Photos of Pune University

During the days of the Raj, what is now the Pune University campus was the monsoon residence of the Governor of the Province of Bombay. The photo below is of what was once his swimming pool and is situated just next to the residence itself (which has a 300 metre high tower) constructed in the Italian-Gothic style. Usually, the swimming pool — such as it is — has very little water in it and looks nothing like this; the photo here was taken during a particularly heavy monsoon.





More Photos: flickr.com/photos/22257505@N05/sets/72157603578626033/show/

Protecting the Kilt

Sometime ago, I wrote about the possibility of extending copyright protection to designer clothes. Now, The Independent [1] reports that the Scots are trying to protect the Scottish Kilt:
"The campaign is the idea of an Edinburgh-based kilt-maker, Howie Nicholsby, who, exasperated by the influx of cheap, foreign imports calling themselves Scottish kilts, got in touch with the Scottish Member of European Parliament Alyn Smith to see if they could persuade the European Commission to give the Scottish kilt protected designation of origin (PDO) status."
The protected designation of origin status is usually used to protect food though under EEC regulation 2081/92. [2]
Links:
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hands-off-our-kilts-scots-bid-to-copyright-their-national-dress-789340.html
[2] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31992R2081:EN:HTML

Self Blame

I’m beginning to think that what is most attractive about blaming oneself for the things which happen in one’s life, or taking responsibility for them, is that when you say, “If I had done something differently, the result would have been different,” what you’re effectively saying is that you are in control of your life in some way, that it’s your own choices which have led you to where you are. In many ways, it’s much easier to do that than it is to say, “What happened was not a result of my own choices,” because that is a statement which automatically implies that you had no control over what happened. And not being in control can be truly frightening.

Link: Rape Recovery Journal

“January 26th 2000 Oh these flashbacks are killing me. My heart is hurting so badly. IF this is HEALING, I dont want to do it anymore!”
http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/AmysAnger/Journal.html

User-generated Content: Facebook v. Wordpress

Facebook’s Terms of Service [1] inter alia say:

“By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.”

I’m pretty sure that not too many people know that by posting their content on to Facebook, they automatically licence it to the company in such a broad manner. I’m not sure what fully-paid means in this context though since no money changes hands — I would have assumed that the consideration for the licence was the provision of a service but the words ‘fully-paid’ have left me a little confused.

This is in contrast to Automattic’s Terms of Service [2] which say:

“By submitting Content to Automattic for inclusion on your Website, you grant Automattic a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your blog. If you delete Content, Automattic will use reasonable efforts to remove it from the Website, but you acknowledge that caching or references to the Content may not be made immediately unavailable.”

Links:
[1] http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
[2] http://wordpress.com/tos/

A Photo of an Indian Woman

She’s looking down, quite literally seeing nothing but the ground beneath her feet. Her gait seems more purposeful than elegant and her heels are cracked. The way she’s draped her sari is anything but chic. And her footwear is both sensible and inexpensive although she’s wearing a reasonable amount of gold: earrings, two bangles along with those made of glass and a chain.

I’ve fallen for this photo. It was uploaded on to Flickr on November 29, 2007 by Harneet and has been published under a Creative Commons licence.

The Great War for Civilisation

I’ve been reading ‘The Great War for Civilisation’ by Robert Fisk. I first came across his work during the initial stages of the recent invasion of Iraq by the US at the Information Clearing House website. At the time, most of the Western media’s coverage was so awful that I spent hours looking for news which, at the very least, wasn’t annoying. The Indian media wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t very much of a story here: most of the coverage focussed on India’s refusal to help GWB and what that might mean for Indo-US relations. (Incidentally, that’s one of the few times I’ve ever felt proud of the Indian government: I can’t imagine how we would ever have been able to justify supporting BushBlair & Co. to ourselves).

I read Mr Fisk's articles regularly along with a few diaries such as that of Riverbend whose blog ‘Women Unlimited’ has now published as a book although having read the blog, I haven’t read the book. His reports were the best I could find — he was always very well informed and very humane without being soppy.

His father was in World War I. He speaks of him quite a bit in this book: they seem to have shared a rather complicated relationship. The title is from an inscription on a medal which his father was awarded, if I remember correctly, and the book itself is a mixture of political history and personal commentary.

