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

Poverty and Disaster

There is a lot of talk currently about poor people being disproportionately hit by hurricane Katrina. It makes me think - hasn't this been the story forever and ever? "<insert disaster here> plows through <insert region here> - poor people hardest hit!" It happened with the tsunami, every single earthquake I can think of and must be an yearly occurrence in Bangladesh every time the monsoon hits.

It reminds me of something that happened back home in India. We lived very close to the beach in the Vishakhapatnam and we were a port/fishing city. All the fishermen lived on the beach, where the huts were not only eyesores for those trying to get tourism dollars, but a general indefensible line of housing should a hurrican hit. The city went ahead built an entire colony of low-incom housing with solid walls and indoor-toilets and tried to mmove all the fishermen into those homes. Two months later, all the huts were back again on the beach and their homes had been rented out to other poor people. The fishermen simply didn't want to lose their close access to the beach and their livelihood (their homes were about 15 minutes away by walk) and their convenience. Suppose a major hurrican hit Vizag and these people got affected - the city would have been blamed for not taking good care of its poor.

This is not an attempt to say that poor people are to be blamed for their misfortune - this is just to say there is also a sizable contingent of the poor people who won't let you help them. What do we do about people like that? How do we solve the issue without infringing on their right to make a living in a decent and convenient manner?

MT mess-up

Sorry guys, my blog has been messed up ever since I moved to MT3.2 - I cannot see my entries/comments/trackbacks and cannot even approve them or do anything. I am working on getting hte issues resolved :(

Logic/analysis and comments

Three different people commenting on three different posts - each of them making assumptions about me and trying to refute something that I said by personally attacking me and not providing a shred of evidence or even a sliver of logic to explain why they say what they say. Normally I would let these things just slide, but there were interesting points to be made so I am making them.

Here is "Shy" on the arranged marriages post and he says -

As far as what Shanti had to say, she was probably reacting, and she cud just be pardoned for that,wat say whitegirl?;)! I was really surprised to read that she is married and that too NOT arranged, unbelievable! I really wish I cud find out if she is HAPPY, as in feeling that high, that perpetual smile when people are in love and all those mushy things that I wish I knew!!,, I just get a feeling, that she is in denial, that just as there are Indian guys who r jerks, there are first generation Indian guys who are 1)Attractive2)Fit3)Charming4)Gentleman5)Courteous6_respectful I mean Shanti is the woman at the mall who would do a double take if she saw a white/asian et al girl with an Indian guy, and of course,kind of stare or just give the dreaded look(I have gotten a few!!) its part surprise and part denial ;)! I wud say Shanti, please dont be hasty and dont be judgemental sweetheart, and as your name says.. Peace..right guys?

All I have to say is "Wha?" What really comes across in the initial "whitegirl" posts and this guy's posts is a lot of insecurity. They cannot believe someone can hold views different from them and still be a happy, well-adjusted person. They will make assumptions and jump to conclusions about you since that makes them feel superior and lets them carry on with their worldview without so much as a rethought of their belief system. If you follow the thread though, you will see whitegirl's 180 on the issue. Shy apparently needs a little more time to think and not be so defensive.

The second comment is of course, by "murlin evans" on the post about Iraqi body count - a very ho-hum comment full of cliches and ad hominems and not a single point or fact to save it. I wouldn't normally bother to even acknowledge it except for that it fits the pattern of ideologues sputtering in defense of their ideology without trying to back it up with facts.

The third comment is really a series of comments by "Jerryl Verghese" on the post about B.Raman's dumbass first column (he redeemed himself in a second the next day) about London bombings. I am assuming Jerryl is Indian because of his last name. Jerryl makes a lot of fair points that are completely lost amid the usual shrillness like this - "The United States of America is the largest terrorist organization in the world, bar none." He has absolutely the right to make his arguments and like I said, he has a lot of good points couched in between a lot of easily refutable like the Kyoto/China and other such. What doesn't make sense is the fact the post was lamenting the idiocy of linking all this to the bombings in LONDON - not USA, LONDON, ENGLAND. This is exactly the problem I had with B.Raman's commentary. Sure, there are problems with US policy - I am the last person to give them a perfectly clean chit. To link all that to the extremism that raised its ugly head in London is making a giant leap of faith indeed. If Jerryl had instead emailed me with his points, I would have created a separate relevant post for the debate. When you focus on peripheral issues to the detriment of the issue at hand in a debate, you have already lost.

Jobster??!

Hello, bloggy friends! Anyone heard of the site Jobster? Anyone in the network who can invite me to it? It sounds pretty interesting, so any info would be welcome.

For you cooks out there...a question

Gopi Sundaram has a cooking question for those who are well versed or atleast a little bit more familiar than me with cooking -

I need some help, especially from anyone who knows anything about Tamil or Malayalam cooking.

I have made chips at home, both by myself as well as as a helping hand at home. The broad principles that apply to fried food apply here too: temperature control balances cooking and browning, season the chips when they come out of the oil and are still hot.

With two exceptions: chips made from a particular plaintain (நேந்திரங்காய் [nénthirânkāi], not வாழைக்காய் [vāzhaikkāi]), and from unripe jack fruit (பலாக்காய் [pâlākkāi]). In these two cases, when the chips are half-way fried, you add some brine directly into the oil. It explodes, foams, bubbles, but eventually subsides. This is rather destructive to the oil. A whole bunch of solids sediment at the bottom, and the oil doesn't last very long.

But when the chips emerge from the oil, they are perfectly seasoned. I learnt this technique from my grandmother. Even though we are Tamil, she was strongly influenced by Malayali cooking techniques, and those two fruits are mostly used in Malayali cooking.

Given the drawbacks, why do it this way? Importantly, why do it this way only for these two kinds of chips? I asked Alton Brown when he was in town, but he called my grandmother stupid, so I had to shiv him.

Does anyone else know?

Intermission

You have noticed by now that my heart hasn't exactly been in blogging these days - a high-paying but hard-working job, a demanding one-year-old (yes, he turned one this 20th) and other things have made blogging a pain in the neck to be honest. I don't want to blog because I have to, so this is going to be an extended vacation...I don't know something might catch my fancy and make me wanna talk about it sooner or later, but till then...take care!

Don't forget to send Shivam your Mela nominations for this week's Mela. I will still be co-ordinating the Mela efforts.

What's wrong with this picture?

Remember those puzzles? Here are two letters from the June "Atlantic". Let's see if you can see why I was alternately pissed and amused by them.

Spanking
Sandra Tsing Loh, in "Marshal Plan" (March Atlantic), suggests that "today's cutting-edge parents" spank their children, and jovially commends them for doing so.

Corporal punishment of children - regardless of how "moderate", and no matter by whom dispensed - is considered a violation of international human-rights law. The practice violates at least six human-rights treaties: the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the American Convention on Human Rights; and the European Social Charter.

[rest snipped]

Susan H. Bitensky
Michigan State University College of Law
East Lansing, Mich

The second one...

Letting Go of Roe
In "Letting Go of Roe", Benjamin Wittes essentially says, "Who cares of women have to travel to other states to get abortions, even medically necessary ones?" Apparently, Republican lawmakers care. The so-called Child Custody Protection Act would make it a federal crime to take a minor across state lines to have an abortion without notifying the minor's parents beforehand. Atleast twenty-one states would quickly outlaw abortion if Roe vs. Wade were overturned, according to a study by the Center for Reproductive Rights. We cannot, as should be obvious, rely on state legislation to protect reproductive rights.
Timothy Rood,
Piedmont, Calif.

Blast away!

IMHO

Mavs have heart! Yeah! Take that, Houston! I know it took about two games for my boys to show it, but I am glad they did it. Of course, there are still two more games to be won, so I will refrain from counting my chickens before they are hatched. Hopefully, the German Pope will pray hard enough for Nowitzki to realize the play-offs have started.

Speaking of the German Pope, a former Hitler youth leading one of the world's largest religion? In Dennis Miller's words, anytime there is an adoring throng ardently and passionately in love with a German, it makes me nervous.

Via Prashant Kothari comes this story about a guy put to death in the Saud and they find out five-days later they find out he is innocent - turns out justice delayed was justice forever not served in this case. I am not surprised the Indian Government has not raised a stink over this - we are the kind of people who will put up crap just so others can tolerate us. We never believe we deserve respect like any other nationality. We will continue to be treated like crap until we decide we are as good as anyone else. It is one thing to be a squeaky wheel - it is another to go through impossibly great lengths to avoid confrontation of any kind.

Who woulda thunk it, but Laura Bush was genuinely fine in her well-scripted jokes about "Desperate Housewives" and "Chippendale's". Rock on, First Lady - a sense of humor only makes people more likeable - especially a self-deprecating one.

Thousands apparently marched for peace and against nuclear devices - I wonder how many flags were there denouncing North Korea or Iran who have nuclear ambitions...I am not exactly holding my breath trying to figure it out.

FYI

If anyone is interested in buying something from my CafePress store, there is a coupon that gives you $5 off of every order of $20 or more with coupon code - DUKESGRAPES.

Relationship Advice

Trust me, there is a reason people say two's company and three's crowd. When it is just the two of you, if there is a fight or any disagreement, you are forced to makeup soon since you get bored without the other person's company. When there are other people in the equation, it gets easy to ignore your spouse/significant other for lengthy peroids of time since you have other people to talk to and interact with. The more this happens, the more distance builds up between the two of you till you don't recognize each other anymore and are simply used to existing without each other and in the company of others. It gets easier and easier as time passes till you end up not needing each other anymore - a recipe for disaster. Catch the pattern and nip it in the bud. Do yourself a favor!

(This was something I just needed to get off my chest after a few incidents I have seen recently - the above advice is meant to be general and not in relation to any of the people I know).

Weekend Roundup!

The Terri Schiavo battle is still going on - I have been reading the news and opinion on the battle all over. I have a problem with the phrasing of the issue by most people - many have called it the case of "right-to-die". I disagree with that. If Terri had left clear instructions, if not written atleast verbal ones to more than one person, I would consider this a case of right-to-die. Terri is not expressing her wishes here - the only person who claims to represent tham had remembered them miraculously after winning a million-dollar settlement on his wife's behalf in court. He has specifically said in court when he won the money that he would spend the rest of his life taking care of his wife - all of a sudden he remembers she really didn't want to live like that and would rather die?

I think this is clearly a case of she-said/he-said rather than exercising Terri's right-to-die. We don't know if Terri wanted to die. I know maybe I wouldn't want to. That doesn't mean she didn't want to. this is what I find pretty appalling on the side of the right-to-die people. I read a column claiming that the pro-life people are trying to impose their values on everybody else by trying to keep Terri alive. I think it is also the case of the right-to-diers assuming that since they wouldn't want to be alive like that, Terri wouldn't want to be alive either. See? the imposing values thing works both ways.

Coming back to more mundane things, I don't have any web access at work, so blogging is restricted to weekends and nights (I know, it sucks). The baby is doing real good as are the dogs :)

Good stuff happening in Lebanon - crazy, all that crap about Michael Jackson (I wonder about the mental health of any parents who would allow their kids anywhere near that freak - their kids need to be repossessed by CPS or something). I think that the new bankruptcy bill will screw consumers' happiness and the Republicans suck for pushing it.

Oh, I hate it that iTunes will not support anything other than iPods - I had free coupons from a couple of friends that I used to download songs from iTunes - I had to burn them to CD and then rip them to put them in my Creative Zen. I really don't get the obsession of various people with such proprietary software. I wanted a player that wouldn't restrict me and thank God, I got one. Hate Apple!

Ideavirus

Avinash has an excellent idea to make the most of our educational institutions and social organizations. It is pretty simple, really - he wants them to collaborate on coming up with solutions to problems like the kind most NGOs deal with. Educational institutions can definitely be financially and ideologically perfect for NGOs to get help for their projects while giving the students and faculty some much needed real-world scenarios to find solutions to and test their technologies on. It is a win-win.

