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511 items (458 unread) in 17 feeds
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Mental Vomits
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-Kashmir-
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Arif Shora's Thought Dump
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Notes From Kashmir (6 unread)
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The Times Of Kashmir (47 unread)
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Raashid Malik
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[ Kasheer ]
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Islam & The West - Opinions Of A Kashmiri Nomad (201 unread)
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~ Kashmir ~
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The Sakooter Speaks
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truth exposed
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Ather Zia RSS Feed
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Life in Kashmir
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KASHMIR MEDIA
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E=mc^2 (80 unread)
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Planet Mursileen
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Kashmiri Bloggers (9 unread)
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19:04
500 Kashmiri Employees To Be Chraged, Jammu Employees Untouched
» KASHMIR MEDIASyed Yasir (from kashmirtimes) SRINAGAR, Sep 11: The state government has prepared a list of around 500 employees, who according to it had actively participated in the recent pro-freedom protest demonstrations and marches. The government is planning to take action against them. Reliable sources said that some quarters in the government fear that any action against them may [...] -
18:56
Sachin Pilot - Farooq’s Son In Law Strengthening The Family
» KASHMIR MEDIAby Iftikhar Gilani (from kashmirtimes) NEW DELHI, Sep 11: The wheel has turned full circle. Congress MP Sachin Pilot from Rajasthan has stepped into shoes of his late father Rajesh Pilot, a former Union Minister, to broker yet another deal between the Congress and the National Conference (NC) in the upcoming Assembly elections in Jammu and [...]
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16:50
The Killings Continue
» ~ Kashmir ~Kashmir -Friday, the 12th of September, 2008 The emotions, the rage, the strength and the helplessness of Kashmir. Stats: 2 Killed. 25 Hit By Bullets. 150 Injured. 2 Million Protesting. Perpetrator: India.
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14:23
Seeing A Father Saving His Son Numbed My Pain
» KASHMIR MEDIA(from greaterkashmir) Srinagar, Sept 11: Fifty-year old Rafiq Ahmad felt nothing when a bullet fired by the CRPF troopers him in the shoulder, because, he says, he was numbed by the sight of the CRPF troopers savagely beating a man protecting his child from blows of the troopers. Rafiq Ahmed was playing chess on August 25 in [...]
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Indian Moral Code
» E=mc^2Many self-appointed groups in India are now defending what is called Indian Moral Code. Well, we know about Legal Code and Penal Code, but what is this Moral Code?
India’s idea of democracy is interpreted as the rule of majority where majority can impose its ideas, notions, dress, language, and habits onto others. If these others do not acquiesce, then it is forced down their throats. They get things done by popular movements. They can send millions of SMS to get their favorite cricketer acquitted.
They also feel obligated to come up with a set of rules, traditions, and habits which are considered morally superior and they give it a name called Indian Moral Code. This Moral Code derives legitimacy from all sections of the society because it promises to protect Indian Culture, dignity, morality and sacred traditions. It gets legitimacy from patriotic and religious groups at the same time. The way a State imposes its Legal Code and Penal Code onto Indian citizens, these upholders of Indian Moral Code impose their morality onto everyone.
When Sexy Shriya donned a revealing dress for an evening outing, some Tamilian organizations believed it was against the sacred and honorable Tamilian traditions. When Khushboo and Sushmita Sen talked about women’s sexuality, marriage and virginity, the upholders of Indian Moral Code rose up to challenge them.
In small towns of India, this is even bigger problem. Most girls get their freedoms restricted by their own families, and where necessary the mohallah people, who are out there to defend Indian Moral Code from getting sullied. When I attended a well-known engineering institute in India in 90s, girls were restricted from mixing with boys. Some professors took up this task to punish the girls who were seen talking to boys by deliberately failing them or giving them low marks. All this they did with great concern and care for upholding Indian Moral Code which is more sacrosanct than the marks these girls received.
In many Indian towns, couples are targeted by youth, social outfits and sometimes the police force, for seen together. The fact that they held hands or were seen hugging is good enough for these people to act.
In a rare show of solidarity, which happens in India only when it comes to imposing idiotic notions, both Hindu and Christian organizations in South India cracked down on people who were seen as ‘violating the moral code’.
