Cockroach puts 30 people out of work

A cockroach makes a surprise appearance... and at the end of it all, 30 employees lose their jobs... More

Blogging in south Indian languages

Well, I was expecting this, but not so soon. Blogger announced it on 12th here.

The first indication of this was when Orkut had the option to type in south Indian languages -- Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. Blogger had introduced Hindi transliteration some time back. What's remarkable is out of the five Indian languages provided, four are south Indian ones, including Malayalam, my mother tongue. ഇനി മലയാളം ഫോണ്ട് ഡൌണ്‍‌ലോഡ് ചെയ്യണ്ട -- I mean, now I don't have to download Malayalam fonts.

I can see that Google family engineers working on Blogger have done their research well to find out that while Hindi binds north India well, there is no one common language that binds the south in a similar manner. One can survive with Hindi anywhere from Mumbai in the west to Kolkata in the east, or even further north east in the the Seven Sisters. But each of the four south Indian languages are so distinct unless one knows each of them it is difficult to survive in the respective state.

During the eight years I was in the north, I had no difficulty travelling from place to place or even communicating with the local people. But when I came down south, I felt out of place, even though I am from Kerala.

So, it's not without reason that Blogger has provided four south Indian languages and Hindi. However, I am sure it will provide other major Indian languages like Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali etc. also.

Hats off to the engineers for the facility that has been provided to get the spelling of the transliterated word correct. Type out the word in English; if the trasliterated word looks inaccurate, then just click the word; a menu drops down, from which the right form can be selected.

Wow, this looks wonderful. The only glitch: the spell-check has stopped working. Hopefully it's getting fixed.

Ban possession of guns in US

No end to violence on American colleges -- yesterday's incident at the North Illinois University in which five students were gunned down in a classroom was the fouth in a month.

Since American universities have lots of foreign students on their campuses, security of students is not just an American issue, it is also a global one. The North Illinois University, for example, has 862 international students from 88 countries. NIU has an Indian link -- it has a tieup with Karnataka's Manipal University.

So what has Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois, got to say on this?

"Today we offer them our thoughts and prayers, but we also have to offer them our determination to do whatever it takes to eradicate this violence from our streets, from our schools, from our neighborhoods and our cities," Obama said. "That is our duty as Americans," he tells a news conference.

But he nullifies all the determination with this:

"I think there is an individual right to bear arms, but it's subject to commonsense regulation."

Why doesn't America completely ban ownership of guns, except by people who need it as part of their work?Why should people carry guns for their protection when there is a well-armed security force? Of all people, why should students be legally allowed to possess guns?

None of the candidates -- Hillary, Obama or McCain -- has a clear cut policy on gun control.

America is supposedly leading a war against terroism. Aren't students living in a state of terror on US campuses, not knowing who will spray bullets on whom? When innocent lives are lost, aren't the classical terrorist and the student with a gun in the same league?

Election year may not be a good time to hammer out bipartisan agreements. But an effort on the part of the two parties and their leading candidates to hammer one out against possessing firearms will signal to the Americans and to the world at large that the American establishment doesn't have two standards when it comes to gun culture.