church and state

Supreme Court rules on government Ten Commandments displays

right or wrong????

quote

The Earth As It Is
Leonardo Boff

Is it possible to live in peace and happiness when you know that two-thirds of human beings are suffering, hungry and poor? To be human we have to have compassion. This solidarity is really the defining factor of our humanity and is gradually being lost in a culture of material values. It’s not only the cry of the poor we must listen to but also the cry of the earth. The earth and human beings are both threatened. We must do something to change the situation...
There won’t be a Noah’s Ark to save only some of us. To meet people’s fundamental concerns change is needed. The world as it is does not offer the majority of humanity life but rather hell. I believe that change is possible, because I cannot accept a God who could remain indifferent to this world, but only one who cares about the poor and the suffering.

thought

it is letting ur gaurd down and giving someone else the right to hurt you...
and they do.
there is no other way

quote

"aathigam paesum adiyaarkelaam sivamae anbaagum
naathigam paesum nallavarukelaam anbe sivamaagum"
(meaning as per shethra
for believers "GOD IS LOVE"
for atheists "LOVE IS GOD ")

quote

Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys.
--Gail Pool

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
--Mark Twain

Gandhi saint or politician???

Reflections On Gandhi by George Orwell

nice critical essay.

culture dominance on the net

French answer to Google library from bbc

"The French, concerned that the internet is in danger of becoming the exclusive preserve of the English language, are responding to Google's project to put 15 million books and documents online with their own French version."

reservation

A flawed move in Aligarh from frontline

i have never understood how reservation ever helped anyone let it be SC/ST or women or muslims. it is like instead of giving these people the opportunity to come up to the standards we are saying it is ok to be idiots(and i am not saying that they are idiots). don't worry u will get a job in a govt office so as to messup the already messed up system. or be a doctor and kill few more of ur fellow countrymen. or whatever else u do.
if they really want to help bring up these section of the society then we have to start at the bottom. open up free primary education in the remote areas. instead of paying these professor to teach below par student, pay them to go out and teach students so that when they sit in the exams they r ready to take up the challenge. educate the society not to be biased against them. give them help or 'bheek'(can't find the english word for it).

Car Nicobar... post tsunami

Car Nicobar's resilience from frontline

"Community participation, strengthened by the tradition of tribal solidarity, is a key element in the UNICEF's tsunami rehabilitation interventions in Car Nicobar, which have proved successful despite logistical problems. "
...
"Unlike the settlers, the Nicobarese seem completely `demonetised'. "They have an organic link with their habitat and live off it. They keep pigs for meat, but there is no cattle-rearing. They do backyard poultry farming so that they can have eggs to eat. But you can be sure that the extra eggs will not be sold. The mainland concept of bank balance, property and private ownership is non-existent. The community comes first, and everything belongs to the community," explained Vivek Kumar Porwal, the new Deputy Commissioner of the Nicobars district. "
...
"We do not have such a word as `orphans' in our vocabulary" says Thomas Philip, captain of Mus and secretary of the Tribal Council. "We treat them like our own and look after them. We do not have orphanages here!"
This may be yet another reason why the travails of Car Nicobar have not been as palpably felt by the world as the pain of the other regions of Asia that are grappling with the aftermath of the tsunami. The strong bonding between the people of Car Nicobar is helping them survive their pain and loneliness. "

a ray of light in the tsunami disaster...

child labor

291 children rescued in Mumbai

when will it stop...

quotes

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
--J. K. Rowling

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
--Robert Fritz

thought

if laws were to fix the problems, then we should be living heaven by now.

thought

silence, distance, uneasiness, uncertainty, unwillingness

Beaten by Google - Joe Kraus founder of excite

Lessons from Silicon Valley from bbc

"Lesson number one from Excite is about timing in a technology business
...
Lesson two says: the internet is a new sort of market place that needs new business plans to make it work.
....
Both Excite and Google are free to use; both business plans needed the support of advertisers.
But Excite took the conventional view that the ads would come from the top 100 companies in the USA, the people who buy huge amount of TV time and blanket the newspapers and the magazines.
Google did not go for the big spenders. Google's squads of PhDs wrote algorithms that would make it viable for the company to take hundreds of thousands of ads from hundreds of thousands of small (or big) companies, and pop the ads up in highly relevant spaces close to the search lists. "

quote

"As long as there are entrenched social and political distinctions between sexes, races or classes, there will be forms of science whose main function is to rationalize and legitimize these distinctions."
- Elizabeth Fee