Bill's posts with tag: idiocy
 Sometime back I got one of those self-consciously "funny-but-makes-you-think" e-mail forwards. This one went something like this: "You're a desi (ie Indian) if you...blah blah...save old jars and reuse them...blah blah blah...use old towels as dishcloths...blah blah."
I normally ignore this sort of stuff, but I was stricken by the fact that the reuse of jars and old towels seemed to be something the character who wrote this originally (almost certainly an Indian software engineer domiciled in the US) thought worthy of making fun of. And then I remembered that often - and even more often in recent days - I read in the papers right wing columnists and economists bemoaning the fact that Indians have yet to "develop a disposable culture". You know the reason - those who save old jars and towels don't buy custom-built jars and new dishcloths, etc, so the profits of the bastards are hit. But the way they present it, it's as though it's some kind of national disgrace that we don't follow the lead of the US and generate even higher mountains of garbage than we are generating already.
Incidentally, nowhere among these writings have I read a word against the reuse of medical supplies like syringes - which is something that has to be stamped out. But then bandage manufacturers and syringe suppliers don't advertise in the general press or sell their products in the fancy malls for the credit-card carrying rich, so I guess they don't register on these peoples' radar.
These people are those who say they want India to be more like the US - which is, although it still uses so much in the way of resources that if everyone were to live so wastefully, we would need six more earths to provide the sustenance - at least trying in a fashion to reduce its wastage.
Those among us who laugh at people who re-use ball-point pens instead of throwing them away want to reach a point of convergence, I guess, where the Americans and we are wasting the same amount. Then they might think of reducing wastage.
But if there's money to be made from it, I wouldn't bet on that either.
 I read in one of Carl Sagan's books about a certain episode in 19th Century England. Beekeepers suddenly had a massive drop in their honey collections. So major was this problem that they finally got together and called in a biologist, a man called Charles Darwin (maybe some of you may vaguely recall having heard of him).
This Darwin studied the situation and told the beekeepers that to remedy the situation they must...get more cats.
The 'keepers, fortunately, had the faith in science to accept this bizarre suggestion and acquired cats in greater numbers, after which the honey yield went right back up again.
Here's how it worked. The bees fed primarily on the nectar of clover growing in the fields. A population of field mice also ate the clover. Now the field mice were going through a population explosion and gobbling up all the clover. Result - no nectar left over for the bees.
Now, imagine this happened in India, now, today. Let's see the likely scenario:
1. Honey yields fall drastically.
2. Beekeepers get together and hold a special prayer to the honey gods, and sacrifice a barrel of honey to him/her. TV cameras and the print media are invited to watch.
3. Local politicians claim that this is because of the "stepmotherly attitude" of the Central government towards the beekeepers. They demand adequate compensation.
4. Beekeepers call a strike and attack government offices. A far-right wing organisation adopts the agitation as its own and says that the beekeepers' problems are caused by those speaking other languages or professing other beliefs.
5. A nationally famous Feng Shui expert advises the beekeepers to arrange their beehives in particular patterns and to arrange for flowing water in the east of their apiaries, while any tree that grows in the south-western corner must be removed. An astrologer asks the beekeepers to add extra vowels to their names.
6. The Prime Minister visits the beekeepers and makes a speech about the Unclear Deal and 10% growth rate.
7. India wins a minor cricket match. The media go ape.
8. As a "temporary relief measure," the government decides to purchase honey from abroad at three times the price it is willing to pay local beekeepers. Major economists strongly support this decision.
9. A beekeeper commits suicide. The media shows some mild interest.
10. A major, overhyped Bollywood film is released. The media have nothing else to talk about.
11. The rats outrun their food supply and their population levels fall. As time goes by the honey yield picks up.
12. The astrologer and the Feng Shui expert fall over themselves taking credit, but whine that nobody listens.
 I saw on the news today that the Indian women's beach volleyball team refused to perform in the first world beach volleyball tournament unless allowed to perform in sleeveless T shirt and shorts instead of a "two-piece swimsuit." The latter is - but of course - against Indian culture. Just about everything is against Indian culture, as I have pointed out often enough before, except for rape and sexual discrimination and female foeticide and so on and on and on.
I never thought beach volleyball was about playing, personally speaking, and I don't know anyone who watches the sport for the volleyball. But rules are rules, and once you begin relaxing rules to suit certain tastes there's no telling where it will end. Or is there?
