Pensivia Reflectona

One Year Later

2008-07-17T09:00:00.000+05:30

The following is an article I first came across in TIME's AIMCAT 0918 (June 22) question paper. A quick Google search led me to an article titled "Ode to the Rainbow’s End" / "The pains of happiness.." in an old Indiatimes blog of someone named Clitoria. However, though the articles might appear similar at first glance, there are significant differences. I loved both versions, and what follows is actually an amalgamation of the two versions.

I apologize to the original author for so blatantly plagiarizing his/her work, and more importantly, for (possibly) altering such a beautiful work. I have no idea who the original author is. I think Clitoria, whoever he/she is, got the article from somewhere else, and modified it to his/her liking. I think TIME edited from another source too. If any random or not-so-random passerby here knows about the original source, please enlighten me through your comments. Perhaps it's more because of the various experiences in my life over the past one year than any special liking for what I perceive as a profound sorrow pervading the article, but I really loved this article, and I would love to know the original source.

There are days when sorrow is like a physical ache. Under your skin, it is a soiled washcloth the surgeon left inside before sewing you up. In your bloodstream, it's a murky grey fluid, an effluent without an outlet. Inside your ribcage, it is the deadweight of despair. Even neon seems dim, music grates. People are talking to you, but all you want is for them to go. Their concerns are trite, banal, pointless, compared to the grief that you cannot share with anyone. There are such griefs, and they are the most terrible.

At this precise point of time, happiness seems a myth, a chimera, a bedtime story for children, a poor urban legend. When were you happy last? Yesterday? The day before? Yes, you can remember those times, those moments, but you can’t believe it was you. It was another person, yes. It was another world. Here, now, this moment, you can never again be happy.

You make a list. You start small: mundane happinesses, commonplace joys, random unplanned delights in a world where happiness was allowed. Lying about in a meadow in the winter sun. The caress of river breeze on your face. Getting wet in the rain after seven years. Cuddling up with someone you love under the quilt.

But the memories of happiness can hurt too. Can you ever go back to those moments and experience them again, now, with the knowledge of what comes after? Will the sky ever be as azure as it was on that winter day ten years ago? The quilt may be the same, but you could be alone.

Happiness happens. But the patterns of its arrival are random, and its departures are staggeringly unexpected. It knows no reason and follows no apparent logic. Causality can be established, but you know that introspection and analysis often spoil it. It can be a warm light, it can be cool blue. Anticipation can be it, so can afterglow. Bliss is doing nothing at all, but it can also be working at feverish pace. But most of all, right now, for you, happiness appears elementally cursed, like a stillborn.

A sleeping child, a warm puppy, a mother's lap. Two rainbows in the same sky and animals hiding in clouds. The first snowfall, the last love of your life. Ducklings waddling down to the pond, the sighting of dolphins.

People find happiness. All the time. You know that. As they sight their brother pushing his luggage trolley out of the arrival terminal. As they cheer India's victory at the Eden Gardens and in front of TV screens in shop windows. You have even met people who have been happy for sustained periods - for months, for years. People full of life, happy with their jobs, happy with their relationships, their existence silver clouds with no dark linings. These are people who have fitted perfectly into the lives they have been handed by destiny, circumstance, environment. People who have built their own lives with a clear idea of their selves, consciously and systematically reduced the variables in their existence, shrugged away doubt and found their places in the world. Those places could be an existential Taj Mahal, or a sleeping bag for the mind. Size does not matter. You have known people who have struck gold financially and been happy. And people who have given away what they had and attained happiness. Acquisition has been joy, so also renunciation.

You know people who have been given a happy life, at least for some time, by a Dale Carnegie book, by a Chicken Soup book, by any of the thousands of books that spew out of the presses every year, promising the Big H in smooth steps. You haven't read any of them, nor will you ever, but if even a small number of people have felt that a book has delivered on its promise, you are OK with that. If people find cheer in staying up all night in a crowd listening to devotional songs, you have no problem with that. Religion has never held any lure for you, but you recognize the right of others to worship in their search for truth and meaning, solace and peace.

P G Wodehouse and The Pickwick Papers. M S Subbulakshmi singing Suprabhatam in the morning. Vintage Kishore Kumar on the car stereo at 100 kmph on the highway. Amélie from France. The Lion King from Hollywood, and Munnabhai MBBS from Mumbai.

But why do you need to be happy? Why do you crave for it, if the only thing you know for sure about happiness is the inevitability of betrayal? Happiness won't last, it will leave, without even the courtesy of a wave of goodbye. Did not one of your professors once tell you that creativity is directly proportional to the amount of tragedy you hold in your heart? What sort of pictures could a Vincent van Gogh with his soul at peace have painted? Could Gregor Samsa have woken up one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself metamorphosed into a gigantic insect, if Franz Kafka was a happily married bureaucrat? What is the big deal about happiness? From your limited knowledge of the world's major religions, you have a sense that most messiahs have spoken about peace of mind, rather than happiness. You could be wrong, but that's the notion you have.

In fact, aren’t you supposed to rise above happiness and sorrow, and attain a state of overwhelming calm? These ideas are things of beauty, you can recognize that, but like all great art, they are pointless. They seem to be about story-telling, with no story to tell. The sound of one hand clapping, you know, will always be too faint for you to hear.

To be with people you love. A night out with long-lost friends. To know that you can trust her and that she can trust you. To be alone and comfortable.

To be alone and comfortable. Finally, isn't that what you are looking for? Once you asked a book-lover friend, what do people do who don't read? You still remember his answer. Reading is a solitary activity, he had told you, and very few people enjoy solitude, and content in seclusion. Reading is silence, and very few people enjoy being in silence. That’s why so many millions search themselves, looking for a core that could define them. But what if it's all a cosmic joke? What if there is no core, what if its all about just two mirrors facing each other, with the reflections stretching to infinity?

Wear Sunscreen

2008-03-24T22:26:00.004+05:30

"Wear Sunscreen" or "Sunscreen Speech" are the common names of an essay actually called "Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted On The Young" written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column on June 1, 1997. In her introduction to the column, she described it as the commencement address she would give if she were asked to give one.

"Wear Sunscreen" was set to music, renamed "Baz Luhrmann Presents: Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen): The Sunscreen Song (Class of '99)" or in short "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" and released on an album by Australian film director Baz Luhrmann. The song features a spoken-word track set over a mellow backing track. The song lyrics, which consist of a litany of humorous but practical advice, were drawn word for word from the Schmich column except for a date change from "'97" to "'99" - although an early mix exists with the original line of "Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97" still in place.

Here is a video version of the song, and following that the complete text of Mary Schmich's essay, "Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted On The Young", better known as "Wear Sunscreen".

Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted On The Young

Mary Schmich

Chicago Tribune

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '97... Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.

The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

You are NOT as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4 PM on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself, either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's. Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings; they are your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography in lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Adieu, Sir Clarke

2008-03-19T17:32:00.004+05:30

I have always enjoyed reading, and I have read many, many books, but if I were to pick one book as my favorite ever, it would be 2001: A Space Odyssey, an iconic book by an iconic author, Sir Arthur C Clarke. I read it when I was about 14 years old, and it captured my imagination like no other book ever did. I am not very sure of this, but when I look back now, I think it was the first real science fiction book I ever read. It made me a huge fan of the genre, and fanned my already great ambition to be a scientist. My ambition to be a scientist died down later on, however, I am still a fan of science fiction.

I have not read too many of Clarke's books. Nearly not enough as I have wanted to. Besides 2001, I have had the pleasure of reading its three sequels, and a couple of his other novels. I am yet to read his Rama series of books, and also his newer, post-1990 books. But still, the influence of Clarke as an author on my life has been tremendous.

And it's not just my life that Clarke has influenced. So many astronauts have claimed to have been inspired by Clarke. Clarke himself was proud of his influence on so many people.

"I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books."

— Arthur C. Clarke, Address to US Congress, 1975

Clarke was instrumental in the idea of development of commercial satellites:-

Clarke's most important scientific contribution may be his idea that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays. He described this concept in a paper titled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?", published in Wireless World in October 1945. The geostationary orbit is now sometimes known as the Clarke Orbit or the Clarke Belt in his honour.

The world was made richer by Sir Clarke, and now that he has left, the world is poorer. Fittingly, Clarke, a very non-religious person, left unambiguous written instructions that his funeral be private and secular:-

"Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral."

On a personal note, my favorite author died on the same day when the first woman I fell in love with received the last gift she would ever receive from me. That's the story of my life.

Clarke's Quotes:-

Clarke's Three Laws:-

1. "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

2. "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

3. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"Life is just one big banana. Science fiction allows us all to peel open the reality and discover the yellow truth inside."

"The truth, as always, will be far stranger."

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean."

Of UFOs: "They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth."

"Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what's over the next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without information. Without information, you'd go crazy."

"We should always be prepared for future technologies, because otherwise they will come along and clobber us."

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

"Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1 - 'It's completely impossible.' 2 - 'It's possible, but it's not worth doing.' 3 - 'I said it was a good idea all along.'"

"Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal."

"I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her."

"I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about. "

"It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars."

"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him."

"Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society."

"Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it."

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."

"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."

Search Terms - 1

2007-12-26T19:15:00.000+05:30

Not too long ago, I equipped this blog with a StatCounter project. StatCounter provides many useful features to webmasters, one of them is Search Keyword Analysis. Through two modules, Keyword Analysis and Recent Keyword Activity, StatCounter provides a comprehensive report of the keywords that lead people to a site.

These are some of the rather weirder search keywords and phrases that people have used to reach this blog:-

Torture

how to make torture devices

how to (build a torture device)

— Apparently, for people with severe anger management issues, the post on the Raytheon Silent Guardian protection system is very useful.

pain sensitivity nerve frequency torture machine

— More specific... On google, this query returns my blog as the top result.

extreme torture devices for men

— Searched by a really angry wife perhaps?

uncyclopedia torture

— Really? I always found Uncyclopedia really funny.

middle age weapons and torture devices

— The old ones...

torture devices contemporary

— And the new ones.

the ultimate torture

— Watching a Rajinikanth movie?

Teapots & Holograms

how do you see the teapot hologram

— Hmm... In a sci-fi movie?

teapot holographic pictures

holographic teapot

holographic tea pot like

— What's with all the teapot hologram queries?

teapot underwear

— What??

India — The great land of Tigers, Maharajas and...

indian public molest

— No, no, no. Not everybody. Just the men.

what tourist have to say about indian hospitality

— The question...

tourists are molested raped in india

— And the answer.

English Class

synonyms for great woman

— Someone wanting to write a very verbose love letter? Google has a post in this blog as the 6th result.

synonyms for underwear

— Wrong place. Try Merriam-Webster. "underclothes, underclothing, undergarments, undies"

PerGle

man cuts dic off vid

— Some people have really weird tastes. Wondrously, a google search returns a post in this blog as the 9th result.

sex history of changezkhan

— Was he a porn star?

chuck jism

— Somehow, this post satisfies the query.

mens underwear photos

— Reaching this post, some girls must have been really disappointed.

The Academics

is there any backdoor entry in iim

— You wish!

iitians uncyclopedia

— Don't IIT-ians have anything better to do?

Literary Geniuses

gift of the magi thai

pier-glass meaning in magi gift

the gift of magi silent imputation of parsimony definition

tortoise brush story sold hair christmas

— Err... What?

character analysis - sudie in the last leaf

— Yeah, a real nice girl, that one.

Etcetera

women are like computers

— No dear nerd, sorry, but they are not. But you can keep saying that over and over again, if it makes you feel better.

sane agnostic

— Saner than Theists, I suppose. But surely not as sane as Atheists.

cusat hell

— Oh, it's not that bad. But yeah, PeePee is a real jerk.

the ultimate dr. john

quetzalcoatl mark hutchinson

mne. sofronie., definition

Jesus's Dad & The Smell of Burned Animals

2007-12-16T14:02:00.000+05:30

When I was younger and stupider, I used to be a Christian. I was born in a Christian family, and until I was about 15, I used to believe in all the Christian crap. I had very little choice, my family used to forcibly shove Christianity down my throat from the time I was an infant, when I was too young to defend myself. My conversion from practicing Christian to non-practicing Christian to Agnostic to Atheist started, I think, when I started to study the Bible. I had never really read the Bible when I was very young, I used to read random portions from the Bible every day at my family's insistence, but never truly understanding their meaning. Then one day I decided to really start reading the Bible, from the start to end, and to understand what I then believed to be a "holy" book. It was then that I found that the Bible was utter crap, its fantastic stories almost as disgusting as they are stupid. One of the portions that I found most idiotic was the Book Of Leviticus.

Some of the interesting portions from that book:-

The LORD called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting. He said, "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When any of you brings an offering to the LORD, bring as your offering an animal from either the herd or the flock.

" 'If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he is to offer a male without defect. He must present it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting so that it will be acceptable to the LORD. He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. He is to slaughter the young bull before the LORD, and then Aaron's sons the priests shall bring the blood and sprinkle it against the altar on all sides at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. He is to skin the burnt offering and cut it into pieces. The sons of Aaron the priest are to put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. Then Aaron's sons the priests shall arrange the pieces, including the head and the fat, on the burning wood that is on the altar. He is to wash the inner parts and the legs with water, and the priest is to burn all of it on the altar. It is a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the LORD.

" 'If the offering is a burnt offering from the flock, from either the sheep or the goats, he is to offer a male without defect. He is to slaughter it at the north side of the altar before the LORD, and Aaron's sons the priests shall sprinkle its blood against the altar on all sides. He is to cut it into pieces, and the priest shall arrange them, including the head and the fat, on the burning wood that is on the altar. He is to wash the inner parts and the legs with water, and the priest is to bring all of it and burn it on the altar. It is a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the LORD.

" 'If the offering to the LORD is a burnt offering of birds, he is to offer a dove or a young pigeon. The priest shall bring it to the altar, wring off the head and burn it on the altar; its blood shall be drained out on the side of the altar. He is to remove the crop with its contents and throw it to the east side of the altar, where the ashes are. He shall tear it open by the wings, not severing it completely, and then the priest shall burn it on the wood that is on the fire on the altar. It is a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the LORD.

— Leviticus 1

The LORD said to Moses, "Speak to Aaron and his sons and to all the Israelites and say to them: 'This is what the LORD has commanded: Any Israelite who sacrifices an ox, a lamb or a goat in the camp or outside of it instead of bringing it to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting to present it as an offering to the LORD in front of the tabernacle of the LORD -that man shall be considered guilty of bloodshed; he has shed blood and must be cut off from his people. This is so the Israelites will bring to the LORD the sacrifices they are now making in the open fields. They must bring them to the priest, that is, to the LORD, at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and sacrifice them as fellowship offerings. The priest is to sprinkle the blood against the altar of the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and burn the fat as an aroma pleasing to the LORD.

— Leviticus 17, verses 1-6

Somehow, I found it very, very disturbing that the god I used to worship loved the smell of burned animals. What sort of sick psycho would be pleased by the aroma of burned flesh and fat??

Those are not the only weird portions in Leviticus, there are more:-

No man is to have sexual relations with another man; God hates that.

— Leviticus 18, verse 22

If a man has sexual relations with another man, they have done a disgusting thing, and both shall be put to death. They are responsible for their own death.

— Leviticus 20, verse 13

I guess these are a couple of the portions in the Bible that are supposedly against Homosexuality. But they talk only about male homosexuality. Is God OK with women having sexual relations with other women? May be it's like guys who are disgusted by gay men, but find lesbianism and lesbian porn very arousing... May be God feels the same way.

" 'Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.

— Leviticus 25, verses 44-45

Of course, Jesus's Dad finds no fault with slavery. Slaves are "property" of their owners. No wonder the Christian nations of Europe and the Americas found nothing wrong with enslaving people from Asia and Africa.

" 'Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

— Leviticus 19, verse 19

Polyester anyone?

" 'Of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams, you may eat any that have fins and scales. But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales—whether among all the swarming things or among all the other living creatures in the water—you are to detest. And since you are to detest them, you must not eat their meat and you must detest their carcasses. Anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be detestable to you.

— Leviticus 11, verses 9-12

What? No Lobsters or Shrimps or Prawns??

Propoganda Journalism

2007-10-16T22:26:00.000+05:30

The Indo-US nuclear deal has had a lot of media attention in the past couple of years. Especially in the past few weeks, as political debates on the issue have heated up, the media attention has increased rapidly too. As usual, several sections of the media have been taking sides on the issue, with varying degree of subtlety.

On last night's Face The Nation, Sagarika Ghose made it absolutely clear what her, and CNN-IBN's, stance on the issue is. Ghose minced no words in her half and hour of unambiguous attack on the Indian government, Manmohan Singh, and on the Left parties. There was no moderating voice, no suggestion of different opinions, and not even any variety in her attacks. The guests included Jayanthi Natarajan of the Congress, and Mohammad Salim of the CPI-M. But all the questions asked, all the statements made, everything said by Ghose was unmistakably against the government's decision to put the nuclear deal on hold. The question asked in the show was not subtle either: "Is Manmohan Singh a Lame-Duck PM?" Excerpts from the online report of her show last night:-

Inglorious surrender to the Left

The Congress has been called the government of wimps. Its putting the deal on the back burner has been called an inglorious surrender to the Left. When the Congress decided not to take the Left on on the Indo-US nuke deal, did it also realise to what extent it was compromising the dignity and office of the Prime Minister who had staked so much on the deal?

But critics say that the Government is not doing anything. It is clearly a crisis of leadership. All they are clearly doing is looking over his shoulder to find out which ally is going to pull the rug when.

Government doing no work?

Economic reforms were supposed to be Manmohan Singh’s great legacy. But what he was able to achieve in 1991 as finance minister, he certainly has not been able to carry forward in 2007 as prime minister.

While some policies may have been moved, but major reforms have been installed.

The Left has stopped an elected government from functioning. Have they exposed the dismal side of parliamentary democracy?

Natarajan answered Ghose's claims as well as she could, and as well as she should. However, no fight can be fair when the referee and the ringside announcer have already decided which side should win.

Tonight's The X Factor on NDTV was, in contrast, an absolute delight to watch. It had the same subject, the now-delayed Indo-US nuclear deal, but with a far more composed and far more fair host, Nidhi Razdan, and was handled far better than Ghose's show. Razdan may not possess the flair of Sagarika Ghose, and may not seem to be as powerful or effective a television debate host as Ghose at first sight, but she certainly knows how to handle a discussion without taking sides. She was very courteous and polite to the guests, raised interesting and important questions, and covered all aspects of the politics surrounding the deal. Unlike Ghose and CNN-IBN, Razdan and NDTV did not pick the sides in the fight. And if they did, they masked it extremely well. The result was a very good discussion, with all the involved parties putting forward their points well, and expertly handled by Razdan. There was no political mud-slinging, certainly not from the show's host.

Media "activism" by television news channels is considered quite fashionable in India these days, with the media taking the role of a watchdog over the society. In some cases, it can have good effects. In fact, it can be argued that in most cases, "activism" by news channels has extremely positive effects. But in some cases, it can be very damaging. One example is the case of Moninder Singh Pandher in the Nithari serial killings. When the case broke, all the media went all out in their attack on Pandher along with the other accused, Surender Kohli. But later, the CBI gave a clean chit to Pandher. The case is still pending, but the effective trial, verdict and execution by the media means that Pandher will probably never be able to live anything close to a normal life again, even if he is acquitted by the court.

Another negative effect of media activism on part of news agencies is the distortion of news. When the goal of a news organization becomes to fight for a cause, rather than just to present the facts, facts get distorted, and news become stories. If a reporter wants to fight for a cause or highlight an issue, a proper medium would be an opinion column in a newspaper, or a blog, and not a television show that claims or presents itself to be a news show.

Regarding the Indo-US nuclear deal, Ghose and CNN-IBN may think strongly about the issue, but they need to remember that the government of India is not a Congress government, but a UPA coalition government. Manmohan Singh and the Congress may, or may not, have a lot of support from the aam admi on the issue, but the electorate has also voted for a significant number of Left representatives in the Parliament. The UPA government has to listen to the concerns of the Left on any issue, and that is not just because the government needs support from the Left to stay in power. A more important reason is that whether they like it or not, the people of India elected 60 members from the Left parties to the Lok Sabha. And they too are representatives of the people of India, and their views have to be taken into account when making policy decisions. And that is exactly what the UPA government has done. Like Jayanthi Natarajan repeatedly stated in Ghose's show, there is no shame in admitting that the UPA government has to take the Left on board in crucial policy decisions.

Another interesting angle: CNN-IBN is co-owned by TBS Networks' Turner International India. TBS Networks is an American company, and it's assets like CNN are famous for their pro-Americanism. Does this have something to do with CNN-IBN's campaign in support for the Indo-US nuclear deal?

Incidentally, NDTV and its director Prannoy Roy are known for their perceived ties with the Left and Left politicians. Well, I guess it's impossible for anyone to be perfectly impartial in any issue. But it would be good if the media can at least hide their predilections better.

Feature Addition: Snap Shots™

2007-10-07T10:48:00.000+05:30

This blog has just been updated with another wonder of the Web 2.0 world: Snap Shots. It took a while to configure it to the satisfaction of the author, but the end result is quite good. Now a user can hover over a Snap Shot enabled link (like this one) and a neat pseudo-window will open up showing a small preview of the target web page. Any link with this functionality will have a small icon to its right. There will be non-Snap-Shots-enabled links too, and such links will not have that icon (example).

More information on Snap Shots available here. FAQ, including user customizations available here.

Now, that's an idea probably worth a billion dollars!

