Why does the world watch US presidential elections so closely and with so much interest [COMPACTIDEA]

• No one in the world watches French or UK or Russian or Canadian or Japanese or German or Australian or Indian elections so closely. US presidential elections are watched closely, by both the power-brokers and the general public from the entire world.
• The reason is not only that the outcome of US presidential elections affect the lives of the people in the rest of the world. No. It's also because US presidential elections feel like a sort of reality show to the general public. The debates, the spit that candidates throw on each other, the revelations, the insults, the suspense, the polls, the advantage of English language, etc., together make for a very entertaining reality TV show from the standpoint of the general public. For the general public, the question isn't as much about the effect on their lives. It's the fun part, the part about betting on a horse and then watching its performance with keen interest. Like watching a cricket match. Or like watching Bigg Boss.
• US knows all too well that the rest of the world closely follows US elections. It can only feel happy about this, since this is yet another way in which US spreads its influence.

Winners of Academy Awards [Oscars] or Nobel Prizes aren't necessarily the best in their respective fields [COMPACTIDEA]

• Frequently, Oscars are politicized. So movies that support Western foreign policy will be awarded, and those that highlight Western crimes won't even be nominated.
• Oscars are inherently biased against non-English movies, since there's only one category/award for such movies. Hence the numerous excellent non-English movies being made all over the world each year hardly stand a chance, at least statistically.
• Nobel Prizes are also politicized to the extent that prominent Russian figures, for example, won't be acknowledged or awarded, just like Oscars are biased against nations which America considers its perennial adversaries. Not to forget lunatic decisions such as the award to Obama, or a lack of award to Mahatma Gandhi [presumably to not humiliate the British].
• Overall, just because a piece of work or a person gets an Oscar or a Nobel doesn't by itself imply necessarily that it is [or he is] the best in its/his respective category. Politics plays a major role. America plays a major role. Hatred of Russia, China, Iran, etc., plays a major role. Xenophobia plays a major role.

The illusion of the greatness of the PetroSheikhs

Many people praise the kings / rulers / sheikhs / sultans of the Arab world for the huge and magnificant structures they create [e.g., Burj Khalifa or the Kingdom Tower], the grand ideas they apparently have [discounting the fact that they employ top global consulting, design and construction firms], the large sums of money they spend, the "big thinking" they seem to have. Nonsense. Nothing great about it, if you analyze carefully.

Digging out oil bestowed upon them by nature, and selling it on the international market and earning money in the process doesn't equal intelligence or greatness. It's called luck. Or chance. Or just an accident. Absolutely nothing marvelous about it. It came to them for free. It was/is valuable for the entire world [like gold]. No brain was required. They didn't do anything about it. Anyone fortunate enough to be sitting upon trillions worth of crude oil like folks in the Middle East would automatically start to have "great" ideas to spend his easily-earned fortune. Let's not develop an illusion that these PetroSheikhs have something special in their brains which we don't. Look at South Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc., to understand what real greatness is - generation of immense wealth and prosperity in the face of considerable natural odds and an absence of natural resources.

Update [26-Sep-18]: Watched these two videos last night, showing opulent Saudi weddings. Big SUVs, lots of gold, luxury watches, top-grade accessories, and so on. Might give you an illusion that these folks are awesome. Nonsense. They're simply spending whatever they've won in the geographic lottery.

South Korean cinema is a vast treasure waiting to be discovered [COMPACTIDEA]

Over the last few years I've seen some South Korean movies - Oldboy, The Chaser, etc., and I have come to the realization that South Korean cinema is a treasure chest that's waiting to be discovered by anyone who admires well-made movies. South Korean movies have a distinctive mix of elements that differs materially from other cinemas such as Hollywood and Bollywood - the characteristic Korean language, South Korea's urban development, use of advanced gadgets/technology, Asian culture and sensibilities, strong themes, etc. Overall, anyone who loves watching quality movies should not miss out on checking out South Korean films.

