A-Roy!

"The Indian elite has seceded into outer space. It seems to have lost the ability to understand those who have been left behind on earth..."

"It would be immoral of me to preach violence unless I’m prepared to pick up arms myself. It is equally immoral for me to preach nonviolence when I’m not bearing the brunt of the attack..."

Whatever the mainstream thinks of Arundhati Roy, I must admit I've always liked her and what she's had to say.
Read this interview of her in Guernica - http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/2356/roy_2_15_11/

Some excerpts:

Guernica: As far as writing is concerned, do you have models, especially those that have remained so for a long time?

Arundhati Roy: Do I have models? Maybe I wouldn’t use that word because it sounds like there are people who I admire so much that I would like to become them, or to be like them… I don’t feel that about anybody. But if you mean are there writers I love and admire—yes of course there are. So many. But that would be a whole new interview wouldn’t it? Apart from Shakespeare, James Joyce, and Nabokov, Neruda, Eduardo Galeano, John Berger, right now I’m becoming fascinated by Urdu poets who I am ashamed to say I know so little about… But I’m learning. I’m reading Hafiz. There are so many wonderful writers, my ancestors that have lived in the world. I cannot begin to list them. However, it isn’t only writers who inspire my idea of storytelling. Look at the Kathakali dancer, the ease with which he can shift gears within a story—from humor to epiphany, from bestiality to tenderness, from the epic to the intimate—that ability, that range, is what I really admire. To me it’s that ease—it’s a kind of athleticism—like watching a beautiful, easy runner—a cheetah on the move—that is proof of the fitness of the storyteller.

Guernica: How old were you when you first became aware of the power of words?

Arundhati Roy: Pretty old I think. Maybe two. I heard about it from my disappeared father whom I met for the first time when I was about twenty-four or twenty-five years old. He turned out to be an absolutely charming, unemployed, broke, irreverent alcoholic. (After being unnerved initially, I grew very fond of him and gave thanks that he wasn’t some senior bureaucrat or golf-playing CEO.) Anyway, the first thing he asked me was, “Do you still use bad language?” I had no idea what he meant, given that the last time he saw me I was about two years old. Then he told me that on the tea estates in Assam where he worked, one day he accidentally burned me with his cigarette and that I glared at him and said “chootiya” (cunt, or imbecile)—language I’d obviously picked up in the tea-pickers’ labor quarters where I must have been shunted off to while my parents fought. My first piece of writing was when I was five… I still have those notebooks. Miss Mitten, a terrifying Australian missionary, was my teacher. She would tell me on a daily basis that she could see Satan in my eyes. In my two-sentence essay (which made it into The God of Small Things) I said, “I hate Miss Mitten, whenever I see her I see rags. I think her knickers are torn.” She’s dead now, God rest her soul. I don’t know whether these stories I’m telling you are about becoming aware of the power of words, or about developing an affection for words… the awareness of a child’s pleasure which extended beyond food and drink.

Guernica: Your critics say that you often see the world only in black and white.

Arundhati Roy: The thing is you have to understand, Amitava, that the people who say such things are a certain section of society who think they are the universe. It is the jitterbugging elite which considers itself the whole country. Just go outside and nobody will say that to you. Go to Orissa, go to the people who are under attack, and nobody will think that there is anything remotely controversial about what I write. You know, I keep saying this, the most successful secession movement in India is the secession of the middle and upper classes to outer space. They have their own universe, their ownandolan, their own Jessica Lal, their own media, their own controversies, and they’re disconnected from everything else. For them, what I write comes like an outrage. Ki yaar yeh kyaa bol rahi hai? [What the hell is she saying?] They don’t realize that they are the ones who have painted themselves into a corner.

Kemplates - Presentation ideas

A set of presentation templates by me. It should give you some ideas on how to make a presentation look better. You are free to use it any way you want. These templates are in the public domain.

I've used images in 3 of the slides. The images were chosen from U.S Government archives and are hence in the public domain as well.

I'll be adding more templates shortly.

kemplates - Presentation design ideas

Political change in the digital age

So much discussion seems to be happening around the role of the internet and social networks like facebook/twitter in the mass protests in Egypt and Tunisia. I though I'd post this presentation by CP John, politician from Kerala, titled 'Political Change in the Digital Age'.

Political change in the digital age

Tarantino's first

Footage from Quentin Tarantino's first movie 'My Best Friend's Wedding'.



