I've paid my dues -
Time after time -
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime -
And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand kicked in my face -
But I've come through
I've taken my bows
And my curtain calls -
But it's been no bed of roses
No pleasure cruise -
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race -
And I ain't gonna lose -
We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting - till the end -
- Queen, We are the champions, 1977
To all those who champion the cause of freedom and democracy, apt words indeed. This song was on right after I heard about Benazir Bhutto's assassination today afternoon. There's not much more I can add to that really, except to probably muse on the fact that whatever her failings, Bhutto was a beacon of moderateness in an Islamic society that is today in the eye of a fundamentalist maelstrom. And that is a stand not easily taken.
I totally faded there for almost a fortnight. Work, more work and other chores means that even if I'm glued to the computer half the day, I hardly have time to organize my thoughts into something which could be even remotely readable. Thankfully, the holidays are here and ought to put an end to that! Yayyyy. And I've been bursting at the seams to write *something* - do you know the feeling?!
On the political front, Nepal abolished its monarchy today - hot news as of a few hours ago. I for one welcome that change, given the bloodbaths that have been going on over the last 75 years, the most recent one being etched in all our memories. Hopefully, it leads to a lull in the maoist insurgencies too, if they have a half decent government that isn't hampered by centuries old tradition. That said, its also a sad day in some respects - I've always found monarchs rather romantic, and on every occasion, have read up all that I could find on the two most famous current ones - King Bhumibol of Thailand, and of course, Queen Elizabeth II. Its abolishment in Nepal just means another proud line will come to and end, and at best, be the gatekeepers of palaces and treasures that will revert to a government who may not know how best to care for it.
Which got me thinking about how many such governments are left today. Apart from the UK, its colonies (which don't really count) and Thaliand, the other remaining states are Japan, Cambodia, Jordan, Bahrain, UAE, Brunei, Bhutan, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. Malaysia in fact has an *elected* monarch, perhaps the only such system in the world today (or ever?)! The current Yang di-Pertuan Agong ("Supreme Ruler" or "Paramount Ruler") is styled His Majesty, and cuts a pretty impressive figure on his official portrait. Much more so than jowly King Gynaendra of Nepal anyway.
On another monarchial front, QE II recently endorsed YouTube, by launching the Royal Channel. Its got some pretty nifty videos on it, including her first televised Christmas address from 1957 and even the 1923 wedding of HER parents. It was fascinating watching them - televised impressions of London from the early 20th century, and an opportunity to look at people I've only ever seen in portraits as aged royals. Its funny how one never hears of the activities of monarchs from all but a couple of famous countries. The recent death of the Tongan prince and his wife on a Californian highway was heavily telecast in the US itself, but got practically no coverage on the international media. And would we even be able to point the Jordanian King or the Malysian one for that matter, on a photo gallery?
Oh and Merry Christmas to all of you! I’m not even sure how people spend their christmases if they’re not at home eating a family style dinner. Tired as I was of this question, I ended up in San Francisco with a friend for an awesome dinner (Wild Boar with truffle sauce, yummy), finally rode the famous SF cable cars (isn’t it interesting how people who live in a city never actually do all the touristy bits?), watched Beowulf in 3D (Angelina Jolie is hotter than ever), and ended up at a catholic church for a ten minute look at midnight mass.
St. Peter and Paul's, San Francisco
Union Square, San Francisco
The Punkster has recently finished the 49th carnival for feminists, where she invites a bunch of bloggers to submit entries focussed on (what I assume) were pre-determined categories. While I plan to read (and therefore comment) further on them, I obviously started with the women in tech and gaming sections, two areas I totally identify with :D.
NB: This was actually a comment on her blog, but I hate the concept of having what has become an entire blog entry in the comments section, so its been moved here.
For more information, see this; There’s an episode of a chemistry teacher and a student’s account of the Intel Science Talent Discovery Fair (something I participated and did rather well in *shrug*, a few years ago - so I know a bit of what happens behind the scenes).
Quote:
".. but a rumor passing around the class that our chemistry teacher had asked two of her favorite students to prepare a project for entry in the fair. These students were, of course, boys.."
