I have not seen all the episodes of Heroes and I don't think I will see all the episodes either. It was the almost-fanatic following of this series by my wife and sis-in-law that has made me watch a few episodes.
Though I have not seen all, I have seen sufficient enough to notice the similarities between Heroes and the x-men. Be it the the power of self healing or the agility to read minds or the ability to fly or walk through the walls and many not so direct similarities, we have seen them all!
In spite of being a follow-on, how come Heroes is so popular? I believe it is the inclusive nature of the cast. My wife and sis-in-law started watching this series because it has an Indian, Tamilian, character as one of the lead characters. There are characters from many other countries too.
In essence, it is a story of the world. Whereas, x-men seemed like the story of the United States. At times, in the movie, it sounded more like the story of Newyork and its suburbs! Is this the reason why Heroes popular across the world? Having said this, the simple reason could be, we all like magical, larger than life characters, don't we?
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Language - back to the basics!
Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine on how much text messaging has changed and how ubiquitous it has become. Even the SMS editors have matured multi-fold, from a simple text editor to word-guess to word-complete to heuristic based word-suggestion. It is all available in that small mobile phone!
Now, it is another matter, there are many users out there to whom all these additional features are unnessorory. There are SMS experts out there! There was this girl that I had seen at a shopping mall. She was standing in the queue in front of me at the billing counter. She was talking to her friend standing next to her and at the same time she was texting at an amazing speed. Ping pong, ping pong, she was flooded with SMSes and all she needed was just her right hand thumb. She was typing so efficiently and effortlessly. I have seen that many people do not need the advanced text editing features. The have invented their own way of messaging, with short words. For example 'great' is not 'great' anymore. It is just 'gr8' and so on. You know better, I dont have to get into the details.
We continued discussing on transformation of languages and scripts. I mentioned, if this state continues then one day we will see people communicating using symbols as people had been doing thousands of years ago! For which my friend responded, yeah! you will never know. We look at the scripts as if it was written by some immaturecivilizations. May be they were so advanced that they did not need the our complicated languages. All they needed was their sign languages. At that very moment we stopped talking and got lost in our own thoughts!
Now, it is another matter, there are many users out there to whom all these additional features are unnessorory. There are SMS experts out there! There was this girl that I had seen at a shopping mall. She was standing in the queue in front of me at the billing counter. She was talking to her friend standing next to her and at the same time she was texting at an amazing speed. Ping pong, ping pong, she was flooded with SMSes and all she needed was just her right hand thumb. She was typing so efficiently and effortlessly. I have seen that many people do not need the advanced text editing features. The have invented their own way of messaging, with short words. For example 'great' is not 'great' anymore. It is just 'gr8' and so on. You know better, I dont have to get into the details.
We continued discussing on transformation of languages and scripts. I mentioned, if this state continues then one day we will see people communicating using symbols as people had been doing thousands of years ago! For which my friend responded, yeah! you will never know. We look at the scripts as if it was written by some immaturecivilizations. May be they were so advanced that they did not need the our complicated languages. All they needed was their sign languages. At that very moment we stopped talking and got lost in our own thoughts!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The Govt Museum of Chennai
It had been years since I visited the 'seththa' college of Chennai. To give my wife the much needed break and to help her study for her exams, I decided to take my two and half year old son out for a day. The choice was the museum. It was not a good choice for the purpose after all. Except for the miniature model museum, to be specific, the miniature cars in the model, nothing inside the museum kept him occupied. He, of course, enjoyed the walking around the museum part.
The museum was clean and pleasant. It was evident that the same care has been given for the artifacts they maintain in the museum. However, I was not equally impressed with the display of our national treasures. As a nation with a long history and prehistoric culture, we are used to the treasures strewn all around us. Unlike many nations,we still carry on and practise a life style which has been in vogue for several thousand years. Even today our places of worship, the centres of our ancient craftsmenship still plays the host to these treasures. As a result, we do not give these treasures their due importance and place. Even if we value them, we do not let the worldknow our place. The british boast of their collection from all over the world, including the tons of gold ornaments that they had taken from India during the Raj. There is hardly anything older than five hundred years in the United States, still they are proud of showcasing their natural wealth. And, what we do? Having been used to the wealthof history, we had lost the sense of importance of our treasure. The stone and bronze statues on the display are supported by cryptic, hard to read small font explanations. In many cases, the paper notes are half eaten by moth. One walk around the hall leaves our eyes strained from reading. Certainly not an invite to a second visit.
To be fair, I dont think the museum is adequately staffed. I doubt that they are adequately funded either. They may think of seeking the help of volunteers, Im interested! I know a lot of you out there volunteer for many social causes. Is not this worth its time and effort?
The museum was clean and pleasant. It was evident that the same care has been given for the artifacts they maintain in the museum. However, I was not equally impressed with the display of our national treasures. As a nation with a long history and prehistoric culture, we are used to the treasures strewn all around us. Unlike many nations,we still carry on and practise a life style which has been in vogue for several thousand years. Even today our places of worship, the centres of our ancient craftsmenship still plays the host to these treasures. As a result, we do not give these treasures their due importance and place. Even if we value them, we do not let the worldknow our place. The british boast of their collection from all over the world, including the tons of gold ornaments that they had taken from India during the Raj. There is hardly anything older than five hundred years in the United States, still they are proud of showcasing their natural wealth. And, what we do? Having been used to the wealthof history, we had lost the sense of importance of our treasure. The stone and bronze statues on the display are supported by cryptic, hard to read small font explanations. In many cases, the paper notes are half eaten by moth. One walk around the hall leaves our eyes strained from reading. Certainly not an invite to a second visit.
To be fair, I dont think the museum is adequately staffed. I doubt that they are adequately funded either. They may think of seeking the help of volunteers, Im interested! I know a lot of you out there volunteer for many social causes. Is not this worth its time and effort?
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