Getting used to being called 'bhaiya', 'bhai sahab' and even 'uncle' [COMPACTIDEA]

Guess I'm now at that age or entering that age where these words begin. Earlier I used to call other guys 'bhaiya', because I would usually be the younger one. But now many/most other guys [and girls/women - whether unknown ones or wives of my friends] I meet address me as 'bhaiya'. Since the last 2-3 years, I've heard myself being called 'bhai sahab' occasionally. Initially it felt odd and bad, but now it kind of feels okayish. Maybe we all have this tendency to get used to anything that happens repeatedly. We accept it and then it no longer feels odd. In fact, after a while it's opposite starts to feel odd. Things change after all. And the worst of all is 'uncle'. Has happened a few times in the last 1-2 years [only by small kids], but it's shocking. So much that I've started staying away from small kids just so that one of them doesn't call me out as 'uncle' :)

But guess it's time to get comfortable with all this rather than trying to avoid it. And also it's time to shed some weight and look less 'unclish' :P

Should a top doctor be punished and barred from saving lives in the future for one foul up? [COMPACTIDEA]

We entrust top doctors to save lives, but we do not give them room for a single mistake. No extra reward beyond normal salary/benefits if he brings a life back from the gallows of death by using his experience/skills, but severe punishment and ridicule if he isn't able to save a life because of a mistake on his part [and not because the patient was medically incurable/unsaveable].

Is this okay? Are doctors not allowed to make mistakes? If he has saved five hundred lives in the past, does that not count against a single mistake he made now? Further, what about the lives that will be lost because this life-saving top doctor is in prison and is thus unable to attend to critical patients [whom he would've otherwise saved]? Are we willing to kill perhaps several dozen patients in the future by removing this doctor from duty, only because our definition of "justice" says that the death of one patient - by mistake - deserves punishment?

Thought about these issues while watching Ankur Arora Murder Case.

Feminists vehemently support abortion citing "choice", yet they vigorously howl about sex-selective abortion of female foetuses [COMPACTIDEA]

This reveals a serious contradiction in the position and thought process of these hardcore feminists. They apparently want to support choice, but not universally, rather only when it suits their innate desires. They will, for example, support an abortion [basically a cold-blooded murder] when it's the female who wants to have the thing flushed out [even if the father doesn't support the abortion]. They will, however, oppose the same abortion when only the father wants to get it done [and the mother opposes]. In this sense feminists are quite predictable characters. They will use fancy/funny terms such as "bodily autonomy", "choice", "reproductive rights", etc., when it comes to blindly supporting females, but won't support abandoning of girl foetuses even if both parents agree on this course of action. So heartless murder of foetuses is okay whenever the mother wants to have it done, but it isn't okay - even if both parents want it - if the foetus happens to be a girl!

Where is "my choice" and other blah blah blah now? What kind of logic is this?

Predictable, despicable, eternally frustrated, deplorable and overall nonsense creatures.

Should the smallest and largest countries have equal votes in organizations such as the United Nations?

This is an unresolved question in my mind. Cambodia is small and poor, and its vote can be bought relatively easily by a large, wealthy nation such as China [e.g., Cambodia's vote in ASEAN holds same weight as of the larger Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines], just like USA buys votes at UN from small island nations in order to give the impression that it has "multilateral support" and to not look cornered.

Question arises - should a smaller nation [in terms of population, economy size, etc.] have equal voting rights as a nation with much more population [India] or much more geographic size [Russia] or much larger economic size [Japan]? Countries with few people are representative of the people of the world as whole to a very little extent [compared to China, whose people represent over 18% of mankind], yet they vote on global issues with the same voting weight as nations with hundreds of millions of people each.

Taking away this inequality has its own severe negative repercussions [demonic countries such as USA would literally eat up less mighty nations].