Pastafarianism - Academic Endorsements

2007-10-01T15:06:00.000+05:30

The supporters of the 'christian' brand of "Intelligent Design" often claim that their "theory" has the backing of many "eminent" "scientists" and "academics". (Double quotes added intentionally, because obviously, none of those words should ever be used in the case of ID without one.) Here are some of the endorsements for Pastafarianism by obviously more intelligent scientists and academics (not that the ID backers are real scientists or academics anyway). Taken from the holy official website of Pastafarianism itself.

"As a scientist, I'd like to say that the currently accepted scientific theory is evolution. But, some competing ideas have been proposed, such as ID and FSMism, and discussion to include one should include the other, as these ideas are equally valid."
– Mark Zurbuchen, Ph.D.

"As a medical practitioner and scientist, I wholeheartedly believe that every theory and hypothesis needs full consideration and explanation with formal ratification by peer review. We have a duty to inform our schools and presumably pasta should form a staple part of our educational diet."
– Dr. A. Macintyre (UK)

"Letting the religious right teach ID in schools is like letting the Marines teach poetry in advanced combat training. As a scientist, I see these the relevancy between the two sets to be equal. If Kansas is going to mess up like this, the least it can do is not be hypocritical and allow equal time for other alternative 'theories' like FSMism, which is by far the tastier choice."
– J. Simon, PhD

"One of the hardest things to do as a scientist is to put my personal beliefs aside when discussing matters of science. So as a professional, I have to say that both forms of Intelligent Design - ID and ID-FSM are equally valid and if intelligent design is taught in schools, equal time should be given to the FSM theory and the non-FSM theory. But, speaking personally now, it seems to me the FSM theory is MUCH more plausable than the non-FSM ID theory, because it is the only one of the two that takes into account all the discrepancies between ID and measureable objective reality."
– Professor Douglas Shaw, Ph.D

"In discussing competing theories, if one is to present ID then it is only fair and logical to teach other theories with commensurate evidence. Based on Mr. Henderson's letter, it is clear that the FSM theory has evidence comparable in weight to ID. As a scientist and professor, it is often difficult to present differing opinions in an unbiased way. However, it is important to the student to be exposed to these ideas to form their own opinions. This comes right out of the handbook of the ID purporters: present the different 'theories' and let the listener decide. If those in favor of ID are so convinced, then they should not be concerned that the presentation of the FSM theory would serve to undermine the credibility of ID."
– Elizabeth Garrett-Mayer, PhD

"At one time, I believed as the Aztecs did, that the universe was created by two gods, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca who attacked and ripped apart Hungry Woman to create the universe. Then I believed, as the Moriori do, that the universe was created when Papa and her husband Rangi hugged and bore children, and were subsequently separated by their son Tane who let light shine between them. However, my views have been swayed by the substantial evidence that the earth and universe was actually created relatively recently by the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). I am firmly convinced that the evidence supporting this depiction of the origins of life, the universe, and everything has many of the trappings of science, and I therefore support the inclusion of FSM creation evidence in the Kansas science curriculum and standards."
– Sebastian Wren, Ph.D

"One of the most exciting developments in fundamental physics in the last twenty years has been the development of so-called 'String Theory'. In String Theory, all fundamental sub-atomic particles are visualized and described mathematically as microscopic vibrating strings. Although as yet unproven, many physicists believe that String Theory has the potential to become the long-sought 'Theory of Everything', through which the fundamental physical nature of all matter and forces will become understood.

Obviously String Theory IS correct, although misnamed (a secular humanist conspiracy perhaps?). As NOODLE Theory clearly unambiguously reveals, He has created the fundamental subatomic particles that form all matter in this universe in His own quivering image! You, me, the Earth, the stars…everything in the universe…are all built of trillions of tiny jiggling noodles, microscopic copies of our Divine Saucy Maker. Truly He is everywhere and in all things!
Boy-oh-Boyardi and Ramen!"
– Steve Lawrence, PhD

"As a scientist I believe that when presented with a new idea every possibility should be considered so we can eventually find the truth. It would be very biased if the only possibilities presented would be regulated by some authority. As a scientist I am biased towards the theory of evolution, but this does not mean that everyone should be forced to only learn this and believe this. Putting this aside, I feel if the government feels the need to regulate what students need to learn, then all ideas should be taught in school. Not only Intelligent Design (ID) should be taught, but the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) should also be taught. In my scientific opinion when comparing the two theories, FSM theory seems to be more valid then the classic ID theory. There is more data to back FSM then I have ever seen for ID. The graph which was presented should alone more convincing then anything ID has ever presented. I endorse the FSM theory."
– Afshin Beheshti, PhD

"As a scienctist, I think that ID is a form of pseudoscience–nothing more, nothing less. Pseudosciences lack the well-designed and carefully-interpreted experiments which characterize the true sciences. ID is popular because it provides the general public with an easily understood 'answer' to nature's complexity. Why is it human nature to try to fill the gaps in science with some form of a deity? Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, in his response the Challenger disaster, wrote, 'For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.' It is too bad that many in the USA have fallen into the ID trap, and are making emotional rather than logical decisions.

That being said, and the more I consider ID and the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) theory, the FSM theory has a lot going for it. First, it should satisfy even the most ardent ID detractors. Secondly, since everyone needs to eat and to believe in something, the FSM theory fulfills these desires. Finally, FSM neatly ties together the many ideas about the creation of the universe. I plan on exposing my students to the FSM theory over a pasta dinner."
– Elizabeth Cowles, PhD

"MMMMMmmmmm, spaghetti"
– H. Neville, Ph.D.

"As a former art historian, I must say that FSM wins hands down over ID when it comes to the complexity of its iconography. ID has produced little aesthetic response to its point of view. FSM on the other hand has stimulated a spontaneous outpouring of highly expressive art."
– Laura Jones, PhD

"On Science, Evolution and Intelligent Design What needs to be taught in the schools is how to evaluate scientific evidence, make decisions and think critically. Science is always in flux. New discoveries are always changing our view of current knowledge, refining and fine tuning our view of nature and the world. I came across a factoid the other day that the average Renaissance man encountered in a lifetime the amount of information found in one issue of the New York Times Newspaper. Today, the average person, including the average teenager, is immersed in data from the moment they get up in the morning until they go to bed. They need to be taught skills to help them sort through this amazing morass of information of varying levels of worth. Concrete ?truisms? such as creationism or that relative dressed up in a suit and tie called intelligent design that cannot bend or adapt to new incoming knowledge only do the children of this nation a disservice. Evolution is based on scientific facts. Intelligent design is a form of marketing. The truth must be told."
– Judith Challis, Ph.D.

"The riducule of FSMism by believers in ID is a beautifully ironic hypocracy. It is a classic case of faith-blindness and the worst of intellectual behaviour that can be observed in religion. In this instance the believers in ID run roughshod over the believers in FSMism by claiming their 'Faith' is correct and decrying the FSM 'Faith' as wrong. It is not possible to scientifically qualify 'Faith' and thus a comparison of 'Faith' in this fashion is meaningless and offensive. If no evidence can be provided to support either then both are equally valid or invalid, regardless of how angry or indignant the supporters may be."
– Andy Parsons, Ph.D.

"As a research scientist, I am strongly in favor of the simplest explanations inferred from empirical data. It's quite clear to me that the evidence for the Flying Spaghetti Monster's creation of the Universe is as good as that for Intelligent Design, as accepted by the Kansas school board. I therefore wholeheartedly support your letter, in that FSMism should get equal treatment under the auspices of the state government."
– Brock M. Tice

"I hope no one confuses the terrible and naÃ¯ve notion of ID with what it means to be Christian. In a way, ID represents a very flawed unChristian God who was incompetent to the task of creating capable natural laws, and so resorted to post-creation tinkering, thus giving the impression of supernatural design. Yet, if supernaturalism be called for, then the pasta family of theologies seems the most plausible, and unquestionably the tastiest with cheese."
– Stephen D. Unwin, Ph.D., Author of 'The Probability of God' (Three Rivers Press, 2004)

"Few people realize that the very 2nd word in the bible is mistranslated. The original Hebrew says 'in A beginning…' whereas most translations say 'in THE beginning…' And therein lies the Truth: there was more than one beginning. In fact, there were three: The 1st followed Evolution as discovered by Darwin; the 2nd followed Intelligent Design; but the 3rd and most successful is the present FSMism discovered by you. So, you see, teaching all three is imperative!"
– Dr. Uriel Goldberg

"Having now perused the many facets of Pastafarianism (and being both a scientist and a specialist in the anthroplogy of religion), I believe that there is great scope for women in this religion. Clearly the FSM has aspects of both male and female, with both 'noodly appendages' and two round meatballs which clearly represent the Breasts of the Great Mother Goddess. Given this inclusion of diversity, I feel that Pastafarianism has MORE to offer budding students than ID, which is notably narrow in its outlook."
– Susan Johnston, PhD

"As a professional paleontologist, I need to emphasize that evolutionary theory has nothing to do with explaining the origin of life. Evolution is the scientific explanation that explains the diversity of life that we see all around us. It is usually defined very simply as a change in gene frequencies through time. It's not about origins.

Pastafarianism attempts to explain the origins of the universe, and does so with as much or more validity (and more gusto!) than ID creationism. And maybe many people find a sense of ultimate purpose in the universe by believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But such beliefs are based upon faith, not science. In fact, considering His active distortions of observable data, science cannot comment upon these beliefs at all, and must proceed in it's usual manner — testing hypotheses based upon observable data. Whether these data have been altered by His Noodliness is moot; a difference which makes no difference is not difference.

Pastafarianism does not constitute a scientific theory, despite it's apparent adherence to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle regarding the interactions of observer and observed. It should not be taught as science … unless, of course, ID creationism is also taught as science, in which case all bets are off.

Best of luck with your web page. I'm off to The Old Spaghetti Factory for worship."
– E. Scott

"As a neuroscientist and clinical psychologist, I have often been struck by how the brain resembles pasta. Clearly, the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory is worthy of deep thought. Or at least a side order of garlic toast. Which is more than I can say about ID, which, as St. Sigmund taught, should be subservient to EGO (Equally Goofy Observations)."
– James Blackburn, Ph.D.

"A colleague told me of the gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

At first, frankly, as a professional astronomer, I was skeptical. What scientific proof does Bobby have of the existence of His Noodlyness, or must I take it on faith alone (as, of course, I do with the theory of evolution).

But then I thought back to one of our pictures taken with the Hubble Space Telescope; you can see it at:

http://heritage.stsci.edu/2002/14/big.html

This picture shows the nebula IC 4406, which as you can see is filled with Noodly structures! Not only does this image scientifically PROVE the existence of the FSM, I believe it shows His home in space."
– Howard Bond, Ph.D.

"I have now read and reread the information on Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSM) and I have to admit that it is frankly on par with (and in many ways superior to) the alternative proposed by the Kansas School Board. Having been employed by a school district in the state of Utah in the past, I can speak from experience when it comes to the mixture of education and religion. If Intelligent Design (ID) is accepted by the Board we will fight to have FSM accepted as well, and, once this has been accomplished, I am certainly willing to assist in the training of the Kansas school psychologists in the philosophy of FSM, if the ministers and pirates of the Church find me worthy.

As closing note, as a clinical psychologist and newly devoted disciple of FSM, I am going to write and suggest to the APA (American Pasta Association) that we replace the current diagnostic and statistical manual, the DSM-IV, with the FSM-IV. That way if our clients don't like our diagnoses, they can eat them."
– Lynne Anne Daurelle, Ph.D.

"As a historic buildings surveyor I help conserve a number of places of worship during the course of my work. I would draw you and your readers' attention to the sometimes shabby condition of the buildings that Pastafarians frequent to imbibe His wheat-based message. I implore all true believers to instigage a regular Sunday morning pilgrimage to their local all-you-can-worship ristorante or pizzaria. Remember to tip well to ensure these sacred sites are preserved for future generations."
– Matt Green, PhD.

"As a former research scientist using carbon dating, I was taken with your explanation of the FSM controlling the mechanics of carbon dating. It now seems obvious to me that the FSM must control the apparent half lives of all other radio isotopes, and similarly manipulates experimental results to produce the ages He wishes us to see. What gives me tremendous respect for the FSM is that He clearly does this with a master plan in mind, such that 'dates' from entirely different isotope systems are all in miraculous agreement with one another. Especially amazing is that samples from geographically different locations, deemed to be from the same geological age on the basis of common fossils produce the same dates. This clever manipulation gives the impression of the evolution of progressively more advanced life forms through time, when the obvious truth is that the smarter creatures ran higher up in the mountains to escape the great [spaghetti sauce?] flood. Clearly the FSM is omnipresent and omnipotent, and carefully rearranges results not to merely befuddle scientists, but to create a carefully sculpted and internally consistent picture of the age and history of the earth such as He wants us to see it. This is truly the hallmark of THE supreme being. Making a watch is nothing in comparison to actually manipulating isotopic ratios. Truly we are blessed to be the product of His Noodly Appendage!"
– Brandon Beierle, Ph.D.

"As both a minister and a scientist, I agree with you that there is no place in the science curriculum for ID or related pseudo-scientific theories of how humans came to be. Evolution is the scientific explanation for life on earth. If schools are going to include 'alternative theories' in the curriculum that are not based upon the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment, then FSMism is as good ID, so I support efforts 100%."
– Rev. E. Wayne Ross, Ph.D.

"I am writing to support the inclusion of FSM in the Kansas school curriculum. Your writings on the teachings of the FSM as creator of the universe are as credible and valid as the views promoted by the followers of ID theory. As a sociologist, I believe that research must also be conducted on the rising popularity of low-carbohydrate diets. I suspect there is a strong correlation between this trend and the persecution of those who support the teachings of FSM. I hope the Kansas School Board will promote inclusion and tolerance by teaching FSM theories."
– Stephannie C. Roy, Ph.D.

"As a geneticist trained in evolutionary biology, I am deeply familiar with most of the substantial scientific uncertainties inherent in evolutionary understanding. These uncertainties, of course, relate to precise mechanisms, timings, rates and sequences of events, not in the underlying facts of historical and ongoing evolution.

As a scientist, I am also passingly familiar with the uncertainties concerning global warming which also relate to the precise mechanisms, timings, rates and sequences of events, not in the underlying facts of historical and ongoing global warming.

However, until I read your enlightening website, it never occurred to me that these two phenomena might share deeper more profound similarities.

The logical theory you present is highly thought provoking and worthy of great interest. As I believe this is approximately the standard currently being advocated by the Kansas School Board
to warrant teaching in the public schools, I certainly hope these stimulating ideas are taught along side all other theories meeting that standard."
– David J. Cutler, Ph. D.

"Both the existence and power of His Noodleness have long been recognized — if sometimes unconsciously — by many diverse sources. Fortunately, the lucid tools of postmodern analysis can make that evidence visible and irrefutable. Here are just a few examples. (1) Sir Walter Scott's famous line 'Oh what a tangled web we weave' contains an unmistakable reference to spaghetti — the substance of our Lordship. (2) Close observers of human behavior will note that Italians have long de facto recognized pastafarianism as a serious competitor to Catholicism, practicing the former more frequently and with even greater gusto. (3) The song 'Yankee Doodle' celebrates His Noodleness, even capturing His amazing ability to create Himself out of a decorated headpiece through a mere change of nomenclature. (4) The very name of the famous Chicago-based Pizzeria Uno embeds a belief in the Oneness of Him. (5) When computer scientists speak of 'spaghetti code', their reference to something incomprehensible by humans serves to heighten the gulf between our finite minds and His omniscience, as does (6) the often-heard remonstration 'Use your noodle'. (7) The common phrase 'It went over like a wet noodle' clearly refers to His continual surveyance of all from Above.

With such honorable and compelling credentials, pastafarianism cannot be dismissed out of hand. It is certainly on an equal evidential footing with ID and deserves incorporation into any school curriculum that insists upon teaching ID. Besides, the FSM has the advantage of being much more palatable. 'Opt for farfalle, not far-fetched. With Him all things are pastable'."
– Charles E. M. Dunlop, Ph.D.

"When I saw your story on the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I immediately did what any thinking person would do when coming across something published on a website, that is, took it seriously as a valid scientific theory. But any theory, even one so seemingly self-evident as the FSM theory, requires testing, and I realized the data necessary to validate the theory is right on your page. I'm speaking of course of the relationship between pirates and global warming. It seems obvious from your graph that pirates have been actively preventing global warming, and as the number of pirates diminishes, they are less able to influence climate change. But why would pirates be concerned about global warming? Think of every pirate story you've ever read, what do they all have in common? (Well, besides the eye-patches, and the parrots, and the Arrrrgghhs, etc.) Buried treasure. And where is the treasure always buried? On the shore of some uninhabited island. No doubt you can see where this is going - if the climate warms, the sea levels rise, and the pirates can no longer find their treasure which is now underwater. Even their treasure maps would no longer be useful. Does evolutionary theory or Intelligent Design explain this relationship? I think not. So we have a possible, reasonable-sounding explanation for some part of the unconfirmed data you've selectively included in your theory. Our experience with Intelligent Design shows us is all that is needed to elevate anything from a simple hypothetical musing to a legitimate theory which deserves to be taught in the classroom. I hope this helps in your quest to spread the gospel, err, I mean, fundamental scientific law, of FSM to all thinking Kansans and other Americans."
– Dave Williams

"In His infinite wisdom, the Flying Spaghetti Monster understands that, to a scientist, gravity is a theory. While members of the Intelligent Design Institute, the Flat Earth Society, and the Center for the Study of Intelligent Falling have a right to their views, they ought not to expect that their views be taught as science in a public school. The Great Noodly One knows that although faith may provide a moral lens through which to examine the results of scientific inquiry, human beings (and pasta-based deities) would be mistaken to see science as a threat to religion.

Finally, I would add that if Kansas schools (or any other public schools) are going to teach Intelligent Design as science, then they should clearly include the teachings of the First United Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And, though there will be Pastafarians who disagree with me, I think that these schools should also include the theories of the Reformed Church of Alfredo and of the Cult of Oregano. That said, some ideas are too silly for even the Kansas public schools. For this reason, I would argue that we keep the Church of the Invisible Pink Unicorn out of the science curriculum. I mean, come on, now — that's ridiculous!"
– Philip Nel, Ph.D. , Associate Professor of English, Kansas State University

"I am a practicing scientist, trained in drawing conclusions from data. I am happy to attest that the evidence in favor of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is as compelling as the evidence in favor of any other faith. For this reason, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism should certainly be given equal time in the science classes of any society that wishes to place faith-based teachings on an equal basis with teachings based on scientific evidence. Flying Spaghetti Monsterism may well provide the solid basis on which the good children of Kansas can build a just, rational, and virtuous life."
– Chris Westbury, Ph.D

"In the realm of creation myths, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism provides an incredibly comprehensive explanation for the Universe and life within it. If such myths are to be cast in the guise of theories and taught in science class, it is indeed only fair to teach Flying Spaghetti Monsterism along side other 'theories' such as Intelligent Design. If and when this happens, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is quite likely to become the Creation Education Sensation that sweeps the Nation.

Children everywhere will realize the elegant explanatory power of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. They will undoubtedly see Intelligent Design and other creation myths as the frauds that they are. This is simply an unavoidable outcome of the logical link between pirates and mathematics which is as follows:

Mathematics is the language of the Universe, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster looks favorably upon pirates. Now, every school kid knows, and many adults have forgotten, that a pirate's favorite subject to study in school is nothing other than…AAAARRRRR-ithmetic!

Coincidence? I think not."
– Gregory Sword, Ph.D

"It occurred to me, while enjoying a carb-tastic bowl of Southeast Asian noodles [note that most of the world's remaining pirates are from this region], that the real-world academic support for Intelligent Design (non-Christian-think-tank) is very slim — really just two guys. Just looking through your site, it is clear that Flying Spaghetti Monsterism has significantly greater support among the academic community, leaving any school board with little reason to preference the teaching of ID in schools. Certainly, it seems clear that Pastafarianism has at very least the same amount of supporting evidence as Intelligent Design, (as does, unfortunately, my wife's heretical belief in an all-knowing Pizza Squid which, though it can not be dismissed on the basis of available evidence, is clearly wrong.)

Yet it was also revealed to me, by the noodly touch of our divine-alicious creator, that His whimsical deception runs deeper than just faking the fossil record or manipulating the half-life of carbon to screw with paleontologists. No, in addition to falsifying all observable evidence itself, I believe he created the very concepts of reason and logic as an hilarious joke at the expense of those who deny His almighty meatyness. The very tools with which we crudely attempt to discern fact from fiction in the world around us — the Scientific Method itself — are clever tricks meant to trick the unfaithful into lives of frustration and bewilderment. It is only when one denounces logic and reason themselves that the saucy veil is lifted, and the noodly Truth is made plain."
– G.S. Barkin, Ph.D, Asst. Professor of Anthropology

"FSM is as good a set of beliefs as any religion. It belongs with ID, creationism, and all other religious beliefs in a comparative religion class. These theories to not try to answer scientific questions. Science asks: what is happening and how is it happening. Science is a process by which we observe and try to understand how things work; theories in science are based on evidence and empirical data. Science does not try to answer anything about who or what made the universe the way it is. Religion, on the other hand, is all about who created the universe and why the universe is the way it is.

FSM is a perfectly valid set of religious tenets and we should respect the beliefs of all Pastafarians and we should respect the religion beliefs of all people. However, the study of religion does not belong in science class."
– Alison Bernstein

"The first bottle of Lambrusco I chugged in High School some 30 years ago washed my full immersion baptism into the Baptist faith away. The second bottle I chugged that night resulted in a pasta 'vision' that, sadly, I was too blind and covered in noodles to understand. Now, after a long career as a Biologist and educator, I see the light. If you form a curriculum committee, keep me in mind."
– Jeff Young, Ph.D.

