Thinking Aloud

One critic of conspiracy theories sarcastically remarked, slightly twisting the historic words of Armstrong: “I suppose it really was one small step for man, one giant lie for mankind.”

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Curiosity is second nature to human beings. It is the stuff of science.  It is at the heart of discoveries and inventions.  But there is something curious about curiosity: some people are more curious than others.  Some are very curious, some less so, and some, one might say, are either not curious in the least or do their best to kill their curiosity. Continue reading →

In our cruel South Asian world, the jail and judicial system has to be the most pitiless and shameless. While the police are quick to arrest and torture all probable and improbable suspects, who are usually poor people, the judiciary works at a snail’s pace.  It beggars belief that no government or political party has ever highlighted the need to inject some decency into this utterly inhumane penal and judicial system. 

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Where righteousness rules, whose rule is right?  To those infused with self-righteousness, whether in the name of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Nazism, Bolshevism, Maoism or whatever, all non-conformists are deviants, always despised, often oppressed and sometimes killed. 

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I am struck by two things: firstly, the language used by both government leaders and the opposition.  And, secondly, the similarities between what is happening now and what happened in the past, in Damascus, Baghdad and other centres of Muslim rule in the Middle East and North Africa.

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If fasting, through self-deprivation, is supposed to imbibe self-control, then the actual results are highly dubious. In practice, rather than being a month of deprivation, Ramzan is a time of high consumption. The eating cycle merely shifts from day to night.  People actually eat and drink more than usual, but under the cover of darkness, literally speaking.

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The “sick man” of 1853 was a vast empire, rotting but not ready to reform or to go without a fight. Today’s “sick man” too refuses to heed good advice, despite the loss of a “limb” in 1971. What’s more, he is armed with the nuclear bomb and rather ready to explode it if threatened or provoked. 

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