Happy New Year!

Hello, lads and lasses! don’t mind my fifteenth come-back attempt for the blog ;) This is supposed to be stealth. I want to see if I want to even keep doing this - good news is that I can finally access my blog from work, so I don’t have that excuse anymore :)

If you are really curious about what has been keeping me away from the blogworld and eating up all my spare time, check this…I am not telling you who I am in that life, but I will definitely tell you I met a few people I know in real life in there (they didn’t know it was me) and pleasantly surprised!

Nirvana in Water

I just had to say something about this post from Ann Althouse - Althouse: “We believe bottled water has become less about the physical act of hydration and more about being a companion to people.”

This just cracked me up due to two of my latest addictions…Perrier with Lemon and MetroMint water. I love both of these waters and binge on them constantly. Unfortunately, they are both pretty expensive, so the husband is not too well disposed of this habit ;)

Metro Min especially bills itself as refreshing to the body and soul, which was what I thought of as soon as I read Althouse’s post header. These days, it is not enough for water to simply hydrate you and quench your thirst - it also has to bring you closer to salvation :) Go figure!

Things I don't want to see in the food section

The family was out of milk this Sunday afternoon, so we dropped into a new grocery store that opened in the neighborhood called the “Carrollton Plaza Supermarket”. The place had lettering in some Asian language and considering the population and the Korean church next door, I am guessing this might have been a Korean grocery store. Well, needless to say there were plenty of interesting things I had never before seen in a grocery store…

For one, this was possibly the first place I ever saw that sold “chicken feet”…that was not all - there was a shelf full of intestines from a pretty wide variety of animals…gulp!

Top billing though, has got to go to…”Pig Rectum”! Now, I am all for multicultural sensitivity and kumbaya and love-makes-the-world-go and stuff, but I cannot in good senses buy my groceries from a shelf right by a pig’s rectum. Who eats that? This is a serious question - not rhetorical! Really, who eats a pig rectum? I am curious.

Thursday Morning Blues

Well, last night’s loss to the Suns still hurts so much I cannot talk about it…Also, exhausted tending to the little one who kept waking up every hour on the dot in the night. Thank Goodness, the weekend is close :)

Oh, here is a cool new tool or an incredible annoyance depending on the way you look at it - they give you a unified phone number that links to all your regular phones and makes all of them ring when someone calls this one number. Makes it even harder to make an excuse to not pick up an unwanted phone. Gotta keep it away from the husband ;)

Catching up

Man, the there are quite a few things I haven’t has a chance to talk about in the past few weeks…

1. Geek things first - there was the MT bug that I wrote about below, that kept me from blogging…I couldn’t really work too much on fixing that bug since, I was….
2. Too busy figuring out why the heck Spring Framework hates my adding elements to collections dynamically in a JSP. I know, I know…geek as it is, I hacked out a solution, so let me know if any of y’all are interested in it. This of course…
3. Did not keep me from watching my Mavs quietly grow into a monster only a proud fan like me could be proud of :) How about them Mavs, huh! Awesome! Bring on the play-offs, baby!

Tale of the missing blog

I know all of my 3,4…(counting on fingers)…countless readers missed my blog while I was gone for the little bit. It was a mixup - first with Hosting Matters and then GoDaddy - all is resolved now, so look for more frequent updates :)

Time to rethink....or not!

It was hard to be in the US around the Christmas of 1996 and to not be caught in the Jon Benet Ramsey mania. The beautiful, angelic little child who was brutally murdered, her ambitious mother, the beauty pageant history - there could not have been a more tragical drama if someone tried to make one up. I admit that I was one of those people who thought the parents were surely guilty - I wasn’t completely sure (whoever was?) but I was convinced that they had something to do with the murder, if not all of it. When I heard the news that there was a confession from the actual killer, I felt really bad the poor parents and was willing to do my “mea culpa”. Check out the lates feed from Google News and it seems like there is still plenty of doubt as to the veracity of the confessor and his confession.

This has all definitely made me a little bit more skeptical about the “parents-did-it” theory, but I am not yet totally ready to give up on it. Isn’t that the problem with pre-judgement? You hang to a theory long enough - it becomes Gospel. You are way too invested to let go of it now, even though evidence points to the contrary. I wonder about the police in Colorado those few years - I wonder if that was what happened with them. They found a plausible theory and stuck to it and ignored or rationalized away anything that took away from it.