"I'm writing to add my support to your effort to get FSM acceptance in the Kansas science curriculum equal to that given to another religious belief, intelligent design. As a molecular biologist who was raised and attended public school in Kansas, I think I have a fairly good understanding of both evolutionary theory and creationist conjecture.

While I am still learning about FSM and am by no means an expert, my current assessment is that FSM is equally, if not more, scientifically valid as any presentation of ID I have seen to date. To allow Kansas science teachers to present one but not the other to their students is bald-faced religious discrimination, and should not be tolerated.

Of course, the whole situation makes me very sad for the students going through the state's school system now; I fear that people like me, who got a good science education in a 'Blue' state and went on to a career in science, will only become more rare, and the environment in such places will spin into complete scientific illiteracy. I'm happy to support your quest to make as much of a difference in this as you can. Thanks again,"
– Craig Behnke, Ph.D.

"My friend and I noticed your plea for endorsements from individuals who share both an academic background and faith in the FSM. I'm an academic, but not a scientist, while he is a scientist, but not an academic. We both, however, feel strongly that denying children an education regarding what we know to be the true, noodly nature of the universe is a travesty of human progress. It is apparent to my friend that, from a scientific perspective, no other explanation of existence is conceivable. And he converted to FSMism from atheism. It is apparent to me, as an educator, that to not teach this truth alongside other 'theories' of our universe's creation will cause irreparable harm to our children, escalating to the point at which an entire generation will be ignorant to the noodly appendage operating all around them, inevitably plunging the world and all those upon it into a new dark age. Thank you, Bobby Henderson, for offering an alternative to that horrible fate to which the Kansas State Board of Education would subject our society. Thank you, Bobby Henderson, for saving the world."
– Matthew L. Scully, aerospace engineer
– Daniel M. Gallagher, M.A., educator

"If intelligent design (ID) is based on science, not faith, then it should fulfill the same criteria as any other scientific theory. One of the most important of these is Occam's Razor, the principle that the best explanation for a given phenomenon is the one which is simplest, or to put it another way, raises the least new questions. Most ID theories fail the test of Occam's Razor, because they do not define what entity is doing the designing, or they imply that some sort of god is responsible, which raises the question of whether this god actually exists. However, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism explains clearly who the intelligent designer is, and furthermore, unlike the case for god, there is ample experimental proof that spaghetti does actually exist. I therefore recommend that if ID is to be taught in schools, it should be made clear to students that FSM is by far the most plausible of the many competing ID theories. RAmen."
– S. Bilson-Thompson, PhD (Australia)

"I applaud Mr. Henderson for finally coming forward with a public acknowledgment of our fine religion. Many of you doubt our sincerity and legitimacy and many of you are often unaware of your inadvertant worship. Our most reverend of hymns, 'On Top of Spaghetti' is ritualistically sung by over 75% of the youth of America. Most of these children willingly take of the sacraments of spaghettios. Look into their eyes and you will see the truth. Many have been turned from the true way but He is willing to bring them back into His noodly embrace. As a Doctrate of Comparative Religions, I find it appalling that a small-minded minority is promoting their theories over older more proven scientific principals. May He forgive you for your insolence."
– Gwendolynn Sue Daniels, PhD.

"As an orientalist trained in anthropology, I can assure you that the Flying Spaghetti Monster-theory is by no means ridiculous. It is, in fact, as solid as Genesis, the Aztec legends or Far Eastern stories about the creation of the world, and it is not more absurd.

It's important that this'll be included in the upcoming new school curriculum - the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory could well incite people to think about the discrepancies of other models. I am surprised people can even think of advocating ID - how will we raise the next generations' scientists without any basical knowledge of facts and theories? Your demand to include the Flying Spaghetti Monster in school curricula is reasonable, not insulting and completely legitimate. FSM-ism would do no harm, and be a tasty alternative for fanatic Christianism."
– Simon Harrison Chen, Lic. (London, UK)

"Thank you for enlightening the world about the true creator of the universe and everything in it. As a person with a doctorate in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University (1974) and, thus, a better than average understanding of evolution and Darwinism, I would like to endorse, wholeheartedly, your efforts to get schools to include the REAL truth about ID and about the intelligent designer, none other than the FSM, when they teach ID in their science classes. RAMEN,"
– Ann M. KÃ¶rner Ph.D.

"I am not only a Ph.D. holder and mathematics professor, but also a practicing Hindu, long time Christian, devotee of FSM, and wine connoiseur, but also a part - time crab pot pirate practicing off Vashon Island, WA., primarily in July.

I can attest that since I have begun my work there the mean temperature has declined most pleasantly."
– Roy Smith Ph.D

"As a biodiversity researcher, it has long been clear to me that there must have been something transcending mere variation, heritability, time and differential survival behind all these different sorts of animals and plants - why this ridiculous redundancy? But your revelation of a noodly appendage guiding all things has supplied the missing recipe for truly understanding this interwoven chaos of diversity. What could be plainer, once one has gazed on one of His manifestations, gilded with ground Parmesan, bathed in the blood of tomatoes, hallowed with the incense of basil and oregano, than the conclusion that only a transcendent being such as He could have conceived of the profoundly tangled connections that are revealed by researches into ecology and evolution. A personal relationship with Pasta should not be an option - it should be mandated, and be available on special Friday and Saturday nights."
– Dr Mark Hutchinson (Adelaide, South Australia)

"As geneticist, my personal belief in the creator of everything was so far, that he resembles a pink invisible flying rabbit circling the earth just opposite the sun, and soundlessly squeaking '42″. In consequence, this creature is undetectable even by the most advanced human techniques. Furthermore, the ability of being pink and invisible at the same time provides proof for real allmightyness. However, Pastafarianism seems to be much more substantiated, and is not violating Occam's razor (see comment of S. Bilson-Thompson), and follows pure philosophical logic, as colleague Brian D. Rabern has pointed out previously. Therefore, I am sure that the members of the Kansas Board of Education, who gave logic a particular importance, will honor these undisputable facts by including FSM in their curriculum, thereby setting highest educational standards also for non-US countries. - Additionally, the invisible pink rabbit hypothesis might be discussed if there could be some time spared in the pupil's schedule. RAmen."
– Jobst Meyer, PhD, Professor of Behavioral Genetics

"Just to add my endorsement of Pastafarianism as a nutritious and delicious alternative to ID and other forms of creationism. While I myself would prefer to keep all such religious views out of the classroom, if I am forced to teach one as an alternative to evolution, I will certainly choose Pastafarianism."
– Gerard S. Harbison, Professor of Chemistry, UNL, Lincoln, Nebraska

"If intelligent design (one of my favourite oxymorons after military intelligence and friendly fire) is to be taught in biology lessons, then such crossover of subjects should be expanded! Haiku should be taught in motor mechanics, the making of dovetail joints should be taught in mathematics and cell structure and function in French classes. All of this is as equally logical as the teaching of things written down in a book by Middle Eastern asylum seekers in North Africa thousands of years ago in Biology.

Until today when I read your site I was an unworthy atheist who believed in nothing but reason and evidence based theory but now I understand that this was now just part of the FSMâ€™s plan for me! I now pledge my research from this day hence to understanding the deeper mysteries of the FSM's creation."
– SiÃ´n R.Wall PhD, Cardiff, Wales

"The first bottle of Lambrusco I chugged in High School some 30 years ago washed my full immersion baptism into the Baptist faith away. The second bottle I chugged that night resulted in a pasta 'vision' that, sadly, I was too blind and covered in noodles to understand. Now, after a long career as a Biologist and educator, I see the light. If you form a curriculum committee, keep me in mind."
– Jeff Young, Ph.D.

"As a regular contributor to the scientific literature in the area of Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Associate Editor of one of the top 10 journals in the field, it seems that many of the most important contributions to science involve unification of seemingly discrepant theoretical positions and bodies of data into larger, more unified â€œBig Pictureâ€ theories. We have witnessed this kind of scientific progress in physics for decades and now we are faced with similar promising prospects of an integrative perspective that links biology, metaphysics, and the culinary arts into one overarching theory of how everything got to be the way it is. The theory of evolution (the biological contribution) is a widely accepted and scientifically grounded explanation of the Earth's current biodiversity, yet it falls short of an explanation of how everything got started in the first place. Intelligent Design (ID, the metaphysical contribution) argues convincingly that things are just too complicated for things to have started themselves and effectively argues that, therefore, there must have been a designer. Unfortunately, ID falls sadly short of identifying the designer him- or herself. The Theory of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (the Pastafarian contribution from the culinary arts) presents a very convincing and parsimonious account of the identity and nature of the Intelligent Designer himself and, I think, creates an exciting potential for a Unified Theory of It All. Needless to say, any public school curriculum would be negligently incomplete and shamelessly biased if it did not present a fair and balanced treatment of the three intellectual pillars represented by Evolution, Intelligent Design, and Flying Spaghetti Monsterism."
– Charles E. Lance, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology

"I wish to thank you for opening my eyes (and for making my mouth water). I have already referred to our leader the FSM in both my classes this quarter–Theories of Crime and Deviance & Capital Punishment–as the role of religion (not the roll of garlic) is paramount in explaining crime and punishment. I look forward to further developments in the liturgy in time for my Law & Society course (not the antipasto course). I wish to alert you to today's class discussion, we we briefly considered both the FSM and yesterday's article in the Journal of Religion and Society. There appears to be a strong direct correlation between a nation's belief in 'A Creator' and very high levels of social pathologies. Either belief in a creator is dangerous to a society's health, or we have just been following false creators. Therefore, it is even more crucial to teach Pastafarianism along w/ ID. The ramifications reach all the way to the Social Problem of Order, not just the elimination of doctors from Kansas, Dover PA, & Cobb County GA."
– Tom Durkin, PhD

"As a life-long subscriber to the scientific method, I find myself astonished at your succinctly unifying theory of the origins of matter and life in the Universe. I find myself unable to express the depths of my admiration and beg to offer you my accolades for your unequaled contribution to the field of general knowledge. That which eluded the greatest minds of humanity, the grand unifying theory of _everything_, is now laid bare for all to acknowledge; its brilliant simplicity far surpassing the inelegance of the Standard Model, the tacked-on nature of the Cosmological Constant, the inobsevability of M-branes and the obviousness of Quantum Gravity. It is perfectly derivable that the FSM is the duality of, on one hand, the driving force behind the imaginary-to-real temporal transition (falsely referred to as the Big Bang), and on the other hand, the impetus behind the universal entropy reduction (falsely referred to as Evolution).

It is my sincere hope however, that you may acknowledge that the images of Him, are mere projections onto our consciousness of the rapturous and divine cross-dimensional entity that He must represent. It is highly unlikely, and strikes this writer as somewhat jejune that His true image would be not dissimilar to that of a $5.95 lunch special at Belinda's.

Thank you for restoring one man's faith in science, organized religion and the general superiority of the Italian cuisine in a single afternoon."
– Dmitry Kaplan, PhD

"I am a university researcher and lecturer in Sweden, which is a frighteningly secularised society. The need for the restoration of faith is particularly acute here. Amongst the religious minority, many cling to the exultant euphoria and collective catharses of pentacostal ritual. This fulfils a important need in this country's emotionally and socially inhibited society. Many others uphold the imported religions of their immigrant backgrounds, which adds welcome variation to the palette of human beliefs and dogma. In Sweden there are strong inverse statistical correlations between drug abuse, youth delinquency and crime when plotted against the number of church goers. It is common for students to point out what to them are an obvious causal effects when presented with such data. I find myself standing before a clawing need for a faith based, postconstructive curriculum as an alternative to the secular and scientific programmes that totally dominate this countries universities.

The Kansas School Board's embracing of the intelligent design constitutes a step into the abyss of rhetorical fallacy, a step that I believe would be embraced by a the majority of pupils if impressed upon them in a sufficiently charismatic and ebullient fashion. It seems to me though that the board have overestimated the abilities of science teachers to dupe and cajole pupils into accepting the content of their curriculum, and that intelligent design would more efficiently be forced on innocent minds through the use of professional sales personal, spin doctors, Hollywood writers, politicians or priests.

I myself have looked into a number of belief systems in an attempt to find a candidate for fulfilling students' clawing need for simple answers that explain the complexity of the world. I find none as delightfully absurd and blatantly simplistic as Pastafarianism. It is clear that this is what I shall be teaching my students when they draw simplistic, uncritical, fact denying, authoritarian, dogmatic, or contradictory conclusions from incomplete knowledge. Pastafarianism beautifully illustrates how easily and arbitrarily specious truth can be constructed and it is the perfect complement to the stolid scientific approach.

Until such time as a new era of human enlightenment under a new prophet transfixes my attention, Pastafarianism will become a lecture hall word — a word through which I can offer those clawing students the sense of security and faith in the ridiculous that they need in order to revert to the path of rationality, uncertainty and the systematic search for truth.

To this end, there is also a place in the scientific curriculum for intelligent design, it's just that Pastafarianism fulfils that role so much better."
– Guy Davies Ph.D. Computer Science. Royal Institute of Technology

adNONsense

2007-09-30T19:36:00.000+05:30

What the hell?

How in holy FSM's name did Adsense choose those ads for my blog? How can I earn any money with such senseless ads? May be Google should employ me, I think I can design Adsense's algorithms better...

Bhagat Singh: Why I Am An Atheist?

2007-09-30T19:15:00.000+05:30

This is a translation of the contents of a pamphlet written by Bhagat Singh while in a condemned cell in 1931. This pamphlet was a result of some criticism by fellow revolutionaries on his failure to acknowledge religion and god while in a condemned cell, the accusation of vanity was also dealt with in this pamphlet. He supported his own beliefs and claimed that he used to be a firm believer in god, but could not bring himself to believe the myths and beliefs that others held close to their hearts. In this pamphlet, he acknowledged the fact that religion made death easier, but also said that unproved philosophy is a sign of human weakness.

A new question has cropped up. Is it due to vanity that I do not believe in the existence of an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God? I had never imagined that I would ever have to confront such a question. But conversation with some friends has given me, a hint that certain of my friends, if I am not claiming too much in thinking them to be so-are inclined to conclude from the brief contact they have had with me, that it was too much on my part to deny the existence of God and that there was a certain amount of vanity that actuated my disbelief. Well, the problem is a serious one. I do not boast to be quite above these human traits. I am a man and nothing more. None can claim to be more. I also have this weakness in me. Vanity does form a part of my nature. Amongst my comrades I was called an autocrat. Even my friend Mr. B.K. Dutt sometimes called me so. On certain occasions I was decried as a despot. Some friends do complain and very seriously too that I involuntarily thrust my opinions upon others and get my proposals accepted. That this is true up to a certain extent, I do not deny. This may amount to egotism. There is vanity in me in as much as our cult as opposed to other popular creeds is concerned. But that is not personal. It may be, it is only legitimate pride in our cult and does not amount to vanity. Vanity or to be more precise "Ahankar" is the excess of undue pride in one's self. Whether it is such an undue pride that has led me to atheism or whether it is after very careful study of the subject and after much consideration that I have come to disbelieve in God, is a question that I, intend to discuss here. Let me first make it clear that egotism and vanity are two different things.

In the first place, I have altogether failed to comprehend as to how undue pride or vaingloriousness could ever stand in the way of a man in believing in God. I can refuse to recognize the greatness of a really great man provided I have also achieved a certain amount of popularity without deserving it or without having possessed the qualities really essential or indispensible for the same purpose. That much is conceivable. But in what way can a man believing in God cease believing due to his personal vanity? There are only two Ways. The man should either begin to think himself a rival of God or he may begin to believe himself to be God. In neither case can he become a genuine atheist. In the first case he does not even deny the existence of his rival. In the second case as well he admits the existence of a conscious being behind the screen guiding all the movements of nature. It is of no importance to us whether he thinks himself to be that supreme being or whether he thinks the supreme conscious being to be somebody apart from himself. The fundamental is there. His belief is there. He is by no means an atheist. Well, here I am I neither belong to the first category nor to the second. I deny the very existence of that Almighty Supreme being. Why I deny it shall be dealt with later on. Here I want to clear one thing, that it is not vanity that has actuated me to adopt the doctrines of atheism. I am neither a rival nor an incarnation nor the Supreme Being Himself. One point is decided, that it is not vanity that has led me to this mode of thinking. Let me examine the facts to disprove this allegation. According to these friends of mine I have grown vainglorious perhaps due to the undue popularity gained during the trials-both Delhi Bomb and Lahore conspiracy cases. Well, let us see if their premises are correct. My atheism is not of so recent origin. I had stopped believing in God when I was an obscure young man, of whose existence my above mentioned friends were not even aware. At least a college student cannot cherish any short of undue pride which may lead him to atheism. Though a favourite with some professors and disliked by certain others, I was never an industrious or a studious boy. I could not get any chance of indulging in such feelings as vanity. I was rather a boy with a very shy nature, who had certain pessimistic dispositions about the future career' And in those days, I was not a perfect atheist. My grand-father under whose influence I was brought up is an orthodox Arya Samajist. An Arya Samajist is anything but an atheist. After finishing my primary education I joined the D.A.V. School of Lahore and stayed in its Boarding House for full one year. There, apart from morning and evening prayers, I used to recite "Gayatri Mantra" for hours and hours. I was a perfect devotee in those days. Later on I began to live with my father. He is a liberal in as much as the orthodoxy of religions is concerned. It was through his teachings that I aspired to devote my life to the cause of freedom. But he is not an atheist. He is a firm believer. He used to encourage me for offering prayers daily. So, this is how I was brought up. In the Non-Co-operation days I joined the National College. it was there that I began to think liberally and discuss and criticise all the religious problems, even about God. But still I was a devout believer. By that time I had begun to preserve the unshorn and unclipped long hair but I could never believe in the mythology and doctrines of Sikhism or, any other religion. But I had a firm faith in God's existence.

Later on I joined the revolutionary party. The first leader with whom I came in contact, though not convinced, could not dare to deny the existence of God. On my persistent inquiries about God, he used to say, "Pray whenever you want to". Now this is atheism less courage required for the adoption of that creed. The second leader with whom I came in contact was a firm believer. Let me mention his name-respected comrade Sachindra Nath Sanyal, now undergoing life transportation in connexion with the Karachi conspiracy case. From the every first page of his famous and only book, "Bandi Jivan" (or Incarcerated Life), the Glory of God is sung vehemently. In the last page of the second part of that beautiful book his mystic-because of vedantism - praises showered upon God form a very conspicuous part of his thoughts. "The Revolutionary leaflet" distributed- throughout India on January 28th 1925, was according to the prosecution story the result of his intellectual labour, Now, as is inevitable in the secret work the prominent leader expresses his own views-which are very dear to his person and the rest of the workers have to acquiesce in them-in spite of differences, which they might have. In that leaflet one full paragraph was devoted to praise the Almighty and His rejoicings and doing. That is all mysticism. What I wanted to point out was that the idea of disbelief had not even germinated in the revolutionary party. The famous Kakori martyrs-all four of them-passed their last day in prayers. Ram Prasad Bismil was an orthodox Arya Samajist. Despite his wide studies in the field of Socialism and Communism, Rajen Labiri could not suppress his desire, of reciting hymns of the Upanishads and the Gita. I saw only one man amongst them, who never prayed and used to say, "Philosophy is the outcome of human weakness or limitation of knowledge". He is also undergoing a sentence of transportation for life. But he also never dared to deny the existence of God.

UP to that period I was only a romantic idealist revolutionary. Uptil then we were to follow. Now came the time to shoulder the whole responsibility. Due to the inevitable reaction for some time the very existence of the Party seemed impossible. Enthusiastic comrades-nay leaders-began to jeer at us. For some time I was afraid that some day I also might not be convinced of the futility of our own programme. That was a turning point in my revolutionary career. "Study" was the cry that reverberated in the corridors of my mind. Study to enable yourself to face the arguments advanced by opposition. Study to arm yourself with arguments in favour of your cult. I began to study. My previous faith and convictions underwent a remarkable modification. The Romance of the violent methods alone which was so prominent amongst our predecessors, was replaced by serious ideas. No more mysticism, no more blind faith. Realism became our cult. Use of force justifiable when resorted to as a matter of terrible necessity: non-violence as policy indispensable for all mass movements. So much about methods. The most important thing was the clear conception of the ideal for which we were to fight, As there were no important activities in the field of action I got ample opportunity to study various ideals of the world revolution. I studied Bakunin, the Anarchist leader, something of Marx the father of Communism and much of Lenin, Trotsky and others the men who had successfully carried out a revolution in their country. They were all atheists. Bakunin's "God and State", though only fragmentary, is an interesting study of the subject. Later still I came across a book entitled 'Common Sense' by Nirlamba Swami. It was only a sort of mystic atheism. This subject became of utmost interest to me. By the end of 1926 I had been convinced as to the baselessness of the theory of existence of an almighty supreme being who created, guided and controled the universe. I had given out this disbelief of mine. I began discussion on the subjects with my friends. I had become a pronounced atheist. But, what it meant will presently be discussed.

