Kinda like this quote.....

Came across this quote this morning (woke up really early today, 7 o'clock) on orkut,

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

This indeed is relevant to many things happening in the world today. Especially, over here in the States, where a large section of the public are still under the belief that the Iraq war has got something to with the 9/11 attacks. Relevant also now because of the upcoming general elections for the control of the Congress, people need to effectively use their franchise to bring some sense and direction to the country.

I've never heard this quote before and kinda got stuck at the back of the mind all day. I finally googled for it just a couple of minutes back and found out that it was from the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, known as the father of Western philosophy.

People need his kind of philosophy more than ever now.

Sunday blabber

Another Sunday, another lazy day for me. As usual went to bed pretty late......well went to bed at around 4:30 this morning........so woke up pretty late as usual. Need to change my schedule, getting really out of hand these days.......damn my thesis for that........the numerous sleepless nights i spent working on my thesis kinda became a habit for me right now. It messed up my whole daily routine. And damn the ICC Champions trophy going on in India right now.....all the matches start around 4 in the morning here........so just can't avoid hitting bed early in the morning.

What else? I have an exam the next Saturday, didn't prepare much for that. So not much to say about that!

And oh.....i have been messing a lot around with the layout of the blog ever since i changed over to the blogger beta. If you have been closely following my blog, you would have noticed a lot of changes to the layout of the blog.....from fonts to colors.....especially changed a lot of my settings of the column on the right. Do let me know what do you think of all the changes.

That is all there to this blabber.......take care of yourselves.

These people aren't delusional........

......they are just plain crazy.

Today, the chairman of the U.S's Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine General Peter Pace defended the leadership of his boss, Mr. Rumsfled, saying that it was inspired by the higher power.

According to a news article on Yahoo today, he was quoted as saying......

"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country,"

No one would be alarmed normally if it was a quote attributed to some other Secretary of Defense, but these words are indeed quite significant because of the way the whole administration talked about the war on terror from the beginning. From day one onwards they used words in the biblical sense or terms, like it is a battle between the " good" and the "evil", it is a battle for civilization etc. The President himself is known to be a devout born again Christian and is known to use & take the name of God in his speeches most of the times. He was once alleged to have said this,

''God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq"

To just think that someone at such high and important positions as the President & the Secretary of Defense can talk about the important policy decisions they take are inspired by God or told by God himself is just unforgivable. And we have and are seeing today in the present world how the consequences of such religious fanaticism will unfold into catastrophic disasters like the 9/11 and Iraq war.

I see no difference between the two sides in this war on terror right now. The line is dangerously blurring between them.And when i say both sides, it is interesting to note that all the decisions are being made by a few number of people at the higher echelons of power and in total control, with their own public being either kept in the dark or made to rally behind their cause by the effective use of fear psychosis. Both sides are driven by the belief that what they are doing is right and approved by a higher being.

This reminds me of what Mr. Dawkins said in his BBC documentary the Root of all Evil, something similar to this, in the context of the conflict between the religions, ....

".....the war on terror is not between Evil and Good,as Mr. Bush puts it........it is the battle between two Evils...and who ever wins we loose..."

The sooner the people on the both sides realize this, the better it is for the peace in the world and ultimately for the survival of humanity on this planet.

Yay....this is sure a treasure trove for everyone.....

I just came across this at bbcnews.com and am i excited or what........

The complete works of one of history's greatest scientists, Charles Darwin, are being published online.

The project run by Cambridge University has digitised some 50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images of original publications - all of it searchable.

Surfers with MP3 players can even access downloadable audio files.

The resource is aimed at serious scholars, but can be used by anyone with an interest in Darwin and his theory on the evolution of life.

"The idea is to make these important works as accessible as possible; some people can only get at Darwin that way," said Dr John van Wyhe, the project's director.

So head over to BBCnews.com and read the article first and the head over to this website and bookmark it. It is really a honor for any one on this planet to just go through the work of a genius who came up with arguably the single most idea/theory/fact of all time. I myself am looking forward to go through his works one at a time soon. A big thank you to the University of Cambridge and also to the people involved with this .

And on another note, the new website of Mr. Richard Dawkins is proving to be a wonderful place to share and discuss ideas with people who think rationally and are for a better society and world. Please take time to go through this website too. You won't rue about the time spent there.

Postcard from Space (7)

Credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Cornell, JPL, NASA

Explanation: If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? The Opportunity Rover has captured just that.The distant red horizon is so flat and featureless that it appears similar to the horizon toward a calm blue ocean on Earth. Clouds on Mars can be composed of either carbon dioxide ice or water ice, and can move quickly, like clouds move on Earth.

