Ravi S. Iyer: Worldly

PM Modi's address to the nation today (25th April 2021) focused on 2nd Corona wave which, PM Modi says, is a storm that has shaken the nation. Having acknowledged that impact, PM Modi interacts with doctors, nurses, an ambulance driver and a recovered COVID patient, in a positive spirit focused on defeating the COVID pandemic. I very much liked these messages of PM Modi and the many COVID pandemic warriors of India that he interacted with in this video. PM Modi's Mann Ki Baat with the Nation, April 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys7N6nYfpoU , 32 mins, streamed live on 25th April 2021 by Narendra Modi.  Most of the video is in Hindi but it has English subtitles. Some international media seem to have focused on the bad news, sensationalizing the pandemic's current impact on India. That I think is a one-sided negative view which will make the media channels a lot of money (as such sensationalist bad news captures many eyeballs). The truthful picture is somewhere in bet

Day Of the Badman 1958 Western Fred MacMurray Joan Weldon John Ericson, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C69rpZe5OdU ,  1 hr. 54 mins. I enjoyed this movie even if the story line comes across as quite fictional and has too many angles (justice, condemned man, bullies, fear, romance triangle etc). I liked the main theme of this Western genre movie which is the lonely road that a righteous judge has to take, at times. A man is tried and convicted for murder. Before the sentencing, the convict's relatives, who are notorious thugs themselves, come to town. The family head of this group (convict's relatives) threatens the judge, the jury foreman, cajoles the widow of the murdered man, and shows the sheriff of the town that he dare not try to take their guns. In the process, the family head uses some slick dialogues (Godfather Mafia boss style dialogues about being reasonable ...) and gets his henchmen to rough up and terrify those that they target. Even the judge is beaten up, but t

Last updated on 1st Sep. 2021 Minor update on 28th May 2022 To see part 1 post, please visit: Chinese-American computer pioneer An Wang (1920-1990) and Wang Laboratories founded by him: some aspects of their history of interest to me - Part 1,  https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/04/chinese-american-computer-pioneer-wang.html . Part 3 (final part) of this post series can be read here:  https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/10/chinese-american-computer-pioneer-wang.html  .   Note: This post heavily draws on the book: Lessons by An Wang (with Eugene Linden) published in 1986,  https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Lessons.html?id=CSTxxSaJPGQC&redir_esc=y . By default, "Wang writes" or "He writes" or similar words, in this post refers to what Wang has written in the Lessons book.   Sections in this post IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter (MT/ST) released in 1964, among the first word processor products without CRT display; Wang company spotting and ex