I couldn’t read it all the way through without taking a break though: I found it brutal. For example, the book contains very detailed descriptions of torture which left me feeling ill. They’re not, for lack of a better word, ‘sensational’ in the way you would expect them to be in a best-selling novel; for the most part, they’re mere statements of fact which speak for themselves. Very loudly.

I’m not even going to attempt to review the book but it has made think about how much difference it makes to have an understanding of history. I’ve often wondered whether the coverage of the last war was the result of hope triumphing over all common sense, desperation on the part of the Western journalists to believe the rants of assorted politicians, or just plain stupidity. I’ve now begun to wonder whether part of the reason why most journalists came up with such ridiculous reports is because they simply didn’t know enough about the region, its history, or its culture.

There’s a book I saw sometime ago called ‘Blood and Sand‘ by Frank Gardner, a BBC journalist. I’d like to read it sometime although it will probably be a while before I pick it up: the recent history is the Middle East is chilling.

Addendum: My brother just read 'Blood and Sand' and tells me that it's very good.

French Dishes

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List was created in 1972. The organization’s website says:

“UNESCO has identified and declared as the inalienable heritage of humanity some six hundred places, ranging from natural sanctuaries and manmade landscapes to whole urban centres, archaeological areas, and individual monuments.
The World Heritage List [1] includes 851 properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value.
These include 660 cultural, 166 natural and 25 mixed properties in 141 States Parties. As of October 2006, 184 States Parties have ratified the World Heritage Convention.”

It is not a list one would ordinarily think of listing French dishes on. However, that is exactly what the French President has applied to have done. [2]

Links:
[1] http://whc.unesco.org/en/list
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/25/wfrafood125.xml

Odd Books ; Are Women Human?

From Reuters comes a list of some odd books [1] including:
1. How to Write a How to Write Book
2. If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs
3. Drawing and Painting the Undead
It was the title ‘Are Women Human?’ which caught my eye. Not being entirely certain whether it was another one of those virulently anti-women books possibly trying to be funny or something else, I went and checked it out on Amazon.com.
As it turns out, it’s a feminist study by Catharine A. MacKinnon whose book ‘Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws‘ I read a while ago and think rather highly of. Ms Magazine has said:
“In this collection of essays, the pioneering feminist lawyer calls for international laws to protect women from the denial of property rights, the deployment of rape in war and other brutalities that flow from male oppression.”
I’m not sure why the book has been listed in a collection of odd books unless it’s supposed to be a list of books with odd titles.
Link:
[1] http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080222/od_nm/books_dc
Addendum:
March 28, 2008
‘If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs’ won this year’s oddest book title competition.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080328/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_britain_book_odd

'Herland'

Debs from The Burning Times writes about Umoja:
“In 1990, Rebecca Lolosoli founded a women-only village in Kenya called Umoja (”unity” in Kiswahili). The village was first established by 15 women, and by 2005 the number of women living there had risen to 48. The village is a refuge for women fleeing their husband’s abuse. The women survive by selling their brightly-coloured bead necklaces to tourists, and this has been so successful that the village has even come under attack from jealous local men.”
It’s an inspiring story.

Links:

[1] Umoja Uaso women group: http://www.jambosafaris.com/umojacharity.htm

[2] Debs’ post: http://burningtimes1645.blogspot.com/2008/02/umoja-women-only-village-in-kenya.html

[3] The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/16/wkenya16.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/16/ixworld.html

Cell Phone in Court

Judge Robert Restaino of Niagara Falls City Court sent 46 defendants in domestic violence cases to jail after a cell phone went off in his court room and no one claimed responsibility for it.

There were apparently no less than ten amicus curiae briefs filed in his support at the New York Court of Appeals.

