Tuesday, March 27, 2007
T Rajendar (TR)'s movie Veerasamy
Awesome fun! the best part is that TR actually thinks he's funny...wow...Thanks to the tamil cultural association, a bunch of us got to watch this movie...his dialogues are world famous, and his general great humor is evident throughout the movie...though no one had a clue what was the story....some weird stuff about his daughter running away with his sworn enemy's son, whereas our hero , TR , is himself in love with his servant-maid... Lots of corpulant dancing, weird brylcreem-ed hair-don'ts and allround fun...a must watch for every tamilian out there!
Sunday, March 18, 2007
My all time favorite!
Enable download plugins in your browser, and reload this page, in case you have'nt already. You should see a song playing on top of this page.
Also, if interested, look this up :
Uyirin Uyire Live Mix
Its a score remix.
Cheers, and enjoy the rest of spring.
Also, if interested, look this up :
Uyirin Uyire Live Mix
Its a score remix.
Cheers, and enjoy the rest of spring.
Reservation in India : The real source of brain-drain
For those not in the know, the recent announcements from the Ministry of
HRD,India have re-instated the provisions of the Mandal Commission
recommendations of 1980 of reserving 27% of all seats in institutes of
higher education being centrally funded for OBC's. In effect, this
alongwith the quota already administered for SC's and ST's ricochets
the quota to a staggering 49.5 %
This act will come into being in institutions such as Delhi
University, IIT's, IIM's and other prominent institutes on which India
prides itself. To create reservations for 49.% of the total seats
completely undermines every notion of the so called "equality" it
seeks to bring about.
Wikipedia tells me the following:
Affirmative action, by the way, is followed in the USA, particularly for Black and Hispanic minorities. In India, on the other hand, the whole system is lop-sided against the 'un-reserved' people...
Woefully, reservation was introduced to counter generations of partiality and prejudice adjudged to be due to the caste-system being in vogue, and, instead persecutes people of the un-reserved classes, which still account for 30-50% of the masses.
Under this pathetic system, the 'general quota' positions, are filled according to merit, and the people of the 'reserved classes' under those allocations, do not account towards the reserved vacancies.
Following is a view from an middle-class student from a high school in Chennai:
Nice to see school kids knowing and acknowledging such things.
I, for one, felt an instant sense of alienation, due to extenuating differences in how my classmates and I, whom I had grown up with, were segregated, and differentially 'admitted' into institutions, based on accommodation into respective quotas (In case you are wondering, I fell into the general quota sometime back, which was filled up first, and hence, the consequent cribbing ;-) ).
I felt, personally, that there was no role, that I should play, to accede to this system further, and decided, that further education was only possible at a place there was no such prejudice on where you were born into. Sure, I could afford traveling abroad to study, and sure, my parent's were'nt the poorest of the poor, but it shames me to see, other very smart people, being left in the dirt, simply because, they were'nt of the right class. One of my cousins, for example, cleared well over 99 percentile on both engineering and medical entrance exams after high school, and still could not get into the top three medical colleges in the state, simply because he was'nt of the right birth.
Super-smart, ( or super-rich) people do not feel this pinch, among the un-reserved classes, but the poor, and insufficiently educated lot, are certainly decimated by the system. People like me, who could afford to get out of the system, do so... And considering the opportunities vis-a-vis money and potential elsewhere, why is it then at all surprising, that there is so much brain drain?
Something must be done to rectify the situation, before the politicians in India accuse the smart people of bailing out.
HRD,India have re-instated the provisions of the Mandal Commission
recommendations of 1980 of reserving 27% of all seats in institutes of
higher education being centrally funded for OBC's. In effect, this
alongwith the quota already administered for SC's and ST's ricochets
the quota to a staggering 49.5 %
This act will come into being in institutions such as Delhi
University, IIT's, IIM's and other prominent institutes on which India
prides itself. To create reservations for 49.% of the total seats
completely undermines every notion of the so called "equality" it
seeks to bring about.
Wikipedia tells me the following:
Reservation is a phenomenon unique to India and is different from affirmative action which is practiced in many other countries. The main difference between the two is that in affirmative action the amount of concessions to be made in order to increase representation in an underrepresented group is at the discretion of individual organizations, whereas the reservation system in India is based on statutory quota that must be met.
Affirmative action, by the way, is followed in the USA, particularly for Black and Hispanic minorities. In India, on the other hand, the whole system is lop-sided against the 'un-reserved' people...
Woefully, reservation was introduced to counter generations of partiality and prejudice adjudged to be due to the caste-system being in vogue, and, instead persecutes people of the un-reserved classes, which still account for 30-50% of the masses.
Under this pathetic system, the 'general quota' positions, are filled according to merit, and the people of the 'reserved classes' under those allocations, do not account towards the reserved vacancies.
Following is a view from an middle-class student from a high school in Chennai:
The concept of reservations in India has not worked for 50 years, and this guideline too is a more populist measure aimed at the "aam aadmi's" vote, while cutting away from the real reasons that foster an ever increasing urban-rural divide. Instead of focusing on increased infrastructure creation, strengthening the rural school systems and quality of education, creating trained manpower, cutting corruption and so on, the administration has instead played the reservation card yet again, screwing a sizeable section of the population.