He would like to find out if there is some such collaboration in place in India - Yazad?

Sensitivity or over reaction?

I found this on the CafePress messageboard I frequent, now that I am a shopkeeper there. Personally, even if I find the designs on thongs a little offensive, the more I think of it the more I convince myself it was an overreaction.

NCM - E-Store Stops Selling Underwear with Religious Symbols

It took almost three weeks to do it, but the American Hindus Against Defamation finally prevailed and forced CafePress.com's vendors to stop selling thongs and boxer shorts that carried images of Hindu deities and symbols. ...
Last month, a barrage of angry mail from members of the Sikh and Islamic communities forced vendors on CafePress.com's site to remove underwear that carried the image of the Khanda and the crescent. At press time, the online marketplace still carried underwear with images of Jesus on them.

The kicker for me, is the last two paragraphs above. Sikhs complained, Muslims complained and Hindus complained, but thongs with Jesus' image are still in the stores, since apparently those religious fundamentalists are the only ones who haven't complained. I guess it is time we learned a few lessons in leaving things be and not trying to shut down eevrything we deem offensive. I am not saying that Christians don't do it - I am just saying in this case, they are the only ones who seem to have kept quiet.

The bigger question to me is the fact that we find such stuff offensive. Even going by the religious symbolism, I find that any object has only as much holiness as you will attribute to it. If you worship a stone, it is God - to another, it is just a nicely carved rock. Just because someone disrespects a symbol, should we get all up in arms over it? Do we really own the images and the symbols? If someone else thinks they are just pretty designs, don't they have the right to wear them however they want?

Hot Libertarians?

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)

News Roundup

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.

Making excuses

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 :)

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 -

Suspicious goings on

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.

Rangoli Designs

I have launched a line of designs inspired by Rangoli on Cafe Press. Check out the designs at http://www.cafepress.com/rangolidesigns. Look around and let me know what you think I am doing right and what I can do better. I have just one design uploaded right now. I am in the process of creating more. Any help in the form of critiques from you, dear readers, is appreciated.

Outsourcing hits home

I met the guys who will replace me at the end of March 2005 today. My contract will be up March 31st and there will not be an extension since the contract positions have now officially been outsourced to an Indian consulting firm. A few of the firm's consultants are here to learn the job from us. I am not too broken up over it since I know I can find another job in three months and it was only a contract position anyways. Now, if I were asked to help mentor these guys so they could make me redundant though, it will be another matter completely. I don't hate these guys for my company's decision - it is not their fault. Will I lift a finger to help them? No way!

Update: I was prepared to leave at the end of my contract anyways, so I don't really care about this. What I do care about is the single mom of two kids who will not get an extension because of this - the guy who had a new baby and is the sole earner in the family - different people, different stories and shattered hopes - I cannot just sit here and see all these people depressed and demoralized because some CEO decided we were just numbers on a chart and not react to it. I am not thinking in abstract here. I feel the pain of these people I work with. My husband will feed me if I am out of work. A lot of these people don't have the same kind of support network to hold them up. What of them?

Me and my boring life

This was going to be another living in the moment segment but my son kept me up most of last night so I am too sleepy to write anything coherent - of course, now that I am a mom, I feel guilty about saying my son kept me up when in reality I kept him up by not putting his diaper on right. The poor thing was wet and miserable for a while before I did the smart thing to actually check the bed and feel the wetness (his nightgown was fleece and I couldn't tell it was wet). Yep, that was me, dumbest mom of the year!

Oh well, the little one seems to be doing fine otherwise - he is teething, so it is a 24/7 drool-fest. He will bite anything and everything he can reach including your nose, your chin and your fingers. All you can see sometimes when you pick him up is a big, open mouth trying to grab your chin. He also loves playing with my hair and leaves it "Edwards Scissorhands"-esque once he done with it.

I got my green-card approval a week ago and I am getting my passport stamped on the 14th. I am happy I don't have to deal with the H-1 baggage anymore.

My husband and I are going to be at the Mavs-Seattle Sonics basketball game this evening. He got really good tickets in the 115 row from his boss - I am hoping I will not fall asleep half-way through the game...

Mental Infidelity

This post is really inspired by MadMan. He pointed me to a post by a certain Indian blogger describing in detail the peephole-video he saw of an Indian actress caught bathing in her bathroom. I told him I was more offended that the said blogger was married and was watching this kind of stuff than by anything else. MadMan wanted an explanation and here it goes. Now that you know what is going to be in the post, if you think it will offend your delicate sensibilities, don't read any further.

Few things to make clear - I don't think watching porn is wrong - it just depends on the circumstance. For an unmarried person (man or woman) there are few avenues of guilt-free sexual satisfaction in India and porn is probably the best way to go about it given you don't hurt anyone else and there is no danger of STDs and such. One thing though is the problem if getting used to sex as a pure biological need without any sense of affection or love associated with it, which could cause you problems when you are in a relationship later on.

When you are married (again, regardless of if you are a man or a woman), you have someone already you can share your passion with. I also don't find it a problem when couples watch porn together to spice up their sex life - absolutely fine as long as both the parties know what they are getting into and they are both happy with it. My problem of course, occurs when a husband (I have seen it most of the time with men) watches this stuff by himself. I consider it mental infidelity.

Why would I think such thing? What about appreciating a beautiful woman on the road? in a movie? on the beach?

There is a big difference in the situations. As a woman and wife, this is how I see it. Catching an occasional sight of a half-naked or a fully-naked woman on a beach or in a movie while you are just passing by or browsing through is natural and normal. You cannot expect someone to go through their life with blinders on. When the same person actively seeks out said naked women by ordering a PPV movie, watching porn or constantly visiting beaches for the express purpose of ogling the women, then there is a problem.

I call the above behavior mental infidelity since the people mentioned above have not done anything wrong physically - they never probably touched the women they were ogling. They have touched them mentally - they have used these other women and porn to titillate themselves in their mind. I find this wrong on many levels for a married man. Firstly, it shows this man doesn't find his wife attractive enough to make him passionate anymore if he needs to rely on something else to turn him on. Secondly, how long before these fantasies intrude in his sex life with his wife where he is sleeping with someone while thinking about something else? At this point his lovemaking with his wife is turned into an exercise for ejaculation without any real sense of intimacy that is required to strengthen the bonds of relationship. Simple as that, which is why I find married men running after porn a little disturbing.

Election and stuff

I am getting my election coverage here - The Command Post.

Coming tomorrow...review of "Vaastu Shaastra"

Today's stuff roundup!

- I think Raj Bhakta is kinda cute in a weird sort of way and am watching the Apprentice to root for him. I don't know if he will win (Kelly and Kevin seem pretty strong to me), but he does have a good chance. Go Raj, the anti-stereotypical Indian guy!

- I hate Survivor - how can you vote off the one and only eye-candy, Agent Brady? Boo!

- Watched "The Forgotten" over the weekend. Spoilers below, so don't look unless you wanna know (that rhymes!)...

OK, this was one of those movies that I think as a mom I was supposed to get real moved by and cry buckets in. Unfortunately, I didn't do so. Here is a brief synopsis - Julianne Moore plays Telly, whose son died in a plane crash 14 months ago. She still loves him and cannot let go, so she keeps seeing a therapist (Gary Sinise). One fine day, all traces of her son in her life start to disappear - pictures in albums, video tapes, etc. She first suspects her husband of doing this to cure her, but turns out her husband doesn't believe she ever had a son as does her therapist and her ex-babysitter. She finds the dad of a little girl who dies in the crash with his son, but he doesn't believe he ever had a daughter. (You get all this from the trailer - the spoilers are in the extended entry)

I really liked the premise of the movie and was very prepared to like it when I went to watch. The ending was hokey crap about the bond between a mother and her son being greater and better than evil aliens! Yes, I said evil aliens - don't even ask! I don't understand why she was the special mom who didn't forget and why the other moms promptly forgot their supposedly dead offspring. What is different about Telly? The only thing I can think of is that she actually remembers her pregnancy - how stupid! Every woman remembers that! If this was billed as sentimental pap I would have bought it but thriller, this movie ain't! Skip it!

More stereotypes

Why do all the cars with Kerry/Edwards stickers stay in front of me resolutely during rush hour and refuse to go even a mile over 30 mph? On the other hand, why are all the Bush/Cheney-stckered cars/SUVs always in such a rush that they are trying to run me off the road even when I am going 10 miles over the speed limit?

Quote for the day

There is no idea so stupid that someone will not buy it!

GMail Invites

I have 6 invites - email me if you want one...

update: I am out of the invites - will let you know when I get a few more :)

Melting into melody

Imagine a day in your life when morning starts too soon and the day cannot end quickly enough for you. Of course, this is the same day you are then required to work for long hours because a deadline is approaching. You get back home tired and aching and you get a phone call from a loved one that has troubling news and you are upset that someone you love so much is going through tough times.

Now you find out you are out of groceries and need to go get things right now so you can cook. You do all that while dodging the lonely 75-year-old woman who wants to talk to you about her drunk husband for 30 minutes. You get into the car and switch on the music. You are driving along...suddenly there are the opening bars of a beautiful song - you can feel the tension ooze away from your body - your body turns to jello and you sigh involuntarily - your breathing slows down as does your mind...have you ever melted into a melody like that? I would be an insane woman if not for the magic of music.

Learning Experience

You know, you do learn something new everyday. I wouldn't have known there was an actual internet domain for "Palestinian Territory, Occupied" (.ps) if it didn't show up in my eXtreme Tracking stats - I got 3 hits from them overall :o

Where is the love?

Maybe they should be singing "Where is the fire?" instead...Black Eyed Peas Burn Down Recording Studio With Candles

We got sponsors

Well, we are getting our hosting sponsored by the good folks from Spend On Life for the next three months, so show them some appreciation by clicking the link over to their site and checking them out. They don't have any popups or stupid promotions. They seem to be a perfectly nice financial services site that provides info about Auto insurance, home loans, etc.

Who knows you guys might end up finding something useful from them :)

Good news

As someone who spent the first 35 weeks of pregnancy terrified that the baby might be premature (he did arrive 2 weeks early), I think the news below will definitely ease a lot of burden from other pregnant women. The earlier this is caught, the better the results.

Protein discovery could help prevent premature birth

Scientists have taken a big step toward developing an earlier, safer and simple test that could help prevent perhaps 175,000 premature births in the United States each year. Researchers say they have identified certain proteins in the blood that can indicate whether a pregnant woman has a uterine infection that can lead to premature birth. They hope the discovery will lead to development of a diagnostic blood test that would allow doctors to treat infected women with antibiotics earlier, in time to prevent premature delivery.

We are not nerds...

...we are just "gifted"!

A Smarter Brain

Some people probably suspected the math whiz from grade school wasn't in his right mind. Apparently he wasn't--he was in his right and his left mind.

A recent study of adolescents with above-average math abilities found the right and left halves of their brains are apparently better able to interact and share information than the brains of average students.

"Giftedness in math, music or art may be the by-product of a brain that has functionally organized itself in a different way," said Michael O'Boyle, psychologist at the University of Melbourne and one of the study's co-authors.

I have math and music covered - I guess my doodling during company meetings can qualify for the art part(?).

What up with me...

Hey all, I know I have been pretty bad about posting regularly these days. Things have gotten a little hectic since I started working again. My new employers monitor every bit of internet access and as a contractor I don't get much lee way using it. Once I get home I am so exhausted carrying not just me but also my (fast-growing) baby around that I don't have much energy to do anything but eat and go to sleep. That is pretty much my boring life so far.

Of course, it couldn't be a boring life when you are pregnant, right? I have a bunch of "desi" moms at work who have made it their life's mission to teach me what it is to be pregnant and keep lecturing me on the do's and don't s of pregnancy till they are blue in the face and I am ready to drop off out of sheer boredom and irritation. Seriously, why can't some people just mind their own business? I can only console myself with the fact that it is only 8 more weeks at the most...