I don’t really know what to make of this case. I do sympathise with the judge knowing how superbly annoying cell phones can be. I remember having an extremely strong desire to ask people to leave class when their cell phones rang. I’ve never felt affronted or any such thing as many people who are in the middle of giving a lecture seem to feel. However, I do think that a cell phone should essentially be private and that it’s basic courtesy to ensure that it doesn’t create a nuisance in a public setting whether it be a classroom, cinema hall or court room.
That being said, my first reaction was that this judge had overreacted although, much to my embarrassment, I lost much of my sympathy for the defendants once I realized that they were there on DV charges.As unfair as this is, I believe that few men (whether or not accused of DV) are not guilty of being abusive – possibly because I’m used to the way things operate in India. A very large fraction of men are abusive, many of them without even realizing it simply because they cannot imagine living their lives any differently. And society being what it is, few women would dream of approaching the police / courts unless they were already in hospital or in very real danger. And even if they do approach the system, they rarely receive relief. Take these two cases for example:1. A husband committed bigamy, left his first wife starving on the streets where she ultimately killed herself. It was held that he wasn’t guilty of being cruel to her and thereby abetting her suicide.2. A wife who did things like refuse to make tea for her husband and who thereby supposedly denigrated his ‘honour’ was held to be guilty of inflicting cruelty on him in a divorce case.And with thoughts like that in the back of my mind, even thought this case occurred in another country, all I could think was: perhaps it is better that they go to jail for something even if that something is entirely ludicrous.
Nonetheless, I would support this judge’s removal. He’s acted in an arbitrary manner and while today his actions have generated a lot of publicity since, let’s face it, they’re so bizarre that they’re funny, tomorrow he could just as easily do something even worse which doesn’t get any publicity such as, well, not instruct a jury properly regarding something like the burden of proof or reasonable doubt if the defendant happened to tick him off, and that is something which has the potential to wreak havoc on an innocent person.
The reports I’ve read of him do say that he has a spotless twelve-year long record. That doesn’t change my opinion though because records are unlikely to pick up on anything which isn’t particularly absurd and also since people change over time. A judge’s job is far too important for him to be given the benefit of the doubt.
Links:
[1] http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal_blog_watch/2008/02/should-judge-wh.html
[2] http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/02/20/two-hours-of-inexplicable-madness-or-something-else/

Bitching Online and Privacy

The urge, especially when someone does something nasty, to bitch about them online whether on one’s own blog, on a site such as juicycampus.com, in comments to some article or somewhere else entirely can be very hard to resist. I know that there are times when I’ve done it.
I’m not entirely certain whether it’s a good idea though even leaving aside the legal issues: possible defamation, incitement to violence, hate speech etc. It isn’t as though once you’ve vented your feelings, you’ve vented them and that’s the end of the story: what you say could come back to haunt you years later. Search engines have particularly unforgiving memories and unless you have have a name like ’Mary Smith’ which you share with a million other people, all it is ever going to take for someone to dig up what you’ve said (assuming you haven’t said it anonymously) is a thirty second search online, not a thirty-month long search at the archives of twice as many publications.
An example Daniel J. Solove gave in his book ‘The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet‘ was of a man who’d written about his ‘brush with the law’ at the age of seventeen had it follow him for the rest of his life whether at job interviews or on dates despite the fact that, officially, his record was unavailable.
I’ve come to believe that whenever one gives out personal information online, even if it is entirely in the form of a vindictive rant, it constitutes an invasion of one’s own privacy and while it certainly is sometimes productive such as when you want a company to honour a guarantee it’s made to you and your bitching online leaves them worried about their reputation being damaged, I’m not sure it’s often advisable.

Respecting Monuments

Reuters reports that a British man has been sentenced to five days’ detention for urinating on the ‘Freedom Monument’ in Latvia which was erected in 1935 as a symbol of the State’s resistance to foreign rule.
I am rather disgusted by his conduct especially since I can’t imagine any Briton ever behaving in a similar manner in his own country.
However, it also makes me think of the state in which many Indian monuments lie — not quite so much in a state of ruin but in a state of rubbish. The last time I went to Karla caves, it was well nigh impossible to go anywhere near parts of the the caves because of how much they stank, and I can’t think of too many times I’ve gone to a monument and failed to see graffiti of the ‘Sonu loves Monu’ variety etched into it.
I’m not sure why we don’t value monuments enough to be able to enjoy them without being disrespectful towards them.
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL1988648520080219

Background Checks

One of the strangest comments (which Akismet tells me is spam) I've seen reached a post about torture:

I wonder how many of these scam artists have received our money…. I become acquainted with Woman'sName on dating site and after some letter she start to tell about love I agree of the feelings. She wanted to visit me, she needed $1500. 00 for agent and airfare. I had doubts about money requests and found an investigation service that does background checks and provide a scam check service. That company is called DetectiveAgency( http: //www. detectiveagency. com, I am not advertising here, I just do a report about my experience. It cost me about $19, and it was much less than I might have lost in other case. I really enjoy this service. I saw that now they do some free service. Maybe it relly can help somebody like me. Buy. But as to me, I will pay for a background check before I ever send any money. Tom