Those who've been academic failures feel vindicated by education-bashing movies such as 3 Idiots, M.S. Dhoni, etc. [COMPACTIDEA]

Bashing academics/education/studies is the "in thing" today in Bollywood. Students are usually distributed according to the normal distribution, hence only a small proportional can be called intelligent in any given classroom anywhere in the world and in any decade. Hence, a significant proportion can be termed academic failures or academically poor. These folks sort of dislike education and so feel happy and even "vindicated" watching education being bashed in movies such as 3 Idiots [and the initial part of M.S. Dhoni], and falsely assume the messages being sent out - that education "isn't everything", and that you can easily be successful even without academics, and so on, forgetting hard/practical facts like there are only 10-15 guys in the Indian cricket team versus perhaps crores of aspirants.

Movies such as 3 Idiots aren't great, despite sky-high ratings and reviews. Such nonsense movies are liked by a lot many people because they allow this large proportion of academic failures to vent out their decades-old hatred for education.

Supreme Court's decision allowing husbands to divorce wives who force husbands to separate from their parents is logical

As expected, hardcore feminists are "outraged" and "speechless" and "shocked" by this decision. Their usual overuse of superlatives has begun [there's already nearly complete desensitization to these superlatives due to prior overuse]. These days, radical feminists feel entitled to have all judgments passed in favor of females, irrespective of what's logical according to the sum total of the basic structure of our society, our religious beliefs, prevailing norms, our culture, and so on. Any judgment/law that doesn't favor females creates shock waves among these predatory feminists, regardless of its merits. An important thing to not here is that these extreme feminists usually express their shock and awe without supporting it with logical arguments. In the screenshot below, she calls it "Shockingly retarded!" and she's left "Speechless 😡😡😡", but she never could explain what exactly made this sensible judgment retarded, other than implying questioning the basic structure of marriages in India [in which case these feminists shouldn't marry anyone at all, except perhaps each other, so they cal vent out their frustrations collectively].

The judges, however, did offer sufficient explanation. Thankfully, they were also cognizant that their judgment will act as a precedent and will be used as a guideline for years and decades to come. They likely also knew that unnecessary rants will follow, but that didn't stop them from issuing a sound judgment.

Thank god we still have non-cuboidal buildings in this world! [COMPACTIDEA]

Skyscrapers look so much the same. World is starting to look similar. Tall, sky-kissing buildings, all in the same basic shape - a long cuboid. They all look so much similar. Diversity in the world is reducing. Not good at all. Thank god we still have some places where important buildings aren't these boring long cuboids. Look at the headquarters of ING and Credit Suisse.

Showing off on social sites that you have a DSLR is another way to raise your quotient [COMPACTIDEA]

I've seen so many fools on FB showing off their DSLRs, pretending that they're "pros" just because they own a DSLR. DSLRs are so cheap now that even a monkey can buy one. Just another way to make oneself feel and seem more important/skilled/valuable than one really is. Narcissism has no bounds. Bridge cameras like Sony DSC-H300 take this one step further. These cameras look like DSLRs but are simply "pro looking" point-and-shoot types. They take away the complexity of a DSLR while preserving the "flaunt quotient". And they're much cheaper than DSLRs as well.

Pathetic!

 

Indians should prefer drinking juice, lassi, etc., rather than Coke, Fanta, etc. [COMPACTIDEA]

Large companies like Coca Cola brainwash entire populations into believing that not only is it "cool" to drink Coke/Pepsi/Fanta, but that it's also somehow "refreshing", "rejuvenating", and a "way to celebrate". Since most of the populations all over the world are dumb sheep anyway, they start blindly believing and following these corporations and start mindlessly shelling their hard-earned money on these harmful products.

Indian government should both gently nudge and overtly force Indians to healthier drinks such as juices, lassi, etc. Those who advocate that free will and independent decisions of adults are always preferable should be reminded that independent decisions don't always produce the best/wisest results. Just look at how many Indian kids and adults are wasting their money and health on Western carbonated drinks. Crush these drinks under the load of taxation. Use these extra taxes to subsidize healthy beverages. This use of force is the only way to stop nefarious corporations from exploiting the foolishness of people.

