The new crusade of moral brigade is to bring back 'Christ' back to Christmas. Newyork Times has a good writeup on this topic.
The New York Times > Week in Review > Holiday Wars: Does Christmas Need to Be Saved?
The moral people emboldened by the recent victory in recent US presidential elections, want now to make it "Merry Christmas" not "Happy Holidays". Myseld being not very religious doesn't really mind if anyone wishes me Happy holidays. What upsets me if my tax dollars are used to celebrate any religious holiday. Its ok to celebrate christamas in schools. It should be also ok to celebrate other festivals of there religions too. I for one would welcome this change.
The trend seems to be to bring back the religion into daily life. Thats a slippery slope my friend. Thats what Taliban did, that's what Iran's mullah did, Thats what is happening in Pakistan.
Then teaching evolution would be 'amoral' and the sex education would be a bad thing. Where would the ball stop rolling? Then 'Ten Commandments' would be becopme absolute law. May be I am being paranoid, but if the goal of this brigade is to bring religion back then is there any stoping them?
These people use religion and morality interchangeably, which is my major gripe.
I Guess they would never understnd that morality is not absolute and every culture their own set of moral standards. I guess we have an another dark age looming at us, I dont see much hope....
As Marx said religion is the opium of masses and these days we have this opium in abundance and consumption has increased many times. I just want to be spared of this intoxication. Scary reality is my cup of tea.

Just a rant
Have you ever have feeling of numbness? Just give up this struggle of what we call life and go somewhere where there is no life at all? No expectations at all? No rules to live by? I don’t know what I am going through, but this slough of feelings is overwhelming. No, this is not the defeatist in me talking, I consider myself to be one of the surviours. I have withered many a storm, weather beaten, I guess but not really adept at surviving these storms.
Smart people before have been running away from the world I just described to establish their own sense of rule free expectation free world of their own, without much success. I have seen a good movie called ‘Ghar’. Farooq Sheik and Shabana Azmi acted in this movie. The protagonist is a rebel in college; he rebels against everything, which has been established. Shabana fells in love with this rebel and they get married. They have a son together and the Hero slowly starts conforming. He works for a book publisher who publishes sleazy books for profit. All for the sake of society, he has to buy a house and rise a kid! What an irony!
I have lost all hopes of running away and establishing my own world. Liberia, a West African nation was established by the former slaves of USA to be the country of the free. Now they have dictator. Fate has a very weird sense of humor, or if there is a God out there he must be very twisted.
What I am running from? Responsibilities? No. Expectations? Yes. I just want to do what I want to do, not what someone wants me to do. Being born into an orthodox family doesn’t help either. I am the first-born, so I am expected to carry my Family’s name on my shoulders so to speak. Is this good idea for my family? No. But strangely, I have this responsibility and the resulting expectations coming along with it.
I know I am not making any sense. I don’t have a clue what am I writing, and I don’t expect anyone to read this rant.
I know I have to face this; the best way to fight a bull is to catch by its horns. I have to confront this shit sometime or other. The shit has to hit the fan, rather than running away from it just prepare for it.
The society doesn’t like outliers. It wants everyone to fit the curve perfectly. I was an outlier once. Now, I try to fit the curve perfectly. Even then, society wants more perfection and lesser deviation. I guess I have no choice. If anyone is looking at me to start a rebellion, move on sir, I am not your kind of person. I am a dull, run of mill, clog in wheel kind of guy who was just born so that this wheel of life can turn on.
It’s a sobering experience when you realize that your existence doesn’t have a consequence other than propagation.