I've cut out the agency's name because I'm not advertising it either. :)
I did rather enjoy reading the comment though -- it reminded me of a friend who is a non-native speaker of English. And it doesn't seem like a bad idea i.e. doing a background check. I first thought of it when a lady -- an actress though I can't remember her name -- said that she would do one to check the history of potential partners on Oprah. It made sense to me then and it still does. If not anything else, you wouldn't have to deal with suddenly discovering that the oh-so-perfect chap you're interested in has two wives, a conviction for culpable homicide and no job.
That could be a bit of an exaggeration but in today's world, who knows? Sometime ago, for example, a friend of mine got married to a chap whom she knew next to nothing about and whom she didn't check up on at all. Her marriage, while it lasted, was a disaster.

The Terror Dream

by Susan Faludi
I've been reading extracts of the book online but I haven't been able to find it in a bookshop. I'd love to read the whole book through: it seems interesting and humourous (though more sarcastic than laugh-out-loud funny).
Reading the extracts reminded me of a conversation I'd had with a friend's mum some time ago where I'd told her that I felt as though over the last few years, the clock has been turned back in terms of women's 'liberation'. Not being an authority on the subject in any sense of the word though, I've rarely voiced the opinion.
It is, however, an opinion which the author of this book seems to share and build upon albeit in a different context: Faludi says that 9/11 revived traditional gender stereotypes.

Footpath Barrier

When you try putting a barrier across a footpath you’ve just constructed to ensure that bikes can’t make their way on to it only to find that either the footpath or your barrier isn’t level, this is how you solve the problem.

Obscenity

Bangalore has just banned dancing in bars although no one really seems to know how this ban is supposed to work.
India is the country where you can urinate in public (if you're a man) without so much as having an eyebrow raised but where you can't kiss in public.
1. Richard Gere faces obscenity charges in India for kissing actress Shilpa Shetty during an event to raise AIDS awareness -- although the Supreme Court has stayed proceedings in a lower court, the arrest warrant has not been quashed.
2. However, Justices AR Lakshmanan and Tarun Chatterjee of the Supreme Court dismissed a PIL seeking ban on obscenity in papers filed by Advocate Ajay Goswami in 2006. [1]
3. But item girl Rakhi Sawant was refused permission by the Hyderabad police to perform at an event there. [2]
4. A PIL was filed against Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai and the producer and director of Dhoom 2 by Advocate Sudhir Kumar Ojha for attacking the image of the Indian woman by kissing in the film. [3]
5. The Bombay High Court banned TV all channels from showing adult content without certification as a result of a PIL filed by Pratiba Naitthani, a political science professor. [4]
I'm not sure I understand why one does and the other does not constitute obscene conduct in India. And I can't wonder if a great deal of the problem -- such as it is -- has to do with lawyers having nothing better to do although there must be more to it than that.

Links:

[1] http://www.indianexpress.com/story/18445.html

[2] http://www.hindu.com/2006/08/14/stories/2006081419060100.htm

[3] http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=43d1bfa6-527d-4db7-889a-fb0828c1dd21

[4] http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=35727

Symmetry and Impossibility

A post which mentions the Necker cube led me to pages with M C Escher's work. The first time I saw some of his works was sometime in the 80s. Someone had printed them out on what, by today's standards, was a superbly lousy printer and they were a bit patchy but they did introduce me to him. I've been entranced by his art ever since then although I don't have any books which contain any of his work.
Gallery: http://www.mcescher.com/

Forgiveness

There's a post on Mad Melancholic Feminista about forgiveness and (sibling) relationships. It made me think about forgiveness in my own life.
It's an issue I've been grappling with for a while now -- it simply doesn't come easily to me. The way I see it, forgiveness is, by and large, a tool I use to be able to justify the existence or creation of a context which either does actually exist or which I want to have exist.
There are times when I don't even have the slightest desire to forgive. Usually, when that happens, it's simply because I’m afraid that forgiving might involve forgetting, and that forgetting might involve allowing an encore which is not something I would like to have to deal with no matter now many ‘mights’ would have to find their way into reality before that happened.
There are other times when I think that it is beyond me to be able to forgive primarily because anger or pain get in the way although my ability to set those feelings aside seems to depend on who the other person involved is — like most people, I suppose, I can forgive almost anything in those I love.
Although, then again, there are those whom my inability to forgive has ultimately caused me to stop caring for. What seems strange is that I don't have to care about a person to somehow find a way to forgive them. What I need to be able to forgive is to want to be able to see that person playing a part in my life, however small, at some point in the future. And if I want to be able to see that in my mind's eye, I am willing to ignore reality.

