Writing On The Wall?

Some interesting sign-boards/ graffiti from a visit to Cochin

Read the rough print!


From the ridiculous to the sublime. 50 metres away....

A powerful message about pollution. A bit cryptic though.

Time's Man Of The Year

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ORACLIQUE - I

Time's MoYs

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Feminists, the reason I didn't use Person Of the Year was because the abbreviation TPoY would have unnecessarily reminded one of a certain piece of furniture... :-)

1. First things first. Who was the first person to be chosen as TIME's Man Of The Year?

*

2. In which year was the PC famously chosen as the first non-living TMoY?

*

3. Still on 'it', what was the next non-person TMoY?

*

4. Toughie. Grab that list! Who has been chosen as TMoY the most number of times?

*

5. A relatively easy one. Who was selected as person of the century by the magazine?

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6. What were the trio Sherron Watkins, Cynthia Cooper, Kathleen Rowley who shared the last one collectively called? It's not Referees...

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7. Who was the first non-American to be a TMoY? What you wear be you!

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8. Who was the first woman to be chosen TMoY? Quite possibly the other woman...

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9. Who is the youngest person to be a TMoY? Strange.. very strange. Could it be that the oldest is also the youngest???

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10. Who is the only person to have been selected as TMoY in consecutive years?

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11. Who received the honour in 1938? (Now why would I pick that year?)

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12. Four people shared the TMoY in a certain year. All of them have also won the Nobel Prize. And strangely enough, they also shared Nobel Prizes when they did get them (separately, 2 + 2). Identify these Nobel couples.

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13. Just to make it a couple of couple-questions...;-) Who were (was? grammar be my bane!! ) the first couple to be chosen as TMoY?

*

I'll stop at that. An un-nice, un-round number. Round me up!!!

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ORACLIQUE

The Clique Unoblique

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Answers
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1. Charles Lindbergh. Too many "Charles Augustus Lindbergh"s came in. Sniff, sniff...hmm..ok..Don't think I don't know you don't know ;-)
2. 1982. Point-blank.
3. Endangered Earth in 1988
4. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Have given points for just Roosevelt as well.
5. Albert Einstein
6. Whistleblowers. They blew the whistle on Enron, WorldCom and FBI respectively.
7. Mahatma Gandhi. Khadi!
8. Mrs. Wallis Simpson. The woman for whose love Edward VIII abdicated the
throne.
9. Charles Lindberg again. He was the first and hence the oldest as well!
10. Richard Nixon. In 1971 and 1972.
11. Adolf Hitler
12. The Peacemakers - Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, F.W. de Klerk and
Nelson Mandela
are the Nobel-couples!!! got so many 'curie'ous answers to this one!
13. Chiang Kaishek and Madam

14) TIME had a Man Of The Decade award once. Who won it? Which decade?
Mikhail Gorbachev. 1980s.

>I'll stop at that. An un-nice, un-round number. Round me up!!!
That's where everybody stopped! No further Qs came in... :-( Too bad each
of you thought that the "other person" would do it...

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ORACLIQUE
The Clique Unoblique
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Sandeep Unni Adds:
* interestingly Elvis Presley topped the polls for the man of the century,
but time decided to honor Einstein.

Rest On Your Laurels

Rest on your laurels... but do not sleep! - TJ

No matter how much we have achieved, we are only as good as our next test will show. What's more, there is always a "next test"!

What is past is past, dead. Memories are short; people do not remember. Ask any sporting "legend" continuing to play past his age.

You might have done great things. You might be number 1, but number 2 is right behind. If you can be there, so can he. There is only one top-spot. I quote the famous Avis slogan "We're number 2, so we try harder."

What you're doing now is important, all-important. It will define you in the near future.

But as a side-quip, it is not that important either! There's always next time, right? Relax, have a good time. That's the most important thing!

Spin-Offs

I need to get more organized as I realize that all of me may not be for all of you. CubbSpace is multidimensional, you see. Such arrogance! I hear you mutter. I was trying to put too many eggs in one basket.

Only stuff with some literary value will come in here from now on - snippets of prose or verse.

It's horses for courses, and so I've started different blogs for different topics.

CubbSpace
- http://cubbspace.blogspot.com/ -
My literary blog - expect funny stuff (I hope!)

oOzone
- http://oozone.blogspot.com/ -
My programming and OO design tech blog.

InCubbator
- http://incubbator.blogspot.com/ -
Watch my ideas get cooked here!

Oraclique
- http://oraclique.blogspot.com/ -
A trivia-oriented quizzing blog.

Choose your poison! Choose all of them if you will!

Less Human Than

I just failed not one but two CAPTCHA tests (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) that this site posed while I was trying to create this page! I couldn't recognize some distorted letters.

Am I human? ... I wonder ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

If there are humans who can fail the test, there will be machines that can pass, for sure! Who are you? Make that WHAT are you?

Oraclique Trivia

Welcome to Oraclique...
Steeped in trivia and mystique!

Oracle + Clique = Oraclique
Such words are called portmanteaus. Lewis Carroll is regarded as the inventor of this technique.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau

Oraclique was a series of quizzes I had started on Quiznet http://groups.yahoo.com/group/quiznet/ with the nick sonofdelphi.

The name is based on the meanings (all angles) of the combining words.

Oracle:

1. An authoritative person who divines the future

2. A prophecy (usually obscure or allegorical) revealed by a priest or priestess; believed to be infallible

Clique:
1. An exclusive circle of people with a common purpose
2. Completely interconnected graph in computer science

And in Greek mythology, the oracle at Delphi had all the answers.

Couldn't be a more meaningful name, huh?

Twisted Beauty

It takes a very literal
----be---------- nd----
------- nt--- mi--------
---------- of------------

To appreciate these beautiful
---------- t-------------------------
------------ u----------------------
---------- r-------------------------
------------ n-----------------------
---------- s-------------------------
------------ o-----------------------
---------- f-------------------------
------------ p-----------------------
---------- h-------------------------
------------ r-----------------------
---------- a-------------------------
------------ s-----------------------
---------- e.-------------------------

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Written in 2003. Very nearly landed me a job! The dashes are forced because without them, the page doesn't get displayed properly.

Introduction (Declaration Of Intent)

This blog
Will be a log
Of my brainwaves
And self-raves
As and when
They ripen!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Every Dog Has His Blog

Publishing's gone to the dogs
Nowadays everybody just blogs.
Words and ideas the blogger bleeds
Nonsense spewing out at insane speeds
Who cares? Anyway, nobody reads!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

To Blog Or Not To Blog

For months on end, I deliberated. Everyone was doing it, why wasn't I? The answer: because everyone was doing it! Any self-respecting author believes himself to be special, mould-breakingly so. Why be a drop in an ocean?

The blog is the last resort of the unpublished author.
Every dog has his blog.
Should I really stoop so low to conquer?

Maybe fears of being an open book, of having my brain-children dissected, decimated and appraised as worthless as well, (worst of all) being told that my grammar was all wrong... were the reasons that were stopping me.

Nothing was happening. No publishers coming in search of the golden child. No motivation to write either. My pen was getting rustier than a sword in this nuclear age....

So, finally, I've made the plunge. And I'm doing it at Cubb's pace, here on/in/at(?) Cubbspace.