Tests, tests and more tests

Ever wonder why pregnant women have almost 4lb more blood than regular people? It is so that they can have some blood left for themselves after all the tests that they have to go through, each and everyone of which needs about a vial of blood. I have had to give up about 5 vials of blood during the first trimester so people could make sure I am disease-free - another vial went today towards checking for gestational diabetes and my doctor assures me there is just one more test to go through before the grand finale of popping my baby out of myself.

That is another part that is kinda worrying me now, since my doctor was surprised at how big he got when she was measuring my stomach this Monday. It is kinda funny, since I put on only 2lb in the four weeks since my last visit to the doctor inspite of the large icecream sundaes and volcano cakes and pretty much every dessert available that I have been gorging on for the past few weeks. Isn't this fun! I get to eat for two and my baby works out enough for the two of us (trust me - he is really into aerobics these days - I can feel him).

Had a face-to-face interview for an XML/XSL programming position that could be a 12-month contract yesterday. The interview went great and I might learn something or the other today, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. If it works out, it will be almost the same amount I was making in my previous job and a lot less stressful, so it will be a good thing.

Me

Here is me all dressed up for dining out on our 5th anniversary as a married couple (and 26-1/2 weeks pregnant to boot). Oh, and the vase beside me is the anniversary special from my husband :)

Rant alert!

Ok, I have counted till 100, taken deep breaths and I am afraid I am still mad, pissed off at a few morons. Yeah, I know I am supposed to ignore them and pretend they don't exist in my world, but once in a while it just irritates me enough that I need to come out in the open. It started rather innocuously with a post on Jivha's blog about gay marriages, in which he talks about conservative morons. I thought that not only did that phrase didn't account for many liberals who are also against gay marriages, but was a overly broad generalization - the kind I am getting sick of from both sides of the partisan land. so, I comment pointing out that John Kerry is against gay marriages (he is pro-civil unions) and of course, the moron-brigade that regularly haunts his comment section shows up - here are the responses:

Huh... the Bush lover and gay hater makes her voice heard again. What will you do if your kids turn out to be gay and lesbian Ms. Shanti? Will you sent them out of your home, will you treat them like secong class citizens as preached by your beloved spiritual and moral hero George Bush. Come clean now. Posted by: Rama

There you go - this idiot has no idea where I stand on gay issues - he could find out by checking out comments I had made at Jivha's blog itself defending gays that I am not really a gay hater (I am pro-gay marriage for that matter, though I think the courts should keep out of it). Or, the moron could atleast dig up links showing John Kerry actually supports gay marriages or that conservatives are the only ones who oppose this issue and so on, but I guess that would take too much brain power for that. So the easiest thing to do? talk crap about me and my kids. Seriously, this idiot has said crap about me on Jivha's blog time and again till I stopped commenting there, but you know what pushed me to reply this time? He mentions my kids - he is essentially talking crap about my unborn son and I am not going to take this anymore.

Rama, you freaking idiot! If you have the balls to do so, come debate me on issues here on my blog - don't think hiding behind Jivha's blog and making hit-and-run comments about me and my child and attacking me personally is somehow indicative of your superiority over me.

Of course, then there is this extremely enlightening comment -

Hey Shanti, take your right wing, Bush loving agenda somewhere else or to your own blog. Don't attack John Kerry, whatever he did to you? He is a good, decent guy who doesn't make decisions to pander to his base. don't you go on nuts on him. If you are a open minded person you will see that, But we all know what your are. What about George Bush comments on this matter? He doesn't care about daily innocent Iraqi and US soldiers deaths but he is deeply troubled and loosing his sleep over the "Gay marraige" issue. Ya, thats says a lot about your leader.
Posted by: Kalpana

Of course, as is usual again, there is no rebuttal of the links I provided - she thinks I put words in Kerry's mouth when it is a news item (Kerry backs civil unions, not gay marriage) and then goes on to ask about Bush. Now tell me Kalpana, what the fuck does Bush being anti-gay marriage have anything to do with the point I had made in my comment? Did I say I supported him on the issue? Did I ever announce to the world I was a Republican or a Bush-backer? Why is it that if one is pro-war, one is automatically assumed to be pro-Bush? Show me one post where I said I like him or thank God for him?

See, this is what is completely wrong about the environment these days. I don't debate politics or even post much about them anymore, since everyone thinks they know what is right and the other side is complete morons. It is great to take sides on issues and believe in principles, but I think one is narrow-minded when everything one thinks of and agrees to surprisingly conforms to only one side of the political spectrum, whether left or right. I am pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion till the end of the second trimester and pro-war. I make up my mind on individual issues based upon their merits and demerits - not just because Bush said so or the Democrats said so. It makes me sick when extreme partisans would rather slander the other side on issues rather than try to reasonably argue their positions, while respecting the fact that even people who don't agree with you are capable of intelligent thought, as long as they are sticking to issues and not just attacking people!

p.s. One last thing! Call me all names you want on MY blog and I will answer you the way you deserve. If you bring my baby into any of this though, trust me - I will eat you alive!

Valentine's Day

A very, very happy Valentine's Day to you all!

I am snowed in, so it is a very cozy, home-bound Valentine's for me this year - Of course, it is also my Sammy boy's birthday, so it is all the more special for me :)

Amen!

I wanted to save this post by Suruj for the Blog Mela, but it was too good for me to pass up linking to it. Combine his words with this post of mine and this post of Joanne Jacobs and there are some really disturbing trends that seem to be at play here.

Who's the Daddy

"Men - the most useless of Nature's creatures", declared Uma Thurman - a.k.a Poison Ivy - disdainfully, in Batman and Robin. Suzi Leather, head of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Agency (HFEA), thinks along pretty much the same lines. Single and lesbian women have the right to receive IVF treatment (at the taxpayer's expense, of course), she declared, without having to prove the existence of a father figure in the child's life; in fact, a father was completely "irrelevant" in a child's life, and a bit of a "nonsense" besides. It is quite confusing, therefore, that just a couple of days earlier she had also promoted new legislation giving children from donated sperm the right to know the identities of their biological parents. The child's right to know its father far outweighed the donor's right to anonymity, she had declared then. Well, make up your mind, woman: do children need fathers or don't they ?

Beating boys up!

As someone who is going to have a brand new baby girl/boy, this article sure put into words my fears about having a boy instead of a girl - Boy bashing: Some say girl power movement may have gone too far. Here is the deal - boys are the politically correct gender to make fun of, while girls are pandered to, whether it is affirmative action or Title IX in question. It is sexist to say something mean about a girl, but it is allegedly funny to say hurtful things about boys (read article above). This scares me about the prospect of brining up a boy in such a society.

Just as I would feel having a boy is a safer choice in a patriarchal society, I feel having a girl is a better choice in the USA these days, given not just the policy of female empowerment, but the tendency in teachers and others in the boys' lives to label the least bit of rambunctiousness as ADHD and dope them up on Ritalin.

I can see around me how boys are not allowed to be boys - they cannot run around the school burning up their energy, since that is "disruptive" behavior. They cannot play with toy guns or action figures before someone gets alarmed by the "violent" fantasies they are indulging in. I am not saying that girls have it perfect here - I am worried that boys have nothing going their way at all. I don't think it is fair at all to try to imprison children of both genders into rules that are obviously easy for one gender to follow than the others. This really makes me wonder if I have a boy, can I bring him up right? Will the society let me?

(link courtesy Joanne Jacobs)

Gone Fishin'

We here at Dancing with Dogs are going to take a little break for the vacations along with the Blog Mela. We will be back if something really interesting happens or on Jan 5th, 2004 - whichever comes first :)

We are taking the Mela offline till then to revamp it a bit - some ideas are to make the Mela a monthly event and have a poll where visitors can rank the posts and the winning post's author gets a $10 Amazon gift vertificate (I will sponsor that). Drop in the comments any other suggestions you may have to improve the Mela - we will be checking in often.

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! :)

Good news for men

Male birth control pill soon a reality

For the first time, a safe, effective and reversible hormonal male contraceptive appears to be within reach. Several formulations are expected to become commercially available within the near future. Men may soon have the options of a daily pill to be taken orally, a patch or gel to be applied to the skin, an injection given every three months or an implant placed under the skin every 12 months, according to Seattle researchers.

The reason why I say this is a good thing for men is because these pills and other contraceptives might cause a reduction in the number of unwilling fathers who end up paying child support for children they claim they were "tricked" into having. Now that they can make sure they will not have unwanted kids, there goes one more excuse out the door for missing child support payments ;)

Weird dreams

This has got to be one of the weirdest dreams I have ever got - I was being chased around a strange town by a giant, green FISH! I have been chased by dragons, ghosts, people and aliens in my dreams before, but a fish? If I had a shrink, I am sure I would be providing him plenty of fodder to prove how nutso I am ;)

It's a baby!!!

I know I am jumping the gun by 2 weeks, but I cannot hold it in any longer and just need to get this out in the open. I am going to have a baby! :) It has been 11 weeks so far, out of which it has been 6 whole weeks (and counting) of awful morning sickness. I have lost about 16lb so far and don't feel too good often, which is the reason why I have been pretty behind on my blog updates and other extracurriculars.

If everything goes well, we are going to have a June baby, so poor husband is going to be stuck with not one, but two Geminis driving him nuts. Physically I feel awful, but emotionally I have been on a perpetual high, ever since I got to see my tiny little lump in a sonogram and could actually watch the tiny, little chest raise and fall with the heartbeat. Wish me luck, y'all - I am going to need plenty of it :)

Micro Publications

Om Mallik has a very interesting essay about micropublications - GigaOm: Essays: The Dawn of the MicroPubs - it was something that has been happening very quietly around us - we just have been too busy to notice.

Free hosting & a photolog

The big news is that I found a truly free webhost this Saturday. The company is called 1and1 and I think for now, the offer is limited to US and Canada residents only. This is not free for life, but for 3 years and offers 500MB of disk space, 5GB of monthly data transfer rate, one MySQL database, CGI/Perl and pretty much everything a regular hosting account offers. I read about this in eWeek and tried to sign up and it seemed to work.

Not one to leave a free offer unused, I have started a photolog there and I think I will also make a backup of this blog there in case Hosting Matters goes down again. Anyways, here is the link to my photolog - http://www.dancingwithdogs.com/photolog/ - Enjoy!

Allegedly or not!

Newsday.com - Prosecutor: Boys in abuse case improving

TRENTON, N.J. -- Three of the four boys allegedly starved by their adoptive parents have improved enough to take a trip to a local mall and attend a birthday party, but authorities were still trying to determine Monday how the case "fell through the cracks" even though a child welfare worker had often visited the home.

Seriously, I think sometimes we take this whole "presumption of innocence" a little too seriously. In the above case, for example, the boys were either starved or they weren't - how can someone be "allegedly" starved?

Belated Wishes!

A very Happy Diwali (festival of lights) to everybody!

This is the one festival I really, really miss from back in India :(

Court-sanctioned murder

Yahoo! News - Fla. court OKs letting woman die

A Florida woman whose husband and parents have battled for nearly a decade over whether she would want to live in a comatose state may be removed today from the feeding tube keeping her alive. A state appeals court Tuesday refused to block the removal of the tube. That was one of the last legal hopes the parents of Terri Schiavo had against her husband, Michael Schiavo. Barring further appeals, the device will be removed at 2 p.m. today in accordance with the wishes of her husband and a court order.

Reprehensible, really! If they do want to kill her, why won't they atleast do it humanely the way they kill really brutal murderers who get to die in minutes? Terry Schiavo on the other hand, will be starved and dehydrated to death for days and maybe weeks, before her body will give up and die. Why would we choose to do that to an innocent woman?

Here is what her parents, in a desperate fight to keep her alive, have to say -

October 15, 2003 is the day the courts have ordered the withholding of nutrition and hydration from Terri Schiavo. It is also the Feast of St. Teresa - Terri's name-sake.

