I am not sure whether many people will be comfortable with the topic I have chosen.  And I want to assure you that all I write here is my view of things and I fully respect that people might differ in opinion.  In fact, I would be the first one to welcome a difference in opinion. Only one request, if you are ultra-sensitive to the topic of religion, please do not read further. I would really appreciate my readers to have an open mind while reading this material.

You may ask why I want to write on something like this and not on some light hearted stuff. For starters, it is something that I feel very passionately about and I believe everyone should write with passion and not just for the sake of writing. Growing up as a young child, it would have been easy to do what others did. Leave everything to god and just relax; have the copybook lifestyle. Why I chose differently is a story in itself, but that some other day.

The biggest problem that I have when it comes to religion is that people seem to have very fragile ego when it comes to it. Suddenly, they become intolerable on the smallest of issues. A wise man once said “Tell a man to kill someone and maybe he won’t do it, but tell him it’s in god’s name and he would be glad to kill”.  The question I have is how someone can be so blinded by faith that he loses all sense of logic. Would you believe me if I said I saw a monkey-man fly in the sky yesterday. But it’s so easy to believe if the same thing is said by religious texts (which by the way make no sense at all).

Being a science student (and this even applies to many others), I just cannot help make fun of the “all faith, no questions approach” that religions around the world are more than happy to preach. What I don’t get is how people believe that crap? At one time, the Vatican church said that the earth was flat and it was the center of the universe. And when a certain genius Galileo proved otherwise, what did he get in return.  The guy was punished for contradicting what the church said. This is just one of the many incidents in history when the rigid approach of religion got the better of mankind and although the truth was eventually found out, the church has still not apologized for the treatment meted out to Galileo and the thousands of others like him who suffered the same fate.

During the early years of his papacy, the late pope John Paul II was once shot by a crazy lunatic. A team of four doctors struggled for hours in the operation theatre to revive him and later eventually succeeded. At a later sermon, the pope in all his grandeur said that he believed it was only due to God’s will that he was saved. It is interesting to note that it is enough for him to “believe” (for everyone to be sure) that it was indeed God’s great deed and no credit was given to the brave doctors that actually did everything. What I wanted to demonstrate by this is that religion does not require logic to operate. You just have to say you believe in something and that’s it, end of discussion. While science on the other hand has to back up everything it says with proof. I am no expert, but even to me that seem unfair. Is science being punished for being the sane one? Common people think rationally for once and you will realize the sham going on in the name of religion.

I would like to state that religious is the biggest scam in the history of mankind. It was thought of by crazy people in the early centuries and eventually passed on from generation to generation. And I can understand it is very easy to believe what it says. The world seems so perfectly designed that you are almost certain that it was hand crafted by someone. But then doesn’t the question arise that if someone was so perfect in designing the world and everything in it, then the guy himself must be so perfect. And most religions describe God as the most near things to perfection as can be possible. Then logically, who created the creator? And who created the creator’s creator and so on? These questions are never answered. The reply you mostly get is “Don’t ask too many questions. Just believe what is being told to you.” This is mostly followed by a glamorous statement like “For there is no greater gift than the gift of faith”. Well I have two words for you: Not Interested.

I have to appreciate religions around the world for one thing. The way they have people hooked onto them. Trust me it’s not easy to convince people of this shit.  And they have done a wonderful job at it. Even Shakespeare himself could not achieve such perfection in his plays. It truly is a Mass Hypnosis.

All religions around the world say there is only one god and yet fight for the supremacy of their own gods. It is the biggest hypocrisy I have ever seen. Almost every religion preaches peace and tolerance towards others. And you know what the ground reality is. I don’t even want to comment on that. The priests are supposed to lead a life of sacrifice and in denial of worldly gods. Try visiting a priest’s house (of any religion in the world) and you would be surprised at his wealth. Trust me on that one. Life is filled with examples that expose the hollowness of all religions and yet people conveniently overlook it all.

Come to think of it, religion has been the biggest mass murderer in history. Lets take a look at the biggest problems in the world today. It may be the Israel-Palestine issue or the India-Pakistan problem and so on; the core issue is always religion. Truth is that religions around the world are nothing more than giant political parties with each party aiming to destroy the other. Just imagine a world without religion, no conflicts, no problems; just everlasting peace. As a matter of fact, religion has often been used to justify some of the most evil deeds in history; right from the holocaust in Germany to jihad of the present day terrorists. Can you still say that religion is not the root of all evil in the world?

The only reason that religion continues to enjoy such loyalty from people around the world is just one word: Fear. That’s right, its fear. I can be very sure when I say that almost every one of the so-called “theists” has had some moments in life when they had doubts about religion. But why those doubts never grow is because of the fear of the unknown that people have. They are just afraid just in case what religion says might be true. Nobody wants to take a chance. That like it or not, is the mass perception. At times religion is the easy way out. But as I see it, it is the cowardly way out. How convenient is it that when things are going good, god gets all the credit. (“Its all because of god’s grace”). But when things aren’t going so smooth, the problem always lies with the person. Its ridiculous. I cannot help but laugh at such ignorance.

