Pirates go bankrupt because of piracy!

Taste of one’s own medicine? 😛

http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/

Outraged about the Delhi Rape Incident?

Image Courtesy: http://kractivist.wordpress.com

Outraged about the Delhi rape incident, are you? I am too but the reason I hadn’t written anything about this incident or the earlier Guwahati incident is because I know none of this is going to stop because I am writing about it or ranting and raving about it on FB. People will be outraged about it for a while till it is in the media and then go about their business as usual only to be awakened by another such brutal incident. In the meanwhile, the victims die or live in condition worse than death and the rapists roam go scot-free. What is required is a change in the mindset of the people in our country which is way far away from the required mindset right now. We cannot expect change till we believe women are a liability, till our movies stop showing girls going out late in the night and getting raped or in some fortunate cases helped by a hero who gives them a lesson of life by telling them to stay indoors after late henceforth, till we stop treating girls/women as property and the list can go on. This was aptly put in a FB status by Geetha Jacob. Geetha, if you are listening, Thanks for putting it this way and letting the outraged people know they rape indirectly too and a lot of times. And let me tell you this applies to most in our society and not just men but women too. There is no hope till we fix this.

The FB status said:

You stay silent when your mother is treated like shit by your father,
You stay silent when your friend takes dowry from his wife’s family,
You stay silent when your classmates sits at a nukkad whistling ‘maal’ at passing women saying it is innocent fun,
You stay silent when a million women every year in this nation are murdered before birth or their breath dunked in milk before god after it,
You don’t report the drunkard husband who beat up your maid servant because it is not your business,
You stayed silent when your boss hit upon a female colleague and you told her to grin and bear it because it happens everywhere,
You sing along with your favourite male stars as they call their ‘items’ chikni chameli and halkat jawani etc.,
You stay silent when our police and paramilitary gang rape tribal and lower caste women and shove stones inside their rectum saying that that’s an aberration of the system,
You did not protest the lower pay that your female colleagues got just because of their sex,
You helped your parents arrange a marriage for your sister against her wishes saying she doesn’t know her mind,
You stayed silent when in a family discussion a woman’s voice was silenced by the cacophony of male voices,
You force a woman to wear burqa in the pretext of sharia law or justify their domesticity because some asshole called Manu wrote some asinine laws hundreds of years back,
You think feminism is shit and feminist loud mouthed ‘bitches’ who have not better work to do than cry victim,
You applaud as Hindu right wing men barge into a hotel and slap ‘immoral’ women with the intention of ‘reforming’ their ‘maa’ ‘behen’
You stay silent when females in a party are sent away to discuss ‘childish’ things even as you discuss ‘important’ things like politics and all in their absence,
You stayed silent when your father directly and sarcastically showed your mother that she’s lower then men in intelligence time and again,
You objected loudly when your girlfriend, wife wanted to put her life and career ahead of yours saying yours was more important,

And now suddenly you have become a man because ONE woman was brutally beaten and raped while you conveniently forget the hundreds of women whose psyche you were responsible for brutally beating and raping directly, or indirectly through your inaction… and now you evoke the same ‘maa’ and ‘behen’ argument to protect them…

Thanks to the serpent of your awakened manhood, that woman in Delhi will perhaps get justice. But what about the millions of other women in the country of different religion, region and sect united by their shared injustice who will perhaps never get justice precisely for the same reason – your manhood?

Jaspal Bhatti – The original satirist

It is indeed a sad day. Jaspal Bhatti, the satirist, died in a road accident this morning. Most of us would remember him from his hit show ‘Flop show’. He was made for social satire. He took on everybody – chief guests arriving fashionably late, fake medical reimbursement claims of employees police, from police, doctors to PhD guides. They used to be so good just the title song makes you laugh. The show started with titles saying “mismanged by” and “misdirected by”. RIP Jaspal Bhatti! You will always be remembered.

A short video of Jaspal Bhatti from Mar 2010.

Judge not lest ye shall be judged!

Sudan-Famine: Vulture eying the emancipated girl Photo: Kevin Carter

Is there anybody who is not familiar with this pic? This photo won the Pulitzer Prize. The photo was taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine.
The picture depicts a famine stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away. The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it.

This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child. The New York Times who published this photo had to run a special editorial saying that the girl had enough strength to walk till the food camp but no one knows the Ultimate fate.