Copyrighting Clothes

The US Senate and Congress have both been discussing extending special copyright protection to the fashion industry -- an industry which thrives on the lack of copyright protection in several ways. And guess what one of the reasons they supposedly need copyright protection is: to ensure that terrorists don't win. :) If there's one thing no one can accuse Washington of, it's inconsistency.
Links:
[1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080215/135455266.shtml
[2] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070810/030915.shtml
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/fashion/09ROW.html?ex=1344398400&en=1075a5b43c787fd8&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Broken Violins

I just came across an article about David Garrett accidentally crushing his 236-year-old million-dollar Guadagnini violin and felt really sad.
I don’t play the violin although many years ago, my grandmother had given me an old Czech copy of a Stradivarius. It first came to me in good condition. After years of my being separated from it, it came back to me with its body cracked. I doubt the violin was ever worth very much but I was heartbroken nonetheless.

Link: http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2257124,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

Valentine's Day

Love



Withered Love



Photos: fromoldbooks.org by Liam Quin

Debit Cards

I’ve never beeen too comfortable with cards. Sometime ago, I encountered a problem I haven’t faced before although I’m told that it’s common enough — I went to a shop and paid using a debit card. Later, when I updated my passbook, I noticed that I’d been charged twice for the purchase.
Assuming the shop had charged me twice, I tried to follow it up with them (and get my money back). They were polite and helpful – having a membership card with them may have helped — although they told me that they problem was with the bank. They took about ten minutes to give me a letter to give to the bank saying that I’d made a purchase for which they had received payment only once (although I’d been charged twice), and asked that the bank give me back my money.
I then went to the bank with the letter and had a completely different experience there. To begin with, they were completely ill-equipped to handle the situation — such as it is. First they couldn’t find the form which needed to be filled up. When they did finally find it, they discovered that they had just one copy (and have therefore asked me to come back tomorrow to collect the form). It turns out that they also need the form to be submitted in triplicate with three sets of photocopies of the first and last pages of my passbook, and the letter which the shop gave me to give them. Not too surprisingly, they’re not planning to pay for the photocopying charges and to make matters even more annoying, they plan to take a minimum of 45 days to reimburse me. Also, they tell me that it isn’t their fault.
At this stage though I don’t care whose fault it is. I want my money to be returned to me and I am astounded that the bank doesn’t have a quicker procedure to deal with problems like this. The amount in this particular case is small but I dread ever having the same thing occur with a large amount of money being involved.

Sex, Drugs and Bad Journalism

I just came across an article [1] in Mail Today, a joint venture between Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) and the India Today Group, [2] which begins by saying:

"The next time a cocaine addict in Delhi orders for a fix, it’s unlikely that an African man will be standing at the door. Instead, it’ll probably be a young, trendy Northeast Indian girl. And for a few extra thousands, she’ll put sex on offer as well."

The paper may be associated with downmarket journalism but I think that this redefines the term 'dowmarket'. Not to mention that it left me furious: many Indian men seem to associate 'chinky eyes' -- a term which is hardly complimentary in itself -- with the willingness to sleep with anyone, anytime, anywhere, and an article like this does nothing to change that perception.
I could be completely off track but considering that I have quite simply lost count of the number of times I've been approached by men making gestures that are beyond lewd, gestures which friends who look like (and are) propah South Indian Brahmins never have to deal with, there's a part of me that has always suspected that thinking of women from North-East India as sluts has something to do with the fact that a large percentage of women in red light districts are women who've been trafficked into India from Nepal and to the average idiot, if you have chinky eyes, you're available for sex -- it doesn't matter if you've been kidnapped from your home, it doesn't matter if you were lured into a prostitution with the promise of a 'real' job, and it certainly doesn't matter if you have nothing whatsoever to do with the flesh trade.
What really annoys me about this article though is that the way the reporter has told his story is superbly distasteful. I can appreciate the fact that an editor might find a story about how some women from the North East -- and, I have little doubt, women from other places too -- may be being used by drug peddlars newsworthy. But to write the whole story focussing on the superficial, without any credible sources apart from quotes from one officer, and with the abundant use of cheap, sleazy and ill-informed phrases:

• if the customer is willing and has the money, the girl throws in sex as an added offer.