At this point I would like to quote George Carlin who said “Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man – living in the sky – who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time . . . But He loves you!” And that for me really sums up the sorry state of affairs that religion has put all of us in. It’s sad but it’s the reality of life.

Before I conclude, there’s one question that I would like to ask: is it necessary that you vote for the same political party as your mom and dad vote for (for those of you who don’t vote at all, you get the question I hope). My point is that in case of other decisions in life, parents don’t interfere (almost all times I hope). But when it comes to religion, any difference in opinion is taken as an insult. Before young kids are mature enough to understand the difference between right and wrong, they are fed with all crap about religion that it just hampers their sense of judgement. In The End of Faith, Sam Harris writes:

“The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?”

With this I would like to conclude my latest blog hoping that I made some sense to the reader. If you have read it till now, I would thank you for your patience and request your feedback in the form of comments or emails. And if you like what I had to say here, I recommend you read the book “The God Delusion” By Richard Dawkins. It’s a treat for the open minded people.

THEN THE QUESTION WOULD ARISE AS TO WHY INSTALL FROM USB FLASH DRIVE? Why would someone want to install a client OS from a thumb drive instead of a DVDROM or over the network? One reason: Performance. Installing Windows Vista from a high speed USB flash drive is in my experience the easiest & fastest way to complete a Windows Vista install. This is much faster than using a DVD, gigabit ethernet, or possibly even some external USB 2.0 hard drives, due to differences in access speed & transfer rate. To put this into perspective, y’know how installing Windows on a Virtual PC virtual machine from an .ISO CD image is really, really, really fast? Imagine something roughly just as fast, except for doing installations of the OS on to actual workstations. STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS Here’s some step-by-step instructions on how we do this:-. Run CMD.EXE and type the following. Note: This set of commands assumes that the USB flash drive is addressed as “disk 1″. you should double check that by doing a list of the disks (type “list disk”) before cleaning it. If you have multiple hard drives, like an SDFlash drive or a Multibay drive, you could end up wiping your second drive using this command. 1. diskpart 2. select disk 1 3. clean 4. create partition primary 5. select partition 1 6. active 7. format fs=fat32 8. assign 9. exit Copy Windows Vista’s DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive Simply issue the following command to start copying all the content from the Windows Vista DVD to your newly formatted high speed flash drive. * xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ And that’s it. Boot up the machine, have it boot off the USB drive, and watch how fast the installation completes. If you thought Windows Vista installed quickly before then let’s see how you like it now. The slowest part of the install will probably be the computer waiting for you to type in information in the setup fields, and even that can be automated using the Windows Automated Installation Kit.

Michael Jackson Childhood

Photoshoot In 1979

At The 30th Golden Globe Awards

Promoting \’Destiny\’ with his brothers

Rehearsing With His Brothers

Billie Jean

Beat It

Thriller

Say Say Say

We Are The World

Platinum Certification for Thriller

Performing at the 25th Anniversary Celebration Of Motown

At The 11th american Music Awards

Michael Jackson aka The King of Pop was born to a steel worker Joe Jackson and his wife Katherine Jackson on 29th August, 1958. One of several brothers and sisters, he was always the darling of them all especially since he was the youngest. He rose to fame at an early age of 11 when he along with four of his brothers started “The jackson Five”. Working with Motown Record label, they won over the audience. The fact that Michael was the soul of the entire group was never hidden. It was in time that he realised that and seperated from the group to go solo and launched his first album “off the Wall”. It was a huge success but michael always wanted more. Next he came out with “thriller”. This was the album that shot him to fame. From there he never looked back.The Guiness Book of World Records noted thriller as the greatest selling of all time. The video of the title ‘thriller’ was the longest video ever made and ‘Bilie Jean’ ruled the charts for a long long time.

Michael’s greatest moment perhaps came on the 25th anniversay celebration of Motown label, when during the live television event Michael performed the ‘Moonwalk’. The entire crowd went wild and it became his signature. Later, Michael came with a host of other albums which tasted success on the Charts but none could match up to ‘Thriller’. ‘Bad’ became the first album ever to have 6 of its songs in the top 10. Till date, Michael has the record for wining the maximum number of Emmy’s in one night, a staggering 9 awards out of 13 nominations.

Michael not only set reords in terms of album sales and awards. He also has the Guiness record to his name for the maximum number of people gathered at a concert. Michael Jackson concerts were always a huge attraction to youngsters all across the globe. His series of comeback concerts to be held in July this year, known as “This Is It” became the fast selling concert of all times with the tickets selling at a rate of 11/second. Unfortunately, his bid to again become the King of the World was halted midway by tragedy.

