Bomb Blast in Lahore Targets Jews and Barbarians

Last night, some terrorists succeeded in planting three time-bombs in the Garhi Shahu area in Lahore, an area that is 4-5 kilometers away from my house. Thankfully, nobody had died until the last update.

I  had to turn on the idiot box (after many months) to catch the live report, and was lucky enough to witness the uber-intelligent reporters standing inside the shop that was destroyed. Using their extremely intelligent brains, and standing on top of the scene of the blast without caring about forensic evidence, they decreed that “The bombs were planted to create panic in the common citizens”.

I think they are wrong, and I have an alternate theory. It involves the terrorists’ big boss telling them to → continue reading

B(ack)log Links - Part One

I just took a look at my 'FOR BLOG' bookmarks folder and was amazed to see the number of pages (66) I have bookmarked during August, with the intention to write about them here, but never got the chance. So, in an attempt to cross that task from my TODO list, I'm posting some of them here (minus the planned commentary/discussion/blogging) and deleting the rest. They should have converted into 66 posts, but oh well!

I need a break from all the copy/pasting now, and will have to split this post in two parts. So these are the things that have been using up my brain cycles this month. If you find any of the above things useful/fun/entertaining/offensive, do leave a comment so that I can justify spending the last hour or so on this.

Book Sequels Suck

I stopped watching TV more than 5 years ago, and never had a regret. A combination of DVDs, RSS Feeds and books gives a much better value-for-money (assuming time is money) than surfing 100+ cable channels, and (mostly) no ads.

I have one complaint though, the life cycle of a good scifi series or saga is much longer than a TV show. The Dark Tower (Stephen King) finally ended (in a recursion) last year, and Harry Potter will finally end this month. That still leaves me waiting for

    A Song of Ice and Fire (George R. R. Martin)
    Wheel of Time (Robert Jordan)
    Ender (Orson Scott Card)
    Alvin Maker (Orson Scott Card)
    Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling)
    Miles Vorkosigan (Lois McMaster Bujold)
    Saga of Seven Suns (Kevin J. Anderson)

Now, when I pick up a (fiction) book, I make sure it is either a stand-alone novel, or a complete set of novels. I installed the Facebook Visual Bookshelf application last week, and wasted an hour trying to remember the books I read last year. Shelfari and LibraryThing are other similar Web2.0 sites that I have to check out after I finish Robert J. Sawyer’s award-winning novels. With the spare time that I have these days, I’m averaging about a book per two days, so if you have any recommendations, do let me know : )