I found this collection of religious symbols on some site.
I wonder what the United Methodist Church symbol means. And the Community of Christ symbol seems straight out of His Dark Materials. United Church of Religious Science’s symbol seems to be the Star Trek logo upside down and I don’t even want to know the explanation behind the symbol of the United Moravian Church.
Indian society is messed up. I have always said this and have seen many people disagreeing with me. They claim that our society has good values but these people also think that arranged marriage is good so their opinion isn’t worth crap. If everyone just admitted there was a serious problem and tried to improve things it wouldn’t be so bad. However Indians continue to delude themselves with terms such as ‘good culture’ and ‘upcoming superpower’.
We claim to have ‘culture’ and ‘values’ but we also compete with Muslim countries in treating women like shit. I saw these videos on this blog post and decided to put them up here.
This is the kind of country we live in. Can you blame me for wanting to get the hell out of here?
Well they didn’t call me up for the radio show but that’s okay since all the things I wanted to discuss were brought up anyway. One guy who works for TATA Motors was talking about how Singapore made Maruthi 800 cars cost six times more and used the extra money to develop covered walkway and public transport systems. Now this is the perfect solution.
I’m listening to the show now.
Quote from an American/European guy living in Chennai:
“An apocalyptic vision of traffic choked Europe has already happened in Chennai… There are no pavements anymore…” Hahahaha!
Some arrogant guy called Philip suggested that we import second hand cars from Europe since they are of better quality and safer. You think we want to buy your trash? Why don’t you bastards import the Nano? Or make a cheap car and export it to us?
TATA Presents
It looks like the TATA Nano (the name of TATA’s one lakh car) is making news all over the world. Some of the news websites I was reading declare that this is the world’s cheapest car (really?) and that’s not to be taken lightly.
Some photos of the car:
It doesn’t look like the horribly dated boxy looking Maruthi 800 and that alone gets the Nano points for design. However the wheels are really small and make it look odd. Anyway, design is the last thing people would be looking for in the cheapest car available.
Some technical details here. More pictures including interiors here.
BBC Takes An Interest
Someone from the BBC must have read my post about this since I was emailed by Peter Van Dyk inviting me to participate in Have Your Say, a radio show on BBC World Service from 1.30 PM to 00.30 AM tonight. I replied to the email telling him that I would like to participate and Peter gave me details about the show. I can tell the presenter my views when invited to do so and listen to the entire show. I’ve also been linked to on their blog here. This is possibly better than the time I was mentioned in the Adyar Times after writing to them about the traffic problems in Adyar.
The Issues
People all over the world are taking about the environmental impacts of this car. I see a pattern in the comments. People from developed countries are issuing warnings about the environmental issues we face and the Indians divided between complaining about traffic issues and welcoming the car. I completely agree with this comment by Vikram:
OMG India develops a $2500 car and it is an environment disaster; millions of gas guzzling SUV’s are sold every year in the west and that is kosher? Fix your environment record first before accusing someone else.
I’ve written down some of the things I am going to say on the show:
I’m not blaming TATA for making a cheap car. It’s not their fault. They are simply catering to the market. If they didn’t, some other company would. The side effects of more cars on the road is what we should be worrying about instead of trying to blame TATA. It is not their fault that cities are overpopulated and it is not their fault that we lack infrastructure to support even the existing vehicular traffic.
What would you have TATA do? Artificially inflate the price of this car to make it less accessible? Sell the cars only to families in lower income segments? Stop the production and sale of the car altogether?
Families of four traveling on a single motorbike is a common sight in our country. (It looks like TATA used this idea in their presentation at the auto show.) Would you deny them the safety and comfort of a car? It’s not as if the 1 lakh car pollutes any more than the other cars. (It meets all safety and emission guidelines in India.) The exact problem we are addressing here is end result of many more cars on Indian roads as a side effect of the introduction of a cheap car. We will have the same problem if India’s economy suddenly surged ahead so that many more people are able to afford the currently available cars. So why don’t we try to suppress the sale of all cars instead of targeting the cheapest one? In fact, the 1 lakh car is cheaper to produce and has better mileage so shouldn’t we all be switching to this car? It would save fuel throughout the country with its superior mileage.
You can listen to Have Your Say live here and it will be available for download for a week from today here.
I don’t pay taxes yet (not employed, you see) and I already hate the concept of giving the Government a part of my hard earned money. Especially since they go a piss poor job of almost everything and there’s a good chance that I’m just making some politician richer instead of providing my share of funds to help ourselves.
Instead of giving all my tax money to the Government and trusting them to use it correctly (good joke, I know) we should be able to selectively allocate money to different Government departments. Let us set 30% of tax money to be paid to the Government general pool to use as they see fit. The remaining 70% can be paid directly to departments such as Health, Roads, Information & Technology depending on people’s interests. To avoid accumulation of excess money some sort of ceiling can be fixed for each department so that any excess money goes to the general pool.
Now these departments cannot transfer money to the general pool without holding press conferences and taking out full page ads in the newspaper explaining the reasons and the amount to be transferred so that the people will know what’s going on.
Such a system has great potential for showing people where the money is going and give them some say in how it is spent. If the roads in the city suck, then some people would pay slightly more to improve roads that particular year. Not everyone is interested in military might so the Government will have to make do with the amount from the general pool.
If you want more people to participate in decision making and work with the Government, polls are not enough. People must be given control over how the pay taxes.
Now there are some holes in this system and I was going to point them out but why don’t you have a go at it first?
George sent me a text message asking if this was true. I checked Digg front page immediately and it’s true.
News article at the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7161590.stm
That scumbag Musharraf will lose even more credibility in that messed up country. He might even become as unpopular as George Bush!
Oh wow. Read this:
The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.
“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.
A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.
They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.
Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.
The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free — provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.
The treaties signed with the United States are merely “worthless words on worthless paper,” the Lakota freedom activists say on their website.
The treaties have been “repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life,” the reborn freedom movement says.
Nice work. I wish the damn Americans and everyone else would stop calling them Indians. They are Native Americans, the people who were there before the Europeans arrived and took over. People who were born in (or accquired citizenship of) India are called Indians.
What’s with the Indians and their obsession with the U.S.A?
The Russians are perfectly willing to help us out a bit with the nuclear stuff and other military technology. They’ve never screwed us in the past. They don’t attach all kinds of conditions to their deals. They don’t expect India to become their sidekick.
The Russians might also benefit from being friendly to the Indians, I agree, but you cannot deny that their policy towards us is not aimed at controlling us.
Another interesting map I found. Can you figure out what the map indicates?
The numbers on the left indicate age of people. This should be easy to figure out from the fact that India alone is shaded a different colour.
Bored of ORK and QCT? Welcome to my quiz.
The following maps shows the legality of something in various countries of the world. What is it?
The winner gets the satisfaction of being right.
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