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Two things before we jump in:

Last time when I spent some time and blogged was on women’s day. Now again about world environment day (WED, for the rest of this post). Not a coincidence. I get into fundae-emitting mode in such occasions.

WED was always observed on 5th June, but some how I totally missed even the existence of the tradition, and today a friend declared that today was WED. (Later clarified that as WEW (second W stands for week) ends today, or whatever). So let me again take this opportunity.

Traditionally such days were observed to raise awareness on the aspect in question. Long back, when I was still not wearing long pants (to heart fully communicate in telugu, “nikker eskune vayasu lo”), and for few years after that also, I didn’t had faith on such ideas (not the ideas proposed by WED, but on the practice of observing such special days). It was partly because I haven’t seen enough impact of such days, on myself and people surrounding me. But later I realized that I was grossly mistaken. All the buzz created by media and educational/industrial organizations during such occasions is good enough to spread some awareness and assuming that a bit of ripple effect (people passing on the awareness) comes to action, the purpose is served.

So what is this WED about? WED is about raising awareness about reducing our negative impact on environment. The theme for this year is “CO2, Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy”. Low-Carbon Economy (LCE) refers to an Economy which has a minimal output of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions into the biosphere, but specifically refers to the greenhouse gas Carbon Dioxide (as defined in the wiki page). So what can we do about it?

Spending some quality time with tools like environment footprint calculator and check to see how we are fairing with respect to the various parameters.

Getting to know the story of stuff.

The next obvious step would be to take some resolutions to improve performance in some of the bad scoring items from the above result.

Spreading some awareness back home. Best candidates that would welcome the preaching would be parents, nieces/nephews that are aged in at least double digits.

This is more than enough.

Some of the things that made me happy over the past few weeks are:

To come to know that google had shelled out one billion dollars towards research to develop renewable energy sources that are cheaper than coal. Essentially on making solar power the de facto source of energy.

To learn that one of my cousin’s teen daughter has been trying (and spreading a little awareness) to reduce her environment footprint, by doing little things like reducing plastic usage, reusing plastic bags etc.

(How can this post end with out some complaining? )
I have become more serious on this aspect a couple of years ago and since then did many gradual changes to my lifestyle whose unit vectors point at LCE. All said and done, what ever we poor souls do lingering around here in the developing nation of India, will not make much absolute difference to Her. The per capita ecological foot print of developed countries is around an order of magnitude higher than that of developing countries. It naturally follows from a combination of prosperity and lack of corporate citizenship. Awareness spread in developed countries could be an order of magnitude effective from Her perspective. This makes me some time feel that my energies will be best spent trying to increase global awareness (how?) rather than doing small things in an eco friendly manner.

I wish you a Satisfied Women’s Day.

And if you thought this post would continue in the same tone (and are still thinking), pappu lo kalu vesinatle (a phrase in Telugu used to convey “you are mistaken” in a humorous way, the literal meaning being “have (mis-)landed one’s foot into dal“). I am taking tomorrow’s International Women’s Day as an opportunity to vomit out my outrage against pseudo-feminism, which is vast prevailing in the society. I said pseudo-feminism “just” because expressing outrage-against-feminism would make one a male chauvinist pig (That is the sad state of the society. Also, I haven’t heard any similar name to an extreme feminist). Also, the adjective pseudo is redundant, since current society’s practice of feminism is mostly pseudo.

Before continuing, I also want to, for the purpose of record, iterate that I am not against true-feminism. I feel sorry for all the women who fall victim to male domination. Life of both men and women was painful and insecure till the Middle Age: Men died in war, women ended up as war victims. Then during and post industrialization era, lives of men became more secure but the social and religious situations didn’t give enough freedom to women. Till early 1900s, even US’s society didn’t provide a free life to woman. And even today, there are many countries which don’t provide equal privileges to women. But at the same time, many countries/societies have over time, given undue privileges to women.

Definitions from wiki:

Feminism comprises a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities and equal rights for women.

Masculism (also referred to as masculinism) consists of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies primarily based on the experiences of men. Although masculism provides a general critique of social relations, many of its active proponents also seek to analyze gender inequality and promote men’s rights, interests, and issues.

The practice of Masculism itself reflects the fact that Feminism has resulted in some form of discrimination against men (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Masculism). There are things that one is not supposed to speak. I am daring to do it: In my experience, the average case is that a feminist makes/demands more one-sided statements/privileges, than a masculist. The privileges that are supposed to uplift women who are discriminated because of various reasons like social, religious etc, cause more people to suffer than those benefited. The sense of independence portrayed by women is sometimes not true independence. I find presence of hypocracy here: Trying to act independent while the reality is otherwise.

