…in public lavatories is affected by invasions of personal space…

Uh?

Psychologists Middlemist, Knowles & Matter (1976) designed a study to test the hypothesis that personal space invasions produce arousal…How did they do it? By sending a poor bloke to a public lavatory to record by sound (???) the rate at which men piss…Still don’t believe me? Take a look at an excerpt of their study [Link]…

What did the study reveal? That men preferred not to stand next to each other while urinating, and the closer men got to each other, the longer it took for them to begin the process and the shorter the persistence of their stream…

Raise your hands if you are dumbfounded by this piece of information…

I think it’s time to shrink the number of shrinks in society…Greed makes them invent theories to mess with our heads and pockets, and so we are better off without them…Actually, given the kind of field studies they do, I think they are stark raving mad themselves…Take a look at the father of psychoanalysis, neurotic and cocaine user Sigmund Freud’s theory that all men are motivated in all things by a secret desire to boink their mothers…Me thinks he conducted this study to justify his own perversion just like Middlemist, Knowles & Matter…

Now, I’m no shrink but given the theories and studies that are in existence today, dare I suggest that many men who find it difficult to urinate when there are other men around do so because they feel guilty about wanting to have sex with their mothers?

Just asking…

Should internet commentators use their real names?

Do people hide behind pseudonyms in order to abuse or does it give them more freedom to express their thoughts?

MUMBAI: Experimental and realistic filmmaker, Madhur Bhandarkar announced the launch of his new slice-of-life directorial venture Exposed on Wednesday evening at Taj Land’s End. His latest movie will expose the underbelly and overbelly of the IPL league. Konkana Sen Sharma will play a ‘babe in the woods’ journalist looking for PG digs in the big city and Salman Khan will play the star ‘big hitter’ batsman with a weird problem – he misinterprets the term ‘big hitter’ and always comes to the crease bare chested and starts hitting on the nubile white cheerleaders at the first opportunity. As a result, he spends the majority of the movie in jail, recovering from a Katrina Kaif kick in the b***s and getting tortured in the nude by the police. Model-turned-actor Arjun Rampal will play a ‘stylish’ batman who only poses and pouts at the crease in designer clothes and sunglasses while getting hit left, right, and centre by Shoaib Akhtar bouncers.

Synopsis:

Brought up in a small north Indian town by conservative parents, Meghna (Konkana Sen Sharma) always dreamt of making it big in the ‘city of lights’. She is nothing, if not ambitious and dreams of becoming the next Barkha Dutt. She arrives in Mumbai and lands a job as a sports journalist with a premier news channel whilst desperately searching for a place to stay. She attends cricket matches, follows IPL officials and cricket crazy politicians to sleazy dance bars, reads their tweets and stalks their mistresses thus getting a peek into the insidious intentions of tycoons, cricket administrators and politicians. Disillusioned, Meghna decides to expose the truth even if it means she’ll never be the next Barkha Dutt.

In telling the fairly ungripping, cynical and clichéd story of the innocent Meghna’s baptism-by-blood into the murky milieu of Indian sports and politics, Bhandarkar hopes to show how an ordinary citizen needs to be part of the democratic system to rescue it from unmitigated criminalization.

Like all his other movies, pathos and gloom will sit heavily on your shoulders throughout Exposed. Expect the usual dose of extra-marital sex, gay relationships, drugs and sleaze.

Genre:

Idealist who wants to achieve something big, gets dream job, discovers how cruel and corrupt the world is, goes through transformation, alienates family, friends, and colleagues and then becomes a hero by doing the right thing. Done to death.

Script:

Chetan Bhagat

[Please feel free to add to the cast and plot]

Alternate Plot:

Mallika Sherawat plays an NRI girl who comes to Bollywood with dreams of becoming a star but instead gets exploited and ends up becoming a cheerleader for the Mumbai Indians. The movie depicts her journey through the murky world of Bollywood and cricket and how she becomes the ‘bone’ of contention between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds which results in DLF Slapgate 2.

The Government of India is claiming that mandatory biometric identity cards will prevent and reduce the likelihood of ideologically inspired acts of terrorism such as those perpetuated on 26th November 2008 in Mumbai…I personally think they will not as ID cards are no protection against events such as those witnessed on that disastrous day…Do you think if biometric cards had been in existence in 2008, Kasab & Co. wouldn’t have been able to land in Mumbai and create the havoc they did?

