The movie 300 is racist and completly innacurate

Hey Folks,

I havent posted anything for long, I guess I was tied to my inital theme so I have just decided to ditch it and star anew.

First of all don't see the 300. Its a highly racist and falsified story, with gaps in its storyline.
Let me just list out some of the things

1)In the movie the Spartans are shown to be free men and the Persians are shown to have a slave army. As per history it was the exact opposite, The Spartans enslaved people called the "herlots' and 900 of them died fighting alongside the 300. As for the Persians Xerxes's faher had declared slavery illegal all over the Persina empire.(In Sprta 90% of the populaion was made of slaves)

2) Size of the force. As per the hstorians the Greek army was made up of atleast 5000 soldiers, but in the movie they are shown as just a handfull.

3) The movie glorifies the Agoge system, in which a 7 year old child is taken from his mother and put into a military academy. It did exist but future Kings were not allowed to take part in it. So the whole Leonardes(Kings) episode was a creative licence

4) Ending of the Agoge: The movie shows the end of the Agoge by a wolf hunt in the wild, as per history it was concluded by murdering any Spartan slave i.e the "Herlots"

5) On a more generalistic sense the Movie is extremely racists as it atempts to vilify the Persians and then changes their skin color to Black, implying that Blacks attacked the Whites and the Blacks were evil.

Personally I have never seen a more villified campaign against any community.

-Amit

Reviving the blog

Its been 4 weeks since I started the MBA and its been quite hectic. I wish I had the time to talk about it. But unfortunately I dont so will try to put in some snippets.

Day -4(arriving in Cambridge)
I flew into Cambridge 4 days before the start of the course. The flight was uneventfull that nearly every checkpoint asked me to open my bags. One of my classmates had flown in form sri lanka a few days ago told us that was asked to produce a chest xray. This was a bit surpising becuase the british embassy's official position is that no medical examination is required if you are entering from a non yellow fever country. Anywasy owhen i reached the counter the immigration officer asked for my lungs report. If you arent carying anything you have to go to a health counter to get a checkup done which will take atleast another hour.
I met up with one of my classmates Jyothi who had flown in from Delhi half an hour after me. Before flying in we had decided that we will drive together to Cambridge from London,so we went outside and grabbed a shuttle to the rental car company(national). As we had 4 large suitcases and 2 carryons I had rented an SUV.WARNING:- if you are renting at national at heathrow be prepared for an half an hour line to get the papers of your car. The people at their office are just soo slow. The drive from heathrow was nice,except we kept on loosing our way in a few places. The traffics on the major highways is similar to the US traffic except that we are now driving a manual instead f an automatic,so shifting gears creates more gaps in traffic.

Once we took the recommended exit into Cambridge we were quite lost driving on a narrow road but we kept on going and realized that we were on trumpington street which is one of the largest street in cambridge which runs in front of Judge. I finally saw Jude on the right hand side for a brief moment. its a grand building but its quite 'colorfull'.

The thing that strikes you is how small it is. The main areas are just like a city block back in India. e.g I would say that Cambridge is smaller than Koramangala in Bangalore. We finallyt managed to reach both the colleges and collected our keys. The porters were nice and friendly and didnt even ask for IDs to collect our keys. We drove down the houses unloaded the luggage and had some nodles and crashed.

-Amit

Travellogues- The drive through the jungle.

It so happened that one of the guys in office got married last thursday and his reception was on Friday in village called Vittal near Mangalore. Mangalore is around 300+ kms from bangalore,so I was quite excited and decided to drive there. We took 2 cars and 8 people and started at 2. We made good time till Sakleshpur, and were there around 6:30. Sakleshpur is an important landmark as the ghats(hill/hairpin curves drive starts from there). Our destination for the night was a place called Kukkre Subramanya, which is a really old temple.

So far so good but as we were about to enter the ghats a truck driver pulled us over tellign that the road was blocked as a tanker had overturned ahead. The ghat jams atleast take hours to clear off. He suggested that we take another route through small villages. We asked another person and he agreed that we could go on the alternate route. As we ventured in the road it was in a slightly bad condition but it was drivable with a max speed of 40 km/hr. After around 10 kms we came across a village and stopped for some provisions. Unfortunately the locals were not too optimistic about the route. The first person told us to turn back as there was forest aheadand told us that elephants might attack our cars. The other person told us to show our guts and dare it out. The good news was that the road actually existed.

