10 Public Intellectuals

The Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll was conducted in November 2005 and June 2008 by Prospect Magazine (UK) and Foreign Policy (US) on the basis of responding readers’ ballot.

Noam Chomsky : American linguist, philosopher,  libertarian socialist

Umberto Eco : Italian medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary critic

Richard Dawkins : English  evolutionary biologist  author Atheist

Václav Havel :  Czech playwright, essayist, former dissident and politician.

Christopher Hitchens : British author, journalist, and literary critic

Paul Krugman :  American economist, liberal columnist, and author (Nobel)

Jürgen Habermas : German philosopher and sociologist

Amartya Sen : economist,  Professor (Nobel)

Jared Diamond : merican scientist and nonfiction author Atheist

Salman Rushdie : British Indian novelist and essayist

Fethullah Gulen : Turkish preacher

Muhammad Yunus : Bangladeshi banker and economist (Nobel)

Yusuf al-Qaradawi : Egyptian scholar and preacher

Orhan Pamuk : Turkish novelist (Nobel)

Aitzaz Ahsan : Pakistani Advocate

Amr Khaled :  Egyptian activist and preacher

Abdolkarim Soroush :  Iranian thinker, philosopher, reformer

Tariq Ramadan : Swiss Muslim academic

Mahmood Mamdani : Uganda) is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology

Shirin Ebadi :  Iranian lawyer, human rights activist

A weird analyses on the results for  Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll conducted by Prospect Magazine (UK) and Foreign Policy (US). Do you see any difference as I did?

People who voted think religious preachers are more impotent intellectuals to this world than atheists. The same crowd was mentally aright  in 2005 . Also , now there are more intellectuals in south Asia and gulf compared to west.

Looks like whole poll has intention of appeasement.

2005 list :

1. Noam Chomsky : American philosopher, libertarian socialist
2. Umberto Eco : Italian critic, philosopher
3. Richard Dawkins : English biologist , author, atheist
4. Václav Havel :  Czech playwright, essayist, politician.
5. Christopher Hitchens : British author, journalist, and atheist
6. Paul Krugman :  American economist, liberal columnist, and author (Nobel)
7. Jürgen Habermas : German philosopher and sociologist
8. Amartya Sen : Indian economist,  Professor (Nobel)
9. Jared Diamond : American scientist , author Atheist
10. Salman Rushdie : British Indian novelist,  Atheist

2008 list

1. Fethullah Gulen : Turkish preacher
2. Muhammad Yunus : Bangladeshi banker and economist
3. Yusuf al-Qaradawi : Egyptian scholar and preacher
4. Orhan Pamuk : Turkish novelist
5. Aitzaz Ahsan : Pakistani Advocate
6. Amr Khaled :  Egyptian activist and preacher
7. Abdolkarim Soroush :  Iranian thinker, philosopher, reformer
8. Tariq Ramadan : Swiss religous academic
9. Mahmood Mamdani : Ugandan Professor Government
10. Shirin Ebadi :  Iranian lawyer, human rights activist

My Daddy Stoongest!!

When was the last time you exclaimed “Oh my god” in public ? and which god was it ? You don’t now ?? well , you better know it. Some one might sit on your neck and prove your exclaim is very offensive to him. Also it would be politically and theologically incorrect and big time violation of his rule he has read.

Here is a guys who went on proving the same stuff all over again. To mention some:

1. God came and told me “I am god. If any other gods come and claim that they are also gods, its wrong. please note down there is no god other than me”. Now there if there are any , that is a violation.

2. God said that he doesn’t have a face , if any other gods claim to have face thats again violation, since my god said so.

so on , you ll find many such logical reasoning in this video.

Mia Adam and Eve Begaum

There are several Jokes on Adam and Eve, the first prophets. This political joke is my favorite among them. I read many versions of it , with Russians , Egyptians and Indians also. Pakistani version is very apt for the context. No offense .. but truth

A German, a Frenchman, an Englishman, and an Pakistani went to an Art museum and were spending some time in front of the painting of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. After observing the painting for a while an intrigued observer asked the four men where they thought Adam and Eve’s origins could be from.

The German said: “Look at the perfection of their bodies. She with her slender and well-formed figure and he with that athletic body and bulging muscles. There is no doubt they must be of German origin.”

Immediately the Frenchman reacts! “C’est Impossible! One can clearly see the eroticism that is exuding from both figures… She so feminine? He so masculine… And both so aware of the impending temptation… They must be French!”

Shaking his head in disagreement, the Englishman comments: “Oh No, Chaps it can’t be! Note the serenity on their faces, their delicate pose, the sobriety in their gestures. They could only be English.”

