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A Rambler's Ravings  So I haven't posted in ages and ages and this is just a quick post. I'll post a better post soon, I promise, but for today... ...buy a book. Or more specifically, buy my father's book, India Untouched, today. We're trying to drive up the single day sales of the book for the book into the top ten, if possible, within the next few hours. We're in the 500s as of now, so we're doing well. Even if you have the book, buy another copy! Just one! Buy it for a friend, buy it for family, buy it for yourself--whatever. All the profits go to charity, so you're doing something good for the new year. Here is the link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/India-Untouched-F Thanks, Ajit So a new search engine has made its debut, with a charitable twist. When you use http://goodsearch.com/, which is powered by Yahoo, the search engine automatically makes a contribution to the charity of your choice. It seems to function much in the same way Google(and I'm guessing other search engines perform), which is to say that when you click on a sponsor link after making a search, the engine gets paid and a percentage of this goes to the charity. I've started using it and I hope you folks will use it as well and designate The George Foundation as your charity of choice. While I admit I prefer Google's search engine, it takes no effort to use GoodSearch first, click on a sponsor link and if I can't find what I'm looking for, bump over to Google. But as of now, GoodSearch will be my primary search engine and Google my secondary choice, if I need more options. To set it up, go to the GoodSearch homepage. Under the normal section where you'd type in key words for your search is a second section which says "I'm Supporting". Type in "The George Foundation" and click Verify. It'll then give you a list of various foundations--scroll down to The George Foundation Inc.(Boonton, NJ) and click on it. Then you're set and you don't have to do anything else. Subsequently, each time you use this search engine and select any paid advertisements shown on the page, the merchant makes a contribution to us. Take a minute and set this up. It costs you nothing. And you'd be doing a great service to us. Here is a press release on it. I think at the time they were using Google, but for whatever reason, switched over to Yahoo to power their engine: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050914/nyw0 I haven't really read Esquire before; I'd assumed it was another fairly vacant, non-controversial magazine. But this article really surprised me. Not something I expected from the mainstream, especially in these God-fearing days. It was good to see it in such a widely distributed magazine, though I do wonder what the fallout was for the author of it. I see it as a call to arms to get religion out of our freakin' society! I miss the days when the ultra-religious just hung around waiting for the Second Coming(nevermind, they've been predicting the Second Coming for two thousand years...you'd think they'd figure it out by now, but every generation is *sure* Jesus is just around the corner) and weren't terribly involved in politics. Now, they are sure Jesus is just about to pop out of the toster, but for some reason, they also need to get involved in politics. I say go back to your caves and we'll let you know when Jesus is here. Trust me. I'll call you! http://templeofpolemic.proboards42.c P.S.: I *loved* the cowboy dinosaurs. I wish I'd been around when they were roaming the Earth. Yeeh-haw! Finally a movie that didn't let me down. I had been anticipating the movie since I first saw the previews(which were some of the best previews I've seen in ages for a movie), but I had been fearing that "Jarhead" would let me down as so many movies have recently. Thankfully, I wasn't disappointed at all. It's was an incredible, intense and thought-provoking film that is...perhaps a little hard to describe. At least at the moment. I just got back from it, so I'm still digesting it. Which brings me to the reason I'm posting(beyond prompting all of you to go see it). The two major criticisms I've seen by film critics of this movie is that "there is too little war in this war movie" and "we don't quite get the point/moral of the story". Um. Doh? I am increasingly bewildered as to where these critics come from--movie or otherwise(don't get me started on book critics). "Jarhead" isn't a war movie, not in the traditional sense. Yes, it does depict a portion of Desert Storm, but not the heat of the battle. Why does it have to? Don't we have enough war movies that depicts the heat of the moment? I personally liked seeing something different--the boredom of the soldiers, the disintegration of morale, the confusion about the changing state of things, etc. As for the second point, gah! Why does everything have to have a freakin' easily spelled out point or moral? God. It's really gotten on my nerves. What's wrong with a mixed message? What's wrong with just taking a moment in life and showing it and letting the viewers get a ton of mixed messages out of it or no message at all? "Jarhead" kept getting compared to "Three Kings" by critics--compared unfavorably, but between the two films, "Jarhead" is vastly superior to the overstylized, Hollywood moral-message billboard that is "Three Kings". No, "Three Kings" wasn't bad--I thought it was okay, but "Jarhead" was much more fascinating. No, "Jarhead" isn't chock-full of action. If you are looking for a "Blackhawk Down" type of film, this isn't it. There aren't any clear messages, no easy answers. It's just about one individual's experience in the Marines as a sniper and his time in Desert Storm. But despite the lack of fast paced action, it was certainly not slow(unless your ADD is so bad you can't sit through a film without things blowing up every three seconds); I was drawn in from the opening voice-over to the end credits. And by the way, it isn't "an anti-American" film either. Or "anti-Marine". I've seen so many meat-head posts on movie boards in the last couple of days by people who haven't read the book or seen the film--especially from ex-Marines who have somehow been brainwashed into thinking it shows the Marines poorly. Gah. Even if it did(which it