Light bulb jokes redux

http://bucolicplague.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/light-bulb-jokes-redux/

Spreading anti-BJP canards is so much fun

Rediff joins the party against the Party.

Pilibhit is the town in Uttar Pradesh at the center of all the controversy surrounding Varun Gandhi and his communal [sic] speech.

Rediff reports, quoting a "prominent Samajwadi Party - turned - Congress leader, who has earned much credibility with the local farmers on account of his commitment and dedication to their cause."

'Pilibhit has no history of violence'

Here is the Wikipedia entry for Religious riots in Pilibhit

Only reinforces popular belief that the mainstream media is a Congress-Communist mouthpiece.

Sleep-inducing did you say?

Here's a sleep-inducing article on Cricinfo about Sleep-inducing run-fests and exciting droughts . I was yawning like crazy while reading that article. Now that's a delicious irony.
(But hey, what would be even more ironic is if someone found this post sleep-inducing. )

But seriously, I'd rather watch that sleep-inducing cricket than read that article. Immensely boring.

Ravi Shastri fails Turing Test

In an unprecedented event, cricket commentator Ravi Shastri has become the first ever human to fail (a modified version of) the Turing Test. This indicates that while some extremely intelligent machines can (and do) exhibit human-like behaviour, the reverse is also possible i.e an extremely dull-headed human being can behave like a machine.

In an remote experiment conducted by a research group at Columbia University, Ravi Shastri was subjected to a modified Turing Test. The experiment involved respondents listening to cricket commentary on matches right from when 1995 (when Shastri first started commentating), to the current India-New Zealand series. 99.74% of respondents asserted that they were "absolutely sure" that the commentary was a computer-generated sound clip and not a human commentator. Of the remaining respondents, 0.25% said that they were able to "guess" that it was a human, but could not be absolutely certain. The rest of the respondents, said that they "knew it was their favourite Ravi Shastri" and even tried to slip in a few words of praise on the feedback form. These repondents were classified as retarded. After filtering out these useless data, the research group chose to publish its findings in what is now being hailed as a pathbreaking paper.

The research was funded by Channel Nine of Australia and co-funded by Shastri's former employers ESPN-Star. "We chose Ravi Shastri for this experiment because it required a subject with incredibly low levels of cranial matter", said a spokesperson. Other contenders were Arun Lal and Rameez Raja. "But Shastri won hands down as the subject of choice", said a beaming member of the research group. Ravi Shastri is now being contacted by a research group focussing on voice production from computers. A representative said, "As an extremely dull human being producing repetitive commentary of the highest quality, Mr. Shastri's services would be invaluable to us. As computer scientists focussing on developing computer systems simulating verbal production, we are intrigued at his ability to produce non-stop cliches and catch-phrases with such low intelligence levels".

When contacted by news agencies, Ravi Shastri issued this written statement:

"I just get the feeling that this is just what the doctor ordered. This will do my confidence a world of good. Make no mistake, I'm a tall man and I can hit the ball like a tracer bullet and the fielder can chase it till the ball wins the race, but this achievement will do me no harm whatsoever - it doesn't matter how they come as long as they come. For now I can be rest assured that my post-commentary career will take the aerial route."

(Related side note: This written statement also failed the aforementioned Turing Test)

Raghuvamsa Sudha

This song makes me so happy. It makes want to jump around and dance! It energizes me and fills me with bliss at the same time. Simply sensational - Raghuvamsa Sudha in Kadana Kutuhala ragam. Sung by the peerless MS Subbulakshmi.



PS: R. Prasanna on the guitar. Fabulous stuff.

Ramachandra Guha is puzzled - Let us help him

Ramachandra Guha is puzzled as to why Sri Lankan cricketers were attacked. He says it "defies rationale and even irrational logic" (irrational logic? I beseech you to define that for us, O Eminent Historian!)

Anyway, let us help him sort out his doubts. Guha presumes that other terror attacks have some "justification". Sample the steaming pile of bovine crap that he wrote in his post 26/11 article in the Wall Street Journal

The failure to punish the perpetrators of successive pogroms has thrown some young men into the arms of fundamentalist groups.

So, naturally, for a man conditioned to think in this manner about every terrorist attack, the question arose in Mr. Guha's mind - "What pogrom were these young gunmen victims of?"
(Gunmen or terrorists? Ah, that's another story)

Anyway, Mr. Guha dived into his long database of Hindu pogroms. But then he realised that the victims were Sri Lankans. Come again? S-r-i L-a-n-k-a-n-s. "Whoa!", said Mr. Guha. His database had drawn a blank. The Sri Lankans had done nothing to upset his favourite minority community. Then why were the followers of the religion of peace angry with the Sri Lankans? Why did twelve gunmen spray bullets on the Sri Lankan cricket team?

Explaining the repercussions of Tuesday's attack, in a telephonic interview from Bangalore, he said, "Today's event is very puzzling.

Mr.Guha, it is quite easy to see why you are puzzled. When you go about assigning justifications to all terrorist attacks on the "communal" civilians in India, an attack on Sri Lankan cricketers will definitely seem mysterious. The issue, Mr.Guha, is not so inscrutable. The answer lies in the ideology pursued by these "misguided" young men. These men follow a violent, fanatic ideology called Islamism.

Instead of going about trying to justify what are plain brutal cold-blooded and unforgivable murders, I suggest you try and understand the root cause of these attacks - not poverty, not one of those "pogroms" in your database, not Kashmir - but Islamism.

Simple, no?