The life of Michael Jackson has been an up and a down story. From the success he enjoyed on the stage to he controversies he courted outside. It was any paparazi’s dream story. His colour changed dramatically from a black african-american male to a surprisisngly white looking pale guy with feminine features. His strange sometimes bizzare behaviour did not sit well with a lot of people. People gave him the nickname “wacko-jacko”. He had multiple surgeries done on his nose to recify its shape and his photo sleeping in an oxygen chamber became widely pulblicised. He was criticised for hanging his baby from a hotel window in Germany and later apologised. His greatest downfall came when in 2003; he was charged with child molestation charges and tried. The trial went on for 2 years and the Los Angeles court later acquitted him of all charges. Though he emerged victourious in his legal battles, the toll that it took on him personally was too much to bear. He suffered financially and kept away from the media. He even shifted to ahrain for two years. His famous residence Neverland Ranch had to be sold to pay off some of his debts and when he did return to the United States in late 2007 he rented a home in a posh neighbourhood in downtown Los Angeles.

Whatever controversies may have dogged him through out his illustious career, to his loyal fans he will always be the King, yes the King!. Here’s is my tribute to the man around whom a generation grew….

“He showed us how to ‘Heal the world’. It does not matter whether you are ‘Black or White’, just ‘beat it’, beat the problem coz ‘We are the World’. When in doubt just look at the ‘Man in the Mirror’. Remember ‘You are not alone’, but ‘Don’t walk away’; that is not the ‘Human Nature’. Sing the ‘Earth Song’ with a ‘Smile’. Even though he is ‘Gone too Soon’, he is here in our hearts ‘Moonwalking’ forever.
Here’s remembering the ‘invincible’ MICHAEL JACKSON …”

This is a quote from the legendary writer William Shakespeare himself:

“He ,who spills his blood with me, shall be my brother.”

Personally one of my favorite quotes. tell me if you liked it.

Check out fore quotes coming soon.

Well hello to whomsoever is reading this. his is my first blog here on wordpress and i must say i like the look and feel of the website. It is a lot more comfortable than many of the others i have used.

Anyways coming to the point, as  began to think on a topic on a topic to write my very first blog, i can assure you that process took some time. To be fair to myself there is no shortage of things around the world. There are so many issues on which i’d like to express myself but since this was my very first blog  i chose elections 2009 because that is something that affects the life of each and every one of us.

See the Verdict is now well out in the open. The UPA has won a thumping majority and the NDA is well and truly out of the picture(for the next 5 years atleast).  Its been a historic election in more ways than one. to begin with Dr. Manmohan Singh would become the first Prime Minister fter Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to be voted back to power after serving on the top job for a full five year term. The verdict also marks the end of the typical hung assemblies that we were used to getting since 1990. Hopefully this time, the congress having made a government on its own would provide a more stable government and push for more social reforms. A big relief would be the absence of the left parties whose approval would no longer be needed before taking any measures.

Advani’s prime ministerial hopes are now dashed completely and i think i can safeky say now that he is on his way out. As to who will replace him at the helm of the BJP is still not sure. But one thing we can say with surity is that many contenders would spring up and we can expect ugly infighting in a party that is already trying to save its face amidst an embarrasing defeat.

Another key question that this verdict raises is on the ability of the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to be as effective outside Guarat as he is inside Gujarat. This result will surely deal a huge blow to his ambitions for this countries toughest job. his aura of invincibility has definitely been broken. Although in Gujarat, he still remains a force that the congress is far defeating. This made clear by the defeat of Shankarsingh Vaghela, the parties topmost candidate.

One of the biggest consequence of the unanimous verdict in this years electin is that it has dashed the hopes of many potential prime ministerial candidates and the so-called “King Makers”. This is mostly true for parties such as the BSP which lost huge ground in UP. BigWigs such as Deva Gowda, jayalalitha, Prakash Karat and Lalu Prasad Yadav who were looking for big deals despite small numbers have cut to size. Lalu even lost the election from one of the two constituencies that he had been contesting. The victory of Trinamool-Cong combine in West Bengal was a huge turning point and could mark the beginning of a change, a change in a state where the last one and a half generations have grown up under the red rule. I see better times ahead in WB.

Moving on, not everything was well for the congress party. The fact that four of their cabinet ministers lost the election would not go down well with party that otherwise saw a nearly perfect election. The biggest surprise was the Home Minister P. Chindambarams failure to gurantee a Lok sabha Seat. The others include A.R. Antulay, Ambika Soni etc.

All in all the point i’d like to make is that the congress party may celebrate today but there is no shortage of tough tasks waiting for them once they resume power. There is an economy in turmoil that is suffering the effects of a global recession. The issue of 26/11 has not been taken very seriously by pakistan. The war in Sri Lanka and pakistan poses real security threat to us. And top of it lies the main issue of internal secrity.