Who Came First?

Lookie what I bumped into! The eternal egg-chicken mystery supposedly solved. It’s interesting. Read on.

Chicken-egg puzzle solved

London, May 28: It’s a question that has baffled scientists, academics and the man on the street through the ages: what came first, the chicken or the egg?

Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer.

It was the egg. Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal’s life. Therefore, the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in the prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg.

Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, said the living organism inside the egg shell would have had the same DNA as the chicken it would develop into.

“Therefore, the first living thing, which we could say unequivocally was a member of the species, would be this first egg,” he said. “So, I would conclude that the egg came first.”

The same conclusion was reached by his fellow scientists Professor David Papineau of King’s College, London, and poultry farmer Charles Bourns.

Papineau, an expert in the philosophy of science, agreed that the first chicken came from an egg and that proves there were chicken eggs before chickens. He said people were mistaken if they argued that the mutant egg belonged to the “non-chicken” bird parents.

“I would argue it is a chicken egg if it has a chicken in it,” he said. “If a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatched, that would surely be an ostrich egg, not a kangaroo egg,” he said.

Bourns, chairman of trade body, Great British Chicken, said he was also firmly in the pro-egg camp. He said: “Eggs were around long before the first chicken arrived. Of course, they may not have been chicken eggs as we see them today, but they were eggs.”

- The Telegraph, 29 May

For a Friend

Normally, I’m not a morning person. I take my time to get my butt out of bed and into the shower. But today is different. Today is a dear friend’s birthday – A friend who stays up till 2 AM discussing Marvel Universe and its superheroes and their love lives with me – basically because we have nothing better to do ;) A friend who doesn’t laugh at my comic book collection; a friend who rather shares the passion. A friend true enough to consider doing what is considered unthinkable among comic book lovers – that is part with his prized Amazing Spider-Man comic book [Issue 3] just because I’d missed that particular – and spectacular – issue.

So here’s wishing you a very Happy Birthday, Zoe! I hope you will come back to civilization soon and get to read this. Click here to make your butt-day even happier, bub :)

P.S. Check out the Wolverine Snikt giant super special by Tsutomu Nihei. The artwork rocks!

Five Steps Towards Losing My Religion

They say time changes the way you think and perceive things. But in my case, my feelings and two-cent opinion regarding certain things have surprisingly not changed. Religion, for instance: my opinion on this subject is the same as it used to be, say, half a decade back. I’d written the following piece a good many years back for a weekly thing I was working for back then. Thought I’d share it with you today.


LOSING MY RELIGION
When REM sang this song, they got the Grammy. If I repeat the same phrase in the wrong place, at the wrong time, I might get ostracised. Why? Because religion is larger than life. Larger than you and me. Larger than anyone. Hell, it’s even larger than god!

But as I have a knack for getting into trouble for speaking my mind, I’ll take the risk again - I lost my religion. I just dropped it because it just didn’t make sense to me. It just didn’t! When? I don’t know. It was not like I woke up one fine day and realised that I didn’t like religion anymore. It was rather a gradual process… the process towards losing my religion.

Before any misconception breeds, let me affirm here that I am not an atheist. And no, I don’t have any problem with god. It’s the religion part that irks me. Now, I come from a religious family [whatever that means] and my father would roll in his grave if he knew that I would be writing this piece. In fact, there was so much religion everywhere while I was growing up that it made me sick. Religion was shoved down my throat to the extent that I choked.

So what’s wrong with that? Nothing much actually, but this forced religion just took away my chance to find god on my own and build up a rapport with him/her. Since there are so many gods and goddesses in our land to choose from, I could at least have enjoyed the freedom to choose the one I wanted to worship. Or invented one for that matter! But, no, I was dragged by my collar and told that this particular deity was the one I was supposed to revere. There goes my free will! Step one towards losing my religion.

Okay, Mr God looked decent enough [at least in the crafted images; never got the chance to meet him personally!] and appeared pretty harmless. But then again I was told that I was supposed to fear him! Now why the hell is that required? Is this some sort of tyranny? When do we have to fear someone superior? Point A - when we are in the wrong. Point B - when the superior finds us too inferior that he wouldn’t mind stubbing out our puny existence.

Let’s analyse Point A. Now despite all our vices, we can’t be in the wrong 24/7, right? If so, what is the need for this perpetual fear? Is being born a sin [like some say] and we have to be forever sorry for our existence? Or is it some kind of a feed-on-fear theory crafted by a handful of people for their interests?

