In case they had forgotten why they were there, a large sign on the wall reminded them. ‘GOLD’ it said simply

 - read more (and for complete album) on dailymail

I have seen it too, Guardian is annoyingly pro-Pakiland and anti-Indian.

There are already some Taliban style Fatwa’s on him, but we all know nothing much gonna happen anyway.

There is nothing much to worry about him though, he will not be the next Malik Kafur! I know this kind, I have seen many, he’s going to spend rest of his life writing heart_and_arrow signs on public toilet doors and may be some sex toons too.

But I am worried about Sanal, he represents free speech and scientific temper in India, and I am guessing blasphemy case on him will stay for next couple of decades!

Let me know your thoughts anyway.

Although Hindu honor killing is a gruesome and sordid affair, it differs in many important respects from honor killing in neighboring Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Indian Hindus murder men for honor more often than do Pakistani Muslims, and they murder for reasons mainly related to concerns about caste purity.

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of Hindu honor killings is the fact that Indians abandon the horrific practice when they migrate to the West whereas many Pakistani Muslims carry it with them. Part of the explanation may lie in their different patterns of acculturation upon immigrating to the West. Young Hindus in the West are no less prone to violate traditional social codes than young Muslims, and their parents may be no less furious when they do, but Hindu families in the West do not feel the same degree of public humiliation and shame as they might experience back in India. They are eager to preserve their cultural identity but not at the expense of alienating their adoptive communities. The absence of dreaded khap panchayats no doubt mitigates the consequences of dishonor.

read more on  Middle east forum by Phyllis Chesler and Nathan Bloom

One reason there’s a lot of confusion about rights from both liberals and conservatives is that there are different sorts of rights. Besides the distinction between legal and moral rights, we also need to distinguish the different sorts of claims the assertion of a right makes. Philosophers generally use the expressions negative rights and positive rights to express these distinctions. Now there’s nothing evaluative about these terms. It’s not negative in a bad way. These are precise terms that philosophers use to make an important distinction. So let’s see if we can explore it.

Consider this claim: I have the right to go to the store and get a lottery ticket. Let’s begin with what this doesn’t mean. First of all, it doesn’t mean that I have an obligation to buy a lottery ticket. It’s up to me. No one should be forcing me to buy one, but also no one should be forcing me not to buy one. Second of all it doesn’t mean that the store clerk has any obligation to give me one. I’ll have to pay for it, which is shorthand for making a trade.

This works whether we’re talking about lottery tickets, milk, potato chips, coffee, beef. My right to get these things is not an obligation to get them, and neither is it a warrant to be given them. My right to get these things means that no one ought to stop me from making trades through which I can acquire them. That’s a little different from, say, when you get arrested and are informed that you have the right to an attorney. You know how they say it from TV. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. The store is under no obligation to provide me with a steak if I can’t afford one, but the folks who arrested me are obliged to provide me with an attorney if I cannot afford one. So these are different kinds of rights.

One way to get clear on this distinction is to think about the relationship between rights and duties. If Smith has a right then Jones has a duty. Understanding what different kinds of duties Jones might have is one way to understand what kinds of rights Smith might have. We’ll call negative rights the kind of rights which impose on others a negative duty, a duty not to do anything, a duty of noninterference. If I have a right of this sort all you have to do to respect that right is refrain from blocking me. Negative rights are sometimes called liberties.

Now we’ll call positive rights the kind of rights which impose on others a positive duty, a duty to provide or act in a certain way. If I have a right of this sort, you respect it by complying. Positive rights are also sometimes called entitlements. So my right to a lottery ticket or a steak is a negative right. No one can properly interfere with my efforts to acquire these through trade. Freedom of speech is another example of a negative right. I cannot be arrested for speaking out. The right of criminal suspects to an attorney is a positive right. One will be provided. One interesting feature of negative rights is that they don’t conflict and we can all respect everyone else’s liberties all the time. We simply have to refrain from using force to make people do our bidding.

Positive rights can conflict and in a couple of ways. One way they can conflict is scarcity. If there are 10 public defenders and 100 people get arrested, they can’t all have their right to an attorney satisfied equally. This sort of conflict can sometimes help us understand which claims are legitimate. Your property rights give you exclusive use of a resource so others can’t claim a right to vacation in your yard, at least not without your permission.

The other source of conflict raises a more troubling issue. Since positive rights create duties on others to act or provide, doesn’t that represent a violation of their negative rights, their liberty? It depends. Some positive rights are created by a contractual relationship. Since I’m a member of AAA, I have a positive right to towing services if my car breaks down. Nonmembers have a negative right to seek towing services, but I am actually entitled to receive them. That doesn’t violate anyone’s negative rights, though, because the relationship is entirely consensual and defined by a contract. If I claimed I had a positive right to a steak, someone would have an obligation to give me one, not as a trade but as a nonconsensual service. That would violate their liberty, making them involuntarily subservient to me. This suggests that if we’re free and equal by nature, any positive rights would have to be grounded in consensual arrangements.

Unfortunately, for a lot of so called positive rights this just isn’t the case.