Anyway, so India is allowed to play wearing T shirts and shorts. Fine, or is it? Aren't there people who will then (and this is certain that they will) object to the Ts and the shorts? Then maybe, um, the team should be allowed to play wearing salwar suits. But then the South and East might object that the salwar suit is North Indian. Better have them play wearing saris, which everyone thinks is "Indian" though it came with the Greeks of Alexander. But saris might expose midriffs when they jump around. They might even come off! What to do?
Um...burqas?
So we have them playing wearing burqas, maybe with the face uncovered unless the Muslims object. But, uh, beach volleyball players are barefoot, and someone might not like that. So let's have them wearing sandals. But as Cyn (pissycat) pointed out here some days ago, open toed sandals are all sexually charged for some people. So the Indian team had better put on shoes.
But the shoes would get clogged with sand...
I have it! I have it!
If they can't wear bikinis, let them play in Wellingtons under burqas, then. That should satisfy everyone.
Problem solved!
It's kind of fashionable, these days, in India, to look at the Bush regime with something akin to worship.
No, I'm not kidding. When the rest of the world, including the people of the US itself, have turned against Bush with the ferocity of the disillusioned believer, what passes for public opinion in India - the right wing Hindu-fascist dominated Great Indian Muddle Class - has decided Bush is God come down among us.
Not quite surprising, because, like Bush, the Great Indian Muddle Class hates all Muslims and supports Nazi measures as long as such measures don't impact on it.
So when the Hindu right was in power here in India, not that long ago, it imposed "tough anti-terrorist laws" - called TADA [Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act] and POTA [Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act]. Under these lovely little laws, both since repealed at the national level, an accused is guilty unless he proves himself (yes, the burden of proof is on him) innocent; no warrant is required to arrest anyone; and any confession before a policeman, even if obtained by threat or torture, is evidence. You get the drift?
Naturally, both TADA and POTA were meant to be used exclusively against religious minorities and left wingers, and so they have been used. But even with all the dice loaded against the accused, in truth, hardly one in ten of the accused under these laws has ever even been brought to trial and fewer than one in ten of those have been convicted. That's how effective those "tough" laws are. And if one thinks they were effective in stopping terrorist and "terrorist" attacks, well, just check the recent past of this would-be-fair land...
But since those laws were meant basically as a legal means of locking up Muslims and lefties, a sort of modern-day Nacht und Nebel decree, any Hindu fascist spokesman worth his trident would be bound to shriek from the temple-tops about how they need to be brought back at once if the evil terrorists are to be stopped, and that Bush's Guantanamo is the way to go.
And if one points out the utter uselessness of these laws, the response is always the same, whether from the Hindunazis themselves or their Muddle Class followers: "Well, OK, so the laws don't achieve anything directly, and some innocents do get locked up. But that's precisely the point. It shows that we won't even hesitate to imprison innocents.It sends a strong message, it shows we aren't a soft state!"
OK, so I have a suggestion: since India is now the murder capital of the world, let's send a strong message to would-be murderers: every time there's a murder, let's at once hang everyone at hand from the nearest tree, lamp-post or gallows, even if those persons are obviously innocent passers-by.
No, to ensure that the message is at maximum strength, let's hang everyone at hand, especially if those people are obviously innocent passers-by. Or even more especially if they weren't within a thousand kilometres of the murder.
How d'you like them apples?
