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Comments posted by flimflam2
On
Is Regionalism Stupid?
at first reading, your blog sounded muddled, pointless, and contradictory; you suggest that regionalism may be "stupid," then say that it's part of human nature, and that you yourself are dually regional. moreover, you never told us what about regional affinities irks you, why you value "national unity," or why regionalism is a form of fundamentalism.
my most generous thoughts about your blog were that:
1. you have a preference for punjabi culture;
2. you speak hindi fluently.
the first is a personal preference about which i have little to say, and the second is a practical matter; it is useful to be able to speak in and read hindi if one lives in delhi.
my views about your blog changed considerably after i read your responses to readers' comments. i was particularly influenced by your words about the "paaTTi" (grandmother) - clearly a tamilian - who lived in your building, and about your physical appearance which supposedly wouldn't give away your malayali origin.
now, i understand your beliefs and your stance, and have a great deal more to say than 1 and 2 above.
flimflam
On
The Lesser Crime
But I am really impressed by your courage or sheer chutzpah trying to corner your prof!!! -- r-sharma.
what would be a legitimate reason to "corner" his professor? for his insistence on honesty and integrity?
flimflam
On
The Lesser Crime
an amendment of the second paragraph of my previous comment:
"contrary to your baseless belief, you now have evidence - from kala bn and nargis natarajan - that glass tracing is NOT a universal phenomenon, but only a habit of some - perhaps many - dishonest, incompetent, lazy, cowardly, and immature indian students of architecture and engineering."
flimflam
On
The Lesser Crime
you certainly lost control and came apart, so much so that you were reduced to flinging the crudest vulgarities at me.
contrary to your baseless belief, you now have evidence - from kala bn and nargis natarajan - that glass tracing is a habit of some - perhaps many - dishonest, incompetent, lazy, cowardly, and immature indian students of architecture and engineering, and not a universal phenomenon. according to your own blog, you are one of them. your blog could have been an appropriate vehicle for an interesting discussion on cheating, but what you wanted was utterly undeserved admiration. tragically, you got it from your mindless minions.
here's a challenge. show the exchange of comments between you and me to your son, about whose moral development you are so concerned. apart from the motives underlying your sordid tale, how will you explain to him - or to an intelligent woman - your frequent use of the common term for sexual intercourse as a weapon for the verbal expression of anger? i can show our exchange to my children and wife, and not cringe. can you say same about yourself?
flimflam
On
The Lesser Crime
b s (unfortunate initials!) keshav, here's a summary for you:
you cheated at college. you were caught red-handed. in middle age, you decide to exploit that incident. you make up a filmy story that you drove a hard, illogical bargain with the hated professor, and slander him. you expect to be admired for posting the account at sulekha. there's talk about your angst over revealing this episode to your impressionable, young son. it's all pukeworthy-sweet. mindless bloggers you've softened in advance shower you with returnable accolades for your "wisdom." you feel a false sense of satisfaction. one blogger questions you. you lose control and engage in crass name-calling. "brilliant!"
flimflam
On
The Lesser Crime
repost: how old are you, keshav, that you are impelled to fling at a poster the crassest sexual terms and body functions to express your frustration and anger?
i am indeed, quite familiar with architecture. my wife is an architect (trained at the schools of architecture of madras university and columbia university, new york), and her classmate, a woman, was almost surely one of your professors. you asked; i told you.
i've never heard anything from my wife about cheating. i distinctly remember her taking an incomplete in a (post-)graduate course at columbia u, and spending an additional semester at significant cost (entirely mine, in those days), because she had underestimated the workload. but she didn't cheat, and i was glad.
you
i post a one-line comment, and you respond with 10 lines; i reply with 10 relevant lines, and you now respond with 20 angry lines! as everyone can see, the "defensive outpouring" is entirely yours, and most of it is irrelevant.
you and everyone here had an opportunity to engage in a thoughtful discussion on a serious matter. instead, you are here, looking for gratuitous accolades for your role as a heroic cheater in a contrived, filmy story.
thank you for one of the most entertaining whines i've heard in a long time.
flimflam
On
The Lesser Crime
how old are you, keshav, that you are impelled to fling at a poster the crassest sexual terms and body functions to express your frustration and anger?
i am indeed, quite familiar with architecture. my wife is an architect (trained at the schools of architecture of madras university and columbia university, new york), and her classmate, a woman, was almost surely one of your professors. you asked; i told you.
i've never heard anything from my wife about cheating. i distinctly remember her taking an incomplete in a (post-)graduate course at columbia u, and spending an additional semester at significant cost (entirely mine, in those days), because she had underestimated the workload. but she didn't cheat, and i was glad.
you and sulekha's undiscriminating readers lapped it up naively! "
i post a one-line comment, and you respond with 10 lines; i reply with 10 relevant lines, and you now respond with 20 angry lines! as everyone can see, the "defensive outpouring" is entirely yours, and most of it is irrelevant.
you and everyone here had an opportunity to engage in a thoughtful discussion on a serious matter. instead, you are here, looking for gratuitous accolades for your role as a heroic cheater in a contrived, filmy story.
thank you for one of the most entertaining whines i've heard in a long time.
flimflam
On
The Lesser Crime
my comment said "the apocrypha" (a set of putatively inauthentic books excluded from the bible), not "apocryphal." regardless, the meaning is clear; my comment was not cryptic. i didn't believe your casual mention of sauntering nakedly through your college hostel in mumbai in an earlier blog, and i don't believe that you struck a hard bargain with your professor after you were caught with the loot.
the most illogical part of your story: the professor deems it a greater wrongdoing to copy someone else's drawing than to present another's work for academic credit as your own! the former, at the very least, has a redeeming feature: you may have learnt something while making the effort to copy it. surely, he also knows that the latter may have involved theft.
moreover, your importunate appeals for admiration from your minions here for gaining wisdom from a dishonest act, while at the same time, condemning the man who tried to legitimately penalize you for it, and publicly dredging up his irrelevant past is, at best, cravenly disingenuous.
indeed, not everyone is honest, and nearly everyone has succumbed to a moment of weakness in their callow, student days, but i don't see many middle-aged men exploiting a possibly apocryphal tale of a long-past wrongdoing, as you have, to sermonize, and to win, at low cost, the fawning admiration of naive readers.
a word of explanation: at the large (20,000 students), university of texas campus in my town, whose library i constantly use, indian (post-) graduate students are known for their routine, academic dishonesty and cheating skills. over the last five years, the university has steadily decreased the number of students it admits from india.
at the california institute of technology, undergrad students, only the rare one of whom is from india, can take their tests and exams at any time during a semester, in their own dorm (hostel) rooms, with no supervision. no one cheats; the honour system is paramount; they also know that it's pointless to cheat.
for now, i shall ignore your irrelevant reference to "grammatical errors" and "limited skills" in the last paragraph of your response to my comment.
flimflam
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An Unhuman Conversation
To combat fear they invented a tool called Religion. To combat ignorance they invented another called Education. Unfortunately they do not know how to make good use of both. --- nargis natarajan.
it's possible that you meant what you wrote above, but based on the context, that seems unlikely; saying that they don't know how how to use both leaves open the possibility that they know how to use one.
if you meant, "they do not know how to use religion, and they do not know how to use education," you should have written, "unfortunately they do not know how to make good use of either.
the structure of english statements is similar to that of formal logic. for example,
not A and not B = not (A or B).
that's why "neither A nor B" [not A and not B] has the same meaning as "not A or B" [not (A or B)].
flimflam
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