Iraq

Photo Courtesy CNN

Chastity!

“Chastity has no meaning in the current period and it applies to both men and women" says Sushmita Sen [link]. S Greesh Kumar has a problem! The first part of the quote makes sense though I am not sure why something nonsensical should apply to both men and women. Mr. Kumar has purportedly taken upon himself the onus of ensuring that Indians don’t forget the virtue of being chaste. Mr. Kumar is sure chasing fame in the short term. I wish him all the best. Anyway!

 

Judgments on chastity of an individual lead to honour killings. Association of honour with the chastity of women makes women easy prey to violence. One example that comes to my mind is that of partition of India when women were forced to jump into wells else the honour of the families would be at stake.

 

“Many women died trying to avoid sexual violation, preserve their chastity, and protect their religious and family honor. Scholars of India’s partition have noted numerous ways in which women took their lives. Some jumped into the nearest well or set themselves ablaze. Sometimes the act was accomplished alone, sometimes all the women in a family committed mass suicide.” – [link]

 

There ought to be better metrics, if at all required, to determine a family’s or society’s honour! It is just plain selfish and criminal on part of a society to associate honour with the chastity of women or men for that matter. It only victimizes women who have been victims of sexual violation. It avenges rape by raping another woman instead of punishing the rapist [Mukhtar Mai]. Indeed chastity should not have any meaning at all and even if it is to have a meaning it is for one to determine whether he/she is chaste or not.

Sunil

Sunil [Via IndiaUncut], fight he did!

If you mean sex worker.

Well put [link]! And yes, it is not about being politically correct. It is about saying the right thing.

Mumbai's Unsung Heroes, Thank You!

Thank You.

What came first? The bull or the shit??

Whatever! This is certainly bull shit [link].

But the New York court also put forth another argument, sometimes called the “reckless procreation” rationale. “Heterosexual intercourse,” the plurality opinion stated, “has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not.” Gays become parents, the opinion said, in a variety of ways, including adoption and artificial insemination, “but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse.”

Consequently, “the Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples.”

To shore up those rickety heterosexual arrangements, “the Legislature could rationally offer the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples only.” Lest we miss the inversion of stereotypes about gay relationships here, the opinion lamented that straight relationships are “all too often casual or temporary.”

Evil Genius?

The Shane Warne interview!

What if?

What if there is no God? What if God couldn't care less or do anything at all? What if?

The tragedy in Indonesia [link]. And the picture that made me ask, What if??

The other side

The media, it seems from a few accounts, has conveniently ignored the other side of protests. The other side has a right to its view being publicized too. Two links I got on rediff.

The OBC view on reservation!
What more do the upper castes want?

A healthy debate is what we need. But for that the Arjun Singhs need to go! They have had a long parasitic existence on the Indian fabric. They need to go! But then who will replace them? They, the youth (The party referred to in the link is inconsequential as far as I am concerned)? Parasites in the making?

My seat, mai baap

My seat, mai baap [link]!

" This is the last — but perhaps the most destructive — relic of the licence quota raj. The quota crisis, and the fortuitous arrival of higher education on the political centrestage is in many ways similar to the other crisis that led to India mortgaging its gold to escape payment defaults. Finance Minister Manmohan Singh managed to convert that crisis into an opportunity that changed our lives. Can he similarly in today’s crisis in higher education do the same for our children? Surely, this situation is no less daunting in its risks and complexities. But the rewards of expansion, opening up, private investment, genuine administrative and intellectual freedoms in a society that lays such a premium on education and scholarship will be no less significant."

What are you scared of ?

"No cuts have been recommended in the film, which will have a 15-second-long disclaimer at the beginning and in the end, as demanded by Christian groups."[link]

What are the demand makers scared of? What?

Grace Personified

The graceful giant, Courtney Walsh.

The very very special Laxman

The V. V. S. Laxman interview.

Opportunity

"Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity. "- Bill Gates [link]

Linux vs Windows

And the winner is.........?

Well, no winners here. A good post comparing the two for the desktop. The author's opinion is at the very end of the post, rest all is pretty much without any malice or bias or hatred towards either of the two operating systems.

I have a dual boot, XP and Debian (upgraded the CD version with 2.6.16 Linux kernel and the latest KDE). I do not think that Linux is any bit faster especially if u run the GUI with all the fancy features. Even Windows XP gets faster if one runs it in the Windows Classic mode! The one thing I love about Linux is its great command line interface (shell). It makes life much easier most of the times. Also, Linux is much more configurable if you are willing to take a bit of pain. The greatest disadvantage with using Linux is that most applications, drivers, tools etcetera are made for Windows and it is not always easy to use a different set of tools or applications in a world where almost every other person uses Windows. Wonder why Linux tries more and more to look and feel like Windows?

A lot is said about the security aspects and how Linux is better. Well, I guess the sheer numbers of Windows' users makes it more vulnerable to attack and as far as I am concerned I have had no problems related to security all the while I have used Windows and I do stay connected and online for most part of the day!

Last but not the least, Windows allows me to concentrate more on my work than on how my OS works. Linux satisfies the geek in me!

Well, there is a winner, in fact there are millions of winners.... The users, you and me are the winners. The user can decide and choose and given the ease with which information is available it is not very difficult to decide what one wants!

Prudes that we are!

Got the link on IndiaUncut! Enjoy the stats.

Welcome!

Welcome, Mac.

 

Windows may after all benefit from all the drubbing it gets every now and then. They should have learnt a few lessons on security by now. Time to capitalize I guess, while others come to terms with the bad bad world!

What the clerics said??

"The clerics had said that if Nazma wanted to live with her husband, she must perform 'halala' (she must marry another man and the marriage must be consummated, after which she can get a divorce and then re-marry her first husband)."

Ridiculous. Such clerics need to be brought to book!! Link to Supreme Court judgement on the case.

Grief?

Grief? Or was it a perfect occasion to vent out all that was pent up. All I can say is that people need to engage themselves in more interesting pursuits. Maybe there aren't enough opportunities to satisfy one and all. Maybe these people who seem to be caught up in a time warp need to be utilized better? The need to "save culture" is a tool that is used with great proficiency to deviate from important issues that stare us in the eye. It is an easy way out. Save culture, stop progress? I am not sure what save culture means. Cultures need to evolve else they won't survive or will end up in isolation. Also, the heart of the issue is lack of jobs. It is jobs and job worthy that need to be created not an anti-other culture sentiment.

"In fact there is a lurking suspicion that the violence is not entirely a product of angst at the death of an icon. The support base of a celluloid icon often comes from the things he stands for and Rajkumar was unabashedly Kannadiga, espousing support for local culture and values against much reviled others. In an earlier era, those outsiders were Tamilians and Telugus who came and took away jobs. Today, apart from the familiar villains, the wrath is also directed at multinational companies who are recruiters from outside the state." [link].

Dowry

“Dowry is a symptom of a deeper disease that relates to how our society values women. The original concept of streedhan was based on providing a newly wed girl with some things that she could cherish and call her own. Today this concept has been vulgarized to symbolize all the things that not even the bridegroom, but his family want to have as their own.”

 

Read the article [Why dowry will not die?].