From what I can make out, instead of having the entire class involved in the usual exercise of coming up with project ideas, and perhaps selecting the best ones out of them, the two boys were selected in a unilateral decision. But, doesn’t that mean she must’ve left out almost all the other boys too?
So basically, a female teacher at some point in her life gets to the stage where she thinks that the boys are better than the girls. Hmm. Would this be influenced in any way, not by their performance, but solely their gender? The question I'm trying to ask here I guess, is why and how does she get to such a point?
And of course, while I'm at it, I'll touch off the extensive topic of infanticide and foeticide and whatever-icide that people go through to avoid having daughters. To people familiar with this sort of research - has anyone ever done work on why women would do that to their own daughters? Surely not everyone is forced or influenced by their in-laws or husbands?
I’m in an excellent mood today - a good thing to carry over into a monday morning that begins in less than 7 hours - and brings with it an unending list of things to do. Sigh.
But I’m drawing solace from this weekend , which was undoubtedly *very* productive when it comes to music, film and books. I watched two excellent movies - Head On (Gegen Die Wand, 2005) and No Country for Old Men (2007); discovered the intricate music scene of one of the world’s greatest cities through another (Istanbul, Crossing the bridge), and as a result, have fallen in love with this band (Siya Siyabend); AND am finally half way through a book describing the same - Istanbul, by Orhan Pamuk. I must admit, these are things I’ve been meaning to do independently for quite a while now - but its interesting how the common thread that links them together surfaced serendipiteously!
Head On is a movie I highly recommend you watch. Apart from having the street creds of having being directed by Turkish born Fatih Akin, one of Germany’s star directors; a nomination at the oscars, and a cast which has performed exemplarily - it is an extraordinarily striking movie in the way it depicts the clash of two cultures, and describes the lives of immigrants in a form which hollywood, let alone bollywood can never hope to achieve. Szerelem talks about the story here; it is essentially a love-story between two turkish
immigrants living in Germany who meet, at all odds, at a clinic after unsuccessful attempts at suicide - Cahit, who tries to ram his car into a wall, and Sibel, who doesn’t quite know how to optimally slit her wrists (!). The movie is neither overtly dramatic nor sentimental - the tone is just right, and the locales it was shot in (and the absolutely amazing soundtrack) go far in convincing you that such characters can actually exist, marginalised between two cultures. As the movie progresses, you can observe how circumstances visibly mature what were at the beginning of the movie two very flippant human beings. A reviewer online said it best when penning “Akin has crafted an unflinching film with the structure of a romantic comedy and the emotional kick of a nightmare”. Very true. You can totally gauge the tension which springs from the wish to have nothing to do with your own culture, yet have a longing that just won’t let go - beautifully illustrated when Cahit suddenly slips into English when talking to a turkish woman in Istanbul - his transformation from a hard-drinking, punk-rocker to one who is visibly caught between different worlds is complete.
What is even more interesting, however, is the uncanny likeness of the characters to their real life counterparts. At the very beginning when Cahit (Birol Ünel ) is completely drunk, he wasn’t acting. Ünel WAS in fact sloshed waiting for the shooting to start! And during the filming, he was even told by his doctor to give up alcohol, or risk death by liver failure. Scary. Sibel, the actress who also shares her first name with her on screen persona was recently outed by a german tabloid for having been a porn star a few years ago. This led to some tense moments, when she was all but publicly disowned by her family - an eerie reflection of what her character goes through in the movie. Before this turns into yet another movie review, I’ll just end by saying - go watch!
Which brings me to No Country - another excellently executed movie which in my opinion should win an Oscar whenever it gets nominated for 
one. Not if, but when. Theres’s the gratuitous violence (bone sticking out of an arm?), the nail-biting-edge-of-the-seat action, and very beautiful cinematography of the texan desert. Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones are awesome - but the real show stealer is Javier Bardem, who plays a psychopathic killer named Anton Chigurh, that makes Hannibal Lecter look like your favorite grandma on a sunny afternoon. Of course, being a Coen brothers movie, it has its own brand of an “OhMyGod” ending (the very words someone shouted in the theater as the movie ended) - and I most definitely agree.
