Blog-Death

This blog is dead. I think I have a better (looking) one here

http://www.contra-legem.com

Bye bye, blogger. Nice knowin' ya.

Finally, a Lady with Balls!

As we are 'recovering' from the recent Philip Green vs. Maldivian culture clash, the nation is gripped with yet another controversy, once again religious in nature. This time the issue in focus is an article published in Minivan Daily written by MDP deputy secretary general Aishath Aaniya titled "Are women a social plague?". Some of the issues she wrote about deals with blind faith, excessive modesty obligations, gender inequalities, unwillingness to apply logic and even misinterpretation of holy scriptures and prophetic narrations. While I greatly admire Aaniya for her braveness in the face of our country's recently found religious conservatism, I was foolishly hoping that most people would at least give some thought to what she had said in the article.

After reading the comments posted under the article, I realized that I was wrong. Only a hand full of liberal minded personages praised her for her words of wisdom and act of bravery (for publishing something so bold), contrasted by the rest of the posts which were basically rants from amateur mullahs condemning her to the pits of Hell, calling her a blasphemer and finally passing judgment over her submission to God (To quote one of the comments "I doubt if at this point, you can be called a proper Muslim"). Its amusing the way these people think they are at liberty to criticize a sacred relationship between God and man by dubbing someone a heretic over an idea he merely expressed with good intentions.

However there was one particular post from an apparent doomsayer, which I found very provocative. It relates to Muhammad's narration of encountering tortured feminine souls on his visit to Hell, which took place on the night of the ascension. He described one particular woman hung from her hair with a boiling brain (due to the hellish heat) because she had refused to wear a veil during her life-time, along with various other grisly inexplicable methods of torture (which, ironically, you can only find in religion) for transgressions with varying degrees of gravity. If a mortal does anything like this, he would be called a "vengeful psychotic sadist with an insatiable taste for the macabre" (subsequent to being burned at the stake, once again, ironically) but since this narration supposedly comes from the prophet, we are led to believe it without contemplating its validity or logic or anything for that matter. Anyone who refuses to accept this or with the intellectual capacity to refute it is hastily called a blasphemer or worse. (For this reason I shall keep quiet on the commonly accepted nature of the divine). Blind faith prevails everywhere. My honest impression is that even some negative comments on that article seem to support Aaniya's cause for writing it.

Ultimately its not going to matter what we (meaning self-proclaimed liberals) think of this woman or her bold piece of writing in which she presents her arguments well, with seemingly flawless logic, fair reasoning and reverence of Islamic principles even though she was negating some of them. Most people who called her a blasphemer ignored these qualities of her writing and focused on superimposing their misguided religious dogmas acquired over years of ignorance. She is undoubtedly going to face repercussions, and if she is too proud to recant her arguments and publish an apology, she will almost surely get sacked regardless of what MDP thinks. The party would feel compelled to do so in an attempt to sanitize the organization and to maintain public trust. (One more reason to hate politics? I think so). Even if she does apologize in the course of the next few days I really can't help myself but to admire her for this single act of courage. After all, she has balls (in the metaphorical sense) that most of us can only dream of having.

Paranoid and Ignorant

The notoriously flamboyant Philip Green brought a lot of controversy to our little island nation over the course of the past few days. I was having a discussion with my friend "The Slimy Bastard" whom I have mentioned several times on this blog, and since the discussion got a bit interesting, I thought I'd post it here. Of course, what we 'think' may drastically differ from the norm, for obvious reasons, but hey... freedom of expression right? (Note: conversation heavily edited for profanity, clarity and punctuation; also names have been altered to preserve a much desired sense of anonymity)

F1X says:
Did you read about the English billionaire nut controversy?

The Slimy Bastard says:
Hehe yeah.

F1X says:
The articles read something to the effect of "Maldivian staff posted at the resorts were traumatized after witnessing drunken topless people"

F1X says:
Sheesh… overly dramatic huh?

The Slimy Bastard says:
I enjoyed the comments in the Haveeru article.