In May 1927 I was arrested at Lahore. The arrest was a surprise. I was quite unaware of the fact that the police wanted me. All of a sudden while passing through a garden I found myself surrounded by police. To my own surprise, I was very calm at that time. I did not feel any sensation, neither did I experience any excitement. I was taken into police custody. Next day I was taken to the Railway Police lock-up where I was to pass full one month. After many day's conversation with the Police officials I guessed that they had some information regarding my connexion with the Kakori Party and my other activities in connexion with the revolutionary movement. They told me that I had been to Lucknow while the trial was going on there, that I had negotiated a certain scheme about their rescue, that after obtaining their approval, we had procured some bombs, that by way of test one of the bombs was thrown in the crowd on the occasion of Dussehra 1926. They further informed me, in my interest, that if I could give any statement throwing some light on the activities of the revolutionary party, I was not to be imprisoned but on the contrary set free and rewarded even without being produced as an approver in the Court. I laughed at the proposal. It was all humbug. People holding ideas like ours do not throw bombs on their own innocent people. One fine morning Mr. New man, the then Senior Superintendent of C.I.D., came to me. And after much sympathetic talk with me imparted-to him-the extremely sad news that if I did not give any statement as demanded by them, they would be forced to send me up for trial for conspiracy to wage war in connexion with Kakori Case and for brutal murders in connexion with Dussehra Bomb outrage. And he further informed me that they had evidence enough to get me convicted and hanged. In those days I believed-though I was quite innocent-the police could do it if they desired. That very day certain police officials began to persuade me to offer my prayers to God regularly both the times. Now I-was an atheist. I wanted to settle for myself whether it was in the days of peace and enjoyment alone that I could boast of being an atheist or whether during such hard times as well I could stick to those principles of mine. After great consideration I decided that I could not lead myself to believe in and pray to God. No, I never did. That was the real test and I came, out successful. Never for a moment did I desire to save my neck at the cost of certain other things. So I was a staunch disbeliever : and have ever since been. It was not an easy job to stand that test. 'Belief' softens the hardships, even can make them pleasant. In God man can find very strong consolation and support. Without Him, I man has to depend upon himself. To stand upon one's own legs amid storms and hurricanes is not a child's play. At such testing moments, vanity-if any-evaporates, and man cannot dare to defy the general beliefs, if he does, then we must conclude that he has got certain other strength than mere vanity. This is exactly the situation now. Judgment is already too well known. Within a week it is to be pronounced. What is the consolation with the exception of the idea that I am going to sacrifice my life for a cause ? A God-believing Hindu might be expecting to be reborn as a king, a Muslim or a Christian might dream of the luxuries to be- enjoyed in paradise and the reward he is to get for his sufferings and sacrifices. But what am I to expect? I know the moment the rope is fitted round my neck and rafters removed, from under my feet. that will be the final moment-that will be the last moment. I, or to be more precise, my soul, as interpreted in the metaphysical terminology, shall all be finished there. Nothing further. A short life of struggle with no such magnificent end, shall in itself be the reward if I have the courage to take it in that light. That is all. With no selfish motive, or desire to be awarded here or hereafter, quite disinterestedly have I devoted my life to the cause of independence, because I could not do otherwise. The day we find a great number of men and women with this psychology who cannot devote themselves to anything else than the service of mankind and emancipation of the suffering humanity; that day shall inaugurate the era of liberty. Not to become a king, nor to gain any other rewards here, or in the next birth or after death in paradise, shall they be inspired to challenge the oppressors, exploiters, and tyrants, but to cast off the yoke of serfdom from the neck of humanity and to establish liberty and peace shall they tread this-to their individual selves perilous and to their noble selves the only glorious imaginable-path. Is the pride in their noble cause to be - misinterpreted as vanity? Who dares to utter such an abominable epithet? To him, I say either he is a fool or a knave. Let us forgive him for he can not realize the depth, the emotion, the sentiment and the noble feelings that surge in that heart. His heart is dead as a mere lump of flesh, his eyes are-weak, the evils of other interests having been cast over them. Self-reliance is always liable to be interpreted as vanity. It is sad and miserable but there is no help.

You go and oppose the prevailing faith, you go and criticise a hero, a great man, who is generally believed to be above criticism because he is thought to be infallible, the strength of your argument shall force the multitude to decry you as vainglorious. This is due to the mental stagnation, Criticism and independent thinking are the two indispensable qualities of a revolutionary. Because Mahatamaji is great, therefore none should criticise him. Because he has risen above, therefore everything he says-may be in the field of Politics or Religion, Economics or Ethics-is right. Whether you are convinced or not you must say, "Yes, that's true". This mentality does not lead towards progress. It is rather too obviously, reactionary.

Because our forefathers had set up a faith in some supreme, being-the Al mighty God- therefore any man who dares to challenge the validity of that faith, or the very existence of that supreme being, he shall have to be called an apostate, a renegade. If his arguments are too sound to be refuted by counter-arguments and spirit too strong to be cowed down by the threat of misfortunes that may befall him by the wrath of the Almighty-he shall be decried as vainglorious, his spirit to be denominated as vanity. Then why to waste time in this vain discussion? Why try to argue out the whole thing? This question is coming before the public for the first time, and is being handled in this matter of fact way for the first time, hence this lengthy discussion.

As for the first question, I think I have cleared that it is not vanity that has led me to atheism. My way of argument has proved to be convincing or not, that is to be judged by my readers, not me. I know in the present, circumstances my faith in God would have made my life easier, my burden lighter and my disbelief in Him has turned all the circumstances too dry and the situation may assume too harsh a shape. A little bit of mysticism can make it poetical. But I, do not want the help of any intoxication to meet my fate. I am a realist. I have been trying to overpower the instinct in me by the help of reason. I have not always been successful in achieving this end. But man's duty is to try and endeavour, success depends upon chance and environments.

As for the second question that if it was not vanity, then there ought to be some reason to disbelieve the old and still prevailing faith of the existence of God. Yes; I come to that now Reason there is. According to. me, any man who has got some reasoning power at his command always tries to reason out his environments. Where direct proofs are lacking philosophy occupies the important place. As I have already stated, a certain revolutionary friend used to say that Philosophy is the outcome of human weakness. When our ancestors had leisure enough to try to solve out the mystery of this world, its past, present and the future, its whys and wherefores, they having been terribly short of direct proofs, everybody tried to solve the problem in his own way. Hence we find the wide dufferences in the fundamentals of various religious creeds, which some times assume very antagonistic and conflicting shapes. Not only the Oriental and Occidental philosophies differ, there are differences even amongst various schools of thoughts in each hemisphere. Amongst Oriental religions, the Moslem faith is not at all compatible with Hindu faith. In India alone Buddhism and Jainism are sometimes quite separate from Brahmanism, in which there are again conflicting faiths as Arya Samaj and Sanatan Dharma. Charwak is still another independent thinker of the past ages. He challenged the authority of God in the old times. All these creeds differ from each other on the fundamental question., and everybody considers himself to be on the right. There lies the misfortune. Instead of using the experiments and expressions of the ancient Savants and thinkers as a basis for our future struggle against ignorance and to try to find out a solution to this mysterious problem, we lethargical as we have proved to be raise the hue and cry of faith, unflinching and unwavering faith to their versions and thus are guilty of stagnation in human progress.

Any man who stands for progress has to criticise, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. If after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosphy, his faith is welcomed. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary. A man who claims to be a realist has to challenge the whole of the ancient faith. If it does not stand the onslaught of reason it crumbles down. Then the first thing for him is to shatter the whole down and clear a space for the erection of a new philosophy. This is the negative side. After it begins the positive work in which sometimes some material of the old faith may be used for the purpose of reconstruction. As far as I am concerned, let me admit at the very outset that I have not been able to study much on this point. I had a great desire to study the Oriental Philosophy but I could not get any chance or opportunity to do the same. But so far as the negative study is under discussion, I think I am convinced to the extent of questioning the soundness of the old faith. I have been convinced as to non-existence of a conscious supreme being who is guiding and directing the movements of nature. We believe in nature and the whole progressive movement aims at the domination of man over nature for his service. There is no conscious power behind it to direct. This is what our philosophy is.

As for the negative side. we ask a few questions from the 'believers'.

(1) If, as you believe, there is an almighty, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent God-who created the earth or world, please let me know why did he creat it ? This world of woes and miseries, a veritable, eternal combination of number less tragedies: Not a single soul being perfectly satisfied.

Pray, don't say that it is His Law: If he is bound by any law, he is not omnipotent. He is another slave like ourselves. Please don't say that it is his enjoyment. Nero burnt one Rome. He killed a very limited number of people. He created very few tragedies, all to his perfect enjoyment. And what is his place in History ? By what names do the historians mention him? All the venomous epithets are showered upon him. Pages are blackened with invective diatribes condemning Nero, the tyrant, the heartless, the wicked. One Changezkhan sacrificed a few thousand lives to seek pleasure in it and we hate the very name. Then how are you going to justify your almighty, eternal Nero, who has been, and is still causing numberless tragedies every day, every hour and every minute ? How do you think to support his misdoings which surpass those of Changez every single moment? I say why did he create this world-a veritable hell, a place of constant and bitter unrest ? Why did the Almighty create man when he had the power not to do it ? What is the justification for all this ? Do you say to award the innocent sufferers hereafter and to punish the wrong-doers as well? Well, well: How far shall you justify a man who may dare to inflict wounds upon your body to apply a very soft and soothing liniment upon it afterwards? How far the supporters and organisers of the Gladiator Institution were justified in throwing men before the half starved furious lions to be cared for and well looked after if they could survive and could manage to escape death by the wild beasts? That is why I ask, 'Why did the conscious supreme being created this world and man in it? To seek pleasure? Where then is the difference between him and Nero'?

You Mohammadens and Christians : Hindu Philosophy shall still linger on to offer another argument. I ask you what is your answer to the above-mentioned question ? You don't believe in previous birth. Like Hindus you cannot advance the argument of previous misdoings of the apparently quite innocent sufrerers? I ask you why did the omnipotent labour for six days to create the world through word and each day to say that all was well. Call him today. Show him the past history. Make him study the present situation. Let us see if he dares to say, "All is well",

From the dungeons of prisons, from the stores of starvation consuming millions upon millions of human beings in slums and huts, from the exploited labourers, patiently or say apathetically watching the procedure of their blood being sucked by the Capitalist vampires, and the wastage of human energy that will make a man with the least common sense shiver with horror, and from the preference of throwing the surplus of production in oceans rather than to distribute amongst the needy producers-to the palaces of kings built upon the foundation laid with human bones.... let him see all this and let him say "All is well". Why and wherefore ? That is my question. You are silent. All right then, I proceed. Well, you Hindus, you say all the present sufferers belong to the class of sinners of the previous births. Good. You say the present oppressors were saintly people in their previous births, hence they enjoy power. Let me admit that your ancestors were very shrewed people, they tried to find out theories strong enough to hammer down all the efforts of reason and disbelief. But let us analyse how far this argument can really stand.

From the point of view of the most famous jurists punishment can be justified only from three or four ends to meet which it is inflicted upon the wrongdoer. They are retributive, reformative and deterrent. The retributive theory is now being condemned by all the advanced thinkers. Deterrent theory is also following the same fate. Reformative theory is the only one which is essential, and indispensable for human progress. It aims at returning the offender as a most competent and a peace-loving citizen to the society. But what is the nature of punishment inflicted by God upon men even if we suppose them to be offenders. You say he sends them to be born as a cow, a cat, a tree, a herb or a best. You enumerate these punishments to be 84 lakhs. I ask you what is its reformative effect upon man ? How many men have met you who say that they were born as a donkey in previous birth for having committed any sin ? None. Don't quote your Puranas. I have no scope to touch your mythologies. Moreover do you know that the greatest sin in this world is to be poor. Poverty is a sin, it is a punishment. I ask you how far would you appreciate a criminologist, a jurist or a legislator who proposes such measures of punishment which shall inevitably force man to commit more offences ? Had not your God thought of this or he also had to learn these things by experience, but at the cost of untold sufferings to be borne by. humanity ? What do you think shall be the fate of a man who has been born in a poor and illiterate family of say a chamar or a sweeper. He is poor, hence he cannot study. He is hated and shunned by his fellow human beings who think themselves to be his superiors having been born in say a higher caste. His ignorance, his poverty and the treatment meted out to him shall harden his heart towards society. Suppose he commits a sin, who shall bear the consequences? God, he or the learned ones of, the society ? What about the punishment of those people who were deliberately kept ignorant by the haughty and egotist Brahmans and who had to pay the penalty by bearing the stream of being led (not lead) in their ears for having heard a few sentences of your Sacred Books of learning-the Vedas ? If they committed any offence-who was to be responsible for them and who was to bear the brunt? My dear friends: These theories are the inventions of the privileged ones: They justify their usurped power, riches and superiority by the help of these theories. Yes: It was perhaps Upton Sinclair, that wrote at some place, that just make a man a believer in immortality and then rob him of all his riches, and possessions. He shall help you even in that ungrudgingly. The coalition amongst the religious preachers and possessors of power brought forth jails, gallows, knouts and these theories.

I ask why your omnipotent God, does not stop every man when he is committing any sin or offence ? He can do it quite easily. Why did he not kill war lords or kill the fury of war in them and thus avoid the catastrophe hurled down on the head of humanity by the Great War? Why does he not just produce a certain sentiment in the mind of the British people to liberate India? Why does he not infuse the althuistic enthusiasm in the hearts of all capitalists to forgo their rights of personal possessions of means of production and thus redeem the whole labouring community-nay the whole human society from the bondage of Capitalism. You want to reason out the practicability of socialist theory, I leave it for your almighty to enforce it. People recognize the merits of socialism in as much as the general welfare is concerned. They oppose it under the pretext of its being impracticable. Let the Almighty step in and arrange everything in an orderly fashion. Now don't try to advance round about arguments, they are out of order. Let me tell you, British rule is here not because God wills it but because they possess power and we do not dare to oppose them. Not that it is with the help of God that they are keeping us under their subjection but it is with the help of guns and rifles, bomb and bullets, police and millitia and our apathy that they are successfully committing the most deplorable sin against society- the outrageous exploitation of one nation by another. Where is God ? What is he doing ? Is he enjoying all I these woes of human race ? A Nero; A change (changez): Down with him :

Do you ask me how I explain the origin of this world and origion of man ? Alright I tell you. Charles Darwin has tried to throw some light on the subject. Study him. Read Soham Swam's "Commonsense". It shall answer your question to some extent. This is a phenomenon of nature. The accidental mixture of different substances in the shape of nebulace produced this earth. When ? Consult history. The same process produced animals and in the long run man. Read Darwin's 'Origin of Species'. And all the later progress is due to man's constant conflict with nature and his efforts to override it. This is the briefest possible explanation of this phenomenon.

Your other argument may be just to ask why a child is born blind or lame if not due to his deeds committed in the previous birth ? This problem has been explained away by biologists as a more biological phenomenon. According to them the whole burden rests upon the shoulders of the parents who may be conscious or ignorant of their own deeds led to mutilation of the child previous to its birth.

Naturally you may ask another question-though it is quite childish in essence. If no God existed, how did the people come to believe in him? My answer is clear and brief. As they came to believe in ghosts, and evil spirits; the only difference is that belief in God is almost universal and the philosophy well developed. Unlike certain of the radicals I would not attribute its origin to the ingenuity of the exploiters who wanted to keep the people under their subjection by preaching the existence of a supreme being and then claiming an authority and sanction from him for their privileged positions. Though I do not differ with them on the essential point that all faiths, religions, creeds and such other institutions became in turn the mere supporters of the tyrannical and exploiting institutions, men and classes. Rebellion against king is always a sin according to every religion.

As regards the origin of God my own idea is that having realized the limitations of man, his weaknesses and shortcoming having been taken into consideration, God was brought into imaginary existence to encourage man to face boldly all the trying circumstances, to meet all dangers manfully and to check and restrain his outbursts in prosperity and affluence. God both with his private laws and parental generosity was imagined and painted in greater details. He was to serve as a deterrent factor when his fury and private laws were discussed so that man may not become a danger to society. He was to serve as a father, mother, sister and brother, friend and helpers when his parental qualifications were to be explained. So that when man be in great distress having been betrayed and deserted by all friends he may find consolation in the idea that an ever true friend was still there to help him, to support him and that He was almighty and could do anything. Really that was useful to the society in the primitive age. The idea of God is helpful to man in distress.

Society has to fight out this belief as well as was fought the idol worship and the narrow conception of religon. Similarly, when man tries to stand on his own legs, and become a realist he shall have to throw the faith aside, and to face manfully all the distress, trouble, in which the circumstances may throw him. That is exactly my state of affairs. It is not my vanity, my friends. It is my mode of thinking that has made me an atheist. I don't know whether in my case belief in God and offering of daily prayers which I consider to be most selfish and degraded act on the part of man, whether these prayers can prove to be helpful or they shall make my case worse still. I have read of atheists facing all troubles quite boldly, so am I trying to stand like a man with an erect head to the last; even on the gallows.

Let us see how I carry on : one friend asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, "During your last days you will begin to believe". I said, No, dear Sir, it shall not be. I will think that to be an act of degradation and demoralization on my part. For selfish motives I am not going to pray. Readers and friends, "Is this vanity"? If it is, I stand for it.

The Future: No Sex?

2007-09-24T00:15:00.000+05:30

This started as a small paragraph at the end of my previous post, but then my thoughts wandered to areas completely unrelated to the core issue in that post. So, continuing...

On a completely unrelated note, it sucks that men can be such real assholes. If I could play god, for my pet civilization, I would choose asexual reproduction for all my created organisms. If my very intelligent biologist friend thinks asexual reproduction is not conducive to variations in gene pools or something like that, I would at least make both (or 3, or 4, or whatever) sexes equally strong, physically and mentally.

Rape is like the most sadistic crime that can be committed, in which an organism tortures another purely for pleasure. If an intelligent benevolent "traditional" god exists, this is another proof that it certainly did not do a perfect job designing this universe.

Perhaps in the future, once techniques like cloning are developed properly, mankind will willingly genetically engineer humans to not have sexual reproductive physiological activities. Think of the benefits of such a move. The most important outcome of that decision would probably be much greater human productivity. No time will be needed to be spent on sex, masturbation, pornography, etc., etc.. The manpower engaged (wasted) in activities like the porn industry, or even things like modeling to a small extent, can be redistributed to more useful areas. People will work longer, will sleep longer, will have less reasons or causes to get distracted, and will be more efficient in their lives. Friendships will last longer, crimes will decrease (after all, according to many widely available statistical sources, "love" - as in romantic/sexual love - is the major cause for a large fraction of crimes), and I am sure, relationships will be stronger. Love between human beings will not be affected, as love is not really dependent on sex, and hence human relationships will only grow stronger.

Of course, if better options like advanced robotics and artificial intelligence develop faster than biological advancements, then humans might just transfer their consciousnesses to artificial brains inside super artificial beings... But then that futuristic scenario deserves a lot more detailed treatment...

The Great Indian Hospitality

2007-09-23T22:48:00.000+05:30

The Times of India: Two Japanese women allege gangrape in Agra

Two Japanese women on Sunday alleged they were raped by three men in Agra after being confined for three days in separate places.

An FIR was filed at the airport police station here in this regard after the women informed the Japanese Embassy about the incident which in turn reported the matter to Delhi Police, a senior police official said.

The Japanese nationals, aged 24 and 25, arrived in Delhi on September 16 and left for Jaipur the next day from where they headed to Agra on September 19.

In Agra, the women met two persons identified as Sunny, who was conversant in Japanese, and Alias with whom they got friendly.

The men and women had drinks together later in the day and were allegedly sexually assaulted by Sunny and Alias besides one Rajan, who is said to be the UK-settled brother of Sunny.

"The women were confined separately in an office and hotel for three days," the official said adding, "the suspects yesterday arranged a taxi for the women to travel to Delhi."

As soon as they reached the capital, the women approached the Embassy which in turn informed the police.

The women had given photographs of the suspects and some documents, he said. But, the victims were not able to provide the exact location of the incident, he added.

Medical tests were conducted at the Safdarjung Hospital which confirmed rape, the official said adding that the clothes worn by the victims has also been sent for tests.

In a separate incident, a German tourist in May this year had alleged that a bus driver and conductor allegedly molested her.

CNN-IBN: Two Japanese women gang-raped in Agra

Two Japanese women have been allegedly raped in the tourist hub Agra in Uttar Pradesh.

An FIR has been lodged at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport Police Station though none of the five accused have been arrested so far.

The victims, Atsuko Kiyoshima and Mihokawa Kubo, had reportedly come to India on September 15 and proceeded to Agra from Jaipur on September 18.

A Zero FIR was lodged after the women arrived at the Delhi airport on September 21 and after they contacted the Japanese Embassy.

Zero FIR is related to registering a case anywhere in the country not necessarily at the place of occurrence.

Medical examination conducted at Safdarjung Hospital confirms rape.

I have heard many Indians say that Indians are world renowned for their hospitality to guests. Incidents like this should make it clear to everyone how gracious hosts Indians are. The sad thing is that these are not isolated incidents. There have been numerous reports of rape and molestation of tourists in India in the past few years. In March this year, a German student named Pamela Probst was molested allegedly by a police constable in full public view inside a bus in Lucknow. Last year in April, four people were arrested for allegedly raping and duping a Japanese woman in Pushkar, a popular tourist destination in Rajasthan. In 2004, an Australian woman was allegedly held captive for over two months and repeatedly sexually assaulted by two men in Kashmir.

I can't imagine the horror the women in this case must have gone through. Coming to a foreign country, they must have been really pleased to meet a man who was fluent in their native language. Probably they thought he would be a good companion and friend in an alien land. Unfortunately for them, that was not the case.

For a country that prides on calling itself an emerging superpower, such cases are not very encouraging. Nor are they great stories for a land whose people often claim to respect women.

On a completely unrelated note, it sucks that men can be such real assholes.

Clean Up

2007-09-05T18:31:00.000+05:30

Certain posts in this blog, which I now feel do not agree with the general feel of this blog, have been deleted.

No Blog Roll

2007-09-02T10:23:00.000+05:30

Due to certain very unexpected and interesting incidents that have taken place in my life in the past few days, I have decided to remove the "Blog Roll" element that was previously in my blog. I apologize to my friends and the owners of all the blogs that were linked there. I still immensely enjoy your blogs, keep up the good work. I will re-enable the blog list after a few months.

Quotes - IV

2007-08-16T23:18:00.000+05:30

I have published three posts with similar titles before. I am starting another one here, this one will have quotes by known famous personalities. This will be an evolving post, I will add more contents when I come across quotes I like.

