Sunday, October 11, 2015

A stray dog is a Dog and a Man is a stray man.

The Castle Doctrine, "stand-your-ground law" is a law in the US that authorizes a person to protect and defend one's own life and limb against threat or perceived threat. This law states that an individual has no duty to retreat from any place he/she has a lawful right to be and may use any level of force, including lethal, if he/she reasonably believes he/she faces an imminent and immediate threat of serious bodily harm or death.
It is rightly commented that this law of self defence is not one written but we are born with. We do not learn or acquire it some- how but it is in our nature to defend and protect ourselves from any kind of harm. When one is attacked by criminals, he cannot wait for the law to protect him/ her. Bentham has said that fear of law can never restrain bad men as much as the fear of individual resistance and if you take away this right then you become accomplice to all scoundrels.
Indian Penal Code incorporates this principle in section 96, which says:
Nothing is an offence which is done in the exercise of the right of private defence.  
Section 97 says that the right of private defence is of 2 types:-
(i) Right of private defence of body;
(ii) Right of private defence of property; and the matter is seriously dealt with in Ss upto 106.  
AND, if you can kill another MAN when your life or property is at stake, what will prevent you from killing A STRAY DOG under similar circumstances? 
Thanks.
ങ്ങനെ ആവണം ഭരണകർത്താക്കൾ?
പിറ്റിഎ മീറ്റിങ്ങിന്റെ തീയതി നിശ്ചയിച്ച കാര്യം ടീച്ചർ കുട്ടികളെ അറിയിച്ചു. എല്ലാ കുട്ടികളും നിർബന്ധമായും അവരുടെ രക്ഷകർത്താവിനെ കൊണ്ട് വരണമെന്നായിരുന്നു ടീച്ചറുടെ ശാസന. മറ്റു കുട്ടികൾ 'എസ് ടീച്ചർ' എന്ന് ഉറക്കെ മറുപടി പറഞ്ഞപ്പോൾ, അതിൽ ഒരു ആണ്‍കുട്ടി മാത്രം നിശബ്ദമായി ഇരുന്നു. കാരണം മറ്റൊന്നുമല്ല, അവൻ ഒരു അനാഥനായിരുന്നു. അവൻ വിറയാർന്ന ശബ്ധത്തിൽ ടീച്ചറോട് പറഞ്ഞു, "അച്ഛനും അമ്മയും ഇല്ലാത്ത എനിക്ക് ഞാൻ സ്നേഹിക്കുന്ന എന്റെ രാജ്യത്തിന്റെ പ്രസിഡന്റ്‌ വന്നാൽ മതിയോ" എന്ന്.

ഇനി വരുന്ന പിറ്റിഎ മീറ്റിങ്ങിന് എത്താൻ ആവശ്യപ്പെട്ടുകൊണ്ട് പ്രസിഡന്റിന് ഒരു കത്ത് എഴുതി തരുവാൻ അവൻ ടീച്ചറോട് ആവശ്യപ്പെട്ടു. പ്രസിഡന്റ്‌ എന്ന വ്യക്തി ഒരു സാധാരണക്കാരൻ അല്ലെന്നും, തിരക്കുള്ള വ്യക്തിയായത് കൊണ്ട് അദ്ദേഹം ഒരിക്കലും വരില്ലെന്നും ടീച്ചർ ആ കുട്ടിയെ പറഞ്ഞു മനസ്സിലാക്കാൻ ശ്രമിച്ചു. അവസാനം നിഷ്കളങ്കമായ ആ ആഗ്രഹത്തിന് മുന്നില് തോറ്റ്കൊണ്ട്‌ ടീച്ചർ പ്രസിഡന്റിന് ആ കത്തയച്ചു. പ്രസിഡന്റിന്റെ ഓഫീസിലെ ചവറ്റു കൊട്ടയിൽ മാത്രമായിരിക്കും ആ കത്തിന്റെ സ്ഥാനം എന്ന് ആ ടീച്ചർക്ക്‌ ഉറപ്പുണ്ടായിരുന്നു.