F1X says:
There are good ones? Not just the usual paranoid religious rant?

The Slimy Bastard says:
There aren’t any good comments there, that’s why I enjoyed ‘em...

The Slimy Bastard says:
…and the article itself is pathetic!

F1X says:
Seriously man, how well researched are these people? The statue was of Lord Buddha... and Buddhism doesn't even consider itself to be a religion, it’s a philosophy, a way of life. There isn't any worship involved but still these idiots behave as if by unwittingly allowing this, we have committed to apostasy.

F1X says:
See the first line here.

F1X says:
You don't have to dwell deeper into it. The first introductory paragraph sums it all up.

The Slimy Bastard says:
I know Buddhism isn’t a religion per se. Our 'reporters' aren’t aware of it and our public sleeps during day and night.

The Slimy Bastard says:
Lord Buddha himself said not to worship him.

F1X says:
Dude, I think you should comment with that on Haveeru. My Divehi sucks, so you go for it.

The Slimy Bastard says:
It’s useless to comment there.

F1X says:
He said not to worship him, and they don't. They adorn their temples with images and statues of Buddha as a sign of reverence.

F1X says:
Not an icon of worship.

The Slimy Bastard says:
Now you know why I had this footnote in my last post?

The Slimy Bastard says:
Religiously sensitive people with clouded judgments will take offense from it without even contemplating my reference, ultimately proceeding to dub me a blasphemer.

F1X says:
Hehe. Yeah. I guess you were being cautious. Didn’t want some ignorant buffoon to call you a 'fucking infidel' over a concept you merely explored.

F1X says:
The problem with the religious types is that they take everything too damn personal. if guy A practices 'shit worship' and guy B practices the true religion, its no business of guy B. Won't God (Allah, Domo, Gott, Dieu or whatever) deal with infidels and hypocrites on the day of reckoning? So why should we interfere?

The Slimy Bastard says:
Our hesitation to be a little 'liberal' is the reason why we don’t have HD and why our condition of life remains the same.

F1X says:
Main hindrance to progress, development and ultimately civilization eh?

Hi-Def Dreamin'

One of my latest obsessions is High Definition Television. Living in Shitsville, Nowhere means I am going to have to wait at least another 100 years before we get it on our airwaves so the only alternative was to follow the incredible technology on the internet. Thanks to Apple and friends with bandwidths wider than the Suez canal doing that is now a possibility.


If you have a very good computer (for reference purposes I'll list my specs, which barely meets the standards - 1.83 Duo Core 2 Processor, 256 MB graphics and 1 GB DDR2 RAM) plus a decent internet connection, I strongly recommend seeing these trailers in all its 1080P (thats 1080 vertical lines of resolution with progressive scanning, the benchmark of quality HD) glory. Streaming them from Apple is a pain (near impossible for anyone short of a T1 connection) so I've linked URL's from where you can right-click and hit download.

300 - A

guarenteed epic in the making directed by Zack Snyder and inspired by the graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller (the same genius who inked the Sin City novels). I've been waiting ages for this and its going to finally hit Theatres in Asia tomorrow (9th in the US)The thumbnail image is a full resolution JPEG capture of the trailer. (Download 2:30 161 MB)

The Simpsons Movie - Enough said, see Homer in Hi-def (Download 2:17 182 MB)


Ratatouille - Latest Disney/Pixar endevour. Looks very promising. (Download 1:48 129 MB)


And some neat videos from Japan - BBC Mo

tion Gallery (Download 4:00 309 MB)

The televisions displayed at Reefside (and other consumer electronic outputs here) may be Hi-Def in nature but don't be deceived. The videos are not. They are from normal DVDs upconverted to display on large screen TVs. If you've never experienced HDTV, take one of these videos to a set with resolution 1920 x 1080, connect through the VGA port of a laptop and play. Or get a Blu-ray player or a PlayStation 3. I am going for the latter. To conclude this HD dreamin'/droolin' episode, feast your eyes on the new 70-inch BRAVIA LCD TV from Sony. Price tag? Try $32,000.00!