Continuing on the Istanbul theme - “Crossing the bridge” is an excellent documentary on the music scene. It led me to discover Siya Siyabend, an unofficial band comprising of buskers off the streets of Istanbul. Named after a mesopotamian folk hero (Siyabend), the name of the band is actually that of its lead musician. Not only is he a fabulous guitarist and singer, his virtuosity with the toor (also known as the Santur in India and elsewhere) is phenomenal. Check out the clip below, where he’s collaborated with Alexander Hacke, a german bass guitarist. But more on their music in a later post!
In the throes of some extreme wanderlust at the moment. The entire day has been SO BLOODY unproductive, its not even funny. I recently moved into a new office, one which has a spectacular view (from the 9th floor of the building), and spent the entire day gazing out, reading poetry that had something to do with travel. That is, I spent hours scouring the web for travel poetry to read. Highly recommend this. Not to mention this lovely anthology of travel poetry here.
Blech. Of course, this means I have more time (rather, incentive) to blog. Once I get home, that is.
And whither then? I cannot say.
[Zion National Park, Utah]
[Yosemite national park, California]
[Seville Cathedral, Spain]
[Chinatown, Singapore]
[Fullerton hotel, Singapore]
[Random apartments, Singapore]
[Road trip, Santa Barbara]
[Ooh, guess where!][Chatfield Hollow, New England]
From the "World's shortest essay" competition, the winner, when asked to compose an entry that would satisfy the following - Religion, Royalty, Mystery and Sex.
"My God", said the Queen, "I'm pregnant. I wonder who the father is.."
Now this may or may not be apocryphal - but it sure as hell is funny :)
Overheard,
Computer Security is like sex.How true :))
Once you're penetrated you're fucked.
Szerelem pointed me to a link today, about the number of journalists in the Caucasus that have been killed for one reason or another - political rivalries, whistle blowing, or even just standing up for what should be a free press. A total of 31. Since 2000 - a mere 7 year span. An average of 4 people losing their lives due to the whims and fancies of others, in the pursuit of duty. Civilians, to boot. And this figure doesn't even include those who were roughed up, threatened, or just disappeared before publishing their exposés.
One of the things which struck me was how the author of the article above found it extremely tough to put a picture to each name (he couldn't manage it in two instances). And to be honest, apart from the infamous Politkovskaya murder which received wide press coverage due to her criticisms of the Putin's government, I haven't heard about any of the others in any mainstream media. Does that mean these lives were lost in vain?
I looked up some numbers, courtesy of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the International News Safety Institute, and they're rather startling..
The Top 21 bloodiest countries over the past 10 years have been Iraq (138), Russia (88), Colombia (72), Philippines (55), Iran (54), India (45), Algeria (32), the former republic of Yugoslavia (32), Mexico (31), Pakistan (29), Brazil (27), USA (21), Bangladesh (19), Ukraine (17), Nigeria, Peru, Sierra Leone & Sri Lanka (16), Afghanistan, Indonesia & Thailand (13). Iran’s figures were swollen by one air accident in December 2005. A military aircraft carrying news teams to cover exercises in the Gulf crashed in Tehran, killing 48 journalists and media technicians aboard.As an aside, this puts India at 6th place in being one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. An eye opener of a statistic if there ever was one for the world's largest, and fastest growing democracy. Which brings us to the question of why they were killed in the first place. According to the CPJ,
Full coverage of the article is here. There's no one reason for all the senseless killings - and no pattern which can probably be detected without the help of machine learning mechanisms.
They either died in the line of duty or were deliberately targeted for assassination because of their reporting or their affiliation with a news organization.
Will people one day aspire to thought processes which do NOT involve eliminating potential threats from the arena in order (mostly) to make more money? or is that being naively idealistic?
As you can probably tell - the new look is meant to give the blog a breath of super fresh air!
(Thats a picture of the Hong Kong skyline, I fell in love with it during some 6 hours I spent there a few days ago :))
Fobulous. Like in FOB. Fresh off the Boat. And Fabulous - as in *awesome*.
