Small thoughts Archives - Page 17 of 19

God vs Tuberculosis

13 May, 2007 by Amit Varma

Hindus have launched a last minute appeal to prevent the slaughter of a sacred bull which has tested positive for tuberculosis.
The bull, Shambo, lives in a shrine in Llanpumsaint, Carmarthenshire.

I have just one question: if the bull is sacred, how come God allowed it to get Tuberculosis? Tuberculosis is more powerful than God or what? Shouldn’t people be praying to Tuberculosis then?

(Link via email from Sanjeev Naik. Previous posts on cows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 , 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89.)

Never put the price tag…

28 April, 2007 by Amit Varma

… on the blurbs.

When will bookshops learn this?

Loving the West. Hating the West

22 April, 2007 by Amit Varma

In an essay about the Russia of the 1840s, and its relation to the west, Isaiah Berlin once wrote:

To some degree this peculiar amalgam of love and hate is still intrinsic to Russian feelings about Europe: on the one hand, intellectual respect, envy, admiration, desire to emulate and excel; on the other, emotional hostility, suspicion, and contempt, a sense of being clumsy, de trop, of being outsiders; leading, as a result, to an alternation between excessive self-prostration before, and aggressive flouting of, western values. No visitor to the Soviet Union can have failed to remark something of this phenomenon: a combination of intellectual inadequacy and emotional superiority, a sense of the west as admirably self-restrained, clever, efficient, and successful: but also as being cramped, cold, mean, calculating, fenced in, without capacity for large views or generous emotion…

Holds true in another context, you think?

“I don’t care! Take me home. I’m done”

20 April, 2007 by Amit Varma

Why do the sad stories of other people make us cry?

Could it be because they snap us out of our self-delusion, and show us that death is inevitable and happiness is always fleeting? Nah, let’s not be negative.

Anyway, do check these pictures out, sequentially. It’s brilliant work, and Renée C. Byer got a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for it.

(Link via email from Gautam John.)

On men who scratch

20 April, 2007 by Amit Varma

Q. Why do men scratch themselves in public.

A. Because it’s impolite to scratch other people.

A friend insisted I post on this subject because a man she happened to meet somewhere kept scratching his balls in public. For some reason, she found this objectionable, and felt that I should write a post advising men against such behaviour if they want to impress women. My response: If you give men a choice between scratching themselves and impressing women, they will scratch. Some things are non-negotiable. Deal with it, dude.