"You have to dream sometimes. Because if you don’t dream, you cannot really reach out and do something."
- Kofi Annan

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants."
- Epictetus

"One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds."
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

"Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it."
- Anne O'Hare McCormick

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."
- Henry Louis Mencken

"Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us."
- Arundhati Roy

"Flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead."
- Arundhati Roy

"The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all."
- Arundhati Roy

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
- Steven Weinberg

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
- Oscar Wilde

Happy Independence Day?

2007-08-16T00:52:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was India's independence day. There were numerous patriotic shows on television, with movies, documentaries, even commercials exhibiting great patriotic flavor. One channel, Zee Studio, chose to show a different kind of movie, one that I had wanted to see for a long time. Deepa Mehta's 1947 Earth is not an Indian patriotic movie. It's far from it, it deals with the dark side of the creation of modern India itself. Told predominantly from the point of view of a young girl, the story is set in Lahore, in the time period directly before and during the partition of India. It's the story of a group of friends and neighbors, during the time of the partition.

The movie speaks about some of the worst atrocities ever committed in modern human history, during the partition of India. India of 1947 was a very backward society, a society dominated by ignorance and illiteracy and superstition. And that backwardness was exemplified at the time of independence, with the partition. I have studied Indian history text books that put most of the blame of the partition of India and all the Hindu-Muslim enmity on the Britishers, on their policies. However, I don't think the colonial Britishers were really responsible for the stupidity of the people of India. There was only one reason for the partition of India and all the associated problems, and that reason is the same as the reason for most troubles in the world today: Religion. India was broken up into two nation states purely on the basis of religion. Considering the extreme religiosity of the people of pre-1947 India, and modern day India and Pakistan, the 1947 partition of India was inevitable. I fully agree with Jinnah's theory of India consisting of two nations, Indians were, and still are, really that stupid.

But it's not just India, is it? Religion gives people a belief system that completely dominates all aspects of their lives. And more than that, it gives people an identity. It gives people one more criterion to classify people around them, perhaps the most important criterion for most people. And religion makes people selectively love and hate others, purely on the basis of the imaginary properties of the imaginary entity/entities they believe in. People fail to see others as human beings, they start seeing other people as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc.. And sometimes, such classifications become deadly.

According to some estimates, close to one million people were killed during the Indian partition. Tens of millions of people were uprooted from their homes and had to flee to unknown lands. Tales of atrocities committed during the partition are horrifying. From a random internet link:-

“There are mass killings of Hindus and Sikhs, and abduction of their women-folk, looting of their property and burning of houses. Women are raped in the presence of their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons. They are then distributed amongst the Muslims to be kept as concubines or forcibly married. Large numbers are carried into the tribal territory and are untraceable. Even the children are not spared. They are snatched from their parents’ arms and tossed on spears and swords, and sometimes thrown into the fire alive. Women breasts and noses and arms are lopped off. Sticks and pieces of iron are thrust into their private parts. Pregnant women’s bellies are ripped open and the unformed life in the womb thrown out. Hindu and Sikh women are taken out in processions by the Muslim mobs in some places. A lot of these women have committed suicide by burning themselves afterwards. Hindu men and Sikhs have been forcibly circumcised and shaven and then converted to the Muslim religion.....”

And still, we say "Happy Independence Day".

Why is it that people are so stupid? Why is it that people believe in imaginary entities, believe so deeply that they are willing and actually happy to kill and be killed for them? How is it that people can kill, rape and torture other people just because they don't believe in the same imaginary entities?

How is it that religions, which claim to bring people closer to a supremely benevolent and omnipotent god, make people commit such horrific brutalities? Or in other words, assuming a personal god exists, how is it that believing in and being close to a benevolent all-powerful god makes people such beasts?

One Week Later

2007-07-17T11:39:00.000+05:30

On 10th July, I blogged that I thought the whole universe conspired against me on that day. Now, exactly one week later, the same universe has conspired to help me. I really really wanted something, something that I have wanted for three years, something that I have grown to desire more and more. And today, I achieved it. The universe did its bit, it worked in mysterious ways like last week, but unlike last week, this week it worked to help me. And unlike last week, I did my bit too. That bit would be a small bit in any reality but mine, but in my world, it was the greatest challenge in the universe. And what I did was the greatest thing I have ever done in my life.

Of course, it's all unreal, but the illusion of the universe conspiring to help me and the illusion of my choice to do my part to help myself was perfect.

And, I got a taste of my Ambrosia. Right now, I feel I am as good as immortal. It was as good as I always expected it to be, and simultaneously as good as I feared it to be. A part of me was hoping that the taste would be bad that I would get over my desire for it. However, it was perfect, as perfect as my fears, and at the same time as perfect as my expectations.

On this day, 17th July 2007, I like to believe Paulo Coelho. I really wanted something, and the whole universe conspired in helping me achieve it.

And on this day, 17th July 2007, I met the most beautiful thing in the universe.

The Carina Nebula: Star Birth in the Extreme

2007-07-12T10:37:00.000+05:30

This is one of the largest panoramic images ever taken with the cameras of the Hubble Space Telescope. It is a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) where a maelstrom of star birth — and death — is taking place. This image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of neutral hydrogen during March and July 2005. Color information was added with data taken in December 2001 and March 2003 at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.

This image is available in other resolutions here.

Hubble's view of the nebula shows star birth in a new level of detail. The fantasy-like landscape of the nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. In the process, these stars are shredding the surrounding material that is the last vestige of the giant cloud from which the stars were born.

The immense nebula contains at least a dozen brilliant stars that are roughly estimated to be at least 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun. The most unique and opulent inhabitant is the star Eta Carinae, at far left. Eta Carinae is in the final stages of its brief and eruptive lifespan, as evidenced by two billowing lobes of gas and dust that presage its upcoming explosion as a titanic supernova.

The fireworks in the Carina region started three million years ago when the nebula's first generation of newborn stars condensed and ignited in the middle of a huge cloud of cold molecular hydrogen. Radiation from these stars carved out an expanding bubble of hot gas. The island-like clumps of dark clouds scattered across the nebula are nodules of dust and gas that are resisting being eaten away by photoionization.

The hurricane blast of stellar winds and blistering ultraviolet radiation within the cavity is now compressing the surrounding walls of cold hydrogen. This is triggering a second stage of new star formation.

Our Sun and our solar system may have been born inside such a cosmic crucible 4.6 billion years ago. In looking at the Carina Nebula we are seeing the genesis of star making as it commonly occurs along the dense spiral arms of a galaxy.

The immense nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina the Keel (of the old southern constellation Argo Navis, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts, from Greek mythology).

Oh my God! It's full of stars!

Self Realization

2007-07-10T16:30:00.000+05:30

The Alchemist says that if you really want something, then the whole universe conspires in helping you achieve it. Of course, it's just a completely baseless but very optimistic statement, meant much more to inspire hope in readers than to appeal to their intellect. However, I have often used it to delude myself into thinking that perhaps I can get whatever I want in life. It makes me feel better.

Today I really really really wanted something. I wanted to get my Ambrosia. I didn't want much, all I wanted was a bit to taste, just to get to know it better. And I really tried to achieve it. I even ran for it. And I got close, so close that I could almost feel it. To make me feel better and confident, I even deluded myself into believing Coelho. Yet I did not achieve the Ambrosia. Fear and indecision conquered all the delusions I had created, and it conquered my mind. That was not the only opportunity I had, I got one more chance to win the Ambrosia. And this time too I thought I was very close, but really I wasn't. The whole universe took me very close to achieving one of my dreams, and the whole universe prevented me from getting it.

Today, on 10 July 2007, the whole universe conspired to help me realize that I am a coward, that I am pathetic, and that I am a loser.

From Agnosticism to Atheism

2007-07-06T13:45:00.000+05:30

I recently had a rather short stint at the popular Atheist vs. Theist community in Orkut. It was great fun there for a while, but the fun involved mostly just pwning obstinate "theists" in the forums with the help of other "atheists". But then it became a bit too monotonous, and I just quit.

I had thought of myself as an Agnostic since about 6-7 years ago, till recently. The level of "agnosticism" has varied, with my beliefs swaying more and more towards the atheistic side rather than the theistic side. Even though I was technically an Agnostic for most of the time I spent in the above mentioned community, I was firmly on the side of Atheists. I like to think that it's because most of the theists presented religious arguments to the whole god vs. no god debate, and naturally, I found them stupid.

I think my time at the community served some useful purposes too. I got to interact with people with different belief systems, from the most stubborn atheists (I am absolutely sure there is no God) to the non-religious theists (I know, religions are stupid, but surely, there must a creator) to the most obstinate religious people (KILL SALMAN RUSHDIE! IF ANYONE OBJECTS HERE, KILL THOSE @#!#$!&$*^# TOO!) to the anti-theists(So what if there is a God? F**k him!). There were also some rather intellectual people, who I felt were a mismatch in the community because they were too nice and intelligent. And from those interactions, I got a lot of new ideas, and I got to refine my own ideas. For example, I learned more about the whole American Evolution vs. Creationism debate from the community. I learned more about the Vedas and the Quran. I learned more about Buddhism(which I still consider a strange religion). I learned more about Spinoza's God.

I came across opinions that being an agnostic is often the first step towards atheism. I agree with that statement. Often the realization that the probability of god's existence is negligible comes after the realization that the probability that god does not exist is significantly large. A similar kind of thing has happened to me too. I have come to the realization that my beliefs about god(s), or the lack of god(s), are best classified as Atheistic.

Atheism, as defined in Wikipedia, is the position that "either affirms the nonexistence of gods or rejects theism". That article also says most definitions of atheism involve an "absence of belief in deities". Agnosticism is defined as "the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly theological claims regarding metaphysics, afterlife or the existence of God, god(s), deities, or even ultimate reality — is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently unknowable due to the nature of subjective experience".

I don't "affirm the nonexistence of gods". But I surely don't believe in deities. That, I think, classifies as an atheistic view, an absence of belief. I don't necessarily believe in the absence of god(s). I just don't believe in their presence. I agree that I don't know for sure that god(s) do not exist. That might be considered an agnostic view. But then, I don't know for sure that Santa Claus does not exist either. Or Bigfoot. Or the Loch Ness Monster. Or elves. Or fairies. Since I don't have any verifiable proof that those things exist, I don't believe in them. And similarly, I don't believe in god(s). It's as simple as that. I think the burden of proof is on the people making the hypothesis. And the presence of something is the hypothesis that needs to be proven. Not the absence of something. A Russell's Teapot can never be disproved. That does not mean that normal sane people should be "agnostic" about it.

About four years ago I wrote a log that says that I was 90% sure that god exists, and I classified myself as an Agnostic then. Well, I was young and stupid back then; I am sure I am wiser now. I am now 95% sure that god does not exist. I think that classifies me as a Weak Atheist.

Strong atheism is a term generally used to describe atheists who accept as true the proposition, "gods do not exist". Weak atheism refers to any type of non-theism which falls short of this standard. Because of flexibility in the term "god", it is understood that a person could be a strong atheist in terms of certain portrayals of gods, while remaining a weak atheist in terms of others. Historically, the terms negative and positive atheism have been used to denote this distinction. Within negative or weak atheism, philosopher Anthony Kenny distinguishes between agnostics, who find the claim "God exists" meaningful but uncertain, and theological noncognitivists, who consider all God-talk to be meaningless.

Since many self-described agnostics specifically distinguish their stance from that of atheists, yet would also fit the general definition of "weak atheism," the validity of this categorisation is disputed. Another problem is whether "strong" atheists must consider themselves able to prove authoritatively that a god does not exist, or rather, if they must only disbelieve in such a god in order to qualify. Prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins avoid the strong/weak distinction. In The God Delusion Dawkins describes people for whom the probability of the existence of God is between "very high" and "very low" as "agnostic" and reserves the term "strong atheist" for "I know there is no god". He categorises himself as a "de facto atheist" but not a "Strong Atheist".

I think the probability I attribute to god's existence is low enough to be classified as "very low" according to Dawkin's terms. So, according to Dawkin's definition too, I am an atheist.

Other classifications that I give for myself include:-

Irreligious. I believe that all major organized religions are wrong, and stupid. Even though I am only 95% sure that god(s) do not exist, I am 99.999% sure that even if a god exists, it has not magically impregnated a virgin 2000 years ago to produce a god-human hybrid that died for all humanity's sins and rose from the dead three days later. And I am 99.999% sure that 72 virgins do not await the righteous in heaven.
Antireligious. This does not mean that I hate religious people. But I do have a strong dislike for religions. A bit like doctors hating cancer. I don't hate religious people any more than a doctor hates cancer patients.
Apatheistic. I consider the question of the existence of God as neither meaningful nor relevant to human affairs.
Nonthestic.
Secularist.

But of course,I could be wrong, god(s) might exist. Everything that happens in the universe might be part of a greater divine plan. Everything perfect in the universe might be perfect because an omnipotent omniscient creator designed it. The exquisite natural beauty of the Alps and Seychelles beaches and white roses and Aurora Borealis and Anupa Miriam Abraham might be just because all of them are perfect creations of a perfect creator. And, perhaps, the perfect creator might be a personal god too, and I might be wrong, and my mother right. But I still need more than just faith. Unless I get some verifiable proof, I think I will continue to be an atheist.

Recent Additions

2007-07-06T00:04:00.000+05:30

I have finally added a Creative Commons Deed to this blog. The deed is "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported".

As long as they follow the conditions specified in the deed, anyone is free to copy, distribute, or adapt whatever is in this blog.

And about the "Attribution" condition: Just include a link to this blog and/or specific article in your copy/adaptation.

One clarification: Any posts in which I include any material protected by the GNU Free Documentation License will be automatically under a similar license. I waive any rights I have, any more than the GNU FDL, on such specific posts.

If I inadvertently violate anyone's copyrights or IP rights, please let me know via comments in the concerned post, I will make sure that the violating matter is removed immediately.

And, I have finally signed up for Google AdSense. At the current rate of traffic in this blog, I think I might earn one cent by 2050.

Also, I have changed the layout, and I have added some free webcontent provided by sites like The Free Dictionary and Free-Blog-Content. Perhaps just too much time on my hands, which actually means I am probably not spending my time as I should ideally be spending it.

adSENSE

2007-07-05T21:07:00.001+05:30

Right below my post where I talked about how stupid the whole New7Wonders campaign is:-

Not a great first impression of AdSense...

Quotes - III - Corny Quotes

2007-07-04T13:12:00.001+05:30

"I'm a philosophy major. That means I can think deep thoughts about being unemployed."
- Bruce Lee

"I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn't."
- Patrick Murray

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
So if the doctor is handsome keep the apple away.
And if the nurse is beautiful keep both the doctor and the apple away.

"I was born intelligent; Education ruined me."

"Practice makes you perfect... But nobody's perfect... So why practice?"

"If it's true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?"

"How come "abbreviated" is such a long word?"

"Money is not everything. There's always Mastercard & Visa."

"If your father is a poor man, it is your fate. But if your father-in-law is a poor man, it's your stupidity."

"Behind every successful man, there is a woman. And behind every unsuccessful man, there are two woman."

"Every man should marry. After all, happiness is not the only thing in life."

"The wise never marry. And when they marry they become otherwise."

"Success is a relative term. It brings so many relatives."

"Your future depends on your dreams. So go to sleep."

"Hard work never killed anybody. But why take the risk?"

"Work fascinates me. I can look at it for hours"

"I believe that sex is a beautiful thing between two people. Between five, it's fantastic."

"God made relatives. Thank God we can choose our friends."

"The more you learn, the more you know.
The more you know, the more you forget.
The more you forget, the less you know.
So, why learn?"

"Do you believe in love at first sight? Or, should I walk by you again?"

The "New" 7 Wonders of the World

2007-07-03T17:38:00.000+05:30

One of the hottest news and media topics these days is the "New 7 Wonders of the World" campaign. Everyone seems to be dazzled. The heavyweights of the Indian media seem to be in a real frenzy competing with each other in inspiring Indians to vote for their beloved Taj Mahal. Bollywood stars and other celebrities, ever so excited of being projected as socially conscious and noble, have all very graciously spent their very precious time in educating the poor uninformed Indians about the great need for the Taj to be in the final top 7 list. A R Rahman has been kind to do much more, he even composed a song to inspire Indians to vote for the Taj Mahal. The English news channels lament the great shame of India that the Taj is lagging behind in the list.

Here is my take on the whole thing:

What the hell is the big deal?

A quick background information on the "Seven Wonders of the World" that I came to know just today. There have been many lists of "Seven Wonders of the World". The ancient historian Herodotus (484 BC–ca. 425 BC) and the scholar Callimachus (ca 305–240 BC) made their lists way back in ancient times. The earliest extant version of a list of seven wonders was compiled by Antipater of Sidon, who described the structures in a poem around 140 BC. Many such lists were made throughout history, varying in their degree of recognition. Lists were made in the BC era, early centuries of the AD era, in the middle ages, and in modern times, including a list by the American Society of Civil Engineers. There have been "Seven Natural Wonders of the World" lists, "Seven Underwater Wonders of the World" lists, and probably, many more such specialised lists as well. And for many "Seven Wonders" lists, there have been the "Eighth Wonder of the World" position too.

Wikipedia has several articles on the Wonders lists:-

Seven Wonders of the World

Eighth Wonder of the World

Coming to the so-called "New 7 Wonders of the World" campaign. Apparently, nobody owns that phrase either. In November 2006, the American national newspaper USA Today in conjunction with the American television show Good Morning America revealed a list of "New Seven Wonders" as chosen by six judges. The wonders were announced one per day over a week on Good Morning America. An eighth wonder was chosen on November 24 from viewer feedback.

The 'New Wonders' campaign that is globally hyped is an initiative of a Swiss-based, privately funded corporation called New Open World Corporation (NOWC). Wikipedia has an article on that:-

New Seven Wonders of the World

The New Seven Wonders of the World is a proposed revision of the Seven Wonders of the World, organized by a Swiss-based, for-profit corporation called New Open World Corporation (NOWC). The selection is being made by free and paid votes, through telephone or online. The first vote is free to registered members and additional votes may be purchased through a payment to NOWC. In addition to the sale of votes, NOWC relies on private donations, the sale of merchandise such as shirts and cups, and revenue from selling broadcasting rights.

In addition to free votes, votes can be bought from NOWC by any individual, organization or government. As explained in its Terms and Conditions, NOWC "reserves the right at its absolute discretion to exclude [any] votes" that are cast.

Some in Egypt see it as competition to the status of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the only surviving monument of the original Ancient Wonders. "This is probably a conspiracy against Egypt, its civilization and monuments," wrote editorialist Al-Sayed al-Naggar in a leading state-owned daily. Egyptian Culture Minister Farouq Hosni said the project was "absurd" and described its creator, Weber, as a man "concerned primarily with self-promotion". Nagib Amin, an Egyptian expert on World Heritage Sites, has pointed out that "in addition to the commercial aspect, the vote has no scientific basis."
After the complaints from Egypt, the pyramid was given special status and removed from the voting list. From the Web site: "The New7Wonders Foundation designates the Pyramids of Giza — the only remaining of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World — as an Honorary New7Wonders Candidate, and removed it from the voting."

The New7Wonders campaign is to select a list of 7 wonders of the world. And, it's just a list. The list that it produces, whatever it contains, will at best be just another list to add to the lists that have been produced by many people and organizations over the course of history. It is in no way the list.

The organization that controls the whole process is a private organization. NOWC is not a governmental organization, and it is not a democratic organization. It has no connection whatsoever to something like, say, UNESCO.

UNESCO confirms that it is not involved in the “New 7 wonders of the world” campaign

In order to avoid any damaging confusion, UNESCO wishes to reaffirm that there is no link whatsoever between UNESCO’s World Heritage programme, which aims to protect world heritage, and the current campaign concerning “The New 7 Wonders of the World”.

This campaign was launched in 2000 as a private initiative by Bernard Weber, the idea being to encourage citizens around the world to select seven new wonders of the world by popular vote.

Although UNESCO was invited to support this project on several occasions, the Organizaton decided not to collaborate with Mr. Weber.

UNESCO’s objective and mandate is to assist countries in identifying, protecting and preserving World Heritage. Acknowledging the sentimental or emblematic value of sites and inscribing them on a new list is not enough. Scientific criteria must be defined, the quality of candidates evaluated, and legislative and management frameworks set up. The relevant authorities must also demonstrate commitment to these frameworks as well as to permanently monitoring the state of conservation of sites. The task is one of technical conservation and political persuasion. There is also a clear educational role with respect to the sites’ inherent value, the threats they face and what must be done to prevent their loss.

There is no comparison between Mr Weber’s mediatised campaign and the scientific and educational work resulting from the inscription of sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List*. The list of the “7 New Wonders of the World” will be the result of a private undertaking, reflecting only the opinions of those with access to the internet and not the entire world. This initiative cannot, in any significant and sustainable manner, contribute to the preservation of sites elected by this public.

As the article in UNESCO's site explains, whatever list NOWC produces, it will in no way be a list chosen by the world. It will be just another list, produced by a private organization. And, even if that list is compiled fairly in a purely democratic manner, it will reflect only the opinions of a very small subset of human population that has access to Internet and choose to take part in the process.

I have not voted in the NOWC campaign. Not because I am a stupid RSS fan who hates the Taj. I have great respect for the Taj Mahal. I chose not to vote only because of the excessive hype that the New7Wonders campaign has produced in India. If it was just an online vote, I probably would have voted. But I think most of the people who vote in the New7Wonders campaign are people who have been tricked by the NOWC into believing that the New7Wonders campaign is much more than what it actually is, and I don't want to be part of such a process.

