Barcelona in pictures (Updated)

Updated the collage with the link to flickr! I thought I had done it earlier... but I guess I had not.

Introspection

Beautifully put, the best poetic description of introspection I have come across.

Jaga hua Zameer woh Aaina hai "Qateel"
Sone se pehle roz jise dekhta hun main - Qateel Shifai

Zamir meaning Conscience.

The best I can do at translating into English... (no poetry though)

"I look into the mirror of my conscience everyday before I retire for the night"

Finally!!

And finally the spring has sprung from the deathly trap of winter! Spring time is back in New Jersey!!

Civilization?

How recent is the semblance of it, if any at all. I shudder in fear at the thought of how recent! "Comfort Women!", rather use them for comfort! [Found link on India Uncut].

She is hope indeed!

Farah Aziz Khanum and her fight for her right to wear what she wants! Her fight for individual freedom.

U

The problem is not A, not B, not C. The problem is U. It is THE most important problem!!

What excites?

What excites the senses? That that is visible or that that is hidden. [Inception: NegarKhan - TOI]

Gudiya

She was married to a soldier named Arif who didn't return from the battlefield. It was assumed that the soldier had become a victim of war. She was remarried to Taufeeq. Five years passed and Arif returned. He had not been killed but had become a prisoner of war. What should Gudia do now? Does she stay with Taufeeq or does she go back to Arif? What happens to the child in her womb which was part Taufeeq? No, I am not asking for answers because the only one who can answer the above questions is Gudia. Was Gudia allowed to answer the above questions? Well, no she was not. The panchayat (village governing body) thought that she should go back to Arif. Not sure what was the reasoning. Anyway, Gudia and her unborn are no more. It is said she died due to complications in her pregnancy. I wonder how relieved she would have been having left a world that didn't allow her some very fundamental rights. A world that treated her like an object and continues to treat women like objects. Gudiya and how the media exploited her! I guess she didn't want to lead a doll's life.

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.

Freedom of Speech

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" -- Voltaire

Excellent quote at [link]. Got it via [ link].

Left? Libertarian? Right? Authoritarian?

Who are u? A simple test at [link - courtesy Rahul].

Here are my results:
--------------------
Economic Left/Right: 2.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.36

I cannot gaurantee the efficacy of the test. So check out for your own self.

No analogies please

High time the criminals are booked. These demented politicians need to go. They keep playing the blame game and in the process no one is convicted.

Madrid Masters spices up!

Nice.

India Funding Pakistani Jihadi Groups

Atanu Dey on How India may have contributed to its own travails! The comments are interesting too. I liked his perspective on the donations India made. I guess there is very little sincerity in all the donation that was made. The Indian govt couldn't be worried of calamities that occur in India leave alone neighbours. All these acts can only impress naive people and may help India put up a nice face in the world community much of which could care less about the welfare of Kashmir. They are interested in hearing truce along the LOC for their own reasons.

The one reason that wouldn't stop me from making a donation to Pakistan is that the same money could be used for the good of impoverished India. Now that is one thing that doesn't happen. But yes the terrorists should not get succor for killing innocents!

Mother of the Civil Rights Movement

Rosa Parks. RIP

ThankYou for your courage. We need many more like you in this world.

From fighting objectification to seeking it!

I am appalled by the objectification of women that is so common now a days. The sad part is that women seem to be biggest perpetrators of the same. It is rather unfortunate that the objectification is taking place in the garb of espousing equality of the sexes. Most men should be happy though! What better than a world of sluts? A very good article on the NYTimes that elaborates how the feminists of the 70s may have been wrong and how the women of today are doing no better. I have pasted a few snippets below though I would suggest the article be given a full read at "What's a Mordern Girl to do?". [Reached the link via IndiaUncut]

On "Courtship"

"Decades after the feminist movement promised equality with men, it was becoming increasingly apparent that many women would have to brush up on the venerable tricks of the trade: an absurdly charming little laugh, a pert toss of the head, an air of saucy triumph, dewy eyes and a full knowledge of music, drawing, elegant note writing and geography. It would once more be considered captivating to lie on a chaise longue, pass a lacy handkerchief across the eyelids and complain of a case of springtime giddiness.

Today, women have gone back to hunting their quarry - in person and in cyberspace - with elaborate schemes designed to allow the deluded creatures to think they are the hunters. "Men like hunting, and we shouldn't deprive them of their chance to do their hunting and mating rituals," my 26-year-old friend Julie Bosman, a New York Times reporter, says. "As my mom says, Men don't like to be chased." Or as the Marvelettes sang, "The hunter gets captured by the game.""

"Power Dynamics" [The paragraphs not necessarily in succession in the actual article]

He had hit on a primal fear of single successful women: that the aroma of male power is an aphrodisiac for women, but the perfume of female power is a turnoff for men. It took women a few decades to realize that everything they were doing to advance themselves in the boardroom could be sabotaging their chances in the bedroom, that evolution was lagging behind equality.

A lot of women now want to be Maxim babes as much as men want Maxim babes. So women have moved from fighting objectification to seeking it. "I have been surprised," Maxim's editor, Ed Needham, confessed to me, "to find that a lot of women would want to be somehow validated as a Maxim girl type, that they'd like to be thought of as hot and would like their boyfriends to take pictures of them or make comments about them that mirror the Maxim representation of a woman, the Pamela Anderson sort of brand. That, to me, is kind of extraordinary."

It was naïve and misguided for the early feminists to tendentiously demonize Barbie and Cosmo girl, to disdain such female proclivities as shopping, applying makeup and hunting for sexy shoes and cute boyfriends and to prognosticate a world where men and women dressed alike and worked alike in navy suits and were equal in every way.

But it is equally naïve and misguided for young women now to fritter away all their time shopping for boudoirish clothes and text-messaging about guys while they disdainfully ignore gender politics and the seismic shifts on the Supreme Court that will affect women's rights for a generation.

What I didn't like at the start of the feminist movement was that young women were dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. They were supposed to be liberated, but it just seemed like stifling conformity.

What I don't like now is that the young women rejecting the feminist movement are dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. The plumage is more colorful, the shapes are more curvy, the look is more plastic, the message is diametrically opposite - before it was don't be a sex object; now it's be a sex object - but the conformity is just as stifling.

Hoping for a truly equal (where merit will be synonymous with individual intellect) future!