പക്ഷെ PTA മീറ്റിംഗ് ദിനത്തിൽ എല്ലാവരെയും അത്ഭുതപ്പെടുത്തികൊണ്ട് അന്ന് ആ കുട്ടിയുടെ രക്ഷകർതാവായി ആ രാജ്യത്തിന്റെ പ്രഥമ പൌരൻ എത്തി, ഒരു അച്ഛനായി. ഹീ ഈസ്‌ ദി പ്രസിഡന്റ്‌ ഓഫ് തുർക്കി, മിസ്റ്റർ റജബ് ത്വയ്യിബ് ഉര്‍ദുഗാന്‍!

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Teacher's Day


Thus I celebrated Teacher's Day with my student whom I taught 30 years ago and this re union took place thousands of miles away from our hometown. He came with rose- filled bouquet and fruit- studded pie.
(Will somebody post that pic here?)
The popular adage in Sanskrit “Matha Pitha Guru Deivam” means “Mother Father Teacher God”, describing the order of reverence to be followed. The phrase is a basic tenet from the time of the Vedas or beyond and represents the hierarchy in which one should respect these entities. Thanks to all my dear students.
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What is 'Indoctrination'?

It presupposes the intent to convert someone to a certain ideology. As with words like “doctrine,” “docent,” and “doctor” (sorry M.Ds), the Latin root of “indoctrinate” is docere, “to teach.” As humans have long acknowledged, when we teach, we necessarily impart some combination of facts and value judgments, just as any other intellectual exercise- a study, a trial, an essay, a presentation- requires us to shape or frame the knowledge we want to investigate or communicate. Whether it flatters the liberal or the conservative, there’s no such thing as “raw data,” no such thing as a purely unbiased or un-ideological stance. There are only degrees of measure, of fairness, of critical thinking. The idea that college students are indoctrinated neglects the fact that college students are capable of thinking for themselves.
Critics see that the introduction of a program of rigorous critical thinking by a liberal professoriate has the potential to challenge the assumptions and beliefs of young people who show up at college for an education, and they call it indoctrination. What’s actually happening is that those- certainly not all- young people who show up in colleges having already been indoctrinated- in the strict sense of the word- are being given a framework for thinking more carefully and deliberately for themselves, along with the relative freedom to do so in an environment designed to privilege reason, evidence, and skepticism over assumption, innuendo, opinion and unchallenged faith.
Yes, most eminent professors are liberal.
The fact that liberal people work on campus and liberal things happen on campus doesn’t mean college courses are instruments of liberal indoctrination.
It simply means college students have the ability to think for themselves.
Thank you.
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1. Raju Narayana Swamy
2. Nishanthini
3. Anupama...
and many more... they are all great..
After all, why should these officers stay at the mercy of the state government or its corrupt ministers?
They are NOT KAS or KPS; they ARE IAS or IPS:
the titles they obtained through merit after fulfilling all eligibility criteria.
Why don't they invoke their rights and privileges and alert the Central Government when they are harassed for doing the "right thing", especially when public health and public interests are at stake.
They can opt out of the Kerala cadre any time they want until such times as there are no more officers of the higher cadre left in Kerala:
when THEY SURE WILL PLUG THE LEAK.
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For Sale: 15 cents of garden land with several spots identified to dig well- about 3 kms from the heart of Kottayam city. Priced VERY LOW for quick sale. Ideal for house construction. Contact by 
e- mail only: odikandathil@gmail.com
(for D Achen)
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When some of you spoke about your rich, varied and ancient heritage, I never thought its this big (kidding)!
Scientists have discovered a new species of human ancestor deep in a South African cave, adding a baffling new branch to the family tree.
Acting on a tip from spelunkers two years ago, scientists in South Africa discovered what the cavers had only dimly glimpsed through a crack in a limestone wall deep in the Rising Star Cave: lots and lots of old bones.
The remains covered the earthen floor beyond the narrow opening. This was, the scientists concluded, a large, dark chamber for the dead of a previously unidentified species of the early human lineage — Homo naledi.
The new hominin species was announced on Thursday by an international team of more than 60 scientists led by Lee R. Berger, an American paleoanthropologist who is a professor of human evolution studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The species name, H. naledi, refers to the cave where the bones lay undisturbed for so long; “naledi” means “star” in the local Sesotho language.
In two papers published this week in the open-access journal eLife, the researchers said that more than 1,550 fossil elements documenting the discovery constituted the largest sample for any hominin species in a single African site, and one of the largest anywhere in the world. Further, the scientists said, that sample is probably a small fraction of the fossils yet to be recovered from the chamber. So far the team has recovered parts of at least 15 individuals.
“With almost every bone in the body represented multiple times, Homo naledi is already practically the best-known fossil member of our lineage,” Dr. Berger said.
The finding, like so many others in science, was the result of pure luck followed by considerable effort.
This Face Changes the Human Story. While primitive in some respects, the face, skull, and teeth show enough modern features to justify H. naledi's placement in the genus Homo. Artist Gurche spent some 700 hours reconstructing the head from bone scans, using bear fur for hair.
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Saturday, August 22, 2015

