Gaping maws: a hyper-creative website

The Gaping Maws website is among THE most creative websites I've seen in ages. Check it out!! :)

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PS: I have some pressing work deadlines to meet so this blog has been suffering from "thin" posts this last week. Things will be back in full strength very shortly.

Work

POINT:
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration. - Thomas Alva Edison [Harper's Monthly, 1932]

COUNTERPOINT:
If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. [...] I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor. - Nikola Tesla [New York Times, October 19, 1931]

(contd) Strategic political interpretation: the bane of the humanitarian act

"In Washington, Bush administration officials, members of Congress and analysts have suggested that the outpouring of humanitarian aid and the need for coordination could have positive results for U.S. and global security beyond saving lives.

One of the reasons for such efforts, Powell said Tuesday in Indonesia, is that "we believe it is in the best interest of those countries and it's in our best interest. It dries up those pools of dissatisfaction that might give rise to terrorist activity."

U.S. military commanders are hoping to improve ties with Indonesia's military, which they see as a potential ally in the war on terrorism despite a U.S. arms embargo because of concerns about human-rights violations during the East Timor conflict in the late 1990s."

[Gratitude for aid accompanied by suspicion of U.S., Hugh Dellios, Chicago Tribune]

Strategic political interpretation: the bane of the humanitarian act

I have deliberately sought to keep this blog free of traditional politics but I am breaking this moratorium here. Seeing the US State department and the President repeatedly tout it's humanitarian mission in South Asia as being evidence of it's goodwill towards the Muslim world taints the humanitarian motives of this mission. While America and the whole world are showing a truly admirable outpouring of support straight from the heart, such a strategic justification seems to be completely out of place. I strongly feel that the "liberal media" bears a good share of the blame, by adopting this spin to critique the government in the wake of Jan Egeland's statement about the rich countries being "stingy" in their aid contributions to this disaster. (PS: I watched the entire press conference where he made this comment and the knee-jerk imputation that he was talking about the US was not at all the case. He was referring to "rich countries" including the newly rich in Eastern Europe, the Middle-East, elsewhere in Asia, Latin America, Africa to also contribute rather than just expecting countries in the Northwestern corner of the world to be the sole donors).

I do not say this in the "blame-the-West/blame-the-media" mode (which I find acutely tiresome) but these pronouncements by career politicians adds to my growing disgust in already seeing Indian politicians seek to draw political mileage out of this crisis by ham-handed criticisms of the "other" party -- of the party in power for being inefficient, and of the opposition parties for not placing partisan concerns aside.

Finally, as bloggers are prone to do, I have found a convenient article on the web to justify my opinion (there always seems to exist an "authoritative" article on the web to support every opinion however crazy -- including mine -- isnt there?).

From a press release of Doctors Without Borders(Medecins Sans Frontieres), when they pulled out of Afghanistan:
"The violence directed against humanitarian aid workers has come in a context in which the US backed coalition has consistently sought to use humanitarian aid to build support for its military and political ambitions. MSF denounces the coalition’s attempts to co-opt humanitarian aid and use it to “win hearts and minds”. By doing so, providing aid is no longer seen as an impartial and neutral act, endangering the lives of humanitarian volunteers and jeopardizing the aid to people in need. Only recently, on May 12th 2004, MSF publicly condemned the distribution of leaflets by the coalition forces in southern Afghanistan in which the population was informed that providing information about the Taliban and al Qaeda was necessary if they wanted the delivery of aid to continue."

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That's my verbal diarrhea discharge for the day. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Sensitive reportage

India-uncut is one of those rare websites that I have found that stands head and shoulders above the rest in reporting on the tsunami in a sensitive and empathetic way. Yes, it's all words no less.

I have been one of those, like many others, who has been caught up in the urge to do something ...anything...to "help". One week later, the momentum of doing "my part" -- in having expended resources [time,energy,money] to justify the feeling of being "involved"; by being on top of the minute-by-minute unfolding news about this catastrophe; in cringing at the images of devastation and deprivation; in passing judgements on the politics and progress of the "relief" and "development" activity; in tirelessly preaching about the need for involvement to my family and friends with a preposterously inflated tone of righteousness -- has all begun to teeter towards taking on an aura of absurdity. A very strange and perplexing note indeed on which to start this new year.