Plugging for my shop!
Remember my Rangoli Designs shop at Cafe Press? I have added a few more new designs to it. Here is a sampling of the products in the Valentine’s corner and the Spring Preview sections -
Well, don’t have anything to read over the weekend? Check out this week’s best of Indian blogs at the Great Indian Blog Mela being hosted by Amit Varma. It will be fun and informative as usual!
Chandoo is hosting the next blog mela and even has a prize for the best entry in the Mela. Go drop your nominations with him.
Do you want to see a real, live dinosaur? Read up on the linked article - this author is probably the dino of dinos. Apparently, dude thinks “bloggery” doesn’t really help anybody so it sucks. Yep, by that awesome logic, we don’t need classic literature either since it doesn’t really help anybody now, does it?
Library Journal - Revenge of the Blog People!A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of “web log.”) Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People.
He also says - “Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts.” - I guess I can say given the quality of this gentleman’s rants against blogging, I don’t think he is in the habit of dealing with actual people in the real world who like expressing themselves. What I really want him to explain is what exactly does he mean by complex texts? Shakespeare? Literary Classics? I can point a dozen bloggers who have read every single book he can throw at me. I can probably come up with a dozen equally complex texts he has probably never read. What is really the point of this superiority-complex? Who wins by this entire screed against people who range from law profs, to Iraqis expressing themselves to 10-year-olds expressing their crushes?
This is what baffles me about this everyday onslaught of every decent news organization against bloggers - Hello people, if Dan Rather didn’t run with the forged documents, if Eason Jordan only released the video of the Davos conference, nothing would have happened. Don’t fuck up and then get mad at those who caught you with your pants down. I am really sick of this crap. I think these idiots who write anti-blog rants probably take bloggers a lot more seriously than bloggers themselves.
I love what I am doing on my blog - does that mean I want to be studied in a literature class instead of Charles Dickens? No. I don’t make any claims to greatness and my readers and other bloggers I know of are all aware that we are simply people putting forward topics of discussion or little monologues of what interests us. By constantly attacking us, those who do are exposing nothign but their pettiness.
p.s. Apparently dude mentioned above is so technically advanced that he hates Google. Go figure!
Whoa, what was Geoff Petrie on when he pulled the trigger on a deal as ridiculous as this?
ESPN.com - NBA - Kings ready to end Webber era with 76ers dealThe Sacramento Kings traded Chris Webber to the Philadelphia 76ers late Wednesday night, parting ways with the cornerstone of their renaissance in a six-player deal that dramatically reshaped both teams.
I really don’t see how any Kings benefit from this deal except for Peja who wants to be the man (we will find out soon if he has what it takes) and Billy King, President of the 76ers etam. AI must have peed in his pants when he learned that Webber and a talented role player like Matt Barnes are going to back him up now.
What on earth does Petrie think he can achieve with undersized scrubs like Corliss Williamson, Kenny Thomas and Brian Skinner? It isn’t like he got any expiring contracts either. Oh, did I mention Peja is still a free agent next season and might not even stay with the Franchise anymore?
OT, good job Mavs, for taking care of business and putting the Jazz away last night. I hope the Queens have become a little easier to beat tonight.
Did you guys realize ESPN has trackback? The link I posted above has a trackback ID that my post will be pinging now. I think it is cool as long as they are not using it to shutdown people linking back to them.
update: Has there been a busier trade deadline in the recent years? Najera traded to Nuggets, Antoine Walker back in Boston (I wonder what Danny Ainge had to do for that!), Malik Rose to Knicks and Nazr Mohammad to Spurs, K-fricking-VH to Mavs and Booth and Alan Henderson to Bucks, Jiri Welsch to Cavs, Baron Davis to Golden State, Jamaal Mashburn to 76ers, Glenn Robinson to New Orleans, Vin Baker to Houston - Phew, what a day!
One more update: Poor Alan Henderson - to be traded right after he got married - he tied the knot on Saturday during the All-Star Game weekend :(
I think I am going to pull down Real Women Online. The site is based off of an old version of Geeklog that I don’t have the patience to figure out now and has become nothing but a spam-catcher. I should keep it up only for sentimental reasons really, since I don’t think anyone but the spammers use the site. I can try one last thing before taking the site silently down the night if someone offers to cohost it with me. Ideas? Suggestions? Help?
Yep, after all those vivaldi CDs, Baby Mozarts, Baby Bachs and the entire array of music of both the classical and the kiddie variety, my son has decided his favorite song is “Hotel California” by the Eagles. My husband says he shows real good taste in music for a 9-month-old, but I am really baffled by it all. Neel (my son) refuses to go to sleep unless we play this song before bedtime. It soothes him the best next to my holding him.