Spiritual Blackmail


Bishops and priests tell their followers that donating money will result in receiving more money, for which of course, there is no guarantee in the real world.

Non-profit organizations are audited regularly and have to submit detailed financial disclosure forms to the Tax Department. Religious organizations don’t have to submit anything. There is literally no oversight by the government. This, too, while taxpayers are footing the bill for lavish mansions these prosperity preachers often live in besides giving hefty salaries, perks and alms. This is double dipping and it costs the tax payers millions.

In turn, it’s an insipid heresy that encourages mainly the working class to live beyond their means. "If you pray the right way, God will make you rich" is fraud in the name of God, but because it’s in the name of God our legal system turns a blind eye on it. It’s a religious pyramid scheme. And worse, it’s a religious pyramid scheme that’s based on spiritual blackmail. The idea of material wealth as a sign of God’s favor seems to run counter to the centuries-old tenets of Christianity that have traditionally viewed its central figure, Christ, as being born poor in a stable and dying poor, executed by the state.

The gospel of prosperity, popularized in the 1970s and 1980s by three televangelists who are viewed as its founders: Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland and Frederick K.C. Price, turns Christianity into a vapid bless-me club, with a doctrine that amounts to little more than spiritual, magical thinking. Thanks.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Inclusion Vs. Exclusion

Why is it that every person of Indian origin who won a Nobel in the sciences after independence is not an Indian citizen any more? Hargobind Khurana won the prize for Medicine in 1968, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar for Physics in 1983 and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan for Chemistry in 2009. All of them flowered not because they were Indians per se but because they left India far behind.
In fact, Ramakrishnan was downright rude when many Indians called to congratulate him in 2009. He said: “We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth.” He also complained about “all sorts of people” writing to him and “clogging up my email box. It takes me an hour or two just to remove these mails". While his immediate reaction may seem churlish to us, underlying it is the real issue: the “Indian” successes abroad have little to do with the fact that they are Indians. They succeed because they abandoned India.
We need to ask ourselves: why does our system kill future heroes, while the US helps raise Indians to iconic levels?
Hence the point:
Our system is designed to keep people out, not in. The true value of an IIT or IIM is not the intellectual capital they produce, but their filtering expertise, which keeps all but the super- listers out of these institutions. When the people entering the institution are the best among the best, they will shine no matter what the quality of faculty or the curriculum is.
Exclusion and not inclusion, unfortunately, is our creed.
The Bottom Line is this– Sunder Pichai and Satya Narayana Nadella are supreme examples of the reality of the Indian Market. If you have talent and need to succeed– India is not the place for you. The only thing that India can offer is an entry into the Corrupt World of Politics and a Chance to Get into the Everyday Rut of an Overpopulated, Highly Superstitious, Prehistorically Religious-minded, Backward Country where today even, something as silly as Porn and Beef are Banned when Serious Issues Like the Rape of Women and Corruption in Politics is absolutely Ignored.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

ഒരൊറ്റ ഹൃദയം..!