Update [Apr'18]: There's one more step between the two extreme steps of fully allowing aerated/carbonated drinks [the current scenario] and fully banning Coke/Pepsi. That step is encouraging [either by massive advertising campaigns, or by higher taxes on aerated/carbonated drinks, or both] those folks who just can't be shifted from bottled/canned drinks to prefer the juices from Coke/Pepsi rather than their aerated/carbonated drinks. Juices such as Pulpy Orange, etc., are any day a much better/healthier option than drinking Pepsi or Fanta or Mirinda.

School students shouldn't be given phones - or else give them only the most basic phones [COMPACTIDEA]

School kids get distracted and morally corrupted if/when they're given modern smartphones [with Internet]. They get into all sorts of bad things like watching porn, wasting time on chatting, getting into relationships with girls, etc. Reason for giving phones to school kids is given by parents as for the safety of kids. If this is the reason, better give kids only the most basic phones on which there's no Internet and no applications. Only calls and SMS. Kids need to be kept away from the open Internet, which is like a vast, unfenced jungle. Kids won't get into porn, chatting, flirting, MMSes/videos, etc., and the safety purpose will also be met.

Diana Penty is THE WORST actress ever in Bollywood [so far]

Realized this when watching Happy Bhag Jayegi today at Cinepolis. I don't think I've seen such horrible acting by any actress in any Bollwood movie ever. At some points in this movie, I even felt like maybe Diana Penty is just acting/behaving repulsively the way a dumb and brainless animal would, without exhibiting coherent and meaningful characteristics or gestures that would at least make her seem like a human/woman with non-zero intelligence.

To her credit, she might be a good model, but that's perhaps the only place where she should focus her energy and resources. The moment she opens her mouth and tries to act in a movie, she only makes fun of her own self and her dignity. She's not an actress and she'll never become even a decent actress because what's required for that isn't in her. Good looks can't always compensate for awfully-low acting skills. And you should know not only what you can do, but also what you cannot do - you shouldn't sell yourself for cheap just to grab a role in a movie.

Nevertheless, it wasn't an easy task getting here. Miss Unfortunately-Named Penty faced stiff challenge from other decorated awful actress veterans like Aishwarya Rai, Lara Dutta, and many others, but she rose to the occasion and even went beyond the call of duty to steal the crown of Miss Most Awful Bollywood Actress Ever. Hard work pays, and since she has set a new formidable benchmark in this field, it looks like she's going to be the reigning queen for the bottom for a long time to come.

In Bollywood dance or item songs, the side dancers - guys or girls - don't have any individual identity but have a single, unified collective identity [COMPACTIDEA]

Audience focuses only on the lead/main actor or actress/item girl. The background/side/supporting dancers are there only to "create crowd" for the lead/main folks. These supporting folks aren't seen individually by the audience, but are seen collectively. They don't have any individual identity in these songs, even if they are attractive/good-looking and dance as well or better than the main folks.

Hardcore feminists oppose the Hindu festival Raksha Bandhan [Rakhi] [COMPACTIDEA]

ALSO SEE OID 207Z.

It's amusing to read feminist rants each year about Raksha Bandhan [Rakhi], in newspapers and on blogs. Seriously, such feminists are extremely frustrated beings and they need to get a life and stop prioritizing, for example, the wearing of body-revealing clothes as somehow empowering women and the celebration of traditional Indian festivals as somehow disempowering for females. If these radical feminists don't like our cultural norms and traditions and don't want to follow them [or even see them or hear about them], they can very well either hide inside their homes or perhaps leave this soil and go to some La La Land in some other nation and feel empowered, liberated and vindicated among their own group.

Mediocrity is the ongoing norm in Bollywood [COMPACTIDEA]

ALSO SEE OID 208Z.

