Religion In A Clubby Hole Romair bhaiya:

aap khuda ke liye science ke peeche lath le ker mat dorhain. koi faida nahin hay.

Science is not an idealogy. It is an activity. And it is a very promising activity. At least much more than religion which also can do wonders but those wonders are usually accompnied by millions murdered and raped.

In your liberal religious rhetoric, when you speculate that laws of physics will break, you are probably trying to sketch the so called Qayamat. Why do you bring such a silly thing to the discussion. How on earth does it matter to you if these laws break some day in future. All I can inform you is that they have never broken in the past and in our life (the most important thing to us) and arn`t likely to break in our lifetime. Why???? How the hell does it concern us in any way?

And then, what good are you trying to achieve by convincing people that science is useless? Is it all that useless? Why are we communicating? Why are we here? (I mean in front of our computers)

My sincere advice is that you contemplate some more.

Religion In A Clubby Hole Dear Mr. Samosay the elder brother of pakoray,

Let me crearify this thing about science and religion. Science is what we know and just that. Religion is people pretending to know what they don`t or can`t.

Science has no problem because it admits what it doesn`t know. Otherwise, if it ever needed to compete religion, it can go crazy and make up stories which would be much much better in quality than the religeous fables.

The problem with religion is that it only proclaims, but never convinces. It is a voluntary club.

Religion In A Clubby Hole Let me summerize moral of the story for romair:

Please stop taking it for granted that bringing in the unsolved mystries of all times will contribute towards the defence of some religion(s) you tend to sympathize for.

Please try to defend the question, `why do I believe that god talked to muhammad` or that `jesus had some godly genes` or that `moses saw some sparklings when he was alone`.

By the way, I am so bothered by the fact that god is too shy to come in front of a crowd. Why is god like this?

Religion In A Clubby Hole Romair uncle,

The logic you are advocating is useless.

People like us don`t have any problem with contemplating and speculating for theories of explaination. This is what likes of einstien do exactly.

Our problem starts when we hear a religion X trying to insist that it is from that god. I can digest the presence of god but in no way I can accept somebody telling me something to do because of that god unless there is explicit truth. It is just not fair with me.

So, please don`t twist logic and don`t take refuge behind the `need for god` theory. We all know that we have invented god because we needed him badly.

Religion In A Clubby Hole Nice and powerful.

Mr. Longname, you speak for us. Keep it comming....

Culture Cloning We are different and we are similar. If a superior media is in place in India, the answer to that is definitely in trying to make one here. I think it is not fair with media to confine it with some moral boundries. Arts are another form of freedom.

If a more exposed dance wins over a modest one, that`s the way things work. It is not because people have lost morals. It is because you are sticking to an idealogy which sucks here. Accept it.

Loss of religion. huh. I wonder when this menace will leave us.

Culture Cloning >>>>>What I am really scared of, now, is a little child singing “Aati kya khandala” and not even being able to identify it as foreign.

You are scared because you know little.

“Aati kya khandala” is not that foriegn.

Invisible Immigrations, Furtive Bleedings Too long for me. I only had the time to scroll it down to this box.

South Asian Earthquake: Don’t care… or don’t know? There is no moral claim that people of pakistan can raise about how much aid they are getting. Poeple in the rest of the world are not their Chacha Mamaa who have an obligation to send aid. Lets have some dignity fellow country men.

I am not saying that calling for aid and relief is a bad idea. We should do it more often than not but expectations and complaining is a bad thing. I mean, poor poeple who are brainwashed by the religion and now the rhetoric of the mullah view the west as an evil thing. Sure its not their fault to be such way, but neither is the earthquake west`s fault. Soverign nations are free choose whethre to help or not.

I think there should be a policy of encouraging and training the local people so that they should not keeping lying on ground waiting for the angel of death of arrive, but start doing something smart. These are human beings are are capable of much more than the beasts of the wilderness. A disaster always brings an upsurge in motivation and ability to cop with it. The intelligent minds should devise ways to direct the local people do whatever they can to help the situation themselves and save lives.

Human mind is capable of great things if right path is followed.

Slavery Never Ends Zeena #4:

Khuda ke liye chorr do ab yeh perdah,
Ke hein aaj ham tum nahin ghair koi,

Shab-e-wasl bhi hay, hijaab iss qadar kiyoon?
Zara rukh se aanchal hataa ker to dekho,

Echoes A Suggession.

There are very few people in Pakistan who can read and understand English, not to speak of `good` English.

I have tried to contemplate the rationale behind the recent changes to chowk.com. The only thing I could understand is that chowk wants to become more sophisticated, more structured and more real. I think more important things are in queue.

Who does chowk really represent? I know that it has been founded and run by some lahori people. Absence of advertisments show that Chowk is not about money. Chowk has most of its writers from Pakistan and mostly punjab. Bulk of indian presence is from the north. I have this idea that chowk is basically concerned with problems facing present pakistani society, at home or abroad. Indian presence is there to spice up things a little and balance the perspecitve which would have been more polar if things were otherwise. Chowk needs to clear up its mind at this. I say that chowk will do just fine if it makes up its mind that it major representation is of Punjab and other major cities of Pakistan plus those in India who are in similar situations. Trying to mushroom the whole south asia is silly. I mean, theoratically it is possible but what`s the point? More generalization means less attention to details.

