gre SHAMBOLLIC: May 2008 gk

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Dr Binayak Sen

It's not officially a crime to put in a word for Naxalites, but it appears all you need is a bit of prominence in which case a sympathetic word/act will find you ambushed into jail. Ignorance of law is not a valid claim for defense in court; so even if we can forgive the untenable expectation of awareness of all daft legal developments, CAN THE PUBLIC KNOW WHAT THE STAND ON treating Ns as humans IS? If there isn't one, who should be held for pre-emptive imprisonments? The government and Left is so spectacularly self-absorbed, dishing out Padma Bushbags to metal-chewing Mittals and dyspepsic Noyis, they should really look up from their orgy and see what their wilful oversight is telling the world. Tell me that the A-team NDA boys of Wharon, Harvard, MIT don't read the Economist. Or maybe Mukti Morcha's Shaheed Hospital doesn't rock their radar like Mount Sinai. They say, justice delayed is justice denied - i'd say: injustice prolonged = bloody crime
posted by Finny Forever at 8:56 AM 2 comments

Renaissance woman؟

posted by Finny Forever at 7:57 AM 0 comments

Thursday, May 29, 2008

How to undermine karma

The wise man built his house on rock, dumb man on sand parable was the product of a system that didn't know better than to sustain elitism and discourage invention. What if a poor fucker had an inheritance of only sandy land? Be sure that today, it isn't only low income houses in Ejjipura that are willing to fall. Sure every second sundry one storey construction even in tenements are using reinforced steel bars filched or borrowed, but I'm not sure the quality of land on which they intend to stand is given much thought even in more prestigious commissions. Whether it's water logged is about the only issue. Pumps are got from somewhere and the water bed for the locality is drained out. That's another issue altogether and the point is: the dumb fart who was left with sandy land can either follow Laurie Baker's advice and keep that land for a beach frond shack nothing more, or he can try flicking a couple of helical piers and anchors directly from some Razack of the Prestige Group who is I think getting away too easily with fucking up roads with construction material while he lives in a gated community. Ya – so the sandman should consider this. And some heavyduty drills.
posted by Finny Forever at 8:19 AM 2 comments

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Thachom Poyil Rajeevan

Most writers (mostly the kind who go about describing themselves 'writer') perform as miserably as their prodiguous input/output. Then there are those that crush you to abject humility in the sound of what theyve done. T P Rajeevan I heard once in a decrepit book shop reading out his poem translated from Malayalam, and I could not handle it. It's been 5 years and I do not remember the poem exactly but I wish to point out that most of his work, it was self-published - none of the starry eyed plopshit or a face in femina. Try out
When glasses look back.
posted by Finny Forever at 10:55 PM 0 comments

Thursday, May 15, 2008

VK Krishna Menon

Of all those blue-eyed babes in that Independence Mooment Club, there is one who makes my blood jump*: VK Krishna Menon. Although born into what passed for privelege (though nothing is certain in Kerala), his story suggests the thrum of someone with the hunger of an underdog, strangely. He never had his meals on time and ran on tea. You probably remember him for the marathon UN thing? A gripping orator, enviable conversationalist and not surprisingly a nifty networker, this is someone I would want to spy in his element.
Did you know he co-founded Penguin Books? And Pelican.
He has been described as 'the most disliked person in India' (which says a lot about the TIME editorial line and a lot about him). I really would like to know who constituted TIME's survey sample. really some rags.
posted by Finny Forever at 3:52 PM 1 comments

Thursday, May 08, 2008

So i spend on the cheapest sl in the market that comes without hdds, optical drives and worst still for all sluts for convenience - without windows. Yes, it comes with linux (xandros) and you'll have to pay 3K extra if you want the familiarity of your jealous cross-eyed old wife, windows. then the nervy part, I needed an usb hdd.'Seagate snubs Linux'; and what about Lacie. For psychological confort I returned the Seagate for a Lacie 120G (Seagate makes too much money anyway; the Barton Centre guys even made a refund of the difference). And it wasn't all plug and play. You've got to mount that fat(32) from console. And I had to hunt for all this. And figuring out mighty clever things like my hdd was identified as sdc1 and not sda1(as given in most quick examples) by rummaging through output of the dmesg command. So what did it in the end was: mount -t auto dev/sdc1 home/usb after mkdiring /home/usb. The best part is I don't need to mount and unmount everytime, the loading and unloading happens. I hear this compatibility crap isnt going to happen with the dvd drive. And for the connectivity bit that got me walking in the sun for 2 days to speak to various bums in tata and reliance (no options support linux), I figure my best solution is what is still being called breakthrough technology - dove (anangram). I don't want to give everything away. But i will soon.O, and if you find yourself in the same situation, here are the links that saw me through:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/mandriva-30/mount-an-external-ntfs-usb-hard-disk-201441/
http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/cltc/cltc_bb-01.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/mount-external-usb-2.0-hard-disk-with-ntfs-74312/
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=875&p=3
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=12602
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=105296
*Note to uber: My post on tehelka next. as soon as my eeep is set free for my post is sitting in it - amassing 2 pages in that time; it might be a short story*
posted by Finny Forever at 6:48 PM 3 comments

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave. - Brancusi
posted by Finny Forever at 10:31 PM 0 comments

Vindhiya

With a blurb photo like that, I'd want to pick up this book. The reviews snatched my interest, 'Cupid's Alarms' and 'Warmth in his eyes'. Regret I cannot read Tamil but the brotherly translation is supposed to be good. O and Vindhiya was her plume name, her actual: India Devi.
posted by Finny Forever at 9:15 AM 0 comments