Why???????????

95 Pounds Heavier, Angry Son Faces Mother Who Starved Him from NYTimes

CAMDEN, N.J., Feb. 10 — Bruce Jackson rose in a packed courtroom here on Friday, 95 pounds heavier and 15 inches taller than he was 27 months ago when he was found rummaging through a neighbor's garbage can looking for food.

He looked directly at his adoptive mother, who was about to be sentenced to seven years in prison for systematically starving him and his three younger brothers in a case that drew national attention to the failures of New Jersey's child welfare system.

"You would make us eat pancake batter, dried-up grits and oatmeal, uncooked Cream of Wheat, and raw potatoes instead of cooked food," Mr. Jackson, now 21, told her and the crowded courtroom. "You didn't take us to any doctor's appointments. You wouldn't let us watch TV or play with our toys. You wouldn't let us take a shower when we were dirty."

He read from a piece of paper in a calm and determined voice betrayed by a slight slur.

"You yelled at us, cursed at us, hit us with brooms, rulers, sticks, shoes and belt buckles; I still have the marks to prove it," he told Vanessa Jackson, 50, who took him in as a foster child when he was 7 and later adopted him.

...

"If we knew why these kinds of things happen, we would be able to put ourselves in the shoes of defendants, in the shoes of mass murderers, in the shoes of people who do horrible things to young children," said Vincent P. Sarubbi, the Camden County prosecutor. "We'd have to become them, and that's why it's impossible in some circumstances to truly understand what may motivate people."

funny quote

"Half the lies they tell about me aren't true."
--Yogi Berra

Australian spectators

Show Murali the respect he deserves from The Hindu

Certainly Australians need to confront and correct their growing reputation for bad sportsmanship off the field. Australian cricketers are raised always to accept the umpire's decision. It's about time locals realised that this applies constantly and sometimes inconveniently, and that the game is greater than any man or any nation.

I always thought that the Australians were the most sporting spectators who would call a spade a spade and not flow with their emotions. But looks like the sub-continent passion of cricket is rubbing on them too....

Javagal Srinath (my fav cricketer)

Srinath on ICC panel from The Hindu

Colombo: India's former pace spearhead Javagal Srinath will be part of the three-member Bowling Action Advisory Panel (BAAP) which will identify bowlers with potentially flawed actions at the ongoing ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup here.

Indo-US joint aggriculture research

Wal-Mart and Monsanto on Indo-U.S. Agriculture Initiative board from The Hindu

NEW DELHI: The United States-based multinationals, Wal-Mart and Monsanto, are on the board of the Indo-U.S. Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture Research and Education. It will set the agenda for collaborative farm research with Indian laboratories and agricultural universities. In India, the universities on their own and through Krishi Vigyan Kendras serve as extension agencies for farmers on the field and have a wide reach.

The influence of the American private sector became obvious to Indian scientists during the first meeting of the board in Washington DC in December 2005. Representatives of the Wal-Mart food chain and the Monsanto Seed Corporation were keen on using the Initiative for retailing in agriculture and on trade aspects. Transgenic research in crops, animals and fisheries would be a substantial part of the collaboration in biotechnology, requiring India to pledge huge funds.

Issues of Intellectual Property Rights and Benefit-Sharing were also discussed. India is endowed with rich biodiversity and has a huge bank of germ plasm and genetic resource material in the public research system.

India is looking for joint ownership or joint patents, whereas in the U.S. much of the transgenic and hybrid agricultural technology is with the corporates.

Indian Council of Agriculture Research Director-General Mangala Rai is the co-chair of the Board along with Ellen Terpstra, Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agriculture Services. There will be seven members on each side.

The Alchemist

Day before I was reading the alchemist while on the plane... A few people had recommended me the book and I have been wondering what the whole deal was about. Finally got chance to read it since it was gifted to me :)

It is a very simple story but it has so many implications to life. So many place I had to stop and think what did I do when I was in such a situation? Where is this applicable? All in all that tiny book has a lot of meaning. And more so for me... since probably I have to figure what is my "Personal Legend". Kind of reminds me of "The Little Prince" Which on the surface seemed to be just a cartoon but was a lot more.

Now I have moved to Memoirs of a Geisha. Another gripping book.

I agree and disagree

Democracy in a Cartoon via ALDaily

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before, the institution of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law? What of the British architecture of Bombay and Calcutta? The British even gave back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples.

On the world stage, should we really apologize for Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe? Mozart, Beethoven and Bach? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Breughel, Ter Borch? Galileo, Huygens, Copernicus, Newton and Darwin? Penicillin and computers? The Olympic Games and Football? Human rights and parliamentary democracy? The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes.

Each of us should have the right to speak against things that we don't agree with... be it religion, morals, laws, anything at all. But I wonder if that will work for the better and will the two sides of the story be heard?