lifeblog
Interesting encounters and experiences...... facts and horror....
Wednesday, August 06, 2014
Ghosts flights and legends....
Saturday, January 05, 2013
Status of Women in our Society....
Do we REALLY want to change things to improve the safety of women in our society? If so then get rid of the basic social 'customs' which demean the women. Get rid of such 'festivals' (which have absolutely no religious origins) such as KARVA CHAUTH which basically treats women inferior..... Make sure you shout down people making comments such as "ladies hain, unkey liye ye kaam theek nahi", or "ladies should not do...." etc etc etc.It is ingrained in our society and just improving and implementing laws (which is ALSO very important) will not be enough.
BASIC SOCIAL REVOLUTION is required. If we do not have the balls to do all this then we just need to SHUT UP and go back to our hidey holes.....
Back in anger......
India is a democracy, where people have the right to protest injustice. Government has no right to block such protests as long as they are peaceful. Being a democracy is India's last claim to the civilized world..... we just cannot afford to lose that!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Moon Vehicle
But that is not the reason I am writing this blog. I just had a simple query.... while watching the news-clip showing the jubilation in the control-room of Chandrayaan-I right after lift-off, was I the only one who noticed that ALL the people in the room looked like the Druid Getafix (or Dumbledore for the new-gen)??? Do they really think the Indian space "set-up" can become a full-blown space "industry" if they are planning to keep the young scientists out of the loop? Or have they found the "spring of life"?
Please don't get me wrong. These "druids" have done great magic for India and I, like millions of others, respect them greatly for that. But many observations liken them to NASA..... the combination of the great minds of the old NASA as well as the rigidness of the new NASA. The whole point about ISRO is that it is different from NASA and not JUST in being much more economical. We are not and SHOULD NOT try to be the China of the space industry (moreso since even China is doing really well in that respect)!!
I really hope this mission goes well and that at the same time the younger generation of scientists get to play a role in it.......
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Pesticides are good for our health.....
And what happened to their claims that there were NO pesticides in their drinks when the NGO found same results last year? Only when this NGO repeated its tests did these multinationals change their tune. And look at the way they are carrying on about FDI to India being affected if any legal action was taken against them. Dear CC and PCO, FYI not all FDI is made by people hell-bent on getting the most out of India by selling inferior quality products and services.
Interesting reader comment on FT
“How independence for India affected history of Mideast”
From Mr Guy Wroble Denver, co 80220, US
Sir, Stanley M. Spitzer (“To get to the truth you must go back to November 1947”, Letters August 8) that November 27, 1947 was the crucial date in the origin of the current problems in the Middle East. On that date the United Nations passed a partition plan for Palestine that was rejected by the Arab League. Unfortunately, he misses the mark by two-and-a-half months.
The telling date is actually August 15, 1947 – the date India became independent. This marked the beginning of the end of the era of European colonisation.
The notion that the Arab League could have sanctioned the establishment of a European/Jewish colony in Palestine so soon after a fifth of humanity had been set free from imperial rule is a remarkable misreading of history.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Media tyranny
1 a : an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution b : a usurper of sovereignty
2 a : a ruler who exercises absolute power oppressively or brutally b : one resembling an oppressive ruler in the harsh use of authority or power
NOW you must be wondering why we don't use this word more often these days! In the last few years the tyranny has been absolute in some countries (North Korea, Turkmenistan, China), benevolent in some and hidden in the rest......
But tyranny is not always in a political form in the so-called democracies of the world. There can be regional tyranny (US, Israel, Australia, North Korea), bureaucratic tyranny (found in most commonwealth countries), media tyranny (BBC, FOX), tax tyranny (eg. in Scandinavian countries) and, ofcourse, tyranny of terror...... (BTW tyranny and terror have different etymologies)
Media tyranny??? A few days back there was an article on the BBC website 'warning' bloggers that BBC reads all comments written about it in cyberspace...... Get the idea? The media giant is a far cry from what it used to be a couple of decades back, steadily moving away from plain honest reporting to something of putting its opinions in its articles such that it sounds like a fact. Take for example an article from today. The reporter is comparing China and India and also mentions that he has ".......spent the last eight years living in Beijing, and only four days in Delhi, so comparisons are difficult....." But that doesn't stop him from completely blasting everything he sees in India. First he stays at some shitty hotel in Delhi and then spends a few paragraphs writing about it...... serves him right. Any idiot would live in a good hotel if going to a new country if he/she has the money (And PLEASE don't say that he didn't have much dough!)........ What did he expect? Then he talks about the airport....... What has he really compared? Streets of two major cities, airports? I am sure this reporter would fall in love with Pyongyang if his reporting skills are soooo limited. Talk about objective journalism. Mark Tully was a BBC reporter, he remained objective until he fell in love with India. I wouldn't call him objective anymore (wrt India), but then he isn't with BBC anymore!
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Blocked blogs and pants
Hey guys, guys, guys (which includes gals),
Hold your horses….. I know banning websites makes the Indian government look like the Chinese/North Korean/US/Saudi Arabian (etc) ones. But other than that fact we need to analyse what’s going on first before we start filing PILs (by the tons) against them.
I finally got a list of some of the banned websites from BBC (and NO, they haven’t banned the entire blogspot.com):
www.hinduunity.org
exposingtheleft.blogspot.com
pajamaeditors.blogspot.com
commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com
www.hinduhumanrights.org/hindufocus.html
princesskimberley.blogspot.com
I visited them all (I could coz I don’t live in India) and it seems that the banned websites fall under three main categories:
1. Completely innocent and VERY boring blogs which are trying to act as if they are doing a great favour by publicizing their conspiracy theories about the US government/other US politicos
2. Hindu extremist websites who make the KKK look likes peace-corps in comparison
3. Plain news blogs (with some mild bias)
One of the sites didn’t fall into any of the above categories: it was completely blank…… blank maybe coz they got caught with their pants down?
So? What’s actually going on? Unnamed sources of the Indian gov have been telling the media that some these sites were passing coded messages to terrorists in India.
Considering the content of these sites (except those which fall in category 2) I can’t think of any other reason these sites could have been blocked for.
While I agree that the government has to be really careful of not stepping on the right of freedom of expression, I really don’t think that “….The ban is cutting us (Indians) off from the people”!! Come on!!! Why didn’t you all file a PIL against the July 2003 ISP law that the government had passed? Coz now their move is VERY legal!
Anyways, the hullabaloo goes on…..
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Mumbai Metro
Are they serious?? Have they ever seen Bombay's skyline? I haven't..... coz I cannot! It is physically impossible...... Now now, if you are going to say that gaze out from Juhu etc, then, my dear fellow, the Metro is a surface and underground feature...... NOT an over-water one!
arrrrrgghhhh! The epidemic of grey-cell reduction is going to be the death of me.........