In a desperate effort to get the attention of someone who could stop this court-sanctioned death, the Schindler family has released a video of Terri that they took some 24 months ago, showing Terri laughing with her mother.

Because of this, Mr. Schiavo's attorneys have ordered that Terri may no longer have visitors. Not even her mother and father are allowed to see her or to even say goodbye to her.

Here is a little more background on the story, as we wrote about it a little while ago - Terri's Situation: A Brief Overview Of Her Court Battle

What up!

I am hosting the Carnival of Vanities this week - so send in your entries to madhoo.1atemail.com before 9:00PM CST 10/07/2003!!!

It is the weekend already, thank God for that! ;) I have had a pretty eventful week over the last week, which didn't leave me with much time for blogging - there are plenty of things I have wanted to talk about, but none of them exactly warranted a complete post, so I am going to combine them all here -

- Watched the Telugu movie "Tagore" last Friday. The movie was alright, but the crowd was another story altogether. There were groups of men throwing pieces of paper at the screen, screaming in awe at the hero and screaming obscenities at the heroine, throwing condom-balloons at people around them. The behavior just sickened me to the core. I didn't bother to stay on - left a little while after the interval. I cannot understand for the life of me why such people are allowed to even enter movie theaters when obviously all they want to do spoil the fun of movie-watching for others in the theater.

- Watched "Memento" a couple of days ago. What a movie! Loved every bit of it, even though I still don't understand a few things I will not mention for the fear of spoiling it for you few people who still haven't seen it :)

- Mavs have started training camp a few days ago. Check out here for the training camp news. For the views of course, you go hear to read Antawn Jamison's camp journal and Josh Howard writes here. I am loving Jamison already and cannot wait to see him play, which of course, is going to happen tomorrow as they take on Utah in Mexico City in a pre-season game. I am going to be catching the Mavs vs. Orlando pre-season game at the AAC this Tuesday, so it will be a fuun and rowdy experience cheering my boys on :)

PSA

I got this email yesterday allegedly from Ebay, asking me to verify my information before I could place further bids. The body of the email is really an image, which is linked to a bogus site -

You can see the reason is obvious for making the body an image - that way the bogus people were able to put a very "ebay-looking" address as if for the consumer to click, while the actual link being clicked on is really the bogus one the picture was linking to. The site asks for your SSN, debit and credit card numbers, the code in the back of your cards and your ATM pin. I am going to forward this email to Ebay's customer support so they can do something about it. Be really careful, people!

Letters or news?

Since when did letters to the editor like this - Letters: Watch out for GOP power grab - become sources of news to Google? If some pissed-off peoples' letters can be deemed newsworthy, why not blog-rants as news sources? How low can they go?

More excuses

Ok, here is my excuse for the intermittent blogging...the dogs ate my posts!!! Not working? Alright! Have you ever spent a lot of days between a lot of people and after a while felt all drained and talked-out and needed a little break to recharge? That is precisely how I feel right now - I am definitely feeling better than I felt over the weekend, but it is hard to leave my anti-social self behind ;) Don't worry, I am addicted to shooting my mouth off and will be back soon (as if I ever really leave) with lots more crazy rants and theses.

What's in a name?

Ok, on yahoo messenger, my ID is "madhoo" - is that some kind of a Muslim or Arab code word? I am asking because I get about 10 requests per day on the messenger from people who "want to be my friend" and want to "chat wit [sic] me". Almost all names are Muslim-sounding, so I wonder if the name has some special meaning that I am not aware of. While I am figuring this out, aisha_farheen, tahirahmedqureshi and ahsanahmed, I really don't want to chat with you - get a freaking life, will ya?

Why get married?

The Marriage Trap - A new book wrestles with monogamy and its modern discontents. By Meghan O'Rourke

A good article in Slate critiquing a book called "Against Love" by Laura Kipnis - a few extracts -

What's curious, though, is that even though marriage doesn't seem to make Americans very happy, they keep getting married (and remarried). Kipnis' essential question is: Why? Why, in what seems like an age of great social freedom, would anyone willingly consent to a life of constricting monogamy? Why has marriage (which she defines broadly as any long-term monogamous relationship) remained a polestar even as ingrained ideas about race, gender, and sexuality have been overturned? Kipnis' answer is that marriage is an insidious social construct, harnessed by capitalism to get us to have kids and work harder to support them. Her quasi-Marxist argument sees desire as inevitably subordinated to economics. And the price of this subordination is immense: Domestic cohabitation is a "gulag"; marriage is the rough equivalent of a credit card with zero percent APR that, upon first misstep, zooms to a punishing 30 percent and compounds daily. You feel you owe something, or you're afraid of being alone, and so you "work" at your relationship, like a prisoner in Siberia ice-picking away at the erotic permafrost.

I find this argument highly shallow and that of a person who has never been love or has never committed to herself anything. Although Meghan O'Rourke pretty much agrees with me, as a married women, let me tell you what I think of this - to put it simply, DRIVEL!

No, marriage is not a capitalist phenomenon at all - it is an institution that has been a part of our lives and cultures in one form or another and has endured for thousands of years and many different religions and non-religions. To speak non-spiritually, marriage is a commitment between two people to be there for each other and to share and love through life. What is so wrong with that?

How many of us own pets? How many of us take care of the pets through their lives and hold them close when they are dying? It isn't like pet-ownership is all fun and play - no, you have ups and downs and ultimately being close to the pet and have the pet close to you enriches your life in so many ways, you work on the relationship with your pet and you plod through the bad times, because the good times make it worth it. Isn't that some sort of a marriage on a simplistic level?

You don't marry just for kids, but we need kids around to sustain our race and ourselves. The kids that we raise cannot have healthy, balanced childhoods that they need to develop into good individuals unless they have a semblance of a family and a support system around them - see the crime statistics, for instance - most criminals are from single-parent families or are orphaned at an early age. If we lived in the kind of free-for-all world the author must like, where is the support? Where is the sense of security?

Lastly, I think a free-for-all society in which there is no marriage, but just consensual co-habitation-with-no-obligation is more of a capitalist structure than the current marriage system.

Excuses

I have one of my doggies (Raju, the fawn Dane) at work today, so I need to look like I am working extra hard, which means there won't be much blogging unless I find something really interesting or the NBA season starts at once as a surprise. In the meantime, head over to Jivha's place and nominate your posts for the Blog Mela.

The Mela will be stopping by at Mahesh Shantaram's place next week, so you know where to do a little self-trumpeting ;)

Good Idea

I think this makes sense - I pay for extra storage with MSN, since if I don't do that, most of my email would bounce daily, owing to the over 100 junk mails I get a day. Spam is actually costing me money - why shouldn't I make them pay for it? If I have to pay to send someone a mass-mailing by post, why shouldn't the spammers pay for the mass-wmails?

Make Money Fast!!!! - If you owned your inbox, spammers would pay to get inside. By Jonathan Rauch

Technologically, no quick fix is in sight. But it's helpful to think about what sort of fix the technologists should be hunting for. The answer, I think, is this: I should have property rights to my e-mail inbox, and I should be able to charge you for admission.

Rainy days and wintry nights

When the skies turn cloudy and Earth washes herself with rain, all Ican think of is you? Why is it that when I look out the window and see the flowers shake the cleansing rain out of their petals, all I feel is despair? Why do you still mean so much to me? Why do I still feel I have lost you?

Why is it that everytime I feel young again, I am looking for you beside me? Why do I still pine for you from some corner of my heart? Why are my happiest songs and saddest sighs in your name? Why is it that when I am sleeping and vulnerable, you take over my dreams?...

Work-related Primal Scream!

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Thanks for listening - we now resume our regularly scheduled programs!

Idle thoughts

I tinted my hair dark red last night - just like that - I think I was really bored :)

While I was waiting for the color to set, the fumes must have gottent to me, since I started formulating a cabinet of Indian bloggers to govern India. The question of who would be PM was easy - who else, but Yaz! He already has experience with and fighting against beaurocracy, thanks to Praja, the NGO he is part of.

I then got to thinking that Gaurav could probably be the Home Minister, Ravi, the finance or foreign affairs minister, with Sameer, JK and Niraj probably rounding out the other posts. I couldn't assign any other posts except for Yaz, Gaurav and Ravi, since I couldn't exactly typecast the other bloggers :p Well, what do you guys think?

Update: I apologize "diplomatically" for forgetting to include Kingsley, who of course, will be the "religion and ethics" Minister, and Sandeep, who will take over once Kingsley will resign over the brouhaha over Atheist Personal Law.

Just wondering...

Ok, I was just curious enough to check my web stats for this month, and I found that I had around 1100+ visits in two days - Jul-21-22, which is last week. That is way above my average, so I am wondering who linked to me to cause that little spike. Anyone have any ideas?

Whee! I need Therapy!

Yep, because as our good friend lets us know, Indian Ink: Conservatives are Closeminded! (Of course, I don't exactly consider myself conservative in a lot of things, but let us ignore it for a while).

I can go all snarky on this and talk about how I don't see anything wrong with "terror management" - shouldn't we try to manage terror? Should we just join hands and hold candle-lit vigils instead?

But then, I can also go all factual on this and mention that this is in fact old news picked up a couple of days ago by Instapundit, who posts links to some excellent refutations. Here are a few -

Conservatives are Happier
Another article by John Ray
Recycling Misinformation about Conservatives (plenty of references and published on July 23)

As you can see if you care to read the gist of the study, any study that compares Hitler, Mussolini and Ronald Reagan and says they were basically the same, you should be able to smell a huge rat. When there are aberrations to the study of course, like Stalin and other commie dictators, the study glosses over it and say they were conservative too. How fun! I thought that the hard-left ties itself into knots trying to tell us all what a "worker's paradise" Cuba is and how good socialism and communism are for us, if we would only listen.

Lastly, the study is nothing but a cheap shot. I know Ind will accuse me of preaching to her, but trying to make out your opposition into some kind of crazed, unhinged psychopaths will not make you any better in the argument. There is no reasoning with you when you think I am stupid or sick. It just makes you holier-than-thou and makes any kind of exchange of ideas between you and me moot (trust me, it might be news to you, but there are good and bad ideas on both sides).

This is one of the things that has sickened me during the recent fights between the pro- and anti-war groups. It would have been real easy for me to just say you are a "commie-liberal-whatever, you are an idiot!" to end the debates with a lot of commenters - they were surely calling me a "bigot" and an "American ass-licker" just because I was pro-war. How persuasive it was too! It just made me feel really right about my position that the best the other side could dredge out was name-calling.

Oh, I have one for Ind - I know you tout around the Vote for Impeach.org url all the time - it is founded by Ramsey Clark, who openly supports Serbian genocidal maniac Milosevic - quickly now, is Milosevic conservative or liberal? What does that make Ramsey Clark? More importantly, as someone with a common cause, what does that make you? See how it works both ways? Have fun!

(disclaimer: I don't mean usual liberals when I meant hard-left - I mean those that actually believe in the Bush=Hitler signs they carry around - the DU and Indymedia types)

Euthanasia

I don't know about others, but personally, I would hate to live as a vegetable. I would hope that if I am ever stuck in a situation like that, when I am nothing but a live brain, my husband would do the right thing and pull the plug on me. Seriously, if a person has no hope of ever being cured, sick of his/her life and wants to end the interminable pain, should the society be allowed to step in and stop it? What about the right of the person on his/her own body? Shouldn't they be allowed to die with dignity and in the way they choose?

Wired News: Euthanasia: A Better Way to Die?

Researchers in the Netherlands found that friends and family members of terminally ill cancer patients who died by euthanasia had an easier time coping with the death of their loved one.

Lazy bloggy day

So I will just ask y'all a question - how many of you are going to watch the "Seabiscuit" movie? How many read the book?

Elderly Drivers

Market driver had recent accidents

SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 17 - An 86-year-old man whose car plowed through a crowded farmers market, killing nine and injuring up to 45 others, had recently damaged his own garage with his car, police said Thursday.