Say a person from another country decides to commit an act of ideologically inspired destruction within India and enters the country on a valid visa obtained from the Indian embassy in his country after showing genuine or false papers (it is very hard for embassies to verify documents and identities especially in countries that don’t have a biometric database )… Once inside India he proceeds to gather all the items needed to create the explosive device he needs and then makes his way to his target venue…While entering his chosen place, he’ll produce whatever ID the Indian government has given him on entry to India…Once inside, he detonates the bomb he has made with predictable results… If he is a suicide bomber then he and his identity card will be reduced to smithereens and if he is not a suicide bomber but has found a way to create the explosion from a safe distance, then by the time the police get to the bomb site, he’ll be on his way out of the country by showing his passport at the exit point…

Now lets look at home grown terrorism…Suppose an Indian citizen decides for whatever reason to commit an act of violence against his countrymen…Although he has a biometric ID card, he is still free to commit the act of destruction he wants to…The ID card will not stop him…At best, it will help the police to identify him after the event and if he is a suicide bomber, then the card will not be helpful at all in its charred form…

The government claims that ID cards will allow security agencies to track people and question suspects before they create havoc…Is it possible to track 1.1 billion people on a regular basis? It will work only if the suspects are known to security agencies and if they leave a trail…One must remember that terrorists are masters of their game and experts at staying below the radar and even with biometric ID cards, their activities may remain untraceable…The cards may help catch a few suspects and thwart some attacks but I don’t think it’ll reduce them by much…The thing with ideological terrorists is that they always find a way…Compulsory ID cards in Spain did not stop the Madrid train bombers and compulsory ID cards in Germany did not stop the planning of the September 11 attacks by Mohammed Atta and his associates in Hamburg…

…and so need the government to tell me what my name, sex, address, marital status, and identification marks are on a little plastic card (UID card)…Not only that, I also need them to tell me what my fingerprints and I look like on the same little card…Look at it this way, I am 37 years old and if I don’t know who I am by now, I obviously don’t care and therefore I’m better off not knowing…And anyway, why would I want the government to tell me all about myself? My parents already did that when I was young and I trust them more than a faceless bureaucrat sitting in a stinky office …Yes, I really don’t trust those government types…Years ago, when the EC first introduced voter cards, I was told that I was older than my mother and my name was Shivaji and not Sraboney…This confused me so much that I’m still in therapy for it…

“Just think of the advantages,” says Dr. Manmohan Singh, “if some idiot at a party asks you who you are, all you have to do is flash your UID card…You wouldn’t have to waste your breath introducing yourself…And if the information is wrong, well, all the better for you…”

Since I don’t live in a police state (as yet), I think I have the right to retain control of the information that goes on the UID card…Name, DOB, address are all OK but why would I want strangers to know my credit rating and body measurements? I don’t want an asinine telemarketer calling me up and saying, “Hey, we got your details from your UID and we have the right underwear to fit your body type…”

Dr. Manmohan Singh and Mr. Nandan Nilekani, please tell me why you need to know where I eat and and shop? If I shop at Shopper’s Stop, will that make me a terrorist or a fraud? What are your motives really?

So say four out of five adults of the 27,000 interviewed in 26 countries by the BBC…[Link]

[Link]

Personally, I was dumbfounded to read that the BBC even carried out a survey of this kind…But then it and its government have their own agenda…I just think the topic itself is rather stupid and arrogant…

I wonder what kind of loaded questions were asked to bring about these results especially in third world countries like Nigeria and Ghana?

Questions like this perhaps: “Listen, you idiot…We are a politically correct organization and we need politically correct answers…If you don’t answer correctly, we’ll send you off to Gitmo and you’ll never be heard of again…So, is internet access a fundamental right?”

Oops! I made a mistake…Maybe the questions weren’t loaded but the sample was…27,000 educated middle class people around the world were asked if internet access should be a fundamental right…So, that’s a majority of the affluent middle class then, not the majority of the roughly 7 billion people who live on this planet most of whom live below the poverty line…

As far as I see it, internet access is not a fundamental right and cannot be placed next to free speech and liberty…Although free speech is a fundamental right and the internet helps publish that speech, I feel the dissemination of ideas need not be a basic human right…If access to internet is a basic human right, then shouldn’t  access to a telephone, TV, newspaper and radio also be? Why have these things been forgotten?

None of this matters unless governments enforce the right to food, shelter and education…Just think about it, what would a poor illiterate malnourished person living in a drought ridden village in Maharashtra do with internet access?

