Looks like my site has been crawled by Spambots – some of the most evil creatures to inhabit the online world. If you have left your email ids in your comments I’m afraid they are already part of online marketers’ databases, and soon you will receive mails from online pharmacies, debt consolidation agencies, etc.

Sorry about that. I have put in spam protection now (There is a “-NOPAM- ” before all mail ids, which should offer some kind of protection) But I fear it is closing the barn door.

(No I haven’t sold your addresses to make a quick buck)

(Incidentally, as a general advice, you should always spam-protect your email addresses when you put it where it will be visible on a web-site, like ravikiran@-NOSPAM-ravikiran.com. A human will know that he should remove the -NOSPAM- tag. A robot won’t )

(Incidentally, #2, that is also why you don’t see my email address anywhere on the site. Not because I am a recluse who doesn’t like human contact, but because I don’t care for robotic contact)

from Praful Bidwai
It also contains this obligatory lie:
“It is the Hindutva ideologues who founded the Two-Nation Theory.”
Wrong. It was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan who first propounded the two-nation theory – in the late 19th century, and the demand for Pakistan was made formall? by the Muslim League in 1937.

The TTD trust showed an annual income of Rs 532 crore last year. Of this, Rs 188 crore came from hundi collections (the money directly contributed by devotees). (Economic Times Thanks to the Prairie Dog for ferreting it out)

Assuming that this guy is paying interest at the current market rate of say 10%, He must have taken a loan of 5320 crores for his marriage. Of course this debt was incurred in the ancient past, when interest rates must have been higher, so probably the actual principal is lower.

The article doesn’t mention Dharmasthala for some reason. I am sure this too will be among the top ten or so.

Try this demonstration of ESP.
Here are some explanations of why it works.

It has been announced.
We have committed ourselves to No-first-use. I think it is a bad idea. If you’ve ever been an elder brother/sister, you will know why. If you develop a reputation for maturity and rational behaviour, you’ll be the one expected to make concessions every time there is a crisis, because the other side is so childish and immature that it is impossible to reason with it.
We shouldn’t rule out any kind of behaviour, because that increases our predictability and restricts the number of chips on the table when we are bargaining.

Raelians claim birth of second cloned baby
This is turning out to be more and more like a hoax. They are also going back on their commitment to have their claim scientifically tested.

Ashwini supports the anti-conversion ordinance.

If you take a look the Act itself, it clearly proposes an imprisonment and fine for those who ‘force’ or ‘induce’ conversions only. Fair enough I say. This way only a person who is truly interested in the new faith will convert. Conversion was not meant to be a numbers game anyway.

Freedom of religion isn’t just the freedom to practice the religion you were born into. It is the freedom to practice any religion of your choice, including the freedom not to practice any religion. It is not for the Government to dictate which religion people should follow, or that conversion should happen only for “spiritual” reasons. Should the Government ban praying to God for fulfillment of material desires? If not, why should it ban the actual fulfillment of those desires?

I personally prefer an easygoing religion like Hinduism over other religions which say that there is only one God and that all others are false. But I don’t support using Government power to force people to follow my beliefs.

Please welcome Ashwin to the blogging community!

Swami wants to know what I think of this article by Swaminathan Aiyar. It fears that Narendra Modi is India’s future Prime Minister. I don’t share Aiyar’s fears. Why? Because of this:

I have no doubt that the temple attacks greatly aided Modi’s victory in Gujarat, just as the Pakistani attack on Kargil ensured Vajpayee’s victory in the general election of 1999. In India, the quality of governance is so indifferent that incumbent governments tend to be voted out. But when a major security threat arises, when the state seems under attack by foreign forces, the incumbent is suddenly in a strong position to rally support provided it sends out an appropriately jingoistic message. The BJP is fully capable of this. The Congress is not. The Marxists are not.

There is one thing wrong with the logic: Kargil. Even winning the Kargil war did not hand a comfortable victory to BJP. What are the chances that an increase in terrorist strikes will move a sufficient number of Indians to vote for it? Gujarat was supposed to be an “experiment”, but if it was they used the wrong test data. Jingoism will appeal to the hardcore BJP voter – there are a lot of them in Gujarat. But the hardcore BJP voter will anyway vote for the BJP. If he is very very pissed off, he will probably stay at home. But he will never vote for the Congress. BJP’s problem is that there aren’t sufficient numbers of such voters. People are concerned about terrorism, but not everyone is concerned to the same extent and when the crunch comes, this concern jostles for space with other issues.

Narendra Modi is useful to the BJP – because his rhetoric ensures that the Hardcore BJP Voter won’t stay at home – but he won’t become the PM.

To all those who answered my survey.
A special thanks to the one who “was here”

I particularly like the name Mango man (Aam aadmi , got it? ) It reminds me of my younger days when I used to inflict such punishments(got this?) on others.

Speaking of words
Does she mean poseurs or posers?