We were ina adventurous mood so we went ahead. It was already dark and silent except the sound of bats flying around. After around 40 minutes we came across the dreaded forest gate
. We had to search for the forest guard ,but luckily he believed in the story of the jammed road and let us in. Or maybe he jsut felt outnumbered 8 is to 1. The drive through the jungle was outstanding, occasinally there were trees which had fallen on the hills and were at the edge of the road. If we dont see them in time the car would smash into the log and there was no human beings for miles and miles.And plus we had smokers in the group so we they had to take a smoking break. I am attaching a pic , my car's tail lights are visible and I am standing next to the guy in the white shirt(who is barely visible) but because of my dark shirt I am lost.

The thing that was surprising was the silence, all throughtout the drive we didnt hear anything not even a cricket chripping, it was eary and the best time to exchange ghost stories, which we did :-). The drive though the forest lasted for over an hour but finally we reached civilization at 10 had dinner and checked into a lodge and dozed off into slumber.

Superman was a nerd

Ever wondered why superman wears his underpants over his clothes & a cape. Its because he was a nerd. Sounds unconvincing doesnt it. well here are the facts.

The term nerd in the 19th century and early 20th century meant a circus clown/entertainer which included acrobats. The acrobats were dressed up in brighly colored underpants and capes and would do death defying acts. The majority of the earlier superheroes including superman design was influenced by these acrobats and hence superman is attired like a circus gymnast. hence superman=nerd.

-Amit

Googleplex

Just came across a few news artcles about the new Google complex around 80 miles of Portland,Oregon,USA. Finally after a long time some investments seem to be flowing back into the Portland area.

The interesting part was that Google claim that google has approximately 450,000 computers in its grid. And they plan to to use the new center as a data center so this number is going to rise .

Wehn I visted the Silicon Graphics meuseum in the bay area one of the exhibits was a 16 node rack which was the first computer which ran the google search engine. The unique thing about the google architecture is the complete unreliance on any special interconnect, they just use simple cheap ethernet. This has helped them in exponentially scaling the number of nodes in the google grid.

Best of luck google as M$ is after you with plans of boosting thetheir grid to 800,000 computers by 2011.

-Amit

Fanah Movie and Shayaree

Fanah is a hindi movie which was released recently after much hype. As expected it didnt live up to the hype,but it did have some good Hindi/Urdu Shayaree(poetry)

Here are some shers from the movie:-

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Khuda Aaj Ye Faisla Karde,
Use Mera ya Mujhe Uska Karde.
Bahut Dukh Sahe He Maine,
Koi Khusi Ab Toh Muqadar Karde.
Bahot Muskil Lagta Hai Usse Duur Rehna,
Judai Ke Safar Ko Kum Karde.
Jitna Duur Chale Gaye Woh Mujhse,
Use Utna Kareeb Karde.
Nahi Likha Agar Nasib Me Uska Naam,
To Khatam Kar Ye Zindagi aur Mujhe FANAA Karde
----

Tere Dile mein meri saanson ko panah mil jaaye
Tere Ishq mein meri Jaan Fanaa Ho jaayeā.
-----
Ankhen to pyar me dilki zuban hoti hai,
sachi chahat to sada bezuban hoti hai,
pyar mai dard bhi mile to kya gabrana,
suna hai dard se chahat aur jawan hoti hai
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Phool hun Gulaab kaā?
Chameli ka mat samjhnaā?
Aashiq hun aapkaā?
Apni Saheli ka mat samjhnaā
-----------
Dur Humse Jaa Paoge Kaise,
Humko Bhool Paoge Kaise.
Hum Who Khushbu Jo Saanson Mein Utar Jaye,
Khud Apni Saanxon Ko Rok Paoge Kaise
--------
Bekhudi Ki Zindagi Hum Jiya Nahi Karte,
Yun kisika ka Jaam Hum Piya Nahi Karte.
Unse Kehdo Mohabbat Ka Izhaar Aakar Khud Karein,
Yun Kisika Peecha Hum Nahin Karteā
---------
RONE DE TU AAJ HAMAKO TU AANKHE SUJANE DE
BAHO ME LELE AUR KHUD KO BHEEG JANE DE
HAI JO SEENE ME QUAID DARIYA WO CHUT JAYEGA
HAI ITANA DARD KI TERA DAMAN BHEEG JAYEGA
--------
tere dil mein meri saanson ko jagah mil jaaye
tere ishq mein meri jaan fanaa ho jaaye
adhoori saans thi dhadkan adhoori thi adhooren ham
magar ab chaand poora hain falak pe aur ab pooren hain ham

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Cambridge MBA yahoo group

The Cambridge yahoo group that I had started for my fellow classmates had been going oslow organic growth to around 16 members till last week. Finally I sent out a mail and invited everyone on the official site to the yahoo group and now we have 45 members thats more than 2/3rd of the current class.
I have also been planning on reducing my active role on the yahoo group and now that the two new moderators have started taking care of business I can kick back and relax.

cheers
-Amit

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cambridge-mba-2007/