Wednesday, June 22, 2011

India revisits visionary Sanjay Gandhi's compulsory sterilization scheme

People from all walks of life in India today paid tribute to visionary Sanjay Gandhi, who was almost 40 years ahead of his time with his thinking. For the uninformed, Sanjay Gandhi was credited with the (in)famous, compulsory sterilization programme for men during the mid 70s.

Though severly criticised then, the programme, with a slight modification to suit current conditions, is being seriously considered by the Central and State governments, with the support of the opposition parties. The reason is the spate of rapes that have been reported in recent times, all across the country.

The change from the original programme, envisioned in is that instead of undergoing compulsory sterilization, men will have the choice to undergo either forced castration or forced penectomy. The motivation is to ensure either complete stoppage of testosterone production, or remove the organ necessary for committing the act.

The proposal was put forth by a committee comprising of members from the National Commission for Population, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and the National Commission for Women and will be tabled in parliament during the monsoon session. Hospitals have already launched special early bird offers ever since the news about the proposed law was made public.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Google image search

Google has a TinEye-esque search feature. Not sure if it will become a TinEye killer. I don't get how pictures of people are similar to pictures of Spongebob mushroom. :D

Friday, June 17, 2011

Riots? What riots?

Vancouver city witnessed riots post the Stanley Cup final match, in which the Vancouver Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins. But riots don't matter for some people.



Click on the image to see full version on CBC.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

India launches "internet commenting" course

The Ministry of Human Resources Development, Govt of India today announced the launch of a new course - Internet Commenting - designed to teach people to post comments and opinions on various Internet fora and websites.

"The course is a pre-requisite for completion of secondary school and must be refreshed once every 2 years. The first module in this course is 'understanding satire and sarcasm', literary constructs that appear to be lost to the general Indian public. The Center and all state Governments believe that in order to make a useful contribution to discussions and consequently to society, Indians need to know how to read tongue-in-cheek articles that poke at the issues plaguing us." stated Ms Vibha Puri Das, secretary of the Department of Education under the Ministry of Human Resources Development in a press conference yesterday.

She also observed that "Typically such a journalistic/contributory article/editorial is followed by hajjar, mostly abusive, moronic comments by those who fail to understand the article; making the commenter look like a nitwit. Comments posted by Indians are can be broadly classified as either being irrelevant, anti-author/website, or if all else fails, anti-Pakistan and are almost always, unintentionally hilarious. Comments that do not fit into any of these categories, which is extremely rare, are the ones that have some sense in them."

"Our society prides in the importance it gives to education and such comments go to the contrary. We can't blame commenter it if she didn't understand sarcasm so we decided to add this additional course to the curriculum." - Kapil Sibal, Minister of HRD added.

Saturday, June 04, 2011

Ramdev fast gains sponsors

After talks with the Government apparently failed, Baba Ramdev announced his fast against corruption and graft. A lot has been written and said about this fast, coming fast on the heels of Anna Hazare's recent "blackmail the government" attempt; allegations have been laid that the fast is politically motivated.

But, advertising gurus are most impressed with what they consider a complete sponsorship coup that Baba Ramdev pulled off. The fast has been sponsored by VLCC and Talwalkars, two companies providing personalised weight loss programmes, in addition to other fitness and beauty care services.

Dieticians from both companies said that a good fast helps clean the body. Spokespersons for both companies said that the fast was a great event for them to market their weight loss solutions. They also mentioned that the packaging of food items sold at the fast will be contain equal sized logos of both companies.

The two companies are commercial competitors and the fact that Baba Ramdev was able to get both to sponsor the fast, amicably, has left marketing gurus stumped. C.K. Prahlad stated at a media meet at the IIM-B yesterday that he is going to update his book with a new chapter discussing the same.

Friday, June 03, 2011

Vancouver

AARRGGHH!!



Got posted on BoingBoing yesterday and seems to have gone viral, for the wrong reasons. Could well give competition to Rebecca Black.