Greetings, amigos. Please set some time aside for an eclectic selection of posts
from the Indian blogosphere. This week we have 22 posts for you to sample, and
as usual, I’ve taken some time to go beyond the nominated posts and find other
noteworthy pieces of prose. I’ve even broken them into topics. So for instance,
if you couldn’t care less about cricket (like me), you can skip the sports
section completely. Apologies for the minor delay in posting. There was a power
problem at home. You’d think a UPS mated to a spike-buster would do the trick,
but noooo…
On with the show, shall we?
Society, politics, and culture
Satya argues for liberalisation
of tertiary education (yet oddly enough not primary and secondary education)
and thinks the government should stop trying to regulate everything. In
another post, he points out that the Punjab government is opting for a
school voucher system after seeing a big drop in education standards. A model
for the rest of the country to follow? This is an interesting blog that the
Cartel will watch closely.
Patrix, in a post that rules him out as a libertarian, opines that individual
rights can and should be subverted in a time of national crisis.
Shocking! Somebody tell him about Indira Gandhi and her Emergency. 😉
In another post, Patrix ruminates
about making safe career choices or leaving it all to do something one
loves.
Harini talks about how Indians will marry anything and everything in as much
style as possible. That
includes marrying trees too.
Nitin Pai ridicules a foreign
policy expert’s suggestion to negotiate with terrorists in Kashmir. (Get proper
permalinks, Nitin. 🙂
On Sepia Mutiny, Anna is miffed that a list of the best 50 restaurants in the
world doesn’t
have anything Asian in it. (I want to make that list one day with my
restaurant, but given how poorly Indians receive gourmet multi-course meals,
it may not happen if it’s in this country.)
Saket Vaidya, in a long post, details
his concern for the poor and how he has fed many a poor person on the
street.
Suhail Kazi has a meandering post on his journey and the trials and
tribulations on his way to getting
a Social Security Number in USA.
Anand
reminisces about witnessing large rallies in Kerala, God’s own country (how
I hate that term!)
Fellow atheist Sybil, who lives in Melbourne, finds that most of her
colleagues have tried
some drug or the other.
Akshay
goes on a train ride in Mumbai and tries to explain some of the local
history.
Economics
Naveen, on the CCS blog, has suggestions for books that explain how markets
work around the world.
Marketing and Management
Neelakantan takes
pleasure in trying food from different vendors, grateful that he doesn’t
have to endure the standardised mediocrity served at McDonald’s. He also thinks
that ready-to-eat
packaged food has more potential in India than ready-to-cook food.
Sports
Swaroop forgets to use the spell-check while writing that Saurav
Ganguly’s six-match suspension will help him get the break that he needs. To
ignite a flame war, he even mentions the support for Saurav from some
cricket-loving Cartel members. Could he possibly be talking about posts
like this?
And Nandan thinks Sehwag is more like
Don Bradman than even the legendary Sachin.
Science and Technology
Selva
is upset at Microsoft being granted a patent on a method to access emergency
data.
Rajesh Jain believes that affordable
bandwidth will lead the way in encouraging development of ASP-modelled
software solutions for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises)
Humour
Gaurav
has an excellent plan for eliminating all crime from Mumbai. It involves a
strategic identification of all the hotspots of criminal activity, and then
shutting them down one by one. Bravo!
Lastly, please don’t miss this
hilarious post on The Examined Life where a couple of Cartel members take on
the mysterious Sudhakar Nair who appears unable to detect sarcasm, sardonicism,
and irony. Well, maybe he’s not so mysterious after all. His writing style and
IP address bear more than a passing resemblance to a certain left-leaning socialist writer whom we all know and love. (Seriously, "Sudhakar",
you’re dealing with a bunch of very smart people who are even smarter when
working together. Did you think we wouldn’t find out? You need to do a better
job of concealing your Clark Kent identity.)
Thank you for visiting folks, and I hope I’ve given you a decent selection to
read. Posts with just a couple of lines and a hyperlink were left out, just for
the record.
The next mela will be hosted at Selective
Amnesia.
To set the record straight, while my post focussed on liberalising higher education, that’s not to mean I’m not arguing for liberalising primary or secondary education.
Everything I said in the context of higher education applies just as much to school education as well.
Good mela, neat work, and the classification helps a lot!
Thanks
Shivam
Hi Madman
I though the link to “Swaroop forgets to use the spell-check” should have been under my name. Anyhow, ill keep the spell check on next time.
