-12 step brothers are very wimpy. The cry from a little scratch, one is like a diva wont eat anything, He cried when a piece of chicken liver was put on his plate!!!. I am noticing that kind of behavior from many kids. I am glad to admit that this kind of behavior is not wide spread yet, but by the 2050 who knows.....

A famous proverb!

Hello people, this is my very first post here and I'd like to quote one of my favourite sayings....

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you aren't"!

Globalization

Recently I came across an interesting perspective about Globalization.

"Globalization makes automation of things pointless when people in some other part of the world can do the same thing very well and at a highly competitive price."