 It amuses me sometimes when I hear of how this country or that “saved the world from the Nazis”. At the most they saved their own asses. Not the world. This is because, folks, the Nazis could never have won the war. Even if they’d won every single bloody battle, they’d still have lost in the end, collapsed under their own weight of contradictions. Here’s an illustration of why: If you’ve seen films like Tora! Tora! Tora!, Midway, The Sinking of the Bismarck, or even (gag) Pearl Harbor (sic), you’ll have noticed the aircraft carriers liberally used by the British, Japanese and Americans – but the Germans, despite their large and powerful navy (the Kriegsmarine), never had an aircraft carrier. Well, that’s not quite true. The Germans had an aircraft carrier programme in place as early as 1935, with four carriers planned. The first, called Flugzeugträger A (Aircraft Carrier A) before its launch in 1938 and named KMS Graf Zeppelin afterwards, was scheduled to be ready by 1940 – and yet, it was never, ever completed, even though a few carriers would have given the Germans a terrific advantage at sea. One of the main reasons why the carrier wasn’t completed was the little fact that Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, chief of the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, didn’t want anyone but his own men to operate aeroplanes. So he systematically and successfully sabotaged the plans of the German naval chief, Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, to make the carrier operational. One way of doing this was to offer only obsolete planes, the Messerschmitt Bf109E and Junkers 87 Stuka, for use on the carrier – and those in navalised versions, which, he insisted, would not be ready before the end of 1944, by which time, naturally, they would be even more museum pieces than they already were. Another way was to insist that the pilots of the planes would remain under Luftwaffe command, which means that for every operation launched from the ship, the pilots would have to receive orders from Luftwaffe headquarters in Berlin and not from the naval officers commanding the ship! No wonder Hitler, a man of limited imagination who was never enthusiastic about the sea in general and carriers in particular, gave up on the carrier… So what happened to the Graf Zeppelin? Although about 80% complete, the ship spent its time in harbour being used as a floating depot ship, while its planned sister ship, Flugzeugträger B, was scrapped in 1940 and the C and D were cancelled. In April 1945 its crew sunk it in shallow water to prevent it from being captured by advancing Soviet forces. They, however, raised it easily, towed it back to Russia, and in 1947 sank it as a target ship. The wreckage, seen here: 
was finally found in 2006 by a Polish diving team. Actually, the carrier was poorly designed, and wouldn’t have been much of a match for more sophisticated carrier forces, but that isn’t the point. The point is the fact that the Nazis were so busy in their internecine turf battles (of which I’ve mentioned just one) that they probably would have fallen apart immediately once Hitler left the scene. All of which makes neo-Nazis today even more comical than they would otherwise be… 
 Just saw in the news that some Indian tourist has chosen to write to Gordon Brown and Manmohan "Chairwarmer" Singh complaining about Mohandas "Mahatma" Karamchand Gandhi's waxwork at Madam Tussaud's being "placed near to a dustbin."
Apart from the usual rants - which I shall spare you for once - about busybodies with too much time on their hands, and misplaced priorities and so on, it strikes me that putting Gandhi next to a dustbin is peculiarly symbolic.
We Indians, after all, trashcanned Gandhi long, long ago.
 You've heard of the Roswell Incident, I assume - the alleged crash of a "flying saucer" at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 that was allegedly covered up by the US Air Force.
And a few days ago I read of an incident where Vietnamese observers reported an explosion in the sky over Cambodia and recovered pieces of grey metal, the remains of a possible UFO.
Now, I've seen two UFOs, so they do exist. I mean they are precisely what they contend to be - Unidentified Flying Objects, with the stress on the first word. And, yeah, I've seen two: a bright red tadpole shape and a mysterious soaring yellow-green light...the sad bit is neither remained unidentified for long. The first turned out to be a rather large and unusual red meteor, and the second, a hot air balloon flying at night.
So, I believe in UFOs. I just do not believe that they are anything more than temporarily unidentified objects seen in the sky, certainly not visitors from outer space. Neither do I believe the US or any other government is hiding data of an alien spaceship crash simply in order to glean some kind of military advantage from it.
But!
Just assume an alien spaceship did crash on earth, tomorrow, and its wreckage was recovered. If it crashed far enough from 24 hour media coverage not to be instantly reported, what do you think would happen to it?
Well, the government under whose jurisdiction it crashed, or its overlord ("ally"), would more likely than not, at once - or as soon as practicable - hide away the wreckage, prepare a cover story, and try to glean some kind of military advantage from it.
Exactly what's supposed to have happened at Roxwell.
So, since I'm no militarist and no patriot, next time you see a flying saucer (not the type your wife just flung at your head in the kitchen) crash, call me. I'll make sure the world knows all, and then some.
We have it on reliable authority - on the best authority, in the person of Herr Bush himself, nobly supported by the editorial staff of The Times of India - that the latest spurt in global food and oil prices is fuelled (literally) by increasing demand in China and India.
OK, so I apologise.
I apologise for being part of a nation that has people who need to eat; and who, moreover, are saddled with a government that sold almost its entire stocks of grain to the US for pig food, therefore leaving it without adequate reserves to meet this crisis, therefore being forced to curtail the export of grain. You know how it is.
I apologise for the fact, moreoever, that we aren't a grain importer most of the time; which means we must perforce give the lie to Herr Bush again.