There always are and have been sophisticated people within every society. However, what Pakistani society needs at the moment is not a boost to the sophistication of the sophisticated, but to push the barrier of the ratio between the intellectuals and the naive.

We live in interesting times when internet is available to those who don`t even have good drinking water. There is high chance that more people can be involved in the thinking process than ever before. Only the right methods need to be adopted by the right people who are in a position to do so. Chowk is one such voice.

I don`t know how to do this. May be, get best of your articles translated into Urdu (or other languages if you want to `reform` others as well). May be, have some delibrate effort to get some real history lessons written for the Pakistani masses, also in Urdu. Brainstorming is job of the Chowkidars.

I can only say that even if you view urdu as an old fashioned cultural baggage, a mistake of medieval cultural winds, please have a look at the facts and the demand of the time. You have the resources to do it. Even if you put only a little link on the first page, it will do. The biggest reason for this is that nobody else is doing it. Masses in Pakistan just don`t have access to ideas that don`t stink of something bad. And yet, they are the real Pakistan, not the ones who are born to be users of such websites.

Echoes Re#61 by chowk-staff

beej seems to have something in his heart against chowk staff and that`s why he is trying to provoke them. beej, is there a special outcome that you want from it?

apart from it, beej`s objection is very valid. a shopkeeper cannot dictate to its customers. chowk staff, please don`t be authorotative, its not good for your own health.

Echoes My opinion to beej`s points on how to utilize front e-estate.

>Ten recommendations for the redesigned front page (must act right away):

>(1) Merge “avoice” and “echoes” into one (much smaller) box and call it by a term that >simple folks can understand – try “editorial”. Shorten to no more than three lines total.

-

>(2) Drop the “Explore chowk” box. It has not been used by any one since 1906.

Not a very good idea.

>(3) Drop the “Featured” box – it is one of the nuttiest ideas I have ever seen! There is no >reason the new editor should start showing her bias toward individual writers so brazenly!

-

>(4) Drop pictures from the “Columns” box – some of them are fifty years old – like the >one the Gillster used for his wedding proposal.

I am also not comfortable with the pictures. They drag chowk closer to the real world. Imagination works better in an imagined world. Chowk has an advantage in remaining distant from the real.

>(5) Move the “i-logs” box to a side – as used to be.

Yes, they are awkward in the middle.

>(6) Reduce the height of the “Self publish” box, by arranging each entry over two rows >only.

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>(7) Get rid of those yucky colors in the center – move “profile”, etc. to side >under “Columns”.

Colors in the center do not fit. They are doing nothing less than ruining the feel of the front page.

>(8) Drop “Who’s on line” – it is meaningless, it does not work right, and who cares!

Yup. It doesn`t work.

>(9) MOST IMPORTANT: Return the central portion the way it used to flow before (7 items >in detail, plus seven in less detail). Put back the page names.

Yup, that gave an on and off reader an easier interface to plan which articles to read and when. Please don`t make chowk fast paced.

>(10) Next time you develop a sudden itch to make changes in the interface – ask BEFORE >you go ahead and do it!

They have the right to make the changes. But they will be responsbile for the consequences.

Other than this, I don`t feel good as chowk moves closer to a mundane embodiment. Chowk needs to be abstract, a barren land where people come in search of the gems (good articles) and fellow gem seekers (interactors) can interact.

Chowk staff had an advantage in remaining perdah daar. They had a divine(in a sense) status. It gave chowk a status of an unbaised unassociated entity, something everybody can feel comfortable with. It made chowk an extention of mother nature to the cyberworld.

And yes, vulgur interactions need to be controlled but in a very linient and automatic manner. A system of a lot of warnings (mere numbers on the interactor`s profile) can really work which can then change to delayed interation previlages for some time. Something which a school principal would do.

Ramzaan Mubarak Janab temporal sahib,

aap ki dergaahe aaliya per mujhe aap ki rasaai ka waseela dastiyaab nahin ho saka. barahe karam kisi asaan raaste se murhamat ferma dain.

kher-andaish,
J

Ramzaan Mubarak A comment on this pillar of Islam.

Ramazan is just another way to make people push their limits of religious furvour, a re-charge mechanism so that the brain washing works till the next one. But I don`t want to give too much credit to the inventor because it wasn`t a new concept. Christians and Jews had it. But whoever invented it first, would get that credit.

It is just another hafta-e-safai or hafta-e-khush-iklaaqi. Now a days, corporations can make people do silly things like this because they have control over their push button. Pre-historic bosses had to rely on the notion of the big ghost to make people do it. But that works better than anything.

Tempo, I am amazed at you. Usually poets and artists are the first ones to smell the fishy air.

Ramzaan Mubarak T:

Thanks for the offer.

I am curious to know where in toronto do you dwell and what do you do for a living (I am sure there will be something other than poetry too) :-)