സ്വന്ത താത്പര്യം സത്യത്തിന് എതിരാണെങ്കിൽ 
അപ്പോൾ, സത്യ വിശ്വാസി സത്യം മാറ്റി വയ്ക്കുന്നു .


എന്നാൽ ആ സത്യം എന്നെങ്കിലും വെളിച്ചത്ത് വരുമ്പോൾ 
ദുഃഖം കൊണ്ട് സ്വയം തകരുന്നു .

മനുഷ്യൻ സത്യം സത്യം എന്ന് പറയുന്നതല്ലാതെ എന്താണ് സത്യം എന്ന് ഗ്രഹിക്കുന്നില്ല .

ബുദ്ധികൊണ്ട് ഗ്രഹിക്കുന്ന സത്യം സത്യമല്ല . 
ബുദ്ധി കൊണ്ട് സത്യം ഗ്രഹിക്കുവാൻ കഴിയില്ല . 

സത്യം എന്താണ് എന്ന് സ്വയം പഠിക്കാതെ മനുഷ്യന് 
അത് മറ്റുള്ളവരെ പഠിപ്പിക്കുവാൻ സാധ്യമല്ല .

മറ്റുള്ളവരെ പഠിപ്പിക്കുവാൻ കഴിയാതെ അത് 
അവനവനു ഗ്രഹിക്കുവാൻ കഴിയില്ല .

സത്യം "ഞാൻ " തന്നെയാണ് എന്നറിയാത്ത മനുഷ്യന് 
"സത്യം" വെറും ആചാരമാണ് ........ 

ആൾ ദൈവങ്ങൾക്കു കഴുത്തിൽ അണിയുവാനുള്ള 
ആഭരണമാണോ ആത്മീയത ?

പലതും കാണുമ്പോൾ അങ്ങനെ ചിന്തിക്കേണ്ടിയിരിക്കുന്നു.

സാധാരണ ജനങ്ങളുടെ ആത്മീയ അജ്ഞതയെ ചൂഷണം ചെയ്ത് ഉപജീവനം നടത്തുവാൻ മാത്രം അതുപകരിക്കും .

ആത്മീയതയെന്നാൽ - 
മിഥ്യയായ "ഞാൻ " സത്യമായി പരിവർത്തനപ്പെടുന്നതാണ് 

വ്യക്തിയിൽ പരിവർത്തനം ഇല്ലെങ്കിൽ അതു മറ്റൊരു നാടകം മാത്രമാണ്.


(post script after reading the news on Thomas Mar Athanasius' elevation as Suffragan Metropolitan of MT church)


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A great deed, but not too huge a feat... This underlines the need for all our hospitals having helipads on top of their buildings (if possible, right over their operation theatres and with efficient elevators) and a few suitable air-crafts (owned privately or by the state), besides alert medical professionals trained to handle emergency situations.. . This will not only help ailing patients (organ/ donor/ donee/ super- specialty) but also people involved in major accidents and dire situations (road/ fire/ fights/ psychiatric/ domestic violence etc.) from where they can be air-lifted and rushed to hospitals with well- equipped trauma units. Thanks.
കേരളത്തിന് ഒരൊറ്റ ഹൃദയം..!

How about that?

In Sonnet 76, Shakespeare wrote, “invention in a noted weed,” which could be interpreted to mean Shakespeare's use of cannabis or the “noted weed,” for creative writing: “invention.” In the same sonnet, Shakespeare wrote he would prefer not to be associated with “strange compounds,” which could be cocaine.

A recent analysis discovered cannabis residue in 400-year-old clay pipes from William Shakespeare’s garden, the Independent reported. The analysis was performed by South African research scientists from the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria who used a technique called Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry, a forensic technology which found cannabis residue in four pipes.

