pakistan & india
Ten days before he was assassinated in January, my father, Salman Taseer, sent out a tweet about an Indian rocket that had come down over the Bay of Bengal: "Why does India make fools of themselves messing in space technology? Stick 2 bollywood my advice." My father was the governor of Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, and his tweet, with its taunt at India's misfortune, would have delighted his many thousands of followers. It fed straight into Pakistan's unhealthy obsession with India, the country from which it was carved in 1947.
Though my father's attitude went down well in Pakistan, it had caused considerable tension between us. I am half-Indian, raised in Delhi by my Indian mother: India is a country that I consider my own. When my father was killed by one of his own bodyguards for defending a Christian woman accused of blasphemy, we had not spoken for three years.
To understand the Pakistani obsession with India, to get a sense of its special edge—its hysteria—it is necessary to understand the rejection of India, its culture and past, that lies at the heart of the idea of Pakistan. This is not merely an academic question. Pakistan's animus toward India is the cause of both its unwillingness to fight Islamic extremism and its active complicity in undermining the aims of its ostensible ally, the United States.
capablanca
Simply beautiful!
Jose Raul Capablanca vs Professor Marc Fonaroff New York 1918 Spanish Game: Berlin Defense. Hedgehog Variation
via ChessGames.com.
More, at ChessHistory.com
pastafarian headgear
An Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as "religious headgear". Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons.
Mr Alm said the sieve was a requirement of his religion, pastafarianism.
The Austrian authorities required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive.
The idea came into Mr Alm's noodle three years ago as a way of making a serious, if ironic, point.
A self-confessed atheist, Mr Alm says he belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a light-hearted faith whose members call themselves pastafarians.
A medical interview established the self-styled 'pastafarian' was mentally fit to drive
The group's website states that "the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma".
via BBC
luanda?
If you think New York is expensive, try Luanda, Angola where you'd pay $28 for a CD and about $20 for a club sandwich and a soda, according to an annual survey on the cost of living around the globe by consulting firm Mercer.Costs are so high in Luanda for Americans that Mercer deemed it the most expensive city in the world for the second year in a row.
The biggest trend to emerge in this year's survey -- which compares the cost of housing, coffee, food, clothing and transportation for expatriates in 214 cities across five continents -- was that American and European cities slipped in the rankings, while African and Asian cities climbed.
via CNN.
Seriously?