Mea culpa. Mea Maxima Culpa. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Meanwhile, of course, the citizens of the developed world can, you know, discard up to 40% of the food they grow, uneaten; and naturally just 5% of the food Americans throw away each year could feed four million people. That is, you know, quite all right, and I apologise even for bringing up the subject.
I'd also take the opportunity to apologise for the fact that we in India, and throughout what the French called the Third World, mostly don't yet own cars; so the accusation that our demand is driving up fuel costs - and not rampant speculation in oil futures and the Iraq war, for example - is kind of, you know, odd. Sorry again.
And before I forget, I apologise for the fact that we haven't yet learned to eat less enough to compensate for the food material being turned to ethanol in the West. We should be willing to go hungry so Herr Bush's backers can go on driving their SUVs.
 But give our children time enough and I'm sure, if they survive, they can.It's a bit late for us though.
Will you forgive me? Can you?
Will you even try?
 | DC | May 10, '08 11:08 AM
for everyone |
Most Indians know of a man called Khushwant Singh.
An old (he's in his nineties) windbag who was once a (time-serving) journalist, he writes endless self-obsessed columns which I read for their pure entertainment value (not their value as entertainment). For instance, this is the man who once said the argument that the invasion of Iraq was about oil was "balderdash", because, he said, there was "oil enough for everyone". You get the standard of his intellect.
In today's column he surpassed himself.
According to Singh, the current era refers to "BC for the period before Christ while AD refers to the time after his demise." Apparently this man, who boasts endlessly about having lived in London and elsewhere (like it was a gigantic deal) and drops names left, right and centre, has never heard of the term Anno Domini.
In any case, let's grant for the sake of argument that Singh is correct. If BC means Before Christ and AD means After Demise, what is the period of Christ's life (assuming he existed) to be called? During Christ? DC?
Jesus wept.
 What does one do when people whose job – whose entire purpose in life – is to keep track of changing seasons express shock and amazement when spring follows winter? Don’t you think that there is perhaps just a little something a little bit wrong somewhere?
The red flag is all set to flutter above Kathmandu, and the Indian diplomats and media people who were all camped out in Nepal – and whose job includes being able to interpret the writing on the wall – profess to be taken by surprise. They had hoped (and said) the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) would, at best, come in third behind the right-wing Nepali Congress and the ineffectual Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist). I was in Kathmandu for ten days, just before the elections - I left on the day of the election, actually - and it comes as absolutely no surprise to me that the CPN (Maoist) is doing as well as it has. The Maoist leader, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ("Comrade Prachanda") enjoys almost rock-star status in Nepal. Maoist flags flutter from rickshaws and like bunting, from buildings. It's a mystery to me as to why Indian media and diplomats claim to be shocked and/or mystified by the results. It was obvious what was coming. I knew it from Day Two. The people of Nepal are not fools. They know that without the CPN (Maoist) and its long drawn People’s War the corrupt regime of the king, Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, would still be firmly in place and that all talk of egalitarianism would be no more than hot air. That the Maoists knew they would win was evident also in their insistence on a proportionate representation system ballot. In this parties win seats as per the percentage of votes they win, and is a much more accurate indicator of who enjoys how much support than the "first past the post' system followed by India. One would think that this fact would be obvious to everyone. Not to India's media, evidently, nor to our diplomats. I remember one of the worst Indian newspapers (no prizes for guessing which one, it’s notorious and I’ve cited it many times here) claiming hilariously that the Maoists were afraid of losing, that’s why they wanted the proportional representation system! Also it comes as no surprise that certain elements in India, who are always "championing democracy", as well as their political masters in Washington, should be “troubled” by the verdict of this entirely democratic election. For such people, democracy only exists when the right candidate (in more senses than one) wins. So we have some news channel holding a discussion on how the Maoist win in Nepal will adversely affect India – as though it were any of our business, and as though we could do anything about it. I’m tired tonight and about to hit the sack. I shall certainly have more to say on this topic as soon as I accumulate some time and energy. In the meantime, a word of advice to our esteemed America-worshipping “leaders”: have no fear. Nepal won’t be the lapdog it was under the horrible kings, but it won’t be an enemy either – unless you force it to be. And to our reporters and diplomats: grow eyes and ears, if necessary by genetically programmed stem cell injections. The state will pay. Oh how it will pay.