Referring to someone fabulous who's just stepped into the United States from India. I quite liked it, from an article here
Yes! I'm back in Delhi after such a long time that it hurts being here. What passed for normal in bygone eras isn't anymore! (right, I'm being slightly melodramatic here, bear with me okay?) Sure, things change and all that - but its so interesting to see how your perspective does too.
Three days into my stay, I think I'm settling in very well. I've bought myself Orhan Pamuk's "My name is Red" and so far, reading it has been a lovely experience. My favorite part of the day - to read or otherwise - has always been the late afternoon - a time when the Spanish take their siestas, and most people in India tend to nap as well. I could never stand sleeping though - the sun's rays are just perfect, not too bright, not too dull, and there's a certain something in the air which make me really relaxed. Soporific, even. And if you're sitting next to a garden or trees - chirping birds just add to the atmosphere.
(Hmm, I just thought I'd ask a friend about what she thinks is her favorite part of the day - and surprise surprise, she'd never even given it any thought before :))
Another stark difference I've felt here is the sounds and smells you encounter in India, something which the very spartan and organized west (ok, maybe just the US) doesn't have. As I type this, I can hear a host of sounds, all amalgamated into a low roar which just creeps subliminally into your consciousness. If I try and really listen to it, I can hear the distant sounds of traffic as they filter in through a group of trees outside; a rickshaw seller hawking his kulfi ice cream; heck, i can even hear a group of women singing wedding songs, complete with a Dhol; barking dogs, children playing cricket, someone talking on a mobile phone far away...
And then there are the very unique smells which I've really missed - gulmohar trees, eucalyptus, the slightly smoky smell of a dense fog which hovers over the treetops; open wood fires used by road construction workers to cook rustic food - the occasional pungence of frying garlic, or the earthy aromas of roasting rotis! there's also, atleast in parts of the city where I live, stacks of freshly cut grass from the various lawns and gardens in the vicinity - a slight breeze just wafts the smell from these into the already heady mix; and the occasional cigarette smoke, as someone near by steps out for a break before heading home, or back indoors to finish whatever it was they got tired of.
Sigh.
Of course, the traffic here's gone to the dogs. What was merely chaotic before is now a battle for life and limb - literally too, if you've been following the recent episodes of how blue line buses in Delhi have caused the deaths of almost a hundred people in the last few months. Road quality seems to have improved, as has the quality of air in the city. There are far more cars on the streets; shopping centers have been elevated from being mere grocery stores and odds-n-end shops, to high end luxury brands which cater to an exclusive set of the rich and famous. Heck, I've noticed that the price of goods is proportional to the part of the city you buy them from!
Guess capitalism has a new address. And its definitely the heart of New Delhi, for now.
Quoting a friend when discussing the Ahmedinejad episode at Columbia -
"free speech is free speech. it's like virginity, you either have it or you don't."
How true - there's no way you can reasonably fake either.
Came across a very interesting interview of Noam Chomsky, the celebrated linguist and extreme left wing political commentator at Le Monde Diplomatique today. Apart from talking about Democracy in the typical firebrand way he usually does, he mentions a very pertinent point on the topic of censorship of the free press in countries that are (or call themselves) liberal democracies, vis a vis totalitarian ones.
It is one of the big differences between the propaganda system of a totalitarian state and the way democratic societies go about things. Exaggerating slightly, in totalitarian countries the state decides the official line and everyone must then comply. Democratic societies operate differently. The line is never presented as such, merely implied. This involves brainwashing people who are still at liberty. Even the passionate debates in the main media stay within the bounds of commonly accepted, implicit rules, which sideline a large number of contrary views. The system of control in democratic societies is extremely effective. We do not notice the line any more than we notice the air we breathe. We sometimes even imagine we are seeing a lively debate. The system of control is much more powerful than in totalitarian systems.
This has never been more relevant than it is today - given the handful of countries in the world which can be termed actual democracies, how many of them can really count themselves as being part of a tiny faction that allows completely free speech?