In India, there is 33% reservation for women, and if women are equal to men, why reservation? All the feminists out there, if you think you are equal to men (which I neither object nor accept, “just” because I want to be politically correct), dont avail this facility.

Even public transportation in some areas of India (may be all areas) provide reserved seats for women. A true-feminist would not avail this facility. Worse, the buses in Andhra Pradesh have this written: “Respecting women is our culture. Let them sit in the seats allotted to them”. I thought respecting “people” was our culture, but they say I was wrong. It’s not rare to see two double seats occupied singly by two women, and at least one male standing. (In most parts of India, you don’t go and sit beside a stranger of opposite gender)

In many situations, women can bypass rules or have special instantaneously made up privileges just because they are women. If you closely observe, such privileges arise out of the sympathy toward women, and it looks to be saying that women are incapable of living life the hard way. If you think you are a tough woman, don’t avail any such privilege.

Speaking of laws, there are tonne of laws, both Indian and International, which are made up as a result of some single instances of peculiar cases. The argument would be “to avoid such things in future”. So even if people who suffer as a side effect, versus people benefited as a measure of avoiding similar incidents, turns out the be 10000:1, it doesn’t matter to the well experienced judges sitting in the Supreme Court of India. I don’t know (and if yes, please let me know) whether this would count as a crime under any IPC section, but I wouldn’t hesitate to make a statement that the law makers (Not to be confused as public representatives. They are a different story) often do a bad job and end up making dumb decisions, especially when it comes to issues related to women. Probabilistic and cause-effect analysis on social conditions is lacking. Of course there are also situations when the Supreme Court of India passed fruitful orders based on public interest petitions against unfair corporate practices.

I think you get the general idea. One who claims to be a feminist (see definition above) should not only demand equality on issues unfavorable against women, but also at the same time reject lioness share of privileges in issues favorable towards women. I think this is a fair demand.

Some related reading:
http://falcus007.blogspot.com/2005/10/pseudo-feminism.html (This guys headline is interesting and matches with my views: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention)
http://members.tripod.com/antibjp/events/wbill.html
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/quest/200204/stories/2002041303070200.htm
http://indianmen.wordpress.com/2006/12/19/womens-rights/ (Very lengthy, havent read it myself)

Yes, its damn easy. For most of us, problems show up in pairs. One, the actual problem. And then the thought that having a problem is a problem, is the second problem. This less-thought-about thought, was put into me by my friend Praveen (Nandigam), via his yahoo messenger status. That was probably four years ago. I then realized that I am partially suffering from this problem. (Ya, having this problem is also a problem :)). The original sentence read like this: “The problem is.. thinking that having a problem is a problem”. (Am I correct, Praveen?) That day little did he thought that his sentence would be documented in the internet, four years later. This very sentence came into my mind at times, when I had this uncomfortable feeling that having a problem is also a problem.

So what Deepak Maharsh.., err.. Mahablogger says is, dont get into the vicious circle of problem-of-having-a-problem. Just concentrate on the actual problem. Who do you think in the world doesnt face problems? Everyone does. Ok, now I think I am sounding preachy, but actually I am.

Lately I realized that quite a few people have this problem, in varying magnitudes. So I thought why not try to help them.

Aha! Yesterday (or I would say last time) it was 29%, and now it is 20%

First it was a jump from 1GB to 2GB along with a Infinity + 1 promise. Now it is ~2.8GB to ~4GB. THANK YOU GOOGLE. But, when will you do the same for picasaweb? I dont care even if you go back to 1GB in gmail, but give me more space in picasaweb. You can put ads in picasaweb. I dont care. You have the best desktop photo organizer, but what about online storage?

One compromise would be to give a common space of 5GB for picasaweb and gmail put together. Let the user decide the distribution ratio.

Last week I (along with Raveendra and Sudipta) visited Innovative Multiplex, here in Bangalore, to watch Spider Man 3. Its in outskirt region of marathahalli. A painful process to reach there. Assuming the auto rickshaw’s meter was not tampered, it is about 20KM from our campus. Looks like it is targeted at IT and BPO crowd staying around, whose offices are located in White Field. And so obviously it would be overpriced and ticket for a monday matinee costed 170 rs. (Dunno whether weekend rates are same or not)

The sound system was excellent, one can experience it during the chase scenes. But size of the screen was very small, even for a normal movie, forget about a super hero movie. Never watch any super hero movie here.

The movie is equally disappointing. No plot. The black suit thing is a joke. I think it is inserted just to get some non-zero increase in merchandise sale. (Here is a related post about stupid spiderman merchandise. The spidey tooth brush and spidey neck tie are funny). Just well executed chases and ultra rich graphic work. Lets call it Hollywood version of Dhoom-2 (which served the only purpose of telling prospective producers, “how not to make a movie”).

Here are a few pics of the visit:

Holla doing some serious study on the way back.