signifies a usually brief state of excitement and mental confusion often accompanied by hallucinations. It involves sudden and severe mental or neurological changes. All the views expressed here have to be read keeping in view this state of me.
The blogging community has lost a long standing soldier. She was a 108-year-old Australian woman named Olive Riley, popularly hailed as the world's "oldest blogger". It is reported that she passed away peacefully last Saturday July 12th ’08. She made her last and final post on June 26th ’08. Her death has got due coverage from all quarters including a full page article on BBC News.
Olive came from Australia and was born in 1899 (whoa, this really is a long time back). If you’d come to think of it, you’d realize that she might be among the very few who’d have witnessed the two world wars. What’s even more surprising is that she blogged at an age when people can’t even think rationally, let alone write. She published two blogs, viz. www.allaboutolive.com.au and http://worldsoldestblogger.blogspot.com. In a statement made by her great grandson Darren Stone, he said that the blog was "mind-blowing to her".
She will be mourned by several hundred internet fans apart from her relations.
I will not dwell into what the ‘Teach India’ initiative is all about, but all that I’d say is that it is a social initiative which brings together children in need and anyone willing to help. You can read all about it right here and here. All I’ll write about is how this initiative of the ‘Times of India’ is seeking to change the very perception of people.
The only thing that I’ll say is that ‘Teach India’ was started in the first week of July ’08 through a campaign launched by the ‘Times of India (TOI)’. Since then, several hundred Indians have decided to be a part of this ‘Teach India’ initiative.
What surprised everyone is the fact that Indians have come forward in droves and registered on the ‘Teach India’ website to go ahead and be a part of this innovative initiative. The sheer number of people who have responded to this initiative is mind-numbing.
There is yet another, equally surprising revelation that emerged from this campaign. This surprise has to do with the group into which most of the responders fall. The greater percentage of the people who have registered for this campaign fall in the following category:
1.Young
2.Upwardly Mobile
3.Hard – working
4.Working Professionals
5.Self – employed Professionals
All these people have ‘surprisingly’ committed to spend ‘two hours’ of their already at ‘premium time’ on the weekends for ‘3 months initially’ for this initiative.
This comes as a great surprise to one and all. More so as this comes at a time when the ‘moral brigades’ across India are propagating the belief that it is the ‘young’ and ‘restless’ Indians who are spoiling the culture of our country by mindlessly aping the west. How very ‘wrong’ they were. Not only have these so called ‘young and restless’ people (myself included) taken up to the task of shouldering the responsibility of the down-trodden/lesser privileged but have also taught a moral lesson too many to these microphone brandishing demagogues.
This initiative is changing/affecting, of the many opinions, the following significantly:
1.The world about Indian youth;
2.Indian youth about itself;
3.Indian Demagogues about Indian Youth
There is a great post on ‘Teach India’ initiative by the revered columnist and journalist Ms. Bachi Karkaria in her weekly column ‘Erratica’. The heading reads as ‘Sign up for the 'Teach Neta' campaign’. It is most humorous as well as enlightening. You can read the same here.
It was yesterday that I laid my eyes on this piece of information and needless to say that I was most elated.
The source of this information is none other than the ‘S60 Blog’. The guys at the S60 Blog are putting the beta version to test on Nokia N82 and Nokia E90.
What better news could have come the way of all symbian users but to see their favorite desktop browser sitting tight and pretty on their mobile device as well. I sincerely hope that it would hold up against ‘Opera mobile browser’ which needless to say has had quite a head start.
This project has been codenamed ‘Joey’. It is an experiment by the great people at ‘Mozilla’. They seek to allow the most needed/critical information to appear on your phone as quickly as possible with minimum data download.
Kudos guys and all the very best for your effort!!
Blogging is cool, Right? Well, the answer to this question would depend on which geography you are at.
I came across this article that I found very disturbing. It talked about Iranian government’s intent to ‘award’ death penalty for bloogers who ‘disturb the mental security of the society’.
Some excerpts:
“On Wednesday, Iranian members of parliament voted to discuss a draft bill that seeks to “toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society.” The text of the bill would add, “establishing websites and weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,” to the list of crimes punishable by death.
In recent years, some Iranian bloggers have been sent to jail and many have had their sites filtered. If the Iranian parliament approves this draft bill, bloggers fear they could be legally executed as criminals. No one has defined what it means to “disturb mental security in society”.
Such discussion concerning blogs has not been unique to Iran. It shows that many authorities do not only wish to filter blogs, but also to eliminate bloggers!”
Human rights groups have accused Iran of making excessive use of the death penalty but Teheran insists it is an effective deterrent that is carried out only after an exhaustive judicial process. So they now propose this system for bringing about death penalty for blogging.
All this is wishful thinking as this only serves to increase the curiosity of the learned ear. He’ll find alternate ways. But, even then the very thought of an action like this brings bile to my ears. It is an act of curbing freedom of thought and expression.
