Editor on Holiday.

In between the work I have had to do coupled with the necessary amounts of procrastination, I have been left with little time over the past few days but to read nonsense like English Verb Tenses, Bread Recipes, Barbecue recipes, and How to Make Beer and Wine.

So I apologize beforehand for the extreme boredom that will reflect in this post, but do bear with me. I promise more interesting posts in the near future, or atleast to a degree amusing, depending on how you are inclined. Some might find it boring, and I strongly urge them to be as critical and/or abusive as they can be. It surely will reduce the boredom.

But for now, I feel the need to rant about the Indian "news media" once again. The fact that this happens to be an article about Shilpa Shetty is purely coincidental.

Startling that Newspapers or their online counterparts let such bullshit fly. I don't wish to debate over whether this is News or page 3 bullshit. The thing that does startle me is that a reporter typed this out and the editor didn't bother to proof read. Apparently, newspapers don't care about correct grammar and language.

"Indiafm.com

Wednesday, July 25, 2007: (Mumbai):


Shilpa Shetty is in legal trap. The writer obviously never got an A in class. Hence she figured no one would miss it in the sentence. Bad joke? Perhaps, but undoubtedly poor grammar. A London law firm has sued Shilpa's company Cine Entertainment for not clearing their dues.

A security company called CTR services is also planning to sue her on non-payment of bills as they had provided security services to Shilpa in the UK sometime backs. What backs? And if i remember my school grammar correctly, the subject of the sentence is a collective noun (Company) and hence 'is' should be replaced with 'are', purely speculative.

According to the reports, Shilpa has also been dropped from famous publicist Max Clifford's client list due to conflicts with Max's employees.

However, her representative in the UK, Farnath Hussain informs that her company Cine Entertainment has already paid every penny that they owe. Their payment got delayed because the figures CTR submitted were not right and her company asked them to rework on it. Rework on it??? wtf! 'it' refers to 'the figures', so lets plug it in place and see if it makes sense. '... asked them to rework on the figures. If you haven't shot yourself yet, I assure you the next one will take you over the edge.

Recently, she was allegedly linked up with her "good friend" and producer Raj Kundra. Kundra's wife Kavita openly accused Shilpa in media for breaking their marriage." In media? need I say more?

Wonder Blunder

The Seven Wonders of the World, ancient or middle-age, I can’t name one. Actually I can do pretty well on the ancient wonders (I remembered 5 out of 7 correctly), but not so well the middle-age wonders. So I wiki’d it. But what the fuck, there is no middle age list that can comprehensively clear my query.

But that isn’t the point of this. I seriously doubt too many people know all the seven wonders, whichever age. Sure, historians will know. I doubt even a fraction of the world population has visited them all. So the New Seven wonders Project, where we imbeciles are allowed to vote from a list of 20 (formerly 21, before Egypt made a big deal of it) for the 7 we deem fit.

And how does this voting occur. Well the internet and Cellular Phones of course. No way to reach the masses than the internet right? Wrong. Under 1 billion people have an internet connection from the top 20 countries. And the disparity is large. USA has 2 times more internet users than the next, China. And chances are these 1 billion people that get to decide which are the greatest wonders of our time, probably have no authority, not to mention the skewed demographics. How the fuck does Russia’s Kremlin stand a chance when it has not even 10 percent of internet users. The whole exercise is absurd. Yet, it has gained so much popularity that it might just be regarded as the new list.

So, if I wasn’t as lazy as I am, who would I vote for? Well the Taj for sure. Not because I love the monument so much or am in total awe of it but because people visit it. It brings in money, other people’s money. And for that reason alone, I would love for it to be in Social Studies textbooks around the world. I’d vote for the Kremlin. No need to guess why there.

The rest would have to be:

Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany

Petra, Jordan

The Pyramid at Chichén Itzá, Mexico

The Acropolis of Athens, Greece

Angkor, Cambodia

The list is far from popular, and I am sure most of them won’t make it into the Top 7. But who the fuck cares? It is bound to be fucked up if it is left to the people. Take your cue from democracy.

Oh, and thank you Air India for a free dinner and stay! Perfect way to start off a perfectly useless weekend, whose highlight was The Fountain, which I highly recommend. Which is more than I can say for the other “seven wonders” that I watched before it.

Sadistic Youtube

Think twice before giving him your car keys.

Dumb Americans

Are Americans dumb?

I can’t say for sure if they are. Most of the people I meet seem to have some semblance of intelligence and are capable of holding their own in a debate. However, having said that, some extremely eminent scholars (most of them either Americans or Europeans) seem to believe, with sufficient reason, that the “allegations” are not baseless or pointless.


1. Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and ethologist, born March 26th, 1941 in Nairobi, Kenya (a place that holds fond memories for me, personally), holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding Of Science at Oxford University. A champion of the modern atheist movement, he has managed to acquire the epithet, “Darwin’s Rottweiler”.

Richard Dawkins is the author of nine books (among a multitude of essays), some of which include The Selfish Gene (1976), The Blind Watchmaker (1986) and his most recent, The God Delusion (2006).

Richard Dawkins in his documentary “The Root of All Evil?” claims that over 40% of the American population believes in creationism and is averse to the idea of evolution. I have been unable to find the exact resources to prove those numbers (though I am sure I will find something on Dawkins’ site), it is interesting to note that in 1999, The Kansas State Board of Education deleted evolution from its science standards. There are American web-sites claiming that man and dinosaurs co-existed. Some of these sites claim dinosaur sightings.


2. Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter is famous for his stint as chief weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-’98 and also for his open statements denying Iraq’s WMD’s even prior to an Iraq attack. He is well known for his stand on the Iraq war as well as the US policy on Iran.

Scott Ritter has also served in the US military and Intelligence divisions and is now highly vocal on his views over Iran and a possible attack and is not only against attacking them (or N. Korea for that matter) but has stated more than once that both N. Korea and Iran are well within their legal rights to pursue their nuclear interests and places the blame squarely on the Clinton and following Bush administrations for the political unrest in the middle east and around the world. He has also stated that the US government is solely responsible for the mercury rising in the Middle East in spite of the Ayatollah’s (Supreme Leader of Iran) bids for peace and diplomatic discussion.

Scott Ritter believes that the American public is ignorant as to the ground realities in the Middle East and the regime-changing foreign policy of the US government. He further believes that the American public can be easily made to jump onto the Iran bashing band wagon (like Iraq before) by the media propaganda and chest beating uber-patriotic speeches as against their dissuasion against a possible attach by virtue of a more rational voice of reason


3. Youtube

Youtube.com certainly has its own set of people that think Americans are dumb. Loads of videos suggesting the same have been found around the web. Now, it might be highly possible that these are just exaggerations, or perhaps even staged events (though I don’t know who the above mentioned uber-patriotic person would be willing to stage something like this), but all of it is really amusing nonetheless. This one probably doesn’t hold as much weight as the first two, but I am sure people will spend more time on this one than reading or researching on the first two. And that is because… people are stupid. Perhaps I should add a people=stupid tag on my sidebar too.







4. Creationism



Now these videos aren’t necessarily indicative of American stupidity, but rather religious bigotry. I humbly accept. However in a country where a majority of its people believe in the very same religion and practice the same bigotry, it can’t be shielded away from looking stupid. And if you care to watch the next video, you will notice it is a New Zealander questioning the “stupid” viewpoints of the clergy.




5. George Carlin

The 70 year old stand-up comedian is known for his critique of the US foreign policy, and often of religion. Carlin, in many of his stand-up routines, has poked fun at the “dumb” American.

I think Carlin’s humor is sufficient enough that I don’t need to elaborate anymore.




6. George Bush

This man needs no introduction. Most of you’ll are already thinking a) How does dubya being stupid make the rest of America stupid? and b) When did dubya call the american people dumb?

He didn’t call the American people dumb (AFAIK) and is probably quite intelligent (perhaps not articulate and has some learning disorders), to be as successful as he is. Perhaps it is all due to his father’s power and fame, but then I have heard before that he too was “stupid”, perhaps to a lesser degree.

As for how him being “stupid” making the American people stupid, that’s not it. The fact that he has been re-elected makes them stupid. The fact that he has them believing that they are fighting a war on terror (rather than a war of terror, in the words of Borat), that they give a damn about democracy or people’s rights around the world. If anyone believes that these wars (I would as easily call them acts of terrorism, as any other) are for the good of anyone other than the United States (and just a select few at that), then this is certainly a good indicator of how much Americans think (rather than the lack of brains).


7. Borat

George walker was going to be the last entry in that list, until I quoted Borat’s speech. That movie certainly had the rest of the world believing that the Americans are really dumb and think they are know-it-alls.

In conclusion, do I think now, that Americans are dumb? Probably not. Actually, I am pretty sure they are not. If anything, they are ignorant and some Americans think they have the right to be.

Marketing

This is a clip from the movie Diggers (2006).