• a few hours of intoxication and intercourse

simply isn't acceptable. Even the one person the author quotes seems to be biased: he asserts that the girls 'are open to the idea of earning extra money' while the pedlars are not only merely 'suspected pedlars' but they also exist 'to lend a helping hand' to North-Eastern women to help them make money. Yeah, right!

Links:
[1] http://mailtoday.in/epapermain.aspx?queryed=9&querypage=4&boxid=275671144&parentid=2129&eddate=01/28/08
[2] http://www.visualeditors.com/tksajeev/2007/11/india-gets-its-own-version-of-the-daily-mail-in-new-joint-venture/

Other bloggers:
[1] http://gauravshrivastava.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/a-generalized-ethnic-perception-poor-ethics/
[2] http://mizohican.blogspot.com/2008/02/chp-163-sex-drugs-and-north-east-girls.html
[3] http://joytonsing.blogspot.com/2008/01/biased-report-on-mail-today.html

Quarter Life

Another year, and you find that now:

• You fail to recognise the music being played when you enter a coffee shop.


• You are entirely capable of having a conversation with teenagers without having any idea of what they've said.


• You think that Lycra is cheap.


• You can be grouchy and you don't suffer jackasses gladly.


• You may not know what you want or where you're going but you know without a doubt whom you don't want to be around.


• You have little tolerance for people who think very differently from you and insist on preaching all the time.


• You're in love with structured fabrics and your favorite brands are Van Heusen Woman and Allen Solly.


• You don't feel comfortable wearing stilettos all day long, and it doesn't bother you.


• You don't equate looking sexy with revealing flesh.


• You can legitimately use the phrase 'when I was young' even if it's only to say things like '...we didn't have cell phones in school'.


• You can imagine life without SMS.


• You actually know what to do when an audio cassette loses its tension.


• You no longer particularly care for T-shirts.


• You've stopped thinking in terms of a happily ever after.
  


• 18 years old: Misologist, naïve.
• 20 years old: Misoneist, comfortable.
• 22 years old: Misandrist, suspicious.
• 24 years old: Misogamist, undecided.


• You live life in shades of grey.


• You know that your life doesn't look like what you want it to and you're learning how to deal with disappointment.


• You don't give a damn about what anyone else says about you.


• You're no longer sure you know your way around.


• You're not willing to waste time on getting revenge but that doesn't mean that you're willing to forget (or forgive).


• You know that you can flirt but you have absolutely no desire to spend time talking to random guys who mean nothing to you. You just wish you had been that good at it when you were 16.


• You stop making friends with people merely because it's convenient. Your best friend isn't the kid next door who's like a parasite living off your toys.


• You choose your friends carefully; they're people whom you genuinely like and respect, and they're don't all live just around the corner.


• You think that there's nothing cool about not being in control; you've almost completely stopped drinking, forget about getting drunk.


• You realise that you not only draft virtually everything in points -- plaints must be drafted in consecutively numbered paragraphs, double spaced and in font size 14 -- but that you also think in points.

Book Covers

Book CoversFebruary 9, 2008
I like books which look good. Speaking of Mills and Boon, they’ve recently begun to print their books in India but the paper they use doesn’t seem to be as good as the paper they use abroad. Also, the covers prominently say that the books cost only 99 INR each. Apart from the fact that 99 for a book is not ‘only’ 99 in a country where Wordsworth Classics — Dickens, Austen, etc. — cost 90 INR and Bantam Classics — Homer, Virgil, Twain etc. — cost 125 INR, there is something extremely unpalatable about buying a book which reminds you that you’ve bought an inexpensive edition. And I think that that’s why I’ve never bought a Dover Thrift Edition or, for that matter, classics published by Wilson despite their having faux leather covers.
Perhaps it is entirely about being snobbish but given an option between a buying a good-looking book and one which, well, isn’t, I’d always choose the former. Sometime ago, that prompted me to buy a beautiful edition of Jane Austen’s works, my favourite author — never mind that she never moves very far out of a living room — in small, gilded volumes.
That being said, I also love to go to second-hand bookshops and look through layers of dirt for old books. The books I’ve picked up doing that include The Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens which I bought for 10 INR and The Second Treatise of Civil Government by J Locke for 7 INR.

