Why English is good for us as a technical language

So if you have read about HTML, you know that a tag can have child tags and a parent tag. Children of children are descendants (recursively). Parent of parent is an ancestor (recursively again). A tag also has sibling tags. The children of the sibling of parent tag can at best be called a cousin.

Now think if you were going to be taught the same thing in Hindi.

HTML me tag hote hain. Har tag ka ek pita hota hai (Maata nahi hoti). Ek tag ke 0 ya 0 se adhik bachche tags ho sakte hain. Unhe ham putra tag kahenge (putri kyon nahi?). Ek tag ka sirf ek hi pita ho sakta hai. HTML tag ka koi pita nahi hota, isliye woh sarvochh poorvaj kahlata hai. Pita ka pita, yani pitamah tag bhi ho sakta hai. Agar pita ke pita ki shrinkhala banayi jaye to woh sab tag poorvaj kahlayenge. Usi tarah putra ke putra (pautra tag) aur agar unki shrinkala banayi jaaye to we sab vanshaj kahlayenge. Har tag ke bhai tag bhi hote hain (bahnein nahi hoti). Bhaiyon me kuch agraj honge (coming before) aur kuch anuj (coming later).

I think that all the books on HTML would become so funny if we had to read stuff like this.

We should be grateful that we have a foreign language in which we read all the technical stuff :D

Western double standards

Sri Lankan president had to cancel his UK trip since he may face arrest in UK as under the principle of universal jurisdiction, war crimes and crimes against humanity can be prosecuted in UK even if they were not committed in the country. The foreign minister of Sri Lanka has been advised by their British counter part that the current Sri Lankan government must demonstrate its unconditional commitment to democracy. I do not understand what right they have to judge other countries for their commitment to democracy. I wonder if the British will offer a similar treatment to a visiting current or former US president for war crimes committed in places like Iraq or Afghanistan.

Rights vs. Entitlements

Freedom of speech is a right. Freedom of choosing one's religion is a right. Information is a right. Freedom to pursue happiness is a right. Freedom to own property is a right. Food is an entitlement. Education is an entitlement. Work is an entitlement.

So what is the difference? Rights are freedoms from oppression by the state or by the society. Rights are based on the premise that all humans are born equal and the society and government cannot restrict the freedom of a person or discriminate between them based on race, gender, or religion. Entitlements are welfare measures entailing government handouts and are naturally constrained by budget. Rights are universal, entitlements are not.

Rights don't cost government a penny in principle. But government is responsible for protecting the rights of a citizen if any one else or any part of government machinery is infringing on it. This is part of the policing function of government. All citizens have same rights.

Entitlements however cost money. Government has to plan for welfare within its budgetary constraints. Welfare is mostly targeted towards the poor of the country. A rich person doesn't need government support for food or the education of his children. Its the poor of the people who cannot afford such things on their own who need government support for the same. Nevertheless food, education, work and infrastructure are important basic requirements for well being and successful living of the citizens of a state. Hence they are also called secondary rights. Still they should be planned very carefully. Too much of it can make people become complacent as well as lead to the bankruptcy of state. Communist states gave priority to entitlement over rights. This was a road to the servitude to the state and led to massive unrest in the society. Today very few of the communist states are left in the world. Democratic countries like Greece which prided too much on socialist entitlement to its people; are finding it very difficult to take care of their public debt now.

We should appreciate the difference between fundamental rights and secondary rights or entitlements. This will help us plan much better for the future of our country.

Reference:

Swaminomics, Times of India, August 29, 2010, Lets not confuse entitlements with rights

I disown CWG 2010

Sheila Dikshit says that if the rain doesn't stop then she will pray and she will ask the whole country to pray. I want to be clear that I am not going to pray for the gigantic mismanagement and the loot carried out by CWG 2010. I disown CWG 2010. I will not watch it either in TV or in person. I will not read about it in news papers. And I will not care if its failure leads to a so called severe blow to the pride of India. It is probably the biggest organized loot ever in India since its independence. It has destroyed CP and created a havoc all around Delhi. Nobody cares about actually meeting deadlines. It has put enormous tax burden on citizens of the country. I do not wish to have a sense of guilt for the failure of a set of people who have no sense of responsibility and who only care about filling their personal coffers.

Stockholm syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stockholm syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raavan movie is a depiction of Stockholm syndrome.

Corporal Punishment in Schools

The article on Wikipedia describes the current situation on application of corporal punishments in schools (caning or striking a student a given number of times) across the world.

Interestingly Russia and China banned it for decades since it is against the communist philosophy. Several studies have shown that corporal punishment is not as effective as other positive means of managing student behavior. At the moment a number of countries across the world have banned it.

Much of it was originated by the British in 19th and 20th century. They have themselves abolished corporal punishment in schools now; but a lot of developing countries in the English speaking world including our very own India are still stuck in a time warp. When a Soviet school principal visited a British school in 1960's, he was shocked to see the instances of caning. He said, caning is degrading to the student and even more to the staff administering it to the student.

I would say that caning is pretty much a form of violence. And I would quote Isaac Asimov here "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

I can now correlate why there is never a caning instance in all the Harry Potter novels. At most you see students being called for detention which is much more effective technique though it consumes extra time from both the student and the teacher. I am ignoring the methods used by Dolores Umbrige who was more of a vamp anyway.

On Pandavas and Kauravas

I wonder why there were 5 Pandavas. 2 of them were pretty useless and added pretty much no value to the story! As a matter of fact, out of the 99 brothers Duryodhana had, only 2 or 3 had any real contribution to the story. For the rest of them I guess the whole purpose of existence was to be slayed in the Mahabharata war by Bheema. Oh yeah, the other purpose was to demonstrate that Maharshi Ved Vyasa knew of so powerful test-tube baby generation techniques which are not even possible in our current times.