 I read in the papers that Paris Hilton went to Harvard to accept a satirical award as Woman of the Year (that could only be satirical coming to her), and - after keeping people waiting for her for hours, in the rain and cold, proclaimed, in true Paris Hilton fashion, that "Harvard was hot" and "you're all hot".
Even by Pilton standards, that's profound.
All right, I know the Pilton is stupid, but I wonder often if she is just stringing everyone along in this reiteration of her public image as a dumb blonde. I refuse to believe that this one wasn't planned and predetermined; and when you see how consummately she uses the media (most of the time, anyway) it just makes me wonder who's taking whom for a ride.
Of course, I could refuse to look at newspaper pages that print any Pilton news, but that would mean I would have to leave a third of my paper unread on any given day, and that's an understatement.
 As anyone who’s a regular on this blog will agree, I lose my cool over a lot of things.
Recently I heard some moron of a woman claim that those who chose to remain childless were being “selfish”. This same woman said that children were necessary to “take care of one in one’s old age” – and didn’t even seem to notice the contradiction. Now I resolved a long time ago never to have any of my own, and it’s not just because I don’t like children; it’s because bringing a child into an overpopulated world perched on the brink of ecological catastrophe isn’t the smartest thing to do, in my not so humble opinion. But my own feelings or opinions aren’t the point here. I suppose there are many valid reasons why one would want to have children – one might like children, or one might simply be following the biological urge to pass on one’s genes, or one might get pregnant by accident and for religious or personal reasons decide to keep the baby, or other reasons. But making a child because one wants to have social security in one’s old age is not one of them. Nor is the idea that not having children is somehow “selfish”. No one owes society a duty to have and raise kids – maybe in the dim distant past communities needed numbers to survive war and famine, but not now. Let me not even begin on the subject of parents who have children just for the sake of another pair of working hands...
A child doesn’t ask to be born, and any parent who decides to create a baby shouldn’t expect gratitude of that child, either early on or when it grows up. Parents owe children a duty to provide the child with all they can to make that child a decent human being, if only as a compensation for causing it to be born. Certainly parents shouldn’t expect the child to undertake to support them. If it does, all right, but that’s not a duty. So call me selfish. I’d rather be selfish my way.
 So you want to be famous for a while, the easy way?
If you live in India, there's nothing simpler.
For example, take a look at this photo. It shows the Indian tennis player Sania Mirza, and was taken during the Hopman Cup in Perth, Australia, on New Year's Day. It shows Mirza with her bare feet propped up next to an Indian flag.
Some moron of a lawyer or other found this outrageous. He went to court with a petition against Mirza for "insulting the national flag", and the court admitted the petition.
I'm no fan of Sania Mirza; I think she's 10% ability and 90% hype, and I'm more than sick and tired of listening to her talk on TV (in the faux American accent she acquired overnight) on how she is going to be a top ten player in the near future. But this petition against her is worse than ridiculous; it's a travesty of any sort of sense or rationality.
It's not as though the Indian courts are exactly underworked, with a backlog of cases which will take decades, literally, to clear. That they should admit this sort of idiot petition is moronic enough; what's worse is that this is far from an isolated incident. There seems to be a brigade of these people with nothing better to do but sit watching TV and scanning the newspapers to try and find something to launch litigation over. They get their fifteen minutes of fame, and also, most certainly, get some other morons to support them.
Of course the courts will, after months to years of wrangling and appeals and summons, throw out the case. Meanwhile serious legal matters will stay filed away and forgotten.
Mirza says she thought of quitting over this "row". With her own relentless self-promotion, I kind of doubt that; but I have no doubt at all that this sort of thing is a major disincentive for any Indian who wants any sort of public life.
It's just too damned easy in this country to get people to say you've insulted them in some way or other.
 For the second time in ten days, I nearly had a crash - and both times it was for the same reason, a child running out into my path.
The first time was during the day, so visibility was fortunately high; a boy (aged about seven or eight, certainly more than old enough to know better) came racing through traffic, dodging between vehicles, right into my path. I managed to keep control of the bike when I braked suddenly, but nearly got tailgated by the car behind.
This evening, I was coming home when another - female this time, but the same age - came running out from behind a parked car bang in front of me. I had to hit the handbrake so suddenly the bike fishtailed on me and nearly turned turtle. The only way I stopped myself from a bad fall was to take the whole momentum on my left ankle, which is now lacerated and still hasn't stopped hurting.
In neither case did the kids even pause or look back at what they just escaped...