What a wonderful shot! A priceless picture made possible by the ever expanding limits of science.

Well, this has been expected

According to news just breaking in on cricinfo.com,

Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif have both been recalled to Pakistan and will miss the Champions Trophy after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs following an internal Pakistan Cricket Board drugs test. The news comes on the back of an autumn of turbulence for Pakistan cricket, taking in the Oval fiasco, the captaincy saga and the replacement of the head of the board and severely dents Pakistan's chances in the tournament, due to begin tomorrow with a match against Sri Lanka.

This was long due in cricket and had to happen one-day or the other. For too long have the international cricketers escaped the dope tests that have become mandatory in almost all the international sporting events. But with ICC trying hard to make cricket a global game, this wasn't too far away from becoming a regular feature in international cricket. In fact, ICC has done a trail run kinda sorts at the last World Cup in SA by testing players randomly and for the first time they made it official at this time's Champions Trophy.

And the funny thing is that, obviously not so for the millions of Pakistani supporters, the first victims of this whole process were top players from Pakistan! What a nightmare is this year turning to them after such a wonderful start to the season! And the wreck continues......i don't how they are gonna pull themselves out of this rut.

And i won't be surprised if some other players from the participating countries too fall victim of this, 'cause this has been a grey area for cricket for a long time now and many players in the past have escaped the dope test scrutiny.

This whole thing might be a bit painful for cricket lovers around the world, but I'm certain that this will help cricket in the long term.

655,000+ and counting..........

According to an article in the Washington Post today,

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

I just don't know what to say.

If you look at the figure it might look outright erroneous or highly exaggerated but if you look at the report and the way the survey was conducted a sad and devastating truth emerges. Please go through the entire article over here and also watch a clip from CNN that shows an interview with the President of the company that was involved in the survey.

Some of the facts u need to keep in mind: First,

The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.

Sample involved....

The survey was conducted between May 20 and July 10 by eight Iraqi physicians organized through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. They visited 1,849 randomly selected households that had an average of seven members each. One person in each household was asked about deaths in the 14 months before the invasion and in the period after.

The interviewers asked for death certificates 87 percent of the time; when they did, more than 90 percent of households produced certificates.

Cost of the survey...

The survey cost about $50,000 and was paid for by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies.

I don't know how Mr. Bush and members of his administration sleep every night. How can anyone with basic moral values can sleep over something like this? Unless of course you live in a completely different world of your own facts and information. What pains me is that we are allowing this to happen knowing the extent of loss of life.

If these are not crimes........then i suppose every massacre or slaughter is moral in its own right.

Nataraja's problem.....

I really didn't know what to make of it when i came across this video, except for the fact that it is incredibly creative on the part of the team behind this and of course funny!

I'm mad.....

I'm really mad today. Two things really pissed me off today

One, being a veggie i try to get hold of veggie food whenever i go out to eat. Burger King is (was) one of the few joints tht offer veggie burgers and i really like it. Today as usual i went through the drive thru and ordered a BK Veggie expecting it to cost $ 2.21 as usual and to my shock they have increased it to $3.99 in a single week. That's fu&kin' crazy! How can u increase the price of an item by $1.78??????? Damn..........tht is it, I'm never gonna go for a BK Veggie again. It sucks!

Two, the dick head at FOX news Mr. Freak-O'Reilly is stepping up his usual BS and spin on events. Y'sday, i came across a clip on Iraq from his show wherein he ridiculously claimed that Iran is stepping up violence in Iraq so as to influence the November Polls. wtf!? Why the hell in the world would they want to influence the elections? Does it really matter for them if the democrats are in control? And he repeated this claim again last night and added that North Korea's nuclear test was also part of the plan to influence the coming elections! No wonder his ratings are spiraling down....

Mood: Extremely pissed off.

Breaking News: North Korea goes Nuclear

According to BBCnews,

North Korea says it has carried out its first ever test of a nuclear weapon, the state news agency has reported.

It said the underground test, done in defiance of international warnings, was a success and had not resulted in any leak of radiation.

A South Korean official said an explosion had been detected in the north-east of North Korea, measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale.

Hmmmm....this is interesting then. So we are in for some wonderful days ahead of us. Have to see what the response of Mr. "Monkey" Bush is goign to be....

"Freak" show!