Consider this - Neel is old enough to get stranger anxiety. He is a little scared around strangers. My husband wanted to get him used to others, so he took him to a friend’s place. Apparently, the little one just kept crying, sobbing real bad through the visit. After about 15 minutes, my husband couldn’t take it anymore and played “Hotel California” in the friends’ CD player. It was magic, how it calmed the baby and soothed him enough that he was actually quite happy and playing with the people around by the time I showed up there. Interesting choice in music, my baby’s got!
You know from my previous posts that I am on the fence about abortions. It is pretty similar to the way I feel about euthanasia. I personally would prefer dying to living like a vegetable, I always thought. Now, I am not so sure - I might want to live just so I can see how my son is growing up every day. This kind of thing makes me re-examine my thoughts towards things like quality of life and right to life or death.
I have written about Terry Schiavo before (1, 2). I am not going to sit here and judge her husband, though I find it very hard to treat him as completely objective given he has been with another women for so many years now and kids by her, not to mention the huge sum of money he would inherit if Terry died.
I find it extremely sad that parents are being denied all rights in this case to argue to keep their daughter alive. I really don’t understand why the husband who obviously has conflicted interests can be given any importance over parents who only want the best for their daughter. If it were a question of someone simply turning a switch off so death would occur in a minute or so, I don’t think I would have a problem. That is not the case here - Terry’s feeding tube is going to removed and she is going to starve and die of thirst in a few days. Would you do that to a dog? Why would you do that a human being who has loving family who want nothing but to take care of her?
Court: Feeding Can End for Brain-Damaged Fla. WomanCLEARWATER, Fla. (Reuters) - A Florida man can remove the feeding tube that has kept his brain-damaged wife alive since 1990, an appeals court ruled on Tuesday in what could be the final chapter in a bitterly fought right-to-die case.
Florida’s 2nd District Court of Appeal dissolved a stay that had kept the feeding tube in place during a legal battle over the fate of Theresa “Terri” Schiavo, 41. Some doctors said she has been in a persistent vegetative state since suffering a heart attack that severely damaged her brain.
There are plenty more blogs who are talking about Terry - read them. Take all the information in - then think about it - assuming you were going to be wrong anyways, would you rather be wrong in saving a life or taking one?
update: Terri has been granted a stay of execution for one more day.
Read here for her family’s version of Terri’s condition. See here for a video her parents made of her. After all that, tell me that no one should life a finger while somebody decides she should be starved to death.
Frank J takes on “blogs” and explains what you should know about them :)
IMAO: Know Thy Enemy: BlogsThere are these things called blogs out there run by salivating morons who work in lynch mobs to bring people down regardless of the facts. This seems like a dangerous new phenomenon, so I had my crack research staff find out all they could about blogs.Read all of it!
I am going to keep this simple and to the point (atleast that is how I will attempt to mask my total lack of creativity and extreme laziness). Let me warn you that the posts are going to be accompanied by snide comments that might or might not be related to the post (I thought they were my specialty) and multiple cheap shots at a certain libertarian organization, I call the “cartel”. Dive in and enjoy!
Gopi Sundaram thinks that this practice can be “creepy”, but proceeds to defend it anyways.
Saket has had it with the pervasiveness of this certain event in his everyday life. Please don’t mention the “t-word” to him.
Praveen had a “eureka moment” (yes, really!) when he came with the alternative to Valentine’s Day!
MadMan doesn’t want to have a Happy Valentine’s Day…oops, for got that wasn’t a nomination. Scratch that!
More Valentine’s Day hate from zigzackly - is it any wonder that all these anti-Valentine posts are by GUYS? (I am not that much of a Valentine’s person myself, so I have a hard time mustering up too much righteous indignation over these guys - I should let it go!)
Getting back to desi business, JK looks at a roll-call of Muslim achievers in India by our favorite whipping boy and wonders if there is someone missing on the list. JK also takes on language politics - who is loving and who is hating that language, English.
Avinash tries to wed Darwinism to Creationism when he claims to play God doing a science experiment.
Nirvana attempts at ethical hacking and is not too satisfied with the results on Indian sites. He also thinks he is a libertarian because he is the devil or vice versa or something. (The cartel and the wannabes are beginning to freak me out a little :0) Nirvana also needs a girlfiend (wait, I thought that was a requirement to be libertarian…)
Patrix examines free speech issues in America, land of the First Amerndment.
Nandita has a moving ode to her Aai, her grandmother.
Venky turns his sights Westward and examines a couple of events involving Verizon, MCI and HP.
Amit Varma has a story involving a couple, a rose, a few men and lots of sticks. He also explains how Lalu keeps his power. He also reviews the movie, Amu. Are parents responsible for their kids? Amit tries to find out. Yeah, and in his free time he tries to also eradicate poverty, hunger and bring world peace. (Is there anything this guy cannot do?)
Gaurav tries his hand at reading my mind when he hands out the Most Irritating People Awards. I hear you, Gaurav!