Most movies/songs coming out these days from India's Bollywood are mediocre. Like Rustom. Yes, Rustom! Bollywood movies these days have unnecessary and unnecessarily loud background music to cover the lack of acting/story/dialogs. Girls/women who just can't stop themselves from stripping in songs. Forcibly introduced humour/jokes so that the movie isn't labeled "heavy" by youth which doesn't seem to have appreciation for or understanding of high-quality cinema. Leaning on abuses and cheap/indecent/lewd/raunchy terms and phrases in order to evoke a fake sense of interest/wow from the mediocrity-satisfied audience. Music is doing even worse. Loud beats and meaningless lyrics which are little more than noise, all but lacking any soothing melody/tune. Again, much music is now commercial, as opposed to artistic, and heavily relies on shameless stripping "item girls" in order to sell itself [a sort of rider].

*****

31-Aug-16

Happy Bhaag Jayegi is a disaster akin to a thermonuclear explosion. It cannot be described in words. If people are liking/loving this movie, then we're absolutely in an era of mediocrity.

*****

14-Sep-16

Freaky Ali.

*****

21-Sep-16

Pink. This movie appears intellectual on the outside, but look carefully, and it is pseudo-intellectual and not rigorous or convincing at all. Most in the audience, who are sheep anyway, won't notice this, and will come out gushing with overjoy about how Pink is "awesome", "mind-blowing", and so on, unaware that it's their intellectually-challenged brain that finds Pink convincing rather than pleading.

*****

25-Sep-16

EL'AYICHI. Totally pointless and useless yet Indian sheep is calling it "great", etc.

*****

BRICS is, to be honest, an insult for Vladimir Putin and Russia [COMPACTIDEA]

Feels sad to see Putin in the company of losers such as Narendra Modi, Jacob Zuma and Dilma Rousseff. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin both have a very different "class" compared to the other three. Bad days for Russia that its charismatic leader Vladimir Putin has to pose for group photos with fake/puny leaders like Modi, Zuma and Rousseff. I don't feel good seeing this. Russia's league is much higher.

That one white hair strand on your head is a potent reminder for all of us [COMPACTIDEA]

All/most of us have it. It shines brightly and we try to hide it [we've all been told not to chop it or else all our hair would go white]. One can have a few such strands even in one's early 20s. Annoyance aside, this white strand serves as a reminder to us all about our eventual fate - old age, frail body, reduced mental abilities, and eventually death and conversion of what we used to be into dust and lifeless molecules. Perhaps looking daily at this one white strand makes us be a better man.

Is revenge an integral component of serving justice to the victims of a crime [COMPACTIDEA]

This thought occured to me when I read this news story on NDTV about a recent gang-rape in India of a 35 year old woman, her 14 year old daughter, and another female relative [plus beating, looting, etc., of the male family members]. Not digressing from the topic, the key question here [about human nature] is this - why is "revenge" an integral part of [the feeling of having gotten] justice for victims of crime? In this case, the victim family wants the rapists punished. Why do us humans feel a sort of satisfaction when the perpetrators of a crime are punished, considering the punishment doesn't undo or erase the initial crimes that were committed upon the victims?

Whenever I look at photos of buildings in Iraq, Libya, Syria turned into lifeless rubble, I feel sad and angry

Sad and angry because I know that America has destroyed these countries – Iraq, Libya and Syria. America – for its endless lust for oil and dollars and contracts and power and hegemony – has bombed and missiled these nations so much and so many times that these nations and the people there are back to the caveman days. So sad and angry because America itself continues to build and enjoy and use new skyscrapers and new bridges and new tunnels while the powerless people of these destroyed-by-America countries are slaughtered each day by America and forced to live like animals.