Granted that the latter is a rather naive approach to real world issues, and any country which allowed the press full freedom in action would pay dearly for it. (This was rather interestingly illustrated by the media representation of the referendum of France a couple of years ago - in may 2005 referendum on the European constitution, most newspapers in France supported a yes vote, yet 55% of the electorate voted no). The same goes for the obvious anti war sentiment in the US, which is less than accurately reflected by the mainstream media.
But as Chomsky mentions elsewhere, do you really want to be in a country where you need to satisfy minimum constraints on your views, political affiliations and (even) sexual orientation in order to make yourself heard in the mainstream?
The last 2 months have been filled with doing much more than I could even begin to start writing about. Or had the time to anyway. Or maybe I was just being lazy! Oh well.
Time magazine has an excellent series of articles on the rising star that is the Indian economy and state. What struck me specifically were the articles on KP Singh, the founder of DLF Real Estate which today has a market capitalization 3 BILLION USD *greater* than General Motors. At $24 billion, they're one of the biggest in the world. And of course, there were the occasional numbers on the growth of the economy to a trillion dollars (this April) et al. But the author summed it up (brilliantly, I thought) as
"Extraordinary as it is, the rise of India and China is nothing more than a return to the ancient equilibrium of world trade, with Europeans no longer appearing as gun-toting, gunboat-riding colonial masters but instead reverting to their traditional role: that of eager consumers of the much celebrated manufactures, luxuries and services of the East."
Interesting.
.. a treat.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/951D9596-498E-4735-9DBC-58AA497596EA.htm
Bates Gill holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is the author of Rising Star: China's New Security Diplomacy
*cracks up*
Really, I've made so many of those Gill Bates jokes, but to encounter someone actually named thus was priceless! :)
Well. We all know how good (or bad, depending on perspectives) Spiderman 3 was. Don't worry, no spoilers here. This is just a question I need to ask the world at large.
Spidey looks cool doesn't he, when he swings about on his webs, to and fro all of New York Ci.. er, I mean, whatever fictional city he lives in. But.
*WHAT in HELL* does he do with those pieces of webbing stuck all over the city?!!!!
I'm flummoxed.
Human: Er, don't you mean history?
Dragon: No.
Human: No?
Dragon: No.
Human: Why not?
Dragon: Because once I'm done, they'll be scraping you off the ground.
Human: Ah.
.. when
On his News and Comment radio show this morning, ABC Radio Networks host Paul Harvey said “the media should put a stop” to labeling “women and children” killed in war as “civilians.” He said, “It was civilians, for goodness sake, who decapitated New York City.”Dictionaries define a civilian as “one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force.” Harvey disagrees. According to him, “Since the invention of the aerial bomb five wars ago, there have been no civilians.” In other words, innocent people who are killed in war are military combatants because they are victims of a military attack.
Paul Harvey News describes itself as “the largest one-man network in the world, consisting of over 1200 radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations that broadcast around the world, and 300 newspapers.” President Bush gave Harvey the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.
This isn’t the first time Harvey has callously wished for more viciousness in American war fighting. In 2005, he said the United States should use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq. After recalling the use of atomic bombs during World War II, Harvey lamented that “we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq and kept our best weapons in their silos.”
Of course, things might improve when,
“Two years after writing a law requiring highway ‘Welcome to Texas’ signs to tout the state as the home of President Bush, state Rep. Ken Paxton [yesterday] passed a bill that will remove the designation once the 43rd president leaves office.”
Not to get too political, but I just couldn't resist. OTOH, I was going to do a big post on the rising ludicrousnesses of modern Indian morality and culture. Should I?
George Orwell's 1984 was a watershed in how humanity in general thought about the future. If you haven't read it, I really, REALLY recommend you do. It (along with Animal Farm) gave us chilling insights into a society which could, if left unchecked, become dystopian in the very near future. But over the decades since its release, people have always taken it for granted that this was but the fancies of one man, and mankind was savvy enough to protect itself from the beginnings of its own demise.
Up until now.
"Big brother is watching you", the refrain of many a snide comment about totalitarian governments has never been so chilling in its applicability to the modern democratic state. And no, I'm not getting unnecessarily melodramatic or anything - a series of events which have happened in the past week have made me question a lot of things I'd taken for granted before. Not in the least, the concepts of privacy and freedom.
