Blog of Parag

Make parents more responsible

Yahoo! News - Court Bars Internet Pornography Law Enforcement

Thankfully, the US Supreme Court struck down another Draconian legislation, putting the responsibility of what children see in the hands of their parents. The state has no business in telling people what is safe for their children to view.

Hopefully, the Supreme Court will review and strike down the 'Defense of Decency' act that imposes fines and penalties on broadcasters for broadcasting what the FCC thinks is indecent.

Wife-killer

Educated or not, employed or not, software professional or not, living in India or not, a scumbag is a scumbag.

Didn't know that wife abuse for dowry existed within the Indian community in US. Following link tells a story of a greedy non-human (my brain can't come up with a word for him, please help) who first abused his wife for money during the five years of their marriage and finally hacked her to death. It is truly disgusting.

Husband Charged With Murdering Wife

First photos with Nikon D70

I am just amazed with this camera on the first day. It is so fast. There is no delay after pressing the button. The photo quality is absolutely excellent. Check out the 'sky' photo below. No manual settings, no filters, nothing. Just shot in the auto mode. The color of the sky is beautiful. Can see myself happy with a camera for a long time to come.

First photo. Of course, it is Ashwini.

Another one of Ashwini.

Sky

Pet peeve #2

My head starts to throb when people write "their" and mean "there" and vice versa. These same people also write "your" and "you're" in place of one another.

Father's Day

It was a great day for me. Must have done something good over the last year.

• V made my favorite alu-parathas and mango milk shake.


• Ashwini brought a cupcake from her daycare that all kids made for their fathers.


• I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of a UPS delivery man carrying this.

PHLOG: From the South Rim

http://www.parablog.com/phlog/archives/000625.html

Detroit Pistons win the NBA championship

Pistons are beating the crap out of Lakers. With 6 minutes left in the last quarter, they are leading by 25 points. Pistons will become the NBA champions after a gap of 14 years. I feel sorry for Karl Malone and Gary Payton who came to Lakers for the last chance to get the ring before retiring. They will have to retire without a ring afterall.

When Detroit won the Eastern conference championship, it was being said that they have won the rights to lose to Lakers. It was a general consensus that Lakers will win with big stars like Shaq, Kobe, Karl Malone and Gary Payton. I can only imagine the amount of gambling money that exchanged hands due to this unexpected result and some very happy risk-takers who chose Pistons over the Lakers.

Looking for Ashwini???

Ashwini has moved to a new password-protected website.

Send me an email at parag at parablog dot com to get the password.

Yahoo!mail expands quota to 100MB

Thanks to Google for raising the bar with 1GB Gmail, Yahoo launched its new version of web-based email program today with 100MB mailbox capacity. All current users are automatically upgraded.

The wonderful, free internet! Keeps growing and growing and growing....

Bollywood invades excellence in sports

What do Aamir Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Vivek Oberoi and Bipasha Basu have in common other than their pathetic displays in movie theaters around the world?

They all got to carry the Olympic torch, which represents excellence in sports, when it went through India for the first time 40 years.

What the hell do these bollywood idiots have to do with Olympics and sports? When will this obsession with filmstars end? I guess, never.

Read more here.

via pseudofreud.

Horrible tragedy

In the house next to us lives a typical American family: husband, wife, two daughters, a dog and a cat. Yesterday, they were struck by a horrible tragedy. It was one of the hottest days of this summer. Due to miscommunication, one of the daughters and her mom forgot to let their dog out of the car after they came home in the afternoon. The poor dog was left in the car for a couple of hours and died because of heat. Our neighbourhood is always so quiet, there probably wasn't anyone around to notice if the dog was struggling and barking inside the car.

I was playing with Ashwini in the yard when they found the dog in the car. She was with the family for years; almost their third child. The lady was devastated. She started crying so loudly that I thought her daughter or herself got hurt. I ran over to help and found out what had happened. It was just so sad. I still can't erase the picture of that dead dog in her arms.

My plans of getting a dog are postponed indefinitely. Should concentrate on taking care of Ashwini before thinking about taking on responsibility for another living being that would depend on me for its care and safety.

Two hands

This joke is very crude but funny. Consider yourself warned before you click on this following link...

