bijoyv

In our small, tired world, there's too little space for anything. And then we cram in terrorism, recession, traffic jams, politicians, elections, pink slips, pink chaddis, climate change, crop failure...

Where do we draw the line?

Stop, for one small moment...
Think one small thought...
Do one small deed...
Say one small word...

Draw the line. And put the smile back on the face of your day.

One Small Love. Go on, spread it around.

Quick Tales, the LiveJournal-Caferati flash fiction contest, was about writing a short story in 500 words or less. The theme was one word: journal.

From over a thousand entries, 100 made the short-list. My story is one.

If you know me well, you'll know that it's partly based on a true incident. The rest is pure imagination.

Please read, and if you can, rate it. But mostly, please read.

The link is here: http://quick-tales.livejournal.com/22413.html

Over at IBNLive, the wife and I have posted blogs - she on the President of India and I on Munnabhai.

Pondicherry in September was a honeymoon. Pondicherry in December was a family do.

Imagine two sets of mutual in-laws in perfect harmony. Throw in a sister and a cousin. And us, bickering away.

In September, Pondicherry was an oven. We were blessed by haze over the Bay of Bengal, but nothing took away that sauna feeling. In December, we were in for the ooh-la-las. Cruddy skies. Just the lightest hint of sweat under the collar (it was about 27 degrees above the notch and, I say this with 100 percent humility, 95 percent humidity).

This time, we stayed at Auroville, as I have always wanted to since I first visited it in 1995.

Warned
in midsong
a note trails
hangs still
as if waiting
for an omen to pass

thus augured
my song descends
meandering
to her willing ear

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Just when the rest of you thought God's army is making a comeback, trust Scientific American to sort us out. The ancient Evolution v. Creationism argument makes a comeback, and the score is 1-0 in favour of the Darwinists.

Here are the big Creationist arguments dissed by SciAm:

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.
2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.
3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or
falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and
can never be re-created.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.
5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.
6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.
8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a
protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.
9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become
more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have
evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have
evolved from protozoa.
10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.
11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.
12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.
13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.
14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the
anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if
they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent
conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not
evolution.
15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level,
life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through
evolution.

This recent article, titled 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense, lists the big reasons why some of the most 'scientific' arguments raised against Darwinists are a bunch of a-baloney.

Please excuse the pun - I thought that was a very good one. And while you're at that, excuse the bad rhyme.

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I ponder this question everyday through the traffic snarls in this newly rechristened city, which in the not-so-distant future will doubtless be promoted as commodity.

What do traffic jams augur?

The speed of the present caught up in itself trying to get to the future, or the future come to a standstill?

To say whether the future bodes ill or well is not a matter of idle prophesy but of determined and concerted action.

How much are we willing to change India? Or, better still, be the change that will goad India to take the leap into the future.

Sometimes we argue that the future is already here. Far from it. The future is what we create of our present. Before we pin down these opportunities to 'create wealth', we must look at how much these very opportunities, and maybe the wealth we hope to create, can bridge the impoverished and the wealthy.

Because the future is a place where we must all coexist, and inequity has no place in it.