Even dogs and cats in my experience have the sense to wait for vehicles to pass before they try to cross the road. These children certainly should be old enough to know better, if their parents taught them anything at all. If their parents didn't, they shouldn't allow them out of doors without a collar and leash - or else they should understand that they risk them being turned into roadkill.
I don't think anyone can blame me if I am getting phobic about children these days.
 In one of the newspapers I read, I came today across an article on the "urgent need" to defeat the "worst threat" to the country - the Maoist insurgency in the forest areas of several states.
Since the conventional attempts by the state have failed and are failing, the "correspondent" writes, the government - its counter-Maoist forces outnumbered and outgunned - will have to defeat the Maoists using the techniques General Thapar (then, I must point out, the figurehead chief of the Indian Army; the real power was in the hands of his whilom deputy, the vainglorious and incompetent Lt General Brij Mohan Kaul) used against the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1962. Phew.
While I am, and have always been, pro-Maoist, and my sympathies are entirely with those who seek to save their lands and forests from rapacious government-backed corporations and feudal landlords, let me just step back a little and look at that statement dispassionately.
In 1962, the Chinese had whipped India's ass so thoroughly that even Indian history books don't pretend it was not a defeat. Trust me, that's a real whipping. And this guy suggests the government use the same tactics against the Maoist insurgency...
If they do, I suggest they simply surrender to the Maoists right away and spare us a messy civil war.
Is this then the fate of all those who choose to believe in the artificial religion invented by a mediocre science fiction writer on a bet that he couldn't invent one and make money from it?
I never had a high opinion of Tom Cruise, but looks like he'd really lost the plot this time.
Or maybe Xenu the deposed alien galactic ruler will destroy us before we destroy the earth. In which case welcome, aliens.
Several years ago I was watching a Christian fringe sect prayer meeting in action. One of the speakers was a young man in an impeccable grey suit, white shirt and red tie who was holding forth at the top of his voice: “How can we be descended from monkeys? I don’t believe this. It’s not possible!” Yesterday, while researching chain mail armour for a piece of fiction I’m writing, I came across a web page that argued that Neanderthals were modern humans who lived within the last five hundred years (“since the flood” was also written along with the last five hundred years, implying that the Biblical flood is just a few centuries old, something the Bible never claimed). This was a creationist site, of course, and the authors also accused “evolutionists” of racism and wilful ignoring of evidence. They (the authors) themselves seem never to have heard of radiocarbon dating or DNA analysis. So much for their arguments. However, the two episodes I mentioned seem to me to encompass within themselves the essential mindset of the creationist fringe. I call it a fringe because, obviously, it is not necessary to be a creationist to be religious. The Catholic Church for instance now accepts evolution as a reality and has dismissed creationism. However, it’s a powerful fringe, mainly because it wields power out of all proportion to its size in the US, and the US wields power out of all proportion to its size in the world at present. Creationism is a very real danger for a simple reason. Creationists – theists in general, true, but creationists in particular – must by the very nature of their belief put a hypothetical supreme being over everything. Since this supreme being created all of us and everything around us, it stands to reason that It will step in and rescue us from whatever fuck-up we create. Or else if we destroy something utterly and totally, it stands to reason that the supreme being allowed it to be destroyed because such was Its will. Either way, we don’t have to take responsibility for our actions. You see where that will lead us? War, genocide, environmental destruction. It is, therefore, important to try and understand the creationist mindset. It’s not my purpose in this blog post to argue creationism versus science. So, I’m not going to spend time shooting down creationist arguments, which in any case is akin to potting sitting ducks. The point I’m trying to make is that the average creationist argument is so primitive, so all-round dumb, that one wonders why they would try and put up such stupid reasoning anyway. Is it because they are stupid? The rank and file, like the moron at the prayer meeting, undoubtedly are. But they aren’t significant. They will think what they are told to think. It’s the other lot, the sort of person who wrote the web articles, who are the interesting ones. And they are not stupid. It may be true that they are mercenary predators on the gullibility of common people, and of course no religion can survive without the constant inflow of massive amounts of money. But this alone can’t explain it. If money were all that was necessary, then we might have expected at least a more organised and less paltry line of thinking and reasoning, one that wouldn’t blow away like smoke in the light of day. What I think exemplifies the creationist mindset is preconception. Unlike science, which takes nothing for granted unless it’s been experimentally verified, creationists come in with an utterly shuttered world view. Everything – everything – must be made to concur with that world view. If someone begins with the idea that things fall not because of gravity but because invisible demons are dragging them down, he, I submit, will explain everything – planetary motions, black holes, everything that has anything to do with gravity – in terms of demons. Or if he can’t do that, he will ignore the existence of such facts. He literally won’t see them. It’s like being selectively blind. And this is why creationism has to be fought right at the primary school level. As I said a couple of posts earlier, theism already targets children for brainwashing. A child who’s brainwashed to believe in creationism as well is an automaton forever and ever, amen. Of course there are the semi-creationists as well. There is my ex-classmate Simon, who proudly declared that “as a scientist he believes in evolution, but as a Christian he believes in Genesis.” And he didn’t even see the contradiction.
