Heathrow

Three planes hover over the runway. Well there are four. Four that I can see. All four at seemingly different heights eager to make it to the ground. As I await the first landing two planes take off. I had not accounted for these planes that were waiting to reach the skies. Everything moves from motion to rest or vice-versa but for the workaholic Radar that keeps rotating tirelessly. The skies are cloudy but only at the horizons. The runway is wet. It must have rained earlier. Has not rained since I landed at Heathrow which was around seven hours ago. As the place recedes into darkness, the Sun is replaced by the thousands of stars that stick to the galaxies of planes that move in and out of my bird'’s eye view. A Boeing 777 is dragged to the hanger. It does no’t get bigger than this! All others without the humps look a tad emaciated.

Black? White? Wheatish? Brown? Yellow?

"I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man" - Morgan Freeman [Link – Got via Link]. My views on Color! Also, the darn thing responsible for it!

Fox5News and the thuggish transit workers

The Fox5News has been calling the transit workers strike as illegal transit workers strike (By the way, it is illegal by law). What other options do these workers have? Not that they are on strike every now and then. It is after 25 years that they are on a strike. Will the MTA listen otherwise? Now what the Mayor had to say was funny indeed.

"New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lashed out at union leaders for "thuggishly" turning their backs on the city [ link]"

Thuggishly! What is he trying to do? Get the commoner against the transit workers. The commoner can any day be in the shoes of the transit worker. But for all the inconvenience the commoner needs to stay in support of the strike.

How Intelligent Design Works

HowStuffWorks discusses without any bias the concept of Intelligent Design. A few interesting snippets from the article. The main grouse that the scientific community supporting natural selection has against the proponents of intelligent design is that much of intelligent design is proof by elimination. That means, at the risk of being too simplistic (but then you can read the article), if a certain process cannot be explained by current science there is intelligent design behind the process. I wonder what the world would have looked like had we explained everything by intelligent design. We would be inhabiting the jungles and I guess I wouldn't have been blogging this from home!

Intelligent design (ID) states that the universe and its inhabitants could not have evolved by the "blind chance" set forth in Darwinism. Its arguments are mostly concerned with what it considers to be holes in the theory of evolution, and it claims that these holes scientifically prove the presence of an "intelligent designer" in nature.

Unlike creationism, ID does not state that God is the intelligent designer. It only says that there is clear evidence in nature of intelligent design. The designer in ID could be God, but it could also be an extraterrestrial race or some other supernatural force. Also, ID does not draw its arguments directly from the Christian Bible.

The scientific community sees this argument as inherently flawed. It points out that Dembski sets forth a negative hypothesis: Anything not created by chance or law must be designed. But scientists claim that chance, law and design are not mutually exclusive, and they are not the only possibilities. So the process of elimination cannot be applied. And in any event, they say, science does not accept the process of elimination as proof of anything. The scientific method requires a positive hypotheses -- you cannot prove one thing simply by disproving another.

There are also widespread claims that the majority of the Discovery Institute's funding comes from Christian fundamentalist organizations and individuals, noting especially the millions of dollars donated by philanthropist Howard Ahmanson, an evangelical Christian, and hundreds of thousands of dollars provided by the Maclellan Foundation, which seeks to "serve strategic international and national organizations committed to furthering the Kingdom of Christ ... by providing financial and leadership resources to extend the Kingdom of God to every tribe, nation, people, and tongue"

Anyway, I was quite happy to read about this court ruling.

The malaise remains as suicides continue

A moving coverage of farmer suicides in Vidharba [link, written by Sonia Faleiro] . There are many reasons for the plight of the people. Govt. apathy, policies etc. This [link], at the Indian Economy Blog, discusses various possible solutions to the problem in the comments section. What shocks me most is the mention of wedding expenses of Rs 60,000 and dowry of Rs 100000 in the article by Sonia Faleiro. Even in such desperate circumstances the society hangs on to the malaise of dowry. There is no letting go on what in the first place shouldn't exist. The 1,60,000 could be used for betterment of the family and may prevent a suicide or two had our society been a bit more mature. I guess over a period of time female foeticide will rise in the region. Not sure whether it has already started.