I am very disappointed.

The storyline especially the death looked very contrived; the death was as if publisher (or someone else) forced Mrs. Rowling to kill someone important and he was chosen. The logic behind the sequence of events were very flimsy. Also the death takes away the factor that holds together the tomes.

Overall it appeared too much planning but less heart has gone into this volume. As if it was a desperate attempt to pensieve all the storyline together and bridge the apparent puzzles.

In this book you will find several characters behaving much different from their normal style and capabilities and they are not under any spell either AFAICT. That really make it a painful reading at times.
Read more (397 words) »

Dr. Richard Stallman's latest tirade is against Harry Potter's publishers. As you might know HP publishers in Canada acquired a court order to prevent reading of Harry Potter books before the official release date.

Read more (373 words) »

England 220-1 (46 overs) beat Australia 219-7 by nine wickets. Marcus Trescothick hit an unbeaten century and Michael Vaughan a fifty as England beat Australia by nine wickets. England were set 220 to win after restricting Australia to 219-7 and reached the total with 24 balls to spare in the NatWest Challenge.

Read more (71 words) »

These are the countries I visited or currently stay:

Read more (21 words) »

Yes, you heard me right. I want to be cloned. And not just one clone, several in fact.

Read more (245 words) »

I never thought I would rejoice the arrival of monsoon (rainy season) as much as I did this year. The summer was exceptionally hot with temparatures rising upto 55 C (Centigrade) in parts of Orissa and 50C+ in Ranchi district in West Bengal. Several people died from the heat and humidity, the elderly being affected most.

Read more (130 words) »

With supplemental oxygen, Will Cross, 37 became the first person with type 1 diabetes to reach the South Summit of Mt. Everest. That put him just shy of the top of the 29,029-foot mountain.

while this is not the top, is a great achievement for a type 1 diabetic. Will has called in and stated he only went as far as the South Summit of Everest and turned around because of high winds… For a type 1 diabetic, this is beyond what many can dream.

Read more (190 words) »

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is to be applauded for taking action to protect the rights of true victims of asbestos-related illness and ensure they promptly receive their full compensation, the Center for Individual Freedom said late last week.

"The committee has voted to create a $140 billion fund to compensate those made ill by exposure to asbestos," said Marshall Manson, vice president for public affairs. "Currently these individuals are victims not only of asbestos itself, but of a judicial system gone mad."

Pointing to a study by the RAND Institute, Manson noted that trial attorneys have bogged down the court system with 730,000 asbestos-related claims, 90 percent of which are for non-malignant conditions. This rampant baseless legal action has driven 100 defendant companies into bankruptcy, so legitimate plaintiffs can hope to receive only pennies on the dollar at best. And from that, they must pay attorney and transaction fees that climb as high as 60 percent, Manson added.

I wonder if someday we will have a legislation for Lawyerities - a fatal (economic and moral) condition caused by over exposure to lawyers.
Read more (179 words) »

"Welcome to New York City Rejection Line"…"You have been officially rejected".
A free phone service which you can avail to reject someone be it in love or employment.

Someone won't leave you alone?
Give them "your" number: 212-479-7990
The official New York Rejection Line!

It does feel very heartless. Another layer of de-humanizing society. Now you can get rejected by an answering machine, which implies that you are not even worthy of a face-to-face rejection in the eyes of your rejector!
Read more (201 words) »

First there was this newborn child. Her mother accidentally gave her birth in the toilet of a running train. And the child slipped from her and fell down the toilet tube in between the railway tracks (from a train moving at full speed). The train was stopped and he was found alive on the track after travelling 25 kilometers (gives you an idea of the speed of the train). The child was completely unharmed!

Read more (257 words) »