My S*** is better than your s***

[via ]

Sitayana – Sita’s Epic

The story Ramayana* is his entire life journey starting from his innocent youth, his mastery over skills in winning Sita, his role as dutiful and obedient son to adhere to his father’s words while aware of the flagitious intensions of his step mother. He gives up all the worldly richness and sets away to spend 14 years in jungle. Sita being his wife accompanies him followed by Laxman, Ram’s younger brother.

They spend quite an adventurous and romantic** life in the forest. Sita finds her world in her husband Ram and experiences an unspelled love for him. Everything works fine when one day, Sita gets abducted by Ravana while Ram is away to fulfill one of her impossible wishes. Ram does everything possible to get back his love. He gathers a huge army, builds a bridge across an ocean, does all that he could. Finally, he succeeds to kill Ravana and gets her back. With this they complete 14 years of stay in jungle and they return to their kingdom after which they should have lived happily ever after.

But the story takes turmoil instead, Ram’s story ends here and Sita’s story begins. This happens when a subject of Ram’s kingdom whispers “how could Ram trust Sita, who been with Ravana for so long”. Ram wants a test now, Agni-Pareeksha – A test to check purity of a woman, by entering into fire. Exactly this part of the story becomes hard to digest. This is where so many questions arise and is left unanswered.

• Did it serve right for a person like Ram ‘the so called God’ to come down to such a cruel act?
• Is he setting example for all men or rather his followers to commit such an act?
• Or is he doing right by following well set example from his predecessors?
• Ram must have done justice to his kingdom? But why not to his wife? Had he really loved her he wouldn’t have banished her at such a crucial moment.

God exists!.

I am done; I am not atheist any more. Thanks for all those who continuously tried convince me that “almighty God exists “(like credit card salesmen). Thanks for all those mails and pamphlets. Now that I have opened my mind and accepted God exists, please help me further to understand “which package” of god is suitable for my life style. I heard they come in different features. (Sarcasm is intended in whole paragraph)

And to all those who are still atheists, here is a story if a holy Barber which opened my mind (or closed … or whatever)

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the subject of God,

the barber said: “I don’t believe that God exists.”

” Why do you say that?” asked the customer.

“Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn’t exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can’t imagine loving a God who would allow all of these things.”

.. and ugly.

In one of the last posts, I mentioned illustrations of gods in carvings of beautiful mythological stories. That was about good people like Krishna, durge bad people like mahishasura etc. Now time to write about ugly ones. The gods still living on earth, and making money…

Some thousand years a mythology writer left a space for a sequel. there is going to be tenth avatar of Vishnu. He will come and remove all the evil in Kaliyug and the name’s Bond .. James Bond.

and finally he came … !!kalki bhagvan is an ex-insurance (LIC) agent in Perambur according to Google. Estimations say his assets are Rs400 to Rs600 Cr. He and his enlightened wife went through a morphogenesis field. Read more on kalki bhagvan , and read some warnings and about money lust too.

Take a pick : Zombie or an atheist ?

Alas… !!! Americans are fine with a caveman or a zombie as their president, than having an atheist sitting in whighthouse. Schizophrenics or cannibals are not there in the list, I guess even they get better votes than a non-believer.

via Graceful flavor

Technorati Tags: Atheism, America, president, election,

Nail in my head

These guys have some attitude, kind of attitude only James Hetfield had copyright so far (as I know)

Nail in my head
From my creator
You gave me a life
Now show me how to live

For those who can’t video fast, I am pasting the complete lyrics here. (Also for the reason, youtube’s irritating hobby of removing videos)

Believers and ‘one day vegetarians’

In India believers have some undefined dislike towards animal products into places of worship. They are not allowed into temples and places of worships. I really don’t buy the idea of we all started as vegetarians and animal lovers, but I feel they are introduced into the religion to convince the followers to show god loves animals too.

Major three or four religions in India want its followers to be vegetarians. Most of the followers successfully convince their gods, that they will be vegetarians on specific days of the week (Fridays Lakshmi, Saturdays Vishnu etc).I saw so many of them while ordering in a hotel “two Rotis … and then …hmm… today what ..??Tuesday… alright … Butter chicken!”.

People don’t enter temples if they had taken any non-veg that day, and most of them can’t explain why?

These all confusing rules, people made them and the same people find loopholes not to follow them, Then why to have them at all. Why restrict only to temples.

There are some more of them

• Kerosene are not supposed be used in any of places of worships. They are considered to be animal product, came into form by tones of animals and plants died billions of years ago.
• Sugar is not used in any of the Hindu religious ceremonies. The reason is sugar is prepared from Jaggery, and while doing it they polish jaggery with some animal product (I guess it is leather). So any sweet is cooked is using Jaggery directly.

I have listed certain things which are missing in those rules.

• All gods and goddesses wear silk. All Shwethambaras and Peethambaras presented to gods are silk, which are results of boiling thousands of silkworms. Similarly honey, which is obtained killing or burning thousands of honeybees.