Something should be done pretty soon about the way "fashion" shows operate. They cannot let the models become like this .........it's sick and crazy! These models set a very bad example to the teenagers.....and that is dangerous. These kinda shows or models who take part in them in lot of ways promote the serious problem of 'eating disorder' seen among young people.

A Spanish fashion show recently rejected models who were skinny and i think this should set a precedent for the other shows to follow. Anorexia shouldn't be promoted as something that is cool.

Photo: A model presents a creation for French fashion house Guy Laroche as part of their Spring/Summer 2007 ready-to-wear fashion collection in Paris October 7, 2006. REUTERS/Charles Platiau (FRANCE)

A first....

Well another lazy Sunday and I've logged into my PC this afternoon and came across this ( if the link doesn't work then chk the oct 8's Views section article abt Younis Khan) over at my blog's site meter. This brings up a few things....

• Either people in the media back home do read blogs quite often or they just seem to have a good blogsearch engine.

• It was really cool of Mumbai Mirror to give importance and place for the views of bloggers on their digital edition.We appreciate this as bloggers. I don't know whether they do this on their print edition....hope somebody in Mumbai clears this for me.

• This is a first of sorts for my blog and I'm thrilled................. :)

• And, finally something should be done abt the way Pakistani Cricket operates.

And on a different note, my job search is still going on and it kinda is a boring thing to do. Phew!
Hopefully this week might be the lucky week for me. Keeping my fingers crossed!

P.S.: Btw.......for those who haven't figured out what the initial link is all about, my blog is the fourth article featured on that page.

A wreck called Pakistani cricket

Pakistan's cricket is in more than one way has always been, and still is, a direct reflection of the country's own chaotic history. Turbulent, chaotic, directionless, and a catastrophic disaster waiting to happen most of the times......... but nevertheless with glimpses of promise here and there.

The latest chaos just before an important cricketing event like the Champions trophy brings forward the deep rooted problems of the whole cricket setup of Pakistan. Player indiscipline and the big star egos have been long dogging its system. Moreover, regular takeovers from the consecutive governments have added to its ever increasing miseries. At one time i remember the cricket team having at least 6 or 7 players who were past captains and that too in a span of less than three or four years between them. But in spite of all this, I have always been amazed at the raw talent that the Pakistani cricket always produced, and that in a way made me to respect and admire their team despite of the fact that they being our arch sporting rivals.

As i sit down to write this post, another news breaks on cricinfo.com saying that Younis Khan was reinstated as the captain and their newly appointed assistant coach was sacked following the resignation of their board president! All this in a span of two days after the resignation of the newly appointed stand in captain....Younis Khan. Phew......

Maybe it's quite difficult to understand the complex politics of their board for an outsider like me. But, it is quite clear that the message they send to the rest of the world has always been that of utter chaos and disorder.

I hope that they will somehow find their strength and purpose as a team and deliver the results that their cricket fanatic countrymen would be expecting from them.

So true.......

Someone on one of my orkut communities led me to this link. It's an article written by Richard Dawkins in the British newspaper The Guardian about the U.S. & U.K's invasion of Iraq and why it is totally a misconceived operation. Man wasn't he right on back then......

Osama bin Laden, in his wildest dreams, could hardly have hoped for this. A mere 18 months after he boosted the US to a peak of worldwide sympathy unprecedented since Pearl Harbor, that international goodwill has been squandered to near zero. Bin Laden must be beside himself with glee. And the infidels are now walking right into the Iraq trap.

There was always a risk for Bin Laden that worldwide sympathy for the US might thwart his long-term aim of holy war against the Great Satan. He needn't have worried. With the Bush junta at the helm, a camel could have foreseen the outcome. And the beauty is that it doesn't matter what happens in the war.

Imagine how it looks from Bin Laden's warped point of view...

If the American victory is swift, Bush will have done our work for us, removing the hated Saddam and opening the way for a decent Islamist government. Even better, in 2004 Bush may actually win an election. Who can guess what that swaggering, strutting little pouter-pigeon will then get up to, and what resentments he will arouse, when he finally has something to swagger about? We shall have so many martyrs volunteering, we shall run out of targets. And a slow and bloody American victory would be better still.

The claim that this war is about weapons of mass destruction is either dishonest or betrays a lack of foresight verging on negligence. .....................

Continue to read on the rest of the article, it brilliantly & rightly puts in the flaws in the U.S. electoral system that made Bush the President in the first place.

Classic Homer......err and high too.....

Source: youtube.com, FOX