According to THE HINDU, there have been many such cases where some groups resorted to ‘punishing individuals’ who ‘violated the moral code’. Hindu outfit Bajrang Dal, and a Christian outfit, Social Action Committee, and some members from Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD) took it upon themselves to defend the unwritten Indian Moral Code. To do this, these groups targeted young men and women who were seen together, especially if they came from different religions. THE HINDU writes [emphasis mine]:
In one case, a young woman was attacked because she went to the house of a young woman from a different community. The Bajrang Dal has claimed responsibility for seven of these incidents.
The district head of the organisation, Sudarshan Moodabidri, claimed that the outfit had “solved” over 200 cases in the last two months where Hindus were “caught” committing the “immoral” act of interacting with members of other communities.
Mr. Moodabidri said, “Sometimes it becomes necessary to use force. Fear of such action should deter such misadventures. Girls reform themselves once they are thrashed and humiliated in public, but boys are tougher to control.”
These groups even carried out a ‘joint operation’ in one case proving idiocy is the most common binding factor for all these upholders of morality.
Moral Code in colleges
These days it’s fashionable for many colleges to proudly impose a dress code on its students. There are many colleges in India who don’t allow jeans and t-shirts for girls. The code prohibits them from wearing sleeveless and tight-fitting clothes as well. They strictly enforce wearing Indian salwar kameezes. The principal of such colleges proudly wear this ideology as a badge since he knows the kind of audience he is talking to. Parents gleefully admit their kids to such schools believing they are contributing to upholding of the Great Indian Moral Code.
"We are only trying to ensure that students dress decently and modestly, in a way that befits our culture. A dress code will also pre-empt harassment of women students," says Dr. Viswanathan, Vice-Chancellor of Anna University.
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LHC, Big Bang: Mega Instrument
» E=mc^2Progress in Science and Technology went hand in hand in the last five hundred years. That’s why you often see these two words clubbed together. But they are two different things. One can develop technology without having to understand Science. For example, one can develop a wheel or a rudimentary microscope without understanding Newton’s Laws of Motion or Laws of Optics.
First came instruments (or the technology) that helped people make more scientific discoveries. Measuring time with precision using different types of clocks and allowed people to make accurate observations paving way for Laws of Motion. Invention of microscope and telescope spawned many other branches of science - Physics, biology, medicine. Bunsen Burner helped chemists. Steam Engine spawned transport and Industrial Revolution and at the same helped in framing Laws of Thermodynamics. Invention of Printing Press helped in dissemination of knowledge thereby allowing many people to embark on pursuit of Science, and as well feed onto each other to make incremental progress. Printing Press also helped in bringing other social changes – such as Reformation and French Revolution.
Scientific discoveries and theories in turn helped in making technological innovations, like radio, telephone, television, dynamo, etc. Without better instrumentation, scientific theories would not have come forth so easily. Without science, we would not have made better technology.Today, we see one of the biggest scientific instruments built – LHC – Large Hadron Collider.
LHC is the largest machine in the word. It is the largest particle accelerator and world’s largest refrigerator. It is the fastest place on the planet where particles will travel at 99.99% the speed of light. It also creates the emptiest space in Solar System where ultra-high vacuum is created. It has the dubious record of being the hottest places in galaxy while maintaining temperatures colder than outer space. It will record temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than Sun’s core and at the same time has a extreme cool temperature of 271.3°C (1.9 K). It has the most powerful supercomputer in the world called Grid, where more than 100,000 dual layer DVDs will be recorded every year. It has the biggest and most sophisticated detectors on the planet, where 600 million proton collisions per second are recorded. It has precision instruments that measure intervals of few billionths of a second, and distances of millionths of a meter.
Quest for knowledge, to know how the Universe works, has set in motion the greatest contribution of mankind called Science. When Copernicus and Galileo asked questions about the workings of the Universe, it set in motion a revolution in human history. That curiosity to know how, what and why, has helped man discover, invent and create things unimaginable few hundred years ago. Man can now fly, go into space, go deep into oceans and earth, can now travel at speeds faster than sound, be connected with anyone on the planet in a moment, watch TV, freeze food, all because of that curiosity to know how the Universe works.
This experiment, called the ‘biggest experiment’ of humankind is another step in that direction- to unravel the workings of the Universe. We need to understand that not all instruments give the results we are looking for. That’s the whole idea of Science- we try though we fail many a times.
As we increase our understanding on the Universe works, we push ignorance into a remote corner. No longer can rudimentary telescope help us in making new discoveries. We need bigger and better instruments like Hubble Telescope to see farther into Universe. No longer can we use rudimentary cathode tube experiments to know the behavior of particles. We need bigger and better machines like LHC.