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.

8 random facts

I was tagged by Amit for this seemingly harmless activity. It has taken a LOT of my time to do this! So here are the rules for this game:

1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
4. If you fail to do this within eight hours, you will not reach Third Series or attain your most precious goals for at least two more lifetimes.

I am pretty much a goner when it comes to #4, cause I am doing this five days late! So I am not reaching Third Series and will not be attaining my most precious goals for at least two more lifetimes. Not very different from what it is now...!

So here they are - 8 random facts about me.

1. I love being busy. I am not a workaholic, and I love my weekends - but I must be doing something at all times.
2. When it comes to organization, my friends tell me that I have OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive *Delight*)
3. I am supremely accident prone. A classical case of trouble-magnetism. And I have a natural flair of making a complete fool of myself in the most impossible of situations.
4. I dig reading user manuals and safety manuals. That's the reason whenever my friends buy something new, I am given the user manual! As a gift. :D
5. I hate my glasses, but I love my wristwatch. I never take it off. Never.
6. I love watching movies of all possible genres. They could be foreign languages, limited edition movies, art movies, animation... but I choose what I want to watch.
7. I like meeting people. I don't care if my acquaintanceship lasts less than an hour - but if I end up having a nice rich conversation with this person, I feel great about it. But it's really difficult to find people of the same wavelength, and more so when they are strangers.
   
8. In my mind, I put things (people, activities etc.) in patterns. I don't use it for making judgments, but I just enjoy doing it.
   

Hmmm. So these are 8 random facts about me. And to continue the chain, I tag Abheet, WhoDunIt, Shreya, Saurabh, Dimple, Gaurav, Deepika and Shreyasee. Have fun!

Prangstgrüp

Columbia University. It's a quiet afternoon in a library, with everyone spending all their time and energy in the upcoming tests.
It was more than the occasional cough that tore through the silence in the Columbia University library that afternoon.
A voice sang out in Broadway style...
"What's this?
What's this on the page?"
I can hardly believe my eyes
Every page I turn is a new surprise
And I'm doin' it all because I'm reading on a dream!"

All students looked around awkwardly - not sure if to tell him to shut up or whether to laugh along. He went along to sing a whole song in these lines, with supporting members giving the music and a lady friend who danced a complete routine.

YouTube Video © Prangstgrüp (3:00 min)

All students are enraptured by what was going on. Then the "pranksters" left. Like the way they came. Prangstgrüp had struck again.

This is the boldest group of students who come up with these audacious campus pranks - be it a really long and loud computer startup tune in the library, or giving "accurate" lectures in the NYC subway (on optics, combinatorics etc. with assignments and all) to people caught totally unawares or even bursting out with a song in the middle of a lecture they are not even originally a part of (see video below)! Go ahead... spend a few minutes with these really amazing artists! They have 17 masterpieces so far - all of them hilarious, and really bold! (Somehow they always manage to videotape it very well.)
This is TEACH: A lecture musical.

YouTube Video © Prangstgrüp (3:07 min)

Anorexia

Came across this advertisement on Anorexia. It blew my mind!

Google Video (39 sec)
Anorexia Bulimia Contact | Mirror

Creative Director: Martin Stadhammar, Grey, Stockholm, Sweden
Client Service Director: Sigrun Yngvadottir, TCB, Stockholm, Sweden
Director: Oskar Bård, Hobbyfilm

Related post: Perception of beauty

Just around the riverbend - II

I'm female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That's all you need to know. It's all that matters these days anyway.

In March last year, I had made an entry (Just around the riverbend) about Baghdad Burning, a blog by an anonymous Iraqi woman who goes by the name Riverbend. She has been posting entries in this blog since August 17th 2003 - her entries being true tales of a life governed by fear, hate, misery and distrust. The italicized text above was her very first entry in her blog.

Well, her blog was converted into two books: Baghdad Burning - Girl blog from Iraq and Baghdad Burning II - More Girl blog from Iraq. The first book went up for the $52,000 Samuel Johnson Literary prize, chronicling three years of war and destruction in Iraq, with no filtering whatsoever from the media. The publishers maintained her anonymity at her request.

Riverbend continued blogging, giving a painful and bitter description of the corruption running in politics and how the armed forces now getting involved in raping and killing the very citizens they are supposed to be protecting. The frequency of her blogging reduced greatly over the last year because it took a lot out of her to write about things she hated and could do nothing about. The recent-most raping allegation that happened in February was cleared in less than 14 hours and the accusing woman was thrown in a bad light. That was her entry in February. After a long period of silence, she wrote her last entry in April.

She's now leaving Iraq. Her home country.

So we've been busy. Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable? We, like many Iraqis, are not the classic refugees- the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice. We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare- stay and wait and try to survive.