I don't know why Indian celebrities like Shabana Azmi (who I respect a lot, both for her profession as well as her social work) have been campaigning for the NOWC and the Taj Mahal. May be they are actually getting paid by the NOWC to hype the process. May be the NOWC paid A R Rahman to compose the song. But what really confuses me is the great craze among the Indian media about the New7Wonders initiative. They seem to be completely tricked by the NOWC campaign. Tricked into believing that the NOWC list will be the Seven Wonders list from July 7 onwards.

And the even more confusing thing is, it's not just the Indian media. Even BBC seems to be bowled over by New7Wonders. And apparently, it's not just India:-

BBC News South Asia: Taj Mahal - not so wonderful?

Brazil's President Lula de Silva used a radio address to tell people how to vote for Rio's statue of Christ the Redeemer.
The government of Peru has opened computer terminals in public plazas to encourage people to vote for the ancient city of Machu Pichu.

But, the lack of enthusiasm in India to vote for the 17th-Century Taj Mahal has been striking.

India has around 170 million mobile phone users and one person in every 50 has access to a personal computer.

But lacklustre voting over the past few months has seen the Taj Mahal get just enough votes to get at the bottom of the top 10 list.

Until a few weeks ago, there was virtually no information about the campaign.

The Taj Mahal and Aishwarya Rai
Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai supports the Taj for its symbolism of love

Although some private television channels are now calling upon people to vote, most people are yet to hear about the campaign.

A special composition by ace musician AR Rahman, 'India Unites for the Taj', to drum up support for the monument has come a little too late in the day.

And worst of all, many say, the Indian government remains completely aloof from the campaign.

When asked, a senior official in the tourism ministry, Leela Nandan, said: "There is much more in India than the government. It is the people of India. Every member of Indian society has to take this responsibility."

Few tourists

Bharat Kapadia is chairman of private media group I Media Corp Ltd, which has stepped in to galvanise public support for the Taj.

"We need lots of votes. It is sad the government has not mobilised any resources for this. We are in dialogue with the tourism ministry and others. They had nothing more to say than tell us that it is a good project," said Mr Kapadia.

Many ordinary Indians are backing Mr Kapadia's work.

"Why is the government shy to launch a nationwide campaign for the Taj?" asks Sharda Sharma, an employee with a multinational company.

She says she had no idea about the global campaign till a few days back. "Whichever way the vote goes at least it will only help promote Taj Mahal and India," she said.

Why should the Indian government start a "nationwide campaign" for the Taj Mahal as Sharda Sharma asks? Why should the Indian government waste the tax payer's money on promoting what is a business undertaking by a foreign private organization? And why does Sunil Raman, the author of the BBC article, seem so sad about what he calls the lack of enthusiasm among Indians?

From the New7Wonders site's Terms and Conditions page:-

By participating in the GVP, you are notifying us of your voting choice online by becoming a New7Wonders Member, by purchasing a certificate online, by making a phone call to one of the provided telephone numbers and or by sending us a mobile text message. NOWC reserves the right at its absolute discretion to exclude votes and voters. In some instances you may incur certain standard or premium charges to send us your vote, such as for example to send us a mobile text message. In nearly all cases a small portion of these charges may be received by NOWC and will be used to help offset the significant costs of running the N7W campaign. Where possible and relevant the charges for participating in the GVP are as notified in the relevant section. NOWC will update this pricing information on a timely basis, but is not responsible for any incorrect information or incorrect charging. NOWC reserves the right to change the charges payable from time to time.

An article from the Washigton Post:-

The Seven Wonders Reconsidered

Compulsive voters can cast a second ballot for $2 and receive a special certificate -- not exactly the purest expression of democracy, but somebody has to pay the bills.

Including corporate sponsors, voting fees and other donations, Viering said in an e-mail, "funds raised and investment in the campaign since the beginning has been in the eight figures." Although the group's financial statements are open to the public because of its nonprofit status, she said, precise information about finances is not currently available because the group's staff of six is focusing for the next four months on getting out the vote.

In Internet chatter about the campaign, some people call it pointless, commercial and self-promoting. Others call it harmless fun or a valuable effort to protect the world's heritage.

Matt Rosenberg is among those on about.com suggesting a different kind of modern wonder, the creation of the state of Israel. Another blogger suggested German chocolate cake.

"I have been laying on my lawn for the last three weeks straight without moving," Nick Young wrote on the Google Earth blog. "I hope that google satellites will take pictures of me and everyone will vote it to be one of the seven wonders of the world."

Apparently, the New7Wonders campaign involves a lot of money. And, additional votes can be bought by people who can afford them.

Get set for the new Seven Wonders

With its motto being Our Heritage Is Our Future, the New7Wonders Foundation wants to document, maintain, restore and reconstruct world heritage. In fact, fifty percent of all net revenue raised by the New 7 Wonders Project will be used to fund restoration efforts worldwide.

How noble of them! Using half of the generated revenue for such a great purpose! But what happens to the other half? And, even this is at present just propaganda. They might very well use all the revenue to buy luxury aircraft for their investors.

Taj Mahal specific websites:-

Vote for Taj Mahal

Vote for Taj Mahal as one of the new seven wonders of the world.
Every one's heard of the Seven Wonders of the World but few have actually seen them.
Why? Well, it's mainly because only one out of the six 'Must See' destinations, the Pyramids at Giza in Egypt, is actually still standing.

So with the Seven Wonders of the World no longer actually giving wonder to the world, in 2000 it seemed the perfect time to start again and nominate Seven New Wonders.

Launched in 2000 by the New 7 Wonders Society, a Swiss group with the preservation of man-made heritage close to its heart, the hunt was on for the new seven wonders of the world.

With strict rules like all nominations having to be man-made, be in an "acceptable" state of preservation and to have been completed by 2000, 30 potential wonders are short listed and the Taj Mahal at Agra (India) is amongst them.

Nominations were whittled down by public votes to 77 last year. Then a panel of architectural experts, chaired by former UNESCO chief Federico Mayor, shortened the list to 21. Interest has grown as Weber and his 10-member team visit the 21 sites. Their final visit will be March 6, 2007 to New York's Statue of Liberty.

In fact the Taj Mahal is the only Indian landmark to have made it in to the short list.

With 21 new world wonder finalists battling it out for just seven places, the Taj Mahal is, up against some pretty heavy weight competition including the Great Wall of China, the Acropolis, The Inca City of Machu Picchu in Peru and of course the Pyramids.

But with the New 7 Wonders due to be announced live on television around the world on 7th July, 2007, you've still got a bit of time left to cast your vote.

And, the doomsayers:-

Taj Mahal, potential world wonder, is ill(Site)

Taj might not be a wonder after all(Site)

And, it's not just the Taj Mahal that some Indians so badly want to be a part of the NOWC list. Quite expectably, the Hindu nationalists are jealous of all the attention the Taj is getting:-

RSS wants Angkor Wat included in seven wonders

As a campaign to include the Taj Mahal among the seven new wonders of the world gathers momentum, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has pitched for including the 12th century Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia in the category.

An article in the party mouthpiece Organizer said: "We should also undoubtedly join the campaign to enable this enduring symbol (Taj Mahal) of our country to make it to the top seven. But, equally significant, both for all Indians and Hindus across the globe is the presence of the world's largest Hindu temple, Angkor, among the 21 finalist candidates in the campaign to choose the new Seven Wonders of the World."

It appealed to the people to also vote for Angkor Wat saying, "So, if Taj deserves your vote, click the mouse for Angkor Wat too. It is as much ours as is the Taj".

The bottom line is this: The NOWC New7Wonders list will be just another 7 wonders list. It will have no more importance than what people give it. What if the Taj Mahal does not make it into the list? Who cares? Will that decrease the reputation of the Taj? It will probably just give it some free publicity due to the news reports of foolish people protesting or committing suicide because of the Taj's absence from the list. And what if the Taj does make it in the list? That won't make much of a difference either. The Taj Mahal will be Taj Mahal, as long as it exists. The only thing having the Taj Mahal in the list proves will be that there are a lot of Indians who were taken for a ride by the NOWC.

Kissing Hank's Ass

2007-06-21T23:30:00.001+05:30

This morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:

John: "Hi! I'm John, and this is Mary."

Mary: "Hi! We're here to invite you to come kiss Hank's ass with us."

Me: "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to kiss His ass?"

John: "If you kiss Hank's ass, He'll give you a million dollars; and if you don't, He'll kick the shit out of you."

Me: "What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shake-down?"

John: "Hank is a billionaire philanthropist. Hank built this town. Hank owns this town. He can do whatever He wants, and what He wants is to give you a million dollars, but He can't until you kiss His ass."

Me: "That doesn't make any sense. Why..."

Mary: "Who are you to question Hank's gift? Don't you want a million dollars? Isn't it worth a little kiss on the ass?"

Me: "Well maybe, if it's legit, but..."

John: "Then come kiss Hank's ass with us."

Me: "Do you kiss Hank's ass often?"

Mary: "Oh yes, all the time..."

Me: "And has He given you a million dollars?"

John: "Well no. You don't actually get the money until you leave town."

Me: "So why don't you just leave town now?"

Mary: "You can't leave until Hank tells you to, or you don't get the money, and He kicks the shit out of you."

Me: "Do you know anyone who kissed Hank's ass, left town, and got the million dollars?"

John: "My mother kissed Hank's ass for years. She left town last year, and I'm sure she got the money."

Me: "Haven't you talked to her since then?"

John: "Of course not, Hank doesn't allow it."

Me: "So what makes you think He'll actually give you the money if you've never talked to anyone who got the money?"

Mary: "Well, He gives you a little bit before you leave. Maybe you'll get a raise, maybe you'll win a small lotto, maybe you'll just find a twenty-dollar bill on the street."

Me: "What's that got to do with Hank?"

John: "Hank has certain 'connections.'"

Me: "I'm sorry, but this sounds like some sort of bizarre con game."

John: "But it's a million dollars, can you really take the chance? And remember, if you don't kiss Hank's ass He'll kick the shit out of you."

Me: "Maybe if I could see Hank, talk to Him, get the details straight from Him..."

Mary: "No one sees Hank, no one talks to Hank."

Me: "Then how do you kiss His ass?"

John: "Sometimes we just blow Him a kiss, and think of His ass. Other times we kiss Karl's ass, and he passes it on."

Me: "Who's Karl?"

Mary: "A friend of ours. He's the one who taught us all about kissing Hank's ass. All we had to do was take him out to dinner a few times."

Me: "And you just took his word for it when he said there was a Hank, that Hank wanted you to kiss His ass, and that Hank would reward you?"

John: "Oh no! Karl has a letter he got from Hank years ago explaining the whole thing. Here's a copy; see for yourself."

From the Desk of Karl

1. Kiss Hank's ass and He'll give you a million dollars when you leave town.
2. Use alcohol in moderation.
3. Kick the shit out of people who aren't like you.
4. Eat right.
5. Hank dictated this list Himself.
6. The moon is made of green cheese.
7. Everything Hank says is right.
8. Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.
9. Don't use alcohol.
10. Eat your wieners on buns, no condiments.
11. Kiss Hank's ass or He'll kick the shit out of you.

Me: "This appears to be written on Karl's letterhead."

Mary: "Hank didn't have any paper."

Me: "I have a hunch that if we checked we'd find this is Karl's handwriting."

John: "Of course, Hank dictated it."

Me: "I thought you said no one gets to see Hank?"

Mary: "Not now, but years ago He would talk to some people."

Me: "I thought you said He was a philanthropist. What sort of philanthropist kicks the shit out of people just because they're different?"

Mary: "It's what Hank wants, and Hank's always right."

Me: "How do you figure that?"

Mary: "Item 7 says 'Everything Hank says is right.' That's good enough for me!"

Me: "Maybe your friend Karl just made the whole thing up."

John: "No way! Item 5 says 'Hank dictated this list himself.' Besides, item 2 says 'Use alcohol in moderation,' Item 4 says 'Eat right,' and item 8 says 'Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.' Everyone knows those things are right, so the rest must be true, too."

Me: "But 9 says 'Don't use alcohol.' which doesn't quite go with item 2, and 6 says 'The moon is made of green cheese,' which is just plain wrong."

John: "There's no contradiction between 9 and 2, 9 just clarifies 2. As far as 6 goes, you've never been to the moon, so you can't say for sure."

Me: "Scientists have pretty firmly established that the moon is made of rock..."

Mary: "But they don't know if the rock came from the Earth, or from out of space, so it could just as easily be green cheese."

Me: "I'm not really an expert, but I think the theory that the Moon was somehow 'captured' by the Earth has been discounted*. Besides, not knowing where the rock came from doesn't make it cheese."

John: "Ha! You just admitted that scientists make mistakes, but we know Hank is always right!"

Me: "We do?"

Mary: "Of course we do, Item 7 says so."

Me: "You're saying Hank's always right because the list says so, the list is right because Hank dictated it, and we know that Hank dictated it because the list says so. That's circular logic, no different than saying 'Hank's right because He says He's right.'"

John: "Now you're getting it! It's so rewarding to see someone come around to Hank's way of thinking."

Me: "But...oh, never mind. What's the deal with wieners?"

Mary: She blushes.

John: "Wieners, in buns, no condiments. It's Hank's way. Anything else is wrong."

Me: "What if I don't have a bun?"

John: "No bun, no wiener. A wiener without a bun is wrong."

Me: "No relish? No Mustard?"

Mary: She looks positively stricken.

John: He's shouting. "There's no need for such language! Condiments of any kind are wrong!"

Me: "So a big pile of sauerkraut with some wieners chopped up in it would be out of the question?"

Mary: Sticks her fingers in her ears."I am not listening to this. La la la, la la, la la la."

John: "That's disgusting. Only some sort of evil deviant would eat that..."

Me: "It's good! I eat it all the time."

Mary: She faints.

John: He catches Mary. "Well, if I'd known you were one of those I wouldn't have wasted my time. When Hank kicks the shit out of you I'll be there, counting my money and laughing. I'll kiss Hank's ass for you, you bunless cut-wienered kraut-eater."

With this, John dragged Mary to their waiting car, and sped off.

Quotes - II

2007-01-17T13:15:00.000+05:30

"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."
- Robert Frost

"The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it."
- Franklin P. Jones

"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?"
- Jean Cocturan

"It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose."
- Darrin Weinberg

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

"Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again."

"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

"Whoever said money can't buy happiness, didn't know where to shop."

"Alcohol doesn't solve any problems, but then again, neither does milk."

"Most people are only alive because it is illegal to shoot them."

"Forgive your enemies but remember their names."

"The number of people watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your action."

"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations."
- David Friedman

"The joy of losing to someone you love is greater than the celebration of victory over someone you hate."

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."

"Don't place me in your eyes, I may fall as a tear, place me in your heart, so that every beat reminds you that this friend is always there for you!"

"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."
- Henry Louis Mencken

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind..."

"The difference between genius and insanity is measured by success."

"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again."
- Franklin P. Jones

"Happiness is not a state of being, but a simple choice"

"Until you begin to see ahead of time, time will always be ahead of you."

"Meet success like a gentleman and failure like a man."

"I learned it the hard way, I can show you the easy way, but you won't learn anything from it; so you are better off with the hard way."

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein

"Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
- Mark Twain

"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limit."
- Albert Einstein

"Live in the Present, for the Future, guided by the Past."

"Pain is inevitable; Suffering is optional."

"The way to avoid mistakes is to gain experience; the way to gain experience is to make mistakes."

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up."
- Gandhi

"Children are like wet cement, whatever falls on them makes an impression."

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

"The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive."
- Robert Heinlein

Interviewer - "What do you think of western civilisation?"
Gandhi - "I think it would be a very good idea!"

"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."

"A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first."
- Chanakya

"Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends."
- Chanakya

"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian."
- Dennis Wholey

"Computers will never take the place of books. You can't stand on a floppy disk to reach a high shelf."
- Sam Ewing

"Materialism will inevitably produce the kind of society where people know the price of everything, but the value of nothing; where people have a great deal to live on, but very little to live for..."
- Anonymous

"Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use."
- Wendell Johnson

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
- Steven Weinberg

Quotes - I

2007-01-16T23:30:00.000+05:30

"Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you only have one life to live and one chance to do all the things you want to do."

"It's better to lose your pride over some one you love than to lose that someone you love for your useless pride."
- Chinese Proverb

"It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return, but what is more painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let that person know how you feel!"

"No one is worth your tears, the one worth of them doesn't make you cry."

"If you want something badly, you will get it, if you didn't get it, you didn't want it badly."

"Shoot for the moon.
Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
- Les Brown

"Wise men talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something."
- Plato

"In life everyone is going to hurt you, you just have to find the one who's worth the pain."

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
- George Bernard Shaw

"One day love and friendship met. Love asked, 'Why do you exist when I already exist?' Friendship replied, 'To leave smiles where you leave tears.'"

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion."
- Robert M Pirsig

Life

2006-09-20T18:31:00.000+05:30

When I was younger and stupider, I used to think that there was something special about life. I thought "life" was something that could never be explained by science without considering God as a factor. "Life" was, for me, proof of the existence of an intelligent and conscious God. I thought there was a mysterious force or energy called "life" that made human beings and other organisms alive. I thought that when people died, that component called "life" just disappeared, and could never be brought back. I now think differently, even though it is quite possible that I may actually be more stupider than when I was younger.

Now, I don't think there is anything special about life. Living things on this planet Earth are just interesting and complex things that could possibly have come to exist randomly without any supernatural interference. I think every single life process can be explained purely scientifically. Of course, I am no biologist, but I would be disappointed in all the biologists in the world if one claimed that this was not true.

A couple of years back, I quite suddenly had an interesting idea: that "life" exists only at the cell-level. That is, anything special about life that appears to be exotic is exotic only at the cellular level, if at all. At any system larger than the cellular level, whatever happens is only as a result of interactions between cells, for their survival.

I think life itself has a tendecy to survive. Life tries its best to survive, it adapts, combines, splits, anything to try to survive. Multicellular organisms are a result of this tendency of individual cells to survive. Multicellular organisms exist because the individual cells have a better chance of survival together than alone.

I am not really "alive", there is no me in the physical sense. "I" am just a consciousness, the consciousness that resides in my brain, a consciousness formed as a result of the "live" cells in my brain and their complex interactions. I am just a software, an Operating System, the hardware that essentially supports me is just my brain and its cells. The body that is considered as me is required for its survival but not essentially necessary; the nervous system is required to control the body. "I" am essentially an illusion, an illusion created by the cells in my brain to better their collective chances of survival and well-being. Pain, happiness, sorrow, all emotions are mere illusions that are created by the software, my consciousness. When I "die"; all that happens is a critical failure of the operating system caused by a malfunction in the hardware that supports it. But since there is no real "me", I never really die in the biological sense. I die only at a conceptual level. The individual cells in the body I control die, of course, with the failure in the OS.

What is really special, the exotic thing that so enthralled me earlier, is then not me; it's my consciousness. The collective recognition of "me" created by the individual cells in my brain. The software that gives me the illusion that I am whole and one and atomic. The OS that hides the parts that make up the whole "me".

Most religions teach that the entity called God created the universe with human beings are the most important component. Thus, they consider multicellular organisms as atomic, which is not surprising considering that few religions arose after the growth of biology. Therefore, whatever is contained in this post is pure blasphemy to all religions.

But, I guess people who believe in such conventional religion will be much more happy with their faith than I am with what I think is my logical reasoning. I have no real reason for my existence. But, they always have an imaginary heaven to guide them. Ignorance sure is bliss.

Fate, Control, Determinism.

2006-09-19T21:51:00.000+05:30

Are we really in control of our lives? Do human beings, as intelligent and conscious entities, have free will? Are we really "intelligent", are we really able to make decisions? Or is our freedom of thought an illusion?

There are two ways to view the universe. The easy way and the hard way. The easy way is quite simple, just don't be bothered about the functioning of the universe, don't ask "why" or "how", just believe that things "is" or "are". Or, imagine that the universe itself is an illusion, we are probably just software in a computer of a super-intelligent entity, and the universe is just an environment created in the software. Or, the most popular one, believe in God, a super-intelligent entity that controls the universe. Or believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Or some wacko theory like that.

The hard way is, well, hard. You can analyze the world using the data your consciousness collects from the only sources of information it has, the five senses. I like this way more than the easy way.

Some people believe in fate. Some people don't. However, most people believe in free will. Whenever people think about some mistake that they did earlier, they always say, "Damn, I should not have done that". But really, was there any other way?

I don't believe in free will. I believe in Laplace's deterministic universe, in that I believe that the whole history of the universe has already been set, the universe is what it is because that is the only way it could have been. I believe in fate, I believe that the state of the universe a thousand earth years from now is already set, and cannot and will not be changed. Of course, I am not discounting the basic ideas of the Uncertainty Principle, I don't think the future can be calculated to a high degree of accuracy, but just because something cannot be calculated by our intelligence due to its limitations or of the universe's does not mean that it is inherently incalculable, or that it has no value. I believe that all the decisions that I am going to take in my life are already set, and nothing can change them. I am not really "intelligent", I am not in charge of my decisions. I am typing this text because I was supposed to. If in the future I end up killing someone, it is because that is the only way the universe could progress.

What enables human beings to "take decisions"? Whatever it is that causes human beings to take decisions, all that is just a result of physical and chemical reactions taking place in the brain. And, given a particular state of a human being and a particular set of stimuli, the brain can and will take only one set of actions. Even if the original state can be reproduced and the experiment repeated a billion time, each time, the brain can and will take only that particular set of actions/decisions. The decisions which we seem to take are only because of physical and chemical reactions taking place in our brains, and they are not in our control. If, as you read this, you feel this is a whole load of crap, then it is because that is the only way your brain could have possibly felt, given the initial conditions and the stimuli.