Made in 1987 with a budget of $5000, it was one of those rare collector's items for several decades till YouTube came along...

Apparently, the 36 mins in this video is all that's left of the movie. A fire destroyed the rest.

2011

Here's to a marvellous and happy 2011!

'The End Of The Age Of Man?'

Christie Lynn, at the wonderful "Observations of a Nerd" blog, writes about how the Male of some species may be on the way out. Read an excerpt below. Fascinating stuff. It's up as a semi-finalist in the 3 Quarks poll of the best Science blog posts of 2009.

"No matter what our cultural influences might try to tell us, what makes a man a man isn't rippling abs, bulging biceps, or a rugged personality.

The only thing required to be a man, as far as people are concerned, is a Y chromosome.

Human beings, barring genetic anomalies, have 23 pairs of chromosomes in their genomes. One half of each pair comes from each parent. Twenty-two of these pairs of chromosomes are the same in all people. But the last set is different - they alone determine sex. You can have two possible combinations: XX and XY, and the Y is what makes a man male. It alone carries the genes for testes and sperm that separate the boys from the girls.

But the Y chromosome is behaving unlike any other chromosome in our bodies - it's shrinking. The X chromosome, Y's feminine partner, contains almost 1500 genes. It's believed that the Y chromosome, too, once contained around that many. But now, the lonely Y only contains 86 genes. It's lost almost 95% of its genetic material.

Why is the Y shrinking? The answer lies in how our cells replicate. When a cell divides, it has to make entire copies of its DNA to put into the new cell. But our cells aren't perfect - whenever they copy genes, they make a few mistakes. Some of these mistakes are caught by special enzymes which "check" the DNA, but not all of them. Those that make it past the initial checkpoints are usually fixed later by borrowing information from the partner chromosome. So if you have a flaw in a gene on your dad's copy of chromosome 18, the body replaces that gene with the corresponding one from your mom's copy of chromosome 18. But the Y chromosome has no exact partner - ever.

Over time, these mistakes accumulate, turning large portions of the DNA into junk, which is later removed - thus the chromosome slowly shrinks.

What will happen if the Y chromosome disappears? No one's entirely sure. In truth, no one's sure that it can be lost entirely. Some believe that the important "male" genes will attach to the X chromosome or another chromosome, which has happened in some species of mole vole. These animals have either two X chromosome paired together or only one, unpaired X and still have two distinct sexes. In humans, this can happen, though rarely. It's known as XX male syndrome, where somehow a few of the Y's genes have attached to an X, rendering the person still "male" despite a lack of a Y chromosome. However, in this case, the X chromosomes tend to feminize the person as well, leading to small testes, sterility and effeminate characteristics. Others believe that another chromosome will attach to the Y, giving it more genes and allowing it to continue onward. Still others believe that it will never fully disappear, and will remain indefinitely as a husk of a chromosome containing only the one or two genes absolutely necessary for manhood.

Why is it so important to have men around? After all, plenty of species breed asexually or without sex distinctions. There are even species of lizard which are entirely female. Instead of mating with men and exchanging genetic material, they hump each other and simply clone themselves. The process of reproducing without fertilization in vertebrates is called parthenogenesis. It has been documented in some species of shark, too. But never, not once, has it been found in humans. Other than a rumor of some woman named Mary about 2,000 years ago, no one has ever had a virgin birth.

Even if human beings were to be suddenly able to undergo parthenogenesis, we would lose a vital component of our reproductive process. Without that variety, we'll be far more susceptible to the onslaught of disease and parasites which evolve far more rapidly than we do.

So, if it's not bad enough that the Ys are shrinking, the men, in general, are losing their manliness due to environmental effects.

Most scientists believe that a true loss of the Y, and thus men, would spell the end of our species

There are several, vital genes, they argue, that have to come from the male. And clearly, our reproductive process is currently dependent upon men. Even if we did evolve a way around the lack of males, the loss of genetic diversity is likely to be devastating. We'll be at the mercy of fast-evolving parasites and viruses. But then again, who really knows? Even if the Y disappears, perhaps the next few million years will not spell the end of the age of humans, but solely the end of the age of man - with the age of woman just beginning.

 

Read the full post here. And vote for it here

 

The Islamic Bomb is 11 yrs old

Last week was the 11th anniversary of the nuclear bomb tests by Pakistan. Dawn, a leading Pakistani newspaper, ran this article.

" ONCE upon a time making nuclear bombs was the biggest thing a country could do. But not any more; North Korea’s successful nuclear test provides rock-solid proof. This is a country that no one admires.

