In remembrance of Manju Nathan

I think educated Indians need to know about this. I shall write more about this later. For now, I stand in respect for a someone who apparently died for his ideals.

Gaurav's post on Manju.

The Indian Express report

Law unto the land?

Fine, you elect a guy. He seems to be a decent, intelligent hardworking guy who has the best interests of the people at hand. His very integrity seems a nice bargain for all the crazy ideas.

But what if he pushes on to make a law which to all intelligent standards sounds so absolutely dumb that no-one dares to oppose it?

I wrote this way back in June, after reading this in the newspaper did in my morning absolution, despite my not smoking, and not having a spot of film ever.

from ONE MAN

Somehow the power of a single man dawns on me not after I see exemplary achievements by strong willed individuals who change the world, but when I see complete buffoonery of one man's dumb mind changing everything sane about the world. And the rest of the world made to suffer through it.

"Smoking scenes will be banned in films and television serials to be shown from Oct 2, the government said on Wednesday. An understanding to this effect was reached after a hour and a half meeting between information and broadcasting minister S. Jaipal Reddy and health minister A. Ramadoss."

So now in the special cases it is allowed, theatre owners shall be obligated(with the threat of a 2 year imprisonment) to show warning slides when such scenes are being shown. In case of old TV serials, broadcasters will be required to put out scrolls(during the objectionable scenes) to warn of consequences of smoking.

Like the dumb fucker who decided that playing the national anthem in theatres would fuel patriotism. Why don't people screw their asses? Is it only me who feels that attacks upon one's aesthete(sensibilities) is much more than attacks on material ones?

On a different though related thought, I am rather fond of a fictious anecdote between God and a person who was very perturbed with the state of the world. The person was questioning. He says, "Lord you are all powerful. You MADE all this. You KNOW how this is all wrong. Why don't you do anything about it? Don't you see people suffering? Why don't you do something?"

The Lord answered, "I did do something! I sent you"

Arghh, can't believe i actually wrote that!

Now, i hear(read?) in yesterday's newspaper of a proposal to fix up minority reservations in IITs and IIMs. Nehru would be turning in his grave. In his adjoining speech to the parliament with the first reservation bill, Nehru mentioned that the coming generations of all classes who have been provided reservation quotas shall feel their pride crumpling and hence shall get off all shackles of reservation themselves. Within 50 years, india shall be a equal state in all aspects.

I shall not waste my time in deliberating on the virtues and sins of so and so. Yesterday's editorial in The Economic Times did an excellent bit about talking that reservations were meant to benefit the generation next, and all this would enable doing is to favor the current minority elite, while poor muslim kids still attend grossly inefficient madarssas. Putting reservations for the elite in merit based institutions, while the poor still do not get any benefit is unfair(he used a more effective word) politics. I just wanted to cuss it out.

Just what does one do when he disagrees with a politician? My school civics teacher used to say, "Wait for the next election". Presuming that one gets the government out of the way in the next election. So what? Laws, once made have a way of sticking on. It is many many many many times more difficult to repeal or abolish a law than make it.

All ye virgins, make merry NOW. They are going to make a law to abolish premarital sex soon.

Naxalwatch Blog

While searching technorati for news about naxalites, came across this blog naxalwatch.blogspot.com. Seems pretty comprehensive.

TV Talk

So I've become very good at plugging my channel, which has been in the "launching in a few weeks" stage for the last seven months. So I've become really great at PR these days. A question I face the most, second only to "When the F are ya guys launching?", is "How effing different can ya guys be?"And that's when my true brilliance shines forth.

That's when I talk about C*** and their intra-day stock market movement based content.

That's when I talk about N*** and their eminence in the general news space because they were the first to get sexy graphics and a sexy anchor. (Another matter altogether, that the sexy anchor now needs a face lift desperately.)

That's when I snigger about HT's superb look and their superb looking anchors currently. And drool about them. But laugh at them, otherwise.

That's when I wonder why SS hasn't gone off the air as yet.

Ok, so a large part of the PR speech is about being bitchy. But, like a blogger friend pointed out, that's life in the media bizz world.

So what's the plug for my channel-in-the-ever-launching-stage? That it's a cross between C***, with its boring stock discussions, and N***, with its old-sexy-anchors-who-need-a-face-lift.

Now who can resist that combination, eh?

;-)

... appeared first in Timecode

TOI's "Sting Operation" on the Delhi Bloggers' Meet

A TOI journalist goes undercover to the Delhi Bloggers' Meet and blows the whistle on the smallness and ineffectualness of the Desi Blogosphere.

Unfortunately, looks like he is going to end up with some egg on his face.

CSF's blog feed mobilized

Now that we have CSF (II) back online again, I've gone ahead and converted the atom blog feed into a readable format that can be accessed by cell phones and other mobile devices (thanks to PhoneFeeds). This way, those who either super busy and get no time to site in front of a computer or are mostly on the go can always read the latest blog feeds at CSF by keying in the following url into your cell phone or mobile device and start browsing through all the recent blog postings: http://pfeeds.com/a96

Something that blog administrators of aggregator services might want to do is, mobilize or phonelize their rss/atom blog feeds, whereby, one could stay up to date on the latest in blogosphere via their cell phone or mobile device through just one mobile rss/atom feed that already would be aggregating many blogs (according to location/taste). I've done this already for BahrainBlogs (Blogs from/about Bahrain) & Kottu (Blogs from/about Sri Lanka).