The scientists' analysis studied 24 pipe fragments which were excavated from Shakespeare’s home- garden at Stratford-upon-Avon in South Warwickshire, England. The results, published in the South African Journal of Science, indicated cannabis in eight samples.
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Reputational Disaster

What is going to happen is a reputational disaster if this is widely reported. The compromise of the MT Church on gay marriage is incoherent, dishonest in itself, and reliant on dishonesty in others. I’m sure gay men will be thrilled by the exciting new job opportunity to become bishops, though perplexed as to how it will be policed by other churches. 
For many years in the history of the Church of England and the American Episcopal Church with whom the MT church has full communion with, bishop- celibacy was considered optional. Based on the customs of old times, it is assumed by many that most of the apostles, such as Peter, were married and had families.

The Catholic church is no exception. See,

Popes accused of being sexually active during pontificate:

1. Pope Sergius III (904–911) was accused by his opponents of being the illegitimate father of Pope John XI by Marozia. These accusations are found in Liutprand of Cremona's Antapodosis, as well as the Liber Pontificalis. 
2. Pope John X (914–928) had romantic affairs with both Theodora and her daughter Marozia, according to Liutprand of Cremona in his Antapodosis.
3. Pope John XII (955–963) was accused by his adversaries of adultery and incest. The monk Benedict of Soracte noted in his volume XXXVII that he "liked to have a collection of women". Some sources report that he was rumoured to have died 8 days after being stricken by paralysis while in the act of adultery, others say that he was killed by the jealous husband while in the act of committing adultery.
4. Pope Benedict IX (1032– became pope in 1044, again in 1045 and finally 1047–1048) was accused by Bishop Benno of Piacenza of "many vile adulteries." In his Liber Gomorrhianus, Damian accused Benedict IX of routine sodomy and bestiality and sponsoring orgies. In May 1045, Benedict IX resigned his office to pursue marriage.
5. Pope Paul II (1464–1471) is popularly thought to have died due to indigestion arising from eating melon in excess, though a rumour was spread by his detractors that he died while engaging in sodomy.
6. Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484). According to the published chronicle of the Italian historian Stefano Infessura, was a "lover of boys and sodomites" - awarding benefices and bishoprics in return for sexual favours, and nominating a number of young men as cardinals, some of whom were celebrated for their good looks.
7. Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) had a long affair with Vannozza dei Cattanei while still a priest, but before he became pope; and by her had his illegitimate children Cesare Borgia, Giovanni Borgia, Gioffre Borgia, and Lucrezia. A later mistress, Giulia Farnese gave birth to a daughter (Laura) while Alexander was in his 60s and reigning as pope. Alexander fathered at least seven, and possibly as many as ten illegitimate children, and did much to promote his family's interests - using his offspring to build alliances with a number of important dynasties.He appointed Giovanni Borgia as Captain General of the Church, and made Cesare a Cardinal of the Church - also creating independent duchies for each of them out of papal lands.
8.Pope Leo X (1513–1521) was accused, after his death, of homosexuality (Francesco Guicciardini and Paolo Giovio). I
9.Pope Julius III (1550–1555) was alleged to have had a long affair with Innocenzo Ciocchi del Monte. The Venetian ambassador at that time reported that Innocenzo shared the pope's bed.

I think the CONFUSION or the REAL PROBLEM with the majority is that they have been duped and not made aware of these things. The BIG question is why then the church leaders don't tell us that? And the EQUALLY BIG answer: 
to maintain and prolong a bishop's made-up, larger- than- life image and his exclusive nature with coloured dress and associated paraphernalia to command respect and loot money: a self- deception as our bishops who have studied Theology have read all the above stuff and consider marriages/ gay marriages/ sex outside marriage as already sanctioned. Thanks.

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In no way am I justifying the resourceful children who are averse in caring for their parents. But this is exactly where the state government should step in to protect and provide care to an Indian citizen for which the state is duty- bound. With more and more nuclear families getting older, we are going to see this a common phenomenon in most Keralite homes and we need to have more and more personal care boarding homes and nursing homes to cater to the needs of this fragile population. The state must form a new ministry for the aging and the old or at least constitute an independent department with sufficient funds pumped into it for caring the old and aging, with steps in place to prevent the looting of that money. In no way can the state run from this primary responsibility. Thanks.