I find such a thought truly scary. All our lives we are taught that we are in control of our lives, at least to a certain degree. We are taught that the success and failures in our lives can be determines by ourselves. But, the absence of free will means that we are not in control, we never have been in control and we never will be. We are just puppets in the hands of the universe. We cannot change our fates, our fates are already set and cannot be changed.

If there is no free will, and if the whole history of the universe has already been set, what is the whole point in life? What is the fun in living? What is the logic behind trying hard to be rich ten years later if probably in ten days we will be worm food and whatever we do we cannot change that fate?

Another aspect of a deterministic universe is what happens if time travel or future predictions are possible. What if, as seemingly "intelligent" and conscious entities such as human beings, we can gain knowledge of the future? What if, we are the Laplace's Demon? What if we gain knowledge of the whole fate of the universe? Will we as "intelligent" entities, able to change it?

Because of the obvious contradictions and difficulties such a condition might bring, I believe that it is an impossibility to "travel" into the future or even gain knowledge of the future. I think my brain is not capable of pursuing this matter any further than this.

As I stated earlier, the idea of a deterministic universe would be quite unsettling to many people. What is the alternative?

The alternative would be an easy view of the universe. Believe in God. Believe that we are truly intelligent; believe that all science is wrong. Believe that the decisions we take and the thought we think are all results of not physical or chemical reactions taking place in our brain, but rather due to some link with God that makes us truly free from the laws that this universe seems to possess. Believe that we are truly important, that God built the universe and the stars and the galaxies only to amuse and mystify us, that only we really matter. And believe that God interferes in the universe whenever he pleases, that he/she/it truly loves us carbon based bipeds and responds to what might be explained by stupid science as electric impulses in our brains or mechanical waves in the atmosphere. Such a view would be much more reassuring to us than the idea of a completely deterministic universe.

Interesting reads:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace's_demon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

Profile Picture

2006-07-27T18:28:00.000+05:30

Source: WikiMedia Commons

Much Better Solutions than Reservations

2006-05-21T13:53:00.000+05:30

The necessity of reservations comes from the argument that the so-called lower-caste students cannot compete with their so-called upper-caste counterparts in any equal barometer that is blind to their castes. Thus, reservations are necessary, at least according to pro-reservationists, because of the incompetence of the so-called lower-caste students as a whole, and because of the inability of the system to rectify this incompetence.

The only true and lasting solution to the problem of incompetence of lower-caste students is to simply make them competent. Their level of academic ability should be raised so that they can successfully compete with upper-caste students on equal terms. And that should be the goal of "affirmative actions" in India. By simply pushing incompetent people through the backdoors of centres of excellence will only make them more incompetent. The solution is, then to make them competent by means of good, free primary education. This should work, and work well. This, if implemented correctly, should be a perfect system. After all, if even after free, excellent, equal primary education, lower-caste students cannot compete with upper-caste students, then it must be accepted that they are, in fact, genetically inferior. Here are some steps that I have thought of that can improve the situation drastically, and work much better than the backdoor-entry formula that politicians seems to favor (can't blame them, after all, they are also largely uneducated. But such steps can also raise the quality of future politicians):-

First of all, the government has to realize that education is too important a subject to be left to the states. Education has to be brought into the central or at least the concurrent list by a constitutional amendment.

Second, the central government, which has huge resources at its disposal, has to allocate tens of billions of dollars every year for quality primary education. And the first aim should be to start excellent public schools. Start good schools by spending lavish amounts like Rs. 50 crores per school. Provide all schools with good hostel facilities, for all students. Of course, free, good-quality, food should be provided too. Make all such schools fully air-conditioned, with swimming pools, spas, multi-gyms, golf courses, whatever. Of course, I am exaggerating on the golf courses, but the thing is, spend a lot on the future generation. Focus on quality rather than quantity. Rather spend too much than too little.

And, all such schools should provide absolutely free education to all Indian students. All students should be provided with free uniforms and books every year. And the books should also be of top quality. Books may even be made laminated. Students may be given free laptops. Exaggerating again, but the point is, quality should be top-class. Everything should be free - hostel facilities, library facilities, everything. And hostel stay should actually be encouraged for students.

The teachers are also very important. It should be realized that teachers are in fact important people who do very important work. Teachers should be given high, even huge salaries, and people should be encouraged to become good teachers. The teaching profession should be raised in level to the standard of engineering and medicine by good salaries and other incentives. Teacher-student ratio should be very good, below 1:30.

The syllabus should also be revised; a new board may be set up with new ideas and fresh infrastructure. The syllabus should be revised frequently.

And of course, no reservation of any kind should exist in such schools. The admission procedure should be absolutely blind to any kind of social/economic factors.

The problem of course, is money. Actually, the only logical disadvantage of such a proposal is money. The steps suggested above may seem utopian, suitable only for an incredibly rich country, or for an incredibly low-populated country. But this is not so.

India's union budget for 2005-06, had an estimated outlay of Rs.5, 14,344 crores ($118 billion). Now, out of this, about 20 billion dollars were set aside for defense spending. For, war. Why can't the government set aside 20 billion dollars for primary education? Two thousand 10-million dollar schools can be set up with 20 billion dollars. And thus, 20 billion dollars can be used to provide high-quality primary education for 15-20 million students. Surely, this is more important than the building of nuclear weapons and missiles, right? Especially considering that such weapons may never actually be needed in an increasingly civil world.

And, I don't think there is any harm in some rapid increases in taxes for such a noble cause as primary education. So, increase the taxes. Just tell the people that the increase is meant for primary education of their children. Tax the corporates too. Just tell them these taxes will eventually help in increasing the standard of their future workforce in India. Also, tax private schools. Tax the fees and donations to private schools, something like 200% of all fees and donations. Make the snob schools much more expensive. This will encourage even rich students to study in public schools, thus decreasing the educational disparity even further. Increase the taxes to raise an additional 50 billion dollars every year, and spend all of that on primary education. Decrease the focus on higher-education for a while, and focus on primary education.

Also, education has to be made absolutely compulsory. The laws should be converted from words to action.

Why can't the central government do these things? I don't think there is any drawback to such steps except the funds. And, I don't think even that is a huge detriment.

More Reservations

2006-04-08T23:14:00.000+05:30

The more I think about it, the more convinced I get that the central government's move to increase quotas in India's elite educational institutions is an utterly stupid decision. Today's "The Big Fight" in NDTV focussed on the issue, and today's was one of the most passionate episodes I have seen of this excellent programme. Emotions and passion ran high, and there was more than one instance when I thought that the whole affair would turn out to be a badly managed fight on national television.

Anyway, the programme taught me some things I was not really aware of earlier about the whole caste scenario. The major revelation for me was that the percentage of "backward" people in India is much larger than I expected. Someone on the show claimed that more than 70% of India's population is made up of SC/ST, Dalits, OBCs and other backward communities. I guess since I was born a Christian in a middle class family, and because stayed in a modern city almost all my life, I have never really understood the real picture of India's social divisions. Also, I think social divisions like castes are stupid, I even think that institutionalised religions are stupid. So, I think even considering people as different on the basis of caste or race is silly. However, I now realise that no matter how much I and others like me try to ignore the harsh, illogical divisions and discriminations based on castes, they are a reality, and more importantly, it seems that most people in this country take such divisions seriously.

Several points were raised on the show in support of the quotas. One was that even though a vast majority of the people belonged to the so-called lower castes, almost all of the financial, political, social and other forms of power was concentrated in the hands of the so-called "brahministic" classes. Another was that the standards of quality and merit are almost always decided by the people in power, and by virtue of the eariler point, by the upper classes. Well, several points were raised, and I thought almost all of them were stupid, even the second point discussed above. So I do not plan to spend too much of my time or space here to discuss them. The first point given above is quite valid in my opinion, but I don't think the way to correct the situation is by reverse discrimination.

Several points were raised against the quotas too, and I found them much more in number, and infinitely more logical too. Most of them have already been discussed in my eariler post; but some were not, or were not expressed as strongly or correctly enough as they deserve.

One point is that some IIT students themselves, who were part of the audience, said that many of their fellow students, who got into their institutions on the basis of quotas rather than merit, found it quite difficult to compete with their much more capable peers, or even to just cope up with their studies. As a result, many such students have had to drop out of colleges, and many such students, even after graduation in such prestigious colleges, found it difficult to get good jobs. So, basically, what the IIT students who were part of the audience said was that those students who get into the top institutions on the basis of quotas would not be able to keep up with the standards of these institutions, and hence, the very idea to get them into these institutions would be self-defeating.

Another point raised was that in the future, with such huge percentages of reservation in institutions like the IITs and the IIMs, there might arise a situation such that the students who get on the basis of merit and thus are probably of more superior intellect and capability will look down upon their fellow students who got admissions because of quotas. This kind of discrimination would be reasonably justified too, because after all, the general-class students would have proved themselves to be intellectually and academically superior to their backward-class peers who got admissions only on the basis of reverse discriminatory quotas.

Also, these kind of quotas might just increase the ill-effects of the caste system. In the future, companies recruiting students might start asking their castes, simply because they would want to know whether the students really deserved what they achieved, or whether they just had a back-door entry to their colleges. Thus, even people who did not think too much about castes earlier might start thinking seriously about castes. The so-called backward-caste people might get stereotyped as truly backward because of the huge differences between the general-class meritorious students and the backward-class quota-entry students. Even those students who were potentially meritorious enough to get admission through general merit might get discriminated against, if they get entry through quota.

One thing I have always believed, and was reinforced by what I witnessed in today's "Big Fight", was that it is often the so called backward-caste people who are more caste-minded. I mean, all backward-caste people want the total abolishment of the caste systems, and want total equality, then why the hell do they keep talking caste? How can they expect to be treated equally if they keep demanding distinctions based on caste? Even when people want to forget about castes, the backward-caste people and their leaders talk up caste issues. The problem is that most backward-class people in India have a huge inferiority complex, and the inferiority complex of the backward-class people is much more than any superiority complex of the upper classes.

I think the best way to eradicate the caste system is by just ignoring it. Consider a so-called lower-class person going to a new place for work. How can the people know which class the person belongs to? But if the person got the work through some quota, then the people there will surely know. Thus, it is often the quotas and the reservations that help people to identify the so-called lower-caste people. I truly believe that if the whole system of reservations was not ever introduced in India, and if the market was more open and the economy more capitalist, then there would be much less caste-based barriers in India today. This might seem like a naive statement, but I tell this by my own personal experience. I was born in a Christian family, and hence, I have never had any direct experience with any caste issues. Having lived in a city most of my life, I have never looked at people or learned to look at people on the basis of their castes. I have never really understood or experienced caste from a personal point of view. The only reason why I have even heard of castes is because of the news about the resevations and quotas and lower-class movements and all such things which I think are plain silly. If there were no reservations and quotas, then I would not have ever heard of a thing such as caste. And in a rapidly urbanising country like India, I think this would be the case with most other young people as well. But, because of all the quotas and the reservations and the inferiority complex issues of the so-called lower classes, I too have learned about castes.

Now, to the particular issue at hand. I still say that in my opinion the reservations and quotas in elite institutions like the IITs and the IIMs is a bad idea. I have already expresses almost all the reasons for my judgment. Even acknowledging the reasons behind the government's decision (the official reasons, not the actual reason which is just vote-bank politics - I really don't think Manmohan Singh and his team are stupid enough to take such decisions for any other actual reason), I don't think quotas in elite institutions is the solution. There are much better solutions, and maybe I can post some of my humble views later. I don't have time now, hopefully I will find some time to express my views soon.

Reservations about Reservations

2006-04-07T23:32:00.000+05:30

The Indian government’s decision to introduce caste-based reservations in the country’s premier higher educational institutions like the IITs and the IIMs is disturbing. This decision, like almost all caste-based reservations, is based only on vote-bank politics. The decision will lower the standards of India’s best universities and colleges, at a time when they are beginning to be hailed as among the best in the world.

The arguments in favor of reservations are as plenty as they are old-fashioned. Reservations were introduced by the independent Indian nation in several areas, from education to jobs to the government itself, as a temporary means of elevating the status of the backward classes, and were predominantly caste-based. This was quite logical, considering that caste was a very important factor in society then. However, the reservations have continued, and have been increased and diversified several times. And the continued use of reservations has been justified on the grounds that the condition of the backward castes is still not satisfactory. If this is the case, then this should be an argument against reservations, not for it, because this just proves that continued and increased reservations have not really met their goals.

The situation in the 21st century India is vastly different from the British India. The whole world has changed, and in the new era of globalization, economic factors have proved to be more important than social factors. In the modern world, people are not as often judged or discriminated against on the grounds of caste or religion, the major basis has become money. Poor upper caste people are discriminated much more than rich lower caste people. But still, governments surprisingly base their policies on outdated concepts of caste-based politics. Vote-bank politics is based on the assumption that for such policies, the people favourably affected by such decisions are very likely to applaud that decision and even potentially become permanent supporters of the government, whereas the people negatively affected by such policies (who usually constitute the whole of the remaining population) are unlikely to remember such policies and oppose the government for too long. Taking the example of the decision in question, the so-called backward caste people will probably be very happy with the UPA government’s decision and might become the UPA’s and the Congress’s permanent vote-banks, while the rest of the population, though annoyed by the government’s decision now, are unlikely to remember or consider this as a huge issue by the time of the next elections.

And this very nature of vote-bank politics is a big problem in itself. We have witnessed several government decisions to increase reservation quotas in various fields. But how often are these quotas reduced? The reduction of quotas is tricky, because the backward castes, having been so royally treated by hypocritical political parties, will see such a move as anti-backward-caste and the opposition parties, eager to make their own advances in the backward-caste vote banks, will be quick to brand the government as an oppressor of the backward castes. And, the media and the people might also oppose such a decision, in support of the poor, oppressed backward caste people. So, such backward-caste and minority appeasement is almost always a one-way affair.

The main reason why this particular move by the central government stands out is because this decision affects some of India’s top institutions, the IITs and the IIMs. Some reports suggest that as much as almost half of the seats in some institutions will be reserved, which means that a large portion of the seats in these premier institutions will be distributed based on factors other than merit. The IITs and the IIMs are world-class institutions, and many are starting to consider them in the same league as the best colleges and B-schools in the US and the UK. The logic behind the introduction of reservations in these institutions is that by ensuring that a large portion of students in these institutions are from the backward classes, at least some students from the backward castes will have a greater chance of being among the most respected professionals in India, even in the whole world. But what this move also means is that the chances of the majority of IIM and IIT aspirants to get into these institutions have been decreased greatly for no fault of theirs. The introduction of quotas have not been accompanied by an increase in the student intake, and hence, most of the truly brilliant students who have been seriously preparing for the CAT and the JEE and other exams would rightly feel disappointed.

Another, perhaps more serious issue is that by the government’s move, the overall quality of the student body in these institutions is bound to take a hit. Of course, there will be minimum qualifications for even backward-caste students, but the fact remains that a majority of the students who eventually get into the institutions because of reservations would not have been successful without the reservations. Thus, less meritorious students will bag seats that should have gone to more deserving students. This will seriously lower the standard of the student body.

The companies that hire students from these institutes and pay them huge salaries do so not just because they trust the quality of training in these institutions, but also because of the extremely tough and demanding nature of the admission procedures. Thus, a foreign MNC coming to some IIM for campus recruitment can be assured that the IIM itself has made sure that the students there are of the highest quality. The IIMs and the IITs make sure that their students are extremely good even before they attend a single class in these institutions. And the companies those go for campus recruitment drives in these campuses and even recruit these students later can be assured of that superior quality. But now, with this move by the government, this assurance of quality has been diluted, and recruiters will certainly take note of this fact. The situation now is that people the world over thinks that the IIM and IIT graduates are all world class professionals. The situation five years later could be very different. Companies and people might very rightly consider IIT and IIM graduates as some really good, but some undeserving. It won’t be a big surprise if a trend emerges such that recruiters and people in general starts discriminating between IIM and IIT graduates who got into their institutions because of merit, and those who got admission only because they were lucky to be born in some particular caste. Thus, caste-based discriminations might just increase, even among educated people, because of these quotas.

Because of the general decrease in the quality of the student body, the prestige of being an IIT or IIM graduate might disappear too, with the quality. Five years from now, it might not be considered so great to be an IIT or IIM graduate. Not just the quality, but the prestige of these institutions will deteriorate.

Yet another issue is that these reservations most probably will not help the people who need them. Poor people, even if they are in the backward castes, are unlikely to get any benefit. They still will not be able to attend good expensive coaching classes, or get good jobs for work experience, and the IITs and the IIMs will still be out of their wildest dreams. The only people who get any benefits from the quotas will be rich and the middle class backward-caste students, and these are the sort of people who don’t really need these quotas anyway. It is unrealistic to expect that rich backward caste students will get good education, bag good jobs with huge salaries and then do selfless social work to improve the conditions of their backward-class brethren. The rich will just get richer, the poor and the oppressed will remain poor and oppressed, and the really deserving students will unfairly lose out on opportunities.

Reservations and quotas for the so-called backward castes have always been a major issue in Indian politics. In some cases, reservations have helped in reducing the gulf between the upper and lower classes. However, reservations have proved to be ineffective and at times counter-productive in a majority of the cases; and their continued existence is itself a proof of their failure. Reservations, in many cases, do not help the truly backward people, and also discriminate against others for no fault of theirs. But the vote-bank policies of governments have ensured that reservations are considered a necessity for social justice. The move by the UPA government to introduce quotas in elite educational institutions is a very disappointing and visionless move, one that is backed only by political motives. This move will undoubtedly adversely affect the prestige and quality of these institutions, as well as hurt the prospects of many deserving students, whose dreams will be shattered for no fault of theirs.

Accidents, Interpretations, Riots, and Blood

2006-03-05T18:26:00.000+05:30

A few days ago, the one-man committee appointed by the Indian Railway ministry, consisting of retired Supreme Court judge U C Banerjee, submitted its final report. The main finding of the report was declared last year in the interim report, and the final report contained what the committee considered as strong proof to support its findings.

In short, the committee claims in its findings that fire in the coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra on February 27, 2002 was the result of an accident. This fire killed 59 people, was believed to be an act of pre-calculated and well-planned arson, and was the major reason for the huge riots that followed in Gujarat that resulted in the death of thousands of people, the majority of them Muslims.

The finding that the fire was accidental could have huge repercussions. The Gujarat government and the state police have thus far treated and investigated and treated the fire as the result of a pre-planned conspiracy; and hundreds of people are undergoing trial for the whole thing. If the finding of the Banerjee committee is found true, then that means that these people are innocent. What will be the fate of these people? The Gujarat government and the police will have a lot of questions to answer, about all the people they oppressed, about all the evidence they fabricated, about all the witnesses they created. The world would then understand that the whole case and all the evidence was always been a big witch-hunt.

The findings will have other consequences too. The previously almost indisputable belief that the fire was the result of a cruel conspiracy was the cornerstone of the almost genocidal riots that followed the fire. Immediately after the Godhra incident, the government and the police and everybody concerned led people to believe that it was the result of a conspiracy. All the muslims in Gujarat, and probably the rest of India, were suddenly collectively viewed as cold-blooded killers by the ruling communal maniacs and their associates, and carnage followed. One of the worst communal riots in Indian history, with thousands of casualties, has been described as attempted genocide by many, and I wholly agree to this view. The role of the Gujarat government and the police and the whole state government machinery in the riots is well known, and I will not go into that. But, just the idea that all these riots, in which thousands of muslims were slaughtered and raped and looted and humiliated, were all for absolutely no reason, is bound not only to enrage the average human being, but also to embarrass and hurt the perpretators of all the crimes.

It's no surprise that the BJP, the VHP, and all the other communal extremists who led the genocidal riots denounced the committee and dismissed its findings almost as soon as the report was submitted. Arun Jaitely, one of the few intelligent and knowledgeable people in the BJP, gave seemingly honest and passionate interviews to a few news channels explaining his party's stand on the whole issue, giving several points to counter the claims of the Banerjee committee. It is interesting that a major political party, the second largest political party in India and the main constituent of the former ruling alliance, dismissed an official committee consisting of a former Supreme Court judge with utter contempt, without even taking time to try and understand the points raised by the committee. But, really the BJP and the Sangh Parivar had no other choice. It was not just a matter of telling the people of this country why they killed thousands of muslims, but also they had to tell themselves that they did all that for some reason, however hollow that might be.

Optical Ideas

2006-03-05T00:48:00.000+05:30

Secondary memory devices are a major bottleneck in any computer system. And in the case of removable media, the situation is even worse. Optical media are widely used world over for data storage and distribution. DVDs are making way for next generation media types like the Blu-Ray and the HD-DVD, and even though Bill Gates says that optical media may not be needed for too long, even newer technologies are emerging. Optical media will probably continue to be widely used for several decades in the future.

A major issue of optical drives and media is the speed of data access and burning. Usually, a single stationary laser is used to read and write data from a disc, and the disc is rotated at high speeds. The limitation of data transfer then becomes the maximum speed at which a disc can be rotated safely. The maximum speeds now are about 16x for DVDs and 52x for CDs. As newer technologies like Blu-Ray emerges, this speed becomes a real bottleneck for a variety of systems, like HD players and drives, which need a lot of data per unit time.

Now, I really wonder why newer technologies are not really emerging regarding the speeds of optical drives and media. Sure, some newer technologies are emerging, but none of these really address the core issue of data speeds. I know absolutely nothing about this whole field, but some of my stupid amateur suggestions:-

1. Why not use multiple laser beams for read/write operations? Why use a single laser when hundreds or thousands of small stationary or mobile lasers can be used? Really, new details about nanotechnology and photonics emerge every day, so multiple lasers cannot be too difficult, can they?