Over fifty died in a train collision in Punjab, India, yesterday. This proves over and over again. We don't respect human life in India. I guess subconsciously we think, we are billion, so fifty here a hundred doesn't matter. "Its law of large numbers" we mutter together.
BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Uproar over India train collision
Those A'holes let the two trains run on the same track. That's a disaster waiting to happen.
Now the blame e game has started. The BJP is gunning for Laloo' head. Yeah! Right boys, that would solve the problem of unsafe railway overnight. It all boils down to corruption. Corruption greeds incompetence, it also breeds disregard for authority, it makes dicipline vanish in a woosh!
Laloo is no angel, no infact he is the angel of death! He has ruined Bihar and I for one think that it has no future. It went off the cliff.Now its Railways turn, he is politicizing it, and casts'sizing' it. That's surely a recipe for disaster.
Solution? The only solution is breaking up railways and selling it off private companies. No Idea how to do that, but, it seems working in Britain. Everyone has a responsibility, if shit happens the company will be sued to oblivion.
Nellore, the town I am from has a Railways station, it was built in early 1900s by the British, for their salve trade. It hasn't seen any improvement in since then. Only 2 god forsaken platforms. They recently built half assed good for nothing platform. Again corruption and nepotism.
Bastards! I am so mad. I just hope that one day all those responsible will get stuck under a derailed goods train carrying sulfuricd.

Pro-Family group (read a Christian group) today said that the death penalty is "Moral'. Man, even the word hypocrisy doesn't have enough potency here.
Pro-Family Group Says Peterson Death Penalty Verdict 'Morally Right'
Acocording to this wacko, Judeo-Christian God would have given the same judgment and killed this man. So, this all-loving God is not that 'all-loving' a toll.
It has been shown that Death penalty is not a deterrent at all. If you compare the crime statistics in the countries which don't have death penalty and the countries which have death penalty there is no noticeable difference. But why do people keep insisting and supporting death penalty?
"Sweet Revenge" I would say. I wrote earlier how we feel good about ourselves when we evict revenge. This is the motive, 'feel-good-about-me' motive.
USA being one of the developed countries has one of the highest population of death row inmates in its jails, does it say something about the country? Oh yeah, I hear the cries "we are moral, we are family oriented" all around. If this country is so moral, why is there 50% divorce rate here? Most of it due to exra marital relationships?
This freak who was defending this death ruling was also demanding to use this ruling as a basis for ruling against abortion (Scott Peterson wife is pregnant when she died). Scary people. They love the fetus but hate humans. How pathetic.
If Scott Peterson really killed his wife and his unborn son, he should spend his whole life paying for it, in an isolatory cell and paying for his existence cleaning washrooms. If he is killed by lethal injection, he would be having it easy.
When do people realise that morality is not absolute! Marriage for you may be moral and God given right for you, but, for me it is just immoral to get tied down to one wo/man when there are thousands out there...

Isn't it a big ego booster when New york times editorial writes think in the same way as you do? Yessir, I think so. In the last blog, I wrote how women are being effected by AIDS and how they can take control of the situation. The following editorial piece in nations thinks so too.
The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: The feminization of AIDS

To reiterate and repeat myself, if we have any chance of defeating AIDS, we should bet our lives on educating women. The buck stops with women, not only in war against AIDS but against any other social illness.
I sincerely feel women empowered societies stand much more chance and have stake in future.

Bhopal gas victims

Twenty years back, Methyl isocynaide one of the most poisonous gasses was released silently into the bursting city of Bhopal. Countless people are dead and many more are permanently affected. The saddest part is that most of these victims are poor and homeless. why is this so? the poor and homeless were sleeping under the blue sky and the dark dragon sunk in. Killed most of them in their sleep itself.
Atrocious, isn't it? so the company which was involved in this would be closed and all the victims would be compensated and the people involved would be behind bars wouldn't they? Ay may be in your country called Utopia. Not in India.
Even 20 years later nothing changed, very few were compensated. Such apathy? Welcome to India, that's your first lesson here. Our value for human life is very little. We believe in Adam Smith’s theory od Demand and supply. Humans are one resource we have in abundance and therefore thus apathy towards it.
What would have happened if this nightmare would have happened in any Western country? hard to guess isn't it? The company would have been sued and would have been tanked. The travesty would not have allowed to happen in the first place, there would be enough regulations on storage and processing such poisonous gasses.
Now Union Carbide which owned the Bhopal facility has been skirting the respectability. Green peace activities tricked BBC to do an interview, and the fake Union Carbide spokes person accepted the responsibility for the whole thing. Union Carbide had to issue a rejection of this acceptance. So now they reject that they caused this tragedy? in fact its a genocide.
Yes sir, good old genocide, not planned cooked dinner sort of thing but killing 3000 people is still a genocide.
Indians still didn't learn a lesson, its laying the reddest carpet to all the 2 bit western companies. All we need is a unending supply of grease to keep out palms oily for along time. No I am not against western companies what i am against is gross disrespect shown to human life by who ever is in power in India.
I just hope that we have smarted up and pulled our pants. No more Bhopal's no more mass graves!!

