Comment from the channel 7 talk show "Mudda"

Two comments that really struck me that how can someone think in such a way...
First was

"App hote kaun hai najma ka theka lane wale"

... I forgot the name of the guy but he was a politician.
Second was

"Tali kabhi ek hath se nahi bajti, per zyada galti aurto ke hi hoti hai"

someone from the audience
(and then there was a classic statement that never fail to outrage me)

"Rape unhi ladkiyo ke hote hai jo kam kapde phanti hai."

again someone from the audience

This episode was discussing a how can there be "sabhy samaj" (especially related to Muslim society) An interstice fact there was only one female in the audience.
I will not say anything to the last comment cause that is just a peace of bullshit and so is the second one.

Now lets look at the first statement coming from a politician (elected by the people of the country called India) who represents one of the minorities(Muslim). The context of the statement... to refresh your memory it was about the case when a man and his wife wanted to stay together even after one of the members of the guys family raped the wife which is wrong because the wife has become haram.(I totally don't buy that is actually true according to Islam I will have to cross check this) And the girl went to the court asking to stay with her husband. And this Mr. Politician has the guts to say that who are you(court or anyone else) to stand against the fatwa that was issued that this two cannot say together. Is it just me or is there someone else who thinks that the leadership of this country has gone down the drains. If this comment was by some random XYZ I would maybe let it pass... but a educated(supposedly) leader that is suppose to uplift the society that is a very much a part of this country is saying as if he is running some random kingdom of his own and that to taking them backwards. And ofcourse people support these kind of people.

Internet, plagiarism and Kaavya Viswanathan

In Internet Age, Writers Face Frontier Justice from NYTimes

Frontier justice? Mob rule? Perhaps.

But last week, not just petty gadflies fueled by schadenfreude and bloodlust (though there was that), but also armchair defense attorneys and the merely curious were discussing the books — as well as whether Ms. Viswanathan's status as a) immigrant, b) minority, c) child of privilege or d) hottie — played a role in her treatment.

Many online commentators detected an underlying racism, for instance, in even good-natured rants — perhaps typified by Gawker's cheeky (and occasionally misinterpreted) comment on Tuesday: "Isn't it kind of awesome to see an overachieving Indian kid finally do something wrong?"

But others pointed to the fact that Ms. Viswanathan had only one week earlier told The Newark Star-Ledger that "nothing I read gave me the inspiration" for the novel, but now, under scrutiny, suddenly recalled adoring Ms. McCafferty's books and claimed to have unconsciously channeled them. Given that, her critics charged, she was being treated better than other fabulists of late.

"If Viswanathan weren't young, attractive and a student at the best brand name in higher education, wouldn't she be James Frey II?" Jane Genova, a marketing consultant in Connecticut, wrote on her blog (janegenova.com) on Thursday. "You bet," she continued. "The pile-on would have been fast and massive."

But what if she had been deaf and blind?

That was a question raised in a discussion at Metafilter, where Andrew Shalit, in a defense of Ms. Viswanathan's claim of unconscious copying, pointed to the Helen Keller archives at the Web site for the American Foundation for the Blind.

There, in her autobiography "The Story of My Life," Ms. Keller describes how, at age 12, she wrote a story — "The Frost King" — that created her own publishing scandal.

"Mr. Anagnos was delighted with 'The Frost King,' and published it in one of the Perkins Institution reports," Ms. Keller wrote (Chapter 14 at afb.org/mylife). "This was the pinnacle of my happiness, from which I was in a little while dashed to earth. I had been in Boston only a short time when it was discovered that a story similar to 'The Frost King,' called 'The Frost Fairies' by Miss Margaret T. Canby, had appeared before I was born in a book called 'Birdie and His Friends.' The two stories were so much alike in thought and language that it was evident Miss Canby's story had been read to me, and that mine was — a plagiarism."

It was surmised that Ms. Keller must have heard Ms. Canby's story read to her as a child and unconsciously retold the story years later as her own, an event that left her in dread of trying to write anything original again.

Back at Metafilter, Keith M. Ellis wondered if Ms. Keller would have received a fair shake in the rush to judgment that is now de rigueur in the Internet age.

"It seems to me we give zero consideration to the possibility that it might be plagiarism, but unintentional," Mr. Ellis wrote, adding: "If we changed the name and obscured the disability-indicating details, would we still be willing to consider innocence?"

A piercing question, that — though so, too, is whether Ms. Viswanathan's case warrants a comparison to Ms. Keller's. And as mercenaries stampeded to eBay to peddle copies of Ms. Viswanathan's suddenly scarce book (a first edition was selling for $80 on Friday), the hope for any larger lessons in the "Opal" episode began to dim. Yet here, too, the Internet presented something of a solution.

Thought

I havn't been really good with blogging these days... there is so much that i hear and see that needs to be put down here but somehow when there is time there is no access and where there is access there is no time. I need to do something abt it.

Quote

May you live all the days of your life.
--Irish Blessing (Now that is a true blessing)

Intresting site....

Killing The Buddha via ALDaily

I olny read this (I broke up with Jesus) article and it seems intresting. I don't know what this whole site is about but will look through it in due time(as religion seems to be one of my fav topics :))

extract from the site about the site --

Killing the Buddha is a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the "spirituality" section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not. If the religious have come to own religious discourse it is because they alone have had places where religious language could be spoken and understood. Now there is a forum for the supposedly non-religious to think and talk about what religion is, is not and might be. Killing the Buddha is it.

Quotes

Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.
-- John Ed Pearce

To change the system you have to be a part of the system.
-- Page 3(movie)

Dhoni #1......

Dhoni ranked top after India win from BBC

Believe it or not but it is Mahendra Dhoni in the top slot for ODI. I hope he lasts long.