Kevin Carter

The photographer Kevin Cartercommitted suicide three months later due to depression. He not only received the prize but also drew a lot of flak for not helping the child and instead using the  20 mins to adjust lens which got him the prize. Recently on one of the Facebook albums this pic was posted with caption that questioned the human values of Kevin for having taken this photo instead of helping her which prompted this post.

Had he helped, he would have helped one child but this picture caught the attention of an entire world! which is a better outcome and let us not forget his job was to take these pictures. That was his objective of being there. He was DOING HIS JOB!

It is much easier to judge Carter’s values sitting in our air-conditioned rooms and researching the history on our computers using Google. Ever wondered what it must be like to be a war photographer? To see people die in front of you, to be in the line of fire yourself, to see your colleague and friend die in a firing while taking those pics. How easy it is to see suffering like the kind in Sudan and still continue doing your job with the same passion.

Portion of Kevin’s suicide letter read “I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…I have gone to join Ken [recently deceased colleague Ken Oosterbroek] if I am that lucky.” He was a white male who protested against apartheid. He was a member of the “Bang-bang club”. Through his photography he also exposed many other evil practices like Necklacing.

Ok now back to our “Judge others from your comfort zone” club. Here are a few questions for you.

• When was the last time you contributed to a relief fund and how much(this by the way is the least you can do)
• When was the last time you even visited any affected area? Even if you are given a chance most of us would be busy with our own lives or give up the chance for fear of contracting a disease or getting into the chaos
• How much do you contribute to your local society welfare
• Are you associated with even one NGO and what is your contribution to it?
• When you see a begging child, what do you do

1.  Comment on the sorry state of India
2. Give the child a rupee or two and get rid of them
3. Take a child to your house and give a job
4. Take the child to an NGO and try to get help to get make them employable and give the child make it literate
5. Stop the child for a minute and speak to it about the concerns and why the child is forced to beg

Answer these questions and compare yourself to the above Kevin’s work and read the suicide note of the foolish guy who committed suicide even after receiving an award and compare who is more human. The answer would obviously be “The Judge Club”. Of course yes isn’t it more human to be selfish and judgmental! It requires more sacrifice and guts to do what Carter did than just being human!!

Tokyo-Earthquake

Tokyo-EarthQuake-Tsunami

The earthquake with a magnitude of 8.9 had hit Japan 2:46 pm Tokyo time followed by nineteen aftershocks.Now it has caused a Tsunami and also many incidents of fire have been reported in Tokyo, one being in a nuclear plant and one in oil refinery. The largest recorded quake is said to have taken place in Chile on May 22, 1960, with a magnitude of 9.5. It has also caused power outage and some wall collapses, rattled buildings and strewn cars. But no major causalities are reported. Hope the people are safe. Praying for them.

According to the latest news 400 passengers of a high speed bullet and Cruise went missing. 200-300 Dead bodies have been found in North Japan. Another 88 people are confirmed killed and 346 people are missing.

Trouble in the Nuclear plant 170 miles northeast of Tokyo(no radiation leaked reported though). Millions of houses blacked out. It has been a SAD SAD day.

Now the Tsunami has hit Hawaiian coasts too.

Whirlpool at a port in Oarai, in the state of Ibaraki- Image courtesy: dailymail.co.uk

This has been one of the biggest recorded earth quakes from the late 1800s not just in Japan but also the world reported The Times Of India. The nature’s fury just looks like apocalypse, a year before 2012.

update: Japan PM has declared a Nuclear emergency. News of damages in Miyagi continue to come.

The continued reports of explosions in Fukushima Daiichi plant near Tokyo taken over tremor concerns.

Google glitch affects Gmail

Are you one of those people who save your important data in gmail inbox? I am for sure one of them. The news that a bug in Google seems to have wiped out 1,50,000 gmail accounts came as a rude awakening to me. The affected users are able to see a welcome message just like they have opened a new account. All mails, chat logs and attachments are said to have been lost. Google claims it is just 0.08% of users, the number is still huge considering the number of Gmail users. Google engineers are still working on recovering the data.

Nobody is immune to disasters not even Google. While I haven’t been able to check out if I am one of them as there is no gmail access in office, I am wondering what do I do if I am one of them. At least for the unaffected ones here is a saviour. You can back up your mails to the hard disk to avoid such a mishap

Uncle Pai’s sad demise

Uncle Pai is ‘Amar’ along with his Amar Chitra Katha series. Some mortals are indeed immortals.