Video and transcripts from learn liberty via Atanu Dey on India’s Development

Apenotmonkey.com

Back to molesters, they have really changed these days! They feel no shame facing camera during the act, in-fact they were acting like she was a trophy! One of them is “bond” in Facebook (make him famous):

Share it if you wish to. Read the comments if you have time, you can see shocking trend! Facebook users have written verdict “hang him!” , “castrate him!” etc etc. Most uncivilised among them was “do the same to his loved ones!”. Can you believe it ! There are actually people suggesting to molest loved ones of a person accused of molesting! Probably these are the guys who wanted to molest that night, but couldn’t, since there weren’t in right spot! Now that they missed chance, they want to start a pyramid structured molestation camp!

Breaking India: Western Interventions In Dravidian And Dalit Faultlines by Rajiv Malhotra, Arvindan Neelakandan

Almost finished

A SECULAR AGENDA:For Stregthening our country, For Welding IT – Arun Shourie

Just picked up

Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan – MJ Akbar

Next in queue

ಕವಲು – ಎಸ್ ಎಲ್ ಭೈರಪ್ಪ.

from ninapaley.com

The first thing that strikes you about India is how dirty it is. In a word, the place is disgusting. All of it. The entire country. Never before have I seen mountains of garbage the size of a small house stacked on the side of a road, in broad daylight, in the middle of a city, repeatedly. Dumpsters tipped over and overflowing. Mounds of trash — wrappers, cups, papers, napkins, strewn all about, mixed with sludge from the soda and urine and spit coagulated from thousands of daily passersby.

There’s no single sentence for India. The place is a fucking mess. And it’s the only country that I’ve ever been to where I left more confused than when I arrived. My search for meaning came up empty time and time again

read further a dust over India

Don’t miss comments section.

thanks to phdcomics

Indeed, very impressive. But do you know a what is more impressive ? One which involved us – Battle of Longewala ! (Can it be called “last stand”? ’cause we won!).

Too bad it is not in top 10. Anyway, Be afraid, Be very afraid!

Tank tracks at Longewala. Photographic reconnaissance image taken at the time showing the desperate last minute manoeuvres by Pakistani tanks in the Longewala sector. Circles show destroyed Pakistani tanks.

via

Vishnuvardhan was a good personality. A living example to this is Vardaraja Pai and the Yajaamana Uppinakayi. Vardaraja Pai is Mangalore based businessman and he is an ardent Vishnuvardhan fan. His father Raghunath Pai was an Badami Vendor. He had joined his father in his business and also he was waiting for an opppurtunity to meet Vishnu. One day he met Vishnu in Kukke Subramanya and got his visiting card. He used to send Badami powder and the Pickle(Uppinakayi) to Vishnu. Together they established a very good relationship. In the year 2000 AD Vishnuvardhan’s starrer Yajamanna was released. It was super duper hit and ran for more than a year. In one of the scene’s of movie, Vishnu plays a role of Pickle vendor. In the movie the name of the pickle is Roja Uppinakayi and he becomes a successful businessman in the movie. Vardaraja Pai had ambitions to achieve something great in the life. Upon seeing the movie he decided to do Pickle business, he kept the name of the pickle as Yajaamana Uppinakayi and put the photo of Vishnuvardhan on the pickle bottle. He sought blessings of the icon and his permission to sell the product with the name of the movie. Vishnu agreed and sent him a permission letter. Now Vardaraja Pai is a successful businessman and has now become an inspiration to others - Wikipedia 

Now, if you have a story like-  ”why you don’t like brinjal” or “why did you stopped picking your nose!” or any other silly question like this has an answer “because it reminds me of Shah Rukh Khan” , publish it in Wikipedia ! It will find its way in Icon section of SRK – unedited, uncredited and without references.

And ha.. don’t forget to mention who are your father/grandfathers, and what they used to do! Its so relevant.

Anyhoo, this is the rationale behind naming it The God Particle:

……The Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman coined the phrase “The God Particle” as the title of his otherwise excellent book as a way of underscoring how essential the Higgs is in our Standard Model of Physics. You can get away with that sort of hype when you’re a Nobel prize winner. It also sold roughly 10 gajillion copies. He also got cutesy afterwards, and used to semi-seriously defend the name by saying that the publisher wouldn’t let him call it the goddamn particle….

Dr. Dave Goldberg on i09

One of topics book covered was Lemuria aka Kumari Kandam ! I swear on FlyingSpaghettiMonster, I never heard such thing before.!

Here, straight from Wikipedia entry :

Kumari Kandam (Kumarikkaṇṭam) is the name of a supposed sunken landmass …

50,000 BC: Kumari Kandam civilisation
20,000 BC: A lost Tamil culture of the Easter Island which had an advanced civilisation
16,000 BC: Lemuria submerged…

- Kumarikandam

Indian version of Middle earth ..eh ?

Deja- vu s right ? … and yet we complain about Indian TV shows that they all are similar, and need to catch up !

BTW we have one show from India joins the aboe club:

CID : A “mentally special” ACP which short term memory loss helps CID to resolve crime.

thanks xkcd

If you agree with it, stand up for this!

Now, the context

In March 2012, Sanal pointed out that the “blood” oozing from a statue of Christ at the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Velan Kanni in Vile Parle, Mumbai was in fact water from a leaky pipe. Following his exposure of this “miracle”, a complaint was lodged against Sanal by the local Catholic Archdiocese with the Mumbai police, who are now able to arrest him. He has been denied ‘anticipatory’ bail which means if arrested he faces a long term in prison merely for explaining the science behind an apparent mystery.

Again, if you disagree with this blasphemy case, sign a petition here, we will try to work out a way.