Commenting effectively

I have been in enough discussions around the internet that I have seen all kinds of debaters. There are all kinds of people - those who use logic and facts coldly (one of the reasons why I like the cartely guys), those who are much too emotional to think logically (I have fallen in this category quite a few times), those who don’t have a point to make, but hate the people on the other side anyways, aka Trolls. In reality, one person is capable of being all three types in the same discussion, but most people seem to take on a single persona and use it to the maximum effect.

There is also a very thin line between what makes a person a troll vs. what makes you stop and listen to someone on the other side of the fence from you. I am trying to basically see where that line is and what it is that makes a person turn off from discussions. The internet being what it is, debaters are completely cut off from visual cues that usually signal if something is a friendly banter or a deathmatch between avowed foes. Words that sound a certain way to person typing them might not necessarily come off the same way to the other person or a casual reader unaware of the context.

I don’t comment on anything anymore at Desicritics for example, since I think it is an echo chamber with a few people peering down their lofty perches at a few other people who try the opposing view. No one even argues anymore - people simply sneer at each other.

We here recently had a troll attack - he claims he only wants me to hear his side. Well, hello! How are you going to reason with me when you start off by calling me names? What makes you think I will not only listen to you but agree with your point when you call me awful things? Maybe you don’t want to change minds, but just fling feces around - that makes you the worst kind of troll.

There have definitely been tough discussions on this blog on lots of different topics - I have been argued against and hung out to dry, sometimes by people who are close friends with me offline. It was fun - even if the discussions got emotional, we could set the differences aside as simply differing opinions. We didn’t hate each other or think less of one another.

It is when you start demonizing your opposition or ascribing evil to them that the discussion is as good as dead anyways.
Person 1: I really think X is far better than Y.
Person 2: I knew it! You evil, horrible person - how can you like X?
Person 1: You are too stupid to like X - how dare you support Y?
So ends that discussion. Just like any discussion where people use words like “Dhimmicrat” or “Rethuglican” and actually mean it - I mean, seriously! If all Republicans are evil and all Democrats are too dumb to tie their own shoelaces, why even have an American government? We might as well outsource governance to Bangalore. Is an Indian accented President that much worse than a Texas-accented one?

Coming back to the point though, if you want to be taken seriously, if you want others to listen to you and actually agree with you - please, please don’t start the debate off by assuming the other person sucks. Start it in good faith - assume that the other person is as good as you think you are. Treat them with respect till they deserve no more. Once you see they don’t deserve anymore, stomp them into the ground with facts and cold-blooded logic!

We are all moved into a new home

We moved hosting accounts recently - Hosting Matters was costing way too much for way too little space, so we moved over to Go Daddy now. Thanks, Sarah for all your help. Regular blogging will resume soon.

Oh - oh - one more thing - Cynthia McKinney lost, so all’s good with the world ;) We couldn’t be happier even if the NY Times “fauxtographers” staged us as being dead when we obviously aren’t :p

For more fun with “fauxtography”, visit here…

Boys and Girls

There has been quite bit of an on-going discussion in blogs these days (see here, here) about boys, girls, education and how the genders make it difficult for them to be taught in the same manner at school. I had an opportunity to observe first-hand, some interesting stuff yesterday.

My little (20-month-old) son was invited over to a childrens’ gym for a birthday party. There were probably about 4 boys 18-30 months-old and about 8 girls, all of same age range. The party co-ordinator let them all run around and let-off steam a bit. Then she called them all made them sit around in a circle for some group games. Initially, the entire group sat there in the circle and played. I noticed that 10-minutes later, only girls were left in the group and the boys had all wandered off (including mine) to play around by themselves and in general run around like little maniacs.

It was very interesting to see how the girls loved the attention of the group circle and participated eagerly in it, while the boys were initially made to sit there by their moms and then slowly just wiggled away for some solitary play time. They were not even playing with each other - they were all by themselves quite unlike the girls who were in little groups even in playtime. Even the games they were playig were really different - even though the gym equipment they were playing with was the same.

