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Showing posts from December, 2009

A graphical recap of the decade (2000-2009)

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Courtesy: The New York Times

How religious is your state?

I am pleased to be living in America's least religious state .

The Best Films of the Decade (2000-2009)

Again, here are the best compilations I've run across in this category. The New Yorker Internet Movie Database (IMDB) The Rolling Stone Slate The Onion RottenTomatoes Metacritic Roger Ebert Fansided The Christian Science Monitor The Times And since the above lists comprise mostly mainstream films, here's my own list of the best (mostly alternative or foreign) films of the decade gone by. Amu A Mighty Heart Bend It Like Beckham Bloody Sunday Bowling For Columbine Cache Catch Me If You Can Cheeni Kum Crash Crimson Gold Delhi-6 Focus Going Upriver Gomorrah Grizzly Man Guru Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains Kill Bill, Volumes I & II Last King Of Scotland Lord Of War Matchstick Men Mr And Mrs Iyer Nobody Knows No End In Sight Owning Mahoney Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! Persepolis Planet Earth Rabbit-Proof Fence Shwaas Slumdog Millionaire Spirited Away Syriana The Child The Contender The Diving Bell And The Butterfly The Fast Runner The Fog Of War The Pianist The Queen The Road To Guantanam

The Best Books of the Decade (2000-2009)

Here's a rundown of the most useful compilations I've come across. 100 Best (Times) 30 Best (Onion) Best (Salon) My own favorites are listed below. My Stroke of Insight (Taylor) Architecture (Glancey) Under the Banner of Heaven (Krakauer) Discovering the Sikhs (McLeod) The Spiral Staircase (Armstrong) The Undercover Economist (Harford) The Tipping Point (Gladwell) Freakonomics (Levitt) A Really Short History of Nearly Everything (Bryson) The Future of Freedom (Zakaria) My Job Went to India (Fowler) Effective Java (Bloch) Letter to a Christian Nation (Harris) A Little History of the World (Gombrich) Vows (Manseau) Step Across This Line (Rushdie) An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (Roy) The Algebra of Infinite Justice (Roy) Power Politics (Roy) War Talk (Roy) Holy Cow (Macdonald)

Anglais!

I once got caught traveling without a ticket in Paris's underground railway. I did not know much French and got out of trouble simply by repeating one word over and over -- Anglais!

Essential websites

An excellent list of essential websites assembled by The Guardian.

Don't throw away your scratched CDs/DVDs

At least not until you've read this advice on how to fix scratched CDs/DVDs .

Linux commands to treasure

Some lesser known but very useful Linux commands .