It is unknown for scientific achievement, has little electricity or fuel, food and medicine are scarce, corruption is ubiquitous, and its people live in terribly humiliating conditions under a vicious, dynastic dictatorship. In a famine some years ago, North Korea lost nearly 800,000 people. It has an enormous prison population of 200,000 that is subjected to systematic torture and abuse.

Some had imagined that nuclear weapons would make Pakistan an object of awe and respect internationally. They had hoped that Pakistan would acquire the mantle of leadership of the Islamic world. Indeed, in the aftermath of the 1998 tests, Pakistan’s stock had shot up in some Muslim countries before it crashed. But today, with a large swathe of its territory lost to insurgents, one has to defend Pakistan against allegations of being a failed state. In terms of governance, economy, education or any reasonable quality of life indicators, Pakistan is not a successful state that is envied by anyone.

Contrary to claims made in 1998, the bomb did not transform Pakistan into a technologically and scientifically advanced country. Again, the facts are stark. Apart from relatively minor exports of computer software and light armaments, science and technology remain irrelevant in the process of production.

Pakistan’s current exports are principally textiles, cotton, leather, footballs, fish and fruit. This is just as it was before Pakistan embarked on its quest for the bomb. The value-added component of Pakistani manufacturing somewhat exceeds that of Bangladesh and Sudan, but is far below that of India, Turkey and Indonesia. Nor is the quality of science taught in our educational institutions even remotely satisfactory. But then, given that making a bomb these days requires only narrow technical skills rather than scientific ones, this is scarcely surprising......(contd)"

(via 3 quarks )

Wikimedia Picture of the year

The Commons Picture of the Year has been selcted. Stunning, totally free pictures here

Horses on Bianditz mountain. Behind them Aiako Harria mountain can be seen. Taken by Mikel Ortega and Edited by Richard Bartz

Another entry

The Whirlpool Galaxy (Spiral Galaxy M51, NGC 5194) is a classic spiral galaxy located in the Canes Venatici constellation. Taken by NASA and European Space Agency.




(via Boing Boing)

The power in the Stars

The National Ignition Facility in California was dedicated in March 2009.

(Seen here, the interior of the NIF target chamber )



From the NYTimes

Like the cathedrals of antiquity, it is built on an unrivaled scale with unmatched technology, and it embodies a scientific doctrine that, if confirmed, might lift civilization to new heights.
In theory, the facility’s 192 lasers — made of nearly 60 miles of mirrors and fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers — will fire as one to pulverize a fleck of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head. Compressed and heated to temperatures hotter than those of the core of a star, the hydrogen atoms will fuse into helium, releasing bursts of thermonuclear energy.

In February, NIF fired its 192 beams into its target chamber for the first time, and it now has the world’s most powerful laser, as well as the largest optical instrument ever built. But raising its energies still further to the point of ignition could take a year or more of experimentation and might, officials concede, prove daunting and perhaps impossible.
For that reason, skeptics dismiss NIF as a colossal delusion that is squandering precious resources at a time of economic hardship. Just operating it, officials grant, will cost $140 million a year. Some doubters ridicule it as the National Almost Ignition Facility, or NAIF
“If fusion energy works,” he said, “you’ll have, for all intents and purposes, a limitless supply of carbon-free energy that’s not geopolitically sensitive. What more would you want? It’s a game changer.”

Dr. Moses, who was put in charge of NIF a decade ago in an effort to right the struggling project, said that a decade from now, as NIF opened new frontiers, no one would remember the missteps. He compared the project to feats like going to the Moon, building the atom bomb and inventing the airplane.
“Stumbles are not unusual when you take on big-risk projects,” he said.
Dr. Moses added that the stumble rule applied to cathedrals as well.
Having grown up in Eastchester, close to New York City, he noted that the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was still under construction after more than a century. Is it worthwhile, despite the delays?
“Of course it is,” he said. Taking on big projects that challenge the imagination “is who we are as a species.”

NIF Home page

(via kurzweilai.net )

On Legalizing Drugs

I've been following the recent developments around decriminalization of drugs (Marijuana mostly) with great interest. The counter intuitiveness of such measures is probably what makes it fascinating.

Anyway, the situation as of now - A few countries, mostly in Western Europe, are experimenting with legalizing the use of 'light' drugs like Marijuana.