Nice to see school kids knowing and acknowledging such things.
I, for one, felt an instant sense of alienation, due to extenuating differences in how my classmates and I, whom I had grown up with, were segregated, and differentially 'admitted' into institutions, based on accommodation into respective quotas (In case you are wondering, I fell into the general quota sometime back, which was filled up first, and hence, the consequent cribbing ;-) ).
I felt, personally, that there was no role, that I should play, to accede to this system further, and decided, that further education was only possible at a place there was no such prejudice on where you were born into. Sure, I could afford traveling abroad to study, and sure, my parent's were'nt the poorest of the poor, but it shames me to see, other very smart people, being left in the dirt, simply because, they were'nt of the right class. One of my cousins, for example, cleared well over 99 percentile on both engineering and medical entrance exams after high school, and still could not get into the top three medical colleges in the state, simply because he was'nt of the right birth.
Super-smart, ( or super-rich) people do not feel this pinch, among the un-reserved classes, but the poor, and insufficiently educated lot, are certainly decimated by the system. People like me, who could afford to get out of the system, do so... And considering the opportunities vis-a-vis money and potential elsewhere, why is it then at all surprising, that there is so much brain drain?
Something must be done to rectify the situation, before the politicians in India accuse the smart people of bailing out.
India V Bangladesh, WC '07
India won!! Not!
For the first time in history, I feel like giving up on cricket...Losing, is all too common for India, but losing to B'desh, and that too in such a wimpy fashion, deserves a blog entry, nay, a whack-in-the-butt...The high and mighty attitude Team India carries is all too evident...They lost to Zimbabwe similarly in the 1999 World Cup, sealing their fate then ( though Zim were a better team then, and that result had a probability of say 20% ).
There seems to be a deep-rooted mentality amongst general cricket-watchers and cricketers alike to over-rate or under-rate India, based on current performance...Think of it this way, of the 30-odd matches India played against B'desh, India never lost...Probability finally caught up with it...lol.
For the first time in history, I feel like giving up on cricket...Losing, is all too common for India, but losing to B'desh, and that too in such a wimpy fashion, deserves a blog entry, nay, a whack-in-the-butt...The high and mighty attitude Team India carries is all too evident...They lost to Zimbabwe similarly in the 1999 World Cup, sealing their fate then ( though Zim were a better team then, and that result had a probability of say 20% ).
There seems to be a deep-rooted mentality amongst general cricket-watchers and cricketers alike to over-rate or under-rate India, based on current performance...Think of it this way, of the 30-odd matches India played against B'desh, India never lost...Probability finally caught up with it...lol.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Totally unremarkable spring break
Hi,
After much deliberation, me and a bunch of friends decided to go someplace. Well, in our rather extreme stupor, we decided to head to Dallas. Almost immediately, thanks mainly to Google, we discovered that there was practically nothing to see for a tourist at Dallas. But considering group politics and our total lethargy in planning anything else we settled for Dallas.
An early morning ( at about 1PM ) trip to Enterprise gave us a car, and the trip there was rather easy. We stayed at the DaysInn Plano, and went the next day to the Dallas Arboretum. That gave us a rather neat view of Dallas downtown, with its picturesque highrises and so on. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for seeing about a million flowers, all of whose genetic classification I have forgotten by now.
A rather uneventful trip to the Natural Science Exhibits ensued at Fairpark. Saw some really weird dead bodies enbalmed, preserved, and internal organs dyed and displayed in totally unorthodox positions. The term 'rigor mortis' kept popping into my head, as for some reason, the relative positions of the different 'specimens' was rather strange. We also saw a bunch of other things there, but nothing remarkable. Apparently one can donate one's body to this rather irreverant exhibition, though I have no clue why anyone would do that.
Sure, there were a number of other things to do, but we decided not to do them, for inexplicable reasons. Our drive back was far more eventful and lively, thanks to the torrential rainfall that accompanied us all the way from Waco(enroute) to Austin.
After much deliberation, me and a bunch of friends decided to go someplace. Well, in our rather extreme stupor, we decided to head to Dallas. Almost immediately, thanks mainly to Google, we discovered that there was practically nothing to see for a tourist at Dallas. But considering group politics and our total lethargy in planning anything else we settled for Dallas.
An early morning ( at about 1PM ) trip to Enterprise gave us a car, and the trip there was rather easy. We stayed at the DaysInn Plano, and went the next day to the Dallas Arboretum. That gave us a rather neat view of Dallas downtown, with its picturesque highrises and so on. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for seeing about a million flowers, all of whose genetic classification I have forgotten by now.
A rather uneventful trip to the Natural Science Exhibits ensued at Fairpark. Saw some really weird dead bodies enbalmed, preserved, and internal organs dyed and displayed in totally unorthodox positions. The term 'rigor mortis' kept popping into my head, as for some reason, the relative positions of the different 'specimens' was rather strange. We also saw a bunch of other things there, but nothing remarkable. Apparently one can donate one's body to this rather irreverant exhibition, though I have no clue why anyone would do that.
Sure, there were a number of other things to do, but we decided not to do them, for inexplicable reasons. Our drive back was far more eventful and lively, thanks to the torrential rainfall that accompanied us all the way from Waco(enroute) to Austin.
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