Something unprecedented and unforeseen happened today - I wasn't concerned about how many birthday wishes I received on Facebook

Does this mean that the 30s are actually having an effect on me? Maybe. Because until today, as far back as I can remember, I always used to check - multiple times a day - the inward flow of birthday greetings for me on Facebook [on my birthday]. I would feel very excited to see more and new wishes pouring in, but not today. Today I checked FB maybe only once or twice, and I even didn't care much about who or how many wished me. Maybe this has some connection to my overall significantly reduced usage of FB. Or maybe it's just that I'm no longer bothered/worried about whether or not other people are wishing me.

There's an important lesson here. We all have certain beliefs about who we are, how we like to act, what things we like, what priorities we have, what are our dreams, what all we covet, and so on. We consider these values sort of constant and stable, and a description of who we think we are. But the lesson here is that we're not a n-tuple of some constant values. We're changing. Our beliefs about our own self need to change as we change. These can't be constant. I cannot forever hold the belief that I love to check the birthday wishes pouring in for me on FB. I could be and probably am changing in other ways too. So must my beliefs about myself.

If animal cruelty is the key reason for me not eating non-vegetarian food, does it follow that eating genuinely naturally dead animals is alright

This seems like a valid and important question.

If the only inhibition, the only resistance to eating non-vegetarian food happens to be that it's bad/immoral/wrong because it involves cruelty to an animal and that it involves taking away the life of an animal, then it should logically follow that eating the [cooked] meat of animals which genuinely died naturally should be alright.

Now, the question that arises here is - how can this determination be made correctly, and in manner that can be consistently repeated - that a given animal died naturally and wasn't killed by man? This seems like a loophole that can be exploited rather easily. That being said, the mere existence of this loophole, this measurement difficulty doesn't take away the validity of the argument that cooking and eating naturally dead animals should be okay.

The last few days of my 20s...

It's now, at its dusk, that I value my 20s the most. I don't think I ever valued this decade in one's age or my own age as much as I do today. I never thought it would come to an end, no matter how long it was. It just kept on going and going and going, giving the false impression of eternity. I am of course sad that only about 2 weeks are left. Today I happily say that I'm 29, and it gives me a youthful feeling in front of those who're elder/older, but soon I'll enter the 30s, which does seem like a relatively "elderly" decade - that's how the public/society treats it - though of course not as much as 40s, 50s, 60s, etc. But the point here is that eventually, those are coming too. Time isn't going to stop, ever. That's the realization here. You're not always going to be a teen, and are not always going to be in your beautiful, young 20s. But as I always say to myself, life's like that sometimes...

Microsoft shouldn't have apologized for hiring dancers at its GDC party [and there's no need to hide the dancers' faces]

I think it is rather outrageous that Microsoft had to apologize for hiring dancers at its GDC party. Kind of evidence of how malignant the disease of radical feminism is. Hardcore gamers love this stuff and there's nothing wrong with it either. What's more, those who are talking about "blurring/hiding the faces of the dancers" are outright insane [so now we've to learn about the importance of individual privacy from, of all people, the Americans?]. It's their profession and they're more than happy to be paid for it you fools!

In America, you aren't male or female by birth - your gender is the one you "identify with", whatever that means!

What a rotten-to-the-core nation the USA has become. America is the land where a man kisses and beds a man, a woman kisses and beds a woman, and a child can have two parents who are either both male or both female [what a cursed fellow such a child must be]. It is the land where you can be born a girl, yet you "identify yourself" with a boy, yet have the sexual identity of a girl, but still romance with a woman! Wow, what a twisted, utterly repulsive, mentally ill, sick, and shitty place the United States is!

Update [May'16]: North Carolina's law is, to put it in the simplest possible words, common sense!

Update [23-Apr-17]: WTF is going on in America? LOL.

Update [12-Nov-17]: It's getting unbelievable now. What a garbage country America has become.

 

Update [Dec'18]: Now men can compete in women-only sports simply by claiming that they're females? What is happening in this world! She's right but in the name of political correctness people are criticizing her.