Calling internet access a fundamental right diminishes other more important rights needed for survival…

FYI:

• France’s highest court, the Constitutional Council, has ruled that the internet is a fundamental right…It was ruling on legislation against pirates stealing copyrighted music, videos etc. from the net… This is what the Council had to say: ‘The internet is a fundamental human right that cannot be taken away by anything other than a court of law, only when guilt has been established there.’ [Link]
• In October 2009, Finland became the first country to pass a law that makes broadband access a legal right for Finnish citizens…When the law goes into effect in July 2010, every person in the country, which has a population of around 5.3 million, will have the legal right to a one-megabit broadband connection…By 2015, this legal right will extend to 100 MB broadband connection…[Link]

Ramblingsbybones sent Aparna on Special Assignment for an exclusive interview with Bakwaas Toy, the privileged champion of the underprivileged, the lazy thinker who picks points from Naom Chomsky’s writings and the goddess of big lies. I must warn you, this post is not for the peace loving.

Aparna: Ms. Toy, thank you for offering me your valuable time. I must say it is mighty generous of you to take time from your latest cause to speak to me about the Maoist problem. I’m sure you have read about the Maoist massacre of 75 CRPF jawans in Dantewala district of Chattisgarh. What are your views on the methods used by them to further their cause?

Ms.Toy : This war between the Maoists and the government is the most cowardly wars ever fought in history, a war in which the government of India is using military force to disarm poor defenceless people..

Aparna: But the Maoists are using violence too.

Ms. Toy: Let me finish. The Maoists are a poor marginalized people who are trying to resist the usurping of their land and resources by the rich and powerful. They’ve realized that dharnas and hunger strikes don’t work and so more and more of them are reaching for their guns. Will the violence escalate? Yes it will if the ‘growth rate’ and the Sensex are going to be the only barometers the government uses to measure progress and the well-being of people.

Aparna: So, you condone violence?

Ms. Toy: No I do no such thing. But the question is, is violence immoral? Morality is an elusive business, as changeable as the weather. Non-violent movements have knocked at the door of every democratic institution in India for decades, and have been spurned and humiliated. Look at the the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Irom Sharmila has been on a hunger strike years. What has been the result? We are in the era of sponsored dharnas and NGOs the sarkar is comfortable with. We are in a different time and place now. When people decide to take up violence because every other option has ended in despair, should we condemn them? Does anyone believe that if the people of Nandigram had held a dharna, the West Bengal government would have backed down?

Aparna: But the Maoists haven’t tried using peaceful democratic methods, have they?

Ms. Toy: Will you let me finish what I have to say? It’s sad that hundreds of innocent people are getting killed but they’re as much the victims of government policy as anybody else. For the Maoist guerrillas, the police and CRPF jawans they have killed were the armed personnel of the Indian State, the hands-on perpetrators of repression, torture, custodial killings, false encounters. They were not innocent people – if such a thing exists – by any stretch of imagination.

Aparna: So, if a poor farmer in Tamil Nadu kills his rich oppressive landlord out of frustration, would his action be justified?

Ms. Toy: No, absolutely not. He has no right to take another person’s life. You must understand that the situations are different. The Maoists are an organization fighting for justice.  To equate a resistance movement fighting against enormous injustice with the government to a personal vendetta is absurd. They are heroes, not demons. The farmer is a plain old murderer and should be hanged.

Aparna: I still don’t understand the difference. Murder is murder in my book. If you feel so much for the poor, weren’t you and your husband served a notice by a court in Hoshangabad district in M.P. for encroaching on tribesman Vijay Singh Desh’s land?

Ms. Toy: That’s got nothing to do with the topic we are discussing.

Aparna: So, you basically stole land from the same person you claim to represent. Is that ethical? Do you get paid by the movements you represent?

Ms. Toy: Wh-what?

Aparna: In one of articles, you’ve described Maoists as ‘Gandhians with guns‘. Could you please elaborate?

Ms. Toy: Well, in my book they are more Gandhian than Gandhi was. Maoists are poor and so waste nothing. They have no houses to call homes and roam the jungle looking for their next prey. They lead very simple lives. Did you know that they even recycle bullets and body parts? They are Gandhian environmentalists and should have been conferred the Nobel Peace Prize instead of that capitalist Al Gore.

Aparna: Ms. Toy, the leader of the Maoists had asked you to be the negotiator, the mediator between them and the Indian government. Why did you refuse?

Ms. Toy: Frankly, I don’t think I’m right for the job because I don’t have detailed knowledge of the situation or the language required to be a mediator. I mean, my knowledge of the Maoist problem is romantic at best and I use flowery language when I write so being a mediator was not an option.

Aparna: Thank you again Ms.Toy for sparing time for us.

(Disclaimer: I have used information from interviews and articles and have also added my two bits)