Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Title got your attention? Iranian authorities decided to come up with their own version of Google Earth, the 3D version. Now that you’ve stopped laughing, surely you must be wondering why? Easy: Because Google Earth “belongs to the ominous triangle of the U.S., England and the Zionists”, as per an Iranian minister. Oh, and it will be an Islamic version, of course. Whatever that means. This news was a great topic for commenters on Slashdot . Here’s the set of comments I loved. One guy explained the intent of this project: “They have long wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the map and this is how they will do it. Just make their own maps and pretend they don't exist.” And ended with the hope: “Now if only they would do support virtual terrorism instead of real terrorism.” An “expert” on the Quran pointed out that the great book says the earth is flat. Would the map reflect that? To which came the smartass answer: “No, It'll be round, just wearing a bu...

When I saw the news about how Saudi Arabia now sends text messages to the “male guardians” of women when they cross the border , I was very sure that Slashdot would have a fun trail on it…I could almost imagine the comments below it. And sure enough, there was . Now since the countries who pretend to care about human rights, the feminists who should care (by definition), and the secular folks whose tongues get tied when any evil is driven by religious edicts will, as expect, respond to such news with a deafening silence, we might as well laugh at it. After all, isn’t humour supposed the best medicine? The ball was set rolling with this comment/comparison: “When South Africa did this (to black people, rather than women), under Apartheid, the civilised world rightly condemned it, and imposed trade sanctions.” Which prompted the Steven Weinberg’ian response (he was the guy who said, “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing ev...

This friend of mine periodically says he wants a break from work, how he wished the company would allow him to go on a sabbatical but sadly, in India, companies don’t yet do that. The root of his feeling is something most of feel at some point or the other: the job sucks. So if going on a sabbatical is not an option in India, are there any real practical options? Or do we just have to grin and bear it as a way to pay the bills? I found another trail on this topic on Slashdot which seems to confirm what most of us feel. One guy suggested teaching as an alternative career where you could leverage your area of expertise, “ If you have experience on a given subject, coding or otherwise, there is a market for books and teaching. ” A recommendation to teach provoked the inevitable response, “ He's already demonstrated that he "can", which means he's ineligible to teach. ” A pretending-to-be-ignorant wag asked, “ Is that a Star Trek reference? ” Another response trai...

I read this Slashdot trail   about this organization, Every Tribe Every Nation , (ETEN) whose aim is to produce and distribute Bibles in readable, mobile-ready formats in hundreds of languages including Norsk, Potawatomie, Bahasa Indonesia, and Hawai'i Pidgin. Never heard of most of these languages? Well, that’s the point: the aim is to spread the Bible among tribes, aka the old missionary impulse. Like most Slashdot discussions, it’s the comments below the article that are hilarious. An old wine in new bottles comment was “ You would think that people would be able to do away with these historic and completely ridiculous ideas by now. Instead they are still stuck in the dark ages, but now with shiny new technology ”. Others commended the effort, not for the missionary aspect, but for the fact the effort might result in some progress in rendering minority languages correctly on phones. Another guy responded to that saying “ Well, yes. But I do not think that is actually a good t...