In the Netherlands, production, import , export and large scale dealing are prohibited and will still land you in jail. However, personal possession of Marijuana will result in only a fine, at the most. Laws are not usually enforced, and several 'Cannabis Coffee shops' have sprung up where you can smoke your favourite weed without fearing the law. The irony is that normal cigarettes are banned! Apparently Cannabis coffee shops have boosted tourism and netted an extra $500 million in taxes for the govt . As a result of decriminalization, drug use does not seem to have gone up significantly. See this link for more details on the coffee shops

In Portugal, they decided to go all the way in 2001, completely legalizing possesion of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. If people are caught with drugs, they are offered therapy and rehab, not jail. Offenders can actually choose whether to take up that offer or not. Time Magazine has a detailed article about this and its effects.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

(Note: the cited paper was published by the Cato Institute- a strongly left leaning think-tank, so a bias towards legalisation is possible)

The major argument for legalizing drugs seems to be that prohibition has never been very effective. Prohibition usually leads to the banned trade going underground, leading to even more crime and violence. The liquor prohibition era in the U.S is a perfect example.


Incidentally, the U.S is seeing renewed debate over the possibilities of a softer drug regime. The U.S spends the most on fighting the narcotics trade, yet sees higher usage than most countires. Liberal organisations have called for a review of govt policy and some states are considering amending their laws.

Freakonomics had a recent article or 'quorum of experts' which examines different sides of the issue..

Among the people who participated were Robert Platshorn, a former marijuana smuggler, who says:

So for 29 years I lived in 11 prisons, costing you millions, as America’s longest-serving non-violent prisoner of the War on Weed. When Feds kicked in my door, I’d been retired from smuggling for two years. My ice cream and food concessions employed about 50 people. My Miami auto auction, body shop, and barbershop employed another 40. Good jobs and serious tax dollars — all gone in an instant.

What was accomplished? The War on Weed that started in the 1970’s discouraged pot smuggling by small timers like me, and filled the void with drug cartels far more interested in the lucrative cocaine trade. Big profits bred violence, enough to make Miami the U.S. murder capital. Today, we see that same prohibition-fueled violence along our Mexican border.

Legalizing marijuana would deprive this dangerous black market of profits and relieve a ridiculous burden on taxpayers; it would allow police to focus on serious crime instead of arresting more than 800,000 Americans every year for pot ...

So, based on lies and distortions, we demonized a plant that’s proven effective in treating chronic pain, glaucoma, MS, arthritis, and the effects of chemotherapy, AIDS-wasting syndrome, and other chronic illnesses. Studies in at least five countries have shown marijuana to slow and often reverse the growth of cancer cells. All this from a plant less toxic than aspirin and less habit-forming than coffee or wine.

Paul Armentano, Dy Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) points out that

" Further, the great irony of our existing policy is that nearly half of all Americans — including our nation’s three most recently elected U.S. presidents — have used, and many continue to use, pot despite the imposition of prohibition. Would this percentage be even higher if marijuana were legalized? Possibly, but not likely. "

On the other hand, a former top ranking DEA (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) Official, Mike Braun, makes his case by presenting Alaska's experience with legal drugs

" In 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that an adult’s possession of marijuana for personal consumption in the home was legal. Although the ruling applied only to persons 19 and over, teen consumption of the drug skyrocketed. A 1988 University of Alaska study found that the state’s 12- to 17-year-olds used marijuana at more than twice the national average for their age group. School equivalency test scores plummeted, as work place accidents, insurance rates and drugged-driving accidents went through the roof. Alaska’s residents voted to recriminalize possession of marijuana in 1990, demonstrating their belief that legalization and increased use was too high a price to pay."

Clearly, the debate is far from any signs of being resolved. The long term socio-economic impacts are not understood well. The same policy can produce different results in different countries and eras. The obvious political sensitivity of the issue makes objective assessments by governments very difficult...

But whatever the case, the time has come for the world to examine its long held positions and to tackle one of the biggest challenges of our times.

(I'll be updating this article very soon, with links to more sources and a look at actual figures..)

At BarCamp Kerala 5.0

It has been a while since I made my last post. I posted here for a while, then lost the interest and the energy...

Well, that changed last Sunday - Thanks to the BarCamp at Technopark, Kerala. Around 100 attendees - techies and non-techies alike, gathered for a day of presentations, sessions and discussions that were interesting throughout and at times brilliantly stimulating. 