The slow erosion of the founding principles of the United States has been evident for a while now - certain quarters have taken decisions to curtail basic human rights in the name of eradicating terrorism. Others have launched campaigns about Intellectual Property, in the name of which thousands of innocents have been legally targetted - I refer to the RIAA's attack on individuals over the past year or so. And then of course, there's the Indian context of banning blogs which condone terrorism, or are against the sentiments of a particular religious or ethnic group. Censorship for a cause, but still censorship.
All aspects of our social life are on the internet - our email, our invitations, photos, contacts, files, credit card databases and bank accounts. Drivers licenses when swiped in a card reader let the government know where you are. Combine all this information, and you can find out where I shopped, what I bought, when I did so. Google earth allows you to look at my backyard. You now know where I live. You have me on surveillance cameras. Practically every aspect of my life is available to those who want it - legally or otherwise.
The first inkling of the approaching storms was the recent tie up of Orkut, the social networking site, with Indian law enforcement agencies in order to help nab people making a nuisance of themselves online. Not only can you now be censured, you can be thrown in jail! As if that wasn't bad enough, surveillance cameras have now been put in force around Britain which can, hold your breath, READ YOUR LIPS! Thats right! Now, not only can they use facial recognition to find out who you are, they know what you're saying. Perhaps the shouting cameras they installed a while ago will find something to talk about with these.
So you thought that only people who pirate DVDs and music are in trouble? Sure they are - as the recent *dictat* by the US shows. They have recently targeted 12 countries which apparently have bad track records when it comes to containing piracy. India and China included of course. But here's the funny part - they mention Thailand too, because of that government's efforts to subsidize patented drugs from the US for their own use, to make them available cheaply to people who have AIDS.
Whats that? Make their own drugs so that they can save people dying of AIDS? Those *bastards*.
(end sarcasm)
'Sure, the U.S. government can impose economic sanctions on non-compliant countries, but that only takes you so far. The U.S. Constitution requires that the federal government respect the sovereignty of foreign nations. U.S. courts won't typically touch a copyright infringement case if the infringement occurs overseas.'Oh wait a minute. respect the what? Last I saw, Iraq was a sovereign country with its own government. Bleh.
But the icing on the cake is yet to come - and explain the title of this post too. Everyone who watches DVD movies knows that DVDs are hard to copy like VCDs used to be - thats because of the built in encryption, and Digital Rights Management (DRM). Well, the flip side of this is that even if you own the DVD and say, break it - there's no way you can get a replacement without paying for it all over again. Which is basically an extra few bucks for the big record companies. Of course, what one man can build, another can break. An enterprising hacker here
recently cracked this system, and put it up on the web for all to see. To summarize this hack, all you need is the code 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0 to break this encryption. And of course, some more technical knowhow. But you see my point. The fact that this number was published was going to make the AACS (the people who collect royalties on movies) pretty bad. So they issued a cease and desist order against.. hold your breath.. GOOGLE! and Yahoo. and others. And thats what broke the camel's back.
The internet as we know it was built to enhance communications amongst groups of people around the world - and the advent of modern communication technology like faxes and teleprinters was in no small way responsible for the demise of the USSR. When the masses have a collective decision and a medium to act upon, there's not much that can be done to stop them. And this is what is happening. The entire web is up in arms against the AACS. Instead of being able to clamp down on this number, everyone is making new web pages with this number to spread it even further. In my opinion, this is a watershed in the history of the internet because for the first time, people across boundaries have as a group targeted one specific entity. Even as I type, people are printing out coffee mugs, t-shirts, banners, stickers and all sorts of other merchandise to showcase this number. At this point, it has ceased to be just a number - it now stands as a symbol of 'sticking it to the man' - as poignant as the photo of that lone chinese man at Tienanmen square, stopping the approach of an entire column of tanks, and as the world collectively watched, the rising storm of communism.
Except that this time, its not one man. There's a few million of them. And they rise not against communism, but the capitalistic hegemony of corporations. Ironic ain't it?
