The reports of their deaths were greatly exaggerated

When Bloomberg inadvertently pushed out Steve Jobs' obituary, he became the latest in the line of famous people whose obituaries have been published prematurely. While Bloomber has retracted the story, you can still read it on gawker.com

Mark Twain is perhaps the most famous of these, especially for the message he sent in a telegram to refute these claims: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated".

Another famous story goes that Rudyard Kipling read the account of his death in a magazine, and wrote to them saying "I've just read that I am dead. Please remove me from your subscription list."

It's common practice for news agencies to keep stock obituaries for most leaders and celebrities. In 2003, technical glitches on cnn.com allowed the public to access their premature obituaries without a password. It turned out that several obituaries were written using fragments from others' templates - e.g., Dick Cheney became "UK's favorite grandmother" while Fidel Castro became a "lifeguard, athlete and movie star" (after Ronald Reagan).

The number of such incidents in fairly large and Wikipedia maintains a pretty comprehensive list of premature obituaries. Perhaps some of these premature obituaries turn out to be for the good; it is speculated (though not confirmed) that Alfred Nobel instituted the Nobel Prize after reading a rather unflattering premature obituary describing him as the merchant of death.

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Bollywood's new Noir

I have been very impressed with a lot of Bollywood movies from the last five odd years that have been make use of several elements of the film noir style. Some of the most impressive ones that I have seen include Manorama Six Feet Under, Ek Hasina Thi, Being Cyrus, Mithya, and Ek Chalis Ki Last Local (If you see any significant omission here, it's more likely because I haven't seen the movie, than that I didn't deem it worthy of this list:)

I'd be happy to recommend most of these movies to any audience, irrespective of their familiarity with Bollywood movies. In that way, these movies are made for a wider audience. However, if you look at their popularity within the Indian market, most of them fail to make themselves huge commercial successes. As this post on naachgana.com points out, the key to success for many of these movies is keeping costs down.

It's refreshing to see that some actors and directors like Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shorey, Abhay Deol, Neha Dhupia, Rajat Kapoor and others investing a lot of their career into this genre and to making great movies.

It's surprising that most of these films haven't gotten their due from the Government. For instance, India's Oscar picks continue to disappoint (with rare exceptions). Recognition at that scale could potentially prompt some of the good films that are being made to up their budget, and do an even better job (which's not to say that more money will necessarily lead to better films being made).

I'd love to hear from you on any noir movies you'd recommend from Hollywood, Bollywood of your neck of the woods:)

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24 hours is 3 days!

Arrived in Mumbai yesterday, on a brief visit home. One of the first issues I'd to deal with was that my ISP had not activated my internet connection. I repeatedly called them about this, and each time I'd be told that it'd be done in 24 hours. So obviously, I sort of lost my patience after a while; but the agent I was speaking with, instead of being ruffled, explained to me that it's "24 WORKING hours", and that each working day is 8 hours!!

I think it's very disingenuous to say that something will get done in 24 working hours (and even casually dropping the operative word "working" most of the time) when you really mean that it'd take 3 days, even if the numbers add up to the same. What do you think?

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