“One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.” Thus spoke Will Durant, the celebrated American historian and philosopher, the author of the 11-volume The Story of Civilization. I sometimes wonder if Dr Manmohan Singh, the PM of India appointed by the Italian boss of the Congress Party, ever read history and if he did, whether he learned that lesson. Doing nothing is a good thing if the default is to do stupid thing. As the …

Saakshi toasts the achievements of the UPA government [via The Acorn.]
Let’s also raise a toast to the Indian voter for having chosen so wisely. The UPA and what it has achieved cannot be evaluated without reference to the wisdom of a sizable portion of the Indian voters who voted them to power. If it is a bitter harvest, the seeds were deliberately and voluntarily planted.
It’s all karma, neh?

Here’s an image of tropical cyclone Sidr from the NASA Earth Observatory.

Tropical Cyclone Sidr was continuing its northward progress over the Bay of Bengal on November 14, 2007. It was moving north toward the Mouths of the Ganges at a speed of 13 kilometers per hour (8 miles per hour), and winds in the storm system were raging at 220 km/hr (140 mph) near the storm’s center, making it a Category 4 strength tropical cyclone.

Tropical cyclone Sidr is expected to make landfall sometime early Friday morning near Kolkata. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope that it does not have the impact of cyclone Gorky which hit Bangladesh in 1991 killing 138,000 and leaving 10 million homeless.

Natural disasters bring in their wake a feast for scavengers who find the victims easy pickings. Here is a story about Christian missionaries feasting among the vulnerable victims of the tsunami.

I am outraged. Yes, I not so much saddened as I am outraged.
It is a great tragedy. So many lives needlessly wasted. So many children dead, so many more with little hope of a decent human existence. Millions homeless without proper water, food, healthcare and education. Entirely preventable because we have the technology and the resources to avoid all this suffering and death. In the end it comes down to human frailty–greed, short-sightedness, ignorance, the lust for power.
And then there was an incident on Sunday when an earthquake …