Some techical notes: the above mobile feed for CSF currently supports the following:
- WML
- HDML
- i-mode
- MML
- Wap 2.0
- AvantGo, PalmOS
- Pendragon, Windows CE
- ReqWireless, Windows CE

Keep it Blogged!

Let's CUT the Faff, did I hear you say?

Let's talk about the games mediapeopl e play. With each other, no less. We share a love-hate relationship with each other. when it's time for a drink, there's no better place than the Press Club and its discounted liquor, and when it's time for a screw, it's a no-holds barred contest.

The funny thing is, it's so no-holds barred, you feel like laughing.

Cut to Scene One: Busy press conference, where Mr BigWig is hurrying away, followed by a swarm of cameras and reporters. It is an unwritten rule among TV journalists that in such circumstances, when the BigWig is giving bytes, all the cameras will face him from the front, and the person asking the question will also be there - in front. That's when Mr Extraordinaire from N*** comes from the left and asks his dumb question, and BigWig turns thereon! Everyone else curses and mutters, because then they realise that the N*** cameraperson had slunk away to the left earlier, in a preplanned move, and is the only one getting frontal pictures of BigWig yapping, while the rest have a shitty profile.

Cut to Scene Two: A big cement company has just declared its results in a fancy press-con, and bytes are being taken all around. Finally, it is our turn. Now, I'm not really in this beat, but since I was in the neighbourhood, decided to tag along. My colleauge sits with Porky Lech, the MD of the company, who never takes his eyes off her boobs while answering her questions about operating profit margins. After he goes, she gets Beanstalk, the CFO of the company, to talk to her. Meanwhile, high-flying Diva Bitch from C*** walks over to Porky Lech, takes his hands in hers, clasps them tight, presses them against her heaving bosom, and says raucously that C*** and Big Cement Company share such excellent ties, that next quarter they must get exclusive info prior to the normal media release. As if this weren't bad enough, Diva Bitch's l'amour provokes Porky Lech into raucous laughter of his own, whereupon he starts guffawing like a pig in a barn full of fodder - HAWHAWHAW! You can imagine what happened to the soundbyte my colleague was taking.

I swear: I saw that damn sly vixen Diva Bitch actually steal a smirk in our direction.

Copycat

First came to know of this here.

Indiatimes reporter copies, verbatim, a paragraph from a blogger without giving any credit.

Now it can be argued that the blogger copied from Indiatimes. However, the article in Indiatimes appeared after the day the blog was posted. So unless both of them copied from a common source (and we have no reason to think that)..........QED.

The "noise" that is the blogosphere [ according to Sucheta Dalal ] is proving to be of some use to the MSM after all.

They are back, snarling..
Mutts and musts.
Hope it hurts like it did,
when they howled, the last time
here is to you bitches
grrrrrrrrr...welcome back.

Long live the king

While it is about first posts and starting anew, let me start with personal introductions. When I climbed onto the bandwagon at Desi Media Bitch, it was just starting up, and i had some vociferous comments to make about the generalities of certain articles. I was really really pleased with just how sportingly they were abused and fought for. I was a B school student, and already quite getting disillusioned with the blog space. Most public blogging spaces had the 'I suck yours-you suck mine' air about them. I was grumbling all over about those "tea-party" spaces, as most of the active bloggers know everyone around, and the air of geniality.
DesiMediaBitch was not that. I loved it for the debates it generated, the savage fights, of how every time I would discuss it outside, in the offline world, there were opinions every time.

Someone who then didn't even read the newspaper(no time), and had no experience or leanings into the main stream media, and yet had opinions, and loved looking at perspectives. DesiMediaBitch gave me all this and more. If I should say, it had the air of the Bombay slums, with the camaraderie fought for, and respected.(This last perspective picked up from "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts).

I am working in Sales now. A back breaking job with rarely much time to assemble and connect points in your head. And then comment in my blog. You do not realize the importance of easy internet access until you are denied that. I still can only provide perspectives from the other side. But I am glad to be here.

We might not change the world, but at least we want to. And desperately at that.


The king is dead. Long live the king.

To the left, to the right, MSM's alight!

Hi everyone!


Funny how CSF went off the blogosphere for some time.. and then what d'ya know i get a blogger invite today! :D Sweet! Anyways, I'm currently covering the disaster relief efforts of the Pakistan/India earthquake at QuakeHelp blog, involved with the live yet remote blogging of the ongoing Chineese Blogger Conference 2005 in Shanghai (we got done with Day 1, tomorrow's day 2 see the blog for more info) via the CBC2005-Live blog and to top it all am still having a hearty laugh over the whole IIPM fiasco!


Aurevoir Mes Amis!

woof

The bitch is back.