I can say something for sure - we don't have enough problems.
Just now, for instance, our dear government has had to go to the Supreme Court to say that there is no evidence that Ram ever existed.
Who is Ram, and how is he significant? He's the mythological hero of the Hindu epic the Ramayana, and he's significant because he's become the poster boy of the Hindu lunatic fringe - the Horst Wessel of the Hindu Nazi.
According to the Ramayana, one of the most disgustingly racist and antifeminist texts it's been my misfortune to read, Ram led an army of "monkeys" to South India and thence invaded Sri Lanka after building a bridge of earth and rocks.
There is actually a stretch of coral shoals and islets, known as "Adam's Bridge" (see the photo above), linking the southern tip of India and the northern tip of Sri Lanka. It's left over from the time, about 6000 years ago, when there was a ridge connecting the two and one could cross back and forth. The Hindutwits call that stretch the bridge that Ram built.
Now, this stretch effectively blocks the sea passage between India's east and west coasts to ships. Ships have to go round the entire island of Sri Lanka to make the journey, adding to expenses and to danger (the storms round the southern tip of the island are something fierce). So, the government had this idea of dredging a passage right through the Adam's Bridge, called the Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project. Logical, wouldn't you say?
Well, not quite. As environmentalists have screamed themselves hoarse pointing out, the dredging and ship movement will ruin the local ecology; the corals will die from the the mud being stirred up, the patterns of currents will change, things will go haywire. As fishermen have pointed out, their catches will bottom out because the ship movement will cause local sea life to leave as fast as it can - if it can. And of course really large ships won't be able to use the dredged channel anyway, and they will have to keep going round Sri Lanka.
All of this got not the slightest bit of sympathy from the government - until the Hiundutwits weighed in. Their precious Ram's bridge is under threat...and they will not allow this canal project to go ahead.
So there is rioting in North Indian cities and the Supreme Court has imposed a stay order and the government is busy denying Ram's existence. Which is something it could have done years ago and spared the country some of the worst religious violence this nation has ever seen.
But, as I've heard said - no matter what side you are on in a debate, you'll have people on your side whom you'll wish like hell were on the other.
I'm no fan of this Ship Canal project. I'll be glad if the thing doesn't go ahead, because I don't want the corals to die and the fish to migrate. But I'm damned if I want it to be stopped because some moron who still lives in the third century thinks a mythical warrior king will be offended if the canal is made.
Frankly, I'm disturbed by the repeated proof of something I've known for a while. If you want something in this country, asking for it doesn't get you anywhere - not any more. You have to get violent over it, and you have to make your pitch on the basis of religion or ethnic identity. That's the only way to get what you want.
As I said, we don't have enough problems, so they're happy to create a few more.
