Human rights

I was witness to this conversation some time back.

"I wish there was an IKEA in State College... the nearest IKEA is all the way in Pittsburgh. The furniture stores here are so expensive!"
"You could always try Wal-Mart... the furniture there is pretty good from what I have heard."
"Yeah... I know... but, considering where they came from, I guess it's China... with the low wages and all, there's no way I would want that in my house. I would rather own something made by someone who has been paid well for making it."

This conversation had me thinking about the attitude of people here in the United States. They respect everyone - no matter what the job is. Be it the postman or the clerk who does the paperwork, the bus driver or the janitor, the guy who fixes the drain or the woman who cleans the glass windows - they are respected, wished and smiled at with goodwill all the time. Hard to believe? You have to be here to feel it.

Giving respect also earns respect. Respect for the fellow being. India needs this.

I am moving!

I am currently working on moving to Wordpress.com - moving the posts, the embedded videos etc. Anyway, when the moving is complete, the new link will be up here.
I loved Blogger, but I find Wordpress more versatile in its widgets. No hard feelings, I hope, Blogger.

3 hours later...
UPDATED: On second* thought, I have decided NOT TO MOVE. (Talk of indecisiveness!) I still love Blogger. I hated the fact that one cannot change the template CSS styling in Wordpress without having an upgraded account (NOT free).
http://logophilia.wordpress.com barely got to see the light of the day. Thanks to the guy on the left.

*Second is quite an understatement.

Like, I didn't see it coming!

Ok, some awesome dude from Delhi searched in Google for "show me photo gallery of sexual intercourse" and got my blog as one of the results.

My blog!
MY BLOG!
He didn't visit it, but Google returned my blog as a result nevertheless.

(Source: My account in Google Analytics)

I am kind of glad that I didn't put Google AdWords in my website. God only knows what kind of ads I would have got listed here - thanks to Google's algorithm of putting text ads on the basis of relevant words. May be this?

Do you blog and are you LONELY?
Do you feel the NEED for someone? Or something?
CLICK HERE FOR INSTANT* RESULTS!


*The instants may vary.

Educationalists suffer from dementia

The CBSE syllabus in India has decided to mellow down the sex education in their syllabus. Wait a minute, did they have one to start off with? Or was I not paying attention in class when they were covering sex education?

While words like masturbation, arousal and sexual intercourse have been deleted from the revised version of the training manual for teachers, diagrams which describe the journey from puberty to young adulthood have been done away with. This modified version is set to reach schools in a few weeks.

Source: Times of India

This is what the "educationalists" have been saying in defense. My reaction to each of them was "What the...?"

[...] Don’t impose degenerate western culture on Indian schools [...]

[...] India has not given HIV/AIDS to the world. If the world had followed the Indian tradition of one wife or one husband, this disease would not have developed at all. [...]

[...] if the sex education was introduced in any form, episodes like Nithari village would repeat in every school and locality of the country. He said just withdrawing students from the schools where sex education is being introduced is not enough, we need to firmly ensure that it is not introduced at all in any school [...]

[...] It is claimed that the objective of imparting sex education is protecting the students from HIV/ AIDS, but the syllabus prepared for it is so much indecent, damaging and obscene that it will increase the disease on a much higher speed. We don’t want that abortion centres should be opened in schools like that in Britain, morning pills need to be given to teenage girls like that in France, increase in number of unmarried mothers like that in America and teachers sexually exploit their students like that in New Zealand [...]

Source: Organiser

Face the nation (hosted by Sagarika Ghose, CNN-IBN) has the script of the debate between, as I put it, realists and educationalists.

To put it mildly, I am outraged. Are these "educationalists" idiots or are they idiots? More importantly, in their childhood, did they look down at themselves and figure out there was a "branch" growing out of them that stiffened on its own accord?

UPDATE: Sree narrates an incident in her life that took place recently. Death of someone because of AIDS - her husband was infected. May be it could have been avoided if people knew more about HIV/AIDS than they do now. How unfortunate.

Handi(CAP)able

YouTube Video, 1:34 min

A post doc candidate from my lab showed me this advertisement - more like a public awareness ad about how inconsiderate we often are about the physically challenged people. Since I know no Portuguese whatsoever, I have tried my best to provide all the information regarding the relevance of this advertisement.
The car you see here has been parked right on the sidewalk providing a huge obstacle for anyone on a wheelchair/crutch etc. It has been (implicitly) extrapolated to buildings and other places which have little or no regard for handicap access.
This advertisement seems very relevant to Lisbon and Portugal in general, but we do know it is true for many places around the world, India included.
The repartee in the ad is what I like the best - (translated roughly; subject to correction)

"Thanks to all the obstacles, we will be in shape for Beijing 2008"

Special Olympics 2008, watch out for Portugal.

The ad agency behind this wonderfully multi-layered message is Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO), one of the best and most awarded advertising agencies in the world. (Source: Wikipedia)

I can see why.