Fair Use, Copyright and Rowling

In an article which focusses on Warner Bros. Entertainment and J. K. Rowling v. RDR Books and refers to Ms. Rowling as a ‘copyright hog’, Joe Nocera speaks of how the author has been trying to extend the scope of copyright protection beyond the bounds which the law recognises.He ends by saying:
“During my conversation with her representative, Mr. Blair, he pointed me to Ms. Rowling’s Web site, suggesting that would be the best place to find her response to the RDR Books case and the Harry Potter Lexicon. “You have our permission to quote from her Web site,” he said.I already have that right, Mr. Blair. But thanks anyway.”
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/business/09nocera.html?_r=1&ref=business&pagewanted=all

Protection to Foreign Trademarks

In the case of ITC Ltd. v. Punchgini, Inc, it was claimed that the trademark of Bukhara restaurant in New Delhi was being infringed by a restaurant name Bukhara Grill which had been opened in New York. [1] Sheppard Mullin says, "The New York State Court of Appeals concluded that while the "famous marks doctrine" itself is not recognized by New York law, New York law does provide protection to the owner of a famous mark by virtue of the owner's prior use of the mark in a foreign country under a theory of unfair competition through misappropriation." [2]

However, Thomas Zuber points out that 'according to the Second Circuit’s recent ruling in ITC Ltd. v. Punchgini, Inc., No. 05-0933-cv, 2007 WL 914742 (2d Cir. March 28, 2007), there is no federal “famous marks” exception to the basic territoriality rule that the United States does not enforce trademark rights that exist only under foreign law'.
(The Ninth Circuit's decision in Grupo Gigante S.A. de C.V. v. Dallo & Co., Inc., 391 F.3d 1088 (9th Cir. 2004) had earlier recognized the famous foreign trademark exception to territoriality).

Links:
[1] www.nycourts.gov/courts/appeals/decisions/dec07/165opn07.pdf
[2] www.intellectualpropertylawblog.com/archives/trademarks-and-trade-dress-court-finds-famous-foreign-trademarks-protectible.html
[3]www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysnative/RDpcT3BpbnNcT1BOXDA1LTA5MzMtY3Zfb3BuLnBkZg==/05-0933-cv_opn.pdf ; www.aipla.org/Content/ContentGroups/Issues_and_Advocacy/Amicus_Briefs1/20079/ITCbrief_Final_Revised2.pdf
[4] www.lawupdates.com/commentary/itc_ltd_v_punchgini_inc
[5] www.law.cornell.edu/nyctap/I07_0164.htm

MySpace.com v. MySpace.co.uk

MySpace.co.uk was registered six years before MySpace.com was founded. Nonetheless, arbitrator Antony Gold has ruled that the domain name should pass to MySpace.com:
"The Complainant [MySpace, Inc.; MySpace.com] has Rights in a name or mark which is identical to the Domain Name and the Domain Name in the hands of the Respondent [Total Web Solutions Ltd; MySpace.co.uk] is an Abusive Registration. The Domain Name is to be transferred to the Complainant."
The ruling: http://www.nic.uk/digitalAssets/27270_myspace.pdf

Prosecution for Obscene Writing

ABC reports that Karen Fletcher, a woman who wrote sexually explicit stories involving children is now being prosecuted for obscenity. The woman claims that she wrote the stories to deal with her own abuse as a child, and that she charged the 29 subscribers to her site so that she could run it and to ensure that children wouldn't be able to access the material. The stories were apparently not accompanied by any pictures and this is one of the few instances where the written word alone has been attacked. The lawyers involved in the case say that the trial will probably focus on whether the stories have any literary or artistic merit.
I can see how writing such stories can be cathartic although I'm not sure if it's a good idea to post them on the Net but posting them online seems to have more to do with bad judgment / poor taste than with criminal intent. Also, I'm not sure I understand the artistic merit argument: does it mean that if you are a particularly good writer, you can write about 'obscence' subjects and that if you aren't, your writing about exactly the same subject would make you a criminal?
Although I do sympathise with the author, I hate the idea of child porn. The result is that I don't know what to make of this particular case (other than to say that when it comes to child porn, I'm sure that there are many other people around who deserve to be prosecuted far more than Ms. Fletcher).
Link: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=4222798&page=1