The Return of the King

Be still my heart!! ... I just downloaded the official The Return Of the King trailer. And boy!!... does it look good or what!! Its awesome!!

I had goosebumps on my arms as I saw the trailer! I just can't wait for the movie to be released!!

Check it out here or here. [warning: 9 MB]

You could also check out the Frame by Frame view of the trailer here.

Women and business

Videocon MD Venugopal Dhoot brazenly declares that businesses can't be run by women. He said this on being asked about the future of his daughter Surabhi, who has passed her MBA with distinction from University of Wales.

"Our community does not allow that. So, she is back at home," he explains, adding "Anyway, businesses can't be run by women, especially in India. She can do professional managerial work from home if she wants but she will not come to the office," he says emphatically.

"Show me one woman who is running a business successfully," he challenges.

Such sexist attitude! And that too from a person who is about the enter Rajya Sabha, supported by Congress, a party headed by a woman, who, among other things, aims to run the country one day!!

And ohh... by the way... in a completely unrelated piece of news, for the first time ever, women on Forbes’ list of the 400 Richest People in America topped men in average net worth, with $2.8 billion vs $2.4 billion for men.

Featured on that list at number 224 is Meg Whitman who's the President and CEO (and has been since 1998) of eBay which is a $32 billion business today.

Any views on this, Mr. Dhoot?

Couldn't agree more!

Swapan Dasgupta, in his column in Rediff believes that India and Pakistan belong to different civilisations.

We love to believe that the kindness shown to a Pakistani child with a heart ailment will melt even the most hardened souls across the border. We love to believe that the overpowering strength of the hospitality we experience during casual visits to Lahore means that politics is the only hurdle to rapprochement. And we love to believe, as Rajiv Gandhi once put it, that the Taj Mahal is as much theirs as Mohenjodaro is ours.

The time for such romantic piffle is over. Actually, there was never any basis for it.

Exactly!!

Likewise it is too naive to think that cricket or any other socio-cultural exchange will thaw the frozen attitudes on both sides. Pakistan's proclaimed strategic objective is to bleed India through a thousand cuts. With this larger strategic intent in mind, Pakistan may shift tactics and postures, but it will never walk the path of peace with India. Any Pakistani government who tries to take this path will be hounded at home and branded traitors. I wonder why successive governments in India have ignored this simple fact.

For too long India has allowed its responses to be guided by the sanctimoniousness of a professional peace lobby. It is time we ignored these appeasers of jihad. Let the prime minister's pronouncement that India cannot negotiate with terrorists be the final word on Pakistan.

Amen!

Well said, Mr. Vajpayee...

"Just as the world did not negotiate with Al Qaeda or the Taliban, we shall not negotiate with terrorism."

Well said, Mr. Vajpayee!! The strongest words yet from an Indian head of state Government [thanks for pointing out the mistake, Ravi] on an international forum!

Now, Mr. Vajpayee, I only hope you don't try to eat your words by offering to talk to Pakistan on the issue of Jammu & Kashmir, in the near future.

The frontline state against terrorism...

Pakistan is a frontline state in the war against terrorism.

Osama Bin Laden is alive and well in Pakistan according to Musharraf

Fifteen students, including the brother of top Al-Qaeda operative, arrested from madrassahs in Pakistan, for their involvement in terrorist-related activities and links to the Jemaah Islamiyah network

Pakistan admits underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's presence in Karachi

Pakistan is a frontline state in the war against terrorism.

Boom-bastic crap...

With critics flaying the juvenile Boom, left, right and centre and even prompting Aditya Bhattacharya (son of veteran filmmaker, Basu Bhattacharya) to write an open letter to Kaizad Gustad... no wonder Kaizad seems to be in a hurry to claim that he's not a part of Bollywood.

The Big Fight

We're gonna have a debate in our office this evening. I'm involved in organizing the event. Two teams have made it to the finals after an interesting elimination round couple of days back. The topic is...

Do we need a management degree to be a good manager?

Let's hear your views! Go ahead... drop in your comments... :-)

US vetoes anti-Israel resolution

Well, I'm glad that US has used its veto power to halt a UN resolution which asked Israel to desist from exiling Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and to cease any threat to his safety.

Dilbert and IIT

Monday's (September 15, 2003) Dilbert comic strip pokes some fun at IITians, by making them seem like work maniacs who have inhuman abilities to slog and thus outpace their American counterparts.



It seems techies and the rest of the Indian community in the US have reacted very strongly to this portrayal of Indian software developers.

But I, frankly, don't see what the hue and cry is all about!!

The people who're protesting against this will only get painted as "in-duh-viduals" by Scott Adams! ;-)

[via Harry's Livejournal]

"Cry wolf"... or "Better safe than sorry!" ??

Was there really some specific intelligence information (about possible terrorist strikes in Mumbai) that the authorities in Mumbai received on the eve of the second 9-11 anniversary? or was Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal merely shooting off his mouth, as is his wont?!

We may never know for sure.

Earlier, Bhujbal had gone public with claims that he had received specific information that terrorists were about to strike key installations in Mumbai on 11^th September. As a result, there was an unprecedented level of high-alert in the city. The "key installations" in question were put under round the clock vigil by the policemen and people were tense.

Immediately after Bhujbal gave these statements, everyone from senior police offcials to people in the home ministry were up in arms and refuted the presence of any such intelligence information. Bhujbal's deputy, Rajendra Darda, even went to the extent of publicly contradicting Bhujbal by saying, "There is no threat in the wake of 9/11. There is no information either. But our police are always vigilant.". Even top police officials, past and present, criticized Bhujbal for shooting his mouth off in public.