Ramanand believes Indians are incapable of mastering data structures…only certain ones…
Jabberwock reviews (comments on) Amitav Ghosh’s Hungry Tide.
Nitin Pai sees India conceding inch by inch to a certain unfriendly neighbor and wonders about precedent. I thought that conceding and pretending maganimity was the story of our 50-odd-year existence.
Ravages wants to be proud of himself damnit, and unabashedly so! I thought that was what the cartel was for - patting each other’s backs (Ok, so maybe 10 cheap shots at the cartel in one single Mela are not really called for, it might be a record though!).
Pradeep (did I mention he was in the Cartel?) argues for a meritocratic democracy…are we still talking India here?
Anand Vasu tries to understand the arbitrary thin line between chucking and not chucking.
As a mom, I protest the name baby pictures on a post about Paapi Gudiya. Don’t you guys know anything that has “baby” attached to it has a magnetic pull over us moms? We cannot help it, you know!
Hurree Babu has a fun take on Shobhaa De - yeah, you remember her!
Nilu lands in the Reagan domestic airport and finds himself, um, his baggage lost in space-time discontinuity.
Neelakantan (or as I call him, not Nilu) thinks remixes are like potatoes - I personally feel they are more like Chinese food - great to look at, but not very filling.
Nirvana thinks that if you watched Aviator, you need euthanasia.
Check here if you want to participate in next week’s Blog Mela…
I guess there is a silver lining to every gray cloud. This is an interesting bit of information about the devastating tsunami we have heard about all along.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Tsunami throws up India relicsThe deadly tsunami could have uncovered the remains of an ancient port city off the coast in southern India.Check out the picture accompanying the article. It is quite magnificent!Archaeologists say they have discovered some stone remains from the coast close to India’s famous beachfront Mahabalipuram temple in Tamil Nadu state following the 26 December tsunami.
They believe that the “structures” could be the remains of an ancient and once-flourishing port city in the area housing the famous 1200-year-old rock-hewn temple.
Three pieces of remains, which include a granite lion, were found buried in the sand after the coastline receded in the area after the tsunami struck.
Can there really be hot Libertarian chicks? or are they just a ruse to attract single, male Libertarians? (I think I know a bunch of them ;))
Not related to the above, but here is a great article about blogospheric justice by Eugene Volokh called “Lynch mobs or persuasion bunches”. Very interesting to say the least. (via Instapundit)
Hi Good folks! I hope you will all have a great and happy Valentine’s Day!
Visit this week’s Mela at Patrix’s blog. If you want to be featured in the next one, remember that the Mela is coming home to this blog for this week. Send me nominations related to India or written by Indian bloggers made within the dates 2/10 and 2/17. Leave the nominations as comments to this post.
This is going to keep me away from Google adwords - atleast till I make up my mind about how much I really want to invest in my online business. I don’t think it is fair for competitors to click on Google ads to run their opponent’s budget dry - that is just dirty business!
Why don’t they just put a barcode on their flippin’ foreheads already!
Karl Malone will retire now - I guess Tim Duncan didn’t want to let him ride his coattails to the Championship - Reggie Miller will retire next season - another great player retiring without a ring!
Oh, and blogging about your work can get you fired…even if you don’t name your place of employment or any such identifying information.
Here is someone who I wish would get sterilized for life - This great mother gave birth and within an hour threw her baby out of a moving car onto the street along with his umbilical cord still attached, wrapped in a plastic bag. I wouldn’t want to force another baby on this woman or even force her to a life of abstinence. All I ask is for her uterus to be removed so she cannot repeat stunts like this again.
Hey, a hysterectomy works great for birth control, especially if you are as empathetic a mother as in this case!
(p.s. I do understand that per the article, and the police testimony, we are still not sure if it was the mother who threw the baby out - I still stand by my words. If she cannot stay away from people who abuse her, she has no right to expose her babies to abusers).
Update: Guess what! Turns out that the so-called rescue lady was the baby’s mother and she made up the entire baby-thrown-from-car incident. If she had to go to these lengths inspite of Florida’s safe harbor law (within the infant’s first three days, you can leave him at any hospital or fire station - no questions asked), she still deserves to be sterilized!
That is precisely what I am doing right now. I tend to have a single-track mind sometimes. I get obsessed with something and then I pursue it with all my being till one fine day I wake up being bored by it. That will be the end of that story. Currently, I am completely busy trying to find a permanent job (8 more weeks till this contract’s end), creating new designs for Rangoli Designs (I sold a few designs yesterday, so I am really excited! Thanks to those who bought and those who looked!), getting current work done - all while trying to take care of a rambunctious, soon-to-be-9-month-old baby. I am also reading some fiction on the side.