I saw lots of very smart people, people with lots of energy and passion in them. And you had college students who were already running a company or two, hotshot entreprenuers, a guy who builds compilers for fun, another who led the development at Slideshare, another guy who set up a succesful venture after a lot of struggle and is now trying to bring in social change, and an evangelist from Opera. Plus there was a 70 year old farmer tuned blogger about whom a participant said- "I loved for e.g. the farmer dude who asked about iframes and its legal basis to a largely technical audience - that is a story I'll probably tell my grandchildren :-) "  

If this weren't enough, you had linux fans singgering whenever somebody made the mistake of mentioning 'microsoft'  :)  , others happily live twittering the full event, and people (like me) who were just content with taking in everything.

The whole thing kind of rejuvenated me - almost enough to make me quit my job and go build a startup....you know the kind of moment when all sorts of grand plans rush into your head, you think revolution...  (But then you wake up and find it's monday and you're late for office...)

Please visit the site to see the full list of sessions (a few of them didnt take place) and more about the event.

Of all the sessions, the one that really caught my attention was the calculation of Pi through distributed computing. While calculating Pi was an admirable end in itself, the fact that the distributed computing thing ran entirely on the browser ( in an elegant, simple way) just blew me away. I'm still thinking about how you could take that model and implement it elsewhere, but I'm pretty sure there are huge possibilities in it.  

More on all this very soon.....

Btw, this is the presentation on calculating Pi 

Peep Into Pi

View more presentations from vishnu.

Help find Steve Fossett

Steve Fossett, millionaire adventurer, went missing on September 3, 2007 while flying over the Nevada desert. Rescue missions have been unsuccessful in finding him, but with the aid of new age technology, we can now join the search .

Leading the way is The Amazon Mechanical Turk. Volunteers on the service scan satellite imagery for clues to the crash site. The project is located here.

Fans of Google Earth can use the KML file here, to search on Ge. Load the KML, then copy paste 38.679428,-118.913956 in the "Fly To" box found at the top left corner of the application. (For a similar viewing experience in Google Earth to the above image, navigate to an altitude of roughly 1,500 feet ) .

Where were you?

Today is the 6th 9/11 anniversary. The blogosphere must be jammed with posts about it . I do not intend to join the debates around the incident. See this and this and here for some columns on the anniversary.

What we will be discussing is this - do you remember where exactly you were when you heard about 9/11? I certainly do. I've heard that most Americans remember where they were when they heard about JFK's assassination, and Indians remember the day Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. 9/11 was a much greater event than these two, changing the way the U.S.A lived, and directly affecting countless people around the globe.

I was in my hostel room. My friend was in the hospital with pneumonia, and I was with him the whole day. At around 7 p.m, I think, another friend and I got to our hostel to get dinner. We were sitting in my room when we heard the noise outside.

"Someone's firing missiles at the U.S !! "

"They are bombing New York !"

"America is destroyed..."

"This is the end"

There were around 100 students in my hostel , with most of them crammed into our tiny TV room . We didn't have cable , and the news report was quite vague.

I remember 'Bamms' Jijesh yelling "Jai Bharat Matha Ki ! ". I have no idea what he meant.

Later, we went out in search of an internet cafe, and I think we managed to open up one that was closing down for the night.

9/11 for me, surprisingly, is one of the more vivid memories from college.

So, where exactly where you on September 11, 2001 ?

The Shortlisted and the Short shrifted

The MAN Booker Prize Shortlist for 2007 was announced yesterday . The six titles shortlisted are:

* Darkmans by Nicola Barker
* The Gathering by Anne Enright
* The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
* Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
* On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
* Animal’s People by Indra Sinha

Reactions have been mixed, mostly negative. Ian McEwan is the only established author from the list , and has been the bookies favourite all along.

The Long list itself was rather controversial, what with well known authors like Sebastian Faulks and J.M. Coetzee being left out and virtual unknowns entering the race.

The Telegraph reports that :

" While McEwan's novella, On Chesil Beach, has been a runaway commercial success, selling more than 100,000 copies, one of his rivals for the prize, Animal's People, loosely based on the Bhopal chemical plant explosion, by the Indian author Indra Sinha, had sold just 231 copies in this country by mid-August, 10 days after its sales were supposedly given a major boost by being longlisted.

Nicola Barker's Darkmans had sold only 499 copies. Anne Enright's The Gathering had fared a little better with sales of 834 sales, Mister Pip had sales of 880 and of McEwan's rivals, only Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist broke the four-figure barrier, with 1,519 readers buying it. "

I claim thee..