2. Rotating the disc has its limitations. So, why not use high-speed movable/turnable laser and mirror combinations together with rotating discs?

As I said, I am not even close to being an expert in this field, so if any experts happen to read this post, please enlighten me through your comments.

Different religions, different yardsticks.

2006-02-23T22:13:00.000+05:30

The sentencing of David Irving to three years in prison in Austria has really come at a very odd time for Europe. In the past few weeks, many parts of the world have witnessed extremely negative reactions to the publishing of certain cartoons in a Danish newspaper that were deemed as offensive by the Muslim community. Perhaps even more provocative than the cartoons were the seemingly insensitive reactions from people who matter in Europe, including the Prime Minister of Denmark. Many people demanded an official apology from the Danish government, and probably such an apology would have calmed down things a lot. However, the Danish PM said that the government had no intention of doing so, and said that freedom of speech and expression was a fundamental right that he could not be apologetic for.

The situation gradually worsened. There were demonstrations and protests, often violent, against Denmark in almost all parts of the world. And Europe still upheld their pride in their freedom of speech and expression. The cartoons, first published in the Danish newspaper 'Jyllands-Posten', were republished by many newspapers across Europe as an expression of solidarity of the Danish newspaper. And, countries across Europe continued their inaction, saying that everyone has the right of speech and expression. Even as the protests all around the world became more and more violent and bloodier, Europe maintained their protection of freedom of speech and expression.

It is during this time that British historian David Irving has been sentenced to three years in prison by a court in Austria. His crime? He apparently is a Holocaust denier. The charges related to speeches and interviews Irving gave during a 1989 visit to Austria in which he denied there were gas chambers in Auschwitz, and that Hitler had extended a 'protective hand' to the Jews. He branded testimony of holocaust survivors 'absurd' and claimed that deaths in concentration camps were due to disease. So, basically, a person was sentenced to a prison term in Austria, for expressing his opinions on a particular subject, at the same time that Europe is claiming that the freedom of speech and expression is ultimate and infallible in their countries.

Why is this distinction? Why is the Holocaust considered so sacredly undeniable in Europe? Why are holocaust deniers persecuted, and in many cases, prosecuted in Europe, when actually what they do is only express themselves? Why are people who insult or offend religions other than Jewism, or perhaps Christianity, so strongly protected by the 'freedom of speech and expression'?

P.S.: Parts in italics are directly copied from other sources.

India's retail FDI moves

2006-01-29T21:31:00.000+05:30

India's union government is apparently opening up FDI in the retail sector. According to some reports I have read, the government will allow upto 51% of FDI in the retail sector, "by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) route in single brand stores".

As expected, there have been strong reactions from all across the political spectrum, with both the extreme right and the left publicly opposing the move. Now, the BJP has denounced the move, and said that "this step would make the country economically subservient to foreigners". I think this is just a political stand that the BJP has taken, I am sure that the BJP, had they been in power, would have done the same thing sooner or later, and glorified it as another instance of 'India Shining'. The left parties have also expectedly and understandingly expressed their strong disapproval; but I think they will just call for some demonstrations or a few strikes as usual and later fall in line with the government. So, what all this means is that people in India will soon be able to buy products from world-class international brands like Nike and Sony from their own stores.

I think most rich, or middle class, or urban people will be very happy with this move. And with good reason too. The FDI, as stated earlier, will get big brands to open their own stores in India, and will provide an additional incentive to the global players to tap into the vastly growing Indian market. With world-class products from big MNCs and foreign manufacturers available at affordable rates, the people, especially the urban rich, will find that they no longer need to import goods if they want to buy expensive good-quality things. The increased influx of high-quality products will encourage local players to ensure that they also produce good quality goods, in order to remain competitive with the big foreign guns. All this gives more choice to the Indian consumer; and with all the competition, the prices are likely to take deep plunges too. India's increasing western, global look will get a shot in the arm, and India's stores will be as rich in quality as Dubai's or Singapore's. Also, the masses can also look forward to the increased employment opportunities because of the investment.

While all this is all glossy and attractive, I also think that the left is also (slightly) justified in voicing their reservations. While competition is almost always good, it may not always be very healthy for all the players. If, for example, PepsiCo decides to open a hundred Pizza Hut outlets in Mumbai, and other chains like KFC and McDonalds follow suit, the local dhaba-wala may not find the competition healthy. If Wal-Mart opens huge malls in Indian cities using their large resources, even Reliance may find it tough to compete with them. Also, Wal-Mart is apparently famous for opening huge stores in new territories, and offering their products at artificially low prices till the unbalanced competition drives all the local players out of business; and then start selling their products at normal prices. If such practices start to be followed in India (even by Indian groups like Reliance, for example), then this will surely mean the end of the small retailer. If Burger King started offering their burgers at artifically rock-bottom prices, then the demand for samosas and bhel-puris will certainly hit a rock bottom too. And the local dhaba-wala will be bankrupt.

As an urban middle class Indian citizen, I am excited with the government's decision to open up the FDI in retail. I can already see myself go to a real Nike store and get good sports shoes, or go to a KFC outlet and buy myself a good snack. However, as a concerned citizen, I am also a bit wary about all the rich MNCs bursting with all their resources and money into a field that is primarily dominated by the small scale retailer. I am worried about the average shopkeeper in India, who might find a huge Wal-Mart mall next to his modest shop, selling products with better quality and artifically lower prices than his.

I support the government's FDI move. I know that this will probably make my lifestyle better. But I also hope that the government knows exactly what it is doing, and will take necessary steps to protect the interests of the local retailer while encouraging stiff but fair competition.

Note: Some material (news items given in double quotes) is direct Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V from reputed news websites.

Untrue Axioms & Forbidden Reflections

2005-12-09T23:50:00.000+05:30

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has voiced something I have thought of many times. And he has been almost universally damned for it by the 'civilized' world.

Part of what he said was an expression of scepticism about the Holocaust; and the other part is what I would like this post to focus on. What he said was:-
"Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail. Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: 'Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?' If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe - like in Germany, Austria or other countries - to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe and we will support it."

I believe that the second part of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement is perfectly logical. The creation of Israel was directly and clearly linked to the so-called Holocaust, and in my opinion the Holocaust was even the major reason for Israel's creation. I think that the collective outrage of the world, especially of the second world war victor nations, at reports of Nazi persecution of Jews led to a widespread consensus that a nation must be created exculsively for the unfortunate community. Of course, Zionism had arose much before Hitler, and Palestine was a very attractive choice for the extremely super-noble white man, for the rehabilitation of a broken, wounded people. After all, Palestine was just a colony, a land that was inhabited largely by much 'lesser people', Muslims, no less. No westerner would lose his land or prestige by donating some foreign land inhabited by inferior lesser mortals. And, the Jews wouldn't be too close to America or Europe either, to make the westerners uncomfortable with their own guilt: the guilt of Germans of actually electing Hitler to power there (well, maybe not with a thumping absolute majority, but which victory is absolute?), the guilt of the Americans and the British of looking the other way when Hitler was in the process of building the most effectively barbaric empire on earth, the guilt of all the westerners of their own history of discrimination against the Jewish people. A nation of Jews far away in Asia in the desert carved out of western colonies was the easiest way for Europe and America to wash their hands off their sins. And thus, Israel was born.

But that very incident, that of the creation of Israel, is in my opinion the greatest injustice in modern history of the world; an injustice greater than the worst version of the Holocaust itself. A nation of people was suddenly rendered homeless, were made aliens in their own land, driven away from their homes. Why? Because of the sins of the white man.

The argument that the very movement of Zionism was itself reason itself for the creation of Israel implies a far greater injustice. Religious nationalism has been prevalent in all parts of the world since the rise of religion itself. Members of different religions even today claim rights in different parts of the world on the basis of their true or false beliefs, or their ancestry, or culture. Zionism by itself would never be strong enough to actually facilitate the creation of a communal state without the Holocaust. Israel would not have happened without Hitler.

And by the creation of Israel, the white man could hope for redemption. He could look at himself in the mirror and still smile. He could be relieved that he has paid for his sins.

But the white man never did pay for his sins. Instead, he made the poor Arabs pay for the white man's sins. And he allowed, facilitated and encouraged the Zionists to make the Palestinians pay for his sins. And Israel was born, carved out in the desert and on the heart of another nation, the nation which lived, breathed and dreamed in the same land.

And the Palestinians have not finished the payment for the white man's sins. They still pay. Every child who is born in that land starts paying the moment he or she is born. Every suicide bomber who willingly dies for a cause greater than himself/herself continues to pay till his/her death.

What is so wrong in Ahmadinejad's comments? What is so blasphemous about what he has said?

Why can't Israel be created in Europe? Why can't the white man finally start paying for his own sins? Why can't the same Germans who elected Hitler to power grant them some land in their own country?

Maybe some mountains cannot be moved. But then, Ahmadinejad's views raise some very important issues, about history.

What about an open debate on why Israel couldn't be created in Europe? Why didn't the white man pay for his sins? Why wasn't Germany, which was subjected to such humiliating treatment after the first world war, made to concede land for an Israeli nation? Or, why didn't Germans themselves give their land for an Israeli state? Or why couldn't America, the self-proclaimed champion of human rights and the state with the divine right, duty and responsibility to rule and guide the world give land for an Israeli state within their own territory?

Ahmadinejad's opinions raise some important issues. And all these issues are very uncomfortable for the western world. Even an open-minded discussion on these issues would make the western nations very uncomfortable. They would struggle to find answers to explain their decisions, and the world's history that they sculpted.

And so, Ahmadinejad's comments were quickly, clinically and universally blasted and damned as preposterous, illogical and insane. All western countries, and Israel iself, treated his comments with utmost contempt and outrage. These reactions were not difficult to express and explain. Anything anti-Israel or anti-Zionist is branded in the modern world as anti-Semitic. And anything anti-Semitic is considered in the modern world as the greatest sin, and the most outrageous mistake, an absolute blasphemy. And Ahmadinejad's image in the so-called civilized world is that of a raving religious zealot and of a lunatic. And his opinions about Israel are almost as well-known as George Bush's on Osama Bin Laden. So an absolute rejection of Ahmadinejad's statements was very appropriately easy and simple for the 'civilized' world.

In reality, Ahmadinejad's comments raise some points that the whole world will do well to really think about. But the world will not. Because the modern world is largely the white man's world. And the white man never faces his sins.

Celeb Mania

2005-12-07T00:00:00.000+05:30

Today I watched an interesting news item on NDTV. It was about a small kid, suffering from what I think NDTV said was an incurable form on cancer, who was praying diligently for speedy recovery of not himself, but superstar actor Amitabh Bachchan, who is currently in a hospital because of some minor ailment. In the news clip, the kid, who is probably 8-10 years old, says that he was not very sad about his own disease, but was very worried about the superstar's health. And the best part? NDTV's news item was presented in such a way that it seemed that they were strongly supportive of the child's superstar-worship. Specifically, they said that while many people were praying for Bachchan's recovery, this child was setting an example for people by ignoring his own condition and praying for his idol's health; or something to this effect.

While the exact wordings in the news report is quite hazy to me now, what really struck me was that the NDTV reporter actually said that the child was setting an 'example' to others.

Now, this leads me to wonder: exactly what example is this child setting? And this 'example' whatever it is, is it really such an admirable trait in a human being that NDTV must praise it?

The 'example', as NDTV interprets it, can be thought of in different ways. It can, for example, be considered as the child's great mentality in forgetting his own grave condition and caring for another person in a much better health condition. In such a case, this child does indeed set a great example, and it is quite right for NDTV to highlight such an incident.

However, I don't think the child's prayer for Amitabh Bachchan, NDTV's portrayal of the whole story has anything to do with the great altruism of a small kid. The kid did not pray and is not praying for Bachchan because he is concerned about another mortal's health and well-being; he is concerned about Bachchan only because he is, well, Amitabh Bachchan. The prayer was nothing like "God, I know I am suffering, but I am more concerned about this other fine human being I know, so please save him". It was more like "God, this is the one and only Amitabh Bachchan, the Big B, the God on earth, please save him".

And who is this Amitabh Bachchan? An actor, just an actor. Because of his profession, he is a superstar, a celebrity, and a demigod to his fans who would number close to a billion. But really, HE IS JUST AN ACTOR. It is only because of immaturity of his fans that he is a demigod. He just acts out his roles and help make stories appear more realistic, he does not even make them. Just like Tom Cruise, or Jackie Chan, or Elvis Presley, or Michael Jackson, or Shah Rukh Khan, he is just another useless celebrity. Of course, like almost all celebrities, he may have gone to some charity functions, inaugurated some cancer wards, sang a song for some terminally ill child, donated a generous amount for an earthquake relief fund and announced that in all the newspapers, etc. etc., but, really, has he really done anything important for the world or anyone; more than just about any normal person? Amitabh Bachchan is just an actor. He is no Jesus Christ, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King, or even Osama Bin Laden.

Well, I certainly don't think that the Big B is a great enough person for all the people in the world to forget all their troubles and worry about him. And I don't think that he is a great enough person for a possibly terminally ill child to forget about his own disease and worry about Bachchan's health. And I definitely do not think that Bachchan is a great enough person for NDTV to praise a small unwell kid's overtly uninhibited hero-worship, and to proclaim it as a great 'example' for others to follow.

In case what I have posted here causes great outrage to any Big B fans, I would like to state here explicitly that I am a fan of Amitabh Bachchan's too. I would also like to point out that if Amitabh Bachchan's illness caused the particular child to worry less about his own condition and take his mind of his illness, I think that is quite nice. This post was just meant as a comment on NDTV's interpretation of a child's hero-worship, and their proclamation of the child's acts as an 'example' to others.

Politics without politics

2005-08-23T23:32:00.000+05:30

Finally, this year’s first strike was held in our college today. Our college and even the whole CUSAT main campus have always been quite infamous for their rather over-active student politics. And, the situation does not look like it will change any time soon.

I have always felt that the amount of politics in a university can in a way be taken as a measure of intelligence and development of its students.

Universities are centres of learning, places where people open their minds to the world around them. Universities are centres of thought, words and action. It is only natural that students in a university absorb and analyse carefully things happening around the world, and form their own opinions about them. And, such students often communicate with one another to form groups and organisations, to observe and analyse and act about subjects of common interest. Student politics can be considered as a direct result of such phenomena, and student politics and organisations can rightly be taken as very positive developments.

Many great developments have had their origins in great centres of learning. Many unforgettable movements and revolutions have grown in great universities. Some have been successful and have played a role in forging the world that exists today; some have been unsuccessful and have been forgotten by most people. Lenin was a revolutionist at his university (he was expelled from Kazan' University for participating in a student demonstration), and even in his school. Universities like the North Carolina A&T University were centres of public awakening in the USA during the civil rights movements of African-Americans. Famous anti-Vietnam-war protests were held in Ohio’s Kent State University and University of Michigan. University students played a very important role in the Cuban revolution. The University of Dhaka was an important centre of the political movement that led to the independence of Bangladesh. Beijing University has always been a centre of pro-democratic student movements and demonstrations in China.

It is not just the students at universities that get involved in politics. The Chinese Communist Party was formed on the initiative by two professors in the Beijing University.

However, what I see in my university and college is not intelligent politics or organisations. From the time I have joined SOE, there have been many strikes. And, the entire political activities of CUSAT students almost seem to end with strikes. It is as if they don’t know any other more tolerant or useful or intelligent means of protest. There have been very few peaceful demonstrations. Of course, there have been a few demonstrations which ended in stone-throwing and police action and lathi-charge; which only resulted in strikes subsequently. I have not yet seen a single attractive demonstration by CUSAT students, a protest that actually helps in increasing the public awareness about what they are protesting for. Almost all their political action is confined to forced strikes, which really seem to be a very undemocratic way of political movement (of course, the mainstream political parties are no better; they lead the way with their hartals and bandhs).

And, it is not just the means of protest that I don’t agree with. It is also the issues that they protest about. Actually, I don’t think that the student politicians ever have any real issues to protest about. Among all the strikes (which would easily number dozens) that have taken place in our college since I joined there, according to me just 2 have been based on any real issues. All the others have been for absolutely stupid reasons, like students of one party manhandling those of another party, and the latter party calling for the strike on the next day. Clashes between students of different political (if they can be called that) organisations are the single most important and frequent reason quoted for the calling of strikes. I don’t think such things should be the reasons for such undemocratic and forced means of protests. Real politics play very little role in the politics in CUSAT. I think it would be an insult to all great politicians who have walked the earth to call the student organisations in our university political organisations. I don’t think they understand what politics means, or should mean. They should probably be called Irresponsible Apolitical Students Organisations, or Students’ Violence Organisations, or something like that.

I have great respect for student politics in general. I appreciate and respect the great role student organisations and politics have played in shaping our world. But, I have very little respect for student ‘politics’ and organisations in my college and CUSAT.

Non-existent Technology

2005-08-20T12:00:00.000+05:30

I am proud of my status as a student in CUSAT, which is one of India's best science and technology universities, and the only one of its kind in the state of Kerala. But it is quite amazing how a technology university that prepares its students for the 21st century, still manages itself in a very archaic way.

The School Of Engineering is one of the most important and prominent divisions of the university, being the university's premier centre for undergraduate engineering courses. I think the SOE is overall a very good engineering college according to Indian standards. However, a visit to the main SOE office will show the short-sightedness of CUSAT in managing their institutions. The office looks very much like a good office of ten years before. Meaning, large ledgers, dusty thick files, etc. In short, a very unsophisticated picture. Computerisation is minimum, almost non-existent.

All this does not in any way help anyone. Least of all the students. Today was the last date for the payment of S3 examination fees. Students are supposed to pay the fees at a branch of the State Bank of Travancore (SBT) inside the university region. This SBT branch is very small, and usually reserves a single counter for the fees of CUSAT students. I went to the branch on Tuesday and tried to pay the fees, but had to turn back because of the huge queue. And I again went on Wednesday, this time during a free period at around 10:20 AM, expecting things to go smoothly because of the time. And it would be an understatement to say that things did not go as smoothly as I expected.

The queue was huge, extending from one end of the bank to the other, and bending at the end to form a sort of a U-shaped queue. I took my place in the queue, and I had hardly moved a couple of steps forward when about a dozen other students took their place behind me. Then, somebody behind me realised that the bank had decided to open another counter for the students, which incidentally was directly behind us. And, quickly a lot of people realised this, and by the time I had done an about-turn to take my place in the new queue, half of the students in the other queue had already pushed their way into this new queue. And, some wise guys with either huge sizes (like Mahesh) or good connections simply cut the queue and moved to the front of the queue. After all this pandemonium, a bank employee decided to play Good Samaritan and opened a new counter to the left of the middle of the original queues, and this was apparently a counter designed to serve better behaved people than a hundred frustrated, irate college students. This counter had just a simply glass pane to seperate the bank employee from the client (whereas the other counters had steel bars as reinforcement). The moment the opening of the counter was announced, all hell broke loose, and students started fighting with one another to get their fees paid at the new counter. I decided to stay put at my original postition, which turned out to be a good thing. The chaos that followed was too much for the glass pane at the counter, which broke cleanly and caused the previous Good Samaritan to announce that the counter was closed again. And all the students who were earlier fighting with one another, started fighting with people like me in the other queues. And, I, not wanting to be a spoilsport, let my classmates Joseph and Krishna to stand in front of me, and even praised the skill that Joseph exhibited in infiltrating the crowd, though vainly, that was in front of the 3rd counter. And, I then sensed another friend Rony behind me trying to sneak through the queue to in front me. I then decided that it was enough friendship for a day and stuck a hand out to the wall along which Rony was trying to sneak ahead.

And, after a long time, I got my chance, and the moment the guy in front of me, Joseph, paid his fees and got back his receipt, the cashier realised that he had finished a page in his ledger (no computers here either) and spent more than a couple of minutes in checking that page and numbering the next page (and lots of other things too, which I did not really understand). And, when I finally paid my fees and got out of the bank, the time was 12:25 PM. I had just wasted 2 valuable hours of my life to pay the fees of an examination 3 months away.

And today, I went with the receipt to the SOE office, and collected a copy of the examination application form, completed it, and submitted it.

Now, call me idealistic, but I don't think this is the right way to do things. I don't think it is necessary for the university and the college to put students through all this hardship. And, this is supposed to be a science and technology university. Why can't they actually put into practice some of the technology that they claim they teach?

Why can't the university create a system by which all students can pay their fees through the internet? Why can't students apply for their exams online?

These measures should be very simple to implement for a university of the caliber of CUSAT. Or, at least, why can't they at least fully computerise their offices and get rid to the stupid dusty ledgers and files?

I think it is inexcusable for a university to claim that they aim to produce engineers and scientists and professionals for the 21st century, and still manage themselves in a very primitive and archaic way. CUSAT is doing just that.

Before I sign off, I would like to clarify one thing: I love my university. I love my college. I love lots of things about my college and my university. I love the CUSAT Computer Centre. I love the CUSAT central library, which is by far the largest and the best I have seen. I love the New Laboratory Block. I love the greenery in and around the university, which gives it a very natural and pleasing ambience. I am proud of being a student of SOE, in CUSAT main campus. But, neverthless, I think it is time for CUSAT authorities to modernise their infrastructure. No university can produce modern people without being modern themselves. IIT status or not, CUSAT needs to live up to its name and reputation.

Initiation

2005-08-13T00:50:00.000+05:30

The first entry in this blog.....

This is also my first blog entry.

I hope to express my views on various subjects through this blog.

Some of my views will be of a very general nature, I will try to present my ideas about general subjects as a whole.

Some posts might directly concern long-term or short-term incidents and happenings in my life, and how I analyze them.

I hope to have a very fruitful relationship with this blog..... And through it with all who consider it worth spending their time on.....