Why do women and men have two hands?

   

Commensal organisms

This will be a shock to all germ-phobic clean-freaks.

Every healthy human being has about 150 different species of bacteria living in their gut. These bacteria can account for about 2% of body weight, i.e., 1.5 Kgs in an individual that weighs 70 Kgs.

Bottomline: We are all walking talking bags of bacteria.

Lawyerspeak

Ashcroft Refuses to Release '02 Memo (washingtonpost.com)

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft told Congress yesterday that he would not release a 2002 policy memo on the degree of pain and suffering legally permitted during enemy interrogations, but said he knows of no presidential order that would allow al Qaeda suspects to be tortured by U.S. personnel.

Heard some excerpts of the Ashcroft Senate Judiciary Committee appearance on NPR this morning. One of the Democratic senators asked Mr. Ashcroft if these memos in question were classified. His response was:

Some of the memos may be classified in some way under some circumstances

Wow! I need to learn to speak like that. But, wait! I am not a lawyer. If I give such an answer as a scientist, I would be fired in a split second.

Da Vinci Code

Finished reading 'Da Vinci Code' by Dan Brown yesterday. It is very gripping and fast paced. Enjoyed reading a thriller after a long time. Reading the disclaimer on the first page stating that all the references to artwork, secret organisations and rituals etc. are real, makes it hard to figure out where fiction stops and reality starts. This very fact makes it the engrossing best-seller that it has become.

I am not giving away anything from the story here, but one claim about the 'extra hand with knife' in Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' is definitely false. I saw the original fresco in Milan a couple of years ago. It is pretty hard to make any judgment if that hand with the knife belongs to the man next to it or not by looking at it from the distance that is allowed in the museum. The overall condition of the fresco is pretty bad because that whole building except this one wall was destroyed during WWII. I bought a book at the museum that has closeup photographs of different parts of the fresco and it clearly shows that the hand with the knife belongs to the man next to it.

Considering the controversial topic discussed in the book, there is no wonder that a slew of books was published during the last year as companions to the Da Vinci code or countering the claims of Da Vinci Code. Here is a short list...

• Da Vinci Code Decoded: The Truth Behind the New York Times #1 Bestseller;
  by Martin Lunn


• Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code; by Dan Burstein


• The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code: A Challenging Response to the Bestselling Novel; by Richard Abanes


• De-Coding Davinci: The Facts Behind the Fiction of the Da Vinci Code; by Amy Welborn
Posted by Parag at 05:34 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

MT Blacklist

Anyone who has a Movable Type blog and is annoyed with spam comments about porn sites, low rate mortgages and cheap drugs, should get a plug-in called, MT Blacklist. It is just wonderful. It easily removes the comments and adds those sites to its filter list to prevent future comments from the same source. I realised the value of this tool when I looked at the activity log of my blog and was amazed at the number of spam comments, MT-blacklist denied.

So, my advice to you dear friends: Don't blog without it.

New Photoblog

Announcing a new version of my Photoblog. Many of my posts contain photographs anyway. But, this blog will be exclusively photographs and nothing else.

Thanks to Rajesh for inspiration and many aspects of the design.

Bastards of Enron

Enron Traders' Calls Gloated About Cheating

Enron traders discussed manipulating the California power market in telephone calls in which they gloated about ripping off "those poor grandmothers" in the energy crisis in 2000-2001...

On the calls, traders discussed transmission congestion, stopping generators and overall market manipulation. They also kidded about political contributions, particularly to President Bush's campaign.

There is talk of Enron emerging from bankruptcy later this year. So they can start this looting and plundering all over again. I hope the cases against Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay will move forward and they are put behind bars to be raped for a long long time.

Deccan Queen turns 75

Deccan Queen has a special place in my heart. During my summer vacations in Lonavla, I used to get up in the morning to see the blue and cream srtiped Deccan Queen go by and again wait to watch it going in the opposite direction before eating dinner. It always used to be 'on time' which is not very common for most trains. Have travelled on it on numerous occassions and it used to be a moment of pride to tell my friends that I travelled on the Deccan Queen. It is definitely one of the best ways to travel between Mumbai and Pune.