AIDS in Andara Pradesh

India is only second to south Africa in the number of AIDS positive patients and Andhra Pradesh is second only to Maharastra in number of AIDS/HIV patients. What can the reason possibly be? we Andhraites are fairly 'moral' people, fairly religious and fairly family oriented. But why is AIDS so prevalent in Andhra pradesh? Why is not so big a problem in Tamilnadu which has almost the same culture as Andhra Pradesh.

So what can the reasons be?
The main reason is unprotected sex by the males. If everyone is faithful to their partners i don't see any reason why AIDS would spread so fast. This means only one thing we are not faithful to our partners. So we moral people are not so moral at all. The question is why? is anything wrong with our culture? There must be, if not, why are all other South Indian states better than us? I can think one reason from top of my head. For one we are big time male chauvinists, see the phenomenon of Dowry, its so pathetic that this shameful tradition is practiced till day. Males think its their right to have more than one partner and more the number of partners the more macho is he.

The solution? Barbers! what? I also laughed aloud when I heard on the radio that our chief minister has recruited this army of barbers to educate their clientele on safe sex while trimming their beards. Nice try bozo! Are we this desperate that we need barbers to do what medical professionals are trained to do? what next surgeries by barbers?

If it were me who was making a decision i would have entrusted to educating women, not barbers. Mothers, wives and teachers wield lot of influence of men. Catch them young, educate them, teach them responsibility, teach them to say no and to control the senses.

we don't want Andhra Pradesh to be Ethiopia do we?

Suicide

Is committing suicide a ultimate form of courage or cowardice? I don’t know, but let me think through whole of this phenomenon and may be by the end of this exercise, I may have some insights (yeah sure!)

Every one portrays suicide as an act of cowardice, if I meet someone who would say so, my only question to me was have you ever stared into the eyes of death? I did once I can tell you its one of the prettiest sights. Your body’s primary instinct is to survive so it will fight very hard to survive. I was swimming with my friends and on of friends felt that he was drowning and started splashing around and his hand found my hair, he held it very tight and stared dragging me int the water. I started gasping too, I fought him hard I even swallowed lot of water. I was feeling lot of different things at the same time. I was panicking, I was angry at that dude; I was feeling sorry for my mum, dad and my sister. I fought hard tried to free myself and suddenly some grabbed me by another tuft of hair and pulled me out.

That was no fun at all. To put it mildly, I wouldn’t want to go through that ordeal once more. If one commits a suicide s/he must be absolutely driven to the wall to this ultimate step. Suicide bombers have been the desperate choices of terrorist organizations world wide. Kids al young as 14 years old have blo0wn themselves up. Are they cowards? No I don’t think so, are they brave may be but brainwashed for sure. I saw a freaky show the other day on TV. CBC was showing a documentary on how Hamas brainwashes kids starting with the four year olds. Scary stuff!

I have a couple of encounters with suicides. One summer I was spending a weekend at my aunt’s place. I woke on and peered through the window to find a girl hung the balcony of neighbor’s house. I was around 12 years old. I was so scared that I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t understand the whole concept of this suicide then. I was so confused that I didn’t even ask any one any question. The other incident was near my school. Our school was located near a busy railway intersection one evening while coming from school I saw a big crowd around the tracks, I casually went and looked someone committed suicide by placing his neck on the tracks. I saw his severed head. Most gory sight I have ever seen.

So my question again, do you need to be courageous to commit a suicide? Yes. If you are so courageous then why don’t you face the problems in this world? I don’t know, I haven’t read any studies done on suicides. There must tomes of research on this. I even read somewhere that there is suicide gene, which makes one to take his or her life.

Well as always I never have an answer, my jury is always hung and my quest never ends.