End of days? Hooey.

Big Bang fears drive Orissa people to temples

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/big-bang-fears-drive-orissa-people-to-temples/73261-11.html

Its almost hilarious what lengths people's belief in divinity will send them - its seems almost oxymoronic (oxymoronous? bah) , if you think about it - will the ensuing black hole swallow the gods themselves who are supposed to save us? Reminds me of all the garbage in the book "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown.

Reading through http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/09/09/2142259.shtml

Its actually scary though - the protons the 'mad' scientists are playing with at 0.999 C have enough energy to punch a hole through tons of concrete - why bother, I do not know, to discover what lies inside the very tiniest fabric of space-time - maybe its time we rename 'atom', considering that it seems simple enough to break it open.

Random hikes: Diablo

Some random hikes over the past couple of months:
Mount Diablo State Park
We went to the Livermore temple en route.

In front of the Livermore temple


Running down the trail from Mt Diablo to North Peak

Along one of the mount roads criss-crossing the trail

View off a cliff - spectacular view out into the Guadalupe mountains and East Bay.


Near Mt Olympia, on the way to North Peak.
Quaint little place - Praveen poses in front of SF Bay


The trek then winded through some dense foliage, before returning back to Mt Diablo.





A lot of the incline was at ~25-30 degrees - this is one of the easier slopes here:

Solid sarcasm

Been a while since I have posted anything:
xkcd's got some great doodles, really funny, biting sarcasm:
Click here for a sample!

Anime list

I just felt the need to list the anime I have watched so far.
In mostly chronological order of my watching it, starting in the year 2000:

Flame of Recca
Mysterious Play [Fushigi Yuugi]
You are under arrest!
Ninku
3x3 eyes
Rurouni Kenshin [Samurai-X] & Reminiscence
Inu Yasha
Get Backers
Vision of Escalflowne
Ghost in the Shell : Stand Alone Complex
Wolf's Rain
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Gundam SEED
Gundam SEED Destiny
Fullmetal Alchemist
Fate/Stay Night
Gundam Wing
Fullmetal Panic
Final Fantasy VII : Advent Children
Cowboy Bebop
Trigun
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Death note
Demoned Away [Higurashi no Naku karo ni]
Hellsing
Claymore
Ninja Scroll

http://www.animenfo.com/statistic/top.php?type=anime

My viewed list aint bad :-)

I plan to watch/finish:
Bleach
Avatar ( not an anime in the true sense....still fun )

I wanna be a farmer...

Looks like indian tax payers are gonna get screwed. Again.
I heard about the donation to farmers, many of whom are richer than 90% of the middle class...Read:
http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/muralidharswaminathan/1668/50436/upas-rs-60000-cr-insurance-for-polls.html

Half of all income tax revenue goes to this scheme...."I am for the farmer..." says the beloved Pa.Chi. I agree that the poor farmers in the downtrodden villages in rural andhra, or those committing or about to commit suicide should get their loans forgiven....but such a blanket donation to every farmer (Amitabh Bachchan's farmer too, btw..So is Deve Gowda) makes me really cringe.


Maybe I should have (or at least temporarily switched to) become a farmer. Looks like I would have made some easy money.

Microsofting kids...

From Slashdot:

"Microsoft is attempting to curry mind share with the 3-12 age bracket with their new event, the Source Fource, a series of developer-based action figures. Windows Vista Sensei, SQL Server Gal and some lame gender stereotypes presumably seek to rid the world of bearded, katana-wielding evil-doers. From the article: 'Between March 15th and April 15th 2007, the new super dudette will be offered and will be sent to developers who get their act together and attend at least two live MSDN Webcasts or two MSDN Virtual Labs, or one of each."


Argh.. more Microsoft madness. Maybe those are Voodoo dolls. And you can burn 'em.
Who knows...

Bay area randomness

Couple of old friends were visiting me, and we decided to see the bay area in an utterly random fashion - Wake up way past noon, and decide what could be accomodated in the remaining time before sunset. The outcome of that was that we ended up seeing a bunch of stuff we never intended to...LHS, Atomic and I shared credits for the [zero-]planning, and we ended up discussing all of this amidst some hectic PlayStation 2 gaming, generous doses of chocolate/maple syrup, waffles and Atomic's Pongal treatise...





We saw Stanford, of all places...There seems to be a general paranoia about out-of-state folks about seeing Stanford...I personally cannot find anything awesome about going all the way there to look at a bunch of buildings....Ah well...to each his own.







This was followed by a rather brief accident prone visit to half-moon bay....All we did was play ultimate, without any connotation to the word 'ultimate'...in freezing weather, and a rather stiff breeze, to complement my quite still-broken leg.













There was of course the traditional requirement to seek divine blessings...

We visited the Livermore [Food] Temple. Blessed were we to utilize insider information about the copious 'prasaadham' given to devotees at lunch. We even followed this up by a long drive+trek up Mt. Diablo.

Lol, indeed. Remember "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand?




Santa Cruz was a fun outing too, with the weird "Mystery Spot" thing, replete with a trip to the famous BoardWalk....We still couldnt figure out what was so amazing about the place though.






I should'nt forget to mention how seemingly mundane gatherings can turn rather engrossing.
Clubbing together with droves of ex-classmates eeking out a living in the bay area was certainly more fun than I expected it to be...








I even took them to see the center of my world [work, of course!] (and grab a couple of [free] espressos!)...




Considering my past ravings about Body Worlds(R) at Dallas, people just had to see the second edition on show then at San Jose Tech Center...We spent almost an entire Sunday evening seeing dead bodies suspended in weird angles, sometime to the point of nausea...



[I know people shall hate me forever for using this abbreviation....but what the hell.]





And of course no bay area pseudo-tourism is complete without a visit to ol' San Fran.


Incidentally, I also learnt the 'smelly' art of driving on sixty degree slopes on a dumb automatic [-With tire spin stinking up the road-]...