I didn’t argue in favor of subverting individual liberties. I am against any censorship or state control. I merely pondered on the status of obviously guilty terrorists hiding behind the shield of “individual rights” when it is the question of national security.
All said and done, I don’t aspire to be a libertarian either. 🙂
> You need to do a better job of
> concealing your Clark Kent identity.
Why? I fooled you, didn’t I? Tell me about it sometime over dinner.
Sudhakar Nair
[email protected]
I didn’t argue in favor of subverting individual liberties.
Didn’t you write the following:
I merely pondered on the status of obviously guilty terrorists hiding behind the shield of “individual rights”
If they’re “obviously guilty”, there is probably enough evidence to convict them. If there isn’t, that is precisely why the justice system provides the checks and balances to prevent the tyranny of the State.
All said and done, I don’t aspire to be a libertarian either. 🙂
Didn’t you also write:
“Sudhakar”,
Why? I fooled you, didn’t I?
Did you not read what I wrote? We know who you are, D-man!
Madman, I was ruminating over a TV series which threw up an interesting dilemma over urgency in interrogating crucial suspects which could lead to life-saving information (Watch 24’s last episode instead of me rambling on. The judicial system choose to “wait till morning in order to comply with due process rights” of the suspect, which if done would have been too late. Conviction is usually done by the courts which do not operate at 1am. Should we wait for the courts to reopen in the morning and risk the country being nuked?
regards being a libertarian, I am what Saket (Vaidya) calls himself, a half-libertarian. Pure libertarian values are not practically possible in today’s world…the real one that is.
Just my $0.02.
“Madman”,
> Did you not read what I wrote?
Of course I did. That is just the reason I asked, why should I conceal my identity? I fooled you, didn’t I? And I see it’s still happening. “Smart people”, you said , “Madman”? Yes sir.
Sudhakar Nair.
[email protected]
(Sorry, I meant “Sudhakar” since you prefer that).
The weekly blogside view of the Indian economy (12)
Coverage of the Elephant’s trajectory: observations from the blogosphere. (This week: nominate your favourite blog to be included in this series…
haha haa….loved the Taliban single’s link…hahahaa…. i am a man seek a woman, goat or a camel.. he he hee… damn it! really what do they do in reality? then again i suppose face doesnt matter to them..does it?
What do i have to do to be on this blog list of yours??? 😉
How are these mela selections made? Some of the inane ones have obviously not even been nominated. The humour section is crap. Please dont tell me Sabnis Samachar is even remotely funny. The worst post on alpha.blogdrive is better than this. And the other one is about some guys pulling another guy’s leg in the comments section. Was this nominated? Or do you have a personal interest in it. Where is the humour? Whats with two Patrix nominations. Both of them are trite. And whats up with this repetitive reference to “cartel”. When will this cartel thing stop?
Dear Microsoftie Nonblogger,
Please seek some professional help for your anger management issues.
The Blog Mela posts are always picked by the host, and that’s how it’s been for more than a year. If you had bothered to read the intro, you would have noticed the bit where I went beyond the nominated posts.
If you had read the original announcement, you would see that any posts made in that week were eligible, which is why Patrix’s two posts made it. I also admit to receiving $1 million in bribes from Ravikiran for linking to his web site. So yes, I did have a personal interest in the matter.
As for the Cartel, it’s a little Indian libertarian blogger thing, but for your reading pleasure, I linked to some help on the matter. Pity you didn’t bother reading that either. And no, it will never “stop”. It will only get bigger and worse. I suggest you immediately stop reading our blogs to preserve your sanity. Do it now!
I am deeply sorry that you didn’t derive any pleasure from this edition of the Blog Mela. We at MadMan’s Web take customer satisfaction very seriously. I will immediately dispatch a full cash refund to you. Please mail me your address.
(And next time, nominate what you think is noteworthy or funny.)
my my was that an angry as well as funny conclusion Madhu… loved it!! :))) *huge smile*
But unfortunately i am the sole one who didnt get her query answered…
As Madhu’s enjoying himself playing with the trolls, let me answer Lavannya’s question.
It’s simple, nominate a post of yours for the weekly blog mela. The next one will be held here.
To keep yourself updated, just hop over to my blog and check out the Blog Mela section on my sidebar.
I’d like to nominate the follg site for its great humor…..
http://www.bloodybloggard.blogspot.com
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