Point B – If god doesn’t care a fig about us, why should we worship such a bighead? I think god equates love; so from where did this ‘fearing’ part creep in? Beats me! Maybe our folks haven’t read their scriptures right coz from what they tell me, this grand old man sounds more like a dictator to me, the one who needs fear to keep people under subjugation, than a loving Father. If god is a bigot, I don’t want to join the party. If he is not, then the religious heads are painting a totally wrong picture of him and I don’t want to buy that. Step two towards losing my religion.

Okay now, folks admit that god is love and religion is all about loving and sharing. So then, show me love. Yeah, just show me where is it? Does loving a certain god [or is it religion?] mean wiping out other religions? Is that what love means – waging a ‘holy’ war? And what are we sharing – hate, greed and fanaticism? Does religion mean another Gujarat? Or does it mean Talibanisation?

Don’t you think that religion has been [mis]used by the politicians and some god-men one time too many for their vested interests? So much so that religion has been rendered a dirty word. It has been politicised; it has been turned into a dirty game. And poor ol’ god has been left in the corner to nurse his own wounds. Step three towards losing my religion.

Okay now, let’s spare these crooks for a while and look within the institution of religion itself. What do you see? Love, devotion, feeling of oneness? Bullshit! I see a race for one up-manship, I see hypocrisy, I see double standards, divisions and discords, I see lust for power and money, I see everything else apart from love and god. Maybe god too must have had too much of this and took the last bus out of here! And I don’t blame him. Step four towards losing my religion.

And then I observed that people believe bribery to be a way of life and even god could be bought! If you grease god’s palms with sacrifices, gifts and ‘donations’, the gates of heaven will be wide open for you even if you butcher half the mankind on earth. If they think god is the creator, the protector and the giver of all things good, how can human beings ever dream of winning his favour by donating some cash to his coffers? Do they really think that god can be bought? Who gave them the idea in the first place and why? I don’t think I need to elaborate on this! Step five towards losing my religion.

“If there is a god, we must see him; if there’s a soul, we must feel it; otherwise it is better to be an atheist than to be a hypocrite,” thus spake Swami Vivekanand. Though I admit I haven’t seen god, anything good, no matter how small it is, reaffirms my faith that there is someone out there watching over us. There has to be one; otherwise we wouldn’t be here in the first place!

However, religion has long stopped serving its purpose. It has remained nothing but an old worn out cloak that is being dragged around to serve anything but god. Besides, I don’t think god is so publicity crazy that he would need religion to create hype around himself. It makes me sick to think that we have gone down so low to the extent that even god is used and abused for power.

I don’t regret losing my religion and I guess god wouldn’t mind it too. We both got better things to do!

Dams be damned, beliefs be banned!

India: the biggest democracy in the world? Ask me and I’ll tell you: this biggest democracy is also probably the biggest joke in the world. Article 19, sub-clause [a] of clause [1] of the Constitution of India reads “All citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression”. What they forgot to mention is that this particular freedom of speech is restricted to singing stupid slogans like ‘India shining’ and ‘India smiling’. And what freedom of expression really means is freedom to stand around wearing that dumb expression on your face when you know you’ve been fucked but you can’t do a shit about it so you pretend nothing happened in the first place. Cross that thin invisible line and you are a danger to national security.

Take for instance, celluloid star Aamir Khan’s much talked about stance on Narmada Bachao Andolan and its subsequent result. First to be lined up in the firing line was his Rang De Basanti. And now it’s Fanaa, scheduled for release tomorrow, which probably will not be screened in many of the multiplexes in Gujarat, thanks to violent protests by political sycophants.

[Mr. Khan certainly has a knack for creating controversy and my salutes to him for speaking up!]

While the freedom of sycophancy is alive and kicking, our fundamental right concerning freedom of speech has apparently died an unnoticed death. Though this post does not intend to discuss whether or not the Narmada Bachao Andolan activists and supporters are right in opposing the construction of a dam, it does intend to criticise those in power who accord freedom to a handful to silence vox populi.

The fact that some party members in Gujarat have just gone ahead and openly exhibited their tendencies towards hooliganism and the Gujarat government’s silence on this front only goes on to prove that these hooligans have blessings of the powers-that-be to carry out these ‘protests’, which can, at best, be called chamchagiri. Government sanctioned protests? Give me a break here!

First of all, their protests against the screening of Fanaa do not make sense. If the party workers are irked by Aamir Khan’s remarks against the Gujarat government, that’s all right. If you wanna get pissed, go right ahead and vent out – vocally that is. It’s a democratic country. But what makes them believe they have the right to decide whether or not the public watches a particular movie! These sycophants certainly have no right to make a hue and cry over a movie just because the movie stars an actor who said something about someone that they did not want to hear.