All the above combined with the NBA season and the Apprentice don’t leave much time for news or blogging - nothing seems to be happening of interest - it is still the same old. I hope to break out of this soon and have something interesting ready. In the meantime, leave comments, links - anything of interest to you and maybe other readers :)
Remember my Rangoli Designs shop at Cafe Press? I have added a few more new designs to it. Here is a sampling of the products in the Valentine’s corner and the Spring Preview sections -
Patrix will be our gamely host this week - go drop-off your nominations for this week’s Mela.
I was talking to a friend this afternoon and she had mentioned reading Godse’s diaries, so I was vurious and tried to Google up to see if I could find any online. All I found was this website Nathuram Godse and Gandhism. It does contain some interesting information from Godse’s perspective (this is blasphemy for most Indian - we are brought up to think of Gandhi as a saint). Reading Godse’s thoughts and googling up information on some of the incidents mentioned has been informative to say the least.
How many of us really talk of NoaKhali and the Calcutta massacres? Can we really bring about healing of such deep wounds by simply repressing them? How do we solve the current communal crises whose root causes spread so deep into our history?
We call a warmongering person who lets others die for his principles evil - what about Gandhi? Wasn’t he on the other extreme of the spectrum where he let hundreds and thousands of innocent Hindus in India die and refused to sympathize just because of his principles? Again, this doesn’t mean I am saying Gandhi is responsible for all the bloodshed, but I am wondering if his response would have infuriated me if I were alive in those days. Can stubborn refusal to fight be as dangerous to a charismatic leader’s followers as the stubborn refusal to make peace? Discuss and debate…
I found this extract of Godse’s defense testimony in court very interesting -
…Gandhi had done very good in South Africa to uphold the rights and well-being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way. Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and every thing; he was the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma’s infallibility. ‘A Satyagrahi can never fail’ was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is.
Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and irresistible. Many people thought that his politics were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster.
Again, I am not saying any of this true or false, but just food for thought. It is one heck of a defense he presented to the court considering he didn’t want any mercy -
I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day in future.
Last update: For some weird reason, all this reminds me of the movie, “Hey Ram”. I don’t think I can bear to watch it again - I was simply devastated by the violence in Calcutta depicted in the movie. It left me extremely shaken.
Another update: Here is a link from uspeed in the comments that has another interesting perspective on Godse - that of the judges who reviewed his case.
update: I know I cannot leave this thing alone - from uspeed’s link -Quote from the book The Tragic Story of Partition ” Bhajans were also not spared. The soul elevating chanting of ‘Raghupati Raja Rama patita pavana Sita Rama was intoned on the lips of millions of our countrymen for the last several centuries. A new line ‘Ishwar Allah tere nam, sab so sanmati de Bhagavan’ was added to the original”.I was completely unaware of this.
There has been a video-shoot going on all day on our floor today a few feet from my cube. I just heard the theme of Apprentice playing from there while the shoot was going on and a bunch of people in suits. Now, people in suits are to be expected as I work for a financial institution, but the Apprentice theme and the video shoot? Very interesting - let’s see if it turns out to be something.
Neel is turning out to be one vocal baby - he lets you know with different tones of voice, every mood of his. (I wonder where he could have got this incessant desire to blab from!) He loves listening to people talk to him on the phone - he even responds with appropriate “mmm”s at intervals. When I call him up, he actually recognizes my voice and starts smiling, or so I am told. I called him two days ago from work and our conversation was pretty typical (you know, I go, “Hi Neel!” and he says “mmmmm!”) except for a little while where he didn’t say anything. I was wondering if he was still on the phone when he goes, “mmmmmmaaa, ammmmaa, amma!”. If I hadn’t been at work, that would have had me crying so hard :)
(In Telugu, “amma” means “mother).
I was reading a few of my old posts today and found a few interesting things that we expected to happen in the Iraq war - it is interesting to look back and see what went right and what didn’t - to see what we thought we knew then and what we know now.
Praful Bidwai says it is very important to find Saddam’s WMD -The second course would mean the war lacks a moral and political basis. Such a war will be extremely unpopular even in the West, including the US — where a majority of people wrongly believe that Iraq and Al Qaeda are linked. It will inflict terrible cruelties upon the Iraqi people, without necessarily unearthing and safely destroying such WMD as Mr Saddam Hussein may have stashed away in hard-to-find places.[Emphasis mine]
Experts estimate that the Iraqi civilian casualties will be anywhere between 100,000 and 500,000.
Documents filed in an Indian court suggest Saddam is using a few chemical plants in Iraq to build chemical weapons.
I will add more as I go through more entries to find interesting stuff.
Update: I wondered if Antoine Rigadeau will be the missing piece to make Mavs win the title - Can I die of shame now?
Ravikiran has this week’s Mela on his blog (finally!) - go read the belated-Republic Day Mela.
If you want to be featured in the next Blog Mela, go here to submit nominations. Good luck and have fun!