Riverbend, April 26th 2007

Extract from Google Book Search:
In August 2003, the world gained access to a remarkable new voice: a blog written by a 25-year-old Iraqi woman living in Baghdad, whose identity remained concealed for her own protection. Calling herself Riverbend, she offered searing eyewitness accounts of the everyday realities on the ground, punctuated by astute analysis on the politics behind these events. In a voice in turn eloquent, angry, reflective and darkly comic, Riverbend recounts stories of life in an occupied city-of neighbors whose homes are raided by US troops, whose relatives disappear into prisons and whose children are kidnapped by money-hungry militias. At times, the tragic blends into the absurd, as she tells of her family jumping out of bed to wash clothes and send e-mails in the middle of the night when the electricity is briefly restored, or of their quest to bury an elderly aunt when the mosques are all overbooked for wakes and the cemeteries are all full. The only Iraqi blogger writing from a woman's perspective, she also describes a once-secular city where women are now afraid to leave their homes without head covering and a male escort. Interspersed with these vivid snapshots from daily life are Riverbend's analyses of everything from the elusive workings of the Iraqi Governing Council to the torture in Abu Ghraib, from the coverage provided by American media and by Al-Jazeera to Bush's State of the Union speech. Here again, she focuses especially on the fate of women, whose rights and freedoms have fallen victim to rising fundamentalisms in a chaotic postwar society. With thousands of loyal readers worldwide, the Riverbend blog is widely recognized around the world as a crucial source of information not available through the mainstream media.

To-WAR-ds nowhere

While reading about the current crisis of Hamas vs. Abbas over Gaza, I saw this photograph in Reuters.

© REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (GAZA)

A Hamas fighter takes position inside a scanning machine in the customs hall of the Rafah crossing border, between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip, after they captured it, June 15, 2007.
I wonder if the scanner ever went off because there was a gun inside it!

Then I recollected this strip I had read in Calvin & Hobbes a few years back.

© Bill Watterson, United Press Syndicate

Romeo and Juliet, 4000 BC

I started out on Google at 3:00 pm today for some information on emulsions, and at 3:20 pm I was looking at this. I felt vaguely strange.

Picture courtesy: CNET News.com

Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period (5000-6000 years ago) locked in an "eternal embrace" and buried outside Mantua, Italy, about 25 miles south of Verona. Sounds familiar? It's the same city where Shakespeare set the tale of Romeo and Juliet. Here's the bigger catch - In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is sent to Mantua for killing Capulet in a sword fight. Romeo then leaves the city and returns to Verona when he hears that Juliet has died.

It was found at the site where a factory is planned and many have speculated on the circumstances this goosebumps-giving spectacle. Flint tools, including arrowheads and a knife, were also found alongside the couple. Their teeth being intact, it is thought that the couple died young.

They are face to face and their arms and legs are entwined and they are really hugging.

When I was reading through the user comments on the related news pieces, almost everybody had the same thing to say - of not to disturb them from their grave. Unfortunately, it has already been done.

Doomed love?

Other sources of information:
BBC News
Dailymail.co.uk
CNET News.com

Whatsisname

Americans pronounce Indian names better than Indians do. Or at least they do it more accurately. Yes, it's true! I am not kidding!

The most ludicrous habit of many government officials in India is look at the first alphabet of your name, and then at the last, and fill up the rest themselves. Some of them even decide to correct the way it is spelled and then put in on record.
I have ended up being named (on official records) as Kokanad (most common error), Kokanand, Kokenad, Kokonath, Kokanath. Without the blink of one or more eyes.
On one hilarious occasion, my brother Sayontan was called Shaitan.
Prayatn became Prashant. Anushaily became Anshuly (Anshulee).

Correcting the mistake on an official record in India would be a big headache, but if I write about that it should be classified under the label *Sigh* in my blog. So I am not going into that now.

Americans do have a tough time understanding the complicated concoction of syllables in Indian names, but atleast end up reading it thoroughly and even pronouncing it right! And the icing of the cake lies in the fact that each and everyone asks if they pronounced it right. Your face invariably breaks into a smile. A lab mate once approached me with the name "Ramachandran" and asked if "Remakandran" (accented) is the right way to pronounce it, because she didn't want to embarrass herself.

My friends and I had been witness to this incident...
A good friend of ours, ABCXYZ Singh, has had a crisis since she landed in the US, because she decided to dump her last name. Now here's the catch - in the US, it's extremely difficult to survive without a last name because every official record is on the basis of a last name. So they found a workaround and made her first name ABCXYZ as her last name and attributed "Unknown" as her first name. So her name, officially is, Unknown ABCXYZ. While we were getting issued our State ID cards, our first names were being called out. When it was her turn, there was a voice from a sweet old lady -
"Un-known"?
While we all giggled away, our friend walks up to the counter. The old lady is visibly embarrassed because she is sure that is not the right way to pronounce "Unknown".
"Oh honey, did I get your name right?"

Just a note: For many who ask me this question, the meaning of Kokonad is "red lotus" in Sanskrit.

Energy saving

After having been to Boston, New York, Las Vegas etc. and gasped at the beautiful night views of each of these cities, I have often thought aloud - US has a lot of energy. And a lot of this energy goes just into aesthetics and ambience. That's a lot of waste in India, where we always switch off the light and fan when leaving a room.
I was just wondering, how many villages in India could be lit up 24/7 if all the advertisements on Times Square were pulled off the circuit. Or may be Las Vegas?

Talking of energy savings, visit Blackle. Blackle is a *suggestion* which is based on a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year (January 2007) where a theory was proposed that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. So this guy, Mark Ontkush (Occupation: Green Computing Evangelist), did the math and figured out this (from his blog post) -

Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let's assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.

I liked it. Of course, there has been skepticism the world wide about whether the contribution of the energy savings is significant. And, as you might have noticed, the readability of black web pages isn't the best.

Still, as the About Page puts it, "We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up."

Go ahead, search something on Blackle.