That brings me to the ongoing The Da Vinci controversy in India. Nagaland Government has gone right ahead and banned the movie as well as the book in the state. Rediff.com reported that “Nagaland government has issued an 'advisory' to all the cinema hall owners, video parlours and cable operators not to receive, distribute or screen the film in any form in Nagaland.

“Not only that, the Nagaland government has also decided to ban the Dan Brown novel in the state and appealed to all booksellers, stockiest, distributors, individual readers not to sell, buy, distribute or read the novel in the state.” [The full report]

Do these governments take all its citizens for juveniles? Do they think we are incapable of making our own decisions? Our school/college textbooks taught us about the Constitution of this great democracy guaranteeing its citizens some fundamental rights. What these textbooks did not tell us was nothing should be taken at face value. Now we know, now we know.

And did they say ‘India smiling’? Yeah, right! Like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa smiling: I know something you don’t – that it’s all a damn farce!

Crack The Code

It’s brag-time, friends! I took an online "Art of The Da Vinci Code" quiz today, and guess what – I totally nailed it !

Here’s my scorecard for the record:


Suggest me a better way to get an instant ego boost! ** wink**

It’s fun. Crack the Code here.

Check this out, bub!

I just realised I tend to obsess over things I like. I know some of you are yet to recover from my 'Chris-obsessed' bloggings but you ain't seen nothing yet, bub. It’s Wolverine-fest now!

But before you proceed any further, let me warn you: this post is meant strictly for hard-core Wolverine fans. Okay, bub, follow me now.

With X-3 slated for release next week, I've been reading a lot of X-Men/Wolverine comic books and digging up my old comic book collection too. But the problem here in our part of the world is we don't get all the issues and end up missing on a lot of action. For instance, until recently, I had no idea that Magneto, the ultimate nemesis of the X-Men, had once stripped Wolverine of adamantium in his body [and all this time, I was wondering why Wolvie was going around wearing bandages on his knuckles in some of the issues]. Our bub here later on finds out that the adamantium laced onto his skeletal frame is actually poisonous and is hindering him from making optimum use of his healing factor. If you didn’t know that, now you do, thanks to yours truly and wikipedia, which enlightened me on this subject.

Here’s another site that's got the Wolverine Files. I bumped into it late last night, and it’s got pages upon pages of info on our hairy 5’3 anti-hero. [No points for guessing this particular site is my current hangout :) ] God bless internet. Well, today’s post was intended just for sharing this amazing site. I’m generous, aint i? **wink**

By the way, Hugh Jackman, who plays Wolverine in all three X-Men flicks, is 6’2! But then, most artists also steer clear of painting our dear ol’ Wolvie as a vertically challanged super-hero. Now he looks almost as tall as Cyclops & Co. in most of the books! Have you guys noticed that?

As for me, these days, I’ve been keeping my fingers and toes crossed, hoping and wishing that Marvel does what it did last time during X-2’s release – bring out an official X-3 movie comic book adaptation! I hope the gods of the Marvel Universe are listening to my prayers.

The Da Vinci Code 'Does Not Meet Hype'

The glamour and buzz surrounding Ron Howard's celluloid adaptation of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, it appears, is going to be short-lived. Following its opening screening at the Cannes Film Festival on 17 May [the film releases in India tomorrow], the critics have given their verdicts - the film fails to live up to the hype that surrounded Brown's novel!

The online edition of BBC News today carried a round-up of critics' views. All of whom are unanimous in almost entirely writing off the movie. You can click on the headline of today's post to go to the BBC page.

Most often than not, film adaptations of novels never really do justice to the book. Take for instance, Robert Ludlum's Bourne Identity / Supremacy . My pulse raced while I read Ludlum's books and I couldn't put the books down till I reached the last page. However, the films just didn't do it for me. I, for one, felt Matt Damon was not fit to play the role of Jason Bourne. Then the scriptwriters went on to streamline the plot of the novel. And then they left out the final plot twist!

Another good example [I guess] is the film adaptation of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Although I admit not to have read LOTR [oh, blasphemy! LOL!] and yet loved the movie series, The Madman from Aizwal tells me the films are no where near the book.

But then, there are always exceptions. Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter as an ingenious, cultured psychiatrist and resourceful serial killer in the Hannibal triology, adapted from Thomas Harris' novels, is awesome, making Dr. Lecter the number one film villain of all time and winning the film and actors a good number of Academy Awards for SiIence of the Lambs. Though the scriptwriters have changed the controversial ending of Dr. Lecter and Agent Sterling becoming lovers and escaping to Argentina in Hannibal, it hardly does any damage to the plot.

