Indian secularism

Vikram Nandwani is probably the best cartoonist I know. Here's his latest:

The background according to Vikram,

The NSA (National Security Advisor) said there was a need to effectively deal with organisations like SIMI and Bajrang Dal "because then there are many copycat organisations ... Several micro units of the same kind may come up." He claimed "SIMI and Bajrang Dal are not two sides of the same coin, but both of them are dangerous."

For those who are clueless about Indian politics, SIMI is an Islamic militant organization believed to be behind numerous terrorist activities. Bajrang Dal is a militant Hindu organization believed to behind the recent attacks against Christians in Orissa and Karnataka.

Despite it's many imperfections, my thoughts on the Indian constitution hasn't changed much, although I wouldn't sing it's praises quite so loudly as I did two years ago.

More to the point, my favorite Vikram-cartoon is probably the one he did when the LTTE 'Air-force' came to being.

Mod Goviyas

Picture of the day, comes from The Colombo Post:

Sri Lankan Government ministers, trying their hand at farming. Subsequently, one of them got bombed, but survived. Lots of antics, for the rural vote. 

The atlas of the real world

is very interesting. It resizes the world map according to different criteria. Sri Lanka is really big in a few things:

First, number of book published (per million).

This was a genuine surprise. And the annual rate of forest depletion :

And not so surprisingly, we do "well" in the number of deaths due to war:

Much more info and maps at Creative Review. Sri Lanka is also quite large in the rate of abject poverty (measured at $2 per day, but as I recall it's quite low at 1$ per day). Here's another interesting set of maps.

[Maps via Sepia Mutiny]

What Desi's are wearing to the Democrat National Convention

For the background, see this and especially this.

My Wordle

This is kinda cool. It let's you generate your own word cloud for a bunch of text. Here's mine:

It generates the cloud for the current posts in the home page if you give your blog address, you can play with the colors and fonts. Here's one for Kottu :

Go Play.

[Worlde stuff via Atanu Dey]

Peanuts and other nuts

We have had lots of nutty regulations recently. But there's room for comfort, at least Sri Lanka is not the only place with nutty regulations. Here's a peanut packet from the U.S:


The packaging says : produced in a factory producing peanuts and other nuts. Inevitable result of silly food processing regulations.Sigh. Democrats..

[pic via Don Luskin]

Why British left India

According to an email that was sent to me, it's not because of Subash Candra Bhose, Bhagath Singh or even Gandhi, it's because of...


Jawaharlal Nehru Ji.

Try vegetarian.

The advert above from PETA asks people to "Turn over a new leaf and try vegetarian". Now, Imagine if how it would look if they promoted hunger....

p.s. the advert is in Kannada - talk about peaching to the converted! sigh. NGOs.

[Link via India Uncut. For more peta-humor, click here]

Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick, Jack suffers from a quick fire dick

That's from the Island's kiddies page yesterday. No kidding. The Island, of "Pubic Money" fame published this poem on it's children section, the Happy Island.


See this for a full page picture of the page which includes the poem. Heh. The kids these days I tell you...

The Island think it's the work of a net terrorist:

We wish to bring to the notice of our readers that there has been a sinister attempt by an unknown group to disrupt the operations of this newspaper and to tarnish its image through electronic means.

It all began in 2006, when a London-based correspondent warned us against such a move.

Recently, another newspaper, too, became a victim of hackers who tampered with its website.

The e-mail accounts of the editor and the features editor of The Island are the targets through which they sought to disrupt our system by transmitting specially designed programmes. We adopted precautions but we now learn that on Tuesday, when we usually print the children’s section issued on Thursday, we got badly beaten.

An infected junk document ate into an innocent poem that a young contributor had sent in to share with others, after the proof reading stage.

The ill effects of the attack were noticed yesterday as well in the main section of the paper but we managed to eliminate them in time for printing.

We have initiated a thorough investigation into the incident and apologise to our readers, especially children, for the mishap. [link]

Aney meh, editor, go to hell machang. Someone screwed up editing, admit that and move on, life's like that.

Update (2.20pm) : Some guy at groundviews points to the source of the rhymes which the Island copied from. There goes the whole "infected junk document ate into an innocent poem that a young contributor had sent in to share with others" stuff. I mean, anyone who has used a computer more than a week knows that's just pure B.S. This could be the site in which the Island 'journalist' lifted the poem from, pretending to be an innocent young contributor.

[more at Indi's, Ravana's and groundviews]

Why We Shouldn't Study

A friend emails me these two adverts from the Sunday Observer :
(click images to enlarge)

and this one..

the email also goes on to say,

From the early ages of our lives our parents, teachers and relatives told us so many good things about education. But sometimes we come across situations where we have to think twice about them!

hmm. Maybe so, but maybe the secretary's job description doesn't include the occasional blow job for the chairman. But hell, who'd want to work for the Central Bank anyway!

Holi Hai! (Sri Lankan Style)

Here's a tip ladies, next time - wear old cloths. More pics from the DailyMirror

So What's the bread?

Eshan. Coming soon on Facebook.