Now, I am no educator and I really don’t know what all this means. I grew up in a home where my dad was the only male, so I have had no chance (not interest) to observe the behavior of male children. I remember thinking of them as dirty, rowdy creatures when I was little and as the mother of a young boy, I want to see and learn as much as I can about what makes boys, boys. As a young girl, I have never had any problem in school and I remember most of the disciplinary action geared towards the boys. I guess I am kind of seeing now, how it just might be a male thing to run out-of-bounds since you are so full of energy and very less discretion.

Crappy hate mail

Dude, I miss real hate mail. I used to get tons of that stuff and trolls and all kinds of interesting people a couple of years ago. Now, it is all boring! I did get a feeble attempt at one this morning. Here it is -

Dilute Sulphuric Acid to me

Hello,
I used to visit your blog in 2003 when America first ‘invaded’ Iraq .And since then its common knowledge that there are no “weapons of mass desturction”, which the US claimed was its reason for the war. I searched your blog (using the search option there) for updates on this topic, after it was publicly known that the “war”, as such, was (is?) in vain.(It does appear like its all about the OIL.)
I havent found any updates , or your thoughts on this matter since you were following the topic quite keenly.
Did I miss any of your posts or havent you posted anything on this topic since then?

Regards

Let me see, my first thought was to say, “Screw you, I write about what I feel like”. Then I thought a bit and decided I might as well put this poor creature out of his/her misery.

1. Common knowledge about “no WMDs” - why would that be important for me again? It might have been “one” (I emphasize one) of the reasons for America to go to war. It was not my reason why I supported war. Go back and cite me one post when I say that - I had always supported the war because I thought Iraq deserved to be free. Prove me wrong on my points - don’t pick out whatever you want and then say I have debate what was not my point int he first place.

2. So, the war is in “vain” since there are no WMDs - maybe for America. Maybe for you, even. Not for me. I am vindicated every time Iraq goes to elections - every time the Iraqis flash their purple fingers proudly- everytime Iraqis post their thoughts about how great or sucky they are being governed - every time an Iraqi speaks his mind freely! So, kindly go stuff that!

3. It is all about (OIL) - awesome - this has got to be the stupidest canard people are still hanging on to? Where is my cheap 5-cent/gallon Iraqi oil? Why am I paying $2.20/gallon at the station? Show me the Oil! Atleast make up a few new stupid things to say and please don’t waste my time anymore with years-old crap, especially when it is proven that it was really france, Germany, Russia and the all-mighty UN who have been making off like Bandits from the oil money Saddam was spoon-feeding them for keeping him in power in return.

Am I an old fogey?

Should I consider myself an old fogey if I am bothered by IM short-cut-speak over IMs?

Oh and here is something that happened while I was coming back from India. I had to open my carry-on bag in Bombay to be searched and the security lady trashed all my home-made chilli powder saying that it was illegal for me to carry it on the plane. Fair enough, right? I then walk into the duty-free shop to buy my friends some gifts and for sale is a cute combo-pack of curry powder/garam masala. I bought a bunch of those along with the teas for my friends and walk into the plane - as I got settled in, I try to read the list of ingredients on the curry powder and guess what? It is made with….chilly powder

Just in case

Just in case I am not a jittery, nervous fool scared about undertaking a 24-hour-flight to India with my toddler (aka little monster by those who really know him) in my lap all by myself, Ravi points me to this post of his about the exact same airline and the flight I am about to take to Mumbai - Stranded in snowing Schiphol. Heartless, I say!

Still, just in case I do make it alive to Mumbai, I am planning to meet up the gang (aka cartel by those who really know them) on Sunday for breakfast before I take off for Vizag. See ya’ll there :)

No gay male adoption?

Here is an interesting thought - doesn’t Peggy Drexler’s conclusion pretty much make the conservative fundamentalists’ argument against adoption by gay males?

So stooopid!

Yep, that stupid was me - I had lost my purse about a month-and-a-half ago, so I got all my credit cards changed. I went and updated almost all my accounts with the updated numbers…I say almost, since I forgot updating my hosting matters account. They suspended it when they couldn’t get my older credit card number authorized and I find out about this though, via the blogmela.com site where they said my site was gone (I know I never once visited my site once over the last three days - I am very non-vain like that :)). Everything is fixed now, so I guess all is swell that ends well :p