doesn't), so what? Are the Marines exempt from criticism? Are we so gone that we cannot allow people to consider the other side of an argument, to show something in a negative light from time to time? To debate and discuss an issue? Go and see "Jarhead". Decide for yourself. Does anyone reading this use full-spectrum light boxes to combat SAD? If they do(or even if you don't, but you have verifiable information on it), could you recommend one? I'm looking at a couple of options, but it is hard to tell what is good and what isn't. Added to the difficulty is other stuff, like "Bluewave"(http://www.apollolight.com/ I'm always mildly fascinated by how non-Indians visiting India view the country. My own view of India is tempered by that of being an American-born Indian who has traveled to India quite frequently since childhood and with many ties to the country; it's obvious my thoughts on India will be different from those born and brought up there. I've heard all sorts of opinions on India by non-Indians, but I think this one pretty much epitomizes the stereotypical idiotic touristy non-Indian point of view(okay, some of his captions weren't so idiotic, but the ones that were idiotic were *really* idiotic). The photos that accompany the captions, on the other hand, aren't half bad and there are some shots of my parent's home state of Kerala: http://www.stewellington.com/India/ I think the thing that bothers me the most is the constant fetishizing, exoticizing of India. It's a different country, a different culture, but please, it's not automatically some uber-mystical land. I should probably be writing an update, but I'm in lazy mode for the moment, so instead I decided I'd share a rather hilarious comic and website. For the easily offended, especially easily offended Christians, this is *not* your site. You have been warned. For atheists and other like minded souls, I think you'll get a kick out of this. I liked Normal Bob's comparison of Jesus Christ to Santa Claus. It's something I've joked about with John quite a bit during my atheist rants--"God is just Santa Claus for adults. The good get presents, the bad go to hell." One of the things I like about the comic strip is that Normal Bob seems to have a pretty decent understanding of the Bible, which he uses to his own advantage in the strip. The hate and fan mail on his site is also pretty amusing and interesting. I think the most disturbing thing about the hate mail is that a number of them are anti-semitic and anti-muslim. Then again, it really isn't much of a surprise. When defending your own faith, it's important to bash the other major religions and faiths out there. The Jews are a great scapegoat and in recent times, when in doubt, bash the Muslims. I'm sure that's what Jesus would have wanted. Drum roll please! The comic itself: http://www.normalbobsmith.com/satanssal Normal Bob's homepage(with fun games, hate mail, fan mail and the special people): http://www.normalbobsmith.com/ All in all, it's hours worth of entertainment. Some parts are better than others, but it's morbidly fascinating nonetheless. And yes, I guess I've become more outspokenly atheist in recent days. Enough so that I've been having pretty heated debates about God and the impossibility of his existence(by human understanding and interpretation) with my relatives. My uncle Viju and I got into a fiesty discussion a few weeks back in one of my relative's homes. We dragged in several of my other relatives, which was fun. Most of them are at least somewhat Christian, but aren't bothered by my atheism. In fact, I think my father, who is agnostic, was most concerned about my sudden turn towards an outspoken stance on God; he thought I'd start offending my relatives. But my position is that if I've got to hear about God 24/7 in every day society, every day society can hear about my atheism. I have basically been locked in my apartment for the last week. A combination of rapid change in temperature plus unrelenting rain has gotten me sick and as the rains have basically not stopped for a week now, it's been a bitch and a half to get out of my apartment. It isn't that the rainfall is hard--it's just won't freakin' stop! I hate it. If I wanted weather like this, I would have moved to Seattle. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdes For those of you who bashed the Democrats, the liberals and others such as Kanye West for speaking out against Bush and the federal government during Katrina, here is why it was important. And here is why the failure to really fight about the issues during that time has cost people: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/11/polit And talking about the differences between the classes in America, we have some of the largest class disparities in the history of the nation. The magazine n+1 talks about this in its latest issue: In 1947, figured in constant 2001 dollars, the difference between the income of those in the twentieth percentile of the American population and those in the eightieth percentile was a little over $21,000. In 2001, the difference was over $70,000. With the new tax cuts under Bush post-2001, the differences between the two groups has most certainly increased even further. As for education, 3 percent of the students at the top 146 most "selective colleges" are from the lowest socioeconomic quarter of American society; 74 percent come from the highest. These are very real issues and we should never shy away from debate on them, *especially* during periods of time when the population is most likely to pay attention. I've been watching a bit of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. I enjoy it primarily for Vincent D'Onofrio--he makes the show. However, when I was watching the show, I didn't realize I had already seen him in a bunch of movies. It blew my mind that he was Private Gomer Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, that he was Edgar the Insect Alien in Men In Black, and Pooh-Bear in the Salton Sea, among a vast array of other roles. Wow, the man can really transform himself from role to role. That's my definiton of acting; not realizing who the actor is in any given role. According to IMDB, his nickname is "The Human Chameleon". I guess it fits well. |
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