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The debate after-effect

Debate Media Tent

The US presidential debate was the best thing that happened to the University of Mississippi in quite a while. OleMiss is still recovering from the best hangover a university can ever have. My friend James Church has posted student account of the debate here. (By the way, we also beat Gators this weekend. Woohoo!)

I was in and around the media tent and “spin alley” for most of the debate. Instead of writing a long and boring narration, here is a picture blog of the debate that my flickr feed has posted. I did not have enough time to tag each picture; if you follow American politics, you’ll see some big names in there. Feels like a match puzzle? Lets write a program to solve it!:)

September 30, 2008   No Comments

On being a debate related event panelist

I was invited by the Office of International programs to be on the panel for ‘Politics Around the World’ forum. It was fun addressing a diverse group of people, and being involved in a discussion across borders.

The University did a press release of the event, which is already on youtube.

The university also posted the audio podcast of the whole event here.

September 24, 2008   2 Comments

The coward behind the curtain

Stupid-Comment

There is two types of ignorance and stupidity.

  • Ignorance due to virtue – In people who are not exposed to education and thus information. Such ignorance is not just to be pitied upon, but one should try to help them see the world they have not been exposed to.
  • Acquired ignorance and developed stupidity – You find this often in highly educated but religiously, regionally and racially unbalanced, un-secular and aligned top brass. And like many other fields of hypocrisy, we Indians have an edge over it.

My simple blog post on Firefox 3 in Punjabi attracted an example of the second kind.

A comment to the post was this:

You son of a ************(Here he introduced his mother’s name)……..still u ppl r not indians….u still think of a separate state..khalistan…….i never heard any gujuu saying that we have firefox in gujarati…..we ppl gave u shelter and instead of showing gratitude , u r showing attitude……In dia is a land of many religions, states, ppl…so let it be….ppl like u always try to break it…ur community is not bad, even u had some great ppl..and i respect them but because of ppl like u whole community has to suffer…Wat u know abt hindi..hindi is one of the most ancient language and scientific too…wat punjabi is -its a weird form of hindi

Now I have tried to get my head around what was this guy is offended at? Not having Firefox in Hindi or not being born to a Punjabi father?

And guess what? And who is this guy? One of my very known ones from my University’s Pharmacy department. He used a wrong email address while commenting on my blog, used a handle name “Manoj Mishra”.

How stupid? Stupid enough to not know that any website you visit, you leave digital footprints:). A thief who can’t hide! A “Patriotic” Indian, who could not even face his own words!!! What a shame! I’ll allow him his shame and not reveal his real identity here.

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June 23, 2008   1 Comment