Have added ( 'claimed') the blog to Technorati.
.
.
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3 days later, traffic still hasn't exploded.. I wonder why??

Technorati Profile

Facebook's public search

In what might be its most controversial move yet, Facebook has announced that user profiles will be available for public search, ie you dont have to register or login to be able to search the Facebook database; you can just do a google search.

Now, is this going to catapult Facebook ahead of rivals by making it truly open and accessible; or will it scare away the privacy conscious??

Steve O'Hear at ZDnet has an interesting take on this:

"Within this context, does Facebook’s “public search listing” make the situation worse? I’m going to say no. Let me explain why.

Facebook results will inevitably end up pretty high in Google’s index, so a search for my name through Google — were I to opt in — would probably bring up my Facebook profile before many of my other social web presences, let alone what others have written about me. Presuming this works out to be the case, the end result is that I now have more control over what “digital litter” you see first, because I can edit my profile any time I like, and the search engine will re-index the results. In other words, I now at least have a chance to influence how I’m represented on Google and online in general."

If this does turn out to be true, then it could be the start of something big. I can imagine several applications based on google + facebook. But, privacy concerns are not to be treated lightly. There is a very real possibility that public search could be misused in really twisted ways.

And while we're still on social networking, check out

PatientsLikeMe .

( via ZDnet )

The Nokia way - If you cant beat 'em, copy 'em

The geniuses at Nokia have finally found a way to beat the iphone - just copy the iphone ....
Apparently, they are very proud of it. Says , Anssi Vanjoki (Nokia's Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia) - "If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride."
The device was unveiled at the GoPlay event on Aug 29 and is due next year.

That other handset cos would somehow come up with iphone clones was something I'd always expected to happen. The jolt that the iphone and the amazing hype around it has given to the industry will sooner or later result in ground breaking innovations. A few outright rip-offs are inevitable, and are probably part of the process.

Seems Samsung is not far behind . Take a look at the Croix.

btw, Picasso once said, "Bad artists copy. Great artists steal". Maybe the Nokia nerds really are brilliant.

( via Endgadget )

The Oath of the Knight

Today is Labor Day. On Sep 5, 1882 the New York City Central Labor Union held the first Labor Day parade. "The parade was repeated annually without interruption, but not always on a Monday, until several states and then the Congress in 1894, settled on the first Monday in September.

Those first parades were really protest rallies for the adoption of the 8-hour day, rather than the, often tame civic events they have involved into. Participants had to give up a day's pay in order to march. The New York CLU even levied a fine on non-participants!". ( source )

The part that interested us - the parade was actually organised by a then secret organisation - The Knights of Labor, also known as Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor . They had elaborate rituals , like other fraternal organisations . New Knights agreed to commit themselves to improve the conditions of all working people.

At the initiation ceremony, new knights took the following sacred oath:

"In the beginning, God ordained that man should labor, not as a curse, but as a blessing; not as a punishment, but as means of development, physically, mentally, morally, and has set thereunto his seal of approval in the rich increase and reward. By labor is brought forward the kindly fruits of the earth in rich abundance for our sustenance and comfort; by labor (not exhaustive) is promoted health of the body and strength of mind, labor garners the priceless stores of wisdom and knowledge. It is the “Philosopher’s Stone,” everything it touches turns to wealth. “Labor is noble and holy.” To glorify God in its exercise, to defend it from degradation, to divest it of the evils to body, mind, and estate, which ignorance and greed have imposed; to rescue the toiler from the grasp of the selfish is a work worthy of the noblest and best of our race.

You have been selected from among your associates for that exalted purpose. Are you willing to accept the responsibility, and, trusting in the support of pledged true Knights, labor, with what ability you possess, for the triumph of these principles among men? "

The Kinghts of Labor ceased to be a force by the 1890's.

A hundred years on, shall we revive this mystic order?? Shall we go to the mattresses?


( via Consumerist, historymatters )

Viva South Carolina !!

Well, what can I say about this one...




you need to watch this one too.









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Quotes from the far corners

Homer:

"Come on, Marge, I want to shake off the dust of this one-horse town. I want to explore the world. I want to watch TV in a different time zone. I want to visit strange, exotic malls. I’m sick of eating hoagies. I want a grinder, a sub, a foot-long hero…I want to live, Marge! Won’t you let me live? Won’t you please?!”

btw, when does the Simpsons Movie open here??

b2b

Here I go.....................again.