You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2010.
Now, at Bharat Matrimony, you can search for brides who look like your favourite actress, and belonging to your same caste!!
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It’s a funny link to forward, but just for the record, I don’t see any problem with this new feature. It’s not like they only included light-skinned actresses for matching.
They haven’t just included beautiful actresses either. There’s Kareena in there.
Here’s a good post by Ricky Gervais: ‘Why I’m An Atheist‘. If you’re an atheist, it has nothing new; if you’re a believer, you will likely overlook what he is saying to say and take offense instead. It’s a deadlock of sorts.
However, one point he makes interests me most:
“Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. Buts that’s exactly what it is – ‐ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”
You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.
Religion fosters morality (except when it doesn’t), and is cited as one of the reasons why religion is important. On the other hand, there still isn’t a formal system to link atheism and morality. I once asked a spiritual guru if morality could exist without the concept of god. His answer? A flat No.
I disagree. In fact, many atheists believe in and know the importance of morality. However, they arrived at it out of their own introspection — which is the best way one can learn morals. The most effective way of teaching morality is not teaching it at all. Theists find it hard to understand why someone wouldn’t commit murder if they didn’t believe in god or heaven/hell. This has been said before: If god is the only reason why you aren’t killing a fellow human, there is a problem .. with you.
The way I look at morality — independent of organized religion — can be summed up as: There is no reason why you should be good, but there are plenty of reasons why you could be good.
If you came across a news floating around that a team at IITB proved homeopathy works: No they didn’t. Not even close.
Namaste.
Rajdeep Sardesai’s open letter to Manmohan Singh:
What the aam admi seeks (and presumably the UPA still claims to be an ‘aam admi’ government) is a readiness to act against the corrupt and make examples of them. Your leader, Sonia Gandhi, claims to her parliamentary party that the Congress has ‘acted’ against corruption. Can the notion of ‘action’ be defined please? Forcing a minister to resign is not action, prosecuting him would be. Handing over a case to the CBI is not action, ensuring that the investigation is taken to its logical conclusion would be. The nation is not a set of gullible MPs who will be taken in by rhetorical flourishes. We don’t need to become a lynch mob, but the fact is an alert and enraged Indian citizenry will no longer settle for fine words alone.
Here’s a concrete suggestion: why don’t you amend the Prevention of Corruption act to ensure that all corruption cases involving public servants, be they officials or politicians, are put on fast track? If they are proved innocent, restore their dignity. If they are guilty, have them jailed and their properties confiscated. You may lack political support for your move, but trust me, an entire nation will cheer you on.
I largely agree with what Rajdeep Sardesai says, but let’s consider not complaining to Manmohan Singh each time.
Spoilt kids don’t exist because the parents are unaware their kid is spoilt — it’s because the parent has allowed the child thrive thus.
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While on Manmohan Singh, The Onion featured him today as one of the important people of 2010. It’s a funny piece, and the piece gives about as much importance to Manmohan Singh as the Congress does: None.
Great expose of CNN-IBN by a blogger. In a debate ‘Should lobbying be legalized?’, CNNIBN used comments from Twitter users, most of which were supportive of the idea. Except for the teeny-weeny fact that those Twitter users don’t exist.
I guess what CNNIBN is trying to say is: Lobbying already exists, and we might as well accept it.
Update: CNNIBN posted an apology. Sounds plausible.
India has arrived on the world scene. Wikileaks finally released something that is relevant to India!
Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi had told United States ambassador Timothy Roemer that the growth of ‘radicalised Hindu groups’, which create religious tensions in India, could pose a bigger threat to the country than activities of groups like Lashkar-e-Tayiba.
The comment will — and should — be torn apart over the next few days. It is a fallacy to state that Hindu terror is equivalent to Islamic terror in India. It isn’t –atleast not yet — and it is unlikely that Rahul has any data to back his claim.
In which case, he believes something incorrect and is immature. Which once again proves that — as many around the world are already saying — Wikileaks isn’t revealing anything new to us.
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Meanwhile, there are no call records in existence to back Digvijay Singh’s claim that slain cop Hemant Karkare called him hours before his death to tell Diggyboy that he feared Hindu extremists — proving Digvijay Singh is a douche.
