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Joseph Lelyveld, whose book on Gandhi is on the verge of being banned, responds:
He dismissed reports that his work includes offensive language against the Mahatma, saying the book does not talk about the sexual preferences of the Indian leader.
“It does not say Gandhi was bisexual. It does not say that he was homosexual,” Lelyveld said.
The government’s response to this can be summed up as: “La la la la I can’t hear you.”
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Yet again, Gautam Patel has a good post.
Poonam Pandey (the model who has promised to bare all if India were to win the World Cup) says:
Even my parents are proud of me because I am doing something for Team India.
Why can’t we have more such parents?
10 bucks says she’ll be contacted for the next season of Bigg Boss. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll .. err .. bare all.
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Perhaps she seeks attention and fame through this stunt. So do we who have a blog or a Twitter account, no? We just don’t indulge in shameless attention-seeking self-promotion — or so we think. That, and most of us would leave mental scars on others if we stripped. Just imagine your 5 favourite Indian Twitter users naked ..
I need to stop.
A committee finds a loss of Rs. 1600 crores “in the construction and renovation of venues for Commonwealth Games by different government agencies”. Let me expand that for you: Rs. 1,600,00,00,000.
Since we’re all law-abiding middle class citizens, we won’t stop paying taxes. Let me spin the figures so you feel better about the whole thing. The total revenue from taxation last year was 7.5 lakh crore. Rs. 1,600 crore is a just 0.21% of it. Let’s say you paid Rs. 2 lakh in taxes last year. You contribution to the Commonwealth Games comes to Rs. 420 (yes, it’s poetic). That’s one dinner at a Pizza Hut. Frankly, that’s a tiny amount to pay for the pride of your motherland.
If you think that’s too much, what kind of an Indian are you?
It appears that India could have reached the finals of the Cricket World Cup even if had lost to Pakistan — thanks to an obscure rule by the ICC.
ICC’s Law 1.4 (11), that explicates the eligibility criteria for players, clearly states that to play Under-19 cricket or above at the international level, a player has to be a) a national or b) be born in a recognized country or c) is resident in the country for at least 90 days in each of the immediately preceding seven years.
A sub-section of the law that enumerates a “disputed domicile” states that any player from a country/state not recognized by all Test-playing and associate members of the ICC can be disqualified at any time if they fail to submit a certificate of clearance issued by the world cricketing body 30 hours prior to a match to the host country.
Several players of the current Pakistani World Cup squad were born in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and have stated PoK as their domicile in documents submitted to the Ministry of External Affairs.
Read the piece right till the end. It is informative and mind-boggling.
The Centre is now mulling a law that would make showing any disrespect to the Father of the Nation an offence punishable with a jail term.
The irony of how this law insults Gandhi is lost on the government.
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I’m real careful about the word irony after watching this:
Killing it:
Microsoft designer Joe Fletcher makes some interesting observations about the state of design in India:
In interviewing people thus far there have been three points that have so far come forward
1. The “Does it work?” principle: This appears to be the strongest rationale the attributes to the lack of detail I discuss above. In talking with designers in India they stressed that with Indian culture, given their daily life, the details are often a luxury. For example, in the morning they must think of how to get work, making food, washing clothes, getting fresh water, and taking kids to school among other things. Simply from a cultural and living conditions standpoint there is a strong focus on getting by. Details are a luxury that many don’t have in this society. Europe and America have the basics taken care of, which allows them to culturally focus on the details of what a water bottle looks like, having a specific cut to jeans, or separate forks for salad, soup, and cereal.
2. Schools have become a common thread in most of my interviews. For the most part I’ve only found three schools named when discussing design and user experience specifically, with the National Institute of Design (NID) being the top. This school was more of less started by C&R Eames during their work with the Indian government. Secondarily within schools that exist for teaching design, there appears to be a lack of process and design thinking, with a stronger weight on the final product. This type of oversight may account for the lack of innovative software UX. In the end, there just isn’t a strong student community or education around design, which would then carry into the workforce culture.
3. As a last and very logical point, we just haven’t used India as a country to outsource software and technology design experiences, so there has been no reason for them to exercise that muscle, as a result, it’s never been grown. The corollary I was presented with when talking with a designer in India was to think of UX in the US around the 1980’s. It was there, but just barely. It had just started to be cultivated as a solid field.
In the end, we’re asking India to apply Western techniques that have been developed from specific cultural surroundings but have never been part of daily life in their culture. While we tend to overlook it, when I hear people talk about it, it’s almost a “duh, how did I miss that” moment. To be reminded of this, has certainly been an eye opener.
(His third point sounds patronizing, but I chose to take away what he was trying to say as opposed to how it sounds literally.)
Perhaps designers or those familiar with the design sub-culture in India will disagree with these points (or even take offense). As a layman though, they seem like fair observations to me.
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What are the examples of good design you have seen growing up in India?
Many of our traditional products had good design that evolved over centuries. Among commercial products, I liked the basic Bata slippers. Any products you can think of?
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I don’t think minimalism in design is always the right path, but I found that all products that I like to use and whose design I can recall as being good, have been minimalist.
Link via Girish.
Several Israeli tank shells landed Tuesday at a playground in Gaza City, killing three children and their grandfather and injuring 12 other children and women, hospital sources and witnesses said.
You can debate the morality of Israel shelling children; you can rue the situation in Gaza; what you cannot criticize is the aim of Israeli tanks.
If you think the worst that can happen to a 14-year old Bangladeshi girl is being raped while walking from her home to an outdoor toilet at night, then you don’t want to read what happened later.
After today’s match and its accompanying excitement dies, read this well-written post by Gautam Patel on all that’s wrong with the Jaitapur nuclear project.