That incident brought back really painful memories of my first accident ever here in the US. I had gotten my drivers' license in Nov 2000 and early Jan, I am driving on a road and just crossing the signal light, when a car in the cross-road just rams into the side of my car. It was just so awful, I cannot begin to explain it.

So, I stopped my car a little ahead and the person who hit me stopped behind me - someone called the police and we both got out of the cars to meet the policemen. I was driving an Infiniti I30, and my car's right door was pretty smashed, but the car was still driveable. The other car was an old toyota, whose hood pretty much gave in. Well, the story though, is about the other car driver.

He was this extremely old man, with a lighted cigar in his mouth and so frail and shaking so hard - shaking like a leaf. I felt so sad when I saw him, I almost didn't feel like asking him to pay for my damages (I say almost, since the damages were > $3000). Well, the man didn't seem capable of lighting his own cigar, leave alone, driving a car. He clearly had the red light, but was trying to turn right and ran right into me. A younger man would have probably slammed his brakes to avoid the accident. Obviously, this man's reflexes were not good enough to do that.

Anyways, so we exchange insurance information while he insisted I slammed the side of my car into his car's front in a miraculous feat. Then he tells the policemen - "you know, my Caddy held up so much better in a similar accident two weeks ago, than this stupid car did!".

Birth Order

A pretty neat site that makes a guess of your personality depending on your order of birth relative to your siblings - Birth Order Plus - The 5 Personalities of Birth Order - I am a first-born :)

(link via Dean Esmay)

If they were Cubans....

Women paddle from Cuba to Florida, set record...and promptly apply for asylum!

A very Happy Birthday!...

...to the love of my life!
Love you a lot, my favorite crab!

We have been rated

What rating is your journal?
brought to you by Quizilla

(link via Dean Esmay)

How I was an oppressive imperialist

...or atleast I pretended to be :) We had a fourth of July parade in our neighborhood yesterday, for the first time since we moved down here. It was supposed to start in the school a block from us and we were told we could bring floats, dogs - anything and march along. Now of course, I cannot really feel too patriotic about America, owing to the fact that I am not an American citizen, so I just wore clothes with the flag colors, but no flags and dressed my dogs up (they are fully American) with their flag bandannas.

My husband and I sat outside waiting for the parade, when they all came through - the family that lived in the neighborhood for 50 years and owned this land before it was developed - some 20, 30 kids wearing red, white and blue on bikes - little kids in decorated cars, trying to throw candy and beads - last, but not least, the decorated doggies :) It was just a lot of fun watching.

And then of course, as it usually happens when my Great Danes are around, they stole the show and everyone in the parade wanted to pet my "horses" and "ooh" and "aah" over them. Before I knew it, I was sucked in by the friendly people and one of my Great Danes (Raju, the brown one below) and I ended up joining the parade and marched through the entire course - having the time of my life :) So, there we were in a human stream of red, white and blue, wishing everyone a happy fourth and happily celebrating. It was so nice to see Italians, Indians, Pakistanis (yes, we have plenty in our neighborhood), other Asians, Hispanics, African-Americans - all kinds of people getting together in one single neighborhood and for one day, we were all Americans.

Interesting!

Thinking of putting yourself up at eBay? Find out how much you are really worth at - Human For Sale - Home - How much are you worth? - post your worth in the cooments - I will give mine out if it doesn't look too shabby in comparison :)

(link via Common Sense and Wonder)

Sounds like a lot of fun!

One Sixteenth: Gearing up for Hogwarts

Maybe a certain person we all know and love should apply to this over the summer instead of trying to get her MBA ;)

We're going to do a trial run of the Hogwarts Summer Correspondence course. Just four weeks, I'm thinking, and if it goes well we'll do more next summer. I'm setting up lessons in Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures, Potions and a special class in Basic Charms and Spells for Muggle Witches. I was going to do Astronomy, but then I looked at the night sky near our house. There's so much light pollution that the lessons would have to consist of "Go outside, and peer at the sky until you can find a star, any star ..."

(link via Joanne Jacobs)

Men!

Baby boys raise future miscarriage risk

Men! Can they do anything right at all? (end feminist rant) :p

Mothers whose first child is a boy are then more likely to suffer recurrent miscarriages than those bearing a girl first, suggests a new study.

In the spirit of James Taranto...

...what would we do without surveys? ;)

Women, as sexual as men: survey

Tracking Flights!

It is fun tracking flights online - especially when the flight I am tracking is carrying my husband back to Dallas from India after a month-long vacation :) I suspect it is probably off by a little, since he is still over Michigan right now according to the tracker, while he should be arriving in less than 2 hours according to American Airlines.

Oh well, all this is to tell that tomorrow is going to be really light blogging day - I am taking off from work, so we can...ahem..."catch up" on stuff. In the meantime, stay happy y'all :)

Update: Oh, I saw a bunch of people with placards in front of the INS building this morning, on my way to work. Some of the placards read "Families First", "119 days and waiting" and "INS, do your job". Anyone knows what this is about?

This is for Ashwini

Update: Maybe this isn't so far from truth after all!

Really, really big announcement

Well, watch this space and Real Women Online for a really big announcement coming before this Friday :)

A little hungover

Ok, so the birthday celebrations lasted a little longer than usual - it was really a girlfriend and me sitting at home and sharing two bottles of good chardonnay and frozen pizza, but we managed to yak it up till 2:00AM. So, I went to bed at 2:30 and woke up at 6:00, since I needed to get to work. All this might cause me to post or not intermittently.... But then it is Friday, so who cares? Have fun and party on, y'all!

Religion, religion and more religion

Blogger will not let me link to the exact post, so go to this blog - The B. Files - and read the post dated, "Sunday, May 11, 2003". And then, read the comments - I have got to say I am thoroughly impressed by Gaurav's arguments. Those are some of the really well-thought-out and well-argued debate points I have seen about religion. Same goes for Adnan - call me a bigot, but I was pleasantly surprised to see him and Ubaid, two very open-minded Muslims participating in the debate. It was enlightening to say the least. Well said, Gaurav!

Personal post alert!

Reading through Ooma's archives reminded me of myself - maybe a couple years ago - maybe now. I am one of those hopeless romantics - I write long, desperately loving letters to my husband when I have to be away from him. I have written my share of crappy poems and still do, occasionally. I have an extremely fertile imagination and can day-dream myself to death :)

Note: Only the good tyhings in the post apply to Ooma! I wouldn't wish my craziness on any one :p Oh, and we DO like you, Ooma! :)

Most of all, I think I have an enormous capacity to love - I am passionate about being in love - kinda explains why I was dating since I got into High School, till I found my man in Engineering College. I know that each of the people I dated, I loved them like they were my everything. Call me a fool, but I loved each and every single one of them with my all. I betrayed some and some betrayed me, but the love was always consummate and completely focused on the person in question.

I might have scared a few people with the mad intensity of my emotions :) I may have suffocated a few in the relationships with me. Now when I think back, I chalk some of it down to immaturity and insecurity. I wasn't confident enough in myself or settled enough in my skin to take the world on, on my terms. I still give my all to the person I am in love with - the difference now, is that I know how to be loved back the same way :)

New skin

Added a new skin today - check it out in the skins page.

Now that I have gotten the hang of it, expect me to go crazy and add new skins every weekend :)

A poem written for us!

Rob's Amazing Poem Generator

Dancing with remote knowledge of what you
get my depression
and principled. See, how
to Hawaii.
We are talking
about, respect for Mavs came back to a typical
desi Muslim movie, a few paragraphs and order, the
US May 7 against
this Blog again, and
feel all I
like Shanti around 360 degrees.
Jason Kidd, upon his
love for a scoring
machine. The poster especially is shed on for
steals and above : « hide posted by
ignoring, aggravated the courage to equal that he
can not you say about the lightning rod for
the way
his tragic suicide.

(link via Tim Blair)

For geeks only!

Which OS are You?

Quotes for the Day

For the atheists among us -
"Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

For Mavs fans,
"We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees." - Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks

More Announcements

To prove that we here at the "Dancing with Dogs" team (of one) do care for our readers, we have redesigned the blog again, and have added two new skins along with my favorite girly pink. Use the "Skin this Site" feature on the side bar to change the look and feel of the blog as you please - Thanks a lot Joni, for the excellent job and your hard work :) (trust me, her prices are reasonable and her work excellent!)

Now that we have the ability, expect me to create a ton of skins over the weekend :)

BTW, the Blog Mela deadline is 7PM CST today - sorry for the confusion :)

Fun link of the day!

Get your tea-leaf reading here - Lifetimetv.com: Astrology Central (needs Flash plugin).

Swimming

As I was driving to work this morning, I was listening to the radio and they were talking about water parks, wave pools and such, a sure sign of summer! I love swimming and water, but I wasn't allowed to learn swimming in India for obvious reasons - girl, swimsuits, etc. Once I got hear, my husband and I would get into apartment swimming pools and wade around - nothing fancy - I never had the courage to get into the deep end.

This problem was all the more emphasized, when we went to Hawaii. We went on a little diving trip, which required us to actually get into the ocean water in the little flippers, glasses and a little pipe to blow air out of. I wil just say we saw all the fish that we could see while hanging on to the rungs of the boat's ladder. We were extremely scared to let go and try a little swimming on our own.

So, three years ago, when I was between jobs, one of my friends called me up and asked me to go take swimming lessons with her and I jumped at the offer. Both of us show up at this local YMCA and ask about the classes - these little teenage girls hand us a couple of enrollment forms and ask us - "So, how old are your kids?". We finally learned how to swim with the class group - ages 6 and above :)

Conversions, religion and God - Part 2

Varsha Bhosle manages to get herself all worked up into a froth over conversions in India and how Christian missionaries are snaring unsuspecting and gullible Hindus in this column - Stories they don't want told - to the point that she hopes Dara Singh, yes that fiend who was behind the burning alive of the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two little kids in Orissa comes out of his little "imprisonment" unscathed. It was just appalling to read such tripe from a columnist paid to have her opinions published - one whose word reaches so many people all over the world.

Let me tackle the conversion issue first of all - there are three groups of people involved in here. The first, are the people who are converting to another faith, for emotional or spiritual fulfillment or as Varsha puts it, for a few bags of rice. If a person feels that he is better off reading the Bible or the Koran rather than Bhagawad Gita, it is completely within his right. If the person wants to convert because he is getting paid or fed to do so, that is also well within his right. A person can choose to follow, convert from or reject a religion (or God for that matter) as a matter of personal interest. If there is a loser or winner in this, it is the person making the choice.

The second group of people are the missionaries/mullahs/priests who seek to convert people of other faiths to their path. Again, it is their choice if they want to convert someone to their faith by the goodness of their preaching or by offering food and money. It can be argued that there is no point in making some one embrace your religion for material benefits, but it is again the individual choice of the preachers if all they want are numbers are true believers.

The third group of people are us, the bystanders - all I will say is it is none of our business - if some one chooses to preach to people and someone else chooses to convert into a faith based on that. Of course, the society does have to take into consideration if these activities are somehow undermining the national fabric, as in changing the allegiance of the converts from the country of India to someother tradition or religion. It will also get worrisome if this will somehow trample upon the tradition of "mutual respect" (I will not say tolerance - we don't tolerate other faiths - we do more - we respect them) between religions and people existing in India. Unless something that drastic happens, I don't believe the Government of India or any other state or country has any reason to meddle in issues of faith and religion. regardless of the Bhosles of the world say.

All that I said was as an Indian. As a Hindu, this is how I feel about conversions - if my religion is so feeble and the faith of its believers so fragile that they will convert for a few bags of rice, then so be it. If me and my fellow Hindus cannot provide the help that the missionaries are providing to the converting Hindus, we don't deserve to cry over it either. Also, as a Hindu, I believe that there are many paths, all of which lead to God - it could be idol-worship (Bhakti Yoga), Spriritual Enlightenement (Jnana Yoga) or whatever. This means that if another Hindu converts to another faith, to me it shouldn't matter, because according to my religion, that is a path to reach God too.