Didn't know all this, I promise you... I am stressed out to the extent that there is no one in the world more stressed out than me. I am sexually relatively happy and in terms of fitness gone to the dogs. I am this; I am that. And I am all this because I’m an Indian. OK, relax. This is not Bill that I’m going on about. Headlines Today finally changed its bottom strip after a week or so, and therefore one doesn’t have to read about Halle Berry’s pregnancy any more, or that Roger Federer won the US Open. What have they put in their place? Some kind of survey by Men’s Health apparently says that Indian men score sixth out of 20 nations in sexual satisfaction, 18th out of 20 in fitness levels (no, I do not wish to know who was worse – the Dutch are the best, and hear that, Danny?) and are the most stressed out of the lot. That last I can believe. OK, now who seriously takes surveys seriously? I’ve never ever come across a single person who as come across a single person who’s been approached by surveyors (I don’t mean market research for toothpastes or soap). And all the surveys and opinion polls I’ve heard of, just about, fell flat on their faces when put to the truth test (election results, for instance). I guess they approached a few upper middle class men from their friends and relations, and extrapolated from there. And while I’m on the topic – in a country with thousands of ethnic groups and hundreds of different environments like India, how can you generalise anyway? How can you compare the fitness of an Arunachali mountain dweller with that of a pen-pusher in Mumbai? Does this make sense? I think they mean, by Indian man, the average middle class urban Indian from the “heartland”. Emphatically not I, thank dog. Now, look at this. Out of 20 nations? Aren’t there more in the world? Then how can they say people are the “fittest” or “most stressed” in the world? And as for the rest, anyone with eyes can say that Indian men aren’t 18th out of 20; you’d have to invent a new subspecies of human to find someone more unfit than the average Indian man, whose classic shape is of a tomato on two matchsticks. As for sexual satisfaction, Indian men don’t even have any concept of foreplay or even admit that women can get satisfaction out of sex; they may be 6th out of 20, but only in their own imaginations. A reading of the Indian sexologist Dr Prakash Kothari will tell you what Indian men are like in bed. And as for stress, well, that I can believe. But don’t tell me Indian men are more stressed out than the average Iraqi or Afghan. And I wonder how much this survey cost…and just whom it’s supposed to benefit.
 There’s a lot of guff in the Indian papers these days. Much of it is about the “growing closeness” of India to the United States. That’s what they call it, “growing closeness”, whatever that means. Meanwhile the so-called Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, calls George Bush his close friend while his ambassador in Washington calls Bush the best friend India has ever had. Which is a position strongly supported by the likes of the ultra-right wing columnist, Swaminathan G Anklesariya Aiyar, a man who is still trying to cover up his initial enthusiastic support for the Iraq invasion. Nowadays he calls Iraq a “mistake” but says it shouldn’t poison our relationship with the US. All right, so what is so wrong here? Shouldn’t we be happy to make friends with the US? The answer, of course, is that isn’t friendship with the US that is what we’re making. It’s a relationship with the US government and the military-industrial complex. If you want to talk about friendship with the people of a country, everyone is nowadays everyone’s friend. Half the people on my contacts list here, for instance, are Americans. None of them seems to be offended enough by my anti-neocon diatribes to quit. People never really have a problem relating to other people. Besides everyone knows all about American “soft power.” Hollywood may make a horrible amount of trash, but it still rules the world’s imagination – and rewrites history while it’s about it. Personally, I prefer French, Russian, and British films, in that order, but I do admit Hollywood’s power. But that isn’t a problem. I’m not asking for American movies to be banned or something. The problem, of course, with the whole concept of this alleged “growing closeness” is that it has nothing to do with all that soft power and people to people contact. It has everything to do with the current position of the US in the world as the leading threat to peaceful co-existence. See, if you have a bully in the neighbourhood who enjoys beating up people at random just to show who’s boss (the Ledeen Doctrine) – you can either knuckle under to him, you can try and resist him in any way you can, or you can leave the neighbourhood. Since a country can’t leave a neighbourhood, one can either resist current US policy or else join in it. Joining in it means, as the Pakistanis are discovering these days, total submission, so that one can’t even get rid of a hated dictator if his continual in office is convenient for the US. It also means joining in the US’ foreign policy misadventures, even when such joining is harmful and counterproductive, as with Britain in Iraq. This brings its own problems in its wake, like the increased likelihood of retaliatory “terrorist” attacks. Also, no power lasts forever. America’s power is already in decline, and it has lost the constituency that belonged to it – the respect of the rank and file of the world’s people. Even the Roman Empire collapsed in the end – of its own weight. There is absolutely no reason to think that the US Empire won’t do the same. And then, my friends, other nations have long memories. Just see what happened to the nations on the losing side of the First World War if you wish to know what settling scores is all about. As for the common dream of the middle class to aspire to American standards of living and an American lifestyle – that isn’t on either, because (except for a tiny uber-rich minority, and that too living on borrowed time) even the Americans can’t aspire any longer to the American Dream lifestyle, which probably peaked somewhere in the late fifties. If we all wanted to live like Americans, we’d need the resources of six more earths for that. Is this something that is possible? I’m surprised hardly anyone in the media has the integrity to point these simple, well known facts out. On second thoughts, though, I’m not surprised at all.
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