War

November 26, 1949: Consitution of India is Passed by the Constituent Assembly

November 26, 2008: Mumbai attacked by terrorists

From known history, this building was among the early displays of Indian nationalism. Considering how much research the terror groups behind this attack appear to have done, this is nothing but a declaration of war? Beyond this obvious comment on the entire incident, more important are the following:

1) Why was there a situation such that the ATS chief had to be involved in a shoot-out?

2) Why did it take 6 hours for the army to be called into action?

3) Do we have any sort of central level system/protocol to meet terror attacks?

On a lighter vein, now that the incident has come to an end,

If there is a terror attack in India, and we don’t accuse Pakistan of complicity, would the ISI-chief be sacked?

con-science

When religion is misused by people for power, religion gets blamed; should we blame science also similarly?

Michael Crichton had criticized the misuse of the label of science till his death, as he does in this speech at Caltech:

…

Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world.

But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science to banish the evils of human thought—prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan’s memorable phrase, “a candle in a demon haunted world.” And here, I am not so pleased with the impact of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free.

…

strange

One of those ‘good one’s that I missed on the first viewing of the The Royal Tenenbaums: “Strange day out here at the windswept fields”

… or should we say, “Gandhi going medieval in Queens,” by his standards at least!

Shinkansen

If I’ve to choose one image to represent the 20th century, this might be it:

Shinkansen, with Mt Fuji in the background

The first time that I came across the name Shinkansen, I thought it was some place…