And, before it slips off my mind, I'd recently read somewhere that the fourth in the Hannibal series, titled Behind the Mask, is to be published this year and filmed as Young Hannibal. 2006 is going to be a great year it seems, books and movie-wise. I can barely wait to watch X-3: The Last Stand scheduled for a 26 May release in India.

Another film adaptation of a book I absolutely love is Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, hailed as "The voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent" by Sunday Times.

Oh, gawd! I've been going on and on and on, haven't I? What''s wrong with me!!!

Happy Birthday, Travis

Today is Travis' [administrator, mrdaughtry.com] birthday. So all Chris Daughtry fans here on blogger.com, especially Virg and Sundancer, please visit his site today and wish him a Happy 21st Birthday.



P.S. The link to Travis' website is just a click away. Yup, that's the last one on my Link List!

Shoot Me, I Like The L'il Elf

Went to Glitter-Graphics.com to get a new layout for MySpace. Ended up bumping into and falling in love with this little elf. I know it's so last year putting blinkies on your page but this one enticed me enough to seriously risk ruining my online image. LOL! So shoot me!

A Riddle For You

Why do we always end up hurting the ones we love the most when we are hurting ourselves? We were discussing this last night/early today morning, my dear friend Flappy and I.

I guess one of the reasons could be our thirst for empathy. We want the other person to understand what we are going through at that particular point in time. Hell, personally, if it was up to me, I would probably opt to make the whole world wallow in self-pity along with me. But seriously, when I’m down in the dumps, despite my requests to be left alone, inwardly I’m craving to be the centre of someone's universe. I don’t know about you people but that’s how I feel sometimes; and this is what I want - someone to be there and listen to my rants or just participate in the silence. I know that’s asking a lot, but deep within don’t we all want to be emotionally pampered brats sometimes?

The idea of you hurting and your dear one being aloof somehow does not gel with most of us. On a more sub-conscious level, I guess we even want the person we love to actually feel the pain we are going through… may be just a fraction of the pain we are going through. Because then we don’t have to suffer alone, we don’t have to feel alone or alienated; we are somehow looking for that ‘we are in this together’ kind of a feeling, you know. Then we can perfectly understand one another; then empathy won’t be hard to come by. Misery loves company, huh?

But then, most often than not, things don’t work out that way. If it’s not our dear one trying to over-analyze our problems/feelings [trust me, I really hate that!], then it’s him/her actually tiring of our negativity and simply telling us to get a grip [ouch!].

Love, hate, selfishness, self-pity, a desire to be loved a little bit more… just a tiny bit more. These are the things that make us hurt. And hurt others in turn. Or may be I’m wrong. I don’t know. Tell me what you think.

Sunday, Lazy Sunday

Today’s Sunday. So, naturally, I’m in a good – though lazy – mood. That means, though I won’t be writing anything [which, I just realised, I haven’t done in a while], I’ll be copy-pasting some jokes I got in my mail today.

How to Handle Stress

Picture yourself near a stream.

Birds are softly chirping in the crisp, cool mountain air.

Nothing can bother you here.

No one knows this secret place.

You are in total seclusion from that place called "the world."

The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.

The water is clear.

You can easily make out the face of the person whose head you're holding under the water.

There now......feeling better?

Don't Forget to Cancel Your Credit Cards Before You Die
A woman had died in January, but her bank had billed her for their annual service charges for February and March on her credit card, and then added late fees and interest on the monthly charge. The balance had been $0.00 but was now around $60.00. A family member placed a call to the bank.

Family Member: "I am calling to tell you that she died in January."
Bank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."
Family Member: "Maybe, you should turn it over to collections."
Bank: "Since it is two months past due, it already has been."
Family Member: So, what will they do when they find out she's dead?"
Bank: "Either report her account to the frauds division or report her to the credit bureau, maybe both!"
Family Member: "Do you think God will be mad at her?"
Bank: "Excuse me?"
Family Member: "Did you just get what I was telling you, the part about her being dead?"
Bank: "Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor."

Supervisor gets on the phone:

Family Member: "I'm calling to tell you, she died in January."
Bank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."
Family Member: "You mean you want to collect from her estate?"
Bank: (Stammer) "Are you her lawyer?"
Family Member: "No, I'm her great nephew." (Lawyer info given)
Bank: "Could you fax us a certificate of death?"
Family Member: "Sure." (fax number is given)

After they get the fax:

Bank: "Our system just isn't set-up for death. I don't know what more I can do to help."
Family Member: "Well, if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing her. I don't think she will care."
Bank: "Well, the late fees and charges do still apply."
Family Member: "Would you like her new billing address?"
Bank: "That might help."
Family Member: "Odessa Memorial Cemetery, Highway 129, Plot Number 69."
Bank: "Sir, that's a cemetery!"
Family Member: "What do you do with dead people on your planet?"