Thought of writing a post for Uncle Pai, the creator of Amar Chitra Katha. But just found this post with a collection of what people have to say abt him, which is more than what I could say. Sharing it with all of you.

The Sun shines on the Sun signs

You get up in the morning to the warm winter Sun and suddenly the earth beneath your feet has shifted, well, in this case literally 😉 . The astronomers from the Minnesota Planetarium Society found that because of the moon’s gravitational pull on Earth, the alignment of the stars was pushed by about a month. I had read about it some time back but had read it as an ancient science which believed in a different zodiac system. The one that comprises another 13th sign where the Sun spends only 19 days. Ancient Babylonians had 13 constellations, but wanted only 12, so they threw out Ophiuchus, the snake holder.

The change in the zodiac sign seems to have the rocked the world. Most people seem to take the news with a pinch of salt. Some find consolation by that argument that this applies only to people after 2009/2010. I have had friends who could forget your name but not your Sun sign. For most people not reading the daily horoscope is not an option. My roomie’s FB status says “Proud to be an Aquarian…..!!!! i will live and die as an aqua ….!”

Most people find it difficult to associate themselves with the new sign. Mostly comparing themselves to a person in the new Sun sign whom they hate and say “I am not that, am I!!!” Well, if it is any consolation at least they can compare themselves with somebody, I am going to be in the new Sun sign Ophiuchus. No references at all 😦 plus no body seems to know how to pronounce it. So while others are going to be referred to as the Saggi, the Virgo(they are the safest ones no much change there with the new system), the Cancerian, I will be the “she who must not be named” 😯 And the sign seems to be represented by a serpent. I feel like a person who has been unfairly put in the Slytherin house.

According to the Minnesota Planetarium Society, here is where the real signs of the Zodiac should fall. Ready for your world to change forever???

Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16.

Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11.

Pisces: March 11-April 18.

Aries: April 18-May 13.

Taurus: May 13-June 21.

Gemini: June 21-July 20.

Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10.

Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16.

Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30.

Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23

Scorpio: Nov. 23-29.

Ophiuchus: Nov. 29-Dec. 17.

Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20.

Anyway reading my new characters make me feel better. Am I ready to shed my Saggi attitude, don’t know yet but my new life doesn’t look bad either.

The constellation Ophiuchus represents a man wrestling a serpent, dividing the snake’s body in two parts.  It is the only sign of the zodiac linked to real men, sharing traits with Imhotep, a 27th century BCE Egyptian doctor, and biblical Joseph. Like Imhotep, Ophiuchus is considered a healer of men and a doctor of medicine or science. He seeks higher education and enlightenment. He is expected to achieve a high position in life. Like Joseph, he is an interpreter of dreams and vivid premonitions. He is envied by his peers and favored by his father and authority figures.

The dominant characters traits are:

* Many people are envious of the Ophiuchan as he/she progresses well throughout life.
* A seeker of wisdom and knowledge
* A flamboyant dressing sense, favouring bright colours.
* Authority looks upon him/her well
* Would make a great architect or builder
* Number 12 is the lucky number.
* Will have a big family but will leave home at an early age

Don’t know how things will go. All that I know is this is one occurrence that the planets had not predicted at all 😉

Paul strikes again

FIFA is no doubt an event talked about throughout the world but Paul, the psychic Octopus has been hogging no less limelight . Its prediction came true again with the Spain winning today’s match against Germany.

Paul the Octopus is a common octopus who lives in the Sea Life public aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany. And has been making news for its ability to predict the football matches played by German team.  Two clear plastic boxes containing food are lowered down into the aquarium’s tank. The boxes have the flags of two countries attached to them, one of Germany, and one of their next opponent. The container selected by the octopus is assumed to be the predicted winner.

With this recent prediction, Paul scores stand at a perfect 100% in FIFA 2010. And he is no less than a celebrity now.  Lets see if his celebrity status goes to his head 😉 And for the rest non-celebrities (like us) we are happy watching the matches and waiting for the outcome ( As if we have an option) 😛

Worth a Read

 “Today, India proved once again that it doesn’t care for its poor. Today, it was proved all over again that those who do politics in the name of poor in this country, always rule for the rich”, said the article and rightly so.

I was really moved by the article, it is worth a read

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Main-Street/entry/shame-india-sold-its-dead