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What we missed out on...

The "Industrial revolution" started around 1800 and continued for over a century. During that century, the countries of Europe and the USA underwent fundamental changes as science was applied to create machines that made human labour more efficient. Steam power, mining, chemicals, spinning and weaving and metallurgy. Faster transport and communication, reliable ships, railways, the telegraph etc ensured that Europe and the US were industrial societies by 1900. Experimentation had led to the invention of the unpowered glider, and in 1903, the Wright brothers, who were IIRC bicycle makers built upon the concepts of a light and strong structure and the internal combustion engine and created the first powered aircraft. 11 years later, WW1 broke out and thousands of aircraft were manufactured to fight and concepts like recce, dogfights, air defence and bombing had all been "invented" before the end of the 1914-1918 war. By 1900, Europe and the US had already had 1
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Quoted for Truth

What difference does OBL's death make for India? How will things be different? Was OBL involved in Pakistani terror against India? Suggested answers to some truly intriguing questions as well as a deeply informative timeline from user Rudradev @ http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5911&start=2360 [quote] OBL was never an enemy of India, except in the broadest ideological sense. Just because he became the poster-boy of "dangerous Islamism" for the west, we do ourselves a disservice by adopting that image wholesale and applying it to an Indian context where it is not at all relevant. Indeed, I believe the presence of OBL in our subcontinental neighbourhood was in fact a net gain for India. Let me explain why. 1) In the early 1990s, the US was full of hyperpower hubris. They had just won the cold war and destroyed the USSR, and Pakistan (via its support for the Afghan war) was appreciated as a key player in that campaign. These times were the apex of
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Setsuko

Don't fear the coming dark. Pluck the stars from the sky, little firefly. Watch them glow in your hands. They flutter as we cry, little firefly. This hope and hunger will not end. We'll just fade away and die, little firefly.
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Fanatic

I hopped off the bus at Betelguese, hoping perhaps for a hot cup of coffee and some stellar company. Two dizzying years zipping around the Milky Way on the Quark Express left me with a deep-seated urge to feel the earth - any earth - under my feet and the burning desire to get the taste of space trucking meals from off of my taste buds. The man panhandling on the corner outside the busport grinned his crazy grin - the one that promises his undivided attention until you pay him to stop looking at you, stop creeping you out, stop pretending like he knows where you hid the body. You know the body that I'm talking about. The one in your closet only its a skeleton now, hidden and shameful and giving off a miasmic odour that you're scared will surround you until the day you're a skeleton in someone else's little pandora's box. The stench of doubt. You can travel the galaxy and stare stars in the face until the gamma radiation turns your pineal gland into an elastic leg g
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Night Sky

The inky blue of a deep dream of ocean depths and inhabited perhaps, by the same tentacled life swimming in and out of the beams of the weak lights that are our lives, our hopes and our regrets. I look at the night sky and sigh at the sight of the infinity that defies my reach and my understanding. It's the infinity that I swim through in the depths of my inky blue dream.
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Voice

How how how do you say what I've locked away? Make me smile when it's been a while since I let go and replayed the one that went astray. I feel alive I'm still alive Your song plays in my veins I hit rewind and it begins again and in my head that life, that rage, that happy happy pain it's on again. It's in your voice. It's in your song. It's in the way you play It makes me scream along. Don't stop singing keep this world ringing to the sound of your voice.
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Aman ki Asha

I'm not going to waste my breath and dwell on how truly and myopically stupid ToI's 'Aman ki Asha' is. And how it's going to be just a venue for pseuds to sip wine and share kakori kebabs, while admiring each other's pashmina shawls and over-sized bindis . Ooh and clunky silver jewellery. To truly appreciate the complete idiocy of this whole 'initiative', let's imagine that the ToI had addressed their open letter to Mr. Girhotra, father of the late Ruchika G. You know, the one who was driven to suicide by the Rathore fellow. The following piece is a parody of what was on ToI's front page, and has been (re)written by user sanjaychoudhary at forums.bharat-rakshak.com . Love Rathore Feels odd to you -- Ruchika's father -- to see those two words side by side doesn’t it? Hatred and a desire for revenge somehow sit more comfortably in your mind when you think of him and what he did. Words that you’ve been fed in daily doses over the last 19 years.
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