Update: "There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."
- Mahatma Gandhi

No comments!

I know it is juvenile, but what the heck - I will still snicker :-) (from today's samachar - Indian news portal)

Oh boy!

Check these recipe cards out if you are planning to go on a diet soon. I swear you will never want to eat a thing. Ever. Again. One question - if the Fluffy Mackerel Pudding is made of Mackerel, what is the Caucasian Shashlik made of?

Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974

Update:
Another funny link - UNUSED AUDIO COMMENTARY BY HOWARD ZINN AND NOAM CHOMSKY, RECORDED SUMMER, 2002, FOR THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (PLATINUM SERIES EXTENDED EDITION) DVD, PART ONE. via the Instapundit.

Wisdom on a tea bag!

Yes, I did find this quote printed on my Good Earth "Sweet & Spicy Herb Tea".

"Too many wish to be happy before becoming wise" - Susanne Necker

(Nice quotes, but not so nice tea - a little too cinnamony for my taste)

Conversions, religion and God - Part 1

Ok, I started the questionnaire on religion, and it received so much response, it will be unfair if I withheld my own beliefs on the issues. I had almost lost interest in the topic (my mind wanders a lot - I am a Gemini, I can't help it!), but Varsha Bhosle's latest article in Rediff brought the issue back again. To put it simply, I believe in God - I believe God is a life force infusing and within every living being on the planet and elsewhere.

Religion on the other hand, I feel is a set of social mores, a boundary that is defined around people to help them lead a good life. That is not to belittle any religion, but I personally feel that a religion essentially tells you how to be a good human being and lead a good life. If you follow one religion or the other, fine! If you follow the good aspects of a lot of religions, fine too - even if you don't follow any religions and don't believe in God, that is absolutely fine too, as long as you have imposed some boundaries upon yourself, that help you lead a good life.

Does that make religion irrelevant in your life? I don't think so. I have been raised a Hindu and I faithfully participated in all the rituals and pujas during every festival. I fasted on certain days, I woke up before sunrise and prayed on certain other days, I also gave up eating meat and other foods on certain other days, all to make God happy. Of course, that was the outward reason - inside, it was more a test of the will power for me. I did it all to prove to myself that I could. In short, that is the story of my religiosity.

My dad had a master's in Philosophy, so he read books written by a lot of thinkers, which I read sometimes too. I also studied in a Catholic missionary school, where we had to read the Bible and were tested on it later in the final exams as part of the "Moral Science" subject. I am proud to have been exposed to different ways of thinking, which helps me think for myself and be indepndent in my way of life, without feeling guilty like many others who lose sight of the object (God/spiritual fulfillment) for the rituals. That doesn't mean I am not a Hindu anymore - I am still a Hindu since that is the way of life I grew up with and I am most comfortable and knowledgeable about.

More on rituals and conversions in the later parts....

More tea!

I guess I am doing something right as far as my health goes. I am a big green/Jasmine tea fan. I drink at least 3-4 cups a day. This makes me feel so much better :)

Of course, I am willing to do anything for health that doesn't involve me doing something physically difficult, like getting up off of my butt and working out for a change ;)

Study: Tea Boosts the Body's Defenses

WASHINGTON (AP) - An ordinary cup of tea may be a powerful infection fighter, a study suggests. Researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have found in tea a chemical that boosts the body's defense fivefold against disease.

They said the chemical primes immune system cells to attack bacteria, viruses and fungi and could, perhaps, be turned into a disease-fighting drug someday.

Religion...some questions

1. Do you believe in God?
2. Do you believe in religion?
3. Do you believe religion is required to find God?
4. Why do you believe in the religion you believe in?
5. What motivates you to be religious?
6. Do you consider yourself spiritual, religious or both?
7. What kind of a being do you think God is?

Please leave the answers in the comments below. I will post my thoughts on this soon.

Thought.....

Thought for the day -
“ The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.”- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Hmmmm....

I took the Iraqi war-test and the political leaning-test that Ashwini linked to on her blog - here are the results - Really, is anybody surprised?
first test - War-test results

Political Leaning results -

Where do you fall on the liberal - conservative political spectrum? (United States)
brought to you by Quizilla

My fortune for today

Seemed pretty interesting, really :)

Gemini :
Today is being delivered to you gift-wrapped. You're cutting a swath through the world, leaving blown minds and trembling hearts in your wake. Your reputation precedes you, but you live up to it in every sense. Yes, you really are as awesome as everyone seems to think. Leave a record for future generations to understand what you've done. Tonight is a great time to exchange ideas with the intellectuals in your circle of friends.

Comment Policy

I don't have the time to put this anywhere else, so for now I am just making a post of this.

I have not had the need in the past to pester anyone about comments, edit or delete anyone's comments on my blog. I have been very patient and open-minded about views that I often didn't agree with. For my sanity's sake, I need to make some rules now. Please follow the rules, or your comments will be deleted, and if I see a pattern, the IP will be banned. This is not fun for me, since I am not a confrontational sort of person, but I will do it.

1. No profanity, name-calling, personal insults.
2. "War is bad, Bush is dumb, Americans are dumb, it is all about oil, Americans are terrorists", I have heard them all, so if that is the point you want to make, don't post it unless you have some other solid new evidence backing you up.
2a. Some bulleted list you made up or copied from some other website or email is not solid evidence - solid evidence is news - not opinion.
2b. Robert Fisk, Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Marc Herold and Arundhati Roy don't count as experts and I don't care what they say.
3. No racist comments.

Update:
Main Entry: ad ho·mi·nem
Pronunciation: (')ad-'hä-m&-"nem, -n&m
Function: adjective
Etymology: New Latin, literally, to the person
Date: 1598
1 : appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect
2 : marked by an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made
examples: "And it really is ironic that a girl named Shanti, supports a war, which is undoubtedly going to kill many on both sides."
"See now Shanti, you're being rude......you getting pissed at people expressing the same arguments again and again is really not justified."
"I think your rules are rather childish.....Personally I hate America and its international policies. Americans per se are nice people but some are morons. "
"But when one makes an adherence to the rule, and Shanti still goes on a rampage aimed at rejecting anything anti-american, she's bringing it upon herself. "
"Yazad, what restraint and patience of Shanti do you admire. Consider the fact that she created a comment policy after about two comments which disagreed with her viewpoint. Is that a new definition of patience."
"the so called patience you admire just gave way after two comments as already pointed out"
"Then you came up with the Comment Policy, exactly like the way Pentagon made rules for Retd. Gen. Paul Van Riper during famous farce called the Millennium Challenge 2002. And now you say we are kids, you know what, the attitude of running away from the argument and going ad-hominem on the opponent disgusts me... "

For the "two comments" that people seem to so fixated on, here they are -
Cypher - I really want some GIs to die horrible deaths in an ambush

Onkar -
Mr. Laden declared war on a country that did nothing to his people.
Mr. Bush did the same.
Mr. Laden used a novel way to kill 3000 Americans.
Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush used an even more novel way to exterminate an entire generation of Iraqis.
Mr. Laden manages to elicit popular support amongst his people despite being a murderous nitwit.
Mr. Bush manages to rally 70% of the American public to support his illegitimate invasion of Iraq. [Given that 40% of the Americans do not know whom the 2nd world war was fought against and 35% of Americans having the intelligence of an 11 year old, I don't see how that would have been very difficult.]

More intelligent nuggets from so-called poor, oppressed cypher -
"haha comparing in Bush to Hitler, haha whoever wrote this is so full of himself or Bush...

Hitler was a genius, agreed evil but still a genius, Bush is wisest ape on the planet... totally diff species so there is no question of comparison..."

and bungler - "Ole wooden face .... an ape ! Lmao"

And all this, plus righteous indignation for God-knows-what? Piss off, people! If your teeny, weeny minds are so offended by what I write here, no one is holding a gun to your heads to make you read. I have tried to be a lot more patient with you than you deserve. Ankit, Kumar, Photon, electron and neutron, whatever - Bite Me!

Note: This thread is getting much too heated and personal for my liking, so all comments are going to go.....Pffft!

Something to write about....

Ok, I admit it - I don't have anything to write about - I am not knowledgeable enough to talk about the machinations of the war - I am not interested enough in the opinions of various other people about the war to dissect them or revere them as seen fit. My Mavs are playing good on one day and suck on the other, but I don't care enough for them to feel happy or sad, since they decided they are really foreign policy geniuses stuck in basketball-player bodies.

Haven't watched any movies or read any books (how intellectually unstimulating of me - blame the time crunch of juggling a full-time job, a full-time marriage and four extremely needy dogs). I am not eloquent as Lileks to write a big screed about my daily life and make it sound interesting and funny as a book. Think of this as idle chatter - I have a little time in-between work, that I need to kill somehow, and this is what it turned into :) Have a good day and keep safe - will see you later.

Spring Time!

I must have been a plant in my last life time. Sunlight literally energizes me and brings me out of the most haunting depressions. I also mentally wilt and feel awful throughout dull, dreary winters. It was one of those days here in Texas - nice, warm, sunny day - light breeze blowing - clear skies and the temperatire well within the 70s. Ahhhh - it feels like the sunlight infused me with so much energy and happiness. I feel rejuvenated like the green and white-tipped trees around swaying gently in the breeze.

Today, I am going to be happy! I am going to keep smiling!

  

I love this

I am really liking this Jewish blog-mommy thing - you have no idea how easy it is to blackmail them emotionally (evil grin) - Next step in my conquest of "Gotham", helping her even more and keeping at it till she renames my link in her blogroll to "bestest blogger in the universe". BWAHAHAHA!!! I still love you, Diane, Meryl and Susanna.

Letter From Gotham: THANK YOUs

Quotable Quotes

The first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone - Jonathan Franzen

Learn to enjoy your own company. You are the one person you can count on living with for the rest of your life. - Ann Richards

(Yes, I shamelessly plagiarized the quotes and the title from "Reader's Digest" - still my favorite publication - Enjoy!)

My Prayer

Lord give me the strength to get through the day without losing my cool.

Give me the patience to explain to people that dictators are evil people and are not "elected" by any one, especially not by the people who they oppress daily.

Give me the strength to not roll my eyes when some one compares a democratically elected leader of a free country with Hitler, just because they don't agree with him.

Give me the calm of mind required to answer without flying to into a rage, that everything is not about "oiiiil", inspite of what the voices in their head told them.

Please let me reply without cussing out, to those who are all contempt, jeer and derision for a free country, but easily give the benefit of doubt to a murderous dictator who rapes wives in front of their husbands and flogs children in front of their parents to break their will.

Let me not feel too much contempt for people who think 3000 dead people deserved what they got.

Help me understand those that have lived too long under corrupt governments that they cannot fathom the existence of a truthful and a spine-ful regime in a free country.

"Damstraa karaalaani ca te mukhaani
drstveva kaalanala-sannibhani
diso na jaane na labhe ca sarma
prasida devesa jagan-nivasa"

The real Big Brother

Wow! I heard about this on the talk radio on my way to work in the morning. Couldn't believe my ears when the lady was talking about Benetton's idea of implanting little chips in their clothing that are scannable from a distance, so the people doing the scanning can find out all about whatever article of clothing it is that has the chip in it, and probably about you too. Very scary!

Boycott Bennetton - No RFID tracking chips in clothing!

Reproductive rights?

Ok, first of all, this post is not about the abortion debate - I believe in abortion being available legally for all, but fall into a grey area after the first three or so months. Let's leave it at that.

What I found funny is the use of the term "reproductive rights" in the article. On the surface, it seems like they are talking about the rights to "reproduce", which is not really the agenda of the pro-abortion...oops, pro-choice people, isn't it!

Reproductive Rights in Peril

With legislation that would impose sweeping new restrictions on abortion seemingly headed toward approval by the Senate this week, the assault on women's reproductive freedom has reached an ominous turning point.

