Tamil writing proposal - executive summary

In this proposal, I have presented certain diacritics which, if properly used, can be used to write loan words from Hindi and English in Tamil better. The details of the proposal may be found in the paper put up on SSRN. Please note that, for various administrative reasons, the paper has not been published. I want to reserve it for publication until such time that I am in a doctoral program so that I can get some value out of the process of publication. Please keep in mind that the Tamil language proposal should be read in conjunction with the Leveraged Learning proposal. One paper (the latter) proposes a pedagogy for teaching and the other paper (the former) offers a simple proposal to show how languages can be better designed so as to be easier to adopt. 

In this post, Here is the set of examples from the previous post on examples. The first four names are the names of Rama and his three brothers from the RamayaNa and the last two are just two proper nouns I picked out from the Star Wars saga. On the left are the names in Harvard-Kyoto (first four) and standard English (next two). On the right are the names as written under the Tamil writing system that I have invented.

This is just a review of the examples previously discussed but you may think of it as an executive summary of the proposal.

Note that adopting this proposal is purely optional. Again, it is not mandatory. No child in any school has to perforce learn this script. The script can, however, be used to teach children - who out of their own free will choose to learn this new script or those whose parents give such consent. 

The next big thing in tech: Augmented reality

Via ComputerWorld:

Reality isn't what is used to be. With increasingly powerful technologies, the human universe is being reimagined way beyond Google Glass' photo-tapping and info cards floating in space above your eye. The future is fashionable eyewear, contact lenses or even bionic eyes with immersive 3D displays, conjuring up a digital layer to "augment" reality, enabling entire new classes of applications and user experiences.

Like most technologies that eventually reach a mass market, augmented reality, or AR, has been gestating in university labs, as well as small companies focused on gaming and vertical applications, for nearly half a century. Emerging products like Google Glass and Oculus Rift's 3D virtual reality headset for immersive gaming are drawing attention to what could now be termed the "wearable revolution," but they barely scratch the surface of what's to come.

The wearable revolution can be traced back to Ivan Sutherland, a ground-breaking computer scientist at the University of Utah who in 1965 first described a head-mounted display with half-silvered mirrors that let the wearer see a virtual world superimposed on the real world. In 1968 he was able to demonstrate the concept, which was dubbed "The Sword of Damocles."

How to live to be 100

Dan Buettner on how to live to be a hundred : 

Lost opera

Via the Huffington Post:

Scientists have helped to restore Luigi Cherubini's opera "Médée" to its original glory.

A lost aria, or solo song, from the piece, which Cherubini apparently smudged out in spite more than 200 years ago, has been revealed by x-ray scans.

Cherubini was an Italian composer who worked mostly in France and counted Ludwig van Beethoven among his contemporaries and admirers. When Cherubini's French-language opera "Médée" premiered in 1797, critics whined that the opera was too long, and as legend has it, the composer cut the piece by about 500 bars.

A shortened Italian translation of the opera became the dominant form of that opera into the 20th century. But today, many opera-goers and critics long to see "Médée" — which tells the wrenching Greek myth of Medea — as Cherubini first wrote it.

A well-received bicentennial version of the opera in its original form was produced in New York by Opera Quotannis in 1997; critic Peter G. Davis declared at the time that the doctored form "we've been hearing all these years, should now be permanently set aside." Back in December, an audience displeased with a radical take on Cherubini's "Médée" apparently lobbed obscenities at the performers in Paris and shouted "Stop the desecration of opera," according to the New York Times.

Now scientists are taking part in the revival, too. In an original manuscript of Cherubini's "Médée," the closing lines of the aria "Du trouble affreux qui me dévore" ("The terrible disorder that consumes me") are blacked out. Scholars sent the copy to physicists at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, Calif., where the lost musical notes were recovered with the help of powerful X-rays.

Stanford online coursework to be available on new open-source platform

Via Stanford News:

Stanford online coursework will be available starting this summer on a new open-source platform, OpenEdX, the university announced today.

Among the first programs to run on the OpenEdX platform will be Stanford's popular "Three Books" summer reading program for incoming Stanford freshmen, along with two public courses now open for registration – one using contemporary health topics to teach statistics and another helping K-12 teachers and parents change the way students approach math. Courses from Stanford's Department of Electrical Engineering are among those that will run on the platform beginning this fall.

Computing a better way to advertise

From The Daily Pennsylvanian:

This billboard knows if you have a moustache or not. 

Engineering senior and computer science major Cynthia Mai, and Engineering seniors and computer engineering majors Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kiske have designed a video billboard which tailors the advertisements it displays to the people walking by based on their age, gender, glasses and facial hair. 

The team created this digital billboard screen, called “Advise,” for their senior design project — a capstone project for students who are pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Engineering. Students are supposed to apply what they have learned in class to create a device with real-world applications. 

The team recognized from the start that billboard advertisement is ineffective if the demographic of people walking by would never buy the advertised product.

World Quizzing Championships - today!

The World Quizzing Championships are today. Below are the details for the Bay Area (South Bay) venue.

World Quizzing Championship

Today at 10:00am

Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, California