Top Ten Can-Indians Issues

Ever since I became an Indian born  Canadian the following are some of the issues I have had to deal with…..

1) Festivals that I used to take for granted in India are now obscure concepts (Diwali, Holi, Dushera etc.)

2) Having deep conversations with my 4 year old on why she is brown and not white.

3) Having to sit through parties and listen to recently returned Can-Indians praise on and on about the growth in India and then be told by the same people on a one to one basis on how much India actually sucks (electricity disruptions, water disruptions, corruption etc.)

4) Having to see my child give me a quizzical look when she is speaking to her grandparents in India.

5) Having to hear a pathetic drugged white pan handler give me a scolding on how I am taking his job away and how I have to shut up because that person just may have a weapon on him.

6) Having to deal with only 3 weeks holiday instead of 5 weeks.

7) Having to explain to visitors to Canada why Tim Horton’s coffee, for it’s price, is the best in the world.

8 ) Having to shovel snow.

9) Having to go to a job where I know I can do much more for the company than my boss ever can. But since I really don’t have requisite “Canadian experience”, I have to take what I can.

10) Having to explain to jerks over and over again to why Cricket is an exciting sport with lots of action in it. Of course, right after such a conversation, the jerks go into a detailed analysis of the latest golf tournament!! Go figure.

Wow!!

This definitely qualifies as the site of the day!! Let the applet load and have fun. From the mission statement :

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the “feeling” expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved.

The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 – 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine’s Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on.

“Harvesting human emotions”. Isn’t that an awesome idea? I think I am going to spend some time on this site and I hope to come across some fabulous blog!!

Matrix?

Ok, how is this different from the premise in the movie Matrix where the human body is basically a battery?

Scientists are working on a new type of nanogenerator that could draw the necessary energy from flowing blood in the human body, by using the beating heart and pulsating blood vessels.

Zhong Lin Wang and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of technology hope to be able to incorporate the new nanogenerator into biosensors, environmental monitoring devices and even personal electronics that will require no fuel source, internal or external.

It will produce its own electricity while immersed in biological fluids or other liquids, using ultrasonic waves as the energy source. So far, they achieved the nanogenerator effect in an array of nanowires that could produce as much as 4 watts/cubic centimeter.

Boy, can`t wait for the religious nuts to cry FOUL.

I have no idea why Hollywood and popular culture continues to harbour suspicion of humans trying to better our bodies with new technologies. There will come a time when a person’s damaged brain will be supplemented by an artificial brain. Will that person be considered less than any other human being? So why are we always afraid of exploring the realms of science (E.g. Stem Cell Research) when the benefits to human society are huge.

Ten of the best April Fool’s Day hoaxes

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This is really funny. Where is the art of pranks…..oh right, it exists, on Youtube.com. Here are a couple of my favourites.

— In 1977, British newspaper The Guardian published a seven-page supplement for the 10th anniversary of San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semicolon-shaped islands. A series of articles described the geography and culture of the two main islands, named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse.

— Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth’s gravity. Moore told listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment of the planetary alignment, they would experience a floating sensation. Hundreds of people called in to report feeling the sensation.

Ho…Hmmm

A rant…..

Another racial incident on TV.

The popular British reality show “Celebrity Big Brother” has had plenty of disputes in the past, but none of them have sparked more of a debate outside the walls of the house than the past week’s events. Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty has been seen as a victim of racism in the house after verbal attacks from her house mates.

And that set the ball rolling. Politicians, media, mothers, fathers, children etc. all got involved on how the show is bringing out the racist in the contestants. The Indian TV news channels had nothing else but the row on Big Brother.

But my question is, what’s new?

Racism exists in all societies. I have faced it here in the “multi-culturistic” society of Toronto. My non-white friends have faced it in Toronto and other parts of Canada and USA.

Everyone is a closet racist.