Oh, and the "sweeping" restrictions that have the writer's panties in a bunch are talking about banning "partial-birth" abortions, that too targeting one particular procedure - Oooh, the sky is falling!

Carnival #24

Check out the Carnival of Vanities #24 at Acidman's place this week. Good reading as always. Nice descriptions to the posts, with a liberal dose of Acidman's own brand of humor - very interesting!

Cool!!!

Look What They Found In Old Wild West

More than two years ago, archaeologists made an astounding find when they were digging in the dirt about 20 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada: The remnants of an Old West saloon that was open for business from 1864 to 1875. But this wasn't just any old saloon. It was the Boston Saloon of Virginia City, and it was owned by William A. G. Brown, a free black man from Massachusetts who catered to the community's small population of African-Americans, as well as the white people in the town. This is the first known excavation of a black-owned saloon of the 19th-century American West, reports The Associated Press.

This is even better

But the greatest find of all isn't as tangible as these artifacts. James told the Reno Journal-Gazette that said the discovery of the tavern is significant because it helps break down stereotypes of an ethnic group that has been targeted throughout history with prejudice and racism. "We learned that in Virginia City during the second half of the 19th century where there were hundreds of saloons, African-Americans had a place to go to that was respected and dignified," James said.

(emphasis not mine)

SUVs Vs. Cars

A very informative look at SUVs and cars from Megan, explaining the fuel standards, cost margins and a lot more stuff that I never knew about.

Asymmetrical Information: CAFE Standards

Trying to catch my breath

Just dropping by to let you all know that posting has been nil today, due to your humble blogger being extremely busy at work trying to meet a deadline. I have been up till 12:00 last night and got up at 5:00 this morning, so that I could make it to work soon enough to get my stuff done. The end is in sight and I can see the rays of light at the end of the tunnel.

We promise to be back tomorrow with bunches of fresh content - with a heavy dose of opinion mixed in. Ciao! Gotta rush before work catches up with me again!

Easy-to-make Chicken Biriyani

In honor of PETA's Chicken Holocaust ads, here is an extremely easy to make recipe of Chicken Biriyani - yes, I made the recipe up, but I have tried this twice already and am still alive, so I guess it is safe for human consumption.

Ingredients:
3 tbsp. Ghee (or oil)
2 med. Onions, sliced
6-10 sliced Green Chillies (depending on spiciness you want)
2 tsp. Garlic paste
2 tsp. Ginger paste
1 tbsp. Whole Garam Masala (star anise, cardamom, cloves, black peppercorns, bay leaves, nutmeg, cinnamon)
4. Chicken drumsticks
2-4 hard-boiled eggs (if you want)
2-4 tbsp. Plain Yoghurt
1 cup Spear Mint (pudina)
4 cups Basmati Rice (uncooked)
1 tsp. Garam Masala powder
2-4 tsp. Black Pepper powder
Salt to taste

Preparation:
Heat the ghee (oil) in a saucepan and then fry the green chillies, onions and the whole garam masala in it till the onions become transparent. Add the chicken drumsticks, eggs and the ginger and garlic paste and fry for 10 minutes on medium. Add the yoghurt, powdered garam masala, some salt and the mint and cook another 10 minutes. In a rice cooker, put the rice and add 8 cups of water and enough salt. Pour the chicken-egg-masala mix on the top and cook the rice till done. Leave the rice with the lid open for a while so that the water evaporates and then add the pepper powder and mix well. Voila! Your chicken biriyani is ready.

Same old, same old

The more days pass, the more things remain the same - the arguments have been made over and over - everything has been rehashed once too many times and then some more. I really don't have anything to talk about - So, I am going to give short reviews of the movies and books I have watched and read in the past week or two.

Movie Report:
Watched "xXx" - piece of crap - except for Vin Diesel's sexy voice - call me anytime, Vin.

"Sweet Home Alabama" - so stereo-type-ridden, so selfish. I found the ending ridiculously selfish and found it hard to root for the heroine to be reunited with her "former" husband (so did hubby) - I know the audience was supposed to be at the edge of their seats when she is walking down the aisle to get married to the "Yank" who fought with his mother and agreed to do everything that the girl asked him to because he loves her so - we are supposed to be willing her to run into her ex-husband's arms, because they are sooooo in love with each other, while she is marrying the Yank just so she could get away from her roots. Blecchh! Give me an openly dishonest, openly seductive and defiant Scarlett any time - I respect that woman's guts. I hate snivelly women who cannot even face up to their inner gold-digger.

Watched bits and pieces of the Hindi movie - "Khushi" - Kariena, quit talking, quit making faces, quit crying every two seconds - in short, just stop acting altogether. You will be doing Indian movie-goers a big favor.

"Fear dot com" - cheap take-off and a gorier, stupider version of the "Ring". Skip it. Sucks.

Book Report:
"Catch Me If You Can" - short, sweet and fun, though not great enough that I actually cannot wait to watch the movie. Just OK.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I am off to a .NET seminar, so I won't be doing much this morning. I just hope you will all have a wonderful and happy Valentine's Day, whether you are single, married or dating!

I hit big time, people!

I got my first piece of hate mail yesterday - I am so excited, now I can finally say someone takes me seriously enough to be extremely and incoherently mad at me. Here is the email in its entirety (Names deleted to "protect" said haters from further ridicule).

Id have more respect for you if you at least had the intergrity like most Indians and Hindus to admit that your culture and religion are racist and justifiably so, since it is believed that whites are better, both in appearance and intellect. This is borne out by how you select mates and advertise. It is borne out in your own response to the article about the origins of the caste system which you donÂ’t deny but avoid dealing with and skip it entirely as misinterpretation.

I don't know which article he is talking about, but I am guessing it is this article - Is Hinduism Racist? - that he is referring to, in which I spoke against African-Americans trying to create a racial black vs. white thing among Indians, who are not just black and white, but brown and pretty much every shade in between. So, apparently, according to this guy, who I doubt is Indian, all of us Indians think whites are better than blacks - how? because of the way we select our "mates". If he ever read a proper matrimonial, it would say "wheatish-brown" complexion, which is a fairer shade than black, but not as white as westerners - that color is considered too pale and ghost-like in India - also, most of these standards are applied to the women, the personals looking for men usually don't include any color preferences. So all this is because of the caste system? What a bunch of crock!

Surely you are aware of the jokes and insults that most indians and aryans make amongst each other about the blacks and others.

Actually, I am not.

Surely you are aware of the inner hate that you have inside you that you cover up.

Huh?

I wish more people were honest about the racial hatred.

Yeah, if they really had it in them, that is.

I think its pretty pathetic you donÂ’t have the courage to be open about it. Isnt that what gave the aryans from the North power over the black, or dark people, in your history.

Again, you are spouting myths and legends as facts - it would also probably of interest to you to know that I am one of the dark, "Dravidians" from the South, who fortunately have nothing good feelings towards my North-Indian brethren.

Isnt that the reason for the fascination with skin color and class amongst hindus?

Like Muslims and Christians in India don't look for it in the matrimonials - every person wants to marry within or above their "social" and "economic" class. I don't see anything wrong with it. My husband's much fairer-skinned than I am - so, one of had to "compromise" with our "color" values, right? He is a Hindu too - how does that fit into your equation?

Certainly that explains the rise of Hindu fascism in Indian politics.

Jeez, I am pretty sure it had nothing to do with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, Pakistan and Congress's "vote-bank" politics. But then, you are probably completely unaware of it - am I right?

Certainly I would argue that Ghandi was an aberration, an exception to the dominant ideology that the British imposed in their own way on your people. In essence, they ran the white supremacy game that your religion developed to a science over the indians. Ghandi to his credit rejected it and was victorious.

Ooh, so Indians just rolled over and let the British rule them, but then Gandhi (learn how to spell it right, ok?) came along and single-handedly defeated everyone. There was no Nehru, No Sardar Vallababhai Patel, no Bhagat Singh, No Chandra Sekhar Azad, no Subhash Chandra Bose, no Bal Gangadhar Tilak - no common people rallying behind these leaders - nope, nothing.

But it seems now that you have freedom, you have all adopted these racial theories and embraced them. Guys like Dnesh D souza and other are willing servants of racist ideology.

Ok, you lost me here, because first of all, Dinesh is not Hindu - you can tell by his last name - and, yeah, we took away voting rights from blacks once we became free - oops, that would be 60% of the country who are one shade of black or another, so that is too big a vote-bank to lose, so we made them vote again. right?

I say more credit to him, at least he is honest about it and when the axe falls on the latest chapter of tyranny and racism, ie Hitler, hopefully all those who think that color and race are inherently superior can take their place in the graceyard of failed ideologies like communism and fascism.

Again, you are rambling and incoherent and have no idea what you are talking about.

Like Ghandi said, all tyrannies eventually fall, all of them.

I actually agree with this, though not in the context of your email.

Stop pretending you are race nuetral and tolerant. Join the parade of fools you secretly admire and abandon political correctness. Its liberating, at least for a while, donÂ’t you think? You'll feel good about yourself. And you will feel like a beautiful white god. Looking down on others. No need to pretend you are equal to the others. Your white skin will glisten in the sunlight of pure Aryanism. Isnt that the idea? No doubt the blacks have their racist creeds, look where it took them. Nowhere.

Oooh, look at me, I am so.....dark, actually, and Dravidian by genetics, so I guess I cannot feel as glorious as he wants me to after all. Oh well, I will settle for exotic, perpetually-tanned Goddess!!!

Could I be wrong? Perhaps. I doubt it.

You are abolutely wrong - why? because you have no idea what India is about, pure and simple as that. Thanks for reading my blog. You might actually learn something in the process.

This and that!

I have been simply overwhelmed with the response my post about "What America means to me" generated. I thank you all for being so nice and kind and proving the truth in my words. It is great to be part of such a wonderful community.

My weekend has been a big blur, parties on Saturday, Doggie park on Sunday - I haven't had time to do anything, much less reply to the comments on the blog and reply to the beautiful and moving emails that I got over the weekend. Please understand, that it was an oversight if I didn't reply to your email, I really appreciate each and everyone of them.

Got a lot of work to do, so I will probably not be blogging till this evening - till then, go to Real Women Online and check out our this week's featured blogger - she is an awesome lady!!!

RealWomenOnline.com - Give it up to the Blogger of the Week!

Yay! We are back again with a look inside the mind of the our this week's Blogger of the Week, Big Arm Woman!!!

siblingish rivalry

My blog-mom is picking on me again - help me, Meryl! All of you click over to her blog so that I send her more referrals than "salam", so I can be her favorite daughter again!

UH-OH!

Now I am in deep, deep trouble. Who said life with Jewish moms was easy! I think I am going to order myself some of this, to keep on hand.

WooHoo!

So, I get my first insta-link and it is to my backup site :( Please visit http://madhoo.blogspot.com for fresh content. Thanks, Instapundit!

Oh My God!!!

This is my gloriously luck day, y'all!!! Ok, I am not native Texan, but I have been assimilated, OK? I got the instalink, then the "biasbump", and now I found Dave Barry's blog. He is my comedy God and I am so glad I can read him everyday now instead once a week. Cool!

Dave's Blog
(link via Tim Blair - Tim, all my love for you - thanks for the link!)

Been there! Done that!

I was immediately interested when I sw this article in rediff, comparing "reservations" to "affirmative action", since I had done something similar in one of my posts below. Then I read the conclusion excerpted below -

Tanmaya Nanda on reservations

And that is precisely why the Indian American community needs to reach out to other minority groups, irrespective of nationality or colour. By not reaching out to other people of 'different' ethnicities or colour, we lay ourselves open to charges of racism as well.
I am still not comfortable with the idea of 50 per cent quotas in India, but I have come to accept that if economic gaps are to be closed, we will need to keep some sort of equalising factors -- call them quotas or affirmative action. Whatever it takes.

That's it. We need to reach out, just so we do not appear like racists. No serious discussion of how the system is abused, no pros and cons, nothing whatsoever, except filler. My advice, don't read it, nothing new here.