Rust In Peace, Fox

You know what! I’m sick to my stomach and I’m crying bloody foul! I simply refuse to believe Chris Daughtry got the lowest number of votes this week on American Idol. The show is rigged. This much I’m sure of. And what do we have left with us now – a clown backed by the Asshole Patrol, a pretty face who has been screwing up every song diligently for the last couple of weeks, and Mr. Vibrato.

I probably must be sounding stupid crying myself hoarse over a stupid reality show. But right now, I’m so angry I could throw around enough cusswords to shame a truck driver. But that wouldn’t change anything, now would it? Chris was clearly the best among the four contestants; but they are looking for pop idols, not rockers. So they did what needed to be done to get the rocker dude out of the show.

So, in reply to a question left behind by a fellow blogger, this is all I have to say – the frigging Fox/AI producers can take the show and shove it up their ass! I’m done with the show.

The Phantom of the Blogosphere

Ghostwriters. I’m sure everyone’s familiar with that term. There’s no dearth of those goodhearted people who let others take credit for their authorship, provided they are compensated handsomely. It’s an open secret that a lot of celebrities, with their new-found penchant for literary pursuits, avail ghostwriters' services. Our politicians form another ilk that relies on ghostwriters for their politically-charged/correct speeches.

But has anyone heard of ghostwriters for blogs? I have. Because I’ve recently turned into one! There’s this guy I know who can’t be much bothered with mundane activities such as writing. But then desperate times demand desperate measures. When a guy’s got to impress a girl, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, right? And in this particular case, this guy thinks maintaining a blog is a good way to impress his girl. So enter yours truly.

I don’t know if it’s a good idea. I don’t know if I’ll enjoy long-term blog ghostwriting. But I know maintaining two blogs can prove to be a royal pain in the you-know-where, and now you also know who to blame if your friendly neighbourhood mockingbird doesn’t turn up to sing for you regularly ;)

That is one crazy mime act!

I’ve nothing even remotely interesting to write about tonight. So what I’ll do instead is leave you with this video link - Karaoke For The Deaf. Click on it if you want a good laugh.

Pep-pills, pep-talk

Give me amphetamines,
give me life;
Give me barbiturates,
help me sleep at night.
I quit it all to start over again;
Take it as the confession of
a big time junk quitter,
a small time prescription junkie.

A prescription to pull you up. Another to bring you down. Isn’t it funny how a piece of stamped and signed paper wields the power to legalise your addiction and save you the trouble with cops!

Hostile Takeover

When it comes to updating my blog, my track record isn’t exactly flawless. There are times when you can’t update your blog and there are times when you just can’t update your blog. The latter is the reason you’re noticing some gaps between posts this time.

Sometimes I don’t post anything new out of sheer laziness, sometimes it’s due to lack of inspiration, sometimes it’s due to erratic power supply and sometimes it’s that pop-up window on my PC screen that says ‘Cannot Contact Server’ that’s to blame. This time it’s all of the above – and more.

Sunday I didn’t post simply because I didn’t want to. But Monday was another day and I was already going through blogging withdrawals, but then it was fate’s wish that I was to go cold turkey.

Okay, if I were to throw politeness to the wind, I’d say there’s been a hostile takeover of my PC by a family friend. The guy says there’s something seriously wrong with his PC – PDFs don’t download and in rare cases when they do, they won’t open; a certain freeware he just read about somewhere [I’m sure it’s full of spyware] and downloaded won’t run on his system; and to drive in the final nail in his PC’s coffin, his internet connection’s gone with the thunder and lightning! So now that his PC’s practically useless, he’s spending quality time with mine. And – would you believe it – he’s even downloaded that shady freeware in my PC! If the system crashes, he’s getting the bill for sure.

Yesterday evening, I finally had this beauty all to myself. But my happiness was short-lived. I booted the PC only to realise that my internet connection too had gone with the wind, the thunder and the lightning!

Then today, the seize over my PC continued almost the entire day again. And when I finally got to get my hands on it, realisation dawned – server's down yet again! And that too till 11.30 pm! Just when I was about to holler 'Is there any justice in the world?', the answer was staring me in the eye. The connection was back on the track, with the network connection icon on the system tray winking its eye at me, as if we were sharing a naughty secret. Oh, the little things in life that bring us joy!

I know this post is not making much sense but ecstasy never made sense any way. And that’s the mental state I’m in right now – ecstatic! I know I’ll get over this excitement by tomorrow and may be I’ll post something sane here.