Update [Jul'19]: Is equality/inclusiveness so necessary in the news business that large outlets such as WSJ have to use those people in their public-facing roles who clearly do not have attractive looks, faces and/or bodies [as generally accepted in the society]? Examples below. As the RT example shows, there's definitely some amount of hospitality/presentability element in the TV news business, and those outlets that purposely choose and show attractive/presentable faces are bound to gain over those that prioritize political correctness and other nonsensical modern issues.

Update [Feb'21]:

https://www.rt.com/uk/515082-gender-neutral-maternity-hospital/

***

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/515171-chestfeeding-babies-trans-nhs/

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https://sputniknews.com/us/202102151082078091-god-herself-netizens-in-debates-after-rep-eric-swalwell-suggests-god-is-a-woman/

***

Obvious things are having to be enforced / formalized via legislation. Fools.

***

Political correctness vs customer base: UK computer retailer with 87.5% male buyers forced to pull ad that featured only men, RT, Jan'20

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/477931-political-correct-uk-men-ad/

***

 

Who wants to marry a girl/woman where in order to split the household work equally, you have to do time-keeping of which person put in how much time on household chores. No man wants to marry such a woman. Period. And this is the type of society today's West is going to give this world.

***

Abortion is a heinous crime, a cold-blooded murder - defending it with terms such as "choice", "my body", etc., is itself a crime

Most pro-abortion women use fancy and loaded words/phrases like "It's my body and so it's my choice what happens with it", "Us women are human beings and not just incubators or baby-making machines", "reproductive rights", "bodily autonomy", etc., to support their stance. This logic is neither sound nor allowable. No woman has the right to kill another life - least of all her own child - unless required on medical grounds. It's as simple as that. Any other arguments are simply mumbo-jumbo intended to confuse and convince the brainless. What these pro-abortion women basically want is the freedom to kill and quietly throw down the drain a living baby as and when they find it convenient [or dump the baby into a dustbin - unbelievable].

Examples of how hardcore, devilish feminists will go even to the extent of depicting a foetus as a burden for his mother, in order to defend/support their pro-abortion stance:

• How To Argue Pro Choice: 11 Arguments Against Abortion Access, Debunked [link]

Women scream for reservation but not as gutter-cleaners or enemy-facing, bullet-taking soldiers. Nonsense.

This intriguing fact should be kept in mind when addressing women's pleads/requests for quotas/reservation in government positions, private/public jobs, etc. They don't want to do things that are essential/indispensable/necessary but very difficult [maybe they just can't, after all]. The ultra-challenging tasks they want men to take care of, while they enjoy their time in cafes, clubs, cinemas, parlors/salons, and shopping malls.

Ain't going to work in this world.

Lunner, brunner - new words for situations when work-life balance isn't exactly right

And a quick search on Google, as many times before, reveals that lunner already exists. Sometimes human brains think so similarly. Or maybe this is too obvious, since so many people think about work-life balance.

1. Lunner: A single meal that combines lunch and dinner. Usually taken at night when you're too busy during the day and have to skip lunch.
2. Brunner: Combination of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Extreme form of brunch. When you're really busy.

Neerja Bhanot was pretty - but why does this fact make her loss so much more tragic for the public?

So much of the talk among the general public about Neerja Bhanot [and Neerja the movie] focuses on how beautiful/good-looking/pretty Neerja Bhanot was. Most people who've watched the movie frequently say that while Sonam Kapoor has played a good role in the movie, she's nowhere as good-looking as the real Neerja Bhanot. Why this fixation with the beauty of the late airhostess? Whatever Neerja Bhanot did - assuming she really did as much as has been depicted in the movie - was courageous, but is her loss/sacrifice more tragic just because she happened to be very pretty? I don't think so. Would the public have been as much touched and moved had Neerja Bhanot been a fat, short, dark, elderly woman who didn't happen to be good-looking? I don't think so.

Reminds me of how the public and news media were both obsessed with the beauty of Sunanda Pushkar while reporting on her death/killing/murder.