9-11 passed without incident. There were no "incidents". Was it thanks to the police bandobast or was it due to the alert sounded by Bhujbal? Well, Bhujbal, not one to miss a trick, publicly declared that there were no untoward incidents because 'the terrorists changed their plan.'

By the way, one of the "key installations" in the list was supposed to be the famous Siddhivinayak Temple (which is right next to my house btw). Since early morning on 9-11, the police had cordoned off the access road to the temple and the traffic was diverted. No one was allowed to even park a vehicle on the cordoned-off stretch of road. Policemen were patrolling the area in numbers. They had set up sandbag-bunkers on all sides of the temple with arms and ammunition stacked for any eventuality. The whole area around my building resembled a war-zone. There was no way to approach the temple without going through at least one or two police-lines. It was an impressive show of might and resolve by the police.

The road is still cordoned off and the police presence is still very much evident around the temple. I dunno how long will the police disallow vehicles from plying along that important stretch of road.

Whoa!! Blogger bucks premium-services trend by eliminating its paid version!!

The creation of Blogger Pro, which cost subscribers a yearly fee of $35, came about as a result of financial necessity, Blogger co-founder Evan Williams wrote in an e-mail to subscribers. Now that Google owns the service, that need has passed.

"Pro subscribers helped keep us going as a struggling start-up, when servers and bandwidth were at an extreme premium," Williams wrote. "We wanted to keep basic Blogger free, but we needed to start charging in order to keep the lights on…Today, as you may know, Blogger's situation is much different. For one thing, we're part of Google. Google has lots of computers and bandwidth. And Google believes blogs are important and good for the Web."

Google said it would give Blogger Pro subscribers either a $24 Blogger sweatshirt or a prorated cash refund.

Just to make sure, I checked on Blogger website too. And yes!!... it IS true!!! :-)

In his column, 'The Parting Shot' in Mid-Day, Anil Thakraney writes about Media's 'Black Monday'. In it, he wonders about the media apathy as the terrible tragedy in Daman was largely ignored by a media dazzled by the high-profile terrorist bombings in Mumbai and the much-publicized elimination of Ghazi Baba, two events that occured on either side of the Daman tragedy.

This sort of a contradiction hugely benefits two parties: One, the terrorists, who ADORE the media for giving their ‘hard work’ so much attention. And two, the public servants responsible for the poor maintenance of the Daman bridge. They, too, must LOVE the media. For exactly the opposite reason.

Touché!

Time, surely, for some introspection by the media!!

If you want an example of putting one's foot in the mouth, look no further! It seems that the "freedom fighters" like the taste of their feet...

On saturday, after he was gunned down after a 11-hour long battle, the Jaish-e-Mohammad spokesman gave a statement that "Ghazi Baba is not dead", and that the Indian BSF's claim was "a bundle of lies".

But then on Sunday, some arrested JeM terrorists were shown his body and they identified the slain militant as Ghazi Baba.

And then finally, on Monday, BSF intercepted a radio broadcast by JeM which announced, in Pakistan, that "The beat of our hearts, the crown of our heads, our beloved commander Ghazi Baba and his deputy have left... May god accept their sacrifice."

Putting the foot in the mouth... JeM style!

Former Special Secretary of RAW (India's external intelligence agency), V Balachandran, asserts that 'Police intelligence in Mumbai is very poor'. He also goes on to say very damning things about the intelligence setup in the country and especially in Mumbai...

Those days, the Special Branch had a special wing called 'the watchers branch.' The watchers used to mingle with local people, shop owners, roadside vendors and taxi drivers. They were the eyes and ears of the police. They briefed senior intelligence officers about what was happening in the city. That was a credible intelligence-gathering network.

But sadly, the watchers branch was disbanded. Now all the useless officers and constables are appointed in the Special Branch. Now the posting in the intelligence wing is regarded as punishment.

This is pretty much what I was trying to say in my post, a few days back. Moreover, Balachandran also talks about why the brightest and the best in the police department no longer want to work in the intelligence department...

No police officer wants to work in the Special Branch now because there is no corruption there. You cannot make money out of the intelligence department. The temptations for working in an average police station are such that everybody wants to take up those posts, which would fetch them money.

I think we have systematically killed police intelligence in Mumbai and in other parts of the country. Unless we reorient and give emphasis to credible police intelligence system, similar bomb blasts would continue to hit Mumbai.

While it's true that policing a city like Mumbai is not an easy job and the gathering and analyzing intelligence in such a crowded and vast city is next to impossible, it still does not exonerate the politicians and police officials from the charge of breaking down one of the best internal intelligence setups in the world.

A welcome fallout of the Cola controversy is that the Govt. has issued draft norms, for beverages, in the form of a draft notification to amend the Prevention of Food Adulteration Rules, 1955.

Under the proposed amendments, the ministry of health and family welfare has suggested more stringent limits for the presence of pesticides, insecticides and heavy metals in all kinds of beverages.

While this tightening of limits is a welcome step, it still is hardly enough to check the presence of impurities in these beverages. One reason for that is the fact that it's just a set of rules that the Govt. is proposing to amend. These are merely suggestions for the industry to adhere to. They are not enforced in any way by the authorities. It is upto the beverage manufacturers to implement these rules of their own accord. The Govt. has merely raised the bar. It has not made it mandatory for the industry to clear the bar... leaving space for anybody to sneak beneath the bar.