Heck, no one is more racist than an Indian!! Talk to one north Indian about south Indians and you will hear the words “darkies (in Hindi, of course) “at least 10 times in one minute. Ask an Indian about Africans and you will be shocked and surprised to hear the words “Nigger” from the chocolate folks of the “divine” country.

I think there is nothing wrong in showing the true nature of human beings via TV. I abhor reality TV but if a social issue is on display, hell, let it play out cause that’s what we are….stupid, low brow humans. To have the media jump up and down and salivate on a complete non-issue like this is stupid and degrading to their professions (as if they could be “degraded” further!!). This is exactly what an Indian politician and other personalities need. They will say :

“Those westerners have no culture.”

“These are the western values. We should teach them about values.”

In the meantime in India people are dying of hunger, children are being forced in prostitution, wives are being burnt for lack of dowry, poverty is rampant and spreading. No one gives a shit about that news. Our rich celebrity is being bullied in a show (that paid her a retainer) so let us all rally to her defense.

And, oh the 3 year old girl eating garbage in front of our house, hell, at least she is eating. Switch on the TV.

I think this article has it absolutely right.

Claims that Indian actress Shilpa Shetty was bullied and subjected to racist taunts by other contestants made headlines around the world.

More than 40,000 people complained to British media watchdog Ofcom, questions were asked in the House of Commons and protests were held in India.

“This was in danger of being the most boring BB that we’d had in many years – maybe ever,” Lygo told Broadcast magazine. “We were thinking ‘Oh dear – what can we do?’

“And then suddenly … this argument erupted which was taken on by the media and erupted into this extraordinary story.”
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While one minister accused Channel 4 of passing off racism as entertainment, Mr Lygo said it was “fantastic” the show had sparked a debate on racism in Britain.

“Would I prefer it had been raised in the beautifully controlled perfect way of (current affairs program) Dispatches? Yes – but it’s not going to cause this sort of debate,” he said.

Lack Of News?

This has made news 24/7 for the last few days in the US

What? No more missing white chicks?

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The families of two boys kidnapped four years apart and found in the same suburban St. Louis apartment said Saturday their rescue was the end of a nightmare.

The boys’ parents clung to them at two news conferences Saturday and focused on their joy at the startling outcome, saying little about the 41-year-old man charged in the case or how the teens were treated.

Man, I swear I am going to hell. Good for the family, though. I would kill myself or the kidnapper if something like this happened to me.

Only In USA

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A 27-year-old mother of three has died of water intoxication after competing in a Sacramento radio station contest where people attempted to drink as much water as they could without peeing.

Jennifer Strange was found dead in her suburban Rancho Cordova home shortly after participating in the “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest, held by KDND 107.9 on Friday.

Strange had told friends she was hoping to win the prize, a Nintendo Wii video game, for her kids.

It’s not known how much water she consumed but contestants started out drinking 240 millilitres of water every 15 minutes before graduating to larger amounts.

Why, oh why are we so fucking materialistic? Having said that, a free Wii is quite appealing!!

Razzle Dazzle – Indian Style

So, a movie from Bollywood was screened for the first time in North America.

Two of Indian cinema’s biggest stars took the red carpet in Toronto on Thursday night, thrilling South Asian film fans and sparking many to dub the city Bollywood West.
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Organizers billed Thursday evening’s premiere as the first time a Bollywood film has ever debuted outside India.
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Both the producers of Guru and Toronto officials have cited the city’s large South Asian community and culture of movie aficionados as reasons for the premiere.

Trying to bring some “Indian” culture to the west, eh? Well, the true introduction to “Indian culture” was :

Indian megastars Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai arrived several hours late for the gala premiere of their new film Guru. But the estimated 1,200 fans didn’t seem to mind, devotedly standing and screaming for the two actors outside Toronto’s Elgin Theatre.

(highlighted by me)

See, Indians as a rule never value your time. The higher you are in the social strata, the more ignorant you become to the common person’s value. And that true of Bollywood stars, politicians, bureaucrats etc. etc. etc.