This is another of their good advertisements (GreenPeace): Save the Amazon.

Mars and Venus

After reading (and laughing out loud) Men's rights by Ankur, a post about this article in Economist.com, I decided to fish out an old email I had received eons ago. Thanks to gmail's search feature. :) So here goes...

Here's a prime example of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" offered by an English professor from the University of Phoenix:

The professor told his class one day: "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."

The following was actually turned in by two of his English students: Rebecca and Gary.
-------------------------------------------
THE STORY:
(first paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago.
"A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4.
"Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel"
Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her.
"Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.

(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary)
Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F--KING TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!"

(Rebecca)
As**ole.

(Gary)
B***h

(Rebecca)
F**K YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!

(Gary)
Go drink some tea - wh**e.

(TEACHER) A+ - I really liked this one.

Jishnu

Now he can walk! It's more like kicking and walking at the same time. He has started recognizing his house. On the way back after the short walk he takes in the evenings with his parents, he figures out that he is nearing home.
He turns around and walks in the other direction, hoping that his parents won't notice. He kicks and runs at the same time, hoping that his parents will let him play a little more.
He loves being outside. He loves to run behind chipmunks scurrying about. He loves to chase cats. Pigeons. Leaves that fly at the mercy of the wind.
He loves being in water. He will eat anything on the floor except the floor. He has the most hilarious change-my-diaper face. He is a cartoon. He loves playing peek-a-boo.
He is Jishnu. He is my year-old nephew.

Non sequitur

In the recent episode of Devil's Advocate, BJP president Rajnath Singh was interviewed by Karan Thapar on the support of Bhairon Singh Shekhawat for presidential candidacy. Boy, it was some interview. The politicians and their games have become so transparent, that it has now become an art of how ridiculously can you exhibit being in denial. Watch these interviews - they are simply ludicrous. Watch Thapar make mincemeat.

Karan Thapar: You are going by his political career, let me bring that to spotlight. And now the allegations touch his integrity…
Rajnath Singh: No one can question Mr Bhairon Singh Shekhawat’s integrity.
Karan Thapar: From 1952 to 1972 he was an MLA in Rajasthan, from 1977 to 2002 he was an MLA again and yet in between for three years he became a Rajya Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh. Does it not prove that he would have filed a false and fraudulent declaration of residence in Madhya Pradesh?
He would have to—in those days without a declaration of residence he couldn’t have become an MP of the Rajya Sabha.
Rajnath Singh: Whatever I know about Bhairon Singh Shekhawat I believe that his character is spotless.

Karan Thapar: But it is being said about this individual that he took a bribe, that he lied about his residential status to become a Rajya Sabha MP; there are question marks about his use of office as Chief Minister.
Rajnath Singh: No one can even imagine that Bhairon Singh Shekhawat will ever take a bribe. These are all false allegations.

Karan Thapar: If Pratibha Patil becomes the President, and it looks like she will, despite your allegations then what kind of relationship would you have with her?
Rajnath Singh: This is a hypothetical question.
Karan Thapar: It could become a reality, then what sort of relationship you would have with her?
Rajnath Singh: We should wait for the election results.
Karan Thapar: Will you apologise to her?
Rajnath Singh: No, there is no question of doing that. The clarifications must come from Pratibha Patil, the Congress or UPA.

However, I am always amazed on how Karan Thapar manages to abruptly end these interviews in spite of all the questions that go unanswered.
The entire script of the interview is available here (courtesy IBN Live).

Video 1 from IBN Live (5 min)


Video 2 from IBN Live (5 min)


Video 3 from IBN Live (5 min)

4th of July

This was the first 4th of July for me in the United States and boy I loved it! State College may be a (really) small town but the fireworks are among the top 5 in the country. Hard to believe but true. And I would like to believe it. :) The show was synchronized with music playing on the radio at a particular channel and lasted about 45 minutes. The last couple of minutes were spellbinding with about 40 shells being fired per second. Yes! Per second. Thousands of people had thronged to several areas around the Beaver Stadium and had brought with themselves patio chairs, blankets, beer, snacks etc. It was beautiful.
In this video here, we had captured the last couple of minutes (1:25 min) which were the best. Ignore us in the background. :)

Google Video, 1:25 min

The stray and the astray

So the Mumbai municipality has decided to approach the SC for permission to KILL all stray dogs to stop the stray dog menace.
I wonder if it will extend the same thing to the millions of people who are homeless.

Related News:
From IBN Live
Google News search results

Bagels and manners

On the way to a hiking spot (a nice waterfall) a few weeks back, we had stopped at a local bagel store at Wellsboro, PA - a nice quiet town in Tioga county.
The bagels were excellent, so was the cream cheese. The part that amused me the most was this notice near the payment counter. I shot it from my cell phone, so it's not the best in terms of picture quality.