Guess we’re not discovering anything new today.
Once again I’m on a Nusrat spree in music and I found a couple of songs.
What do you reckon will happen when Nusrat saab sings with musicians playing progressive heavy rock?
A: He blends in a way that defies explanation. It shows his understanding of not just his music, but all music.
With Peter Gabriel in Signal To Noise:
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A traditional version of Afreen Aafreen sung when he was in India:
The lyrics of Afreen describe a woman and her body but here, Nusrat saab makes the song seem like it is dedicated to god. He sings with the same honesty of any other qawwali. I remember seeing a video of him performing in Lahore a few years ago (I think): Nusrat saab is performing the modern, electronic-beat versions of some of his songs, youngsters are dancing on the floor and in this ambience, he is sitting down on the stage and singing with the same honesty that he’d sing at a dargah.
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Yesterday’s cryptic Nusrat post was about my entire Nusrat collection uploaded to Dropbox (about 2 GB). A reader, Anil, further shared his collection and now it is at 3.5 GB. Most of the stuff isn’t sold in digital form, if that makes you feel better about downloading music.
I still don’t condone piracy and believe music pirates should utter words against the Prophet Mohammad in Pakistan so that they are stoned to death.
Just kidding.
Chinese premier Wen Jiabao:
Noting that this year marked the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and India, he said the two countries “now face good opportunities to expand cooperation and pursue common development” (goals).
“Finally, I would like to extend through you journalists, cordial greetings and best wishes from the Chinese people to the people of India,” Wen said.
For the nerds, that’s 1.53829922 × 1018 greetings as of this moment.
In return, I propose we let him access p0rn sites while he is in India — he can’t do that back home.
If you truly appreciate and enjoy Nusrat saab‘s music, write to me at the blog e-mail address (or fill out the email address field and leave a comment). There’s something for you.
Again, only if you really enjoy the music, else it’ll just waste your time.
The Time Person Of The Year was announced today. Many seem to think Julian Assange should have won having handily beaten everyone else in the online poll — I reckon Wikileaks made the most impact in the world this year, if not Assange. (Even if you disagree with Wikileaks, it was still the biggest villain. And Hitler, Stalin are former winners. It is not always an honour.)
Go through a list of some of the recent winners, and you will see what a gimmick the Time Person Of The Year is. Heck, ‘You’ were the Time Person Of The Year 2006. Further, compare the frequency of non-Americans winning it a few decades ago to the frequency now. It has become centered around America and the rest of the world America heard about during the year — cue Chilean miners, who were in the shortlisted five.
The Person Of The Year is now an attention-seeking gimmick that is executed — and this is my guess or you could say, prejudice — without the balls required to acknowledge who made the greatest impact in the world this year.
This doesn’t take away any honour from Mark Zuckerberg, the winner. It merely reduces my respect for Time.
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Comment at Slashdot:
Wikileaks is taking the data of large organizations and putting it in the hands of the public. Facebook is taking the data of details of the public’s lives and putting it into the hands of private organizations.
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The Onion pwns Time’s Person Of The Year with its own award and good satire:
It would be impossible to list the most influential people of 2010 without recognizing the individual who made the biggest splash in technology this year: the iPad. That’s right, the iPad. Did you see what we did there? We replaced the human being you naturally expected in a list of the year’s most prominent newsmakers with an inanimate object, Apple’s new tablet computer. We just played with your expectations in an incredibly clever way.
It might not be surprising to find the launch of the iPad discussed among the year’s biggest stories. We easily could have written about Steve Jobs, the iconic CEO of Apple, and adequately described the iPad in that predictable context. But instead, we made the radically unorthodox decision to grant this product—a one-and-a-half-pound wafer of aluminum and glass, mind you—the same status accorded to members of the human race. You’ve already read through a number of stories constructed around people, but just when you expected to encounter another, we pulled the rug right out from under you.
This year, we are choosing a computer as one of the most influential people of 2010.
Oh and if this sounds improbable: The Computer was the Time Person Of The Year in 1982.