Beat me up! I am a masochist!

I really am! I would have been perfectly happy in my little universe, but then I had to go around trying to gather "other viewpoints", so I visited the blogs in the blogroll of a certain person...(Hint: I have a cat-fight going on with her in a post below). Blechh! I am at work, so I don't even have my toothbrush here to wash this dirty taste out of my mouth. I should have been careful when I saw "Guardian" as one of the favored links, but I was too naive. Usually, I stop reading blogs as soon as I see any mention to "Noam Chomsky" - I call it the nom-chom test. The minute I see his link on someone's blogroll, I flee like I am being chased by a thousand "peace-protesters" (isn't that an oxymoron? How can you be for peace if you protest all the time?) chanting "no blog for oil" and "kill SUV-owners".

So, my anti-idiotarian(TM) meter malfunctioned and like Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets, I wandered off into the blogosphere's version of "Knockturn Alley". I am exhausted, I am so tired and I am so sick of those posts that I read. All the blogs were literal copies of each other. Anti-war? check. Anti-Israel? check. Pro-Palestine? check. Hate Hitchens? check. Sanctimonious whining? check. Virulently Anti-Bush? double check. Always bitter with absolutely no sense of humor? triple check. Boring to the point of tears? checkcheckcheckcheckcheck!!! I have learned my lesson - I will never, ever visit The bittershack of resentment, Mighty Girl (warning, if you click on the link, see the owner's pic and get nightmares for a week, don't blame me), Things that piss me off or Free Pie again.

Warning: Said sites are full idiotarian rants and are known to increase blood pressure in sane people - click the links at your own risk [Ed- Well, you were dumb enough to click them; Me- If I am dumb, you are equally dumb because you are me, so shut up!].

Racial quotas, reservations and merit

This is something I just needed to get off my chest ever since I heard about the University of Michigan's race-based admission system. According to this system, you are awarded points on a 150-point scale to qualify you for admission into the college. Not bad so far, except for one small thing - if you are Native American, African American or Hispanic, you automatically get 20 points - this is in addition to the 20 points you get if you are also at a socio-economic disadvantage, whatever that means. Of course, if your SAT score is perfect, you get 12 points, which means your skin color does count for a lot more than your academic achievement. Hypothetically, a poor, black kid with 2.5 GPA (20+20+50 = 90 points) will get an admission, or atleast is considered better than a middle-class white or Asian kid with perfect 4.0 GPA (80 points). Do you see the injustice in this? All in the name of diversity, as if being born with a different skin color somehow makes up for what you lack in talent. Would they give an extra 30 points if I were alien and my skin green?

This system all the more bothers me, since I have been raised in a country that has one of the worst quota systems in the world, which is the biggest cause of "brain drain" from the country. Reservations were introduced in India to level the playing the field for "upper-caste" and "lower caste" Hindus. Initially, they were meant to be there for only a few years. Once they went into place, no one now has the power to try and remove them from the system. I remember when I was in 11th or 12th grade, when the then Prime Minister toyed with the idea - massive rallies and a lot of tension and outcry later, all talk of removing or even reducing the reservation quotas was dropped. Instead, every time a politician wants to woo a new section of the voters, they announce more quotas. It has come to such a sad state that in my home state, if you want to get into a good Engineering college, you have to be in the top 1000 people in the EAMCET standardized test for admission into Engineering and Medical colleges, that is, if you are of an upper-caste and you are a boy, since women have a 33% reservation for all the engineering seats along with all the other lower caste reservations. I have seen upper-caste boys self-immolate publicly protesting the unfairness of the system.

Let me make this a little clearer - my husband had to get a rank of 486 out of the hundreds of thousands of people who wrote the exam with him, to barely make it into computer engineering at a local university - his classmate? a girl with 16000 rank, who happened to hit the double jackpot, since she also belonged to the lowest of low castes as they are categorized. Did she deserve it? She failed every subject in the finals in her first year, except English - she took between 5 and 6 years to complete a 4-year course. Poor thing! she must have been so poor...hold it - she was rich enough to attend one of the best private schools that money could buy for her high school education. Who is the joke on? There were people on the campus who refused to graduate from school, since they were so used to getting free food and money from the government in the name of reservations for the downtrodden. Really bright upper-caste students had to fight tooth and nail to make it into popular college courses that just fell into the laps of others less qualified. That frustrates people. They fight to study and then they have to fight to get a job and then to get promoted. So what do they do? They pack up and they leave. They go to the one country on earth that they think looks at nothing but their intelligence and talent to reward them. Here, in America, they think they are free from all the burdens of quotas and that they are in a true meritocracy.

Unfortunately, they are wrong. America is definitely not as bad as India is, but I am afraid we are slowly getting there. I am afraid that the paradise I came here seeking, the society that I was hoping to find that cared only about my ability to deliver, and not my skin color or my caste, is being taken over by fools. Fools who claim that diversity is God and screw academics. Fools who would frustrate bright and hard-working students, just so they can "represent" colors on the campus. Every admission given to a less qualified candidate is one bright person being told that he does not qualify for "equal opportunity", since he is not the right skin color. This is insane.

Atlantis found?

Mysterious find under sea could be lost city of Atlantis

HAVANA -- The images appear slowly on the screen, like ghosts from the ocean floor. The videotape, made by an unmanned submarine, shows massive stones in oddly symmetrical square and pyramid shapes in the deep-sea darkness.

Sonar images taken from a research ship 2,000 feet above are even more puzzling. They show that the smooth, white stones are laid out in a geometric pattern. The images look like fragments of a city, spanning nearly eight square miles of a deep-ocean plain off Cuba's western tip.

What is right? What is wrong?

All of us at some point or the other find ourselves pondering over what is right and what is wrong. I have been many times confused in my life over doing something a certain way is right or wrong. I would always get fed up of various rules that this is right, this is wrong, dont do that dont do this. But the thing is, what is right for one person might be wrong for another and vice versa.

For example, America is a free society and women can dress up, as they want to. But in some societies around the world, the dress code of women is very conservative. Therefore people from the conservative societies tend to think that Americans are shameless and without morals and themselves as pious and good while the Americans tend to think that the conservative women are ignorant and uncivilized. So what is right and what is wrong? I think both are right in their own way. Neither are the Americans shameless and without morals nor are the conservatives ignorant and uncivilized. Both were conditioned to believe by society and parents to think and dress in a certain manner and their thoughts and behavior reflect it. We cannot just issue a statement that one is wrong and one is right. Similarly alcohol and other things, while in some societies it is right it is considered bad in some others.

So, how do we determine what is right and wrong? Something is right as long as it doesn’t hurt you or others You can run nude on the beach or sit at home in a burqua, as long as it makes you happy and doesn’t affect others, it is right. I think one should not feel guilty or ashamed of such things. This can be especially found in the conservative societies where many things are frowned upon and simple things are made out to be as sins. In the Western Society too there are many rules that should be followed to be accepted in society (eating, dressing etc.) but here too that should be left to the individual concerned to do what they are comfortable with, their behavior should not be condemned just because it does not conform to a certain set of beliefs. Of course, rules at the work place must be followed since they are paid to follow them.

I always resented the restrictions imposed by my parents in my teenage years and rebelled when they tried to mould me into a typical traditional mould. But later I could see that what they termed as wrong was wrong only because it would hurt me if the society did not accept me. Otherwise it is not wrong. Every society has some minimum set of rules that have to be conformed for the person to be accepted. Therefore I think there is inherently no such thing as right or wrong and it keeps changing from person to person and country to country. Just because the beliefs differ a person or a society should not be condemned and there should be place for tolerance and broad-mindedness.

So all I say is, when next time when you are worried about whether doing a particular thing is right or wrong, go ahead and do it as long as it doesn’t hurt you or others. For example, it is right to drink alcohol or others as long as you are comfortable with the health consequences that follow, but it becomes wrong when your family or other people get affected due to this habit. Nothing is sinful. And other people should not be branded good or bad just because they follow a different set of rules, what they are doing is right for them. It is important to remember that it is hard for a person to change beliefs and behavior suddenly when all your life you have been marching to a different tune.

Note: My posts should not be taken seriously; these are my thoughts and opinions only.

--Geetha

Who woulda thunk it?

My site is the only match on Yahoo for the search term - "mind cotrolled cartoon characters with white eyes" - I was going to make fun of the mis-spelling of the word "controlled" and then I realized that that was how I spelt it in one of my posts.... :-(

Yahoo! Search Results for mind cotrolled cartoon characters with white eyes

Hopefully I will be employed soon :-)

It might come as a relief to my two loyal readers that blogging will be light today, since I need to study up to prepare for a technical interview. I guess unless something extremely serious happens today, I will not be back till evening in the least...

What is it about Islam that makes peace impossible?

I have always wondered why it was that in almost all the hot-spots in the world, the underlying causes are most often the problem Muslims have their non-Muslim neighbors. I am not condemning the whole religion and all Muslims, but my personal experience says otherwise. I don't claim to know much about Islam or Muslims - I have been friends with all of two Muslim girls in my life. One of them was my room mate in Grad school -she was a devout Muslim, very religious and very rigid and inflexible, which caused us to start off on the wrong foot. But then I thought we had fixed our problems, and then the whole Ramzan fasting period started and hell broke loose.

I am not sure if it was the low blood-sugar level, but she became so hard to live with, I lived in constant fear of her picking fights with me - our relationship had degenerated almost to the level of a husband and his abused wife. Needless to say that I left that place in a hurry. The one Muslim girl that I really got along with is hardly a Muslim - she wears short skirts, drinks wine and is one of the most liberated (I mean this in the best sense possible, since I really like her) women I have met. She hardly qualifies for the Muslim status in a very religious way.

I guess my whole point is that the Muslims that seem to be able to get along well with others are the ones who don't take religion too seriously and are more spiritual than religious, which makes the question of Islam as religion Vs it's followers very interesting.

Check out this link for a comprehensive list of all the latest Islamic hotspots - Top Ten Areas Where Moslems Actively Persecute Non-Moslems - Dirty Little Secrets - StrategyPage.com

One author to another back

I am glad you liked the post, sister dear! ;-) (still under the "nasty little women" influence) - I liked your post too - It was very interesting and informative.

I guess we cannot expect any dispatches from our cricket correspondent because of the match being post-poned and what-not. He is right now lying down and getting over a major hangover - he spent the whole of last night awake with his friends ....

One author to another

Loved your post regarding Little Women was funny!

Men and Women

Let's say a guy named Fred is attracted to a woman named Martha. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Martha, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"

And then, there is silence in the car.

To Martha, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.

And Fred is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Martha is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily towards, I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together?
Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Fred is thinking: ...so that means it was...let's see...February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means...lemme check the odometer...Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Martha is thinking: He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed - even before I sensed it - that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.

And Fred is thinking: And I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Martha is thinking: He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.

And Fred is thinking: They'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty...scumballs.

And Martha is thinking: Maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Fred is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it right up their...

"Fred," Martha says aloud.

"What?" says Fred, startled.

"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have...oh dear, I feel so..."(She breaks down, sobbing.)

"What?" says Fred.

"I'm such a fool," Martha sobs. "I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse."

"There's no horse?" says Fred.

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" Martha says.

"No!" says Fred, glad to finally know the correct answer.

"It's just that...it's that I...I need some time," Martha says. (There is a 15-second pause while Fred, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)

"Yes," he says. (Martha, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

"Oh, Fred, do you really feel that way?" she says.

"What way?" says Fred.

"That way about time," says Martha.

"Oh," says Fred. "Yes." (Martha turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

"Thank you, Fred," she says.

"Thank you," says Fred.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Fred gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a college basketball game between two South Dakota junior colleges that he has never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it's better if he doesn't think about it.

The next day Martha will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours.
In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it either.

Meanwhile, Fred, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Martha's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: "Norm, did Martha ever own a horse?"

And that's the difference between men and women.

(courtesy Crosswalk)